Backup Men

11

THE KING came out first. I didn’t think that he looked much like a king, but that’s another field in which my expertise is limited. He shook hands with me after Padillo introduced him as Mr. Kassim which I thought was a nice egalitarian touch. He said, “I am very pleased to make your acquaintance,” pronouncing each word without accent, other than the kind that you would pick up from an English tutor. He spoke as if he hadn’t used the language in quite a while and was trying it on again with some trepidation, like last summer’s suit.

I was next introduced to Emory Scales, ex-tutor and now grand royal adviser to the Kingdom of Llaquah. He also shook hands with me and I felt that it was for the first and last time, but that’s the way a lot of Englishmen shake hands and I no longer think much about it.

Scales was an elbow man, nearly always at Kassim’s right one, almost nudging it, but not quite as he bent slightly forward, his long, skinny face constantly turning this way and that, depending on who was doing the talking, the king or someone else. Scales moved his lips a little when the king spoke, much like a ventriloquist and his dummy. I decided that he was a royal adviser who took his duties seriously.

They were an incongruous pair. The king himself was short, plump and totally bald at twenty-one. Either that or the monastery where he’d spent the last five years had a thing about shaved heads. His eyes jumped around almost constantly, as if seeking something comfortable and reassuring to look at and seldom finding it in other people’s faces. He smiled a lot, too, but I put that down to nervousness since his teeth were bad and not very rewarding to look at. Now that he was almost rich I thought that he might afford an inexpensive cap job or at least a toothbrush.

Scales, even with his hovering posture, loomed over Kassim. If he had straightened up he would have been as tall as I and a lot slimmer. I judged him to be somewhere near fifty, a little seedy, a little worn, even a little sad. It may have been his first and last chance at the big time and he was afraid that he would muff it. But then I always read too much into things.

After we had shaken hands, Scales turned toward Padillo and said, “I thought that you said a Mr. Plomondon would be joining you.”

“He couldn’t make it so I persuaded Mr. McCorkle to accept the assignment.” There was always that about Padillo—he lied beautifully.

“You are a very big man,” Kassim said to me and let me have another look at his awful teeth.

I didn’t see any reason to apologize for my size, only ten pounds of which could be blamed on self-indulgence, so I contented myself with an answering smile and a nod.

“The bigger they are,” the king said carefully, “the harder they fall.” He beamed when he got it all out and then turned to Scales and said, “Is that not correct, Mr. Scales?”

“It is the correct idiomatic expression, your Majesty, but scarcely appropriate for the occasion.”

Kassim nodded his understanding and turned back to me. “I did not mean to offend, Mr. McCorkle. It is only that I have not spoken English in many years and I am trying to recall it. Have you had much experience in guardingbody?”

“Bodyguarding,” Scales said, almost automatically, as if he’d been correcting Kassim for days.

The king didn’t seem to mind. “Yes, bodyguarding,” he said.

“Some,” I said, “but not nearly as much as Mr. Padillo, of course.”

“We may have to move from here ahead of schedule,” Padillo said. “McCorkle ran into some trouble on his way up from Washington. It looks as if they know that we’re here.”

“Was it Kragstein and Gitner?” Scales asked me.

“No. I’d never seen this pair before. I thought I’d lost them uptown, but they seemed to know where I was heading.”

“That means that they have added to their strength,” Scales said.

“Maybe not,” I said. “Those two won’t trouble anyone for a while. They may even be in jail right now.”

“Are you responsible for their—uh—misfortune, Mr. McCorkle?” Kassim said, putting a trace of real humor into his nervous smile.

“Partly, at least.”

“Do you have an alternate place in mind, Mr. Padillo?” Scales said.

“Here in New York?”

“Yes.”

“I can locate one if we need it. What we need more than another hideout is that call from Wanda Gothar.”

Scales fished an old-fashioned gold pocket watch from his vest and snapped it open. “It’s nearly seven thirty,” he said. “She should be calling any minute.”

No one said anything for a while as though we all expected the phone to ring right on cue. When it didn’t, Padillo said to me, “Wanda’s been making the arrangements with the oil companies for Mr. Kassim to sign certain papers.”

“Why don’t they just send them over here by messenger?” I said. “We could probably find a notary down at the corner.”

“I’m afraid that the magnitude of the transaction prevents that, Mr. McCorkle,” Scales said. “Although the preliminary negotiations were conducted by his Majesty’s late brother, there must—for a number of reasons, some political, some not—there must be a certain amount of formality and protocol, even grandeur, if you will, incorporated into the actual signing of the documents.”

“You’re not going to do it publicly, are you?” I said.

“No, but nevertheless there will be appropriate ceremony and this is to be recorded on film. The films will be shown throughout Llaquah as part of an educational program that will acquaint the people with the significance of the transaction.”

“Will it be just Mr. Kassim by himself,” I said, “or will other representatives of Llaquah attend?”

The king smiled nervously again and ran his right hand over his smooth head as if testing to see whether it needed another shave. “I’m afraid, Mr. McCorkle, that the representatives of Llaquah who are in this country are also the employers of Messrs. Gitner and Kragstein. My fellow countrymen are not at all anxious for my Patrick Henry to appear on the documents. They would prefer their own signatures.”

“John Henry, I believe,” Scales murmured, looking at Padillo for confirmation.

“John Henry,” Padillo said. “But whoever signs the documents gets the bonus which is four million dollars.”

“Five million,” Scales said. He said it almost dreamily, as if there really weren’t that much money in the world. He was silent for a moment and he may have been counting his share of the prize again. “I suppose it must sound like a rather bizarre situation, but we live in unusual times and in this particular case, extremely high stakes are involved. For some, it is a matter of personal gain. For his Majesty, it is the opportunity to transform his country from a povertv-stricken desert waste into one of the economic wonders of the world in which all of the people—”

Scales might have gone on for another fifteen minutes if the phone hadn’t rung. Padillo answered it with a curt hello and then began listening. I watched the knuckles of his right hand blanch as his grip tightened. He didn’t say good-bye before he hung up and if he didn’t slam the instrument down, neither did he use any gentleness when he recradled it. He turned toward us and his mouth was stretched into that thin, hard line that made his lips seem bloodless.

“Miss Gothar?” Scales asked.

Padillo shook his head. “No,” he said. “Franz Kragstein.”

“Dear me,” Scales said, which must have meant that he was distressed. “What did he say?”

“He’s giving us an hour.”

“To do what?” Scales said.

“To get out of here.”

“And if we don’t?”

“He’ll come in after us.”

Kassim produced one of his nervous smiles. “But how could he possibly do that? Is not our door impregnated?”

“Impregnable,” Scales said.

Padillo turned to give the door a look. “It’s neither to Kragstein,” he said.

“What is it then?” Scales said.

“To him it’s just another door.”

I didn’t like the sound of it so I decided to say so. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“What?” Padillo said.

“Why should he call you? Why not just make his try?”

“Where would you rather try it, here or out on the street?”

“If I were Kragstein, out on the street.”

“So it would be wiser to remain where we are?” Scales said, making it a question out of politeness. He seemed more worried about the king’s occasional grammatical lapses than he did about Kragstein’s threats. The king wasn’t exactly quivering either. He had chosen a chintz-covered armchair and was leaning back in it, smiling at whoever paid him any attention, anxious to please, and eager to keep out of the way. If one had to be a bodyguard, the king seemed to be the perfect client.

“We stay here until Wanda calls,” Padillo said. “Then we move.”

“And you have a place in mind?” Scales asked.

“Only if we need it,” Padillo said.

Conversation ended and we sat there in the maple- and chintz-furnished living room of the apartment that was located in what they used to call New York’s teeming lower East Side and examined the hooked rugs on the floor and the pastoral prints on the walls and the thoughts that slid through our minds and then we jumped, almost in unison, when the phone rang. Padillo got it before it rang twice and after he said hello he nodded at us so that we would know that it was Wanda. He said, “Hold on,” into the phone and gestured toward the room where the king and Scales had been when I arrived. “There’s an extension in there,” he said. “Get on it.”

The phone was next to the bed and I picked it up and said nothing.

“McCorkle’s on,” Padillo said.

“Why?” Wanda Gothar said.

“Because he’s in now. All the way.”

“You said Plomondon.”

“He thought Gitner was a little rich.”

“And McCorkle doesn’t?”

“He doesn’t know Gitner that well.”

“He can’t handle Gitner,” she said. “I’m not even sure that you can.”

“We may get the chance to settle that question in about fifteen minutes. Kragstein wants us out of here by then or they’re coming in.”

“Take care of it,” she said. She had no questions, no comments, not even any advice. Just the automatic admonition which assumed that Padillo would know how to do it just like he’d know how to pick up a quart of ice cream on the way home from work.

“How long have we got in New York?” he said.

“Two more days.”

“Then?”

“San Francisco.”

“That’s not just dumb,” he said “that’s inexcusable.”

“The oil companies don’t need any excuse,” she said. “That’s where the signing takes place. They won’t change it. I tried.”

“Why don’t you quote them the odds against us making a cross-country trip like that with the opposition we’ve got.”

“I did,” she said. “They seemed delighted.”

“You mean they don’t want the deal?”

“They’ll take it, but if something happened to Kassim, they think they could make another one that could be even better.”

“All right,” Padillo said. “I’ll give you a number where you can get me for the next two days.” He rattled one off without hesitation and I was fairly certain that Wanda Gothar didn’t need to write it down. They both had memories like that—the kind that could recall the combinations on their high school lockers.

“I’ll call you from San Francisco,” she said.

“Where are you now?”

“Where the power is,” she said. “Dallas.”

“Call me this time tomorrow.”

“All right,” she said. “By the way, Mr. McCorkle?”

“Yes?” I said.

“Shall I be seeing you in San Francisco?”

“Perhaps,” I said.

“It’s such a beautiful city. Do you like it?”

“My opinion doesn’t count much. I was born there.”

“Really? Then I hope you’re not planning to die there.”

She broke the connection before I could say something that would show off my incisive wit so I hung up the phone and spent a few moments admiring the spinster’s bedroom. It was really a boudoir in the classic French sense of the word which meant that it was a place to sulk in if the diamonds in the bracelet weren’t big enough or if the monthly check was a couple of days late. Although the living room might be chintz and maple, the bedroom was all sex and sin with lots of mirrors and a big round bed with a fur spread that looked like seal, but could have been sable, and careful lighting and a chaise longue big enough for two in case the bed got boring. It could have been the bedroom of a top-dollar call girl, or of a spinster who yearned to be one. Either way I had to feel sorry for her.

When I came out of the bedroom the first thing I saw was the king as he knelt by his chair, his hands clasped in front of him, his head up, his eyes closed, and his lips moving silently, presumably in prayer. Scales was watching him with what I took to be benign approval and Padillo, a failed Catholic of sorts himself, was checking the action on his automatic and looking as though he didn’t have too much faith in that either.

I stood there in the doorway of the bedroom for a while, shifting from one foot to the other until the king got through with his prayers. He signaled their conclusion by saying “Amen” aloud in a ringing, fervent voice and Padillo looked up at me and said, “Did you bring anything to shoot with?”

“The office thirty-eight,” I said and wondered if it were a good time to tell him that I’d forgotten to pack the bullets. Either he was a mind reader or he was resigned to my careless ways because he reached into his coat pocket and tossed me a box of .38 shells. “In case you run short,” he said and I thought that he should get some sort of prize for tact.

I took the revolver out of the attaché case and loaded it and then dropped it into the right-hand pocket of my jacket so that it was sure to ruin the drape. Padillo rose from his chair and crossed to a window and peered out through the cheery patterned drapes that were dyed rust and lemon and what looked for all the world like British Racing Green. Padillo looked through the drapes for a moment and then turned, crossed to the phone, and dialed a number.

“It’s Padillo,” he said and then listened for almost a minute, his eyes squeezed shut as he massaged the bridge of his nose.

When he said, “I’ve been awfully tied up down in Washington,” I knew it was a woman because it was the same thing that he told women in Washington, except that when he was there he was always being tied up in New York.

“Some friends of mine are in town and we need a place to stay for a couple of days,” he said. “No,” he said, “all men.” There was another pause while he listened and massaged his nose some more and then he said, “No, I don’t want you to go to all that trouble … Yes, I know that’s what you pay them for.” He looked at his watch and said, “We should be there within an hour … All right … Thanks very much.”

He hung up the phone and then looked at us, one at a time, as if trying to decide whether we were really worth some private sacrifice that he had to make. “It’s a cooperative apartment in the Sixties just off Fifth,” he said. “All we’ve got to do is get there.”

“I don’t mean to carp, Mr. Padillo,” Scales said, “but won’t another apartment be just as vulnerable as this one?”

“It’s not exactly an apartment,” Padillo said. “It’s the entire floor of a building and the person who owns it has something that makes it secure enough for the Secret Service to give it a top rating.”

“What does this person have?” Kassim said.

“The best protection there is,” Padillo said. “About eighty million dollars.”