Cast a Yellow Shadow

Fourteen

Boggs and Darragh followed us out into the hall when we left. Van Zandt continued to sit at the large carved desk, his pale green eyes gazing out from under the white forest of his eyebrows. He wasn’t watching us leave. He may have been looking at his country as it was sixty years ago, before the automobiles and the airplanes and the Coca-Cola, Or he may have been deciding whether to take a pill to kill the pain.

“Don’t threaten us, Padillo,” Boggs said when the sliding doors were closed.

“I wasn’t threatening you. I was just describing what was going to happen if Fredl McCorkle isn’t returned safely. You tried to buy me and you tried to frighten me and neither worked, so you pressured me through another person. That was a mistake on your part.”

“Then you also have the irate husband to consider,” I said. “You’ve convinced me that you might kill her if I went to the police, or if the assassination doesn’t come off. I’ll put up with all of that. I might even put up with a little more, just to make sure she’s all right. But not much more. Especially, not as much as having her scream over the telephone at me. That was another mistake you made.”

Boggs looked around to see who was listening. There was nobody.

“How much do you think we have riding on this, Jocko?” His voice was low and fast. He seemed furious, and a flush started rising from his collar-line. By the time it reached his ears, it was a bright pink. “We’re not playing for coppers, we’re playing for an entire country and the death of that old man in there is the winning ticket. If he’s not killed next Tuesday, then Darragh and I and a half-dozen other chaps may as well pack it in.” He was talking so fast that a trace of spittle formed at the corner of his mouth. Darragh nodded his dark head in agreement. His mouth was turned down at the corners.

“We don’t give a damn about what you feel or think or threaten,” Boggs went on. “You’re nothing and your woman’s nothing. You’re just a trigger finger to us and that trigger finger had better work when it’s supposed to.”

We were standing in the hall, the pair of them facing the pair of us. Darragh hunched his shoulders and leaned forward and his voice was as low and as fast as Boggs’s. “You mean as much to us as a couple of niggers, and nothing means less than that.”

Padillo looked first at Boggs and then at Darragh. “Is that all?” he asked.

Boggs took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the corners of his mouth. He was still pink. He nodded his head. “Could I say it more plainly?”

“No,” Padillo said. “You couldn’t.” He turned to me. “I take it you understood the gentlemen?”

“We don’t mean much to them,” I said.

“Well,” Padillo said, and smiled brightly at them, “it was nice talking to you.”

The flush started rising again on Boggs’s neck. “Have that man available, Padillo.”

“Sure,” he said, and smiled again. “Let’s go.”

We left the four-story house and walked towards the car.

“We didn’t seem to do too well playing the heavies,” I said.

“It was a draw,” Padillo said. “Although they had better lines.”

I made a U-turn on Massachusetts and started back towards downtown. I drove quickly, darting through traffic, and taking a couple of chances on two women drivers who thought that twenty miles an hour was reasonable haste. Padillo turned around and looked out the rear window.

“The green Chevrolet?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“A girl’s driving.”

“She was parked up the street from the trade mission.”

“Don’t lose her,” Padillo said.

“I just wanted to make sure that she knew who we were.”

“Let’s talk to her.”

“Where?”

“You have any ideas?”

I thought a moment. “Rock Creek Park. The trees are just turning.”

“It should be pleasant.”

I turned right at Waterside Drive and the green Chevrolet followed. I drove through Rock Creek Park until I came to the first spot that had picnic tables, shifted down into second, and turned in. The Chevrolet shot past, stopped, then backed up. Padillo and I got out of the car. The Chevrolet pulled into the parking place. The girl behind the wheel cut the engine and sat in the car looking at us. Then she opened the door and got out.

She was a brown-eyed blonde and her hair was cut short so that it seemed to form a helmet over her head. She walked towards us slowly, one hand in the deep leather purse that she had slung over her right shoulder. She wore a brown tweed coat and a beige skirt. She had long slim legs and the dark brown pumps she wore picked their way carefully through the gravel of the parking lot. Her brown eyes rested first on my face and then on Padillo’s and then back on mine. The eyes were wide and they seemed a little frightened. She was all of twenty-two.

“Which one of you is Michael Padillo?” she asked, and her lower lip trembled a little when she said it. Her voice was soft and low and it sounded reminiscent of another voice I had heard before.

“If you plan to shoot him with that gun you have in your purse,” Padillo said, “he’s not here.” As he talked he moved to his right. I moved to my left. The girl’s eyes tried to keep us both in sight, but we were too far apart.

“Damn,” she said, “damn, damn, damn.” Then she took her hand out of her purse. “All right,” she said. “No gun.”

“You didn’t really want to shoot me anyhow. I’m Michael Padillo.”

“What happened to my father?”

“Do I know your father?”

“He came here to see you and now he’s dead.”

“Your name is Underhill then.”

“Sylvia Underhill.”

“Your father was run down by a car.”

“They told me that,” she said. “They told me the car didn’t stop.”

“That’s right,” Padillo said. “It didn’t stop.”

“Why didn’t it stop?”

“This is Mr. McCorkle, Miss Underhill.”

She looked at me. “He mentioned your name, too.”

“I met him briefly.”

“I flew all night and all day,” she said. “May I sit down?”

We sat on the wooden benches of the picnic table and the girl looked around as if she realized for the first time that she had traveled twelve thousand miles and wanted to find out if the tour was all that the travel agent had said it would be.

“It’s nice here,” she said. “This is a beautiful park.”

“Would you like a drink?” Padillo asked.

“A drink?”

“What do we have?” he asked me.

“The emergency ration in the rear. Brandy.”

“Brandy?” he asked her.

“That would be fine, thank you.”

I got the bottle of brandy out of the car and three small plastic cups. It was cool under the trees, almost chilly in the mid-October afternoon, and the brandy tasted warm and reassuring to me. But then it always did.

“How did you know us?” Padillo asked.

“I guessed. I arrived this morning and saw the police and went to your restaurant this afternoon. They said you had gone so I asked what kind of auto you drove. I didn’t know where else to go so I drove to the trade mission. I saw a car that could have been yours. I waited. When you came out, I followed.”

“Do you know why your father wanted to see me?” Padillo said.

She nodded her head. “Yes. Did he get the chance to tell you?”

“Yes; he did.”

She paused and looked around and then she looked down into her plastic cup. “Did you agree?” She seemed to hold her breath after she said it.

Padillo looked at me. I nodded slightly. “Yes. We agreed.”

Her breath came out in a soft sigh. “I’m afraid I don’t have the money — it wasn’t with his things, they said.”

“We have the money.”

Her shoulders slumped in relief and she drank the rest of the brandy. “I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do. I was frantic when we heard about Dad and then they called the meeting and decided that I would have to go.”

“Who called a meeting?” I asked.

“They’re just people who believed as Dad did. Some farmers, some professors, a few lawyers and doctors and — well — just people. Some of them were in the parliament with Dad. They’re not organized. They’re not even the kind to form an organization. They’re just people who don’t agree with Van Zandt, who hate what he’s trying to do.”

“And they appointed you to take your father’s place?” Padillo asked.

“There was no choice. Most of them couldn’t get exit visas on such short notice. I could — or Mother could — because of Dad’s death. Somebody had to come. There just wasn’t anyone else.”

“How old are you?” Padillo said.

She looked at him. “I’m twenty-one.”

“What were you going to do if I hadn’t agreed to go along with your father’s suggestion?”

“Anything that would be necessary to make you change your mind, Mr. Padillo,” she said. “Anything.”

“You’re awfully young for anything.”

“Perhaps that would be an advantage.”

He nodded. “You’re not as young as I thought.”

She took a cigarette from her purse and I lighted it for her. It didn’t make her look any older. “Could you tell me about it?” she asked.

“How much do you know?”

“I know that Dad came here to see you after he found out about you. I know that he and the rest of them raised seventeen thousand pounds. It was all they could raise. They’re not very popular and business has been bad for some. He was going to offer you the seventeen thousand to expose the plot — to make sure that Van Zandt wasn’t killed.”

“They have Mr. McCorkle’s wife,” Padillo said. “They say they’ll kill her if the assassination doesn’t come off.”

The girl looked at me and her eyes were wide. “That’s terrible. That’s incredible.”

He looked at his watch. It was five-twenty. “Where are you staying?”

“I’m not staying anywhere. I went to the police and then I went to your restaurant and then I rented the car and came here.”

“We’d better make it some place safe,” I said.

“Your place?”

I nodded.

“I couldn’t—”

Padillo cut her off short. “He’s harmless. He’s in love with his wife.”

“If you whistle at breakfast, the deal’s off,” I said.

She smiled. It made her look about six years old at Christmas. “I’m sorry I objected. It wasn’t that, it was — I’ll promise not to whistle.”

Padillo looked at his watch. “I have an appointment at six.”

“Take my car,” I said. “We’ll go in hers.” I unclipped the ignition key from my ring and gave it to Padillo. “How long do you think it will take?”

“An hour; maybe two. It depends upon how well I lie.”

“Call me at the apartment. We’ll have dinner.”

“Good.”

Padillo got in the Corvette and drove off. I gathered up the cups and the brandy bottle. “Can you put these in that purse of yours along with the gun?”

“It’s a very small gun.”

“Nothing worries me more than a small gun, unless it’s an unloaded one.”

She wanted me to drive so I did. We came out on P Street and I drove east.

“Will you tell me about it, please?” she finally asked. “About all of it? I’m terribly sorry about your wife, but I have to know what Dad was doing when he died. I have to know if it makes any sense.”

“I can tell you about that right now,” I said as I turned into the basement garage. “None of it makes any sense.”

I got her suitcase out of the back seat and we took the elevator up to my apartment. I showed her the guestroom and bath and said that I would be in the livingroom. She came in a few moments later, looking a little less tired, or maybe she had done something to her face. She was an extremely pretty girl and without her topcoat the rest of her complemented her long slender legs. I asked her if she wanted a drink and she said no, she would like a cup of coffee so I went into the kitchen and heated the water and smoked a cigarette while I waited for it to boil. There was a coffeepot some place, but we never used it. Fredl had grown up on black-market American instant coffee and she insisted it was better than the ground variety. It was one of the major compromises of our marriage.

After Sylvia Underhill took her first sip of coffee I told her about what had happened to her father and what he had wanted us to do.

“And you agreed to do it?”

“Yes.”

“But after he was dead, you didn’t have to.”

“That’s right.”

“You could have kept the money and just forgotten about it.”

“We could have kept the money,” I said.

“He wasn’t cut out for this,” she said.

“Few people are.”

“Are you?”

“No.”

“Is Mr. Padillo?”

“He’s had practice.”

“He seems a strange man. I read the dossier that my father got some place. Has he really done what it says — I mean, all of those things?”

“I haven’t seen the dossier, but Padillo has had what could be called a full life.”

“You’ve known him a long time, haven’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I would ever know what he was really thinking. Does he do all these things because he believes in them or because he enjoys doing them or why?”

I looked at my watch. It was six-thirty. It seemed time for the cocktail hour. “You sure you wouldn’t like a drink?”

“No thank you.”

“I think I’ll have one.”

“All right.”

I walked over to the bar and mixed a vodka martini. “Padillo has had one ambition in life from the time he was sixteen years old, and that is to run a nice quiet saloon. It’s something that we have in common. But he was born with three handicaps for a saloon-keeper: an extremely quick mind, an unusual gift for languages, and superb muscular control — far better than most athletes. He didn’t work at any of these; they just happened to him, just as you happened to turn out to be an extremely pretty girl.”

“Some people found out that all these handicaps were wrapped up in one man, so they used them — much as they would use a lawyer or a surgeon. When they learned that something was wrong somewhere, they would send Padillo in to fix it. He did it not because he wanted to do it, but because it was the price he paid for being allowed to do what he really wanted, and that’s to run a saloon. He would have liked to have run one in Los Angeles, but it never worked out.”

“When you speak of some people, you’re talking about your government.”

“No. I’m speaking about some people. They work for the government and they’re caught up in their ambitions and their convictions and the power of decision and command that they’ve acquired. They would use Padillo to fix things that they thought needed fixing.”

“He killed people, the dossier said.”

“I suppose he did.”

“Because these people in government told him to?”

“Yes.”

“Were they always right?”

“Probably not.”

“Then he killed innocent people?”

“He killed people who were very much like himself, I’d say — as innocent or as guilty. They were chosen to die because somebody in our government thought that the world would be a better place to live if they weren’t around any more. Perhaps they thought it would make a difference, and maybe the world did get better for them because they received a promotion or a discreet commendation. But it didn’t change things much for the rest of us.”

“And it was someone like that in my country’s government who decided that my father should die.”

“Probably. They wrapped it up in patriotism, their own brand, and tied it up with their own convictions, and your father was killed. Those who killed him consider it progress. For you it’s a senseless tragedy because your father’s death seems meaningless. Most deaths are.”

“But Van Zandt’s death would have a purpose.”

“He thinks so and so do those who support him. He thinks it will change history and give him a share of immortality. Those who support him think it will make the world a better place to live — for them.”

“There’s something that bothers me,” she said. “Why are you going to do what my father asked you to do? Why don’t you just do what they wanted you to do and get your wife back and then just forget about it? You seem to be able to take death so very casually.”

“How long do you think they would let my wife live after it was over?”

“I don’t know. Would they kill her?”

“I think so.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Try to get her back.”

“And if you don’t?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t thought about that yet. I don’t think that I can.”