Backup Men

2

A FEW years back Michael Padillo and I had owned a saloon called Mac’s Place in Bonn on the banks of the Rhine. It had been in Bad Godesberg really and there had been some trouble and the saloon had been dynamited and Padillo had disappeared for more than a year. I got married and opened another saloon in Washington a few blocks north of K Street and a little west of Connecticut Avenue. It’s still called Mac’s Place and nobody has dynamited it yet, although when Padillo reappeared there had been some more trouble with a local black gangster, a Federal narcotics agent, and the dying white prime minister of a South African country who had wanted Padillo to assassinate him, but it was nothing that couldn’t be resolved without getting more than three or four persons killed. I scarcely even dream about it any longer.

Some say that Mac’s Place is fading a little now, but I like to think that it has only mellowed. It’s kept comfortably dim so that it can serve as a sanctuary for those who might like to have lunch or a drink with someone else’s spouse. The service is quick, silent, and unobtrusive; the drinks are properly chilled and perhaps more than generous, and if you care for the latest gossip, you can sit at the bar and listen to Karl, the chief bartender, dissect character and reputation without fear or favor. The menu is admittedly limited and admittedly expensive, but if your taste runs to chicken and steak, it offers the best chicken and steak in town.

Padillo and I had been thinking about opening another place in one of four other towns and that was why he was in Chicago when Walter Gothar came calling. The cities we’d chosen, in addition to Chicago, were New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. I’d just spent a week checking out New York before concluding that it didn’t really need another saloon. After Padillo got back from Chicago, I planned to look into San Francisco, because it was where I’d been born, and Padillo would check out Los Angeles because he had once lived there a long time ago.

The only reason that we even considered expanding is because our accountants had told us that we’d better do something with the profits or they’d go to help pay for an ABM system or napalm or something equally useful. Another saloon made more sense than that, as almost anything would, so although neither of us were keen expansionists, it was still nice to travel around the country sampling what someday might become the competition.

When Padillo came in the next morning he looked relaxed, even carefree, so I decided that Chicago didn’t need another saloon either. After we said hello he got himself a cup of coffee and brought it to the bar.

“How was it?” I said.

He shook his head. “It lacked the proper ambience.” It was the same phrase that I’d used to report on New York. We both liked the word because one of the local restaurant columnists had once described Mac’s Place as having a “definitely unusual ambience that bears investigation” and it had been days before Karl, our head bartender, would confess that he’d headed for the dictionary to make sure that the health authorities weren’t going to close us down.

“When do you want to check out Los Angeles?” I said.

“Next month, I think. You still plan on San Francisco next week?”

I nodded. “Or the week after.”

“What do you hear from Fredl?”

“The usual wish you were here stuff.”

“Maybe you should have gone.”

“I never liked Frankfurt that much,” I said. My wife was Washington correspondent for one of the Frankfurt papers, the one that still uses columns to brood about whether England should be in the Common Market, and she had flown back to Germany for its annual editorial conference. Most of Washington’s foreign correspondents called her either Fredl or Freddie, but back in Frankfurt she was Frau Doktor McCorkle, which must have created a fine guttural gurgle. Along with a good mind, my wife also had looks and style and wit and we seldom fought more than two or three times a year and I found myself missing her very much.

“Did I have any calls?” Padillo asked.

I took out several slips of paper and handed them over. They were telephone messages taken by either me or Herr Horst, our martinet of a maitre d’ who got two percent of our net and who thought that Padillo should have been long married. The calls were mostly from young, breathless female voices who wanted to know when Mr. Padillo would be back in town and would I mind terribly asking him to call Margaret or Ruth or Helen as soon as he returned. “The one called Sadie sounded nice,” I said. “Sort of old-fashioned.”

Padillo riffled through the slips and nodded absently. “She plays French horn in the symphony,” he said. “Anything else?”

“You got a message from one Walter Gothar.”

Padillo’s smooth olive face assumed what I sometimes thought of as his Spanish look. His dark brown eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened into a thin line. I felt that it made him look something like a matador who’s been slipped a bad bull. “A phone message?”

“No. He delivered it personally.”

“Light hair, almost white? Looks as if he should register for the draft next week?”

“That’s him.”

“What’d he want?”

“He wanted me to tell you that he doesn’t want to buy the farm.”

Padillo put down his coffee cup and went around the bar and found the pinch bottle of Haig and poured himself a sizable drink. He looked at me and I shook my head no. Padillo sipped his Scotch and let his eyes wander around the empty room as if he were wondering how much it would all bring at a forced sale.

“Did Gothar say he doesn’t want to buy it or we don’t want to buy it?”

I tried to remember. “He said ‘we.’”

Some people never seem to frown and Padillo was one of them. But this time he did and it gave his face a strangely forbidding look. “He say anything else?”

“That he’d be by to see you today around this time. What is he, an old friend?”

Padillo shook his head. “His brother was. Older brother. We worked together a few times and we owed each other favors. I think I still owed him one when he got killed last year in Beirut. They said it was Beirut.”

“His message seemed a little obvious, I thought.”

Padillo sighed. He did that about as often as he frowned—once or twice a year. “When you’re trying to stay alive you can’t afford to be too subtle. But he did say ‘we,’ didn’t he?”

“He said ‘we.’”

“They work as a team.”

“Doing what?”

Padillo lit a cigarette before answering. “Doing more or less what I used to do. It runs in their family. The Gothars have been at it since Napoleon’s time. Karl Schulmeister brought them into the business around 1805. They’re Swiss and they’ve always worked for the highest bidder. ‘All brains and no heart,’” he said, phrasing the words the way people do when they’re quoting someone else.

“Who said that about them?”

“General Savary said it about Schulmeister when he introduced him to Napoleon. But it also fits the Gothars—what’s left of them. That’s why I may seem a little surprised. They’re not the kind to drop around asking for help.”

“Who’s the other half of the team?” I said.

“Gothar’s twin.”

I pointed at the Haig. “I think I will join you after all. A matched set of Gothars seems a little rich.”

“They’re not really a matched set,” Padillo said, pouring my drink.

“You mean they’re not identical twins?”

“They’re identical all right, but you won’t have any trouble telling them apart.”

“Why?”

“Because Walter Gothar’s twin is called Wanda.”