Backup Men

10

I THOUGHT I’d lost them. They’d seemed clumsy at first, but later I decided that they weren’t clumsy at all, only indifferent about whether I knew that they were following me. They weren’t trying to hide, not with those twin blue blazers and those checked trousers and those pink shirts. Their ties were different though. The tall, muscular one with the thin dark face and the horseshoe moustache wore a dark red one that had a big knot and looked like satin. The other man, a little shorter, but not much, fair and almost pale, wore a purple and red striped tie that clashed with the pink of his shirt. At least I thought it clashed. He may have planned it that way.

They probably had followed me from the restaurant, but I was never sure. I didn’t notice them until I got in line for the Eastern shuttle. I tried to be last in line. I always do because it’s rumored that if Eastern doesn’t have a seat for you on its regular shuttle to New York, it will roll out a special plane just for you. I’d like that. That’s why I always try to be last in line. I kept hanging back, but so did they and finally, when it was obvious that there were plenty of seats and there wasn’t a chance of getting a plane all for myself, I handed over the yellow boarding pass and walked out to the airliner which I think was a DC-9, but I wasn’t sure. The new jets are as indistinguishable to me as the new cars.

I went as far back into the plane as I could, hoping that the blue blazers would have to sit in front of me. They did—one seat up and on the other side of the aisle so that I could admire their profiles all the way to LaGuardia.

The dark one looked to be twenty-seven or so with a pronounced overbite that his droopy moustache didn’t do anything for. He had thick eyebrows and a beaked nose and was dark enough to be from either Cuba or Mexico. The fair one kept chewing on something, either gum or his tongue. He had a lot of freckles which not many persons seem to have anymore. Or perhaps I don’t notice them. The fair one was also around twenty-seven and wore dark glasses and occasionally picked his pink nose. They both wore their hair long enough to obscure part of their ears and their coat collars and neither of them even glanced at me all the way to New York.

The first thing I did when I got off the plane was to head for the men’s room where I paid seventy-five cents for a shine. They both wore suede desert boots so they had to hang around and pretend not to watch until I was through. Then I headed for the Avis counter and rented a car. That wasn’t covered by their instructions and they held a hurried conference before deciding that one of them should go find a cab while the other kept an eye on me.

The car that I rented was a Plymouth. I know because I looked at its emblem to make sure. I took a deep breath, started the engine, and headed out into New York’s six o’clock traffic, an act of bravery that deserved some kind of a medal. In the rear-view mirror I could see the cab containing the blue blazers right behind me.

I decided on the Triborough Bridge, not because it was a quicker route, but because it promised the most traffic. I made use of it. I switched lanes a dozen times, slowed down and speeded up, and faked a couple of turnoffs. The tailing cab stayed right with me. On FDR Drive I stuck to the right-hand lane and turned off on Sixty-third Street. Traffic got snarled and we crept along, averaging something like three miles per hour.

Sixty-third is one-way and between Lexington and Park I found what I was looking for: a double-parked delivery truck. I pulled up parallel with the truck and killed my engine. Leaving the keys in the ignition, I opened the left-hand door and got out, carrying my attaché case. I raised the Plymouth’s hood, shook my head, turned, and left it there in the middle of the street for the Avis people and the New York traffic cops to worry about. I headed up Sixty-third toward Park. By the time I turned the corner, the maddened drivers who were stuck behind the abandoned car were leaning on their horns. I could also hear a few coarse shouts. I looked back just once and the two men in blue blazers were out of their cab, but still involved in some kind of an argument with its driver.

On Sixty-second and Park I got lucky and found a cab discharging a passenger. The driver was more or less willing to take me to the Biltmore and during the ride, I kept looking back, but the traffic was too heavy to be sure that I’d lost them, but I thought I had. The driver let me out on the Forty-third Street side of the Biltmore. I wandered about its red and gold lobby for fifteen minutes and when I spotted neither of them I went down the stairs and out the Forty-fourth Street entrance. After a quarter of an hour I caught another cab and gave the address on Avenue A.

When we were three blocks away from where I wanted to go I told the driver to stop. He pulled up in front of a bar and I paid him and went inside. The bar was on Second Avenue and it was crowded. The clock above the bottles said six forty-five. I ordered a Scotch and water and stood at the bar, watching the door.

I spent ten minutes in the bar and then I went out into the street and started walking toward Avenue A. I turned the corner at Ninth Street and First Avenue and the taller one with the heavy moustache hit me on the right arm with what felt like a blackjack.

As I said, I thought I’d lost them, but I hadn’t. I dropped the attaché case and backed off. I wanted to rub my right arm because it ached and when I moved it, it hurt even worse. The smaller one came at me first, low and with his left hand stiff and well-extended. I assumed he was some kind of karate devotee, possibly self-taught, so I kicked his left kneecap and when he yelled and grabbed for it, I hit him just below his right ear with my left fist. I hit him hard and he sat down on the sidewalk and held his kneecap and yelled some more. I turned toward the taller one who was bringing the blackjack around and down in an arc and it seemed to whistle as it came. I blocked it with my left forearm, which hurt far more than I’d expected, and then drove a right into his thick chest. He stumbled back and I moved after him, trying to ignore the pain in both of my arms.

A middle-aged man wearing a black, unbuttoned vest and a white tieless shirt stepped out of a produce store and asked, “What’s going on here?” I hit the taller man in the stomach with my left hand. His breath exploded from him and he doubled over and the man who’d come out of the produce store said, “Let’s break it up.” I kicked the tall man in the face, just as if I were trying for a sixty-yard punt. That straightened him up long enough so that the man in the white shirt and I could note how I’d ruined his looks. The beaked nose was smashed almost flat and some bone showed through the blood.

A small crowd had formed and a fat man in a blue suit asked the man in the vest and the white shirt what had happened. The man in the white shirt pointed at me and said, “That big guy’s been beating up on these two little guys.” Both of the little guys were an inch or so over six feet.

“Anybody call the cops?” the fat man asked.

“Nah. It’s just getting started good.”

The taller man with the ruined nose was now kneeling on the sidewalk, not too far from his friend with the bad kneecap, which I hoped would give him trouble for years to come. I picked up my attaché case and walked over to them. The tall man didn’t know I was there. He didn’t seem to know much of anything other than that his nose was a bloody, shapeless lump of pain. The shorter man, still sitting on the sidewalk, still holding his kneecap, had stopped yelling. He looked up at me. I had some questions to ask him but I had to wait until he got tired of calling me five different kinds of motherfucker. Then I started to ask who had put him on to me, but I saw the blue uniform on the motor scooter down the street, so I turned and headed the other way—or started to. The fat man in the blue suit moved in front of me.

“You want something, friend?” I said.

“Those two guys are hurt real bad. You can’t just—”

I put my hand on his chest and pressed gently. He didn’t move. Instead, he stared at me with mean little blue eyes that were only slits in the fat folds of his face. “Those two guys are wanted in six states,” I said. “If you hustle, you can nail ‘em and beat the cops to the reward.”

“How much reward?” he said.

“Six thousand in Pittsburgh and seventy-five hundred in Altoona. Bank jobs.”

The fat man looked at me and then over my shoulder. He gave me another quick glance, as if hoping that there was something in my face that would let him believe me. Apparently there was because he stepped aside and I started across First Avenue. I’d only gone a few steps when there was a yell. I turned. The fat man stood over the dark Spanish-looking man whose nose I’d ruined. The dark man still knelt on the sidewalk and the fat man had an arm around his neck. He was choking him. At the same time he was trying to kick the smaller, blond man in the head. He missed in what must have been his second try, but the blond man yelled anyway and tried to crawl toward the curb. It hurt him to crawl and he yelled again as the fat man aimed another kick at his head, but again missed. The crowd was watching it all happen when the policeman arrived and I turned the corner.

The address on Avenue A that Padillo had given me was in a grimy seven-story apartment building which was located across the street from a dusty-looking park. It was a block of small, sour businesses that looked as if they could provide their owners a bare living, if the owners didn’t eat too much and too often. There were two candy stores, a dry cleaner’s, a small grocery, and a liquor store. None of them looked solvent and the liquor store for some reason appeared to be on the verge of bankruptcy. It may have been because of the defeated look in the eyes of its owner as he stood in the doorway, searching for whatever signs of Spring he could find in the dusty park across the street.

I glanced around before ducking through the dirty glass entrance door of the apartment house. No one on the street seemed interested in me. Not the dark young woman with the baby stroller that was stacked with old newspapers. Not the old man in the limp gray suit who used a cane to help him edge along the sidewalk. The liquor store owner had looked at me once, as if recognizing someone who could turn into an excellent customer. But he also seemed to know that I was a stranger in the neighborhood, the kind who would buy his liquor farther uptown.

The elevator in the tiled vestibule was large enough to carry two persons if one of them held his breath. I got in and studied the ancient controls and pushed enough buttons and slammed enough doors until the elevator finally gave a moan and grunt and started up to the seventh floor. It seemed like a long trip.

I was looking for 7-C and it was at the end of a hall, guarded by a sturdy wooden door that had a sheet of heavy-gauge steel bolted onto it, a decorative touch peculiar to New York. I knocked and glanced at my watch. It was five minutes past seven. Before I could knock again, there was the sound of a bolt being drawn back and of some sturdy locks being disengaged. The door opened three inches and Padillo looked at me over the chain of the final lock.

“The plumber couldn’t make it,” I said.

“Jesus,” he said and closed the door to undo the chain. He opened it and I went in and found myself in the living room of someone who was crazy about maple. A few of the pieces were new, but most of them were old, at least a hundred years or so, and all of them were maple and looked as if they were waxed every other day whether they needed it or not. What wasn’t maple was giddy chintz if it were on a chair or a sofa or partially covering the windows. On the floor was hooked wool. It was all very quaint and just escaped being comfortable.

“Plomondon said no,” Padillo said.

“He said he wasn’t good enough anymore. Not good enough for Gitner anyway. He also said that he hopes you are.”

“What are you puffing about? Doesn’t the elevator work?”

“You can put the gun away,” I said.

Padillo looked down at his right hand which was holding an automatic, a foreign make that I didn’t recognize. He stuck it in his waistband, a little to the left of his navel. It had always seemed like an uncomfortable spot to me, but he liked it and I had seen it jump into his hand from there in less than four-tenths of a second, so I no longer felt qualified to comment on its inconvenience.

“I’m puffing, if you want to call it that, because I ran into a couple of guys down the street who wanted to beat up on me.”

“Was it impulse or did they know you?”

“They knew who I was. They picked me up in Washington at the airport. I thought I’d lost them, but they’re either smarter than I thought or I’m not as clever as well-meaning friends have led me to believe.”

“Probably the latter,” Padillo said. “If you were even half smart, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be holding down your regular spot at the far end of the bar.”

“Now that you’ve brought it up—”

“Scotch or bourbon?”

“Scotch.”

Padillo disappeared into the kitchen that was just off the living room. I looked around some more. There were two closed doors and an open one that led to the bath. I assumed that the flat had two bedrooms. Padillo came back with the drinks and handed me one.

“Where’s the king and the royal adviser?” I said.

He nodded toward one of the closed doors. “In there. It’s got a one-inch iron bar across the door plus three other kinds of locks.”

“Who lives here?”

“A forty-year-old spinster who’s determined to maintain her virginity,” Padillo said. “She’s in Europe for a month or two. Wanda arranged for the place. I think the spinster is a distant cousin or something.”

“Well, now that I’m here, what do you want me to do?”

“Go home.”

“I thought you needed a fair hand.”

“I need a pro, not an amateur. Not even a gifted one.”

“Offer me money and I can leave the amateur ranks.”

“Look at you,” he said, shaking his head.

“That’s a little hard to do without a mirror.”

“You’re ten pounds overweight and most of it’s in your gut. You should’ve got glasses three years ago but you’re afraid that they’ll spoil your aquiline profile. You think hard exercise is the five blocks that you walk home each night if the weather’s just right. You’re up to nearly three packs a day, you’ve got a cough that sounds like the second cousin to emphysema, and if the booze hasn’t given you a hobnailed liver, it’s not because you didn’t go out for it. You’re a mess.”

“You forgot to mention my gums,” I said. “I’m having a little trouble with them, too.”

Padillo took a swallow of his drink. “What would you do with Amos Gitner?” he said. “He’s faster than I am and I doubt that he’s ever felt compunction and probably doesn’t even know what the word means. I’m not going to be the one who tells Fredl that it all happened so fast that you couldn’t possibly have suffered.”

“I could sit on him,” I said. “Squash him flat.”

“There’s that.”

“Well, you need somebody and there aren’t many that you can call on anymore, are there?”

He shook his head. “Not many. There never were really and most of them are dead now.”

“Or scared.”

“Not scared,” he said. “Just sensible. That’s something that no one could ever accuse you of.”

“Do I go or stay?” I said. “You call it.”

Padillo’s dark Spanish eyes appraised me for several moments and then he shook his head again, a little sadly, I thought, as if only sentiment prevented him from dispatching the faithful old spaniel now that his teeth were gone. “Well, Christ,” he said, “since you’re already here.”

“You don’t know what this chance means to me.”

“If it presents the opportunity to turn coward, take it.”

“Your advice was always sound, if a little self-righteous.”

“Cheap though,” Padillo said, put his drink down, and turned toward one of the closed doors. “You might as well meet the king.”

“What do I call him, King, your Excellency, or just Peter Paul?”

“Try Mr. Kassim, if ‘you’ doesn’t seem to fit. He’s supposed to be incognito.”

“How does he like being king?”

“If we can keep him alive, he may like it just fine.”