Backup Men

7

IT WAS fifteen past three when we came out of police headquarters and started walking west toward Fourth Street in search of a cab. I was about to tell Padillo that I thought I’d figured out Wanda Gothar’s message, and ask whether he wanted to be dropped off at her hotel, when a green Chrysler New Yorker sedan pulled up a few feet in front of us and a man got out of the seat next to the driver.

Padillo touched my sleeve and said, “If I say go, run.”

“Friends of yours?”

“Acquaintances.”

The man who got out of the Chrysler wore a spade-shaped beard that was running to gray, and which almost compensated for the high gloss of his cream-colored scalp. A pair of dark glasses rested on his long white nose and his mouth seemed to be trying to smile through the beard at Padillo. He was neither tall nor short and he moved easily as if he still liked to make hard use of his body, even though it was more than fifty years old.

When he got within a few feet of us he stopped smiling long enough to say, “How are you, Padillo?” and then turned the smile back on before Padillo had the chance to reply, rotten or awful or even tolerable fair.

The only other thing I noticed about the man was that he kept his hands motionless and in plain sight, well away from his body.

“Down to pay a traffic ticket?” Padillo said as he turned his left side to the man, his own hands relaxed, but held at belt level so that he could either block a quick left or wave for a cab.

“Actually, we were looking for you,” the man said, not offering to shake hands, but still smiling when he wasn’t speaking as his own hands moved slowly and carefully behind his back.

“Why?” Padillo said.

“We thought we should talk.”

“About Walter Gothar?”

The man brought his hands out in sight again and used them to help him shrug. “Walter—and other things.”

“Where?”

There was that smile again, a glint of white porcelain through a well-kept forest of gray and black. “You know my preference,” he said.

Padillo, not taking his eyes from the man, said, “Do you know a sleazy bar close by, Mac? Mr. Kragstein prefers to conduct his business in them. The seedier the better.”

“Sixth Street,” I said. “I can think of several.”

“Name one.”

“The Chatterbox.”

“Sleazy?”

“Foul,” I said.

“Excellent,” Kragstein said.

“He’s coming along, you know,” Padillo said, nodding his head toward me.

“Of course, of course,” Kragstein murmured and turned toward the Chrysler. He opened the rear door for us. Before we got in, Padillo said, “My partner, Mr. McCorkle; Franz Kragstein.”

“Hello,” Kragstein said, but didn’t offer to shake hands. I didn’t mind. He waved toward the man at the wheel. “You know Amos, don’t you, Padillo?”

“We’ve met,” Padillo said and ducked to enter the back seat. I followed and when I’d closed the door, Padillo said, “How are you, Amos?”

The man called Amos turned slowly in the front seat to look at Padillo. He was the youngest one in the car, still in his late twenties. He looked at Padillo for a moment and then nodded to himself, as if resolving some question that had long bothered him. He looked at me next and the dismissal whipped across his face so quickly that I wasn’t really sure that it had been there at all. He smiled faintly at Padillo and said, “Fine, Mike, and you?”

“Okay,” Padillo said. “Mr. Gitner, Mr. McCorkle.”

Amos Gitner gave me a nod before turning back to the wheel. “Where to?” he asked Kragstein.

“It’s a place called The Chatterbox, on Sixth Street, I believe.”

“I hope it’s crummy enough for you,” Gitner said.

“Mr. McCorkle assures me that it is.”

The Chatterbox drew a mixed clientele in that half of the customers were drunk while the other half were trying to get that way and would soon succeed, if their money held out. We took the last booth in a row of seven that lined the left side of the room. I sat next to the wall, facing Kragstein. Padillo and Gitner, in the outside seats, faced each other across the booth’s formica table top.

The Chatterbox must have been a retail store once, a none too prosperous venture that couldn’t sell enough hard ware or work clothes or maybe notions. Now it sold a little food and a lot of cheap wine, beer, blended bourbon, and gin. I didn’t think there was much call for Scotch.

Remodeling had been kept to the absolute minimum: there was the row of cheap booths; an L-shaped bar with a dozen or so stools; a kitchen which I could smell and had no desire to inspect; a jukebox, and a cigarette machine. I figured that the jukebox and the cigarette machine took care of the rent. The beer companies had taken care of the decorations.

There were six customers at the bar, four of them black, two of them white. No women. One of the blacks was drunk, but pleasantly so, if that’s possible, and both of the whites, their necessary cigarettes all but forgotten between their fingers, had reached the point where they huddled morosely over their wine and perhaps hoped that these were the drinks that contained oblivion. Clean them up a little, find them some new clothes, and they could join the morning Bloody Mary crowd at Mac’s Place and nobody would know the difference until they fell off their stools, and perhaps not even then.

The bartender was probably the owner. He wouldn’t need much hired help: a relief bartender, a cook, a couple of dishwashers who could also swamp out the place, and maybe a waitress or two at noon and at night. It was a cheap place that catered to hard drinkers and the only difference between it and the saloon that I owned half of was a couple of clean shirts and a $100,000 line of credit.

“Admirable,” Kragstein said, looking around. “Really excellent. I’m surprised that you know such places, Mr. McCorkle.”

“I use them to think in,” I said.

Kragstein nodded approvingly, as if he believed me. “I myself find them conducive for business purposes.”

Before he could tell me how business was, the bartender came over, took a couple of cursory swipes at the table with a fairly clean rag, and asked us our pleasure. Kragstein’s was gin. Padillo and I asked for bottled beer. Gitner wanted a Coke, perhaps because he was driving. Nobody said much until the bartender returned with the drinks. He was a stocky, dark-complexioned man, possibly a Greek, and he wasn’t much impressed with his uptown trade. He served the drinks and then waited to see who would pay. They don’t run tabs in places like the Chatterbox.

I kept my hands on the table and so did Padillo and when the Greek started to whistle “Carolina Moon,” Kragstein got the idea and handed over a five. The bartender put 52.80 change on the table and went back to his regular customers. The same drinks in our place would have cost $1.35 more, but that’s how it is with a steep overhead, which some insist on calling atmosphere.

“Well, now,” Kragstein said as he peered about. “This is rather nice. But would it be possible to speak German or French?”

“Either one,” Padillo said, “although McCorkle’s German is better than his French.”

“Then we shall speak German,” Kragstein said in German and I was surprised that he spoke it with an American accent. His English was easy, but also slightly accented, although I hadn’t been able to determine what flavor.

“It was too bad about Walter, wasn’t it?” Kragstein said after he had taken a sip of his gin.

“Terrible,” Padillo said.

“And I believe that it happened in your apartment, Mr. McCorkle.”

“In the living room,” I said.

“A garrote?”

“Steel wire attached to a couple of plastic bicycle handlebar grips,” Padillo said, looking at Gitner. “It’s supposed to be fairly popular in Southeast Asia. You spent some time out there recently, didn’t you, Amos?”

“A few months,” Gitner said.

“Cambodia, wasn’t it?”

“There and a couple of other places.”

“Free-lance or contract?”

“Does it matter?”

“I heard it was contract.”

“Believe anything you like, Padillo, as long as it’s comforting.”

Gitner wasn’t a tall man, but he had nice moves. I hadn’t seen him smoke and if he drank nothing but Coca-Cola, his teeth might have a few fillings, but there was nothing wrong with his liver. He looked American—the way young, earnest Americans looked a decade or so ago before they discovered things that they thought were more important than close shaves, clean fingernails, tidy haircuts and J. Press suits. Gitner was something of an anachronism, I decided, a throwback to the fifties with his crew cut light brown hair, his quiet tweed jacket, his expensive gray flannel trousers, his buttondown white shirt, the marble-sized knot in his red silk tie, and his burnished cordovan oxfords. I tried to decide whom he reminded me of and it came as faint surprise when I realized that Gitner was a blond version of Padillo as he’d been not quite fifteen years ago when I’d first met him, before he’d let his sideburns reach his earlobes and before he’d cultivated the moustache that I thought made him look like the Dark Knight from Iberia, a little down on his luck perhaps, but ready for either fight or frolic. But that’s what I get for having been reared on Tennyson.

“I thought we should clear the air about a few things, Michael,” Kragstein said and waved his right hand around as if to demonstrate what he meant.

“Go ahead,” Padillo said.

“Am I to understand that you intend to lend your talents to Miss Gothar, now that her brother is dead?”

“I’ve been thinking about it.”

“Not out of sentiment, surely?”

“No.”

Kragstein nodded, as if reassured by Padillo’s answer. “Good,” he said and paused for another sip of gin. “We are, as you’ve probably gathered, interested in one Peter Paul Kassim.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“And you, too, are interested in him.”

“Only in his health.”

“As are we.”

Padillo said nothing. Instead he borrowed a cigarette from me, lit it with his own matches, and blew some smoke up into the air, gazing around the bar as if wondering how much it would cost to buy in.

“Perhaps I should first assure you that we are in no manner responsible for Walter Gothar’s death. I hope you believe me.”

“Sure,” Padillo said. “But would it make any difference if I didn’t?”

“None,” Gitner said. “None at all.”

“Walter seemed a little worried about you, Amos. He thought you had him in your book.”

“Did he say that?”

“More or less.”

“He was wrong.”

“That won’t bother him now.”

Gitner tasted his Coca-Cola as if he expected it to have turned sour. From the look on his face, it may have. He put it down and shoved it away from him toward Kragstein. “Gothar wasn’t as good as he thought he was,” he said. “That’s why he’s dead.”

“He was pretty good,” Padillo said. “Personally, I thought he was too good to let somebody get behind him with a garrote.”

“Maybe it was his sister,” Gitner said. “It sounds like her.”

“Maybe,” Padillo said.

“I thought you had a thing going with her.”

“That was a few years back.”

“What happened?”

“Do you feel it’s vital that you know?”

Gitner smiled, but it wasn’t a pleasant one. I felt that he may not have had any other kind. “You’re not letting me needle you, are you, Padillo?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Good. I just want to make sure that if something happens to Wanda, you won’t feel any great personal loss.”

“None,” Padillo said. “But whoever gets to her might have to go through me.”

Gitner nodded slowly, more to himself than to anyone else. “That could be interesting,” he said. “That could be real interesting.”

“Wanda has told you about Kassim, of course,” Kragstein said comfortably.

“She hasn’t told me anything except that she’s got a client that you’ve taken an order on.”

“I thought you said—”

Padillo interrupted him. “I said that I’d heard that you were interested in Kassim and that I’m concerned about his health. That’s all. The rest of it you assumed.”

“But this arrangement of yours with the Gothars. It would—”

“There’s no arrangement.”

“Are you trying to cut yourself in or out, Padillo?” Gitner said.

“I’m already in. The only question left is for how much and who’s going to pay it.”

Gitner and Kragstein traded glances, meaningful ones, I assumed. Kragstein decided to do the talking, probably because he was better at it. “We could always work out an accommodation, Michael.”

“What kind?”

“We’ve accepted this assignment on an incentive arrangement. The young man is to sign certain papers as soon as his brother dies. If he does not sign those papers, we receive a sizable bonus. Our fee is still adequate if he does sign the papers, but does not return to Llaquah. We receive virtually nothing if he does sign the papers and returns to Llaquah.”

“So you’re in a hurry,” Padillo said.

“That’s right,” Gitner said. “We’re in a hurry.”

“Who’s your client?”

“Does that matter?” Kragstein asked.

“It does to McCorkle.”

“Really? How?”

“He was hoping it would be the wicked uncle.”

“Kassim doesn’t have any uncles,” Gitner said.

“Cousins?” I said, trying to make my voice sound hopeful.

“He’s got some aunts and some cousins, but no uncles, except by marriage.”

“I don’t suppose they count,” I said.

Gitner turned to Kragstein. “What’s he talking about?”

“We were discussing the possibility of working out an accommodation with Padillo before we became sidetracked,” Kragstein said. “Shall we continue?”

“Fine,” Padillo said.

Kragstein nodded. “We could arrange it several ways, of course, Michael. The one I prefer is that you come to your understanding with Miss Gothar and then be not nearly as proficient as you usually are.”

“In other words, you take a dive,” Gitner said.

“For how much?” Padillo said.

Kragstein pointed the end of his beard at the dirty ceiling. “Oh, say twenty-five thousand. Dollars, of course.”

“And I’d also be expected to tip you off about where Kassim might be stashed away,” Padillo said.

“Yes,” Kragstein said. “That would be expected.”

“All for twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“That’s right,” Gitner said. “Twenty-five thousand. That’s good money for doing what you’d be doing which is nothing. I’d like to make twenty-five big ones for doing nothing.”

“How much front money?” Padillo said.

Kragstein ran a thick, nicely cared for hand over his gleaming scalp before answering. “Possibly seventy-five hundred.”

Padillo laughed. It wasn’t really a laugh, it was more of a sharp, wordless bark of contempt. “Both you and Wanda,” he said.

“Both of us what?” Kragstein said.

“You’re both working on spec. How much oil do they guess is underneath Llaquab—eighty billion barrels?”

“Ninety,” Kragstein said.

Padillo leaned toward him across the table and switched from German to English. “That means a country whose annual income has been hovering around zero will get to watch it shoot up to seven or eight hundred million dollars a year—which is more than Kuwait gets. But that’s all sweet bye and bye money. Right now there’s not enough hard cash in this deal on either side to buy a pack of cigarettes.”

“The money will be there,” Kragstein said.

“What’s your asking price, Franz, a quarter of a million?”

“That’s close enough,” Gitner said.

“And you’re offering me ten percent, except that all you can scrape up between you in front money is seventy-five hundred. That means that you’re both almost broke and that’s why you’ve taken it on spec—because there’s nothing better around.”

“You’re not rejecting our offer, are you, Padillo?” Kragstein said in a new, soft low tone that made what he’d said sound more like a threat than a question.

Padillo rose. “That’s right,” he said. “Maybe your new partner doesn’t know that I’ve never worked on the cheap, Franz, but you do.”

“I’ve heard that about you, Padillo,” Gitner said. “That and a lot of other things. Maybe now I can find out if some of them are true.”

I was standing by Padillo now as he looked down at Amos Gitner. He looked at him steadily for several moments before he shifted his gaze to Kragstein.

“Maybe you’d better tell him, Franz,” he said. “Somebody should.”

“Tell him what?”

“That’s he’s not all that good.”

Kragstein did something with his mouth so that his teeth showed through the thicket of his beard. It could have been a smile. “I think he is,” he said.

“You’re talking about technique, aren’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Then you forgot something.”

“What?”

“Brains,” Padillo said. “He hasn’t got enough.”