Missionary Stew

by Ross Thomas

  It was fifteen seconds before the obviously tempted Baldwin Veatch gave his one-word answer. “Out,” he said.

  “Well, shit,” Louise Veatch said.

  He turned to her, surprised, perhaps even hurt. “You don’t agree at all, do you?”

  “I just think you’re dropping out too soon. You could wait, see what Draper comes up with, see if it's really worth it, and then make up your mind.”

  “That would be a bit too late, I’m afraid, Louise,” Slipper said from around the cigar he was carefully lighting. “The—uh—possibilities I mentioned to Baldwin are contingent upon his immediate, let's say … disas-sociation.” Slipper smiled a comfortable, confident smile that seemed to signal he had nearly completed what he had been sent to do. Or maybe, Haere thought, he's just found out that he can still matter after all.

  Haere slowly got up from the chrome-and-leather chair and stood staring down at Veatch. “By next June, Baldy, they won’t even know who you are. By next July, even Slippery here won’t be taking your calls.”

  “I’m out,” Veatch said.

  Slipper came up quickly from the boxlike chair with a curious display of easy, fluid grace. He crossed over and stood searching Haere's face for something he apparently couldn’t locate. “Draper, I’m fond of you. You know that.” He paused and then continued in a soft, almost pleading tone. “And I admire you. By God, I do. Now I’m begging you not to go through with this thing. Begging you. If I thought it’d do any good, I’d get down on my knees and beg.”

  “You know what it is, Slippery?” Haere said. “What it really is?”

  The white-haired man shook his head. “What doesn’t matter, Draper. But it's big and it's bad, just as you said. I can judge its…its badness by the people who sent me and who’re going to be mighty unhappy when I go back and tell ‘em what you aim to do.”

  “How unhappy?” Louise Veatch said.

  Slipper looked at her and shrugged. “They’ll send somebody else out. And it won’t be some old coot like me, either.”

  “Who?” Louise Veatch demanded, rising quickly, the concern sweeping over her face. “Who’ll they send?”

  “Louise,” Slipper said, “I don’t even like to think about it.”

  She quickly turned on Haere, her face suddenly pale, her hands clutching her empty glass as though to keep them from shaking. “You knew, didn’t you?”

  Haere nodded. “Slippery made it all pretty plain the first time he and I talked.”

  She turned to her husband. “Make him drop it.” The governor-elect only looked away. Louise Veatch turned back to Haere. “Goddamn you, Draper, get out of it!”

  Haere smiled slightly. “I either can’t, or won’t,” he said. “I’m not sure which.” He turned then and walked from the room. All three of them, two standing and one seated, watched him go. Nothing was said. No one tried to stop him.

  Haere ran two errands on his way home. The first was at the travel agency near Seventh and Wilshire in Santa Monica, where he picked up the two first-class tickets to Tucamondo from Carlotta Preciado, the pretty twenty-six-year-old who examined him dubiously as she handed over the tickets along with his American Express card.

  “Now what's wrong?” he said.

  “You don’t look so hot, Draper.”

  “I always look like this.”

  “No, usually you look like the world's going to end next month. But today you look like you just heard they moved it up a week.”

  He smiled. “That better?”

  “Not much.” She indicated the two tickets he held in his hand. “Nobody's going down there, you know. I haven’t booked that flight in over two months. What the hell’re they going down there for, anyway?”

  “Honeymoon,” Haere said.

  “I can get them a real deal in Jamaica.”

  “They’re looking for excitement.”

  “Excitement,” she said. “Well, getting shot at or disappeared should be sort of exciting.”

  “That's just the kind of thing they’re looking for.”

  Carlotta Preciado sniffed. “Velveeta. Who in the world would ever name their kid Velveeta?”

  “Fondue freaks?”

  “Tell your honeymooners something for me, will you, Draper? Tell them if they don’t like Jamaica, I can get them a real sweet deal in Barbados. And if they want excitement, they can go to a cockfight and watch two chickens beat up on each other.”

  Haere grinned. “See you, Carlotta.”

  “Velveeta,” she said. “Jesus.”

  Haere's next stop was the parking lot of the Crocker Bank. He opened the old Cadillac convertible's glove compartment, rummaged around, and finally found a small white paper sack that had once contained something he had bought at Brooks Brothers. He stuck the folded sack into his hip pocket, entered the bank, and was left alone in a small room with his safety deposit box. He tore a check from his checkbook, turned it over, and on the back wrote, “IOU $10,000,” signed his name, and then wrote in the date. He opened the box and counted out $10,000 in fifties from the pig-fucker fund. He put the money into the Brooks Brothers sack and folded it so that it looked as if the sack might contain his lunch. He put the IOU in the safety deposit box, returned the box to its proper slot, agreed with the guard that it was indeed warm for November, went back out to his car, and locked the money away in its trunk.

  When he found a parking place only a block from his building, Haere wrote the location down on a card in his wallet. He took the money from the trunk, walked home, up the stairs, and into his enormous room, where he found John D. Yarn and Richard Tighe waiting for him.

  “Well,” Haere said. “You’re back.” He turned, closed the door, and put the money sack down on a small oak table.

  “We’re back,” Tighe agreed. He was sitting in the same chair he had sat in before, the Henry Wallace one. Yarn was back on the Wayne Morse couch. Hubert, the cat, was in Yarn's lap, almost asleep.

  “We’ve been waiting quite a while,” Yarn said. “We’d almost decided to go and leave you a message. We were going to break pussy here's neck. As an attention grabber, that’d be pretty good, wouldn’t you say?”

  “You don’t have to break his neck,” Haere said. “You’ve got my attention.”

  “This mess you’ve been poking around in ever since Mr. Replogle got himself killed up there in the mountains and we came around pretending to be with the FBI.” Tighe stopped talking and raised his eyebrows in mock wonderment. “You do know we’re not with the FBI?”

  “It dawned on me.”

  “We thought it might,” Tighe said. “Well, you’ll have to agree that what you’re poking around in is a real mess, right?”

  Haere nodded. “A real mess.”

  “It's also more fluid than you might realize. Alliances are made, broken, remade, dissolved, and made again.”

  “You’re not making sense,” Haere said.

  “He's not trying to,” Yarn said. “What he's trying to do is give you a message.”

  “Which is what?”

  “We’re asking you to drop the whole thing,” Tighe said. “We’re asking you to forget all about it.”

  “All right,” Haere said. “I will.”

  Yarn smiled. “I don’t believe you, Mr. Haere.”

  Tighe picked the cat up underneath its front legs and stared into its sleepy blue eyes. “We might have to break your neck after all, pussy.”

  “Mr. Tighe doesn’t believe you either,” Yarn said.

  “I’m no actor,” Haere said.

  “No, of course not,” Tighe said as he put Hubert gently down on the floor. “But you do understand we’re quite serious.”

  Haere nodded. “I can believe that.”

  “Good,” Yarn said brightly and turned to Tighe. “Well, we’ve made our request, delivered our threat, so I guess we can go.” He nodded toward the white Brooks Brothers paper sack. “What's in the sack?”

  “Ten thousand in cash,” Haere said and saw that they didn’t
believe him.

  Both men rose and moved to the door, accompanied by Hubert. Haere followed closely. “Keep out of it, Mr. Haere,” Yarn said, “for your own sake.”

  Haere nodded, but said nothing.

  “So long, kitty,” Yarn said and opened the door. Tighe went through it. Yarn started to follow him, but paused. “I almost forgot,” he said, whirled quickly, and drove his left fist hard into Haere's stomach. Haere doubled over. Yarn stood watching him for a moment. “Just to make sure we really did get your attention,” he said and left.

  Haere straightened up slowly, clutching his stomach and gasping for breath. He moved slowly out onto the landing and watched the two men reach the bottom of the stairs and go through the door and out into the street. Haere turned and stumbled back into the enormous room. The pain came again, almost doubling him over. He straightened and moved, one slow step at a time, to the phone, picked it up, and punched a number. When it was answered he said, “Car-lotta? This is Draper again. That honeymoon flight to Tucamondo tomorrow? Get me a seat on it, will you?”

  CHAPTER 24

  At thirty, Velveeta Keats still called her mother ma’am. They had been talking long-distance for nearly twenty minutes, Velveeta Keats staring out at the Pacific, her mother, Francine Keats, staring out at Biscayne Bay. In California the temperature was seventy-two degrees and dry; in Florida it was eighty-five with a humidity of around seventy-five percent.

  There was a fifteen-second silence before Francine Keats spoke again. “And you’re sure this Mr. Citron is a nice boy, Vee?”

  “Yessum, except he's not really a boy. He's forty at least.”

  “Well, you know what I mean.”

  “Yessum, I know. But Papa's met him, Mama. Ask Papa about him.”

  “Well, I don’t know, flying off down there to Central America with someone you just met, it could lead to—well, you know the kind of fixes you get in.”

  “Yessum.”

  “How's the weather out there?”

  “It's real nice, Mama.”

  “It's warm here.” There was another silence and then a long sigh from Florida. “When you all fixin’ to leave?”

  “Right away.”

  “And you’ll be gone how long?”

  “He said about ten days or so.”

  “And what’d you say this Mr. Citron does for a living?”

  “He's a writer, Mama. He writes travel articles.”

  “Huh,” Francine Keats said, her disapproval total. “Well… “ She paused again. “Well, you all have a good time.”

  “Yessum, we will.”

  “And I’ll tell your papa hello.”

  “Yessum. You do that.”

  “Well.” There was another pause. “Send me a postcard, hear?”

  “Yessum.”

  “Well, goodbye then.”

  “Goodbye, Mama.”

  After Francine Keats put down the phone, she continued to stare out into the bay where a white fifty-six-foot Chris Craft was putting out to sea. She knew the boat. It was the Sea Savvy, and it was owned by that New York couple down the road, that stuck-up Jewish lawyer and his wife, the one with all the red hair who claimed to be from Charleston. My Lord, the people who claim to be from Charleston nowadays. Francine Keats turned away from the window, sighed again, and examined herself in a mirror. She put two forefingers just in front of her earlobes and pushed up. The lines went away. So did ten years. At least ten, she thought. But they’d have to put you under to do it and B. S. won’t stand for that because he knows you’d talk just like you do in your sleep and Lord knows what you’d say. But maybe if you could find a surgeon in Mexico City or Buenos Aires or someplace, one that didn’t understand English, maybe you could have him do it. It sure was worth looking into.

  She turned from the mirror and crossed the large room, which she called her sitting room because it sounded nice, went through the door and down the long hall to the door at the very end. There the man she always thought of as the skinny French nigger, the one theycalled Jacques, sat reading his American comic book, or probably just looking at the pictures. Jacques raised his eyes from the comic book and smiled.

  “I…need…to see… him,” Francine Keats said, raising her voice and spacing the words to make the English penetrate.

  “Oui, madame” Jacques said, rose, turned, knocked softly on the door, and waited for the “come in.” He opened the door and Francine went into what she called her husband's den. The man was still there, the one B.S. called General, although he didn’t look like a general to Francine Keats. He looked like Mr. Bilgere who had taught her Sunday-school class in the Calvary Baptist Church when she was eleven.

  “Sorry to bother you, B. S., but—” She stopped and looked timidly at the general.

  “But what?” Keats said.

  The general was now on his feet. He even bowed slightly. Francine Keats liked that. She liked any display of nice manners.

  “I just talked to Vee and—”

  Keats interrupted his wife. “You sure it can’t wait, honey? We’re kinda busy here.”

  Francine Keats spoke in a rush. “I just thought you’d better know that Vee's flying down to Tucamondo with that Mr. Citron you met out there in California. You know, the boy you told me about.”

  Keats rose from behind his large teak desk and leaned across it toward his wife, his hands pressed flat against the desk's leather top. When he spoke his voice was quiet, so quiet and low and hard that Francine Keats began backing toward the door. “When?” Keats said. “When's Velveeta leaving?” He glanced at the general with a small apologetic smile. “Velveeta's my daughter.”

  The general nodded.

  “Why, right away, she said.”

  “Right away could be a couple of hours, honey, maybe a day even.”

  “I got the impression they were on their way to the airport.”

  “I see,” Keats said. “Well, thank you, Francine. Thank you for comin’ in and tellin’ me. I appreciate it.”

  “I thought maybe you oughta know,” she said, turned, and hurried from the room.

  When she was gone the mild-looking general sat back down and crossed his legs. He was wearing a double-breasted blue blazer and gray slacks of very fine light flannel. On his feet were the black laceless shoes that he still had made in London. His hazel Sunday-school teacher's eyes were covered by rimless bifocals. His face was round and unremarkable. His gray hair was thinning. Only his voice was distinctive. It was a deep clipped bass.

  “She said Citron, I believe. Your wife.”

  Keats nodded and sat back down behind his desk.

  “Gladys's son, I presume.”

  Again Keats nodded. “Yeah, he's Gladys's kid all right.” “Well,” the general said. “That does present us with yet another problem, hmm?”

  “You mean my daughter?”

  “The problem—or question—as I see it, is why did young Citron ask your daughter to accompany him, hmm?” The general usually ended his questions with “hmm?” It was a habit he had picked up from an upperclassman at Virginia Military Institute, where he had been sent by his father, himself a general, after his eyes prevented him from being admitted to West Point. The general was actually a colonel-general and his name was Rafael Carrasco-Cortes. He was fifty-six years old and looking forward to an extremely comfortable retirement. However, his retirement now seemed to depend almost entirely on the man who sat behind the large desk in the book-lined room. The general was sure the books were unread, probably unopened. To the general, B. S. Keats was a social inferior, clever perhaps, but crude and ignorant and, of course, dangerous. B. S. Keats invariably thought of Carrasco-Cortes as the spic general. Their mutual contempt made for a curiously effective partnership.

  “You wanta know why Citron took my daughter along?” Keats said. “Well, that's simple enough. He probably wants to fuck her some more, that's why.” Keats smiled at the general's wince of dismay and then continued: “That's one, and two, I’d say, is he figur
es she might be useful as sort of a hostage. I don’t reckon that sucker trusts me after all, despite all the time I spent butterin’ him up.”

  “We are so close to complete success,” the general said, his tone full of regret. “So extremely close.”

  “Hell, Ralphie, we’re still gonna make it,” Keats said. “But you and me might as well get one thing straight. Ain’t nothing gonna happen down there to my daughter, understand?”

  The general nodded his agreement. “But that still leaves us the problem of young Mr. Citron, doesn’t it, hmm?”

  “Yes, sir, that it does.”

  The general sighed. “Gladys, of course, won’t like it. She won’t like it at all.”

  “Now that's just too fuckin’ bad about Gladys, isn’t it?” B. S. Keats said, grinned his cold gray-toothed grin, and added, just for spite, “Hmm?”

  They met for the first time outside the door of the grungy downstairs front apartment, the tall gray-haired woman in the dark-blue suit and the young blond woman with the sun-streaked hair and deep tan who was dressed in jeans and shirt and carrying in her right hand a small expensive Mark Cross suitcase made out of bleached pigskin.

  Gladys Citron was about to knock on the door of Unit A when Velveeta Keats said from behind her, “I’ll bet you’re his mama. You two sure look alike.”

  Gladys Citron turned. “I’m Mrs. Citron.”

  Velveeta Keats smiled, shifted the suitcase to her left hand, and stuck out her right. “I’m Velveeta Keats, and Morgan and I’re just fixing to leave for the airport.”