Missionary Stew

by Ross Thomas

  “Goddamnit, Gladys!” The voice was loud enough to be considered a yell, and it belonged to B. S. Keats, who was yelling from Florida.

  “ ‘Goddamnit, Gladys’ isn’t going to get us anywhere, B. S.,” she said and motioned for Yarn to hand her the drink she had put down. Yarn gave her the glass and then lit a cigarette, which he also handed her.

  “You claimed that kid of yours was gaga,” Keats said, almost screeching the words. “That he had scrambled eggs for brains.” The screech dropped back down to a yell. Tighe had risen from the couch and moved over to stand by Yarn. Gladys Citron had lifted the phone away from her ear. Both men had heard Keats's voice quite clearly. It sounded like tin being torn.

  “I told you he was disturbed, B. S. That's all. That he was suffering from depression.”

  “Depression, huh? Well, your melancholy baby who wasn’t supposed to be able to find his ass with both hands sure as shit seems to have snapped out of it. You know where he is right now?”

  “Probably on a plane.”

  “And you know who's with him?”

  “Your daughter.”

  “My daughter, the nut case.”

  “I met her this morning,” Gladys Citron said and paused to take a swallow of her drink. “I found her rather sweet and charming in a fey sort of way.”

  “You did, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, guess who they took along as keeper, my fruitcake daughter and your Sad Sam son?”

  “Keeper?”

  “That's right. Keeper.”

  “Who?”

  “Draper Haere.”

  There was a long silence that was finally broken when Gladys Citron said, “I see.”

  “You fucked up, Gladys.” Keats was no longer shouting. His voice had grown soft and almost tender. Gladys Citron interpreted the new tone as a threat, a quite serious threat.

  “We warned Haere off,” she said.

  “We? You mean those two gigolos of yours? Shit, they couldn’t warn flies off a peach.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  Keats sighed. “I hate to say this, Gladys, but it sure looks like you just went and fucked up everything.”

  “I don’t fuck things up, B. S. I straighten things out. Let me remind you of a couple of items. More than a couple. When your daughter was playing Crazy Mary down in Miami, and about to go to the police, I lured her out here with an invitation from a movie-star landlady to come live on the beach in Malibu. And after Colorado, when we suspected Draper Haere would start looking for a professional snoop, I managed to lumber him with my own son, who, I felt then and still feel, is so emotionally damaged he's virtually useless. Then let's not forget old Drew Meade. I took care of that little problem, too. So now we have another one: Draper Haere. But he's really no big problem. My people can leave this afternoon and be in Tucamondo early tomorrow morning.”

  There was a silence from the Florida end and then Keats said, “Well, you did use your own kid, I gotta admit that.”

  “And one more thing, B. S. I brought you in on this deal, which is something else you might remember occasionally.”

  “I don’t forget anything.” There was another brief silence which lasted until Keats said, “I’ll give you credit, Gladys, it's one sweet deal.”

  “How's the general?”

  “He's all set and on his way back.”

  “Then there's no reason why we can’t proceed.”

  “None except for this Haere fella.”

  “I’ll take care of that.”

  “Gladys.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t want Velveeta hurt.”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “I mean, I don’t want her touched.”

  “She won’t be.”

  “Well, just to make sure, I’m gonna be sending my two French niggers down there tonight, and you might as well know if anything happens to Velveeta, well, my two niggers will have to take care of that boy of yours.”

  “I see.” She looked up, studied the ceiling for several seconds, then sighed and said, “B. S., I’m going to say something very simply and I want you to listen most carefully.”

  “I’m listenin’.”

  “If your people touch my son, I’ll kill you.” She slammed down the phone and finished her drink in three long swallows.

  Yarn grinned at her. “Think he believed you?”

  “Hell, I believed her,” Tighe said. “Why wouldn’t he?”

  She looked first at Yarn, then at Tighe. “There's a three P.M. flight to Miami.”

  “We’ll be on it,” Tighe said.

  Gladys Citron looked at her watch. It was 1:10. “Well,” she said, “nap time.” She reached up and ran her forefinger gently down Yarn's right jawline, turned, and went down the hall that led to her bedroom. Yarn started to follow, but paused at the entrance to the hall, turned back, and looked at Tighe. “Coming?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Tighe said. “In a second.”

  The only other passengers on Tucaereo Flight 9 to the capital, Ciudad Tucamondo, were a thirty-four-year-old American and a young, drably dressed Venezuelan woman who tried to make herself invisible and who, Haere suspected, was a mule for some cocaine smuggler now homeward bound.

  The American and the Venezuelan woman had thriftily bought tourist seats, but were promptly moved up into the first-class section once the plane was in the air. There, all five passengers were cosseted by the purser and the five flight attendants until they could eat and drink no more. Finally convinced they could do nothing else for their passengers, the crew gathered in the front of the first-class section and either slept or gossiped among themselves for the rest of the four-hour flight.

  After his opening conversational gambit was rebuffed by the young Venezuelan woman, the American went looking for someone else to talk to. His glance fell on the face of the melancholy saint who sat by himself across the aisle from the remaining two passengers, the man and the woman who slept leaning against each other. The American moved down the aisle and stopped at the seat of the saint, who was staring out the window into the dark.

  The American cleared his throat. Draper Haere looked up at him.

  “First trip down here?” the American said.

  “Very first.”

  “Mine, too,” the man said and slid into the seat next to Haere. He held out his hand. As Haere reached for it, the man said, “I’m Jim Blaine.”

  Haere brightened. “Any relation to James G. Blaine?”

  “That's my full name, all right. Where's the James G. you know from?”

  “From Maine,” Haere said. “A long time ago. He wanted to be President but never quite made it.”

  “All my relatives are from Kansas. Not too many Blaines in Wichita, where I’m from, but there’re a lot over in Kansas City, except most of that's in Missouri, you know.”

  Haere nodded his understanding and asked, “What takes you down to Tucamondo?”

  “Well, it's sort of a funny story. I’m a doctor, an M.D., and I’m going down there for the Friends—you know, the Quakers?” Haere nodded again.

  “The folks down there need doctors,” Blaine said. “They need’em real bad from what I hear.” He shook his head regretfully. It was a largish head with a high forehead, made even higher by a rapidly retreating hairline. Blaine had grown a blond mustache beneath his snub nose, and under the mustache was a small, almost prim mouth that rested uneasily on a sledgehammer chin. Blaine's eyes went with the chin rather than the mouth. The eyes were sky-blue, almost unblinking, or perhaps just steady, and curiously skeptical. Haere wondered what Blaine specialized in and decided that whatever it was, he must be good at it.

  “Are you going to work in a hospital?” he asked.

  Blaine gave his big head a decisive shake. “A clinic out in the boonies. The Friends set it up a couple of years back. It did okay until about two months ago when somebody disappeared the guy who was running it.” He shook his head almost angrily and the big ch
in seemed to take an apparently fearless swipe at the world. “He was a friend of mine,” Blaine continued. “Joe Rice. We started out in the first grade and went through med school together. So when they disappeared him, I thought, well, the hell with it. I got in touch with the Friends, farmed out my patients to some other guys, kissed the wife and kids goodbye, and here I am.” He smiled. “Damn fool thing to do, I guess.”

  “It sounds more dangerous than foolish,” Haere said.

  “I’m not a Quaker, you understand,” Blaine said, then paused. “Hell, I don’t guess I’m anything. Haven’t seen the inside of a church in twenty years. Didn’t even get married in one. But Joe Rice, he was a Quaker.” Blaine smiled. “When we were kids, real little kids, I used to try and knock it out of him.” He chuckled. “He’d beat the shit out of me. Some Quaker.”

  “There's no word about what happened to him?” Haere asked.

  “Nothing. One day he started off for the clinic in his car, and zap. That was it. They never even found the car. There's no law down there, you know. I mean, they got soldiers and what they call federal police, but there's no law.”

  “So I hear.”

  “Well, maybe I can cure a few sick folks. Set a few broken bones. Deliver a few babies. Old Jim wrote me once that he was getting to be a specialist in gunshot wounds. Maybe that's why they took him. He patched up the wrong people.”

  “Maybe.”

  Blaine cocked his head as he examined Haere. “You’re not a missionary, are you?”

  Haere shook his head.

  “When I first saw you, I thought you might be. You sort of look like what I think a missionary would look like. What line’re you in?”

  “Direct mail,” Haere said.

  “Well, that must be pretty interesting,” Blaine said and even managed to put some conviction into his tone. He yawned then, covered it with a hand, looked at his watch, and said, “I guess maybe I’d better try and get some sleep.” He rose. “Been nice talking to you.”

  “And to you,” Haere said.

  The plane landed one hour and thirty-five minutes later at Tucamondo International Airport. The Venezuelan woman was first off the plane. Next down the ramp went Dr. James Blaine, followed by Velveeta Keats, Morgan Citron, and Draper Haere.

  When Dr. Blaine reached the bottom of the ramp he was confronted by four men in civilian clothes, questioned briefly, and led away in handcuffs.

  CHAPTER 27

  Because Draper Haere's Spanish was at best rudimentary, consisting of two or three hundred disjointed words that enabled him to rent a room, order food and drink, flatter a woman, and get a car repaired, he let Morgan Citron take over at the immigration and customs counter.

  Citron collected the passports from Velveeta Keats and Haere, glanced through them, walked over to a window as if to examine them in a better light, and then moved up to the counter, where a sullen, baldheaded man in a green uniform eyed him with either boredom or contempt or both.

  Citron tapped the three United States passports on the counter and shook his head regretfully. “I’m afraid there is a problem.”

  The baldheaded man brightened and nearly beamed. “A problem, you say.”

  “Yes. With our visas.” Citron turned to indicate Haere and Velveeta Keats.

  “You are traveling together?”

  Citron nodded. “The three of us.”

  “What is the problem, may I ask?”

  “As I said, it lies with our visas.”

  “I see. Continue, please.”

  “We obtained them, the visas, at your consulate in Los Angeles.”

  “I know their work.”

  “Is it sometimes inaccurate?”

  The baldheaded man now stared at Citron with something akin to respect. “It happens,” he said slowly, “although not often.”

  “My visa, for example,” Citron said and slid his passport across the counter to the baldheaded man, who picked it up, looked left, then right, peeked inside, glimpsed the folded-up $100 bill, placed the passport back on the counter, and covered it with the palm of his hand.

  “Are the other two passports the same?” he said.

  “Exactly the same.”

  “Then there is, as you say, a problem,” the baldheaded man agreed. “But it may be only minor. I will have to confer with my chief.”

  He picked up the three passports, turned, and disappeared through a door. Haere moved over to Citron. “See if you can find out about the guy who got arrested,” he said. “The doctor.”

  “He's an M.D.?”

  “Right.”

  Citron nodded. “Okay.”

  The baldheaded man came back through the door looking almost cheerful. He picked up a rubber stamp and opened the three passports. “It was a small problem,” he said as he banged the stamp down on them. “A mere clerical error.”

  “I am relieved,” Citron said, gathering up the passports. “The other man traveling with us, the American doctor, the one who was led away. Did he also encounter a problem?”

  The cheerful look went away, replaced by a stony gaze. “He was of your party?”

  “We merely met on the plane.”

  “You are not colleagues?”

  “No.”

  “Do you plan to meet him later?”

  “We have no such plans.”

  “Good. His papers were not in order. He is to be questioned.”

  “By the police?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I have an unseemly curiosity. It is a failing, I fear.”

  “Yes,” the baldheaded man said. “It could be.”

  “I thank you for your courtesy.”

  “Welcome to Tucamondo,” the baldheaded man said.

  Citron led the way across the small room to the door that was marked as the exit. He opened the door and led them into a huge waiting room filled with fear. It was also filled with people who sat, stood, and leaned against walls, clutching suitcases and valises and shopping bags and cardboard boxes bound with rope or twine. Six men in black visored caps and ill-fitting dark-green uniforms moved among the people. Seemingly at random, an officer in a Sam Browne belt used his swagger stick to touch this person, then that, male and female, young and old, husband and wife, brother and sister, parents and grandparents. Those touched by the swagger stick were led away, leaving their possessions behind. No one watched them go. No one looked at the men in uniform. Instead, they gazed at the floor, the ceiling, the walls, and sometimes at each other, but never into each other's eyes. Many stared down at their own hands, and often seemed surprised to find that they were twisting themselves together.

  Haere spotted the purser who had been on the flight from Houston. The purser was hurrying toward the street exit. He looked neither right nor left. As he went by, Haere touched him on the shoulder. The purser shuddered, stopped, and turned slowly. Relief spread across his face.

  “What's going on?” Haere said, gesturing toward the packed-together people.

  The purser didn’t look where Haere gestured. Instead, he looked up at the ceiling.

  “How many people do you see?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Six or seven hundred, maybe.”

  “And how many will fit aboard a DC-8?” the purser asked, still staring at the ceiling.

  “Two hundred and fifty?”

  “Two hundred and thirty-two.”

  “What happens to the ones who don’t make it?”

  “They wait,” the purser said. “Some have been waiting for four weeks.”

  “What about the ones the police are leading off—what happens to them?”

  The purser decided to examine the floor. “Each passenger is given a number,” he said. “Each number is called in precise order. A fair system, no?”

  “Yes. Sure.”

  “Those who are led away are led away because they supposedly have problems—tax problems, exit-visa problems, almost any kind will do. These problems are quickly cleared up. Then the persons are inv
ited to contribute to the police welfare fund. If they contribute adequately, they are returned to their former place in line.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  “They go to the bottom of the list, if they are lucky. The less fortunate, those without money, well, no one is really quite sure what happens to them.” The purser looked at Haere for the first time. “I really must go, Mr. Haere.”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  “No, Mr. Haere. I’m afraid you don’t.” The purser turned and hurried toward the street doors. He looked neither right nor left, but only up at the green sign above the doors that read: Salida. Exit.

  The airport was built on a narrow plateau that jutted out from the range of mountains that divided Tucamondo both geographically and economically. On the eastern slope, the mountains ran down into the broad marsh that fed into the Caribbean. The western slope descended more abruptly, finally spreading out into low hills that formed a natural harbor around which Ciudad Tucamondo had been founded by the Spanish in 1519.

  They made the eleven-mile run from the airport to the edge of the city in an eight-year-old Chevrolet Impala taxi. The first thing the young driver had tried to sell them was dope, either cocaine or marijuana. He was a poor salesman and knew it, and his pitch was at best half-hearted. He became only a bit more eloquent during his second proposal, which was for a guided tour of the city's fleshpots where he promised sights that defied imagination.

  “These are not old crones, senor,” he said to Citron, who sat beside him in the front seat, “but young girls of no more than thirteen, some perhaps even twelve.”

  “Virgins, of course,” Citron said.

  “Only one, but her deflowerment by the large dog is the climax of the exhibition.”

  “Where do they find so many virgins?”

  “In a poor country like ours,” the driver said, “virgins are both cheap and plentiful.”

  “How's business otherwise?” Citron asked.

  “It is better here in the west than the east. There they are starving. Here we only go hungry.”

  The road from the airport was a fairly new but already potholed four-lane highway, largely devoid of traffic, and lined with burned-out shells of trucks and buses and passenger cars.