Missionary Stew

Chapter 26

When the telephone rang at 1:00 that same afternoon in Gladys Citron’s living room, the blue-eyed man who sometimes called himself John D. Yarn rose from the wingback chair in which Drew Meade had died, crossed to the telephone, picked it up, and said hello. The voice that screamed into his ear made him wince, lower the phone, and press it against his chest. He turned to Gladys Citron.

“It’s him,” Yarn said, “and he’s not happy.”

Gladys Citron glanced first at the brown-eyed man seated on the couch, the one who sometimes called himself Richard Tighe. He shrugged. She put down her drink, rose, crossed to the phone, and accepted it from Yarn. She removed a pearl earring, put the phone to her left ear, and said, “Well?”

“Goddamnit, Gladys!” The voice was loud enough to be considered a yell, and it belonged to B. S. Keats, who was yelling from Florida.

“ ‘Goddamnit, Gladys’ isn’t going to get us anywhere, B. S.,” she said and motioned for Yarn to hand her the drink she had put down. Yarn gave her the glass and then lit a cigarette, which he also handed her.

“You claimed that kid of yours was gaga,” Keats said, almost screeching the words. “That he had scrambled eggs for brains.” The screech dropped back down to a yell. Tighe had risen from the couch and moved over to stand by Yarn. Gladys Citron had lifted the phone away from her ear. Both men had heard Keats’s voice quite clearly. It sounded like tin being torn.

“I told you he was disturbed, B. S. That’s all. That he was suffering from depression.”

“Depression, huh? Well, your melancholy baby who wasn’t supposed to be able to find his ass with both hands sure as shit seems to have snapped out of it. You know where he is right now?”

“Probably on a plane.”

“And you know who’s with him?”

“Your daughter.”

“My daughter, the nut case.”

“I met her this morning,” Gladys Citron said and paused to take a swallow of her drink. “I found her rather sweet and charming in a fey sort of way.”

“You did, huh?”

“Yes.”

“Well, guess who they took along as keeper, my fruitcake daughter and your Sad Sam son?”

“Keeper?”

“That’s right. Keeper.”

“Who?”

“Draper Haere.”

There was a long silence that was finally broken when Gladys Citron said, “I see.”

“You fucked up, Gladys.” Keats was no longer shouting. His voice had grown soft and almost tender. Gladys Citron interpreted the new tone as a threat, a quite serious threat.

“We warned Haere off,” she said.

“We? You mean those two gigolos of yours? Shit, they couldn’t warn flies off a peach.”

“You’re wrong.”

Keats sighed. “I hate to say this, Gladys, but it sure looks like you just went and fucked up everything.”

“I don’t fuck things up, B. S. I straighten things out. Let me remind you of a couple of items. More than a couple. When your daughter was playing Crazy Mary down in Miami, and about to go to the police, I lured her out here with an invitation from a movie-star landlady to come live on the beach in Malibu. And after Colorado, when we suspected Draper Haere would start looking for a professional snoop, I managed to lumber him with my own son, who, I felt then and still feel, is so emotionally damaged he’s virtually useless. Then let’s not forget old Drew Meade. I took care of that little problem, too. So now we have another one: Draper Haere. But he’s really no big problem. My people can leave this afternoon and be in Tucamondo early tomorrow morning.”

There was a silence from the Florida end and then Keats said, “Well, you did use your own kid, I gotta admit that.”

“And one more thing, B. S. I brought you in on this deal, which is something else you might remember occasionally.”

“I don’t forget anything.” There was another brief silence which lasted until Keats said, “I’ll give you credit, Gladys, it’s one sweet deal.”

“How’s the general?”

“He’s all set and on his way back.”

“Then there’s no reason why we can’t proceed.”

“None except for this Haere fella.”

“I’ll take care of that.”

“Gladys.”

“What?”

“I don’t want Velveeta hurt.”

“No. Of course not.”

“I mean, I don’t want her touched.”

“She won’t be.”

“Well, just to make sure, I’m gonna be sending my two French niggers down there tonight, and you might as well know if anything happens to Velveeta, well, my two niggers will have to take care of that boy of yours.”

“I see.” She looked up, studied the ceiling for several seconds, then sighed and said, “B. S., I’m going to say something very simply and I want you to listen most carefully.”

“I’m listenin’.”

“If your people touch my son, I’ll kill you.” She slammed down the phone and finished her drink in three long swallows.

Yarn grinned at her. “Think he believed you?”

“Hell, I believed her,” Tighe said. “Why wouldn’t he?”

She looked first at Yarn, then at Tighe. “There’s a three P.M. flight to Miami.”

“We’ll be on it,” Tighe said.

Gladys Citron looked at her watch. It was 1:10. “Well,” she said, “nap time.” She reached up and ran her forefinger gently down Yarn’s right jawline, turned, and went down the hall that led to her bedroom. Yarn started to follow, but paused at the entrance to the hall, turned back, and looked at Tighe. “Coming?”

“Yeah, sure,” Tighe said. “In a second.”

The only other passengers on Tucaereo Flight 9 to the capital, Ciudad Tucamondo, were a thirty-four-year-old American and a young, drably dressed Venezuelan woman who tried to make herself invisible and who, Haere suspected, was a mule for some cocaine smuggler now homeward bound.

The American and the Venezuelan woman had thriftily bought tourist seats, but were promptly moved up into the first-class section once the plane was in the air. There, all five passengers were cosseted by the purser and the five flight attendants until they could eat and drink no more. Finally convinced they could do nothing else for their passengers, the crew gathered in the front of the first-class section and either slept or gossiped among themselves for the rest of the four-hour flight.

After his opening conversational gambit was rebuffed by the young Venezuelan woman, the American went looking for someone else to talk to. His glance fell on the face of the melancholy saint who sat by himself across the aisle from the remaining two passengers, the man and the woman who slept leaning against each other. The American moved down the aisle and stopped at the seat of the saint, who was staring out the window into the dark.

The American cleared his throat. Draper Haere looked up at him.

“First trip down here?” the American said.

“Very first.”

“Mine, too,” the man said and slid into the seat next to Haere. He held out his hand. As Haere reached for it, the man said, “I’m Jim Blaine.”

Haere brightened. “Any relation to James G. Blaine?”

“That’s my full name, all right. Where’s the James G. you know from?”

“From Maine,” Haere said. “A long time ago. He wanted to be President but never quite made it.”

“All my relatives are from Kansas. Not too many Blaines in Wichita, where I’m from, but there’re a lot over in Kansas City, except most of that’s in Missouri, you know.”

Haere nodded his understanding and asked, “What takes you down to Tucamondo?”

“Well, it’s sort of a funny story. I’m a doctor, an M.D., and I’m going down there for the Friends — you know, the Quakers?” Haere nodded again.

“The folks down there need doctors,” Blaine said. “They need’em real bad from what I hear.” He shook his head regretfully. It was a largish head with a high forehead, made even higher by a rapidly retreating hairline. Blaine had grown a blond mustache beneath his snub nose, and under the mustache was a small, almost prim mouth that rested uneasily on a sledgehammer chin. Blaine’s eyes went with the chin rather than the mouth. The eyes were sky-blue, almost unblinking, or perhaps just steady, and curiously skeptical. Haere wondered what Blaine specialized in and decided that whatever it was, he must be good at it.

“Are you going to work in a hospital?” he asked.

Blaine gave his big head a decisive shake. “A clinic out in the boonies. The Friends set it up a couple of years back. It did okay until about two months ago when somebody disappeared the guy who was running it.” He shook his head almost angrily and the big chin seemed to take an apparently fearless swipe at the world. “He was a friend of mine,” Blaine continued. “Joe Rice. We started out in the first grade and went through med school together. So when they disappeared him, I thought, well, the hell with it. I got in touch with the Friends, farmed out my patients to some other guys, kissed the wife and kids goodbye, and here I am.” He smiled. “Damn fool thing to do, I guess.”

“It sounds more dangerous than foolish,” Haere said.

“I’m not a Quaker, you understand,” Blaine said, then paused. “Hell, I don’t guess I’m anything. Haven’t seen the inside of a church in twenty years. Didn’t even get married in one. But Joe Rice, he was a Quaker.” Blaine smiled. “When we were kids, real little kids, I used to try and knock it out of him.” He chuckled. “He’d beat the shit out of me. Some Quaker.”

“There’s no word about what happened to him?” Haere asked.

“Nothing. One day he started off for the clinic in his car, and zap. That was it. They never even found the car. There’s no law down there, you know. I mean, they got soldiers and what they call federal police, but there’s no law.”

“So I hear.”

“Well, maybe I can cure a few sick folks. Set a few broken bones. Deliver a few babies. Old Jim wrote me once that he was getting to be a specialist in gunshot wounds. Maybe that’s why they took him. He patched up the wrong people.”

“Maybe.”

Blaine cocked his head as he examined Haere. “You’re not a missionary, are you?”

Haere shook his head.

“When I first saw you, I thought you might be. You sort of look like what I think a missionary would look like. What line’re you in?”

“Direct mail,” Haere said.

“Well, that must be pretty interesting,” Blaine said and even managed to put some conviction into his tone. He yawned then, covered it with a hand, looked at his watch, and said, “I guess maybe I’d better try and get some sleep.” He rose. “Been nice talking to you.”

“And to you,” Haere said.

The plane landed one hour and thirty-five minutes later at Tucamondo International Airport. The Venezuelan woman was first off the plane. Next down the ramp went Dr. James Blaine, followed by Velveeta Keats, Morgan Citron, and Draper Haere.

When Dr. Blaine reached the bottom of the ramp he was confronted by four men in civilian clothes, questioned briefly, and led away in handcuffs.