Backup Men

17

PADILLO was still lying on the bed and still examining the ceiling when I entered the motel room.

“You called it,” I said. “They picked me up just as I left the St. Francis.”

“Gitner and Kragstein?” he asked, as if he expected me to say no.

“Two I didn’t recognize. They were driving a Pontiac. A light blue one, if it makes any difference.”

“What did Wanda say?”

I told him all about the meeting that was scheduled for ten the next morning and as he listened he kept his eyes on the ceiling, not moving, rarely blinking, not even smoking. When I finally stopped talking, he sat up slowly, his hands still clasped behind his head, and then, with his legs fully extended, touched each elbow to his knees.

“What’s that, your exercise for the year?”

“I just wanted to see whether I could still do it.”

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

“No,” he said and looked a little surprised. “Is it supposed to?”

“Only those who deserve it—like me.”

“She say anything else?”

“Wanda?”

He nodded, swung his feet off the bed, and rose.

“Just that she’s joining us at six and that she’s convinced that Kragstein and Gitner killed her brother.”

“That’s a theory anyway,” Padillo said as he reached under the pillow for his automatic. “She needs one.”

“You’ve got your own, of course.”

“I’m still working on it,” he said.

We went next door where the king and Scales were watching a fifteen-year-old movie that seemed to be about the good times that could be had down on a subsistence farm. Scales switched it off when we came in and looked a little embarrassed. The king looked only disappointed.

He also looked less like a king than ever. He was sprawled on one of the twin beds, wearing only slacks and a T-shirt. The T-shirt seemed fairly clean but it had a hole in its side. The king’s belly strained at the shirt and he was comforting himself with a giant-size Baby Ruth. Other than that he needed a shave he appeared to be as placid and content as ever and I had the feeling that he had all the makings of a first-class benevolent despot.

Padillo had never cared much for preambles, so he began at the crux of things. “They’re going to try to kill you between now and ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” he said. The king choked on a mouthful of Baby Ruth, but recovered nicely. Scales, seated in a chair near the TV set, crossed his legs the other way to show that he was concerned.

Now that he had their attention Padillo told them what Wanda Gothar had told me. When he was through he looked at the king and said, “I’m going to say it just one more time. If I were you, I’d ask for police protection. If you have some aversion to the local police, then I suggest that you request protection from the Secret Service or the FBI or even some other Federal agency. All it takes is a phone call. If you were really smart, you’d not only ask for that, but also for a cell in the city jail tonight.”

The king bit off another bite from his candy bar, chewed it thoroughly, swallowed, and then said in a soft, reproachful voice, “The jail in Dallas did not afford much protection for the Oswald person, Mr. Padillo. Forgive me, but I have little faith in your jails or your police or your Mr. Herbert Hoover.”

“J. Edgar,” Padillo said. “Herbert’s dead.”

“Yes. J. Edgar.”

“So you won’t change your mind?”

The king shook his head. Stubbornly, I thought. “No, I will not change my mind. I have every confidence in you and Miss Gothar.” He paused and then added quickly, “And Mr. McCorkle, of course.” I decided that when Kassim became king, the diplomatic corps had suffered no great loss.

“You agree with this, Scales?” Padillo said.

“I think his Majesty’s point is well taken. Furthermore, Mr. Padillo, I feel that you and your colleagues have just been paid a great compliment—one that you will remember in years to come.”

“Especially if he gets killed tonight,” Padillo said. He looked at his watch. “It’s five o’clock now. That means we have seventeen hours to go before the ceremony takes place. I don’t know when Kragstein and Gitner will try it. Maybe as soon as it gets dark. Or at three o’clock in the morning or even on the way down to the oil company. They may even try it more than once, but that seems unlikely if they want to avoid the cops. So I want neither of you to move out of this room between now and tomorrow morning. Your food will be brought to you by either McCorkle or me. You’re to answer the door to no one but us. You are not to answer the phone or to make any calls. If something happens, try to get to the bathroom and lock yourself in. That might give you a minute or two and that minute or two could make the difference between whether you’re dead or alive. If you have any questions, you’d better ask them now.”

It had been a long speech for Padillo and both the king and Scales seemed to have followed it closely. When he was done, they looked at each other, and the king shook his head slightly.

“We have no questions,” Scales said. “His Majesty’s safety is in your hands.”

Padillo looked as though he wanted to say something, something rude, even nasty, but apparently thought better of it. He turned and moved to the door where he turned once again and looked back at the king. “I think—” he said and then stopped. Instead he pointed at the door. “Be sure to lock and bolt this after we’re gone.”

When we were back in our own room I said, “What were you going to tell him before you changed your mind?”

“That he was a damned fool. But you don’t tell kings that, do you?”

“Not unless they are—but if they are, it doesn’t do any good.”

Wanda Gothar arrived promptly at six, carrying a large dark brown leather purse and wearing shoes that matched, a dun-colored pantsuit that would have looked drab on anyone else, and a concerned expression.

“I think I was followed,” she said, “but I couldn’t be sure because of the traffic.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Padillo said. “They know we’re here.”

He was back on his bed, inspecting the ceiling again. He hadn’t risen when Wanda came in. I indicated that she should have the chair that I’d been sitting in and she lowered herself into it as she glanced around the room with a look that gave it a C-minus rating.

After inspecting the room she turned her gaze on Padillo who fared no better. She placed a cigarette in her mouth, but I didn’t bother to try to light it this time.

“Well,” she said after blowing some smoke out in a long, gray plume, “when do you think they’ll try it?”

“Before ten o’clock tomorrow,” Padillo said to the ceiling.

“That’s no answer.”

“It’s the best I have.”

“You know how Kragstein works,” she said. “What’s his preference?”

“He doesn’t have any. That’s what’s kept him alive. Morning, noon, or night. They’re all the same to him. You were two years old when he started in this business, Wanda, so don’t try to outguess him.”

“Walter didn’t think that he was quite as good as you paint him.”

“And Walter’s dead, isn’t he?” Padillo said.

I thought that Padillo shouldn’t have said it. It seemed to be one of those needlessly cruel remarks that you would like to recall and disown as soon as they’re uttered. Wanda Gothar flinched slightly, but when she spoke her voice was low and controlled. “Is that why your friend in New York is dead, Padillo? Because you underestimated Kragstein?”

Padillo sat up on the edge of the bed and stared at the floor for a moment before turning his head to look at Wanda. “I deserved that, I suppose.”

I felt that it was as close as he would come to an apology, but it didn’t mollify Wanda. “But you did underestimate him?”

“Not really,” he said. “I was faked out by too much money. It takes the edge off and gives you a false sense of security. That’s what it’s for, of course. So I let it lull me and Kragstein was smart enough to figure it out.” He stopped looking at Wanda, reached for a cigarette and lit it, and when he spoke again, he seemed to be talking more to himself than to us. “To stay in this business you have to stay poor. I don’t know any rich ones, not any who lived long enough to spend their money if they stayed in it. Kragstein’s been at it for thirty years and he still has to scramble around for next month’s rent. But he’s still alive.”

“So are you,” Wanda said.

“But someone is dead back in New York because eighty million dollars made me careless, although not careless enough to get myself killed. You’re right there. But careless enough so that I had to make a choice instinctively and I don’t like to make them that way. I chose to live and let Gitner’s bullets kill someone else.”

“It wasn’t a choice,” I said. “It was an automatic reaction, a reflex.”

Padillo turned to look over his shoulder at me. “Was it?”

“I saw it,” I said. “I saw the whole thing.”

“You saw me depend on a high-priced security system that had grown flabby because nobody like Gitner had ever taken it on. It was a system designed to discourage the gentleman jewel thief who’d be afraid to go up against it because he might get his dinner jacket mussed. I made my mistake when I believed that it would keep somebody like Gitner from getting where he wanted to go. He probably thought it was quaint. I know that’s what he thinks I am.”

“Aren’t you?” Wanda Gothar said. “Oh, not just you, Padillo, but all of us. Aren’t we something like the characters in a post-World War II set piece? A trifle grim as we brood about revenge, but a little self-conscious about being here at all, and rather ashamed, I’d say, for having so quickly become such anachronisms. You’re right. Quaint is the word.”

Padillo rose and walked over to Wanda Gothar and looked down at her for several moments and then smiled. It wasn’t his usual quick, hard grin. It was an almost gentle smile, one that he seemed to have been saving for a sentimental occasion on the off chance that he might have to attend one some day.

“You’re not old enough to be quaint, Wanda, but you’re still young enough to get out.”

It was the second and last time I ever saw her smile and she still didn’t put much into it, perhaps because she didn’t want to waste what little was left. But still, it was a smile, and some of it seemed to creep into her voice. “You’re forgetting something, Padillo.”

“What?”

“The Gothar tradition, the one that goes back almost a hundred and seventy years. You know what it means?”

“Not really.”

“It means that I’ve always been too old to get out.”

The motel was a U-shaped affair, two stories high, built of redwood and glass and some kind of stone that looked too pretty to be real although it was. Our room and the one that Scales and the king occupied were at the bottom of the U. Padillo had rented two more rooms. One of them was on the right-hand side of the U on the second floor. The other one was on the ground floor on the U’s left-hand side.

Padillo handed Wanda Gothar a room key and she dropped it into her purse. It clunked against something metallic.

“What are you carrying?” he said.

“A Smith and Wesson thirty-eight.”

“That all?”

“No. A Walther PPK. It was my brother’s.”

“Which one?”

“Paul.”

“I seem to remember that he did like a Walther.” He turned to me. “You know what the PPK stands for?”

“Polezei something,” I said.

“Polezei Pistol Kriminal. They’re both a lot of gun for you, Wanda.”

“I know how to use them,” she said. “Or don’t you remember?”

“I remember. You get the upstairs room.”

She nodded. “McCorkle will be downstairs on the left. I’ll be upstairs on the right and so you have a crossfire. Where will you be, in with them?”

“If I were in with them when it happens, it would be too late for me to do any good. I’ll be here. You want to see them before you go up?”

She rose, shaking her head. “Is it necessary?”

“No.”

“Then I see no point in it unless they need reassurance. Do they?”

“No.”

She turned and started for the door, but stopped, and looked back at Padillo.

“Tell me something.”

“What?”

“You’re not putting me up there because it’s the farthest and presumably the safest place, are you?”

“No.”

“But you do have a reason?”

“Yes. I have a reason.”

“Well?”

“You shoot better than McCorkle.”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s what I thought it was.”