Backup Men

by Ross Thomas

  Padillo came back from the bar, carrying two drinks. He handed one of them to me. That was thoughtful. I smiled at Vernon and took a swallow.

  “Why was Gothar in your apartment, McCorkle?” Schoolcraft said, his voice a tired rasp.

  I sighed and shook my head, keeping the impatience out of most of what I said. “I don’t know why he was in my apartment. I don’t know how he got in. He was here when I arrived and he was as dead then as he was when they wheeled him out of here ten minutes ago. And that makes him your responsibility, not mine, so why don’t you go look for who killed him someplace else now that you’ve peeked under my bed and into all the closets.”

  I raised the glass for another swallow, but Lieutenant Schoolcraft knocked it out of my hand. The glass bounced on the carpet and the drink made a small puddle for a moment before the woolen fibers soaked it up.

  “You should take something for that temper, Lieutenant,” I said, bending down for the glass. When I straightened up, Schoolcraft was massaging his right hand. He couldn’t possibly have hurt it. “Eighteen hours straight today,” he said. “Twenty yesterday, nineteen and a half the day before.” He looked up from his hand. “I had no call to do that. Sorry.”

  “Forget it,” I said and noticed that Sergeant Vernon seemed irritated by my magnanimity.

  “Let’s take them both down,” Vernon said.

  “Sure,” Schoolcraft said, nodding wearily as he moved toward the door. “That would do everybody a lot of good, wouldn’t it?”

  “It might learn them not to be so goddamned lippy.”

  Schoolcraft turned at the door and leaned against it. He seemed to be a man who rested whenever he could. Only his eyes moved, racing across my face and then Padillo’s, circling the room quickly and finally lighting for a brief moment on Sergeant Vernon’s face before again taking up their restless journey.

  “A trip downtown wouldn’t teach these two anything, Sergeant,” he said. “You want to know why?”

  “Why?” Lester said.

  “Because you can’t teach anything to guys who know it all—and you know it all, don’t you, Padillo?”

  “Not all of it,” Padillo said. “For instance, I don’t know what goes on inside a cop’s head.”

  Schoolcraft stopped his eyes on Padillo’s face. It was a hard, almost brutal stare. “You think it’s different from what goes on inside your head?”

  “It has to be.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Padillo said, “I could never be a cop.”

  5

  WHEN THE two homicide detectives had gone after making sure that we’d be down at police headquarters to make a full statement by 2 P.M., which was as soon as Lieutenant Schoolcraft would be out of court, I went into the kitchen and put on some water for coffee. It helps me to sleep for some inexplicable reason. Just as the water was beginning to boil there was a knock at the door. After I opened it I wished that I hadn’t.

  I knew the man who stood there with the oyster-white raincoat buttoned up to his neck and the lilac pajama bottoms that poked out from beneath his uncuffed gray flannels. He had been bad news when I’d first met him several years ago in Bonn and he was probably bad news now and I saw no reason to pretend that I was glad to see him at two o’clock in the morning.

  “It couldn’t wait, huh?” I said.

  Stan Burmser shook his head and frowned so that three vertical creases appeared in his forehead, a sure sign that he was thinking. Or trying to.

  “He’s here, isn’t he?”

  “He’s helping me put up some marmalade.”

  Burmser shook his head again, a little sadly, I thought. “Still the sick comic,” he said. “I thought you might’ve gone into therapy by now.”

  I turned my head. “You need anything from the Harvard man?” I called to Padillo.

  He appeared in the foyer and looked at Burmser. He took his time. “I think your pajamas are ducky,” Padillo said.

  “So does my wife.”

  “What have you got, a police teletype in your bedroom?”

  “Just a phone.”

  Padillo shrugged and turned back toward the living room. “Let’s get it over with,” he said.

  I motioned Burmser to my chair where they had found Walter Gothar dead and he lowered himself into it without any obvious discomfort. I toyed with the idea of telling him who had sat in it last, but decided not to. It probably wouldn’t have bothered him; he might even have enjoyed it.

  “What happened to Gothar?” Burmser asked Padillo.

  “He got himself killed.”

  “Why here?”

  “Maybe because of its convenient in-town location.”

  “We knew the twins were around. We know that they saw you. We want to know why.”

  “Ask Wanda.”

  “I don’t want to have to put somebody on you, Padillo.”

  “I won’t mind as long as he’s got a cheery manner and doesn’t try to run up a tab.”

  I rose. “You want some coffee?” I said to Burmser.

  He looked at his watch. “It’s past two o’clock.”

  “I didn’t ask what time it was.”

  “No, thanks.”

  I made two cups of instant coffee and brought them into the living room, handing one to Padillo who claimed that it never kept him awake either. Burmser watched us drink it, not trying to hide his disapproval.

  “I realize that you’re no longer with us, Padillo.”

  “I never was. I was an indentured servant, if anything.”

  “You got paid.”

  “Not enough. Nobody’s ever paid enough for what you wanted.”

  “You could have said no.”

  “I can now; I couldn’t then. I tried, remember? How many times did I try to say no, a dozen? And each time until the last one you found a new pressure point that made me say yes and pack my bag and catch the next plane heading east for some place like Breslau with the odds eight to five and rising that I wouldn’t make it back.”

  “Well, you’re out of it for good now.”

  “Sure.”

  “All I’m after is information.”

  “I run a saloon, not an inquiry service.”

  “The twins wanted something. What?”

  Padillo rose, moved over to the window, pulled back the curtain slightly, and looked out. If he’d craned his neck a little, he could have seen the Washington Monument and beyond that, the Potomac. I don’t think he saw anything.

  “A backup man,” he said after several moments.

  “You?”

  “Me.”

  “Why you? I don’t mean that like it sounds.”

  “They thought I owed their brother something.”

  “Paul? He’s dead.”

  Padillo turned from the window. Burmser watched him carefully, as if waiting for him to go on with a particularly fascinating tale. When Padillo said nothing, but instead wandered over to look at a fairly good Irish seascape, Burmser cleared his throat.

  “What were they on?” he said, trying to make his question casual, and almost bringing it off.

  “A protection job.”

  “Who?”

  “They didn’t say. Somebody important enough to be able to afford them.”

  “Why a backup man?”

  Padillo turned from his inspection of the painting and smiled at Burmser for the first time. “Franz Kragstein,” he said, as if he enjoyed saying the name. “You remember Franz.”

  Burmser seemed to relax. He sank back into the chair that Walter Gothar had been strangled in and crossed his legs and produced a cigarette and lit it with a chrome lighter. Padillo wandered over to another painting, a turn-of-the-century portrait that I’d paid too little for a long time ago.

  “Kragstein shouldn’t have bothered them much,” Burmser said.

  Padillo cocked his head, as if trying to make up his mind about the portrait. “This guy really had it, didn’t he?” he said and, not expecting an answer, told Burmser, �
�It wasn’t Kragstein who bothered them. It was his new partner. Or maybe associate.”

  “Who?”

  “Amos Gitner,” Padillo said and turned to watch the show.

  It was worth it. Burmser let his jaw drop and then stubbed out his cigarette as if he were giving them up forever. When he was through with that the three vertical furrows reappeared in his forehead, deeper than before. I remembered them as a sign that he was now not only thinking, but also deeply worried. He rose hurriedly. “Can I use your phone?”

  “You may,” I said, doing my snide bit to keep the language pure.

  He turned to Padillo once more. “Is he in the country?”

  “Amos? I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Padillo, who’s the twins’ client?”

  “I guess he’d be Wanda’s now, but I still don’t know who he is. I don’t know anything about him at all except that he’s either here or coming here incognito and Amos Gitner doesn’t bother him, which doesn’t make him too smart in my book.”

  “Mine either,” Burmser said and hurried over to the phone. He picked it up and then put it back down, turning to me. “Do you have another one?”

  “In the bedroom. Down the hall and to the left.”

  When Burmser came back a few minutes later, his gray hair was rumpled as if he’d been running a hand through it out of nervousness or frustration or both. By then he must have been the civilian equivalent of a two-star general in that weird outfit he worked for, the one that had kept sending Padillo on those hurry-up trips when he should have been helping me inventory the booze. Padillo was out of it now, just as he said. He had got out the hard way, getting himself shot in the process, and I was more than curious to see whether he could stay out.

  Burmser ran his hand over his hair again, bearing down hard as if trying to press away his look of mild embarrassment.

  “He wants to talk to you,” Burmser said to Padillo.

  “Who?”

  “Maybe it’s the President,” I said.

  “I didn’t vote for him.”

  “Maybe that’s what he wants to talk to you about.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Padillo, he’s waiting.”

  Padillo crossed to the living room phone and after he picked it up and said hello he listened for what seemed to be a long time, but which couldn’t have been more than three minutes. I guessed that he was listening to the man who ran Burmser’s outfit, a publicity-shy multimillionaire who had once been a Rhodes scholar and who had gone into the business during World War II and had never done anything else. I assumed that he liked it.

  Finally Padillo said, “I’ll want that in writing on White House stationery.” He listened for another fifteen or twenty seconds before he said, “You can call it blackmail; I’ll call it insurance. If you think the price is too high, forget it.” Impatience spread across his face as he listened a while longer before he said, “I don’t work that way. When it’s done it’ll be done and you can hold all the postmortems you want, but don’t count on me to be there … All right … Yes, I understand … Here he is.” He held out the phone to Burmser who took it, said hello, listened fifteen seconds, said, “Yes, sir,” but didn’t get a chance to say good-bye bccause the connection was broken with a click that was audible across the room.

  Burmser turned to look at Padillo. “He says you’re solo.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What about him?” Burmser said, nodding in my direction as if I were some unwelcome intruder who’d bumbled his way into the conversation. Maybe I was.

  Padillo looked at me thoughtfully. “We could tie him up and gag him and hide him in the closet.”

  “Aw, Christ,” Burmser said, turning toward the door, “I don’t know why I talk to either of you.” He paused at the door with his hand on its knob. “You know where to reach me, Padillo.”

  “Don’t sit by the phone.”

  “Amos Gitner,” Burmser said and then repeated the name as if it cheered him considerably. “You still think you’re all that good?”

  “I guess I’ll just have to find that out, won’t I?” Padillo said.

  “Yes,” Burmser said, smiling broadly this time, “I guess we all will.”

  He opened the door and was halfway through it when I called to him. “You forgot something.”

  He stopped and turned. “What?”

  “You forgot to hang up the phone in the bedroom.”

  6

  “WHAT DO they want you to do?” I said after Burmser slammed the door hard enough to wake three floors of neighbors.

  “Keep Wanda Gothar’s client alive.”

  “Do they know who he is?”

  “Burmser’s boss does. Or says he does.”

  “Is he important?”

  Padillo sank back in the sofa and stretched out his legs, staring at the ceiling. “He could be the richest kid in the world. If he lives long enough.”

  “He’s important all right.”

  “You’ve heard about what’s been going on in what they now call Llaquah?”

  I thought a moment before answering. “It’s way down the Persian Gulf, about the size of Delaware. It’s also an absolute monarchy with a new oil strike that supposedly makes Kuwait look like a dry hole.”

  “Well, the kid’s going to be the king of Llaquah as soon as his brother gets through dying.”

  “The playboy brother,” I said. “I read somewhere that he had an accident last month. In France, I think.”

  Padillo nodded, still staring at the ceiling. “He flipped his Maserati while doing one-hundred-and-thirty. He was badly burned and his chest was crushed and I don’t know what they’re keeping him alive with. Prayer probably. But he’s now something of a medical curiosity because by rights he should have been dead two weeks ago.”

  “When does the wicked uncle come in?” I said.

  “What wicked uncle?”

  “The one who filed the tie rods on the Maserati and now is just waiting to do in the younger brother.”

  Padillo stared at me. “I thought you’d sworn off those late movies.”

  “I sneak one now and again.”

  “Well, there’s no wicked uncle, but there are a couple of oil companies.”

  “That’s almost as good,” I said. “Two giant industrial combines locked in a death struggle over a tiny corner of the world which contains the richest oil reserves known to—”

  “No death struggle,” Padillo said. “They’re in cahoots—a cooperative venture, I think it’s called.”

  “But nothing so grand as a cartel?”

  “No.”

  “What’s the kid’s name?”

  “Peter Paul Kassim.”

  “Peter Paul?”

  Padillo nodded and stretched. He yawned, too. I caught it and yawned back. “That seems to be one of his problems,” he said after we were through yawning at each other. “At sixteen he underwent a religious experience and rejected his Muslim faith, converted to Catholicism, and entered a French monastery where he’s been ever since.”

  “I take it that the folks back home didn’t much care for that.”

  “Not much.”

  “Why is he in the States? His brother’s not dead yet.”

  “They never got along and when the brother dies and Peter Paul becomes king, the oil companies are going to need his signature on the documents that will complete their deal. The older brother was to have signed them here, but he flipped his car before he could make the trip.”

  “How old is Peter Paul?”

  “Twenty-one.”

  “Who wants him dead?”

  Padillo yawned again. “Not the oil companies.”

  “No.”

  “There’s no wicked uncle.”

  “Pity.”

  “So that’s what I’m supposed to do. Keep Peter Paul alive and at the same time find out who wants him dead.”

  “And you said yes.”

  “No. I only said that I’d try to keep him alive.”
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  “For how long?”

  “Until his brother dies and he automatically becomes king and signs the documents.”

  “What about afterwards?”

  “Right now Peter Paul hasn’t got a dime. The Gothar twins must have taken him on spec—a contingency basis. When he signs those oil company contracts, or whatever they are, he gets five million dollars for his personal use. He can hire his own army then.”

  “Why don’t the oil companies move in, if they want him to stay alive?”

  “They don’t want to get caught in a crossfire. If something happens to Peter Paul, they’re fully prepared to do business with his successor—whoever he may be.”

  “What about the folks back home?”

  “They won’t lift a finger because of his infidel dog religion. They’d probably be just as happy if he got himself killed.”

  “So that leaves you and Wanda Gothar. I’d think that Peter Paul would welcome the Secret Service after what happened to Walter.”

  Padillo shrugged and rose. “Maybe he’s just trying to find out how it feels to have royal prerogatives.”

  “Or he’s stupid.”

  “There’s always that possibility.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “You mean why did I take it?”

  “That’s right.”

  Padillo moved to the door before answering. “I want that letter.”

  “On White House stationery.”

  Padillo nodded. “On White House stationery.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t need it anymore. Five years ago maybe, but not now. You have more than enough to blackmail them with if you really wanted to say no.”

  Padillo smiled, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the chair—at the last chair that Walter Gothar ever sat in. “Maybe I’ve gone in for coercion,” he said.

  “No. You’re not much good at that either. And they won’t write anything that you could really use.”

  “I thought there might be a line or two in it thanking me for doing another swell job for God and country.”

  “It was Walter Gothar getting himself killed here in my apartment, wasn’t it?”

  Padillo shrugged and put his hand on the door knob. “There was that,” he said, “and something else.”