Missionary Stew

by Ross Thomas

  “Listen to the radio and keep an eye on the ocean.”

  “None of ‘em work?”

  “Not anymore. They’ve more or less given up.”

  “How do they get by—on welfare?”

  “No.”

  “What's gonna happen to ‘em?”

  “That's what they’re waiting to find out,” Citron said.

  “You know what?” Keats said. “They make me kinda hungry. Any place to eat around here?”

  “There's a place back at the county line. You like fish?”

  “Sure.”

  “It's got good lobster and shrimp. You eat outside on picnic tables—with your hands mostly.”

  “Let's try it.”

  Citron rolled the divider down and told the driver where to go. After the divider was rolled back up, Keats gave Citron a long calculating look and said, “You given my proposition any thought yet?”

  “About being a fancy man?”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have called it that. About all I really want you to do is keep an eye on Velveeta. Take her to the picture show once in a while. Maybe to a museum. They got museums out here?”

  “There's one just down the road,” Citron said. “The Getty.”

  “Well, she likes things like that, so you could do those things and sort of look in on her, make sure she's eatin’, listen to her jabber, maybe even take her to bed, if you are all of a mind to. What I reckon I’m really askin’ you to do is be her best friend.” Keats paused. “I’d make it worth your while.”

  Citron turned to examine the brown-faced man. The faded blue eyes had gone back into their round and almost honest shape. The expression was wholly ingenuous. Citron had seen such expressions before in places like Cicero and Marseilles and Montevideo. He had also learned to distrust them.

  “Who were they, Mr. Keats?”

  “Might as well call me B. S. Everybody else does.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Those two fellas you run off? They were just hired hands, that's all. I still got me some enemies back home, Morgan. So after you called and told me about what happened, well, I made a couple of calls and now I got one less enemy than I used to.”

  Citron nodded slowly, as if the elimination of one's enemies was only to be commended. “So they won’t be back?”

  “No, sir, those two won’t.”

  “What about others?”

  “I’m workin’ on that. Mendin’ my fences, like the fella says.”

  “Why don’t you just hire Velveeta a bodyguard?”

  “She won’t put up with it, that's why. I’ve tried, and her mama's tried, but she won’t hear of it. So I gotta do it on the sly kind of, and you fit the bill.” There was a long pause that lasted until Keats added, “Like I said, I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “I’m not too interested in doing it for money.”

  Keats's eyes narrowed themselves back into their crafty squint. “But you’re interested in something, right?”

  Citron nodded.

  “What?”

  “Central America. You have any contacts there?”

  “One or two maybe.”

  “I’m interested in finding out about a small secret war that broke out down there over cocaine and money. A great deal of money. I don’t know where, though.”

  “A story, huh?”

  Again, Citron nodded.

  Keats, made no attempt to keep the shrewdness out of his expression. “That's all you want—a story? You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Well, shit, boy, get me to a phone after dinner and let's see what I can dig up.”

  The governor-elect put down his fork, picked up his wineglass, drank, put the glass down, and said, “One hundred thousand dollars.” His tone was reverent, as it always was when discussing any sum over $500.

  “Cash,” Draper Haere said.

  “We haven’t got it,” Baldwin Veatch said.

  “Or any way to get it,” said his wife.

  Louise Veatch and her husband were having lunch near their pool in the rear of the white two-story house with the sharp angles and too much glass brick that had been built by a Mexican movie actress in 1938. It was the last house on a dead-end street just off Santa Monica Canyon. It was built on two acres of land and had a seldom-used tennis court to go with the pool.

  Baldwin Veatch had bought the house on impulse in 1973 at a distressed price. Its value had subsequently soared, and the house was now the governor-elect's principal investment, indeed his only one other than the $5,000 he had in an E.F. Hutton money market fund. In the Veatches’ joint checking account there was $1,452.26. Because politics was the only profession he had ever followed, Veatch was a relatively poor man. He had found his modest circumstances useful at the polls, if inconvenient at the end of the month when the bills came due. However, Veatch long ago had found a partial solution. Whenever he needed money, he asked Draper Haere to find him some. Haere always did.

  Lunch that warm November day had been served by the Mexican maid. It consisted of hot dogs, canned baked beans, and a green salad. To drink there was an inexpensive, slightly acid red wine from the Napa Valley. The Veatches set what Draper Haere always thought of as a mean table, and he had declined their invitation to join them, citing his usual no-lunch rule.

  “We don’t need the entire one hundred thousand, Baldy,” Haere said. “All we need is fifty, and I can get that.”

  “Where?” Louise Veatch asked.

  “I don’t want to know,” her husband said.

  “This time, darling,” she said, “I think you’d better. Right, Draper?”

  “It's the pig-fucker money,” Haere said.

  The governor-elect tightened his usually amiable mouth into a line of almost petulant disapproval. “I thought we’d agreed never to touch that except in extreme emergency.”

  “What do you call this?” Haere said.

  The pig-fucker money was $50,000 in cash that Haere kept for Veatch in a safety deposit box. It was all in twenties and fifties— mostly fifties—and was to be used only for counterattack against last-minute smears. It was untraceable, totally anonymous money and, if necessary, could be used to suborn and corrupt. It had lain unused for almost six years now. The name it bore stemmed from Draper Haere's only meeting with Lyndon Johnson back in 1970 when the former President had asked Haere about a close Congressional race in which Haere's candidate seemed to be trailing badly. Haere confessed that things did indeed look bleak and invited the sage's counsel. “Hell, Draper, it's simple,” the former President had said. “Just call him a pig fucker and let him deny it.” Haere's candidate followed the advice and lost by less than five hundred votes.

  “I just don’t like it,” the governor-elect said. “I don’t like it at all.”

  “We’re only buying information,” Louise Veatch said. “It's research, actually.” She looked at Haere. “Although I don’t understand how you’re going to buy for fifty thousand what's advertised for a hundred.”

  “I’m cheap,” Haere said. “I told Meade I’d only buy it in twenty-five-thousand-dollar chunks. He gives us the essential basic stuff for the first fifty and the rest is just details that Citron can dig up at five hundred a week.”

  “How's Citron working out?” Veatch said.

  “Good. Very good. He's very quick, very bright.”

  Veatch looked at his wife. “Well?”

  Again, they exchanged their silent confidences. Veatch turned back to Haere. “Okay. Do it. Just remember one item. This whole thing is apparently a cover-up. If they find out we’re trying to lift the lid off, they’ll try to stop us. You understand that, don’t you, Draper?”

  “Whether we go ahead or not depends on just one thing, Baldy,” Haere said.

  “What?”

  “How badly you want the nomination.”

  Veatch threw his napkin down on the table. “I want it, all right,” he said. “I want it damned bad.” He stood up. “It all seemed so simp
le at first.”

  “It's never simple,” Haere said.

  Veatch looked at his watch. “I’ve got a meeting with the transition committee.” He looked at Haere. “Did you walk or drive?”

  “I walked.”

  “You want a ride?”

  “I need the walk.”

  “When will you be back?” Louise Veatch asked her husband.

  “I don’t know. Late. Around six, six-thirty.” He again looked at Haere. “You might as well have some more coffee. Keep Louise company. She might think of something I forgot to ask.”

  “All right,” Haere said. “I will.”

  The governor-elect nodded as if he had said all he had to say, leaned down, kissed his wife on the cheek, turned to leave, but turned back.

  “Let me know what happens,” he said.

  Haere nodded. He and Louise Veatch watched the governor-elect turn, cross the patio, and enter the house. When he was inside, Louise Veatch filled Haere's coffee cup. He thanked her and said, “Let's go to bed.”

  “Yes,” Louise Veatch said. “Let's.”

  B. S. Keats spoke his terrible Spanish with no trace of self-consciousness. He spoke it loudly, more or less bawling it into the telephone without regard for accent or grammar. He ignored both past and future tenses, and spoke only in the present. When his grasp for a Spanish word failed, he substituted an English one, sometimes tacking on an “o” or an “a” for harmony. He seemed to have absolutely no difficulty in making himself understood.

  The calls, four of them, were all long-distance, international longdistance, and had been placed to numbers that B. S. Keats read into the phone from a small notebook. Two calls had gone to Bogota, one to Costa Rica, and one to Panama. No names were mentioned, because Keats made all the calls station-to-station and charged them to his phone-company credit card.

  The calls were made from Citron's telephone and they had not begun until 3:30 P.M . When the limousine pulled up outside the apartment building, Keats had made Citron go in first to make sure Velveeta Keats was nowhere around. “I just don’t wanta see her, Morgan,” he had said. “That may be hard to understand, but that's just the way it is.”

  When the last long-distance call was completed, Keats hung up the phone and turned to Citron. “Tucamondo,” he said. “Got a fix on that in your head?”

  Citron nodded.

  “Well, that's where it happened—just outside the capital.”

  “Ciudad Tucamondo.”

  “Right.”

  “Mucha muerte, mucho dinero,” Keats said. “That means a lot of death, a lot of money. That's all they knew—or all they’d tell me, anyway.”

  “Did they say when it happened?”

  “Five or six months back, give or take a week either way, but you know how the beaners are when it comes to time.”

  Keats rose, glanced at his watch, stuck his left hand down into his pants pocket, and brought out a thick roll of bills. Citron saw that they were hundreds. Keats peeled at least a dozen of the bills from the roll without counting them. He offered the money to Citron. “It's gonna cost something to be Velveeta's best friend.”

  Citron stared at the proffered money and wondered where greed had gone. Maybe that's what the spur of poverty really does, hethought. It makes you indifferent instead of ambitious. Still staring at the money, he shook his head and said, “No, thanks.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Keats glanced around the shabby studio apartment, shook his head as though unaccustomed to dealing with fools, and put the money back in his pocket. “You’ll look in on her, like we talked about?”

  “I’ll look in on her.”

  “My plane's at six.”

  “You’d better go then. Do you want me to tell Velveeta hello?”

  B. S. Keats thought about it and his faded blue eyes grew round and almost innocent. “Well,” he said finally, “I don’t reckon that’d do any harm, would it?”

  CHAPTER 18

  The Mexican maid, a confidante and co-conspirator of Louise Veatch's, awoke the sleeping couple at 5:15 P.M. By 5:30, Draper Haere was dressed and out of the house and walking his long walk back to his enormous room in Venice. It was a walk of a bit less than four miles, and Haere made it in just under sixty minutes. The sun had set by the time he left Louise Veatch, and it had been dark for almost an hour when he inserted his key into the Haere Building's side entrance. Behind him, a car door slammed. Haere turned and saw Morgan Citron leave his Toyota and start walking toward him. “I’ve been waiting for you,” Citron said as he drew near.

  “I was in a meeting,” Haere said, unlocked the door, pushed it open, and gestured for Citron to precede him up the stairs. At the landing, Haere used another key to unlock the door that led into the room. He went in first, found the switch, and turned on a lamp. When he saw Drew Meade propped up in the Huey Long chair, he said, “Shit.”

  “Is he dead?” Citron said from behind Haere. “He sure as hell looks dead.”

  “Hey, Meade,” Haere said, raising his voice slightly. When there was no answer, Haere said, “He's dead. They even left the rug.”

  Citron looked. A cheap eight-by-ten blue rug lay neatly rolled up by the Huey Long chair. Hubert, the cat, was on the rug, using it as a scratching post. When he was through scratching, he yawned.

  “Not much of a watchdog, that cat,” Citron said.

  “He has no enemies,” Haere said, turned back, closed the door, and moved slowly and cautiously over to the dead Drew Meade. Citron moved with him.

  “I don’t think your locks bothered them any,” Citron said.

  “Not much,” Haere agreed and took a ballpoint pen from his vest pocket. He used the pen to move the lapel of Meade's jacket to one side. The two bullet holes made in the white shirt by the .25 caliber rounds were separated by less than an inch. A bloodstain, about the size of a saucer, had spread over the shirtfront.

  “He didn’t bleed a lot, which means he died fast,” Haere said.

  “There's no blood on the chair either, and what's on his shirt seems dry, so I’d say he's been dead awhile, and that's about the extent of my forensic knowledge.”

  “Mine, too,” Haere said as he bent over and almost absently picked up the cat, who cried with delight in its loud half-Siamese voice. Stroking the cat, Haere circled the dead Meade, stepping over the rolled-up rug. “Ever search a dead body?” he asked Citron.

  “Shouldn’t we let the cops do that?”

  “What cops?” Haere said as he and the cat started circling Meade once more.

  “I see. No cops.”

  “He's already dead and buried in Singapore. We’ll just prop him up against a lamppost somewhere, maybe over in Culver City. Dead bodies don’t bother them much over there. See what he's got in his pockets.”

  “Me?”

  “I’ve got to feed the cat.”

  Still carrying Hubert, Haere headed for the kitchen area, took down a can of 9-Lives from a shelf, and sliced off its top with his electric can opener. While Haere fed Hubert, Citron knelt by the side of the Huey Long chair and studied the dead man.

  Drew Meade's eyes were still open and, for some reason, seemed focused on something off to the right. Despite himself, Citron glanced over his shoulder, but there was nothing to see but a wall of books. He looks as if he's reading the titles, Citron thought, and doesn’t see much that interests him. If there was an expression on Meade's dead face, it was one of disappointment mingled with disdain. The mouth was slightly open in the beginning of what seemed to be a sneer. The head was tilted back, leaning against the large chair's padded rest. The lifeless hands lay palm up in the lap in a supplicant's helpless position that somehow Citron knew they had never once assumed in life. The big feet were firmly planted on the floor. Meade smelled of death, which meant that he smelled of urine and feces.

  Citron sighed and reached into the inside breast pocket of Meade's jacket just as Haere rejoined him. He found a U.S. passport and handed it
to Haere. In the outside jacket pockets he found a pack of Camels and a box of matches that bore the name of a Chinese restaurant. He passed both up to Haere. There was nothing in the shirt pocket or in the pants hip pockets. In a pants side pocket, the one on the right, there was a small roll of bills, which he also handed up to Haere. The other side pocket produced seventy-four cents in change. Citron put the change back and studied Meade for several moments, then lifted up the pants legs and rolled down the short black socks. There was nothing concealed beneath them, only eggshell-white, surprisingly thin ankles. Citron rose.

  “That's it,” he said.

  “He had sixty-seven dollars and a passport made out to someone called Donald B. Millrun. Has he got a watch?” Citron looked. “Yes.”

  “Take it.”

  Citron removed the watch, an old self-winding stainless-steel Omega Seamaster. He gave it to Haere. “Robbery?” he asked.

  “Why not?” Haere said. “It’ll make the cops happy.”

  “What now?”

  “Well, now we roll him back up in the rug, put him in your car, and dump him over in Culver City. Somewhere just off the freeway, I think.”

  “My car?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why not yours?”

  “I can’t remember where I parked mine.”

  “Well, Christ,” Citron said, knelt again, and rolled out the rug. He looked up at Haere. “What d’you want? The head or the legs?”

  Haere frowned. “Did you look in the watch pocket? A New York cop I once knew told me some guys hide things in their watch pockets. Older guys especially. He said it was one of the first places he always looked.”

  “I didn’t look there.”

  “Well, why don’t you?”

  “What do you expect to find—a ffolded-up thousand-dollar bill with the Swiss account number on it?”

  “Just look, will you?”

  Citron dug a forefinger down into the small watch pocket, felt something, and used thumb and forefinger to lift it out. It was a business card folded into a small square. Citron unfolded the card. On its front was printed: DREW MEADE, INVESTMENT COUNSELOR. There was no address or phone number. On the back was written in pencil, “D. Haere,” and then Haere's phone number. In ballpoint ink was written, “B. Maneras,” and after that something illegible. Citron handed the card to Haere.