Missionary Stew

by Ross Thomas

  Torres ignored the captain and examined Citron carefully. “Well, spy, what have you got to say?”

  “I have no wish to be shot.”

  “You speak very good Spanish.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you have money?”

  “None.”

  “If you had money, you could buy a fine last meal.” “I have no money.”

  “Then you will eat what the rest eat.” Major Torres pressed a button on his desk. A guard entered. The young lieutenant rose and unlocked Citron's handcuffs. The guard looked questioningly at Major Torres.

  “He is to be shot in the morning,” Torres said. “Find him a nice cell.”

  The guard nodded, took Citron by the left arm, and led him away.

  The cell was on the ocean side of the prison. There was a barred window high up. The cell was small, no more than five by seven. It was lit by a single bulb and contained a plastic bucket, a clay jug of water, and a low stone bed. A folded blanket was on the bed.

  “I can sell you cigarettes and food and even liquor, if you have money,” the guard said.

  “I have no money,” Citron said. “It was taken from me.”

  The guard shrugged as he closed and locked the cell door. The door was made of iron bars. Citron looked around the cell and sat down on the stone bed. He sat there for nearly an hour, staring down at the floor, his head bowed, his arms on his knees, thinking of pastmistakes, old loves, untaken paths, and the final indignity he would have to brook, which was death. After that, no more surprises ever. He absolved himself of all sins, if sins there were; almost but not quite forgave his enemies; rose, and urinated into the plastic bucket. When he was through urinating, he sat back down on the stone bed and took off his right shoe. He then rolled down his sock and slipped the gold Rolex from his ankle. He put the watch in the plastic bucket. It would be safe there, he knew, at least for a while.

  He folded his jacket into a pillow. He lay down on the stone bed, his hands locked behind his head. He stared up at the high stone ceiling. After a while he closed his eyes. After a while he even slept—and dreamed of Africa.

  The office was large enough to pace in. It belonged to the charge d’affaires of the United States embassy, who sat behind his teak desk and watched the man in the three-piece blue pinstripe pace up and down as he cajoled, implored, and even threatened.

  The charge d’affaires was Neal Rink. He was fifty-nine years old and had risen as high as he would ever rise in the Foreign Service of the United States. Threats, even threats from such smooth articles as Draper Haere, no longer bothered him. Ten years ago, he thought, you might’ve hopped; fifteen years ago you would’ve leaped. Now he smiled, leaned back in his chair, and said, “So it's come to this, has it?”

  Haere stopped pacing and looked at Rink. “To what?”

  “To threats.”

  “I’m not threatening you, Mr. Rink. All I’m—”

  Rink, still smiling, interrupted. “You are threatening me, Mr. Haere. You’re threatening me with assorted members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with a gaggle of congressmen you seem to have in your hip pocket, with crucifixion in both the New York Times and the Washington Post, and with disgrace, dishonor, and possible bankruptcy.”

  Rink reached down into his bottom drawer and came up with a bottle of J&B Scotch whisky. “I suppose I should tell you that I’ve got a rich wife and that I’m retiring from the fudge factory in exactly two months and nine days. With that in mind, maybe you’d be willing to drop the act and join me in a glass of whisky. I’m sure Miss Keats would also like one.”

  Velveeta Keats nodded. “Yes, sir, I would.” She looked up at Haere from her chair in front of Rink's desk. “You sounded awful mad there, Draper.”

  Haere grinned. “I was selling. I always sound mad when I’m selling.”

  “You’re really quite good,” Rink said as he poured the Scotch and added water from his desk carafe. “I assume it's quite effective when dealing with candidates for public office.”

  “It's one of the first things I learned,” Haere said as he accepted his drink. “If you sound angry, you also sound convinced. People like conviction. Especially in politics, where it's a reasonably rare commodity.” Haere took a long swallow of his drink, sat down in the chair next to Velveeta Keats, and looked at Rink. “Okay. Let's hear it. What can you do about Citron?”

  Rink had some of his Scotch. He seemed to like its taste. Then he sighed and said, “Nothing.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing until Merry finds out what they’ve done with him. We need to know where the body is.” He smiled at Velveeta Keats. “I didn’t mean that literally, of course.”

  “No, sir. I didn’t think you did.”

  “There's also another problem.” Rink tilted his head toward the window. “Hear it?”

  Both Haere and Velveeta Keats nodded. The gunfire, although still distant, seemed to be increasing in intensity. “That's the sound of counterrevolution,” Rink said. “One that has at least a six-to-five chance of succeeding. For Mr. Citron's sake, you’d best hope that it does.”

  Before they could ask why, there was a knock at Rink's door. Rink told the knocker to come in. The door opened and Don Merry entered. His hair was mussed, his tie loosened; he looked haggard. There was no smile.

  “Well?” Rink said.

  “I’ve just come from the palace.”

  “Were you able to see the general?”

  “No, sir. It was impossible. There's suddenly a siege mentality over there. But I did see Colonel Velasco.”

  Rink looked at Haere. “Velasco is the general's chief aide.” He turned back to Merry. “Well, come on, Don, let's have it.”

  “They tried Citron this morning. They tried him, convicted him, and sentenced him.”

  “How long did he get?” Rink asked.

  “Until tomorrow morning. He's to be shot at six tomorrow morning.”

  “Dear God,” Rink said.

  CHAPTER 33

  The first thing the two Haitians did with Draper Haere's $9,000 was to suborn the assistant manager of an Avis franchise. The Haitians wished to rent a Dodge van. The assistant manager was reluctant. He was convinced the counterrevolution would succeed and that the Avis cars and vans would be expropriated by the new regime. Clearly, he would be without work, because his politics, unfortunately, were not of the left. He must now think of his future. Cecilio asked the assistant manager if $500 would enhance his prospects. The assistant manager said that, by strange coincidence, it was the precise amount he had in mind. He could now rent them the van with a clear conscience.

  In the rear storeroom of a small shop that usually sold leather sandals, the two Haitians bought two cases of blackmarket Ballantine Scotch whisky and ten cartons of Marlboros. The whisky cost them $75 a bottle; the cigarettes went for $100 a carton. With the whisky and cigarettes in the rear of the van, their next stop was the Presidential Palace.

  At least three companies of infantry in full battle gear now surrounded the palace. The van was stopped a block away from the palace gates by a young private soldier armed with an M-16. “Do you smoke, brave young soldier?” Jacques asked. The brave young soldier replied that he did indeed. Jacques handed him a carton of Marlborosand inquired as to the whereabouts of his commanding officer. The soldier said that Captain Vadillo at the moment was taking his ease in the park on a bench.

  Jacques and Cecilio parked and locked the van. They entered the park and, after a few inquiries, were directed to Captain Vadillo, who sat dozing in the sun, conserving his strength for the battles yet to come.

  Jacques addressed the captain by name and said, “We have a strange request.”

  The captain eyed them with absolute suspicion. “And it is what?”

  “We come from the Inter-Continental Hotel, where a crazed North American paid us a small fortune to deliver a case of Scotch whisky and three cartons of Marlboro cigarettes to a friend of his. The friend
is another North American with a rare name.”

  “What is the friend's rare name?”

  “Morgan Citron.”

  “And where is he supposed to be?”

  “In the Presidential Palace,” Cecilio said. “Detained for some minor irregularity.”

  “Are you Cuban?” the Captain said. “You speak like a Cuban.”

  “Do we look like Cubans?” Cecilio said.

  “There are many black Cubans.”

  “We are Haitian.”

  “I would not help you if you were Cuban.”

  “We would not expect you to.” Cecilio smiled at the captain. “Shall we say two bottles of Scotch whisky and two cartons of Marlboro cigarettes?”

  “Three,” the captain said. “Three each.”

  “Done.”

  “Wait for me here,” the captain said.

  He returned from the Presidential Palace in fifteen minutes and told them, “The North American is no longer in the palace.”

  “Ah,” Jacques said. “

  He is in the federal prison.”

  “Well.”

  “He is to be shot tomorrow morning.”

  “A pity,” Cecilio said. He looked at Jacques, who nodded sadly at the news. “Then we must surely get his whisky and cigarettes to him today,” Jacques said.

  The two Haitians turned and started in the direction of the rented van. Jacques turned back with a smile. “Coming, Captain?” he asked.

  The captain hurried after them and the promised whisky and cigarettes.

  Morgan Citron stood with his back to the high stone wall and watched the squad of soldiers fumble with their rifles. Something was wrong with their barrels, which were bent like candles left in the sun. A woman's voice said, “You are still far too thin.” He turned and looked up at the top of the wall. Miss Cecily Tettah of Amnesty International sat astride the wall as she lowered a rope ladder with glass rungs. Citron was worrying about whether the glass rungs would bear his weight when he awoke in the cell of the federal prison.

  He sat up on the edge of the stone bed. He was not surprised that he had slept. Almost half the time he had spent in the Emperor-President's prison had been spent in sleep—in fast time, as prisoners everywhere called it. He reached into the plastic bucket and brought out the gold Rolex. He wiped it off on the trousers of the suit he had bought at Henshey's in Santa Monica. According to the watch, he had slept an hour.

  It took Citron only two minutes to remove the gold expansion band from the Rolex. He put the watch itself back into the waste bucket, rose, moved to the barred door, and started calling for the guard.

  After five minutes the guard shuffled down the corridor and stopped in front of the cell door. He was a round-shouldered, bleak-eyed man who had the beginnings of a potbelly. His uniform no longer fitted him. Citron estimated the guard's age to be a few yearspast forty, which was good. Ambition had gone, or was going. A younger guard might still have hope.

  “You do not have to scream,” the guard said. “My post is only a few meters away.”

  “How was I to know?” Citron said.

  The guard thought about it and then nodded. “True.” He paused. “What do you want?”

  “I want food and beer and coffee.”

  The guard almost smiled. “Perhaps a nice steak?”

  “I will pay.”

  “With what?”

  Citron held up the watch band. “With gold.”

  The sight of gold produced its usual response. The guard smiled and squinted and licked his upper lip. He looked quickly to his right and left, and then back at the gold band that swung in a small arc from Citron's fingers. “Real gold?” the guard whispered.

  “Eighteen-carat.”

  “Perhaps some beans and rice with your steak?”

  “And beer and coffee,” Citron said.

  “Yes, of course. Beer and coffee. I will be back in thirty minutes.” He turned to leave but stopped at the sound of Citron's voice.

  “Wait.”

  “What?”

  “Do you have any relatives?”

  “Yes. Many.”

  “And some of them perhaps plan to emigrate soon to the States?”

  “My youngest sister and her cousin.”

  “Bring me a notebook and a pen and I will write in it. When your sister and her cousin get to the States they can take the notebook to a man in California who will pay them for it. He will pay them at least two thousand dollars.” Citron paused. “Perhaps more. The man is generous.”

  The guard hesitated. “What will you write? In the notebook?”

  Citron smiled. “A story,” he said.

  After the guard returned with the food and the drink and the notebook and the ballpoint pen, and after he bit into the gold band to test its quality, and after the food was eaten and the beer and the coffee drunk, Citron settled down on the stone bed with the notebook. He opened it and on the first page wrote Draper Haere's name and address in Venice and then: “Draper: Please pay the bearer (or bearers) $2,000 for this—or more, if you like their looks. Regards, Morgan Citron.”

  After that, Citron wrote steadily for four hours. And because it was a strange tale that demanded a cold and logical style, he wrote in French.

  When Gladys Citron arrived at Miami International Airport, she went to a phone booth and used her telephone credit card to call a man at his home in Middleburg, Virginia. The man was retired now from government service and had been for nearly four years. Gladys Citron had known him for nearly forty years. She had once saved his life in 1944 near Cannes. When the man seemed reluctant to do what she asked him to do, she reminded him of 1944 and Cannes.

  “Gladys,” the man said, “looking back on it all, you didn’t really do me any favor.”

  “Come on, Harley.”

  “You really want to do me a favor, you’d come up here and we’d have a few drinks, and then I’d hand you my shotgun, that Purdey I bought in ‘forty-five in London, remember? And then you could do me a real favor.”

  “Call them, Harley.”

  The man sighed. “Call me back in thirty minutes,” he said and hung up.

  Gladys Citron entered an airport cocktail lounge and ordered a martini, the first martini she had tasted in five years. A forty-year-old Cuban with eyes the color of hot fudge tried to pick her up and ithelped pass the time. She ended it by paying for both her and the Cuban's drink, went back to the pay phone, and again called the man in Middleburg. He answered the phone on the first ring.

  “I’ve got bad news,” he said. “You ready?”

  “I’m ready.”

  “According to a cable they got from the charge down there, a guy called Rink, not a bad guy, by the way, well, the good general court-martialed your son today and they’re going to shoot him tomorrow morning at six A.M., which would be seven A.M. Eastern Standard Time.”

  “I see,” Gladys Citron said.

  “That's my Gladys,” the man said. “Tell her the fuckin’ world's coming to an end at noon and she says, ‘I see.’“ “

  It's solid, this information?” she said.

  “They read me the fuckin’ cable, Gladys. This guy Rink says he thinks the general himself maybe due for the drop. They got a counterrevolution going on down there and Rink thinks it just might work.”

  “I see,” she said. “Well, thank you, Harley.”

  “For what?”

  After she hung up, Gladys Citron sat in the phone booth for at least two minutes until she dropped another coin in and dialed B. S. Keats's number from memory. When Keats answered she told him she had just arrived at the airport and suggested they meet in one hour at the place where they usually met when they didn’t want anyone to know they were meeting. Keats asked if she had heard anything. Gladys Citron said she had and that was what she wanted to talk about.

  She drove in her rented Chevrolet past the Bob's Big Boy restaurant and parked a block away. She walked back to the restaurant, went in, ordered a cup of coffee, and took it
over to the booth where B. S. Keats sat with a Coca-Cola in front of him.

  Gladys Citron put the coffee on the table and sat down in the booth across from Keats. She held her large Coach purse in her lap.

  “Well?” Keats said.

  “They’re going to shoot him in the morning. My son.”

  “That ain’t so, Gladys.”

  “He's going to have him shot. Our friend, the general.”

  “Never happen. Never.”

  “Did you set him up—my son?”

  “Me? Christ, I got my little girl down there. I even sent my two French niggers down just to make sure nothing happened to her or him. It's gotta be some kind of fuckup, Gladys. That's what it's gotta be.”

  “I know you set him up, B. S.” she said, took the .32 caliber Colt automatic from her purse, and shot him under the table three times. Keats clutched his stomach, said something she couldn’t understand, slumped forward over the table, and knocked over his Coca-Cola. Gladys Citron rose and shot him through the head, then turned and walked out of the restaurant. There were three other customers in the Bob's Big Boy restaurant, plus the staff. None of them tried to stop her.

  She turned in the rented car at the airport and checked on the earliest flight out. It was American's Flight 138 nonstop to Kansas City. She paid cash for a first-class one-way ticket and gave her name as Mrs. Gordon Percy.

  Seated in the first-class section of the DC-9, drinking the second martini she had had in five years, Gladys Citron came to the sensible conclusion that she might have gone quite mad. Her mind turned then to the comforting thought of suicide. When she arrived in Kansas City, she would check into a nice hotel, perhaps the Muehl-bach, if it was still functioning, order dinner and a good wine up to her room, take a long bath, and think about suicide some more. It just might get her through the night. The thought did, in fact, get her all the way to Kansas City, where she was arrested by two homicide detectives as she came off the plane.

  CHAPTER 34

  Draper Haere and Velveeta Keats walked back to the Inter-Continental from the U.S. embassy. They walked because all taxis seemed to have disappeared and because Haere said he wanted to. The streets were almost deserted except for Jeeps and army trucks filled with soldiers, most of whom seemed to be sixteen years old. Sometimes Velveeta Keats would take flash pictures of them with her Polaroid camera. None of the pictures turned out very well. Velveeta Keats didn’t seem to mind. After she examined each picture and showed it to Haere, she threw it away.