Missionary Stew

by Ross Thomas

  Haere circled the hatrack two more times and then turned to the white-haired man. “Where’d you say you found it?” he asked.

  “Out in Alexandria. I was just poking around one Saturday afternoon and there it was, all by itself, way at the back.”

  “Did you recognize it?”

  “Draper, I can’t say I did. But I swear it looked familiar. You know, I was out to his place a time or two back when I was just a kid, no more’n twenty-six, twenty-seven, so I asked about it and when they said it’d belonged to John L., well, I thought of you, dickered a bit, and bought it.” The white-haired man reached out and touched one of the knobbed pegs. “On this peg hung the hat that sat on the head of John L. Lewis. Of course, old John L. wasn’t exactly a politician in the sense that he ever ran for public office. But he was something.”

  “He’ll do,” Haere said softly, using his coat sleeve to give one of the curving arms a quick brush. “He’ll do fine.”

  The white-haired man had arrived unannounced and unexpected at 7:45 while Haere was watching MacNeil-Lehrer, which he did religiously despite having privately nicknamed the pair, not unkindly, the dull boys. After the white-haired man rang the buzzer, Haere asked who it was over the intercom.

  “It's me, Draper. Or more properly, it is I, Dave Slipper, and I’ve got a pair of fine lads down here with me who’re going to tote something up the stairs, if you’ll just ring the buzzer.”

  Haere rang the unlocking buzzer and then went out onto the small landing and watched with surprise as the two men from Bekins lugged the hatrack up the stairs and into the room, supervised by David Slipper.

  The white-haired man was then seventy-one years old and had first arrived in Washington in 1935 after graduation from Swarthmore with an additional year of postgraduate study at the London School of Economics. He had been, at various times, a New Deal White House aide, or to hear him tell it, “Harry Hopkins's office boy”; a spy of sorts for the wartime Office of Strategic Services; a syndicated columnist (121 daily newspapers); a biographer of the iron-willed Speaker of the House of Representatives, Thomas Brackett (Czar) Reed; an Assistant Secretary of Agriculture (six months); a deputy Undersecretary of the Interior (ninety days); ambassador to Chad (one year, “the longest year of my life,” he later said); and for the past fifteen years a political fixer and consultant who charged outrageous fees for his sensible, hardheaded advice.

  Many in Washington considered David Slipper to be the village wise man. He dwelt in a small mews house behind the Supreme Court, the same house he had lived in off and on since 1936. Joe McCarthy had once been a neighbor. A man of infinite grace and Southern charm, although some despised his elegance, Slipper still retained a trace of a Memphis accent that came and went depending on the grimness of the situation. For when they needed to send the bad news, they often sent it by David Slipper. And as one party wheel-horse in Boston had once told Haere, “When old Dave cuts your throat, Draper, you don’t smell no fuckin’ magnolias.”

  Haere took another admiring walk around the hatrack. “How the hell’d you ever get it out here?”

  Slipper shrugged. “Oxy was deadheading one of its 727s back out, so I made a couple of calls and bummed a ride.” Oxy, of course, was Occidental Petroleum.

  “Just to see me?”

  “Among other things. Have you dined?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Got any eggs?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then I’ll just whomp us up an omelette.”

  The omelette was perfect, as was the salad that Slipper created out of a head of rather dubious iceberg lettuce, garlic, and some hot bacon grease. They ate at the scarred library table in the dining area and shared a bottle of wine. The table had once graced the study of Rep. Vito Marcantonio (D., N.Y.), or so it was claimed by the Brooklyn dealer who had sold it to Haere.

  Slipper put down his fork, patted his lips with a paper napkin, and said, “So. How's the Candidate?”

  “Veatch is fine.”

  “And the lovely Louise?”

  “Great.”

  Slipper produced a thin silver cigarette case that was almost the size of a Number 10 envelope. He offered it to Haere, who shook his head. Slipper selected a pale-brown cigarette and lit it with a gold Ronson that Haere knew to be forty years old. Slipper inhaled, blew out the smoke, and smiled. “I didn’t see you at Jack's funeral,” he said, “but then you don’t go to funerals, do you?”

  “No,” Haere said. “I don’t.”

  “It was a nice do, a fine crowd. The Unitarian preacher mentioned God once—in passing, of course—and Maureen was awful, but then Maureen always is, isn’t she?”

  “I talked to her on the phone. She was a bit put out at having been turned into a widow.”

  “Stick to your rule, Draper, and keep away from funerals. They’re simply a reminder of mortality, and, God knows, at my age, I don’t need any reminders. But I go, I go, and the amazing thing is, they’re all growing younger—the departed, I mean. What was Jack? Sixty or thereabouts.”

  “Around in there.”

  “When I was young, sixty was ancient. Now it's what—middling middle age? Roosevelt, for example. Only sixty-three when he died. Almost a young man by today's standards. But old then. Old and tired and used up.” He shook his head sadly. “The war, I suppose.” His moment of mourning over, Slipper looked at Haere again. “Jack was in the war, wasn’t he?”

  “Navy pilot.”

  Slipper nodded, as if remembering. “What was it, hit-and-run? You were with him, Draper. What d’you think—really?”

  Haere sighed, produced his own cigarettes, and lit one. “Slippery, when you come on like that, my ribs get all tensed up waiting for the blade to slip between them. Now, I want to thank you for the John L. hatrack. It's a fine addition, and I really appreciate it. And you make just one hell of an omelette. But deliver it, will you? The message. Whatever it is.”

  Slipper smiled. “Do you have a drop of brandy by any chance?”

  “Martel.”

  “Why don’t we have a drop and some coffee? That be too much bother?”

  As Haere poured coffee from the Bunn Pour-Omatic and measured out two brandies, Slipper's eyes wandered over the room. “Remarkable place, Draper. It must be unique. Do you still have that wicked cat?”

  “He's around,” Haere said and set the coffee cups on the table.

  “Hubert, right?”

  “Hubert,” Haere agreed, served the two small brandy snifters, and resumed his seat.

  “How was New York?” Slipper said. “I’m curious.”

  “He couldn’t make up his mind, so I saw his mother. She told me to forget it.”

  “Remarkable woman,” Slipper said. “She and I had a small thing going once. My Lord, it must have been back in the late ‘forties, around in there. We planned a tryst, an assignation, in Hershey, Pennsylvania, of all places. I showed, of course; she didn’t.” He sniffed deeply. “I can still remember the smell of all that chocolate.” He sighed. “Well, that's one down, isn’t it?”

  “That's what I told Veatch.”

  “What d’you really think his chances are?”

  “In ‘eighty-four? Zero.”

  “I’m, well…I’m not so sure,” Slipper said carefully. “His name keeps cropping up here and there in some rather interesting places. After all, California will have twenty percent of the delegate strength. That's a sound base. He's got time—two years. Money should be no problem, right? I mean, hell, Draper, you can take care of that. And, my stars, he is presentable, if a trifle glib for my taste, but they’re all that way nowadays. Glib, I mean. They have to be. A mumbler, a hemmer and hawer, just won’t do. Not on television. The only thing is…” Slipper let his sentence fade away.

  Haere didn’t ask him what the only thing was. Instead, he let the silence grow. Hubert wandered over, yowled, and jumped up on the table. Haere scratched his ears and said, “Who sent you, Slippery?”

  Slipper sipped his
brandy. “You know, for a fact, it's really difficult to say.”

  “Who?” Haere asked again.

  “Wilde, Harrington and Litz,” Slipper said, giving the names of the founders of the Washington-New York-Paris law firm, only one of them still alive, a mock-sonorous intonation. Among Wilde, Harrington and Litz's senior partners were six former U.S. Senators, three former cabinet members, and a failed Presidential nominee.

  Slipper sighed. “It was actually old Gene Litz himself, eighty-seven if he's a day. He dropped by my place cold at eight A.M. No warning. I think it must have taken us thirty minutes to get him out of that fool Packard he's still driven around in and then into my place. Shuffle. Shuffle. Shuffle. That's the body. But the mind. Ah, that mind. He was born in ‘ninety-five, Draper, and he hasn’t forgotten one meal he ever ate, one crap he ever took, one person he ever met, or one word he ever read. And yet I must confess he remains the world's greatest bore. All fact and no charm. No charm at all. You ever meet him?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll try to give you the flavor. He comes into my house, looks around, nods, and says by way of greeting, ‘Still live in the alley, I see.’ Well, the chauffeur and I finally get him lowered into a chair. He looks up at the chauffeur and says one word: ‘Out.’ The chauffeur leaves. Old Gene looks at me and says, ‘I’ll have a toddy with one spoonful of sugar. I want the water just off the boil.’

  “Well, I fix his toddy and he takes a sip. Then he says, ‘There is a serious problem that must be solved. You are authorized to proceed to California. There you will confer with the governor-elect. Know him?’I said I did. ‘Thought so,’ he says. ‘Knew so, in fact. You will inform young Veatch that if he entertains any hopes at all of securing the party's nomination in either ‘eighty-four or ‘eighty-eight, he will immediately abandon his research into the circumstances surrounding the death of John T. Replogle. Is that clear?’ “

  “What’d you say?” Haere asked.

  “I asked him who his client was and he comes back with one of his Delphic answers. ‘The nation,’ he says. ‘Mark you, not this administration. I care not a fig for this administration. Third-rate people. Madmen, knaves and actors. But we will not see this nation crippled.’ So I ask, ‘Who is we?’ His answer is another question: ‘You knew Replogle, of course?’ I told him I’d just returned from his funeral. Well, he stares at me with those eyes of his that’ll still freeze marrow and says, ‘Those who destroyed him, we will destroy. Tell young Veatch that, and also that other young man out there, Haere, the one whose father was a radical. Tell them it will all be taken care of in time. If young Veatch refuses to accede to our request, inform him that he will never … never…never win the nomination.’ Then he says, ‘Call my man and help me up.’ So I call the chauffeur in and we start shuffling him back out to the Packard. But just before we get to the door, he stops and says, ‘Your fee for this particular service will be one hundred thousand dollars. The amount reflects my principals’ deep concern.’ Then we start for the door again, but again he stops and looks back. ‘I didn’t see your wife around,’ he says.

  “ ‘She's been dead for twenty years, Gene,’ I said. ‘That's impossible,’ he says, shuffles on out the door and into the Packard, and drives off.”

  David Slipper rose, moved to the sink, picked up the brandy bottle, read its label, put it down, came back to the table, and resumed his seat. “My advice, Draper? Call Veatch off. If he won’t listen to you, have Louise work on him.”

  “No,” Haere said.

  Slipper sighed. “Then I’ll have to go see him and lay it all out.”

  “Tell them this back in Washington, Slippery. If Veatch backs out, I’ll go it alone.” “Why?”

  “Because I’m in too deep.”

  “Already?”

  Haere nodded

  “Is Veatch?”

  “No,” Haere said. “Not yet.”

  “Then I’d better go bail him out.”

  “You’ll have a problem with Louise.”

  “Will you help?”

  “No.”

  Slipper again rose, turned to the sink, again picked up the brandy bottle, and this time refilled the two glasses. “It's not just the money, Draper,” he said.

  “Isn’t it?”

  Slipper shook his head as he sat back down. “I’ve got enough money. More than enough. What it is, if you don’t mind an old man's embarrassed confession, is that I need to know if I can still help change things.”

  “If you still matter.”

  “That's right. If I still matter.”

  “You matter, Slippery, you’ve just picked the wrong side.”

  David Slipper nodded, smiled, and rose. “Well, it won’t be the first time.” He continued to smile down at the still-seated Haere. “This one's going to be interesting, isn’t it, Draper?”

  “Very,” Haere said as he rose. “I want to thank you again for the hatrack. That was a damn nice thing to do. Can I call you a cab?”

  “I’ve got a limo waiting.” He paused by the hatrack, which still stood in the middle of the room. “They’ll send somebody after you, Draper. Somebody nasty. But you know that, don’t you?”

  “I know.”

  “Well, just so you do.” David Slipper turned, smiled his most charming smile, and stuck out his hand. Haere accepted it without hesitation.

  “Take care, Slippery,” he said.

  The white-haired man winked, turned, and was gone. Haere listened to his footsteps hurry down the stairs, taking them two at a time.

  CHAPTER 21

  On their way back from the restaurant, Velveeta Keats drove and revealed in a low, hesitant voice a half-dozen of her more bizarre sexual fantasies. She wanted to know if Morgan Citron would be interested in helping her realize some of them. Citron said he found the first two interesting, but the third one, the one involving a generous use of Log Cabin syrup, sounded a little messy. And although the remaining three offered intriguing possibilities, he wasn’t quite sure they could get around to all of them in a single evening. Velveeta Keats suggested that they limit themselves to the first two or three, and then see what happened. Citron said that seemed sensible to him.

  “You don’t think I’m weird, do you?” she asked.

  “Not at all.”

  “They just come to me.”

  “Your ideas.”

  “Uh-huh. Do you think they’re awful?”

  “I think they’re fine,” he said. “All except the Log Cabin syrup thing. That doesn’t do much for me.”

  She frowned and then brightened. “Maybe we could try it with Wesson oil instead.”

  Citron said he thought that might be an idea.

  It was nearly midnight when Citron gently detached the sleeping Velveeta Keats's iron grip, sat up on the edge of her bed, and started pulling on his shorts.

  She stirred, awoke, and smiled sleepily. “You leaving?”

  “I’ve got a couple of things to do.”

  “I want to thank you for a real wonderful evening.”

  “It was different,” he said as he zipped up his pants. Velveeta Keats giggled her agreement as Citron slipped on his shirt and started buttoning it up. “Do you have a passport?” he asked.

  “Sure. Why?”

  “I may have to take a trip. Maybe you’d like to come along.”

  “Where?”

  “Central America.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow or the next day.” “How long?”

  “A week. Ten days at the most.”

  “You going to do one of those writing-traveler stories of yours?”

  “Research mostly, I think.”

  She smiled. Citron saw that it was a happy, trusting smile, full of anticipation, but it disappeared almost immediately.

  “Is this his idea—Papa's, I mean—or yours?”

  That's better, Citron thought. Don’t trust them, don’t trust me; don’t trust Papa behind that tree. “Mine,” he said. “All mine.”

&nb
sp; “You sure?”

  “Positive. It's just a junket actually—all expenses paid. We’ll fly down, look around, and then come back.”

  “And you really want me along?”

  “Very much.” He waited for her to say no. Please say no, he thought, and I’ll just excuse myself ever so politely, go load up the Toyota, and head north. Maybe the Cadillac People have a chapter up in Oregon or Washington State. He made himself smile as he willed her to refuse.

  “Well, sure, darlin’,” she said. “I’d love to go.”

  Citron telephoned Draper Haere at nine minutes past midnight. The phone was answered halfway through its second ring.

  “You’re up,” Citron said.

  “I’m up.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “Here okay?”

  “Give me twenty minutes.”

  “Fine. You can help me move the hatrack.”

  “What hatrack?”

  “The John L. Lewis hatrack,” Haere said and hung up.

  Together, Haere and Citron moved the heavy hatrack to a point near the door where it would be the first thing any visitor saw. Haere gave it a few more tugs and pushes until he thought he had got it just right, stepped back with an admiring glance, and asked, “What d’you think?”

  “It's…well, hideous,”Citron said.

  Haere smiled happily. “Yeah, isn’t it?” The smile went away as he turned to Citron and said, “What’ve you got?”

  “An answer or two, a few questions, some paranoia, and an idea.” “That's a start. You want a beer or something?” “A beer would be fine.”

  Citron was sitting on the old leather couch when Haere handed him a can of beer and a glass. Haere took his usual seat in the Huey Long chair where Drew Meade had sat his last. “Where do you want to start?” Haere asked.

  “With my landlady.”

  “Craigie Grey?”

  Citron nodded, poured beer into his glass, tasted it, and said, “How well do you know her?”

  “Not well. She's a cause type, a mild leftie, makes a good stump speech, works hard, and from what I understand is a pretty sharp businesswoman. I also think she's not a bad actress.”

  “She recommended me to you?”