Backup Men

25

WHEN THE intern with the blond goatee at Emergency Hospital Central over on Polk Street asked, “What happened to you?” I thought a moment and then said, “I fell out of a tree.”

Padillo and I had left the Criterion Theater stage hurriedly, going back down the stairs to the basement, past the sprawled body of Kragstein, and up another flight of stairs that led to an alley. As we had moved past Kragstein, I said, “He almost died rich.”

“He died poor in a back alley hole in San Francisco. That’s what happens when you stay in it too long.”

“The smart ones get out?”

“The smart ones never get in.”

We had caught a cab just as two squad cars spilled a load of uniformed and plainclothes police under the Criterion’s marquee.

“Some wino got his,” the cabdriver said wisely. “He probably got stabbed over a quarter.”

“I heard it was a little more than that,” I said.

Padillo had dropped me off at the hospital at 7:45. I only yelled once when the intern set my arm which he said had a “nice clean little fracture.”

“It hurts like hell,” I said.

“I’ll give you some pills for the pain.”

After he had enveloped my forearm with a cast, he gave me a small white envelope that said, “One every four hours if pain persists.” I looked inside. There were four white pills. I swallowed them all, but the pain persisted.

At 9:15 Padillo returned to the hospital carrying a large oblong cardboard box under his arm. “How bad is it?” he said.

“They took X rays. It didn’t splinter, but it still hurts.”

He opened the box and took out a gray gabardine topcoat. “You can drape this around you and they won’t notice that you’re dressed like a bum.”

I looked down at my stained and wrinkled suit. “A little seedy,” I agreed. “Who are we going to impress?”

“The oil crowd,” he said. “I also bought one for myself.”

“What about a razor?”

“I picked up an electric one.”

“You think of everything.”

“Somebody has to,” he said.

After I shaved, I put on the topcoat, wearing it like a cape. Padillo had buttoned his up to the neck. Outside the hospital, we caught another cab and Padillo gave the driver the Bush Street address.

“What about Wanda?” I said.

“Wanda can take care of herself.”

“Like a cat.”

“That’s right,” he said. “Like a cat.”

I wasn’t old enough to remember it, but there had been a time when the oil company building on Bush Street had been the tallest in the city with its twenty-two stories. It had been built in 1923. Seven years later its principal rival built its own headquarters just down the street. It rose twenty-nine stories—out of spite, some said.

“What do you plan to do?” I said, as we got out of the cab in front of the twenty-nine-story building. “Wait till the last moment and then rise from the audience and say, ‘Mr. Chairman, I think there is something you should know about the King of Llaquah’?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I always did have a keen sense of drama.”

“Let’s wait and see what happens,” Padillo said.

“You think the king and Scales will really go through with it?”

“They’ll try. Wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

The twenty-ninth floor was nicely paneled in oak and there was a rich carpet on the floor of the corridor which was peopled by half a dozen competent-looking men who wore dark suits and dubious expressions and who wanted to know who we were and why we thought we should be there.

“Your public relations man, Mr. Briggs, should have cleared us,” Padillo said. One of the men who had questioned us ran his eyes down a list that he carried on a clipboard. He made a couple of checks with a pencil and nodded at the other man. “They’re cleared,” he said.

The other man pointed down the hall. “The third door, gentlemen.”

“How’d you fix that?” I asked.

“I called Burmser and told him to arrange it.”

“Did you tell him what happened?”

Padillo shook his head. “I didn’t get around to it for some reason.”

The third door led into a large paneled conference room that was dominated by a huge, highly polished table that tapered at both ends and was surrounded by high-backed leather chairs. It was a table large enough to seat the nearly four dozen men who needed to be on hand when the time came to lay claim to nearly a third of the world’s oil reserves.

Two 35mm cameras already had been set up, one on either side of the table, and their crews were fooling around with them. At one end of the room eight rows of chairs had been placed and they were almost filled with carefully made-up, middle-aged women, nearly all of them wearing furs. Padillo and I found seats in the last row of chairs.

At precisely 10 A.M., a long line of men filed into the conference room, a little self-consciously, I thought, and took their seats at the table as the cameras recorded it all. A couple of still-photographers clicked away with their Canons and Nikons.

A few minutes later, the king and Scales came in, escorted by two distinguished-looking men whom I took to be the two companies’ top executives. All took seats at the far end of the table. Someone had thought to furnish the king and Scales with new suits. The public relations man, I decided.

There was some preliminary murmuring as an aide passed out dark green folders to the men seated around the table. The king stared fixedly at the table top. Scales’s hands fluttered nervously about, fingering his new tie and the buttons on his jacket. If someone had said boo, both of them would have jumped two feet.

The last person to enter the room was Wanda Gothar, wearing what seemed to be a mink stole. Underneath the stole was a dark gray suit that was smart enough to make the other women in the room appear dowdy. Wanda took a seat in the front row which seemed to have been reserved for her. She carried a large black envelope purse. From her seat she had a perfect view of the king and Scales at the far end of the table.

The king saw her first. His face collapsed as he clawed at Scales’s shoulder, trying to get his attention. When Scales saw her he turned pale and became perfectly still. He looked sick. The chairman or president of one of the oil companies looked at him curiously and then leaned over and asked him something. Scales shook his head.

Wanda let them look at her for nearly a minute before she rose and started walking slowly toward the end of the long table where the two men sat, almost huddling against each other. She kept her right hand in the large black purse.

I thought I knew what was in that purse and started to rise, but Padillo caught my arm. “It’s her deal now,” he said. I sat back down.

Wanda stood near the end of the table, not more than two feet from Scales and the king who shrank back from her. The man who looked like a chairman of the board or at least president regarded her curiously and then turned away.

Her hand came slowly out of the purse. Her eyes were fixed on Scales and the king. Even from where I sat, I could see the terror that was smeared across their faces.

When her hand finally left her purse it didn’t hold a gun, it held a piece of paper. She extended it to the king. I could see his hand tremble violently as he reached for it. He read the note and relief flooded his round face. He began to nod his bald head in eager, almost frantic agreement, handing the note to Scales who read it and began nodding, too. She stood there and watched them bob their heads for a long moment and then turned and walked out of the room.

“Let’s go,” Padillo said.

We caught up with Wanda about halfway down the carpeted corridor. Her face was pale and there was hard glitter in her eyes.

“You made it,” she said, not seeming at all surprised. “Did Kragstein and Gitner?”

“No,” Padillo said. “They’re dead.”

“Good. Aren’t you going to interrupt the charade in there?”

“We were counting on you for that.”

“I got what I wanted.”

“They might bring it off,” Padillo said.

She nodded. “I know. Why don’t you stop them?”

“McCorkle would like to. He’s got a speech all prepared.”

She looked at me. “Well?”

“I’ve found that oil companies can take care of themselves without much help from me. I’m more interested in that note you handed the king.”

“Yes,” she said. “The note.”

“How much cut did you ask for, Wanda?” Padillo said.

“No cut,” she said, her tone as cold as her eyes.

“No?”

“No,” she said. “I take it all. The entire five million.”

“That’ll buy Walter a lot of revenge.”

She shook her head slowly. “You can’t buy it for the dead and there’s something else about it you should learn.”

“What?”

“The dead don’t really care.”

“Does five million dollars teach you that?”

She nodded. “It helps.”