Missionary Stew

by Ross Thomas

  “All there is?”

  “That's close,” Keats said, paused, and puffed on his cigar. “You know what Haitians are? They’re ambitious. I never saw anybody, white or black, who’d work as hard as they do. You want a ditch dug? Shit, they’ll dig it—just tell ‘em how wide and how close to China. I don’t hire anybody but Haitians anymore, although goddamn, I do wish they’d learn to speak American.” He paused again. “How's Velveeta?”

  “She seems all right,” Citron said.

  “She tell you about fuckin’ her brother yet?”

  Before Citron could reply, there was a tap on the window. Both men turned. Jacques was bent down, peering through the window, and smiling broadly as he pointed to the long, round buffalo-hide bag he carried in his left hand. Keats nodded and Jacques disappeared, heading back toward the Ford LTD. Keats pushed the button that lowered the glass divider.

  “Let's go, son,” he said to the driver.

  “Yes, sir. Where to?”

  “They got a scenic drive out here?”

  The driver tried to think of someplace scenic. “Well,” he said finally, “we could go up the coast.”

  “Sounds good,” Keats said and rolled the divider back up. The driver put the limousine into gear and eased it out into the heavy airport traffic.

  “She had a brother all right,” Keats said, “and like she probably told you, he's dead. He died when she was seven and he was nine. He died of polio in the summer of ‘fifty-nine. They had polio licked by then, but he caught it and died anyway. Maybe Cash and Velveeta played doctor once or twice, but the rest she just makes up. Incest. It turns some people on—did you know that?”

  Keats didn’t seem to expect an answer, and Citron gave none.Instead, he said, “She also mentioned a husband. Or did she make that up too?”

  “No, she didn’t make that up. She was married to Jimmy. Jimmy Maneras. Jaime, really. He was older’n her. A Cuban. The Manerases and me were in bidness together. She tell you about that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Figured she would. That lady does like to talk. We ain’t speakin’, you know, her and me. Damn fool situation for a man to get himself into, but it happens. It happens.” He sighed and sucked on his cigar. “Who were they?”

  “I don’t know,” Citron said.

  “Kidnappers, you reckon?”

  “If they were, they weren’t very determined.”

  “Because they took off after you threw the pansies at ‘em.”

  “Carnations.”

  “Carnations. Why’d you do a damn fool thing like that?”

  “Reflex.”

  “Before you thought, huh?”

  Citron nodded.

  Keats looked out the window. The view was of some gray-looking marshland. “Not much of a scenic drive,” he said.

  “It gets better.”

  “What’d they look like? I mean, were they white, black, brown, or what?”

  “White. They had diving masks on. Wet suits. From the way they moved, I’d say they were in their late twenties, early thirties.”

  “Voices?”

  “Standard American.”

  “What’d they say?”

  “They said, ‘Not a sound’ or ‘Don’t make a sound.’ I don’t remember which, but they said it to your daughter. And then they said, ‘You either,’ to me. I think I said, ‘Okay’ or ‘Right.’ Nothing very memorable. Oh, one more thing. She bit one of them on the hand.”

  “Bit him, by God!” Keats beamed. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “I forgot.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “He yelled.”

  “Bit him, by God!” Keats nodded and smiled to himself for a few moments, then turned and gave Citron a careful inspection.

  “You married?”

  “No.”

  “What d’you do for a living?”

  “I’m a caretaker and a sometime writer.”

  “What kind of writer?”

  “Travel articles.”

  “Pay anything?”

  “Not much.”

  “Been to college?”

  Citron nodded.

  “Ever been in jail?”

  “Once.”

  “How long?”

  “Thirteen months.”

  “What for?”

  “I was never quite sure.”

  “Where?”

  “Africa.”

  “Shit, that don’t count then.” Keats again looked out the window, frowned at the urban clutter that lined Lincoln Boulevard, and turned, still frowning, to Citron. “I ain’t gonna ask you if you’ve been beddin’ Velveeta because I already know the answer to that, but I am gonna ask you this. What d’you think of her?”

  “I think,” Citron said slowly, “I think she's a bit…puzzled.”

  That seemed to satisfy Keats. He nodded as if confirming something and after a silence that lasted for nearly two blocks, said, “I’m rich. I mean, big rich.”

  “So I understand.”

  “Made it all off dope. Marijuana at first and then I went in early on coke, made a killing, and got out clean. You know what I’m in now?”

  “No.”

  “Shoes. Automated, self-service, discount shoestores. I sat down and thought about what people gotta have, good times and bad. Well, I came up with shoes. Cheap imported shoes. I got a chain of stores going now, a dozen in Florida, five in Alabama, and we’re moving into Mississippi and Louisiana next year. But, hell, you don’t wanta hear about my shoestores.”

  “I can listen,” Citron said.

  “No, what you really wanta hear about is what I’m leadin’ up to. And I’m gonna come right out with it. Velveeta, well, Velveeta's sort of pretty and halfway smart, even if she is six bricks short of a load, and four, five years back I set her up this irrevocable trust, so there's money there, but what I wanta know is if, for the next few weeks, you’d sort of be her fancy man.”

  Citron turned to stare at Keats, whose faded blue eyes had lost their squint. They were nearly round now and, Citron thought, almost honest. “Fancy man,” he said. “Or do you mean keeper?”

  Keats smiled. “Well, maybe a little of both.”

  CHAPTER 16

  With the pleasant taste of the $32-plus-tip lunch he had treated himself to in the elaborate Chinese restaurant on Rodeo Drive still lingering in his mouth, Drew Meade used the key Gladys Citron had given him to unlock the front door of her house. Meade had lunched early and alone at straight up noon. It was now only a little past one.

  He did not go into the house cold. Meade wouldn’t go into a telephone booth cold. He had circled the block once on foot, eyeing the cars parked at the curb and in the driveways. Most seemed to be fairly expensive foreign makes—BMWs, Volvos, and a sufficiency of Mercedeses. He also noticed the white Ford van with the lettered sign that read “CART'S CUSTOM RUG CLEANING” and below that the phone number to call and the address on Santa Monica Boulevard. The van was parked four doors down from Gladys Citron's house, and Meade made an automatic mental note of its license number. using his own mnemonic system, Meade could sometimes remember license numbers for years and telephone numbers forever.

  He pushed the door open, entered the small foyer, stopped dead still, and listened. There was nothing to hear. He turned back, closed the door, shot the deadbolt, and fastened the chain.

  They were waiting for him when he entered the living room, thepair of them, their mouths open slightly for silent breathing, neither much more than thirty, if that, one with blue eyes, the other with brown. Both wore cheap tan cotton uniform-type jackets with their first names stitched in red thread above the breast pockets. The one with the blue eyes was John; the one with the brown eyes was Dick.

  Meade stopped by the table with the Chinese lamp. “So how's the rug business?” he said, picked up the lamp, and threw it at Dick. While the lamp was still in the air, Meade launched himself at John. He feinted a crotch kick and when John turned his hip to it, Meade drove his left
fist into John's lower abdomen, three inches below the belt. There was more muscle there than Meade had expected, but John nevertheless bent over, clutching himself and gasping. Meade had clenched his hands together to bring them down hard on John's bent neck when the gun muzzle was jammed into his ear and Dick's voice said, “Don’t.”

  Meade spun, bringing his forearm up to knock away the gun, but it was no longer there. Dick was in a crouch now, more than a yard away, the gun held in both hands and aimed at Meade's chest just as somebody somewhere had taught him to aim it.

  “Well, shit,” Meade said, moved over and sat down in one of the two wing-back chairs in front of the fireplace, took out his Camels, and lit one with hands that shook only slightly.

  John straightened up, still pressing both hands to his abdomen. “Moves pretty good for an old fart,” he said.

  “They said he might,” Dick said.

  “What’re you supposed to be?” Meade said.

  “What are we today?” Dick said, not taking his eyes from Meade or relaxing his aim. “I keep forgetting.”

  “We’re the rug people today,” John said. “Yesterday, or day before yesterday maybe, we were Special Agent Tighe and Special Agent Yarn. I’m Yarn; he's Tighe.”

  Meade nodded thoughtfully. “The sweepers, huh? The ones they send out with the broom and the dustpan.”

  “Neateners, really,” Tighe said.

  “What happens to me?” Meade said.

  “You?” Yarn said. “You’re already dead. They wrote you up in the New York Times”

  “So I heard.”

  “If you’re already dead,” Tighe said, “well, the worst has already happened, hasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. When you put it like that, I guess it has.”

  “You could just walk out the door and into a new life.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Of course,” Yarn said, “we’ve got to ask you a couple of questions first.”

  “I don’t mind. Ask away.”

  “We noticed you talking to some people today—this morning,” Tighe said.

  “Yeah, now that you mention it, I guess I did.”

  “Who were they?”

  “One guy said his name was Haere, Draper Haere, and the other one claimed to be Mitch Mitchell.”

  Yarn sighed and frowned. “See? We’re already off to a bad start.”

  “You mean his name wasn’t Mitchell?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Meade said.

  “You know, maybe you’d better tell us something about yourself, Mr. Meade.”

  “Tell you about me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Just to make sure we’ve got the right person,” Tighe said. “What I mean is, we don’t want to wind up dealing with a ringer. You can understand that.”

  “Sure,” Meade said. “How much do you want to know?”

  “Just give us an outline,” Tighe said.

  “Well, I was born in Terre Haute, November nineteenth, nineteennineteen. My old man was in the AEF and he stayed on after the armistice and brought home a French bride. That's how I learned French—from her, my mother. When I got out of high school in ‘thirty-seven, my old man got me a job with Western union as an apprentice telegrapher. That's what he was. A telegrapher. Then I went in the army in late ‘forty-one and because of my French and my trade, I wound up in the OSS in ‘forty-two. This the kinda shit you want?”

  “Exactly,” Yarn said.

  “After the war, I went to work for the telegraphers’ union, first as an organizer and later as a business agent. That lasted until the Bureau got hold of me and I went to work for them.” He paused.

  “undercover, right?” Tighe said.

  “Right.”

  “You led quite a few lives for the Bureau, didn’t you?”

  “Four or five.”

  “Go on.”

  “Then I went to work for Air America. I was a scheduler.”

  “The spook line,” Yarn said.

  Meade nodded. “I did some pretty weird stuff for them here and there and they sent me over to Vientiane to do some more weird stuff. Flights into China, things like that.”

  “You didn’t go into China, though, did you?”

  “I flew in and out a couple of times—you know, turnaround.”

  “Dropped some people off, maybe?” Tighe said.

  “Maybe.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I quit and went into business for myself.”

  “Where?”

  “Hong Kong, Djakarta, Bangkok, places like that.”

  “Singapore?” Tighe asked.

  “Yeah, sure. Singapore.”

  “Where you ran into our mutual friend?” Yarn said.

  “Who?”

  Bobby Maneras.”

  “Oh, yeah. Him.”

  “Poor Bobby,” Yarn said.

  “Why poor?” Meade said.

  “Not poor in the monetary sense,” Tighe said, “but poor in the— what should I say? The temporal sense, I suppose. You know Boy Howdy's in Manila?”

  “Yeah,” Meade said, “I was in there a time or two.”

  “Well,” Tighe said, “poor Bobby was in there having a drink or two or three, left, stepped off the curb, and got flattened by a great big truck. They say he was, well, you know, drunk. Poor Bobby.”

  It was then that Meade was sure he didn’t have long to live. Five minutes maybe, he told himself, ten at the outside. He shook his head at the sad news about poor Bobby Maneras and said, “Mind if I have another smoke?”

  “Go ahead,” Yarn said.

  Meade made his hands tremble on purpose this time as he lit one of his Camels with the box of matches he had taken from the Chinese restaurant. He waved the match out, turned, tossed it into the fireplace, and saw that the fireplace poker and tongs were just where he had remembered them. You’ll never make it, he thought, turned back, smiled sadly, shook his head again, and said, “That's too bad about Bobby.”

  “What we want to know, Mr. Meade,” Tighe said, “what we have to know, in fact, is how much of what Bobby told you, you told Draper Haere.”

  “Not much?” he said.

  “How much?”

  “A taste, that's all. You know, to get his attention.”

  “And did you?” Yarn said.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “What exactly did you tell him?”

  “I told him they had a little war down there.”

  “Down there?” Tighe said. “You mean in Tucamondo?”

  “I didn’t tell him where.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. Hell, if I’d told him where, he could’ve gone down there and dug it up all by himself—or had Mitch or whatever his name is do it.”

  “Mitch,” Tighe said. “I almost forgot Mitch.” He paused. “You know what Mitch's real name is?”

  “What?”

  “Morgan Citron. You know, Citron—like the lady who owns this house.”

  “Aw, Christ,” Meade said in a sad voice and turned to flick his cigarette ash into the fireplace. Instead, he threw away the cigarette itself, grabbed the poker, told himself he would never bring it off, and spun around only to find that Tighe now had a pillow from the sofa folded over what Meade thought of as the popgun, the .25 caliber Browning automatic. Not a chance, Meade decided as he rose quickly and brought the poker up anyway.

  Tighe shot him twice in the chest. The shots of the small-caliber rounds were somewhat muffled by the pillow. Meade lowered the poker and stared down at the twin wounds in his chest. He realized with some surprise that he would never really have it made, and then consoled himself with the thought that he would never really grow old either. You can’t grow old until you’ve got it made, he told himself, and you’re not gonna do either.

  He looked up at Tighe and Yarn, who were staring at him curiously, wondering when he was going to fall. “That goddamn Gladys,” Meade said,
took a step backward, sat down in the wing-back chair, coughed once, breathed raggedly three more times, and died.

  Seconds later Gladys Citron came into the living room from the hall, crossed to the wing-back chair, and stood staring down at the body of her quondam comrade-in-arms, infrequent lover, and occasional friend. Her left hand strayed up to the lapel of her suit where she fingered the Legion d’Honneur.

  “They weren’t very loud,” she said. “The shots. I could just hear them in the bedroom with the door closed.” She looked at Tighe and Yarn. “Did he say anything?”

  “He claimed he just gave them a taste,” Tighe said. “Haere and your son. He didn’t know Morgan was your son, though. He's using the name Mitch Mitchell for some reason. Meade didn’t believe that either, but he didn’t know Morgan was your son until I told him.”

  “What did he say?” she asked. “When you told him.”

  “I think he said, ‘Aw, shit.’“

  “ ‘Aw, Christ,’“ Yarn said.

  “Anything else?”

  “ ‘That goddamn Gladys,’“ Tighe said. “That's the last thing he said.”

  She turned to look again at the dead man. “Poor old Meade,” she said, crossed to the tray of bottles, and poured herself a glass of wine.

  “Meade told him too much,” Yarn said.

  “Told who?” she said as she slowly raised the glass to her lips.

  “Your son. And Haere, too.”

  Gladys Citron seemed to consider Yarn's assertion for several moments. Finally, she turned to look at Yarn, took another sip of her drink, and said, “Then I suppose we’ll have to do something about that, won’t we?”

  CHAPTER 17

  The most interesting sight B. S. Keats saw during the hour-long scenic drive up the California coast was the encampment of Cadillac People, which so intrigued him he had the driver turn around and go back for another look. The driver slowed the limousine as Keats stared fascinated at the collection of aging cars and campers and old school buses that were parked willy-nilly at the edge of the sea.

  “What’d you say they call ‘em?” he asked Citron.

  “The Cadillac People.”

  “Not all of ‘em have Cadillacs, though.”

  “They just call them that.”

  “What the hell do they do all day?”