Backup Men

4

I MAY be one of the last persons in Washington to walk its streets late at night. I do so because I like to and because of a perverse conviction that the city’s sidewalks were built to be used twenty-four hours a day, just as they are used in such cities as London and Paris and Rome.

I’ve had some trouble a couple of times, but that’s largely my lookout. Once it was a trio of young hoods who thought a fight might be fun and then whimpered when they found that it wasn’t. The other time was when two muggers decided that they had need of my watch and wallet, but crawled off down an alley without them. I wrote both incidents off as my contribution to law and order. In New York, of course, I take cabs. I’m not a complete fool.

It was usually a little after midnight when I got home, which was on the eighth floor of an apartment building located just south of Dupont Circle. If the neighborhood wasn’t as fashionable as Georgetown, it had more flavor, and that’s what city living supposedly is all about. Within a one-block radius, I needed no more than three minutes to contract for either a bag of heroin or an angel food cake and that must have been what the apartment’s management meant when it advertised the place as being convenient to fine shopping.

I walked home later than usual the Tuesday night that the Gothar twins called on Padillo. It had been one of those relatively rare spring days in Washington when even the three-packs-a-day boys can smell the magnolias. The dinner trade had been particularly good, the chef had been sober, the annual income tax nick promised to be less traumatic than usual, and nothing but mild guilt would prevent me from sleeping till noon.

The editors at House Beautiful would have blanched at our two-bedroom apartment because it was furnished with the disparate possessions of two persons who’ve married a little late in life and whose tastes have already been shaped and molded into what some might regard as prejudice. We usually agreed on paintings, but when it came to furniture Fredl favored what I regarded as unhappy Hepplewhite while she more than once had accused me of trying to turn the place into the Senior Members’ Room at the Racquet Club. There had been a series of painfully negotiated compromises, but I’d drawn the line at The Chair.

I had won it with three of a kind in college and it had crossed the Atlantic twice and if its leather was a bit worn and the springs sagged a little, it was still The Chair and I’d read some fine books in it and used it to doze away some dull afternoons and even made some big plans in it, and if they hadn’t quite materialized, it wasn’t The Chair’s fault.

When I arrived home that night and opened the door and switched on the light, I knew what Papa Bear must have felt like because someone had been sitting in my chair—was still sitting in it, in fact, sprawled in it really, his head back, his hands in his lap, and his feet stuck straight out in front of him. His eyes were open and so was his mouth and his tongue, dark and swollen, bulged out of it. Two white plastic bicycle handlebar grips lay on his chest on top of a broad green and gray foulard tie. The grips were attached to the piano wire that had been used to choke the life out of Walter Gothar.

He may have put up some kind of a struggle, but there was no sign of it. No lamps were knocked over. The ashtrays, full as usual, were neatly in place. So perhaps all he had done was to claw at the wire that bit into his neck while he drummed his heels on the carpet. It was a rotten way to die because it took so long—possibly two minutes depending on the skill and the strength of the garroter.

I crossed the room and picked up the phone and dialed 444-1111 and when the man’s voice said, “Police emergency,” I gave him my name and address, told him that a man had been killed in my apartment, and then hung up. I dialed another number and when Padillo answered, I said, “Your friend Walter Gothar.”

“What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

“Where?”

“In my chair. Somebody garroted him. Piano wire and plastic handlebar grips. I think it’s piano wire.”

“Cops on the way?”

“I just called them.”

“I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“If they get here first, is there anything you want me not to tell them?”

Padillo was silent for a moment until he said, “No. Nothing.”

“Then I might try the truth.”

“They might even believe you,” he said and hung up.

I understand that you’re not supposed to touch anything, but I had a small bar in one corner so I went over and poured myself a Scotch, reasoning that the killer might not have liked the brand, or perhaps hadn’t wanted to hang around leaving fingerprints all over a glass while he toasted his handiwork.

Holding the drink, I stood there in the center of the living room and stared at the dead body of Walter Gothar and wondered why he had wanted to see me, and how he’d got into my apartment, and whether he had known the person who had produced the wire and looped it around his neck, pulling it tight from behind until the spinal cord went or until lack of oxygen destroyed the brain. Either way, Walter Gothar was thoroughly dead so I stood there and wondered what that was like until Padillo knocked at the door.

He came in and crossed over to Gothar’s body and quickly went through the pockets. He took nothing and replaced everything carefully, using his coat sleeve to wipe away or smear his fingerprints. When he was through he straightened and stared down at the dead man.

“Not pretty anymore, is he?”

“Not very,” I said. “Did you call his sister?”

Padillo shook his head and moved over to the bar. “I’ll let the cops do that.”

“Find anything in his pockets?”

“He has an interesting set of keys.”

After Padillo poured his own drink we continued to stand in the center of the living room, like two persons who don’t know anybody else at a chairless cocktail party. We stood there, not saying much, until the police arrived. After that we both found plenty to talk about.

Counting manslaughters, there had been 327 murders in the Washington area during the past year and the two homicide squad cops who’d drawn the Gothar death looked as if they had been stuck with at least half of them. The two cops were black and white and they didn’t seem to care much for each other and not at all for Padillo and me.

The white cop was a detective sergeant, a tall, sour man of about thirty-three or -four with bleached blue eyes that somehow went with the whine in his West Virginia accent. He introduced himself as Sergeant Lester Vernon and I decided that he probably was a sixth- or seventh-generation American WASP who thought that poking around dead bodies was better than mining coal. Maybe it was.

The black cop was Lieutenant Frank Schoolcraft. He was a few years older than Vernon and he had a big wide nose and a big wide mouth and looked as if he would speak with a mushy accent and use man every other word, but he didn’t. Instead, he talked out of the left side of his mouth because something had happened to the muscles on the right side and he seemed a little self-conscious about it. If he had any accent at all, it was East Coast Bitter.

“So when you found him you called us and then you called your partner here?” Schoolcraft said, nodding his long head at Padillo.

“That’s right,” I said.

“Why’d you call him?” Vernon said. “Whyn’t you call a lawyer?”

“Because I’m not going to need a lawyer,” I said.

“Huh,” Vernon said and went over to look at the dead body some more.

The two of them had been questioning Padillo and me for twenty minutes and during that time a half dozen uniformed cops had flowed in and out of the apartment, doing nothing useful that I could see. The technical crew was still at work, but I didn’t pay much attention to them. After thirty minutes or so they wheeled the body of Walter Gothar out of my apartment and I was glad to see him go.

Sergeant Vernon joined us again. “Never seen that before,” he said.

“What?” Schoolcraft said.

“Those plastic handlebar grips. They had lead pipe inside of them and the pipe had little holes bored in it and the wire went in and out of those holes so it wouldn’t slip.” There was nothing but admiration in Vernon’s voice.

“Seems funny to me,” Schoolcraft said.

“What seems funny?” Vernon said.

“That a man would go to all that trouble to fix up something like that and then leave it behind. Anybody who’d go to all that trouble was planning on using that thing more than once. What do you think, Mr. Padillo?”

“I don’t,” Padillo said.

“And you don’t know where his sister might be either?”

“Gothar told me the Hay-Adams.”

“We tried that again and she’s still not there.”

Padillo looked at his watch. “It’s only one fifteen,” he said. “Maybe she’s out on the town.”

Padillo’s observation was about as pertinent and useful as the rest of the information that he had given the police about Walter and Wanda Gothar. Yes, he had known Walter Gothar and his sister for some time, nearly fifteen years, but no, he didn’t know exactly why they were in Washington, although they had mentioned they were here on business, but he wasn’t sure of its exact nature because they hadn’t told him, and no, he didn’t think he knew who might have wanted Walter dead.

“And they just dropped by to see you socially, is that it?” Schoolcraft said.

“I didn’t say that,” Padillo said.

“What was the reason?”

“They wanted to know if I would be interested in one of their ventures.”

“Business ventures?”

“It could be called that, I suppose.”

“What kind of business?”

“The confidential kind.”

“So you don’t know what it was?”

“No.”

“What kind of business were the Gothars in as a rule?”

“I’m not sure that there were any rules in their business.”

“Is that supposed to be a smartassed answer?”

“Just informative.”

Schoolcraft shook his head. “You’re about as informative as a fireplug. What kind of business?”

“Security,” Padillo said.

“That doesn’t tell me anything either.”

“Think about it,” Padillo said, turned, and headed for the bar.

“Your partner’s not much help, is he?” Vernon said, giving me a nice, friendly smile.

“He’s just withdrawn,” I said.

“What about you?”

“I’m more outward going. You know, friendly.”

“Is that why Gothar was in your apartment, because he liked the friendly types?”

“He was kind of cute, wasn’t he?” I said and watched to see what effect the remark would have on Vernon. He didn’t blush, but he couldn’t prevent the look of uncomfortable disapproval from sliding across his face.

“Jesus, you don’t look like a—”

“He’s needling you, Sergeant,” Schoolcraft said. “He’s a smartass just like his partner.”

Padillo came back from the bar, carrying two drinks. He handed one of them to me. That was thoughtful. I smiled at Vernon and took a swallow.

“Why was Gothar in your apartment, McCorkle?” Schoolcraft said, his voice a tired rasp.

I sighed and shook my head, keeping the impatience out of most of what I said. “I don’t know why he was in my apartment. I don’t know how he got in. He was here when I arrived and he was as dead then as he was when they wheeled him out of here ten minutes ago. And that makes him your responsibility, not mine, so why don’t you go look for who killed him someplace else now that you’ve peeked under my bed and into all the closets.”

I raised the glass for another swallow, but Lieutenant Schoolcraft knocked it out of my hand. The glass bounced on the carpet and the drink made a small puddle for a moment before the woolen fibers soaked it up.

“You should take something for that temper, Lieutenant,” I said, bending down for the glass. When I straightened up, Schoolcraft was massaging his right hand. He couldn’t possibly have hurt it. “Eighteen hours straight today,” he said. “Twenty yesterday, nineteen and a half the day before.” He looked up from his hand. “I had no call to do that. Sorry.”

“Forget it,” I said and noticed that Sergeant Vernon seemed irritated by my magnanimity.

“Let’s take them both down,” Vernon said.

“Sure,” Schoolcraft said, nodding wearily as he moved toward the door. “That would do everybody a lot of good, wouldn’t it?”

“It might learn them not to be so goddamned lippy.”

Schoolcraft turned at the door and leaned against it. He seemed to be a man who rested whenever he could. Only his eyes moved, racing across my face and then Padillo’s, circling the room quickly and finally lighting for a brief moment on Sergeant Vernon’s face before again taking up their restless journey.

“A trip downtown wouldn’t teach these two anything, Sergeant,” he said. “You want to know why?”

“Why?” Lester said.

“Because you can’t teach anything to guys who know it all—and you know it all, don’t you, Padillo?”

“Not all of it,” Padillo said. “For instance, I don’t know what goes on inside a cop’s head.”

Schoolcraft stopped his eyes on Padillo’s face. It was a hard, almost brutal stare. “You think it’s different from what goes on inside your head?”

“It has to be.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Padillo said, “I could never be a cop.”