by Ross Thomas
“That’s why we want the letter. If we don’t find her, they won’t do anything to her until they get it back. They’ll trade for the letter.”
Price got up and started to pace the room. “Let me try to sum it up. I don’t mind telling you first of all that this will be quite a feather in my cap.”
“I would imagine,” Padillo said and I admired the way he kept the sarcasm out of his voice.
“Let me see now: Dymec approaches the Van Zandt people. He tells them he wants a letter—to whom it may concern, I suppose—all properly sealed setting forth the fact that one, they have employed him or some unnamed person to assassinate their Prime Minister, and two, that the assassination is to take place on such and such a date at such and such a time at such and such a spot. And three, that for the aforementioned services they agree to pay the sum of seventy-five thousand dollars. Have I got it right so far?”
“You’ve got it right,” Padillo said.
“Now then, the reason that they write this letter is that Dymec here is getting a little worried not only about the rest of his commission, but also about what happens to him after it’s all over—just in case they have the idea of having him caught in the act, so to speak. And thirdly, you and McCorkle are worried about getting Mrs. McCorkle back and she and the letter are considered fair exchange. Of course, once the Prime Minister is assassinated, the letter would be worthless to you because you would implicate yourself in murder.”
“That’s about it,” Padillo said. “If Van Zandt did die and I had the letter, they’d wire me to it.”
“Who’s they?” I asked.
“My former employers—or Price’s present ones.”
Price nodded. “Quite. But the assassination does not take place, you somehow rescue Mrs. McCorkle, and I turn the letter over to my government who uses it to excoriate Van Zandt and party in the press, the United Nations, and so forth.”
“That’s it.”
“Then all we have to do is get the letter,” Dymec said.
“Yes. But you’ll have to go through with the entire charade. You’ll have to be up on top of the hotel because they’ll have somebody around watching to see that you are. If anything goes wrong, if we don’t have Fredl McCorkle safe by the time Van Zandt’s car goes by, then I want it. It’s all we’ll have to get her back.”
“But if she is safe?” Dymec asked.
“Then you hand the letter over to Price.”
“I’ll be at the hotel then?” Price said.
“You’ll be on the roof with him.”
“Just one thing, Michael dear?” Magda said.
“Yes, precious?”
“Obviously, when this is all over, your African friends aren’t going to pay us the rest of the agreed-upon fee. Where will it come from?”
“Out of my own pocket.”
“You must have done well in the gun trade.”
“It was profitable.”
“Speaking of money—” Price said.
Padillo tapped the attaché case. “It’s here,” he said. He opened the case and tossed each share casually on the table. Then he closed the case, picked it up, and headed for the door. I joined him. “Stay close to your telephones,” he told them. “I’ll be calling you tonight.”
Once again they said nothing, but only nodded, as they kept on counting the money.
TWENTY
We walked down the stairs and out of the building and turned south on Seventh Street. When we neared the car, Padillo looked at his watch. “It’s too late for breakfast and too early for lunch,” he said. “What do you suggest?”
“A drink, except that it’s Sunday.”
“Don’t you know some scoff-law barkeep?”
“Me,” I said.
“That’ll have to do.”
The sermons were still going on as we traveled H Street over to Seventeenth and we missed the post-church traffic. “Let’s go by the Roger Smith,” Padillo said.
I turned left and drove down to Pennsylvania and then right. “Van Zandt will turn at this corner and the four-car parade will follow the same route we’re taking.”
Padillo ducked and looked up at the roof garden of the hotel. “It’s closed this time of year, you say?”
“That’s right.”
We turned right on Eighteenth and drove north until it ran into Connecticut Avenue again. I managed to find a parking place in front of the restaurant. Inside, I switched on one bank of lights which still left it dark enough to have made a flashlight handy. We felt our way to the bar, bumping once into a chair. Padillo went behind the bar and switched on the lights that illuminated the sinks and the bottles.
“What are you drinking?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Martini?”
“Why not.”
“Vodka?”
“Gin.”
“On the rocks?”
“No.”
He mixed the drinks deftly and placed mine before me. “That could help that sad look that Magda wanted to cure.”
“I bet she’s a lot of fun.”
“A swell kid and a peachy dancer.”
“Is she good with that gun you were talking about?”
“Very good.”
“Is that good enough to go in after Fredl?”
“It is if she’s on our team this week.”
“Is she?”
“I don’t know. That’s why you’d better go along.”
I nodded. “I was going to suggest it.”
Padillo took a sip of his drink. “After you rescue your wife and drop her off, you can come down to the Roger Smith and lend a hand.”
“There’ll be a few loose toys still out of the box?”
“A few.”
I tried the martini. It was quite good. “Do you think they’ll write that letter?”
“If Dymec leans on them hard enough. If he sits there with that ‘I-won’t-budge-till-you-do’ stare of his, they’ll probably give it to him. They won’t have much choice.”
“It’s insurance for him.”
“He’d better think so. Of course, he could just simply tell them what we want to use it for.”
“I thought of that,” I said. “But there’s not as much percentage in it for him.”
“Let’s hope so. I also hope that it gets Price off my neck.”
“It should,” I said, “but I’ve never known you to be so considerate of people who shoot at you.”
Padillo held up the cocktail shaker and looked at it. “I’m not really. Let’s have one more and then have some lunch.”
“All right.”
He mixed the drinks and poured them. “Funny about Price,” he said.
“How?”
“He wants the letter, but that alone won’t keep him off my back.”
“What else?”
“How many times did he shoot at me last night?”
“Twice.”
“He missed twice. Five years ago he wouldn’t have missed once. Three years ago he would have been dead if he had. You notice I didn’t shoot back.”
“I took it for a sporting gesture.”
Padillo grinned. “Not quite. My hand was shaking too much.”
We walked over to Harvey’s on Connecticut Avenue and had lunch there which was no better nor worse than the lunches they had been serving for the past 108 years. Afterwards, we drove back to Seventh Street, found a parking place, and climbed the stairs to the office with the folding steel chairs and the dust-covered desk. I asked Padillo how his side was and when he said it bothered him I offered him the chair behind the desk. I turned another chair around so that it would serve as a footrest and we sat there in the drab office on a Sunday afternoon and waited for the gangster men to arrive.
They arrived on time, at two p.m. Hardman brought them in, three Negroes of different shades of brown, all dressed in quiet, conservative dark suits, white shirts, muted ties and highly-polished shoes. He introduced us to them and then told us who
they were.
“This Johnny Jay,” he said of a tall, thin man with dark skin, a bleak look, and wide mouth with thick rubbery lips. He looked to be about thirty-one or two. He nodded at us, took out a handkerchief, dusted off one of the folding chairs, and sat down.
“This here’s Tulip,” Hardman said, indicating a man with a dark pitted face, a wide, stocky build, and curiously delicate-looking hands that flitted around like thick butterflies, lighting first on his lapels, then down to check the flaps on his jacket pockets, then the trouser pockets, then up to his head to smooth a hair back into place, and then to the knot of his blue and maroon striped tie.
The last man that Hardman introduced was a mulatto, a sleek-skinned, handsome lad whom he called Nineball. Nine-ball wore a double-breasted suit of dark grey flannel, a white shirt with a tab collar, a neatly knotted green and black foulard tie, and a well-clipped mustache. He wore them all well and gave us a friendly smile when Hardman mentioned his name.
“These the men you gonna be workin with,” Hardman told them. “They also the men who gonna pay you two thousand dollars to do whatever needs to be done like I told you, and I don’t want no mess-ups.”
“I’ll have the money for you first thing in the morning,” I said. “As soon as the banks open.”
Hardman took out his ostrich billfold and opened it so he could read something he had written on a notepad.
“Gonna cost you $10,247 for the whole thing. Six big ones for my three friends here, a thousand each to rent the moving van and the pickup, a thousand into the hip pocket of the man at the phone company to get them phones in first thing in the morning, a thousand to get the two cars painted, and $247 for expenses like uniforms and a couple of other items.”
Nineball spoke up. “We gonna have to zap anybody?”
“Not if we can help it,” Padillo said.
Nineball nodded and said: “But it just possibly might be necessary.”
“It possibly might,” Padillo said.
“How you got it planned now?” Hardman asked.
“There’s one thing about those figures you were reeling off,” I said.
“What?” Hardman said.
“There’s no cut for you.”
“We get around to that later.”
Padillo leaned forward from his chair behind the desk and rested his arms on the blotter. I noticed that he had dusted it off. “It works like this,” he said. “You’ll be outside the trade mission on Massachusetts Avenue by eleven-thirty on Tuesday morning. You’ll be parked so that you have a clear view of the house. If there’s a rear entrance, whoever’s in the big truck will cover that. At precisely eleven-thirty a young white girl will go into the trade mission. She’ll be driving a new green Chevrolet with D.C. plates. At eleven-thirty you’ll start your four-way conference call. I assume that Hardman’s going to be in the pickup so he’ll originate the call. If that girl’s not out of that place by noon, you go and bring her out.”
He waited. There were no questions. Hardman cleared his throat and said: “I’ve told ’em about that part, baby. I also mentioned that there’d be a bonus in it if they gotta go in.”
“That’s right,” Padillo said.
“Who’s gonna be drivin my car?” Hardman said.
“McCorkle. The woman you met at Betty’s will be with him.”
“Uh-huh.”
“McCorkle will be parked a couple of blocks away from the mission on a side street. When that girl is brought out of the mission, both the pickup and the moving van will follow whatever car they take her in to wherever they take her. McCorkle will be following a block or two behind. You’ll be telling him where you’re going by means of the conference call.”
Padillo paused and lighted a cigarette and offered them around. Nobody took one. “When the car that has the girl arrives at wherever it’s going, you’ll wait until they take her in—I’m guessing it will be they—and come out and leave. Then McCorkle here and the woman will move up to the door—”
“You don’t know what kind of door yet?” Tulip asked.
“We don’t even know what section of town it’ll be in,” Padillo said. “But the woman and McCorkle will move up to the door of whatever it is. They’ll be looking as much as possible like new tenants who are accompanied by their movers—you four.”
“Uh-huh,” Hardman said.
“The woman will ring the bell or knock on the door or whatever. When it’s opened, you move up behind them fast because that’s when you go in.”
“They gonna let us in like that?” Nineball asked. “Just cause she asks them to?”
“She’s not gonna ask them, baby,” Hardman said. “You ain’t seen this little old gal. She’s gonna have a gun aimed right at that mother’s belly. Right, Mac?”
“Right,” I said.
“When you’re inside,” Padillo went on, “your main job will be to get Mrs. McCorkle and the girl out safely and fast.”
“You talking about that little old gal we followed there now,” Hardman said. “You ain’t talking about the one who’s handling the gun.”
“No. Mrs. McCorkle and Sylvia Underhill are the ones who have to get out fast. The other one can usually take care of herself.”
“And in this house, that we don’t know where it is, will be where the trouble is?” Johnny Jay said.
“That’s right. That’ll be the trouble.”
“Whatta we do with the women after it’s over?” Nineball asked.
“Take ’em to Betty’s,” Hardman said. “Then you hang around a while outside, make sure nobody’s comin in after em.”
Hardman looked around the room. “You got any questions, you better ask them now.” They looked back at him, their faces impassive. Hardman rose. “O.K., I’ll be in touch with you later this afternoon,” he told them. “You got things to do so you might as well get doing them.”
They got up and nodded at us as they filed out of the room. Hardman watched them leave, then turned to Padillo and me.
“They O.K.?” he asked.
“They look fine,” I said.
Padillo nodded.
“Where you gonna be, baby, while all this fun’s going on?”
“At the hotel,” Padillo said.
“You mentioned Mush yesterday.”
“He’s going to be with me—if that’s O.K.”
“Sure,” Hardman said. “I told him to expect something. You know exactly what you gonna need him for yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Uh-huh. Mush come pretty high.”
“If he’s as good as he thinks he is, I’ll pay it.”
“You wanta make your own deal with him?”
“It’s up to you. What’s your cut?”
Hardman studied the floor for a moment. “Just make the whole package fifteen thousand. I’ll take whatever’s left over.”
“Then I’ll make my own deal with Mush. I’d like to see him tonight.”
“Where at?” Hardman said.
“My hotel—he’s been there before.”
“What time about?”
“About nine.”
“He be there.”
Hardman rose from his chair and moved to the door. “You reckon this’ll about do it?”
Padillo nodded. “Keep in touch.”
“I aim to.”
“The money will be ready in the morning,” I said.
He waved his huge hand. “I’ll pick it up around noon and come by for lunch.”
“It’ll be on the house.”
Hardman laughed. “I was countin on that.” He waved goodbye and left and his 240-odd pounds seemed to shake the building as he bounded down the steps.
Padillo stared at the desk blotter until Hardman’s footsteps couldn’t be heard any more and then he said: “You trust him, huh?”
“What am I supposed to say: ‘With my life?’”
“I don’t know. We’ve been talking some awfully big money and he’s putting in an awfully small chit.”
“Maybe he’s got something else in mind.”
Padillo quit staring at the desk blotter and looked at me. “Maybe,” he said. “If he does, you’re going to have fun on Tuesday when you have to decide whether you like the way his mind works.”
TWENTY-ONE
We drove back through the slow Sunday afternoon traffic to my apartment, where we put the car into the basement garage and took the elevator up to the floor where I lived. I rang the chimes and when there was no response I unlocked the door and opened it as far as the chain would permit.
“It’s all right, Sylvia,” I said. “You can let us in.”
I closed the door so she could take the chain off and we went in. She had cleaned things up: The pillows were fluffed, the ashtrays were empty, the dirty dishes and cups were out of sight, presumably in the dishwasher. I didn’t look, but I was sure that the beds had been made. She was earning her keep.
“How did your meetings go?” she asked.
“All right,” Padillo said. “They understand what they have to do.”
“Is it the same as we talked about?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like some coffee?”
“I would,” I said. Padillo said he would, too.
She brought two cups in and we sat in the livingroom and drank them. I had always liked Sundays in that apartment with Fredl. They were quiet, lazy days littered with The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Washington Star and built around long, large breakfasts with endless cups of coffee. If we got up early enough, I would turn on the radio to a semi-country music station that played a full hour of uninterrupted fundamentalist hymns. Fredl got so that she could harmonize fairly well with “Farther Along” and “Wreck on the Highway.” Later, I would switch to WGMS and she would read me the cattier comments from the Washington papers’ society columns and add her own observations about those whose names were making news. On fine afternoons she sometimes would drag me out for a good German walk or, if it were raining, we might go to the Circle Theater and watch a double feature of bad old movies and eat a half-gallon of buttered popcorn. There were other variations of Sunday, equally prosaic, equally unplanned. Sometimes we just read or wandered around the National Gallery. Once in a while we would take the air-shuttle up to New York and walk around Manhattan, have a couple of drinks and early dinner, and fly back. Sundays were ours, unshared, and we had grown fond of them. I found myself not caring much for this particular Sunday. I found myself missing my wife and worrying about where she was and what she was doing and how she felt. I found myself feeling useless and futile and not overly bright.
