The Seersucker Whipsaw

by Ross Thomas

  “The CIA will find a way,” I said.

  “And these two old boys who are splitting from the party will just frost the cake,” Shartelle said. “My, this has started out to be a nice day!”

  “Clint,” the Widow Claude said. “Anne and I have been talking while you were on the telephone. We have decided to come and cook dinner for you tonight.”

  “I’ve already talked to Samuel,” Anne said. “There’s no jurisdictional dispute. He wants to learn how to cook American to please the good mastahs.”

  “Well, now,” Shartelle said. “It’s getting just perfect, Pete. Here we are out on the edge of the Sahara, in politics and intrigue ass-deep to a giraffe, and the hot sun is shining down, and us sweating like pigs and swilling down gin and tonics, and bang, here they come, right out of the bush, two of the prettiest young ladies in the world offering to cook for us and all, and one with a liquor store at that.”

  “It’s not Africa, Shartelle,” I said weakly. “It’s not Africa at all. We’re not seeing Africa.”

  “Why, boy, sure we are. You mean that slick-talking Major last night ain’t Africa, and all those folks we met at Chief Akomolo’s lunch, and that old witchdoctor and the Ile and his fine straw boater? That ain’t Africa? And His Excellency and that two-mile walk we took and that a-shoutin’ of our names oh, that was fine! You tell me old Doc Diokadu ain’t Africa and Jimmy Jenaro? And even Cheatwood and those good old boys who are Permanent Secretaries? Why it’s better than Mungo Park and that whole passel of books by Robert Ruark. Now I admit there’s only been one killing and no animals to speak of, but I feel Africa—I feel it when I’m down in the market talking to those little old handkerchief-head general storekeepers. I feel it, boy, and if I feel it comfortable, then I consider it my good fortune and yours too.”

  “Okay, Shartelle,” I said. “It’s your Africa. You’ve got one that nobody’ll ever change.”

  Shartelle gave a satisfied nod at my capitulation. “Now then, it’s perfectly all right for these two fine young ladies to offer to cook for us, but I think, Pete, we’d better give them some money to get the groceries. You got any money?”

  “I got money,” I said. I took out my wallet and gave Anne four five-pound notes.

  “That’s forty-two dollars,” she said.

  Shartelle waved his hand magnanimously. It was my money. “Don’t worry about it, Miss Anne. You and the Widow Claude just stock us up nice. And if you can teach old Samuel some new recipes, why I might even part with mine for dirty rice.”

  “For what?” Anne asked.

  “You mean to say you never heard of dirty rice?”

  “No, Clint, I have never heard of dirty rice.”

  “Well, now, we’ve got a treat coming Sunday. Pete has said he’s the expert on fried chicken. So why don’t you find us about three or four good plump fryers. Pete’ll fry us up a mess of chicken and I’ll cook up a potful of dirty rice—just get me two, three pounds of chicken livers and gizzards, honey—and you two young ladies can lollygag around in the shade sipping ice tea, as befits your station in life.”

  Anne looked at me. “You’re right,” she said. “It has to be seen to be believed. Can you give me a lift, Claude? I’ve got to go teach some kids.”

  “Of course. Shall we meet later to do the shopping?”

  “I’ll call you.”

  Shartelle and I each got a fond goodbye kiss. The Widow Claude wound the gossamer around her hair to keep it from blowing. Anne let hers stream out behind. Shartelle watched them leave. “Ain’t they a sight, Pete?”

  “I’m forced to agree.”

  The laterite-covered station wagon almost took a fender off of the Widow Claude’s TR-3 as she pulled out of the driveway. She yelled something obscene at the driver in French and drove on. The station wagon backed up and a face peered out of the rear window. Shartelle and I watched from the porch. An American voice yelled: “Pete Upshaw around?”

  “Here,” I yelled back.

  The station wagon backed up some more and the driver spun it up the drive. I saw who it was then. The trio.

  “Good God,” I said, “it’s Diddy, Dumps and Tot.”

  “Who?”

  “AP, UPI and Reuters.”

  “MY.”

  “There goes the morning.”

  “Maybe they know something.”

  “The only thing they’ll know is that they’re thirsty.”

  The AP man I had known from the days when I was my paper’s chief and only European correspondent. He was pushing sixty-five now and had been writing about it all since he was twenty-five. The UPI man was an Australian, a beanpole made of fine wires that were going to fuse one of these days. I had known him when he was in the UPI office in London. The Reuters correspondent was Albertian and roamed the west coast of Africa as far south as Angola, but no farther. He was a big deep-purple man with a huge red and white smile.

  “What did you call them?” Shartelle asked.

  “Diddy, Dumps and Tot. They were three characters in a book I once read who use to tag around together.”

  “I read the same book,” Shartelle said. “I was eight years old.”

  “I was six.”

  The AP man’s name was Foster Mothershand. He was called Mother, of course. He was from Omaha but that was a long time ago. The UPI’s man was called Charles Crowell and he pronounced it Crow-well. He was from Adelaide really, but he told everyone he was from Sydney. I don’t remember how I found out that he was from Adelaide. I think his girl friend in London told me. The Albertian with Reuters was born in Barkandu, educated at the London School of Economics, and had once worked on the Observer. That was when I’d known him. His name was Jerome Okpari and he had been married and divorced three times.

  On a story like this they would go together in their small pack. It was a matter of economics, actually. They didn’t particularly like or dislike each other, but Mothershand was getting too old to do the legwork that he once did and Reuters and UPI still paid navvy’s wages to its correspondents who didn’t happen to be American. Their London offices also gave the expense accounts a long hard stare. Associated Press, on the other hand, was probably paying Mothershand somewhere around $17,000 to $19,000 a year, plus an expense account that was audited once every five years or so. So Mothershand picked up the tab for the car which all three of them put on their expense sheets, a receipt for each cheerfully furnished by the Lebanese rental car dealer.

  “Ain’t that old Mother sitting there in the front seat?” Shartelle asked as the station wagon braked to a stop in the gravel driveway in front of the porch.

  “It is.”

  “I thought he was dead. I haven’t seen him in fifteen years.”

  Mothershand got out of the car first. He was a tall man, turning to fat, and his stomach poked out the khaki shirt he wore. He had a cocoa-colored straw hat with a red, white and blue band around it that was settled on the back of his head.

  “Pete, I’ve been told that you serve the driest martini south of the Sahara.”

  “Your source was unimpeachable, Mother. How are you?” He walked up the steps and we shook hands.

  “Shartelle, they said you were here, goddamnit, and I said they lied. It’s sure as hell good to see you. Been a long time.”

  “About fifteen years, Mother.”

  “In Chicago, wasn’t it? You were futzing around with some fool thing or other. They’d brought me back to re-Americanize me or something and they thought Chicago would do it. I got rolled for sixty-seven dollars that night by a Clark Street hustler.”

  “But she was a pretty little thing, Mother. I do recall her.”

  “Damned if she wasn’t. You boys air-conditioned here?” “

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “Well, something cool will do.” He walked on into the house.

  “Peter Upshaw, DDT’s gift to the Dark Continent.” This was Crowell of UPI unwinding his six-foot-six frame from the back seat of the station wagon.

&
nbsp; “Hello, Charley.”

  “It’s nine o’clock and I’m sweating like a bloody nigger. No offense, Jerry.”

  “You smell like one, too,” Okpari said and gave me his big red and white smile. A lot of teeth and a lot of gum.

  We shook hands all around and I introduced Shartelle. Then we went into the living room and they sprawled on the chairs and the sofa. They all wore khaki shirts and pants and suede high-topped shoes which the kids in London were calling fruit boots that year.

  I yelled for Samuel and he came out from the depths of his kitchen looking somewhat irritated with all the company we were having so early in the morning.

  “We’ve got coffee, gin, tea, whisky, squash and beer,” I said.

  “Gin and tonic will do nicely,” Crowell said.

  “Same here,” Mothershand said.

  “You bloody heathens,” Okpari said. “I’ll have squash if it’s iced.”

  Samuel waited for Shartelle and me. I looked at Shartelle who shrugged. “Gin and tonic for us, Samuel,” he said.

  “Sah,” Samuel agreed, but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

  Once the business of serving the drinks was done, I told Samuel to leave the tray on the round coffee table. If anyone wanted another, he could get up and get it. Mothershand stretched and groaned. “We just got in from Fulawa’s operation up north, Clint. They got a sharp bunch of young lads running that show. From Renesslaer.”

  “Is that a fact?” Shartelle said.

  “You run into Franchot Tone Calhoun?” I asked.

  “Real bright colored boy from Massachusetts.”

  “They have something delightful cooking,” Crowell said. “They were all going around as hush-hush as could be, but you could tell they were planning to run a shitty.”

  “What do you know?” Shartelle said. “What else they doing?”

  “Well, let’s see. They got bumper stickers already, slapping them on every mammy wagon and Morris Minor taxi they can find.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I said.

  “Funny thing, though,” Mothershand said. “Two days before—or was it one day? It doesn’t matter. Whenever it was when we were there. Anyway, the outfit that’s running Dr. Kologo’s show in the east was going around with the same shit-eating grins on their faces.”

  Shartelle yawned and stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankles. “I knew Renesslaer had some boys up north, but I didn’t know Kologo had anything going in the east.”

  “He’s got five or six of them in an office there. They say they’re from an outfit called Communications, Inc.—out of Philadelphia. Ever hear of them?”

  “Can’t say as I have,” Shartelle said.

  “Pete?”

  I shook my head. “Must be new.”

  “I say, it seems as if the Americans are making off with all the loot in this campaign,” Okpari said. “I could use that, I think. How much are they paying you, Mr. Shartelle?”

  Shartelle grinned. “Not enough, Mr. Okpari. But whatever it is will have to remain a secret between me and the Internal Revenue Service.”

  “Ten thousand pounds?” Crowell guessed.

  “Christ, Charley. Shartelle wouldn’t set up a Boston testimonial banquet for ten thousand pounds.”

  “You come high, Mr. Shartelle?”

  “The candidates who win don’t think so,” Shartelle said. “Fortunately, I ain’t had to talk to but one who lost.”

  “When was that?” Okpari asked.

  “Nineteen-fifty-two.”

  “Bad year for the party,” Mothershand said.

  “Terrible bad,” Shartelle agreed.

  “What the hell are you doing down here, Clint? We go up north and over east and those young apes are pounding away on typewriters, and flogging out news releases, and talking about their four-color posters which I told them wouldn’t do ’em no damn good at all. But I get down here and you and Pete are sitting around sipping gin at nine o’clock in the morning. No phones ringing. No excitement. You got it bought already?”

  “Shartelle and I are just consultants, Mother,” I said. “We think a lot.”

  “Mother, we’re down here trying to help Chief Akomolo hammer out a new democracy on the anvil of political action. How’s that, Pete?”

  “You are a phrasemaker.” Nobody made any notes.

  “How do you size it up, Clint?” Mothershand asked. “Really, I mean?”

  “We’re going to sneak by, Foster. I’m laying six to five right now.”

  “I’ll take five hundred.”

  “Pounds?”

  “Dollars.”

  “Bet.”

  “Six to five is just a little better than even money, Clint.”

  “Odds’ll get better maybe. You come round see us week before election. Probably be up around nine to five.”

  “You’re confident, huh?”

  “Shit, Mother. I ain’t no freshwater college coach crying before the season starts because his first string quarterback’s come down with a dose of clap. I’m paid to be confident. It’s my natural state of being.”

  “How about you, Pete?”

  “I think I’m over-confident. I predict a sweep for Akomolo. You can use that if you want. Duffy would like to read it in London.”

  “What are the chances of getting an interview with Akomolo?” Crowell asked. “I’ve got enough on the American thing. You know: Madison Avenue today staked out a claim on a new and profitable territory—the seething politics of West Africa.”

  “I’m not from Madison Avenue,” Shartelle said.

  The tall thin Australian smiled thinly. “You will be tomorrow.”

  “Chances are good, I’d say. I’ll call the Minister of Information and see what I can do.”

  I got Jimmy Jenaro on the phone, after trying the how’syour-family routine with Operator Ojara. He set it up for ten-thirty.

  “You guys want to come?” Jenaro asked.

  “No. You take care of it.”

  “Right. Tell them to be at the Leader’s house at ten-thirty.”

  “All right.”

  I turned to the gentlemen from the press. “Ten-thirty okay?”

  Mothershand grinned. “You got it running too smooth, Clint. Either you’ve got it taped, or you’re double-crossing somebody. You’ve got ready access to Akomolo—a hell of a lot better than Renesslaer does to Fulawa or that Philadelphia outfit has to Kologo.”

  “Always believed in winning the client’s confidence first, Mother. Then we set out to win the election and it makes it so much easier.”

  Mothershand drained his drink and stood up. “I want to go down and see this young USIS guy before we go to Chief Akomolo’s. Thanks for the drink and for the appointment. You guys sure aren’t much news.”

  “Like Pete says, Mother. We’re just down here consulting.”

  We shook hands again all around and they said they’d drop back by on their next sweep. We said they were always welcome. Mothershand paused before he got into the car and looked at Shartelle.

  “I could use a big one, Clint. I’m serious.”

  “If I get one, you’ll have it.”

  The older man nodded and eased himself slowly into the car. It backed out, turned in the turnaround spot, and sped down the driveway towards the road. It left little red puffs of laterite dust in the air.

  “The first wave,” I said.

  Shartelle nodded. “Get Jenaro back on the phone and ask him to get hold of Diokadu and get over here. We got some tough planning to do. We’ll also need some stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like some little red, yellow and green markers, or flags. The kind you stick in a map to show where the salesmen are—or at least where they’re supposed to be.”

  “Anything else?”

  “A map,” he said. “The biggest map of Albertia he can find.”

  Chapter

  21

  We were following Jimmy Jenaro’s XK-E down the high-crowned asphalt
road to Obahma for the Wednesday meeting with the Ile. Jenaro had his top down as usual. He was hitting close to eighty on the few straights and at least sixty on the curves. William was keeping him in sight, but that was about all. Shartelle was in his usual car-riding position, slumped back into the cushions of the rear seat, his feet cocked up on the folded-down walnut table that the Super Snipe afforded. His slouch hat was pulled low over his eyes and the black twisty cigar was cold and dead in his mouth.

  “You notice Jimmy’s folding bicycle?”

  “I noticed,” I said.

  “He says he’s going to park the Jaguar at the government rest house, slip into some other clothes, some less fancy ones, and do a little work in his district—from the seat of his bike.”

  “He’s not worried?”

  “Nope. He just says it’s a safe district, and he wants to keep it that way.”

  “There’re still too many red and yellow flags stuck in that map.”

  “I think maybe we’ll start changing some to green maybe next week, or the week after. It’s just started, boy.”

  Jenaro had produced the map and the pin flags on Saturday. An artist from his Ministry of Information had carefully outlined the parliamentary districts in ink and then, under the sometimes conflicting supervision of Diokadu and Jenaro, had stuck green flags in the districts considered safe for Chief Akomolo; red ones in those considered safe for the opposition, and yellow ones in those considered doubtful or up for grabs.

  There was no forest of green on the map. Shartelle had brooded over it most of Saturday, questioning Jenaro and Diokadu about what “the old boys down at the precinct level are doing.” I later wrote them a letter, signed by Chief Akomolo, which had implored them to get off their butts and start knocking on doors. Diokadu had it translated into the necessary dialects and it had been mailed out.

  On Sunday we had canceled the fried chicken and dirty rice. It had been telephone day at the wide-eaved house. Anne and the Widow Claude had made sandwiches which we ate while Dr. Diokadu and Jenaro were on the phone telling the party faithful not to worry, that the two defectors who had switched parties were small fry, that it didn’t mean a thing really, and that we were better off without them. Between them they made at least a hundred calls that day. Shartelle had sent William down to the telephone office with an envelope containing a five-pound note for Operator Ojara who had given the long distance calls his personal supervision.