Missionary Stew

Chapter 15

The first black, the tall lean one with the cast in his right eye, stumbled and seemed to trip over his own feet. With hands outstretched he fell hard against Morgan Citron and knocked him backward across the hood of the rented Cadillac limousine. The second black, the squat one with the build of a fat fireplug, bustled over and helped the tall lean one raise Citron back up onto his feet. They brushed him off, apologizing for their clumsiness in soft liquid French, and as they brushed he could feel their expert hands explore for hidden weapons.

The rented limousine, its uniformed driver still behind the wheel, was parked in front of the Eastern Airlines terminal at Los Angeles International Airport. Behind the limousine was the black Ford LTD sedan Velveeta Keats had rented from Budget in Malibu with her Visa card. The limousine-rental people had preferred American Express.

“A single apology is sufficient,” Citron said in French as the two blacks still tried to rid him of some imaginary dust. “Too many tend to make me suspicious.”

“Did I not say it?” the fireplug demanded of the cockeyed beanpole. “Does he not possess a perfect Parisian accent?”

“It is as you claimed,” the beanpole agreed, turned, and said, “Rien,” to the fifty-three-year-old man with the narrow sun-baked face who stood waiting ten feet away.

“Rien,” the man said to Citron. “That means ‘nothing.’ It also means you’re not gonna pull a knife or a gun on me. I’m Keats. B. S. Keats, B for Byron, S for Shelley. My mama married beneath her raisin’ and I seem to have taken after Pap. He was a cracker, damn near white trash. That my limo?”

“That’s it,” Citron said.

“That my Ford?” Keats said, giving the black LTD a nod.

“Right.”

“You parlez-vous better’n I do,” Keats said. “Tell Jacques and Cecilio to follow us.”

Citron told the two blacks what Keats wanted. Jacques, the beanpole, smiled. “We know. We understand far more than he thinks.”

“That’s what I thought,” Citron said and gave him the keys to the Ford.

Before the uniformed driver could make it around the limousine, Keats had the door open and was climbing into the rear seat. Citron followed. Back behind the wheel, the driver turned and said, “Where to, Mr. Citron?”

“Nowhere,” Keats said. “Just sit tight until my niggers get the luggage. You can also roll up that divider and turn on the air conditioner.”

“We can’t park here too long, sir. The airport cops are very strict.”

“You get a ticket, I’ll pay for it,” Keats said. “Now roll up that divider.”

The driver started the engine and pushed buttons that raised the divider glass and turned on the airconditioning. Keats took two plump cigars from his pocket and offered Citron one. Citron shook his head.

“Mind if I do?” Keats said.

“Not at all.”

Keats lit his cigar carefully with a kitchen match that he took from the pocket of his tan cashmere jacket. Beneath the jacket was a pale-yellow polo shirt that was worn outside a pair of linen slacks the color of milk chocolate. On his feet were brown-and-white saddle shoes with red rubber soles. Yellow socks matched his shirt. Citron thought the saddle shoes made Keats look vaguely collegiate.

Keats got his cigar going, blew out some smoke, and turned his faded blue eyes on Citron. “Where’d you learn your French?”

“In France.”

“You live there?”

“I was born there.”

“I reckon I could speak it if I was born there. The reason we didn’t take the bag on the plane is because it’s got the niggers’ pieces in it. Cecilio carries a thirty-eight. Old Jacques likes a magnum.”

“Somebody going to kill you?”

“A few folks’d like to see me dead. What d’you think of ’em — Cecilio and Jacques?”

“They seem competent.”

“They’re Haitian. Boat people. Guess how much Cecilio made year before last?”

“When he was still in Haiti?”

Keats nodded.

“I have no idea.”

“He made two hundred and sixty-eight dollars — the whole fuckin’ year. You know how much I’m payin’ them a week?”

“Two hundred and sixty-eight dollars.”

Keats smiled. His teeth were almost an oyster white, and his smile stayed in place several seconds longer than necessary, as if he sometimes forgot it was there. His thinning hair was so sunbleached it was hard to tell whether it was blond or gray, and he combed it straight down over his forehead in short ragged bangs. The faded blue eyes squinted even in the shade, as if wary of any sudden light, and the long nose that poked out and up was separated from the thin bitter mouth by a well-clipped mustache. Beneath all that was a pointed chin with a scar that meandered across it like a white river.

“That was a pretty good guess — two hundred and sixty-eight-dollars — but a softy’s guess. I pay ’em one thousand bucks a week. Each. Now guess how much loyalty that buys.”

“All there is?”

“That’s close,” Keats said, paused, and puffed on his cigar. “You know what Haitians are? They’re ambitious. I never saw anybody, white or black, who’d work as hard as they do. You want a ditch dug? Shit, they’ll dig it — just tell ’em how wide and how close to China. I don’t hire anybody but Haitians anymore, although goddamn, I do wish they’d learn to speak American.” He paused again. “How’s Velveeta?”

“She seems all right,” Citron said.

“She tell you about fuckin’ her brother yet?”

Before Citron could reply, there was a tap on the window. Both men turned. Jacques was bent down, peering through the window, and smiling broadly as he pointed to the long, round buffalo-hide bag he carried in his left hand. Keats nodded and Jacques disappeared, heading back toward the Ford LTD. Keats pushed the button that lowered the glass divider.

“Let’s go, son,” he said to the driver.

“Yes, sir. Where to?”

“They got a scenic drive out here?”

The driver tried to think of someplace scenic. “Well,” he said finally, “we could go up the coast.”

“Sounds good,” Keats said and rolled the divider back up. The driver put the limousine into gear and eased it out into the heavy airport traffic.

“She had a brother all right,” Keats said, “and like she probably told you, he’s dead. He died when she was seven and he was nine. He died of polio in the summer of ’fifty-nine. They had polio licked by then, but he caught it and died anyway. Maybe Cash and Velveeta played doctor once or twice, but the rest she just makes up. Incest. It turns some people on — did you know that?”

Keats didn’t seem to expect an answer, and Citron gave none.Instead, he said, “She also mentioned a husband. Or did she make that up too?”

“No, she didn’t make that up. She was married to Jimmy. Jimmy Maneras. Jaime, really. He was older’n her. A Cuban. The Manerases and me were in bidness together. She tell you about that?”

“Yes.”

“Figured she would. That lady does like to talk. We ain’t speakin’, you know, her and me. Damn fool situation for a man to get himself into, but it happens. It happens.” He sighed and sucked on his cigar. “Who were they?”

“I don’t know,” Citron said.

“Kidnappers, you reckon?”

“If they were, they weren’t very determined.”

“Because they took off after you threw the pansies at ’em.”

“Carnations.”

“Carnations. Why’d you do a damn fool thing like that?”

“Reflex.”

“Before you thought, huh?”

Citron nodded.

Keats looked out the window. The view was of some gray-looking marshland. “Not much of a scenic drive,” he said.

“It gets better.”

“What’d they look like? I mean, were they white, black, brown, or what?”

“White. They had diving masks on. Wet suits. From the way they moved, I’d say they were in their late twenties, early thirties.”

“Voices?”

“Standard American.”

“What’d they say?”

“They said, ‘Not a sound’ or ‘Don’t make a sound.’ I don’t remember which, but they said it to your daughter. And then they said, ‘You either,’ to me. I think I said, ‘Okay’ or ‘Right.’ Nothing very memorable. Oh, one more thing. She bit one of them on the hand.”

“Bit him, by God!” Keats beamed. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“I forgot.”

“What’d he do?”

“He yelled.”

“Bit him, by God!” Keats nodded and smiled to himself for a few moments, then turned and gave Citron a careful inspection.

“You married?”

“No.”

“What d’you do for a living?”

“I’m a caretaker and a sometime writer.”

“What kind of writer?”

“Travel articles.”

“Pay anything?”

“Not much.”

“Been to college?”

Citron nodded.

“Ever been in jail?”

“Once.”

“How long?”

“Thirteen months.”

“What for?”

“I was never quite sure.”

“Where?”

“Africa.”

“Shit, that don’t count then.” Keats again looked out the window, frowned at the urban clutter that lined Lincoln Boulevard, and turned, still frowning, to Citron. “I ain’t gonna ask you if you’ve been beddin’ Velveeta because I already know the answer to that, but I am gonna ask you this. What d’you think of her?”

“I think,” Citron said slowly, “I think she’s a bit... puzzled.”

That seemed to satisfy Keats. He nodded as if confirming something and after a silence that lasted for nearly two blocks, said, “I’m rich. I mean, big rich.”

“So I understand.”

“Made it all off dope. Marijuana at first and then I went in early on coke, made a killing, and got out clean. You know what I’m in now?”

“No.”

“Shoes. Automated, self-service, discount shoestores. I sat down and thought about what people gotta have, good times and bad. Well, I came up with shoes. Cheap imported shoes. I got a chain of stores going now, a dozen in Florida, five in Alabama, and we’re moving into Mississippi and Louisiana next year. But, hell, you don’t wanta hear about my shoestores.”

“I can listen,” Citron said.

“No, what you really wanta hear about is what I’m leadin’ up to. And I’m gonna come right out with it. Velveeta, well, Velveeta’s sort of pretty and halfway smart, even if she is six bricks short of a load, and four, five years back I set her up this irrevocable trust, so there’s money there, but what I wanta know is if, for the next few weeks, you’d sort of be her fancy man.”

Citron turned to stare at Keats, whose faded blue eyes had lost their squint. They were nearly round now and, Citron thought, almost honest. “Fancy man,” he said. “Or do you mean keeper?”

Keats smiled. “Well, maybe a little of both.”