The Procane Chronicle

18

The rental limousine that met us at National Airport in Washington was the twin of the black seven-passenger Cadillac that had taken us to LaGuardia. But there was no similarity in the drivers. The one in New York had been a bitter, snarling Irishman who lectured us on how the niggers were getting all the good jobs until Procane pushed the button that raised the glass divider.

Our Washington driver was a slight, swarthy Cuban with a crisp smile and a high-pitched giggle that he let out each time the traffic went wrong, which it did every thirty seconds or so.

The weather was cold, around thirty degrees, with fat, low clouds that looked as though they wanted to spit wet snow at the Potomac. I had never had any luck with Washington weather. I either froze or fried.

Procane kept looking up at the clouds. He turned to Janet Whistler and said, “Well?”

“It’s supposed to clear around five,” she said.

I asked Procane why he was so interested.

“If it snows, it’s off.”

“No snow,” the driver said, cheerfully joining the conversation. His name was Manuel Carasa and he had the total unself-consciousness of those who like to strike up conversations at bus stops. “My nose say no snow,” he said, pointing to it so that we could be sure where it was. “From the first time I see snow six, seven years ago I can smell it. Always. No snow today.”

“What a relief,” Janet Whistler said.

“How did you get out of Cuba?” Wiedstein asked the driver.

“Castro, he let me go. First to Miami. Very nice there. Very warm. No snow. I learn English there. Then I come to Washington where it is very beautiful but not so warm except in the summer when it is very warm like Havana. Washington is more beautiful than Havana, no?”

“It’s pretty in the spring,” Wiedstein said. “I was here in April once with my high school senior class.”

“One could paint here,” Procane said. “I think it’s because of the trees. That should be a beautiful spot in the spring and fall.”

We were just past Seventeenth Street going west on Independence Avenue and Procane was looking out at a wooded area just south of the reflecting pool. In the middle of the woods was a small, fake Greek temple. For some reason it didn’t seem out of place.

“What’s that, driver?” Procane said.

“Memorial to dead in World War Number One,” he said. “All dead man’s names are written in stone. Just dead from Washington though, not dead from all over.”

“It’s rather pleasant,” Procane said.

“Over there at right is Lincoln Memorial,” the driver said. “Very famous.”

“Thank you,” Wiedstein said.

We went past the Lincoln Memorial and then along a four-lane highway that separated the Potomac from the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The Kennedy Center jutted out over the highway as if it wanted to edge as close to the river as it could. It had a series of round gold pipes running up its marble sides, but they looked to me as though they’d been added as an afterthought and a none too inspired one at that.

The center’s neighbor was the Watergate cooperative apartment complex where prices started at $44,000 for a one-bedroom unit and shot up to $150,000 for a three-bedroom affair with a wood-burning fireplace and a view of the river. I tried to remember whether I knew anyone who lived there, but decided that I didn’t although a future client might turn up in the place someday if the burglary rate continued to fulfill its early promise.

The driver started to snake the Cadillac through a series of switchbacks and crossovers and underneath what seemed to be an elevated highway of some kind. He made a right turn and about three blocks later I knew we were in Georgetown because I recognized the Rive Gauche, a pretty good restaurant where I’d once had some excellent snails.

If Washington has a ghetto, I suppose it’s Georgetown. Although anyone can live there, you’d probably feel more comfortable about it if you were rich or white, preferably both. Its narrow streets are lined with some fine old trees and some skinny houses all shouldered up together that are rather old, too, or try to look that way. If you’d bought one when Kennedy came in you could probably sell it now and double your money.

The young also live in Georgetown. The bright, quick, upwardly mobile young, and they give it a false sense of informality. Its real rulers are the rich, quiet, powerful families who eat politics three times a day and hunger for more. The rich and powerful also give Georgetown its hoity-toity air that makes a lot of its residents reluctant to be seen lugging home a six-pack of beer. Not quite forty years ago a large chunk of Georgetown was black slum so there may be hope for Harlem after all.

We turned right on N Street and two or three blocks later the driver stopped in front of a three-story house built of bricks that were painted white. The house was almost flush with the sidewalk as were its neighbors. The houses in that block were jammed up against each other. They were all brick and painted either gray or white and their lines were faintly federal, I think.

“Didn’t John Kennedy live on this street when he was a senator?” I said.

“A block or so on down,” Procane said and then told the driver to be back at ten that night. He led the way up the seven steps to the small porch, took out a key, and unlocked the door.

“That you, Mistah Procane?” It was a woman’s voice calling from somewhere in the rear of the house. He called back that it was and then turned to me. “My housekeeper, Mrs. Williams. She came down from New York yesterday to get the place ready.”

A black woman of about fifty-five dressed in a white uniform came into the entrance hall and started collecting our coats. Procane introduced her to me and she said, how do, and started hanging the coats up in a closet.

“How many you gonna be for dinner?” she said.

“Just the four of us,” Procane said and led the way into the living room. It had a huge chandelier that must have been a hundred years old because it used real candles instead of electric lights. There was a worn oriental rug on the floor that was probably as old as the chandelier and maybe even more expensive. The furniture was low with curving, spindly legs and I wondered whether people were that much shorter in the late eighteenth century. On the walls were some oil portraits, darkened by age, and above the mantel was a large mirror with a gilt frame. I didn’t see any ashtrays.

The housekeeper followed us into the room and told Procane, “I spect y’all be wantin some coffee,” and Procane said yes, coffee would be fine. She nodded and headed back toward the kitchen, going through a formal dining room that was separated from the living room by a set of richly molded sliding doors. There was a long, narrow table of dark burnished wood in the dining room, some chairs that to me looked more frail than delicate, and another chandelier that had to depend on candles.

“Well, Mr. St. Ives, how do you like it?” Procane said.

“Is this the hideout?”

He smiled. “Why, yes, I suppose it could be called that.”

“Is it yours?”

He shook his head. “No, I’ve merely leased it for six months. The lease has two more months to run. I’ve been coming down here at least once a week for the past four months, usually to give small dinners for several key congressmen and senators. Lobbying really.”

“For what?”

“I chose one of the conservation measures. It gave me an excuse for renting the house and I actually became quite interested in this particular bill. Did you realize that we’re slaughtering our wildlife at a simply appalling rate?”

“So I’ve heard.”

“I may even have done some good.”

“And when you weren’t lobbying, you were planning,” I said.

“Every detail.”

“It’s rather elaborate.”

“But necessary.”

“Wouldn’t a motel be just as good?” I said and crossed my legs. The armless chair that I was sitting in creaked. It was upholstered in a worn, mauve-colored fabric that might have been royal purple a hundred years ago. Its back had the shape of a flattened light bulb.

“Not if something goes wrong,” Procane said.

“For instance?”

“If the police are brought in. They might check motels. They don’t check private residences on N Street.”

“You told the driver to be back at ten tonight. That means it’s going to happen before ten. Can I ask when?”

“At precisely nine,” Procane said.

“Can I ask where?”

Procane seemed to think about that for a moment. “Yes, I think I can tell you that now. At a drive-in movie.”

“That’s where the buy will take place?”

“Yes.”

“Drive-in movies are good,” I said. “I’ve used them three or four times.”

“I can see how they would be in your line of work,” Procane said. “Moving around at a drive-in movie is nothing unusual. People are always going to the refreshment stand. Cars arrive and depart at any time. It’s dark, which offers some concealment. And it’s usually fairly crowded, which offers some safety.”

The housekeeper came in carrying a tray that held a silver coffee service and four cups and saucers. Procane thanked her and then nodded at Janet Whistler who poured and served the coffee. Nobody wanted cream and no one took any sugar except me.

We sat there in that stiff living room of the house on N Street at four o’clock in the afternoon, drinking coffee like four strangers who had been named to a committee that was supposed to do something that we weren’t quite sure that we really wanted done. So we sipped our coffee and talked about how good it was and about the weather and about the room’s furnishings and whether antiques were a good investment.

Then we were silent for a while, as if all possible topics had been exhausted, except the one that we had met to talk about but no one wanted to be the one who brought it up. The silence went on for four or five minutes until I said, “What happens to those other guys?”

“What other guys?” Procane said.

“He means the ones who’re going to try to steal the million and blame it on us,” Wiedstein said.

“I was wondering when you were going to bring them up,” Janet Whistler said.

“Now that I have, what happens to them?”

“It depends,” Procane said.

“On what?”

“On whether they follow the plan that they stole from me.”

“What if they don’t?”

Procane shook his head. “If they don’t,” he said, “I will probably feel quite sorry for them.”