Missionary Stew

Chapter 18

The Mexican maid, a confidante and co-conspirator of Louise Veatch’s, awoke the sleeping couple at 5:15 P.M. By 5:30, Draper Haere was dressed and out of the house and walking his long walk back to his enormous room in Venice. It was a walk of a bit less than four miles, and Haere made it in just under sixty minutes. The sun had set by the time he left Louise Veatch, and it had been dark for almost an hour when he inserted his key into the Haere Building’s side entrance. Behind him, a car door slammed. Haere turned and saw Morgan Citron leave his Toyota and start walking toward him. “I’ve been waiting for you,” Citron said as he drew near.

“I was in a meeting,” Haere said, unlocked the door, pushed it open, and gestured for Citron to precede him up the stairs. At the landing, Haere used another key to unlock the door that led into the room. He went in first, found the switch, and turned on a lamp. When he saw Drew Meade propped up in the Huey Long chair, he said, “Shit.”

“Is he dead?” Citron said from behind Haere. “He sure as hell looks dead.”

“Hey, Meade,” Haere said, raising his voice slightly. When there was no answer, Haere said, “He’s dead. They even left the rug.”

Citron looked. A cheap eight-by-ten blue rug lay neatly rolled up by the Huey Long chair. Hubert, the cat, was on the rug, using it as a scratching post. When he was through scratching, he yawned.

“Not much of a watchdog, that cat,” Citron said.

“He has no enemies,” Haere said, turned back, closed the door, and moved slowly and cautiously over to the dead Drew Meade. Citron moved with him.

“I don’t think your locks bothered them any,” Citron said.

“Not much,” Haere agreed and took a ballpoint pen from his vest pocket. He used the pen to move the lapel of Meade’s jacket to one side. The two bullet holes made in the white shirt by the .25 caliber rounds were separated by less than an inch. A bloodstain, about the size of a saucer, had spread over the shirtfront.

“He didn’t bleed a lot, which means he died fast,” Haere said.

“There’s no blood on the chair either, and what’s on his shirt seems dry, so I’d say he’s been dead awhile, and that’s about the extent of my forensic knowledge.”

“Mine, too,” Haere said as he bent over and almost absently picked up the cat, who cried with delight in its loud half-Siamese voice. Stroking the cat, Haere circled the dead Meade, stepping over the rolled-up rug. “Ever search a dead body?” he asked Citron.

“Shouldn’t we let the cops do that?”

“What cops?” Haere said as he and the cat started circling Meade once more.

“I see. No cops.”

“He’s already dead and buried in Singapore. We’ll just prop him up against a lamppost somewhere, maybe over in Culver City. Dead bodies don’t bother them much over there. See what he’s got in his pockets.”

“Me?”

“I’ve got to feed the cat.”

Still carrying Hubert, Haere headed for the kitchen area, took down a can of 9-Lives from a shelf, and sliced off its top with his electric can opener. While Haere fed Hubert, Citron knelt by the side of the Huey Long chair and studied the dead man.

Drew Meade’s eyes were still open and, for some reason, seemed focused on something off to the right. Despite himself, Citron glanced over his shoulder, but there was nothing to see but a wall of books. He looks as if he’s reading the titles, Citron thought, and doesn’t see much that interests him. If there was an expression on Meade’s dead face, it was one of disappointment mingled with disdain. The mouth was slightly open in the beginning of what seemed to be a sneer. The head was tilted back, leaning against the large chair’s padded rest. The lifeless hands lay palm up in the lap in a supplicant’s helpless position that somehow Citron knew they had never once assumed in life. The big feet were firmly planted on the floor. Meade smelled of death, which meant that he smelled of urine and feces.

Citron sighed and reached into the inside breast pocket of Meade’s jacket just as Haere rejoined him. He found a U.S. passport and handed it to Haere. In the outside jacket pockets he found a pack of Camels and a box of matches that bore the name of a Chinese restaurant. He passed both up to Haere. There was nothing in the shirt pocket or in the pants hip pockets. In a pants side pocket, the one on the right, there was a small roll of bills, which he also handed up to Haere. The other side pocket produced seventy-four cents in change. Citron put the change back and studied Meade for several moments, then lifted up the pants legs and rolled down the short black socks. There was nothing concealed beneath them, only eggshell-white, surprisingly thin ankles. Citron rose.

“That’s it,” he said.

“He had sixty-seven dollars and a passport made out to someone called Donald B. Millrun. Has he got a watch?” Citron looked. “Yes.”

“Take it.”

Citron removed the watch, an old self-winding stainless-steel Omega Seamaster. He gave it to Haere. “Robbery?” he asked.

“Why not?” Haere said. “It’ll make the cops happy.”

“What now?”

“Well, now we roll him back up in the rug, put him in your car, and dump him over in Culver City. Somewhere just off the freeway, I think.”

“My car?”

“Sure.”

“Why not yours?”

“I can’t remember where I parked mine.”

“Well, Christ,” Citron said, knelt again, and rolled out the rug. He looked up at Haere. “What d’you want? The head or the legs?”

Haere frowned. “Did you look in the watch pocket? A New York cop I once knew told me some guys hide things in their watch pockets. Older guys especially. He said it was one of the first places he always looked.”

“I didn’t look there.”

“Well, why don’t you?”

“What do you expect to find — a folded-up thousand-dollar bill with the Swiss account number on it?”

“Just look, will you?”

Citron dug a forefinger down into the small watch pocket, felt something, and used thumb and forefinger to lift it out. It was a business card folded into a small square. Citron unfolded the card. On its front was printed: DREW MEADE, INVESTMENT COUNSELOR. There was no address or phone number. On the back was written in pencil, “D. Haere,” and then Haere’s phone number. In ballpoint ink was written, “B. Maneras,” and after that something illegible. Citron handed the card to Haere.

Haere read the investment-counselor side and then turned it over. “Well, Haere we know,” he said. “Who’s B. Maneras?”

“Maybe he’s the one they want us to find out about.”

“You think it was planted?”

Citron shrugged. “If we hadn’t found it, you would’ve been talking to the cops.”

Haere thought about that and then shook his head. “I can’t decide whether it was planted or not.” He turned to examine Meade thoughtfully, then turned back to Citron. “What d’you think we should do about B. Maneras?”

“We can stop where we are and call the cops — or I can find out who Maneras is, which I don’t think is going to be too hard. You call it.”

Instead of replying, Haere once more turned back to the dead Drew Meade and again seemed to study him thoughtfully. After fifteen seconds went by, Citron said, “Well?”

“I’ll take the feet,” Haere said.

They had no trouble getting Drew Meade down the stairs, but they did experience some difficulty in folding him into the rear of Citron’s 1969 Toyota sedan. Either Meade or the rug wouldn’t fold. They finally managed to fit him in by lowering the head end of the rug down onto the floor and letting the feet end stick up in the air, pointing at the rear window.

Haere slammed the rear door shut. “Well, that should do it,” he said, taking a step backward to see how it all looked.

“You’re coming, aren’t you?” Citron said.

“Did you think I wouldn’t?”

“It crossed my mind.”

“Mine, too,” Haere said as he opened the curbside front door and got in.

In Culver City they found an industrial side street with a vacant lot that contained six junked cars, and there they dumped Drew Meade. They left him, still wrapped in his cheap blue rug, lying between the remains of a 1970 Volvo and a 1973 Ford Fairlane.

Back on the Santa Monica freeway, Draper Haere said he could use a drink, and they decided on a bar in Venice they both knew, the Mainsail, a place that catered to serious drinkers.

After the waitress brought Haere his double Scotch on the rocks and Citron his double vodka, also on the rocks, they both drank and then waited for the other to begin. Finally, Haere lit one of his occasional cigarettes and said, “You’ve got something else, haven’t you? That’s why you were outside waiting.”

“A place name. Tucamondo.”

Haere nodded as he drew a mental map and pinpointed Tucamondo. “Is that where it happened — the small secret war Meade was going to tell us about?”

“Maybe.”

Haere had some more of his Scotch. “How’d you find out — if you don’t mind my asking?”

“There’s a guy from Miami called B. S. Keats. The B. S. stands for Byron Shelley. He’s got a remittance-woman daughter who he wants me to baby-sit. Mr. Keats was once very active in the cocaine trade. He wanted to pay me to baby-sit his daughter, who’s a touch fey. I agreed, but instead of money, I asked him to make a few phone calls. He did and came up with Tucamondo.”

“Just like that?”

Citron nodded.

Haere sighed and said, “I think you’d better tell me about Mr. Keats and his daughter.”

“Yes,” Citron said. “I think I’d better.”

They were on their second drink, singles this time, when Citron finished his report. The report was delivered to an impressed Haere in short paragraphs, none more than two sentences long. Citron had spoken in a flat, almost uninflected voice, pausing at the end of each sentence, pausing even longer before a new paragraph began, and spelling out each name as if he thought Haere might want to write it down. The most important facts were grouped together first, and the rest were recited in their descending order of interest and importance. He’s calling in a story, Haere marveled, as Citron ended his report with a precise accounting of how much of Haere’s money he had spent thus far.

Draper Haere was silent for almost a minute as he digested what he had been told. “I rather liked the two Haitians,” he said. “The two bodyguards.” He paused. “And Keats, too. B. S. Keats. B for Byron, S for Shelley. I liked him, too. And all it took him was a couple of phone calls.”

“Four actually.”

“Four.”

There was another silence. Haere finished his second drink and said, “That’s it, then?”

“Not quite.”

Haere nodded slowly. “I sort of expected there’d be something else. A kicker.”

“Velveeta Keats.”

“Velveeta. I like her, too. The name, I mean.”

“She was once married to someone called Maneras.”

“R. Maneras, maybe?”

“J. Maneras. J for Jimmy — or Jaime.”

“Maneras. That’s a pretty common name, isn’t it?”

“About like, oh, say, Hansen or Nichols.”

“Still a pretty common name.”

“Not if you find it written on a card that’s folded up and stuck down inside some dead man’s watch pocket just a couple of hours after you agree to baby-sit a lady who was once married to somebody called Maneras. I’d say that makes it a rather unusual name.”

Haere rattled the ice in his empty drink. “So where are we?”

“I think we’re being pointed in a certain direction, don’t you?”

“The right direction?”

“I don’t know.”

Haere rattled his ice again. “Velveeta Keats,” he said. “It’s a pretty name, if you forget about the cheese.”

“I thought I’d take her to dinner tonight.”

“Someplace nice.”

“Yes.”

“Buy her some wine.”

“She likes wine.”

“Maneras,” Haere said. “I wonder who B. Maneras is.”

“I’ll try to find out.”

“If you do, call me.”

“No matter how late?”

“Anytime,” Haere said.