Backup Men

3

THEY CAME in together about half an hour later, blinking at our perpetual twilight and looking as much alike as two persons can and still be of different sexes—something like two nickel-plated ball bearings that are labeled him and her.

Although she had the same chilly eyes, Wanda Gothar’s smile failed to match her brother’s in nastiness, but then I only saw her smile twice and I don’t think she really tried either time.

Padillo swung around on his bar stool and watched them approach. He didn’t smile either. Instead, he kept his eyes on them much as a mongoose would keep its eyes on twin cobras. I began to wonder whether I should summon Herr Horst and tell him to lock up the good silver.

When he was only a few feet away, Walter Gothar stopped and performed one of his abrupt Teutonic nods that would have produced a bad case of whiplash in any normal person’s neck. Then he said, “Padillo.”

“How are you, Walter?” Padillo said, and then added indifferently, “You, too, Wanda.”

She neither smiled nor nodded at Padillo. Instead, she seemed to look right through him with a gaze that denied his existence. She was shorter than her brother by five or six inches, but still tall for a woman, and where his jaw appeared stubborn, hers seemed only determined, and where his mouth was a taut line of stern discipline, hers had been expertly touched up into something that seemed fuller and softer, but still under rigid control.

You wouldn’t want to call Walter Gothar pretty boy, his eyes wouldn’t let you do that, but you could get by with exquisite and he probably wouldn’t have minded at all. Lovely would have done for his sister, although she seemed indifferent to what anyone called her, unless all that careful casualness of walk and stance and movement was a deliberate pose, which it may well have been.

“You received my message,” Gothar said, flicking his gaze from Padillo to me as though to indicate that he was aware of my existence, but didn’t feel that it required any formal acknowledgment.

“I got it,” Padillo said and then introduced me to Wanda Gothar with “Miss Gothar, Mr. McCorkle, my partner.”

She nodded in my general direction, but still said nothing.

“We wish to discuss it with you,” Gothar said. “Privately.”

Padillo shook his head. “You know better than that, Walter. I wouldn’t discuss the price of a drink with you unless I had a witness.”

“It is a confidential matter,” Gothar said.

“McCorkle is a confidential person.”

Gothar looked at his sister and once more she nodded, if moving your chin up and down a bare quarter of an inch can be called a nod. Gothar glanced around the still empty bar and made a brief, disdainful gesture with his right hand. “Isn’t there some other place where we could talk?”

“We have an office,” Padillo said. “Will that do?”

Gothar said that it would and they followed Padillo through the dining area and I tagged along behind, feeling unwanted, if not unneeded, and only mildly interested in what Walter Gothar’s confidential matter was all about. I was far more interested in his sister’s long, slender legs that flashed beneath the pale gray skirt of her knit suit that did nothing to conceal her other charms, which were considerable. I’m not too good at assessing women’s clothes, but I would have put a three-hundred-dollar price tag on Wanda Gothar’s knit suit and bet another hundred that I wasn’t more than ten dollars off. Walter Gothar had on a different suit from yesterday, a double-breasted gray one with lots of buttons, but I couldn’t get interested in what it had cost.

Our office wasn’t much except for the antique partners’ desk that Fredl had given us last Christmas and which we used sparingly because we were afraid that one of us would absentmindedly set a wet glass on its highly polished oak surface. There was the desk and a comfortable enough couch, two straight-backed chairs, three green filing cabinets, two black phones, a gaudy calendar, and a window with a view of the alley.

Padillo and I sat at the desk. Walter Gothar chose the couch and his sister sat in one of the two chairs, her knees together and her ankles crossed.

Padillo leaned back in his chair, almost put his feet on the desk, but caught himself in time, and said, “What are you working on, Walter?”

“A protection assignment.”

“Anybody I know?”

“Do you mean our client?”

“No.”

“Then you must mean our antagonist?”

“That’s a pretty way to say it.”

“It’s Kragstein.”

Padillo was silent as if skimming a mental file on Kragstein. After a moment or two he said, “He’s not that good anymore.”

“Gitner is with him.”

Padillo didn’t need to examine his file on Gitner. He said, “Then you have got trouble.”

“That is why we need a—uh—backup man,” Gothar said and looked a trifle proud of his adroit use of the colloquialism.

Padillo shook his head. Firmly. “I’m out of it,” he said. “I have been for a couple of years.”

Wanda Gothar looked at him, not through him for the first time, and smiled before she spoke, but the chill in her tone canceled any meaning the smile may have had. “You’ll never be out of it, Michael. I told you that seven years ago in Bucharest.”

“You told me a lot of things in Bucharest, Wanda, but none of them was true.”

“And for how long have you been an authority on truth?”

“I’m not,” he said, “but I’m damned good when it comes to lies.”

Walter Gothar quickly interrupted what could have developed into a nasty quarrel between old rivals or old lovers. Or both. I was never really sure. “You must at least consider it.”

“No,” Padillo said.

“I told you he wouldn’t,” Wanda said to her brother.

Walter Gothar gave her a quick, annoyed glance before asking Padillo, “Is it Gitner that disturbs you?”

“Amos Gitner should disturb anyone who’s not a fool,” Padillo said, “but he doesn’t disturb me because I won’t be messing around with him.”

“Could it be Kragstein who—”

“Franz Kragstein’s getting old,” Padillo interrupted. “He can’t move like he once did, but there’s nothing wrong with his brain and if he’s got Gitner to run the errands, then it doesn’t matter whether he can move or not. I saw Gitner in action once and he’s faster and younger than any of us.”

If the man called Amos Gitner had reflexes which made him faster than Padillo, then he was indeed in superb condition. Although the pronounced frosting of gray in my partner’s dark hair wasn’t all that premature, he had one of those rare natural athlete’s bodies that seem to keep themselves in perfect shape without any conscious effort on the part of their occupants. He ate what he wanted, smoked as much as I, drank nearly as much, and could run the hundred in ten seconds flat wearing street clothes and afterward be breathing no more heavily than I—should I ever have occasion to jog around the block, which I won’t. He also spoke six or seven languages perfectly, knew all there was to know about guns and knives, was a bit of a ladies’ man, if not an out-and-out rake, and there were some days that I was mildly bitter about it all.

“We do not need him,” Wanda Gothar said and rose.

“I don’t think you do either,” Padillo said. “What’s the assignment?”

“Interested?” she asked.

“Curious.”

“Sit down, Wanda,” Walter said. She hesitated briefly and then resumed her seat in the chair. Walter Gothar frowned, as if thinking deeply, and then said, “Our problem is that our client is traveling incognito. Otherwise, we could draw on your Secret Service.”

“You could anyway, if he’s the friendly type,” Padillo said.

Gothar shook his head. “He refuses to hear of it. He insists that there be no official recognition of his visit, formal or informal.”

“Does he know about Kragstein and Gitner?”

“Yes.”

“Then he’s a fool.”

“In some ways.”

Padillo stood up. “Well, I’m sorry I can’t help.”

“The money will be excellent,” Gothar said.

Padillo shook his head. “I’ve got enough.”

“No one has enough,” Wanda said.

“It depends on what you think you can buy with it.”

“Your philosophy was always on the cheap side, Padillo.”

“I seem to recall when you thought it was the most valuable kind around.”

“That was before I knew what a—”

“Please!” Gothar said, but it was more of a demand than a request. His sister shifted her gaze from Padillo and let it settle on the calendar. Padillo smiled faintly. Gothar rose, reaching into his inside pocket. He brought out an envelope and extended it toward Padillo. “It is from Paul to you,” he said. “I have no choice.”

Padillo hesitated before accepting the envelope. Then he took it, examined the blue wax seal on its flap, ripped it open, and swiftly read it. “I recognize his handwriting,” Padillo said, handing the letter to me. “Do you know what it says?”

“We have an idea,” Gothar said. “He told us that we might need it some day.”

“It’s from their brother,” Padillo explained to me. “He’s dead now. He died last year in Beirut, wasn’t it?”

Gothar nodded. “In Beirut.”

The undated letter was written with black ink in a neat European scrawl that was all sharp, tight angles and unfinished descenders. It was in English and it read, “My dear Padillo, Some day the twins will find themselves with one which they may have the sense to realize that they cannot handle alone. We have exchanged favors many times and I am no longer sure whether I owe you or you owe me, but I hope that it does not matter. Please do what you can for them, if you can. I shall be, let us say, eternally grateful. Sincerely, Paul Gothar.”

“He wrote a nice hand,” I said, handing the note back. Padillo nodded and passed the note to Gothar who read it and gave it to his sister. While she was reading it, Gothar said, “Well?”

Padillo shook his head. “I’m not that sentimental, Walter. Maybe if your brother hadn’t been, he’d still be alive.”

“We don’t need him, Walter,” Wanda Gothar said.

The tall man with the too young face jerked his head in another of his neck-cricking nods and moved to the door, holding it open for his sister. She swept through it with what I thought was a fair amount of disdain. Gothar paused to look at Padillo thoughtfully. “We won’t beg,” he said, “but should you change your mind, one of us will be at the Hay-Adams.”

“I won’t change my mind,” Padillo said. “Besides, I think you’re badmouthing yourselves. You don’t really need me.”

“That is something that the next few days will determine,” Gothar said, turning to leave.

“Good luck,” Padillo said.

Gothar paused once more to give Padillo a cold stare. “In our business, Padillo, luck plays a very small role,” he said and then he was gone.

“You want a drink?” I said, picking up the phone.

“A martini.”

I dialed a single number and ordered. “Why didn’t you lend a hand?” I said. “It was a nice note.”

Padillo smiled slightly. “There was only one thing wrong with it,” he said.

“What?”

“Paul Gothar couldn’t read or write English.”