Missionary Stew

Chapter 23

The huge living room in which Baldwin and Louise Veatch did most of their entertaining, if scarcely any of their living, was minimally furnished and almost devoid of color except for a few curious paintings by some long-dead Mexican artist. The paintings hung near the tiled concrete staircase that swept down in an S-curve from the second floor. A wall of glass looked out over the patio, the pool, the tennis court, and a fine old stand of pines and eucalyptus. The trees should have helped. Instead, they only barred the sunshine and made the room gloomy and tomblike and even menacing. It was a room that caused guests to drink too much and talk too little at the infrequent parties that were held in it. Louise Veatch hated the room. Her husband, when he thought about it at all, which was seldom, found it only drab, but not drab enough to spend any money on.

The Mexican maid’s sandals slapped against the large square purplish tiles as she served drinks from a silver tray. There was only silence until the maid left. Then David Slipper raised his glass of bourbon and water and said, “Well, here’s to all of us.”

Slipper was seated in a cream-colored chair of boxy design. Draper Haere stared at him coldly and then shifted his gaze to the governor-elect, who was seated at one end of the long cream couch. At the other end was his wife. The governor-elect was fondling a glass of white wine. Louise Veatch had a glass of vodka on the rocks to her lips. She had the feeling she would need it.

“Okay, Baldy,” Haere said. “Let’s have it.”

Veatch met Haere’s cold gaze with a cool one of his own. His mouth, before he spoke, was drawn into a firm line. His big chin looked bold and resolute. It’s his hail-to-the-chief look, Haere thought.

“I’ve decided we should drop our little investigation before it goes any further than it already has,” Veatch said.

Haere nodded thoughtfully without shifting his gaze. “You’ve decided?”

“That’s right.”

Haere looked at David Slipper. “What’d you promise him, Slippery, besides the moon and the stars and the key to the vault?”

The white-haired man shrugged and smiled. “I never promise anything, Draper. You know that. I only mention... possibilities.”

Haere smiled sadly and turned back to Veatch. “Baldy,” he said, “let me ask you just one question. What the fuck makes you think you can call it off?”

Suspecting a trap, Veatch summoned his warmest, most lopsided grin. “I only meant, Draper, that my involvement, which you’ll have to admit has been minimal, will end.” He paused. The grin disappeared. “Forthwith,” he snapped.

Haere was seated on a chair made out of chrome tubing and leather. He leaned forward, his arms resting on his knees, both hands clasping his glass of beer. It was an earnest position and the same that most assume when seated on a toilet. “Baldy,” he said softly, “you’re up to your neck in it. It was your idea to begin with. Jack Replogle came to you first, not to me. But what you’ve boarded is a runaway train. You certainly don’t want to stay, but you sure as hell can’t jump either.”

“I say jump, governor,” Slipper said.

“Shut up, Slippery,” Haere said. To Veatch he said, “I’ve caught a glimpse of what this thing might be. Just a glimpse — somewhere out of the corner of my eye. I’m almost convinced it’s big, awful, and absolutely devastating, and I’m guessing — just guessing — that in the books it could fall somewhere in between Teapot Dome and Watergate. If I’m right, then I wouldn’t presume to tell you how to use it. You know. You could ride it right into the White House. Maybe even in ’eighty-four. But regardless of what you do, Baldy, I’m going after it — if necessary, all by myself. There’re plenty of other would-be Presidents out there who’ll know what to do with it — except I prefer you, God knows why. So what I’m offering you is your last best chance to go live in the White House. In or out?”

It was fifteen seconds before the obviously tempted Baldwin Veatch gave his one-word answer. “Out,” he said.

“Well, shit,” Louise Veatch said.

He turned to her, surprised, perhaps even hurt. “You don’t agree at all, do you?”

“I just think you’re dropping out too soon. You could wait, see what Draper comes up with, see if it’s really worth it, and then make up your mind.”

“That would be a bit too late, I’m afraid, Louise,” Slipper said from around the cigar he was carefully lighting. “The — uh — possibilities I mentioned to Baldwin are contingent upon his immediate, let’s say... disassociation.” Slipper smiled a comfortable, confident smile that seemed to signal he had nearly completed what he had been sent to do. Or maybe, Haere thought, he’s just found out that he can still matter after all.

Haere slowly got up from the chrome-and-leather chair and stood staring down at Veatch. “By next June, Baldy, they won’t even know who you are. By next July, even Slippery here won’t be taking your calls.”

“I’m out,” Veatch said.

Slipper came up quickly from the boxlike chair with a curious display of easy, fluid grace. He crossed over and stood searching Haere’s face for something he apparently couldn’t locate. “Draper, I’m fond of you. You know that.” He paused and then continued in a soft, almost pleading tone. “And I admire you. By God, I do. Now I’m begging you not to go through with this thing. Begging you. If I thought it’d do any good, I’d get down on my knees and beg.”

“You know what it is, Slippery?” Haere said. “What it really is?”

The white-haired man shook his head. “What doesn’t matter, Draper. But it’s big and it’s bad, just as you said. I can judge its... its badness by the people who sent me and who’re going to be mighty unhappy when I go back and tell ’em what you aim to do.”

“How unhappy?” Louise Veatch said.

Slipper looked at her and shrugged. “They’ll send somebody else out. And it won’t be some old coot like me, either.”

“Who?” Louise Veatch demanded, rising quickly, the concern sweeping over her face. “Who’ll they send?”

“Louise,” Slipper said, “I don’t even like to think about it.”

She quickly turned on Haere, her face suddenly pale, her hands clutching her empty glass as though to keep them from shaking. “You knew, didn’t you?”

Haere nodded. “Slippery made it all pretty plain the first time he and I talked.”

She turned to her husband. “Make him drop it.” The governor-elect only looked away. Louise Veatch turned back to Haere. “Goddamn you, Draper, get out of it!”

Haere smiled slightly. “I either can’t, or won’t,” he said. “I’m not sure which.” He turned then and walked from the room. All three of them, two standing and one seated, watched him go. Nothing was said. No one tried to stop him.

Haere ran two errands on his way home. The first was at the travel agency near Seventh and Wilshire in Santa Monica, where he picked up the two first-class tickets to Tucamondo from Carlotta Preciado, the pretty twenty-six-year-old who examined him dubiously as she handed over the tickets along with his American Express card.

“Now what’s wrong?” he said.

“You don’t look so hot, Draper.”

“I always look like this.”

“No, usually you look like the world’s going to end next month. But today you look like you just heard they moved it up a week.”

He smiled. “That better?”

“Not much.” She indicated the two tickets he held in his hand. “Nobody’s going down there, you know. I haven’t booked that flight in over two months. What the hell’re they going down there for, anyway?”

“Honeymoon,” Haere said.

“I can get them a real deal in Jamaica.”

“They’re looking for excitement.”

“Excitement,” she said. “Well, getting shot at or disappeared should be sort of exciting.”

“That’s just the kind of thing they’re looking for.”

Carlotta Preciado sniffed. “Velveeta. Who in the world would ever name their kid Velveeta?”

“Fondue freaks?”

“Tell your honeymooners something for me, will you, Draper? Tell them if they don’t like Jamaica, I can get them a real sweet deal in Barbados. And if they want excitement, they can go to a cockfight and watch two chickens beat up on each other.”

Haere grinned. “See you, Carlotta.”

“Velveeta,” she said. “Jesus.”

Haere’s next stop was the parking lot of the Crocker Bank. He opened the old Cadillac convertible’s glove compartment, rummaged around, and finally found a small white paper sack that had once contained something he had bought at Brooks Brothers. He stuck the folded sack into his hip pocket, entered the bank, and was left alone in a small room with his safety deposit box. He tore a check from his checkbook, turned it over, and on the back wrote, “IOU $10,000,” signed his name, and then wrote in the date. He opened the box and counted out $10,000 in fifties from the pig-fucker fund. He put the money into the Brooks Brothers sack and folded it so that it looked as if the sack might contain his lunch. He put the IOU in the safety deposit box, returned the box to its proper slot, agreed with the guard that it was indeed warm for November, went back out to his car, and locked the money away in its trunk.

When he found a parking place only a block from his building, Haere wrote the location down on a card in his wallet. He took the money from the trunk, walked home, up the stairs, and into his enormous room, where he found John D. Yarn and Richard Tighe waiting for him.

“Well,” Haere said. “You’re back.” He turned, closed the door, and put the money sack down on a small oak table.

“We’re back,” Tighe agreed. He was sitting in the same chair he had sat in before, the Henry Wallace one. Yarn was back on the Wayne Morse couch. Hubert, the cat, was in Yarn’s lap, almost asleep.

“We’ve been waiting quite a while,” Yarn said. “We’d almost decided to go and leave you a message. We were going to break pussy here’s neck. As an attention grabber, that’d be pretty good, wouldn’t you say?”

“You don’t have to break his neck,” Haere said. “You’ve got my attention.”

“This mess you’ve been poking around in ever since Mr. Replogle got himself killed up there in the mountains and we came around pretending to be with the FBI.” Tighe stopped talking and raised his eyebrows in mock wonderment. “You do know we’re not with the FBI?”

“It dawned on me.”

“We thought it might,” Tighe said. “Well, you’ll have to agree that what you’re poking around in is a real mess, right?”

Haere nodded. “A real mess.”

“It’s also more fluid than you might realize. Alliances are made, broken, remade, dissolved, and made again.”

“You’re not making sense,” Haere said.

“He’s not trying to,” Yarn said. “What he’s trying to do is give you a message.”

“Which is what?”

“We’re asking you to drop the whole thing,” Tighe said. “We’re asking you to forget all about it.”

“All right,” Haere said. “I will.”

Yarn smiled. “I don’t believe you, Mr. Haere.”

Tighe picked the cat up underneath its front legs and stared into its sleepy blue eyes. “We might have to break your neck after all, pussy.”

“Mr. Tighe doesn’t believe you either,” Yarn said.

“I’m no actor,” Haere said.

“No, of course not,” Tighe said as he put Hubert gently down on the floor. “But you do understand we’re quite serious.”

Haere nodded. “I can believe that.”

“Good,” Yarn said brightly and turned to Tighe. “Well, we’ve made our request, delivered our threat, so I guess we can go.” He nodded toward the white Brooks Brothers paper sack. “What’s in the sack?”

“Ten thousand in cash,” Haere said and saw that they didn’t believe him.

Both men rose and moved to the door, accompanied by Hubert. Haere followed closely. “Keep out of it, Mr. Haere,” Yarn said, “for your own sake.”

Haere nodded, but said nothing.

“So long, kitty,” Yarn said and opened the door. Tighe went through it. Yarn started to follow him, but paused. “I almost forgot,” he said, whirled quickly, and drove his left fist hard into Haere’s stomach. Haere doubled over. Yarn stood watching him for a moment. “Just to make sure we really did get your attention,” he said and left.

Haere straightened up slowly, clutching his stomach and gasping for breath. He moved slowly out onto the landing and watched the two men reach the bottom of the stairs and go through the door and out into the street. Haere turned and stumbled back into the enormous room. The pain came again, almost doubling him over. He straightened and moved, one slow step at a time, to the phone, picked it up, and punched a number. When it was answered he said, “Car-lotta? This is Draper again. That honeymoon flight to Tucamondo tomorrow? Get me a seat on it, will you?”