Backup Men

8

OUTSIDE I waved at a Diamond cab but he sailed on by after looking us over carefully. It may have been that he didn’t care for the cut of my forest green cavalry twill suit, the double-breasted one that caused kindly friends to ask whether I hadn’t lost a few pounds. Or it may have been that the black scowl on Padillo’s face bothered him. It would have bothered me.

“Smile, for Christ’s sake,” I said, “or start walking.”

Padillo pulled his lips back and showed his teeth. “It hurts,” he said.

“It was just like in the movies,” I said, waving at a Yellow cab whose driver nodded cheerfully at me as he drove on past.

“How?”

“A Western,” I said. “Old Gunfighter, living on nothing but his reputation, drifts into End-of-the-line, New Mexico, slapping the alkali dust from his chaps—”

“End-of-the-line’s good.”

“And runs into none other than Big Rancher’s only son who’s craving to get out from under Daddy’s shadow and make it on his own.”

“So Only Son challenges Old Gunfighter to a showdown.”

“You’ve seen it,” I said as an Independent cab rolled to a stop in front of us.

“I never could sit through to the end,” Padillo said as he climbed in. “How does it turn out?”

“Sad,” I said and told the driver that we wanted to go to the Hay-Adams Hotel.

“You know how I’d end it?” Padillo said.

“How?”

“I’d have Old Gunfighter wait for a moonless night and then sneak quietly out of town.”

“You may be the last of the romantics, Mike.”

“How’d you know I wanted to go to the Hay-Adams?”

“Wanda Gothar’s message. I figured it out. I think.”

“‘In or out by four in six-two-one.’”

“That means you’re supposed to make up your mind by four o’clock today. She’s in room six-twenty-one. I can also do large sums in my head.”

“You’re a comfort.”

“What’re you going to tell her?”

“That I’m in.”

“How do you think she really took her brother’s death?”

“Hard,” he said and then looked at me. “You’re actually curious, aren’t you?”

“I get that way about people who’re killed in my own living room,” I said and hoped that the cabdriver was enjoying the conversation.

“So now you want to see act two?”

“Only if it doesn’t drag.”

“For some reason,” Padillo said, “I don’t think it will.”

The Hay-Adams is a middle-aged hotel on Sixteenth Street right across from Lafayette Square where they recently went to a lot of trouble to build some new sidewalks and trash baskets for the crowds who gathered under the trees to say nasty things about the war in Indochina, pollution, the economy, and the man who lived in the big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue across the street from the square. The crowds and what they said must not have bothered the man much because up until then he hadn’t done a great deal about the things that they complained about.

We took an elevator up to the sixth floor. Padillo knocked twice on 621 and Wanda Gothar’s voice asked, “Who is it?” before she opened the door after Padillo identified himself.

She nearly winced when she saw me, but all that she said was, “Still the mute witness, Mr. McCorkle?”

“I speak up from time to time.”

After we were in the room she turned to Padillo. “Well?”

“I’m in.”

“How much?”

“How much can you afford?”

“Fifty thousand, plus ten thousand for whoever killed my brother.”

“Just the name?”

“Just the name.”

“Amos Gitner thinks you might have done it.”

“That’s not worth ten thousand.”

“I didn’t think it would be. How much front money, Wanda?”

She looked away from him and ran her left forefinger up and down the dark blue material that made up the pants of her suit. “Five thousand.”

“Business must be bad all over. Kragstein and Gitner could only offer me seventy-five hundred and from what I hear, they’ve been working regularly.”

“We took it on a contingency basis.”

“So did they.”

She turned back to him and when she spoke her voice was low and level and very hard. “Just get me that name and you’ve got the ten thousand, Padillo, even if it takes every last cent I’ve got.” She turned away again, as if the melodrama of the statement embarrassed her. “What did Kragstein and Gitner say?”

“That they didn’t kill Walter.”

“What else?”

“That they get a bonus if Kassim doesn’t sign certain papers. No bonus if he does sign, but doesn’t make it back to Llaquah.”

“A sliding scale,” she said. “Did they mention who’s paying them?”

“No.”

“Did you ask?”

“Yes.”

“And you turned them down?”

“That’s right.”

“What did they say?”

“Not much.”

“Gitner must have said something.”

“He seemed to think that I’m getting old.”

She inspected him carefully, much as she might inspect a cold-storage chicken that had been a trifle long in the freezer. “You are, you know.”

“Everybody is,” Padillo said.

“Well, does the five thousand hold you?”

“Forget it.”

“What do you mean, forget it? What are we playing now, Padillo, one of your clever little games?”

“No games. I’m in for free and if I find out who killed Walter, you get that for nothing, too.”

“I don’t like anything when it’s free,” she said. “If it’s a gift horse, I look in its mouth. Since it’s from you, I might even ask for X rays.”

“Don’t.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he said, “you might find out how old and tired he really is.”

Wanda Gothar’s room wasn’t the best that the Hay-Adams had to offer, nor was it the worst. The view from the two windows was mostly of AFL-CIO headquarters, which was across Sixteenth Street, and the room was furnished with a double bed, a few chairs, a combination dresser-writing table, and the inevitable television set. It was a commercial traveler’s room, one to sleep in for a couple of nights, three at the most, before hastening back home or on to the next town. From the looks of the room she could have been there for an hour or for a month because there was nothing in it that seemed to belong to her. No suitcase, no cosmetic kit, nor even a box of Kleenex or a paperback book. I decided that she was either a highly experienced traveler or a compulsive neatener, one of those who gag at the sight of a crushed-out cigarette in an ashtray.

She was turned toward the windows, her back to Padillo and me, when she said, “All right. When do you start?”

“As soon as you give me some answers,” he said.

“Such as?”

“Why did you fake the note from Paul?”

She turned from the window and made a small gesture with her left hand, as if the question were hardly worth an answer. “We were almost broke and we needed help. The only way we landed this assignment was by assuring them that you’d be in on it. You and Paul had been close and we thought that you might feel something—a sentimental obligation perhaps. That was dumb of us.”

“You should’ve remembered that I knew he didn’t read or write English.”

She shrugged. “It was a chance we took. Not many knew it because he spoke it perfectly. He had that block, which for some reason kept him from either reading or writing it. Walter forged his handwriting.”

“He was always good at that,” Padillo said.

“That and other things.”

“It still doesn’t make sense.”

“Why?”

“You could have written it in German just as easily. Whose idea was it to write in English?”

She turned back to the window. “Mine.”

“Because you didn’t really want me in, did you, Wanda?”

“No. You don’t have to ask why, do you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“It’s different now,” she said as she turned, walked across the room to a straight-backed chair, and lowered herself onto it in that easy, graceful way that they once taught in the better finishing schools.

“How?” Padillo said.

“I need you,” she said, gazing at the gray carpet. She stared at it a moment before looking up. “I don’t like admitting it, but I do. I’m the last of the Gothars. That doesn’t mean anything to anyone other than me, but I’d like to stay alive. Did you hear how Paul was killed in Beirut?”

“No,” Padillo said. “I just heard that it was messy.”

“His throat was cut.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

She nodded. “It is, isn’t it? He was good, wasn’t he?”

“I’d say he was almost the best.”

“Which means that it was somebody he knew. And trusted.”

“As much as he’d trust anyone,” Padillo said.

“The same thing must have happened to Walter. He was no easy mark either.”

“Why was your brother in my apartment?” I said.

She shook her head twice. “I don’t know. He was supposed to have been with them.”

“Who’s them?” Padillo said.

“Kassim and Scales. You don’t know about scales, do you?”

“No.”

“He knows about you. He hired us on the condition that you’d be part of things.”

“I still don’t know him.”

“Emory Scales. He was Kassim’s tutor until the boy went into the monastery.”

“English?”

“Yes.”

“And now he’s what?”

“He’s Kassim’s adviser.”

“And just popped up after Kassim’s brother had the car wreck?”

“Kassim sent for him, I understand.”

“And Scales got in touch with you.”

“Yes.”

“What’s he been doing recently? I mean was he still in Llaquah or back in England when Kassim sent for him?”

“He was back in England,” she said.

“You mentioned that Walter was supposed to have been with them when he came visiting McCorkle. I assume that means they’re here in Washington.”

Wanda Gothar shook her head again. “Baltimore.”

Padillo rose from the room’s one easy chair and walked over to the window. “Why would he want to see McCorkle?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Guess.”

“Maybe he thought that he could persuade McCorkle to persuade you.”

“That’s thin.”

“Have you got something better?”

“Not yet. What do Kassim and Scales say?”

“About what?”

“Come on, Wanda.”

“They don’t say anything about why he left them in Baltimore. They said he told them that he had an appointment and that he’d be back and that they should remain where they were.”

“And where’s that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m moving them.”

“When?”

“As soon as Kassim’s brother dies.”

“What’s the latest report?” Padillo asked.

“He’s still in a coma.”

“Where’re you moving them to?”

She looked at Padillo and then at me. “There’s nothing in it for McCorkle,” Padillo said.

“Perhaps that’s what worries me,” she said.

“There could be something in it for me,” I said.

“What?” she said.

“I’d like to know why your brother got killed in my apartment. So would the police. They’ll stop bothering me as soon as they find out who killed him and why. The quicker they find out, the better I’ll like it.”

“Where’re you moving them to, Wanda?” Padillo said.

“To New York first,” she said.

“Then where?”

She looked at Padillo for nearly fifteen seconds. It was a searching, suspicious look such as she might give the two-carat diamond ring that could be had for only fifty dollars along with a touching hard luck story. “I don’t think you should know that just yet,” she said.

“All right,” he said, “you can tell me something else.”

“What?”

“Where were you last night when your brother was being garroted?”

“You really think you need to know, don’t you?”

“I think so.”

“It’s just as I told the police,” she said. “I was out.”

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Padillo said.

“I didn’t for the police.”

“You’ll have to for me.”

They exchanged another long look. “I was out with a man,” she said finally.

“Where?”

“In his bed. Actually, it’s only partly his. The rest of it belongs to his wife.”

“What is he?” Padillo said.

She turned to me. “Notice that he said what, not who. That’s what persons are to him. Things.”

“Like chess pieces,” I said.

“No,” she said, “more like the game you call checkers. All counters have the same value.”

“He’s a true democrat,” I said.

“He asked what the man is because he wants to know how much the man has to lose if he eventually becomes my alibi. If he’s a bellhop or a taxi driver, then he has little to lose. A wife, perhaps, but he can always get another, can’t he, Padillo?”

“He’s Government, isn’t he, Wanda?”

“Yes, damn it, he’s Government.”

“I may have to have his name.”

“What will you do with it, blackmail him?”

Padillo smiled at her, but it wasn’t the kind of a smile that one returns. “No,” he said, “I’ll merely use it to make sure of something.”

“Of what?”

“Not much. Just that you’re not lying.”