Ah, Treachery!

Chapter 17

The century-old red brick house was a tiny two-story affair in the 400 block of Fourth Street, Southeast, and a pleasant stroll from the Library of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Capitol building and the birthplace of J. Edgar Hoover.

It was owned free and clear by Emory Kite, the private investigator, who sat on a red plush couch as old as the house itself, counting $50,000 in $100 bills onto a marble-top table with carved griffin legs that clutched glass balls in their claws.

It was 7:14 A.M. and Kite was still wearing a much too long green velvet bathrobe or dressing gown that Colonel Ralph Millwed thought made him look like one of the more unsavory Disney dwarfs. Grumpy, the Colonel decided, running through the seven names as he watched Kite count the money quickly, even expertly, licking his right forefinger after every tenth bill.

Once he reached the five hundredth bill, Kite replaced the ten banded packets in the big brown paper Safeway bag they had arrived in and folded the sack’s top over three times, securing it with an enormous blue plastic paper clip.

Now cradling the bag, he wriggled backward on the couch until his short legs almost stuck straight out beneath the green robe. Kite gave the money a pat that was almost a caress and said, “When?”

“You have seventy-two hours,” the Colonel said.

“Not enough. Not near enough.”

“Make do,” the Colonel said.

“L.A.’s one big town, Ralphie. I gotta get situated, do some tracking, run the routes, figure the percentages. It all takes time.”

“Do it within three days and you get another fifty thousand. If it takes more time than that, you get just what’s in the sack.”

“How about expenses?”

“You get expenses no matter what.”

Kite turned the corners of his wide mouth down, forming the twin hooks that Millwed had come to despise because they often meant the little shit had just thought up something elaborate, expensive and probably too good to turn down.

“How’d you like the way my Mexican friends out there handled that rush-rush order?” Kite said.

“I didn’t know they were Mexicans.”

“Yeah, well, they’re actually Mexican-Americans, but how d’you think they handled it — the nephew thing?”

“They did what they were paid to do,” the Colonel said, smiled slightly, then asked, “Do they need a letter of reference?”

“No, but while I’m there, I thought I might use ’em as backup out of my own pocket.”

“Emory,” the Colonel said, his voice nearly toneless but full of warning.

Kite widened his eyes until they were brimming with feigned innocence. “What?”

“You will not under any circumstances subcontract this thing. Understood?”

“Never crossed my mind. I’m talking backup — contingency stuff. The General wants a custom job and I’ll do it just the way he likes. Set your objective, he used to tell me, then ram straight toward it. That’s the way he likes a job done and the Captain and Mrs. Central America are a good example of it. So’s the General’s nephew. And you gotta admire the General for that because I can’t even imagine what it must’ve cost him. I don’t mean money. I mean the way it must’ve made him feel.”

“He felt nothing,” the Colonel said.

“I can’t believe that, Ralphie,” Kite said, obviously believing every word. “His own nephew.”

“General Hudson long ago decided that remorse and regret are counterproductive emotions. Once he decided that, he had his removed.”

Kite chuckled. “That’s a good one. But you know what I hear? I hear that before he went to Vietnam, way back when he was a lieutenant or captain, he had his appendix out even though it wasn’t bothering him. He must’ve figured coming down with appendicitis way out in the boonies would’ve been sort of, like you say, counterproductive. So maybe while they were taking out his appendix, they also cut out his remorse and regret glands. What d’you think?”

“I think you’d better get to the point, if there is one.”

“The point is Twodees.”

“He bothers you?”

“Him? Nah. But after he’s fixed, I figure he’ll be the last one — the last you guys’ll have to worry about anyway. Then it’ll only be me, you and the General who know what happened to those two kids from El Salvador, the nephew and Twodees.”

“Get to it, Emory.”

“Well, I’ve been thinking — and I’d like your advice on this — but what I’ve been thinking is maybe I oughta take out some insurance.”

“What kind?” the Colonel said.

“The usual kind. Find myself a lawyer and hand him one of those to-be-opened-only-if-something-nasty-happens-to-me letters.”

Colonel Millwed leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands together and studied Kite with icy gray eyes that never seemed to thaw.

“Do what you please, Emory. But should something bad ever happen to me, something equally bad will happen to you and General Hudson. I can only assume that General Hudson has made similar arrangements.”

Kite nodded contentedly several times and said, “That’s good news, Ralphie. Each of us looking out for himself means that we’re all looking out for each other. Like the three musketeers. Sort of.”

“Sort of,” the Colonel agreed and leaned back in his chair.

Kite wriggled off the couch and rose, clutching the money bag to his chest. “Look. I better go call my travel agent at home and see if she can get me on that ten o’clock flight to L.A. You got any problem with me in first class?”

“None.”

“You gonna stick around till I find out about the flight?”

“I thought I might.”

“Yeah,” Kite said. “So did I.” He turned and left the room, the money bag still clasped to his chest, the hem of his long green velvet dressing gown trailing after him.

Colonel Millwed rose and wandered around the parlor that took up half of the ground floor and was stuffed with furniture, photographs, paintings and souvenirs that dated from the 1900s to the mid-1950s. None of them had been supplied by Kite, who had bought the house and its contents from the great-great-grandniece of the woman who first lived there in 1905 as a 21-year-old bride. When her husband died in 1957, she lived in the house alone until her death in 1980. A year later, her only heir, the great-great-grandniece, who lived in Oregon, sold everything to Kite.

Millwed had once asked Kite if living in the old place wasn’t like living in a museum. “Maybe,” Kite had said. “But it’s my museum.”

The Colonel turned from his inspection of a corner whatnot stand as Kite reentered the room, wearing a Raiders sweatshirt, faded jeans, scuffed white Reeboks and on his big head a blue Dodgers baseball cap.

“That should make you invisible,” Millwed said.

“Think so?” Kite said. “I just checked the Weather Channel and it’s gonna be sunny and about seventy-six out there. Maybe I’ll go to the beach this afternoon.”

“And Twodees?”

Kite seemed to give Partain some thought. “Well, maybe I’ll fix Twodees first, then go to the beach.”