Ah, Treachery!

Chapter 21

After her trout and his lamb at Morton’s, Millicent Altford and Vernon Winfield declined dessert but ordered espresso and cognac. During dinner, a producer, a director, an agent and three actresses had stopped by separately to gloat over the imminent change at the White House; tell a really nasty Bush joke; find out how well Altford knew the President-elect, and ask whether she would be joining his administration.

Altford introduced the General to each of them; grinned at the Bush joke; claimed to have known the President-elect for seven or eight years, and said she wasn’t at all keen about going to Washington. During the drop-bys, the General had half risen six times for the introductions, smiled agreeably but otherwise kept his mouth shut.

Altford had a sip of her after-dinner cognac and said, “Two of those guys who stopped by voted for Bush, the agent for Perot and the women all went with the winner.”

“How do you know how they voted?”

She smiled. “I know.”

The General finished his cognac, examined the tablecloth for a time, then looked up and asked, “I ever tell you how big-city machine politics enabled me to dodge the draft during World War Two?”

She smiled and shook her head slightly. “No, I think I’d’ve remembered that one.”

Seconds went by as the General seemed to gaze across her left shoulder at a past that went back almost fifty years. “From age four-teen,” he said, “I was a hell-raiser. Something to do with hormones and puberty, I imagine. I got into one jam after another and my father always got me out of them with a single phone call. He was a lawyer who got rich off Chicago politics. But you knew that.”

“You don’t talk about him much.”

“No, I suppose not. This time, the time I’m talking about, was a particularly bad jam. It was the spring of ’forty-four and I was about to graduate from the university high school.”

“What kind of jam?”

“Drunken driving and a wreck in which no one was hurt. Inexcusable, of course, but my father fixed it and a week later announced he’d arranged for me to go to West Point. A senatorial appointment. To me it sounded like a jail sentence and I told him that if I had to go to college, I’d rather go to Slippery Rock than West Point. At the time, I believed Slippery Rock to be in either Arkansas or Missouri.”

“It’s in Pennsylvania,” she said.

“I know. But then I didn’t. My father said okay, I could hang around until I was drafted and then go to any goddamned college I wanted to after the war on the GI Bill — providing I survived.”

“This was nineteen-forty-four?”

The General nodded. “I was seventeen, about to turn eighteen when I’d have to register for the draft. It was also about a month before D-Day in Europe and they were drafting all the warm bodies they could find and shipping them off to infantry replacement training camps for eighteen weeks, then straight on to Europe or the Pacific. A lot of the replacements were killed or wounded during their first few days on the line. I regarded all this as a most unpleasant prospect but thought that West Point, in its way, would be almost as bad. I had no desire to be a soldier of any kind.”

“Not too patriotic, huh?”

“Not enough to die for my country, if I could avoid it. I still regard that as a sensible attitude. Sometimes, of course, the dying is unavoidable.”

“So what happened?”

“I went to see my godfather, a Chicago alderman, who’d been on the receiving end of all those phone calls my father’d made on my behalf. The alderman kept me waiting in his reception room for three hours.”

“I don’t blame him.”

“Neither do I because I must’ve been insufferable. When finally admitted to his presence, I told him I didn’t want to go to West Point, didn’t want to be drafted and asked if he had any suggestions. He merely nodded and said, ‘Well, kiddo’ — and I’m paraphrasing here, of course — ‘well, kiddo, you got three choices. You can go join the Merchant Marine, go to West Point or go tell your draft board you’re queer. That’s what my nephew did, but then the little shit really is queer.’ ”

“So you went to West Point,” she said.

“No, I went to see the Merchant Marine recruiter at the post office downtown. He was an ancient mariner of forty-two or — three who said he’d be happy to sign me on but was obliged to warn me they were drafting guys out of the Merchant Marine straight into the infantry.”

“So on to West Point,” she said.

He nodded. “Where I sat out the war and often thought of my godfather, the alderman, who’d given me sound sensible advice devoid of patriotic claptrap. I felt curiously indebted to him, which is exactly how he wanted me to feel. I even thought of it as an example of how politics really worked, not only in Chicago but everywhere. And of course it was — providing you were a rich man’s son.”

“Then on to Korea,” she said, “where somebody finally managed to shoot you and somebody else gave you a DSC.”

“Yes, but I was mentally prepared for it by then — the wound, not the medal.”

“I’ve often wondered why you stayed in,” she said.

“Because I’d learned a trade by then and was really quite good at it.”

“You ever see the alderman again?”

“No, but I think I managed to repay my debt to him.”

“How?”

“By voting the straight Democratic ticket since nineteen-forty-eight,” General Winfield said.

Millicent Altford was driving when they left Morton’s. They had gone only a few blocks when the General, staring into his side mirror, said, “I think we’re being followed.”

After glancing into her own mirror, she said, “Let’s make sure.”

Altford started zigzagging her way toward Olympic Boulevard, turning left and right at random. She even circled a couple of blocks but the car behind followed at an almost measured fifty feet.

“If it’s still back there when we get to the hospital, I’ll alert the security people,” she said.

“You mean wake them up?”

“Let’s hope not.”

They reached the hospital and turned into its curved drive. The following car also made the turn, closed the distance, then stopped, switched off its lights and Edd Partain got out. He looked around carefully before approaching the Lexus on the driver’s side. Altford lowered the window.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

“Jack the doorman was shot dead in front of the Eden earlier this evening. Jessica and I saw it. After we talked to the cops, I rented a car and drove to Morton’s just in time to see you leave.” He inspected the hospital grounds again and said, “You’d better get inside.”

Up in Altford’s hospital room, she and the General sat on the blue couch, Partain in an armchair. She and Winfield finally had run out of questions, hers being mostly about her daughter, Winfield’s about the shooting itself and the marksmanship of the gunman.

They also wondered briefly why anyone would want to kill Jack the doorman, but such talk led nowhere and, after a brief silence, Partain asked Winfield, “Who else besides Nick Patrokis knows you and I are in Los Angeles?”

“No one,” the General said. “And what a curious question. It implies that either you or Jessica was the target, and that the shooter was incompetent.”

“Does it?” Partain said.

Something flitted across the General’s face, either regret or inspiration. Whichever it was made him look uncomfortable as he said, “I misspoke.”

“When?” Partain said.

Instead of answering, the General turned to Millicent Altford and said, “Could you make a reservation for lunch tomorrow for me and two guests at some place that film people frequent?”

“Sure — if I can ask why?”

“I want to invite someone to lunch and I need to offer an inducement.”

“This someone a star-fucker?”

“I can only presume so.”

“Then I’ll call Le Dome,” she said, rose, went to the phone, made the call and returned to the couch. “One o’clock tomorrow. Le Dome’s on Sunset. You’ll have what they call a preferred table.”

“Thank you,” the General said, rose, went to the phone, dialed information, got the number of the Peninsula Hotel, called it and said, “Mr. Emory Kite’s room, please.”

After the call went through, Winfield said, “Mr. Kite? Vernon Winfield. Sorry to call you so late but I wonder if you could possibly join me at one tomorrow for a business lunch at Le Dome on Sunset Boulevard?”

The General listened, then said, “Yes, I understand film people do eat there.”

After more listening, he said, “I need your professional advice about a fatal shooting a friend of mine witnessed earlier this evening.”

Winfield listened just long enough for Kite to ask a brief question, then said, “You met him at the airport today.” Another pause. “That’s right. Mr. Partain. He’ll be joining us for lunch.” One final pause and, after that, the General said, “Good. Tomorrow at one, then.”

After Winfield returned to the couch, looking content, if not quite smug, Altford asked Partain, “Who the hell’s Mr. Kite?”

“A real short guy from Washington who’s the only person except you and Patrokis who knows I’m out here with the General.”

“What else is Kite?” she asked.

“He rents space from us at VOMIT,” the General said. “By trade, he’s a skip-tracer turned detective.”

Partain rested his elbows on his knees, leaned toward the General and said, “You forgot to mention why I’d want to consult with Kite about a dead doorman.”

“I didn’t forget,” Winfield said. “You’re Millicent Altford’s security consultant and fairly new to the trade. You need to know who the doorman really was — his background, job history, friends and criminal record, if any. But what you especially want to know is if there’s anything about Jack that might further embarrass Ms. Altford, who’s already been politically embarrassed by a dead body being dumped on her driveway — the body of a young man romantically involved with her daughter in Mexico.”

“I don’t think romance had a whole lot to do with it,” Altford said.

“Who’s going to pay Kite if he says yes?” Partain asked.

“I will,” the General said.

“Is Kite licensed in California?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“What if he turns me down?”

“We should feel relieved,” the General said.

“And if he accepts?”

“Then,” Winfield said, “we begin our reassessment of Emory Kite.”

A long silence began that was ended by a question from Altford to the General. “You don’t like him much, do you, your Mr. Kite?”

“Is it that obvious?”

She nodded. “Maybe you should wear a disguise tomorrow.”

“A disguise?”

“You know,” she said. “A smile.”