by Ross Thomas
Gladys Citron had kept her figure through diet and exercise: no more than 1,350 calories a day with no exceptions and thirty minutes a day every day devoted to the Canadian Air Force exercise regime. She was blessed with those facial bones that helped keep her flesh from sagging. There were a few lines, of course, and wrinkles, especially around the corners of her eyes, but her chin was firm, her long dancer's neck still fairly good, and she remained all in all very much the beauty.
“You may kiss me, Morgan,” she said, “unless you feel it would be overly demonstrative.”
She offered her cheek. Citron kissed it lightly and said, “How are you, Gladys?”
“Splendid,” she said. “Absolutely splendid.”
She was sitting behind an almost bare two-hundred-year-old desk that might have come from the cabinetmaker yesterday, or possibly the day before. She opened a drawer and took out a small gray box. She pushed the box toward Citron.
“Do sit down, Morgan. Please.”
Citron sat down. She examined him thoughtfully. “You look well. A bit thin, but well. And, dear God, you do look like him. Your father.” She tapped the small box. “For you. A present for your fortieth birthday.”
Citron didn’t touch the box. “I’m forty-two and my birthday was in June.”
She dismissed the discrepancy with a graceful wave. “Go on. Open it.”
Citron opened the box. In it lying on a bed of black velvet was a gold Rolex Oyster, almost exactly like the one he had traded, bit by bit, to Sergeant Bama for supplemental rations. Citron stared at the watch for a long moment, then removed it from the box and slipped it over his left wrist. Before he could thank his mother, she asked, “How long has it been now—five years, six?”
“Six, I think.”
“You could’ve written.”
“I could have.”
“I was worried.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t suppose I’ve really been much of a mother to you, have I?”
“No,” Citron agreed, “not much, although at forty-two I don’t see how that's particularly important.”
“You never forgave me, though, did you?” “For what?”
“For dumping you with the Gargants during the war.”
Citron shrugged. “You had all those Germans to kill, and by the time I was five and old enough to be aware of anything, I was very fond of the Gargants. They had a lot of cows.”
“But afterwards, when you were seven.”
“You mean England.”
“It was supposed to be a very good school.”
“It was, but I had sort of a French waiter's accent, and I also missed them.”
“The Gargants?”
“The cows.”
“I’d like to make it up to you, Morgan.”
“Now?” He paused, the wonderment on his face mingling with suspicion. “Whatever for?”
She smiled. “Atonement.”
“What's the real reason, Gladys?”
“You’re my son.”
“I’m just somebody you met a few times over the years. How’d you find me, anyway?”
“Were you trying to hide?”
“No.”
“Craigie Grey mentioned your name to someone who mentioned it to someone else who mentioned it to us. I’d been trying to locate you for more than a year—ever since those wire-service stories moved out of Paris. I even talked to a Miss Tettah with Amnesty International in London, but all she had was a post-office-box number in Venice. Then we tracked down that young man in Provo.”
“The Mormon missionary.”
“He told us about your watch. He said you were a saint.”
“The Mormons always were saint-happy.”
“He said you saved his life.”
“He exaggerated.”
She picked up a gold-plated letter opener and experimentally pressed its sharp point against the ball of her thumb. “Was he really a cannibal like they all said—or was it just French propaganda?”
“Why?”
She shrugged again. “It's our kind of story.”
“ ‘Dictator Dines on Human Liver and Lights,’ right?”
She put the letter opener down. “We cater to our readers,” she said. “We have to compete with television for their wandering attention. Therefore, our features need to be a trifle provocative.”
Citron looked around the large office. “You seem to be prospering.”
“They pay me one hundred and twenty-five a year, if you’re curious. That young man I sent to fetch you?”
“He's sweet.”
“He's also the most junior on our editorial staff. I pay him sixty a year, mostly for his absolutely devastating sources.”
“I can imagine.”
She rose, walked around the desk, leaned against it, and stared down at her son. “I’ll pay you fifty thousand for your story, your by-line.”
“It's not worth that.”
“We’d fancy it up a little.”
Citron smiled and shook his head.
“I could come up with another five thousand. That's tops.”
“Sorry.”
She moved back around her desk and sat down. “We’ve already spent a fortune on it, Morgan. It has some interesting angles. For instance, we managed to get someone into the prison about three months ago. A warder there in the section d’etranger was about to retire on a ridiculously low pension. He sold us a fascinating rumor—all about how the Emperor-President had fed foreign prisoners on human parts.”
“I’m speechless,” Citron said.
“No you’re not. Confirm it and I can up the offer to seventy-five thousand.”
“For ‘My Son, the Cannibal,’ n’est-ce pas?”
When she didn’t reply, Citron rose, went around the desk, leaned down, and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Gladys, you really never should’ve left the spooks.”
She stared up at him. The stare was cold now. “They paid for your rather expensive education.”
“And I’ll always be grateful.”
He turned and moved to the door, but stopped when she called to him.
“Morgan.”
He didn’t turn back. He merely waited with his hand on the doorknob.
“We’ve got too much invested not to run with it.”
“You could kill it.” When she didn’t reply, he said, “Well, good-bye, Gladys,” and then frowned as if trying to remember something else he had forgotten to say. “Oh, yes,” he said finally, “and thanks for the watch.”
Citron left the offices of The American Investigator and rode the elevator down to the ground floor. He didn’t bother to give Dale Winder a shout. Instead, he walked a couple of blocks, went down into Harry's Bar, and ordered a bottle of Beck's.
CHAPTER 10
Draper Haere was in his downstairs cubicle-like office working on one of his diseases when Morgan Citron finally reached him. To keep his staff occupied and the payroll met during slack political seasons, Haere handled the direct-mail solicitations of a half-dozen organizations that were trying to cure, or at least alleviate, diseases of the heart, the lungs, the eyes, the mind, and the nervous system. The mailer he was editing when Citron called was for an organization that claimed to be easing the suffering of disabled children whom Haere always thought of as the crippled kids. It was his favorite disease. Haere rendered his services at cost and over the years had raised substantial sums. He was not at all sure that the money was being well spent.
When his secretary told him Mr. Citron was on the line, Haere picked up the phone and said hello.
“I’ve been trying to get you,” Citron said.
“I was in a meeting,” Haere said, remembering with much pleasure and no guilt his meeting in the Sir Galahad Motel. “What’ve you got?”
“Something I think we’d better talk about.”
“Right. Where are you?”
“Harry's Bar.”
“Give me fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.”
“Fine,” Citron said.
It took Haere thirty-five minutes to reach the underground parking garage in the Century City complex that housed Harry's Bar. He would have made it sooner except he had trouble finding his car. Because he walked so much, Haere sometimes didn’t use his car for days and frequently forgot where he had parked it. The car was an immense sixteen-year-old dark-green Cadillac convertible that Haere had accepted in lieu of a fee from one of his first clients, a Congressional candidate who had tried vainly to swim against the Republican tide in 1968. It was only the second car Haere had ever owned, and because it ran faultlessly with minimum maintenance, other than the new batteries he had to keep buying, Haere saw no reason to replace it. Haere was really not much interested in cars, although he had once dickered for a Model T Ford of doubtful provenance that supposedly had been purchased in 1923 by William Jennings Bryan.
Most of the lunch trade was gone when Haere entered Harry's Bar and joined Morgan Citron at a table near the entrance. Citron had a cup of coffee in front of him and also an empty sandwich plate.
“Sorry I’m late,” Haere said.
“I had something to eat. You want anything?”
Haere shook his head. “I usually skip lunch.” He looked around. “Shall we talk here?”
“I don’t see why not.” Citron signaled a waitress, who brought a fresh pot of coffee and a cup and saucer for Haere.
When she had gone, Haere said, “Well?”
“Those two guys who dropped by to see you last night?”
Haere nodded. “The FBI agents.”
“Well, they’re not.”
“Who says so?”
“Their verification section.”
“Here in L.A.?”
“Right.”
“You called?”
“Yes.”
Haere smiled his appreciation. “You’ve got one suspicious mind, haven’t you, friend?”
Citron smiled back, but said nothing.
“I checked their ID,” Haere said. “Carefully. Over the years I must’ve checked a hundred of them. They’ve been popping in on me since I was sixteen.”
“Did these two have all the right moves?”
“They were perfect.”
Citron poured them both more coffee. “What’d they want to know—most of all?”
“They wanted to know a little about me and a lot about Jack Replogle, and whether he’d said anything to me before we cracked up.”
“What in particular?”
“Drew Meade. They wanted to know if Replogle told me what he and Meade had talked about.”
“Did they want that more than anything else?”
Haere thought back to the night before. “I’d say they bore down on it pretty hard.” Haere took out a pack of cigarettes and offered Citron one. Citron shook his head. Haere lit his with a match from a small box supplied by the bar.
Citron waited until the cigarette was lit. “I guess I’d better spend some more of your money.”
Haere nodded his assent. “What on?”
“Long distance.”
“Singapore?”
“Singapore,” Citron agreed. “I thought I’d call this afternoon. If you can drop me off on the PCH, I can catch a bus or hitch a ride from there.”
Haere signaled for the check. “Where's your car?”
“Somebody gave me a ride into Century City. To see my mother. He was supposed to run me back, but it didn’t work out.”
Haere almost had his American Express card out of his wallet when he stopped and looked at Citron. “Jesus. Not Gladys Citron?”
Citron grinned. It was a brief, wry grin. “I’m not sure if that's a question or an accusation. But you’re right. She's my mummy.”
“Jesus,” Haere said again.
“You know her?”
“We’ve met a few times.” Haere tried to make the tone of his next question casual, but he could hear his voice betraying him. “Somebody didn’t tip her off on the Replogle thing, did he?”
Citron shook his head. “No, she just wanted to say hello, give me a birthday present, and find out if I’d ever been a cannibal.”
“That sounds like Gladys.”
“Yes,” Citron said. “Doesn’t it?”
Because he had a thirty-five-minute wait between buses, Drew Meade took a twenty-minute survey stroll around Santa Barbara and reconfirmed his impression of it as a candy-ass town. He found its people either too tan or too old, its weather too nice, its architecture too hokey. There was no hustle. Everybody seemed to have just got up from a nap, or about to go take one. Still candy-ass all right, he thought, looking up State Street, then turned and went back to the bus station.
The thing to do, he decided, is to stay out of towns named after saints. St. Louis, St. Paul, San Diego, all horseshit towns. Even San Francisco, now that the fags have taken over. But when his ship came in (and Meade's ship had remained hull down on the horizon for forty years now), he’d go live in New York or Chicago or even Cleveland. Someplace without suntans. Someplace with suits and ties. Someplace civilized, for God's sake.
Meade went into the bus station's men's room and had two quick drinks from his pint of Jim Beam. Back out in the waiting room he sat down in a plastic seat, took out a box of gumdrops, and ate them one by one as he surveyed his fellow passengers, not at all liking what he saw.
Time was, he told himself, when people going somewhere could be divided up into three classes: bus guys, train guys, and plane guys. Bus guys wore coats and pants that didn’t match and tieless shirts buttoned up to their necks. Train guys dressed a little better, if not much, and carried shoeboxes filled with fried chicken, hard-boiled eggs, and potted-meat sandwiches. Plane guys all wore $100 suits with vests and if they couldn’t think of anything else to do, they’d climb up on a shoeshine stand and let some nigger play with their feet. Nowadays, though, you couldn’t tell the plane guys from the bus guys. They had leveled it all out. It's like they’d gone over it all with a grader.
If someone had suggested to Drew Meade that at sixty-three he might be considered a senior citizen, or even elderly, he would have stared contemptuously at them with his chilly hazel eyes and demanded to know what the fuck they were talking about. If he’d had a drink or two and was feeling expansive, he might even have tried to explain how you can’t get old until you’ve got it made. Until then, you just can’t afford old age. This was Drew Made's faith, his dogma, his creed. It kept him young.
They called the bus to Los Angeles just as Meade finished his last gumdrop. He rose and headed for the bus, a six-foot-two, wide-shouldered man with a shambling gait of deceptive quickness. Because he was also a totally suspicious creature, Meade turned his lined, big-jawed face up toward the destination sign on the front of the bus to make sure it really was going to Los Angeles. Satisfied, he used his 223-pound frame to shoulder a smaller, younger man out of the way and entered the bus, heading toward the rear and, if possible, a seat all to himself.
Meade now had $19.47 in his pocket, which meant he couldn’t afford to feel any older than thirty-three. He was on his way to Los Angeles to seek his fortune, a quest that had taken him almost around the world. When he pulled this deal off, he could afford to feel older—as much as forty-five or so. But until then, thirty-three. Maybe thirty-four tops.
He took a slip of paper from his pocket and studied the address again. It was in Beverly Hills on the wrong side of Wilshire—down in the flats where the original planners had intended the servants and tradesmen to live. Beverly Hills, he thought. Queen of the candy-ass towns.
CHAPTER 11
Morgan Citron waited until a little after 5:00 P.M. before placing his call to Singapore, where he estimated the time to be around 8:00 in the morning. The call went through with surprising ease, and less than five minutes after he picked up the phone, Citron was listening to the ripe Cambridge tones of Lionel Lo of the Singapore CID.
“Morgan! It's been years. I read in one of our local
rags how you’d been eaten by cannibals or something equally bizarre. Didn’t believe it for a second, of course.”
“How’ve you been, Lionel?”
“Mustn’t grumble, can’t complain. What’re you working on?— something naughty, I trust.”
“I’m just fooling around with a piece that may or may not pan out.”
Lo giggled. It was the only incongruous thing Citron had ever noticed about the man. It was a high-pitched giggle that sometimes turned into a titter.
“I think,” Lo said, “no, in fact, I’m almost positive that was exactly what you said to me—when? ten years ago?—after they kicked you out of Saigon and you wound up here on my doorstep with all of those oh-so-innocent questions. What a lot of bother the answers turned out to be.”
“You got promoted, Lionel.”
“How kind of you to remind me.”
“I need to ask you about someone.”
“Ask away.”
“What, if anything, can you tell me about a guy called Drew Meade?”
There was only silence. Citron could picture Lo sitting at his well-ordered metal desk with the tape running; the phone clamped to one neat ear, the left; the thick black hair precisely parted—two inches long on the right, three on the left; two pens and one pencil in the pocket of the short-sleeved white shirt that was starched and ironed just so: the dark tie; the carefully pressed, very dark gray slacks; the oval face with its wide nose, thin, dubious lips, and those black eyes that seemed to snap at you. Forty-five now at least, Citron estimated, and maybe even a touch of gray in the hair, but probably not. And that mind, that slippery remarkable mind that made even the quick and the clever feel dull. That mind was working now, Citron knew, because there was only silence. Citron was about to say something when he heard Lo sigh.
“You Americans.”
“Think of me as French, if it’ll help any.”
“I don’t like the French either.” Lo sighed again. “What long ears you have, Grand-pere” “Tell me about it.”
“Where are you anyway, Morgan?”
“L.A.”
