Backup Men

by Ross Thomas

  The man nodded, or tried to, but the automatic got in the way. Padillo lowered it and the man brought his head down, glanced once at the dead body on the floor, and said, “Okay. Okay. It’s no skin off my ass.” He spoke without accent.

  “Where are they?” Padillo said again.

  “They ain’t here.”

  “Were they?”

  The man nodded. “You mean the fat bald young guy and the tall skinny one?”

  “That’s right.”

  “They were here. Doc Asfourh sent them over and me and the kid were supposed to look after them till morning. It was just a one-night deal, you know.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened. They stayed here for maybe thirty or forty-five minutes and then they left.”

  “Just like that?” Padillo said.

  The man decided to rub the right wrist that Padillo’s automatic had slashed. “Just like that,” he said. He wasn’t a very good liar.

  “Does your wrist hurt?” Padillo said.

  “Damn right it hurts.”

  “You want your other one to hurt?”

  The man shook his head.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Valdez. José Valdez.”

  “Bullshit,” Padillo said.

  The man shrugged. “Rogelio Quesada.”

  “All right, Señor Quesada. Let’s hear it all.”

  The man glanced around the room again. He had deep-set narrow eyes and unless he opened them wide not much white showed. Above the eyes was a scant inch or so of forehead and below them was a spreadout nose and a mouth that snarled when it spoke and sneered when it didn’t. He looked ugly and mean and big enough to back up his looks.

  “What the hell am I gonna do with him?” he said, staring at the dead body.

  “Call the cops,” I said.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “From the beginning,” Padillo said.

  Quesada tore his eyes from the body and sent them darting around the room again as if searching for the secret passage that would open up and let him through so that he could make it to San Diego by dawn. When he didn’t find it he let his eyes settle on Padillo and snarled as he spoke. “Ah, Christ, it’s no skin off my ass.”

  “You said that.”

  “Well, I get this call from Doc Asfourh and he wants to know if we’ve got something going and I tell him no so he says he wants to send a couple of creeps over who need a hidey hole till tomorrow morning. So I say how much and he says this much and I say it’s not enough so we jew around with each other until we make a price. So these two creeps come over about fifteen minutes later and the kid and I send them upstairs and forget about them.” He stopped talking and carefully started to pat his trouser pockets. “You gotta cigarette?” he asked Padillo.

  “Give him a cigarette,” Padillo said to me. I lit one and moved over to Quesada to hand it to him. He took it, inhaled mightily, blew out the smoke, and shrugged. “What the hell,” he said.

  “Go on,” Padillo said. “You’ve got them upstairs.”

  “Yeah, well, they’re upstairs and being quiet and the kid and I are just fooling around down here when Doc Asfourh calls again. It was maybe fifteen, twenty minutes after they got here and the Doc says that two more guys are coming over and that they wanta see the two who’re already here and for us to let ‘em.” He shrugged again. “So we did.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then they got here—”

  “What did they look like?” Padillo said.

  “One was maybe fifty or so and had some whiskers. The other one was younger. They both looked like they knew their way around, if you know what I mean.”

  “Go on,” Padillo said.

  “Well, they asked where the other two was and I told them and they went upstairs and stayed maybe ten minutes. I wasn’t paying no attention. It coulda been fifteen. Then all four of them come down and leave. Just like that.”

  “No guns?” Padillo said.

  Quesada shook his head. “No guns. I wouldn’t say they was all buddy-buddy, but I didn’t see no guns.”

  “Then Asfourh called again,” Padillo said.

  Quesada nodded. “Uh-huh. He called again. He said that you three would be dropping around and that if me and the kid could keep you company until ten o’clock tomorrow morning there’d be a couple of bills in it for us. Well, what the hell. So look what happened. I don’t think you had to go and shoot the kid. You didn’t have no cause to go and do that.”

  “We’ll call it an accident if it makes you feel any better,” Padillo said.

  Quesada again stared at the dead man on the floor. “You can call it anything you want to, but it ain’t gonna make him feel any better.”

  “Did they say anything before they left?” Padillo said.

  “No,” Quesada said quickly, perhaps too quickly.

  “Think hard.”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Would fifty make it any easier?”

  Quesada’s face seemed to brighten. Or perhaps it was just greed. “Fifty wouldn’t do much good, but a hundred would.”

  Padillo glanced at me and I shook my head. “I’m tapped out unless he’ll take a credit card.”

  “Point something at him,” Padillo said. I took the office .38 out of my coat pocket and pointed it at Quesada while Padillo got two fifties out of his billfold. There didn’t seem to be much left. He handed the bills to Quesada who folded them into a small square which he tucked into his trousers’ watchpocket.

  “Well, I wasn’t paying much attention, y’unnerstand, because it wasn’t none of my business.”

  “What did you hear that was none of your business?”

  “Well, I heard the older guy, the one with the beard, you know, I heard him say something about the Criterion.”

  “What’s the Criterion?”

  “It used to be a picture show but it’s not anymore. But that’s still what they call the office building that it used to be in.”

  Padillo glanced at me. “You know where it is?”

  I nodded. “It’s south of Market. Skid row territory.”

  “That would suit Kragstein.” He turned back to Quesada. “You said he said ‘something’ about the Criterion. What was the ‘something’?”

  “Christ, I don’t know. I think the younger guy said where to now and the older guy, the one with the beard, said the Criterion and then I quit listening. I didn’t give a shit.”

  Padillo half turned toward me and Wanda Gothar who still sat at the round table, her purse on her lap, looking totally uninterested in what was going on around her. “Let’s go,” he said.

  She rose and started toward the door. I followed. When I was nearly there, Quesada said, “Hey.” I turned as did Padillo.

  “What?” I said.

  Quesada jerked his thumb at the body of the dead youth. “Why don’t you guys take him with you since you shot him and all?”

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  “What the Christ am I supposed to do with him?”

  “You’ll think of something.”

  Quesada moved over to the body and squatted down beside it. He seemed to have forgotten us. He poked the dead man’s shoulder, as if hoping that he were only asleep. “Why couldn’t you go and get killed somewheres else,” he said to the dead man. Then he looked up at us. “Why couldn’t he, huh?”

  “I don’t really know,” I said.

  22

  THE OLD Criterion Theater was located near Fifth and Howard in the heart of the area that countless winos and derelicts had shuffled through in their aimless pursuit of oblivion. I noticed that a lot of the old buildings had been torn down and if you liked to look at parking lots, you might say that the neighborhood had been improved.

  The Criterion long ago had showed its last fourth-run double feature and now its marquee spelled out its latest attraction in carelessly spaced black letters which read, “Crists Own Home Gospil Mission Open 6 A.M.” Whoever ope
rated the mission either couldn’t spell too well or couldn’t locate the needed letters or just didn’t think that it mattered. It probably didn’t.

  The Criterion Building itself was a seven-story brick affair that looked as if it had a long overdue date with the wrecker’s ball. There seemed to be nothing about it either architecturally or historically that would cause anyone to protest its demolition. It was one of those buildings that cities tear down every day and when you pass by after they’re gone you have to think hard to recall what had once been there.

  The three of us sat at a table in the window of a cheap bar and grill across from the building and stared at it as we drank some suspicious-tasting Scotch. It was half past ten and I wondered who was working late in the lighted offices on the third and seventh floors and whether they were making any money.

  “I didn’t learn anything back there,” Wanda Gothar said to Padillo. “I still think Gitner and Kragstein killed my brother.”

  “Think what you like,” Padillo said.

  “Who else could have?”

  “McCorkle,” Padillo said, not smiling.

  She almost smiled, but not quite. “Not McCorkle. Not with a garrote. He’d get the ends confused and then say to hell with it and go back to the kitchen for a drink.”

  “That eliminates McCorkle. What about the people I used to work for? You remember Burmser. He didn’t have much use for your brother. But more important was that the king wouldn’t have anything to do with official protection. So Burmser has your brother killed in McCorkle’s apartment and then pressures me into signing on. That gives him a man on the scene.”

  “That seems a little farfetched,” I said. “Even for Burmser.”

  “I guess it does,” Padillo said.

  “Well, what about the king and Scales?” I said. “They may be a little short on motive and opportunity, but if we put our minds to it, we could probably work something out.”

  They both ignored me as Wanda Gothar took a sip of her Scotch, shuddered slightly, and said, “So whom does that leave?”

  “It leaves you, Wanda,” Padillo said.

  “You’re forgetting Kragstein and Gitner again.”

  “Your motive’s just as good. You’re also one of the few people who Walter would let get behind him. With him out of the way, you’d get the entire pie, not just half. Then you could hire me—or someone like me—for nickels and dimes. It’s the perfect motive. Money.”

  “You’re forgetting my alibi.”

  “The ‘high Government official’ you were shacked up with while Walter was getting himself killed?” Padillo made his voice put “high Government official” in quotes. “Maybe he’d been at the track too often and was down on his luck. He’d give you an alibi for a price.”

  She looked at me. “Where does he get them?”

  “From a wholesaler,” I said.

  “There’s only one thing wrong with your theory, Padillo,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I wouldn’t kill Walter and you know it.”

  He nodded. “There’s that.”

  “I still think it was Kragstein and Gitner.”

  “There’s one way to find out.”

  “What?” she said.

  He nodded toward the Criterion Building. “You can go ask them.”

  “That’s what you’ve had in mind all along, isn’t it?”

  “Why don’t we just wait for them to come out?” I said. “The king and Scales ran out on us. Maybe they’ve hired some new babysitters—Kragstein and Gitner. Maybe nobody wants them dead anymore. Maybe all four of them are sitting up there right now playing dominoes and chuckling about how dumb we are.”

  “You think it’s all been dumb, don’t you, Mac?” Padillo said.

  “Not dumb. Just less than brilliant.”

  He nodded. “I can’t argue with that. But I’ll go in there, knowing it’s dumb, because I have to find Gitner and because once he leaves that building, my chances of finding him again will be next to nothing. Wanda’s going because of her brother. You don’t have any reason to go and if you want to sit here and drink your Scotch until it’s over, nobody’s going to object.”

  “You make a nice little talk,” I said.

  Padillo turned to Wanda. “That means he’s going with us.”

  She shook her head slightly as if puzzled. First she looked at me and then at Padillo. “Why?”

  Padillo shrugged. “Ask him.”

  She looked at me again. “Why?” she said and there was real wonder in her voice.

  “I don’t like to feel left out,” I said.

  The lock on the front door of the Criterion Building was broken. It could have been broken that night or the month before and I bet myself it would stay broken until they tore down the building which didn’t look as if it contained much worth stealing anyway.

  The lobby had a white tile floor with some black tiles that spelled out Criterion Building and it probably had looked neat and businesslike back in 1912, but now the titles were a dirty gray and some of them were chipped and broken and a lot more were missing.

  The two elevators wore OUT OF ORDER signs that looked almost as old as the building. To the left Was a cigar stand, its glass case empty, its shelves bare. A man was curled up behind the case asleep, a half-empty wine bottle clutched to his chest.

  “We walk,” Padillo said.

  “There were lights on the third and seventh floors,” Wanda said.

  We stopped at the building directory. The overhead light for the lobby was out—permanently, it seemed—and someone had rigged up an extension cord with a forty-watt bulb that dangled over the building directory. The second and third floors still had some occupants—a novelty company, a manufacturer’s representative, a collection agency, all last-gasp businesses with no need for much of a front nor the ability to pay for one. There were no occupants listed for any floor above the fourth.

  “I’ll bet on seven,” I said.

  “We’ll check out three first,” Padillo said. “Kragstein may be having one of his clever nights.”

  At the third-floor landing Padillo, his gun drawn, opened the door cautiously to peer down the corridor. He opened it wider and slipped through. Wanda and I followed. She held the Walther in her right hand, her purse in her left. I decided to take the thirty-eight out of my jacket pocket.

  The light that we’d seen from downstairs came from an office at the far end of the corridor. We tiptoed toward it, skirting a broken desk, three old wooden file cabinets, and a collection of mismatched office chairs that some former tenant had moved as far as the corridor before he said to hell with it.

  The lighted door was half frosted glass and half wood. Carefully lettered in black on the glass was “The Arbitrator, Miss Nancy deChant Orumber, Editor.” Padillo motioned us to the other side of the door where we flattened ourselves against the wall. He took up a similar position next to the door knob, reached for it, turned it, and flung the door open. It banged against something inside the office. We waited, but nothing happened. We waited some more and then a woman’s voice asked in a cool, polite tone, “May I help you?”

  She wore a gray leghorn hat with a wide brim and a narrow white band that had some artificial flowers attached to it. Pink roses, I think. She sat behind an old but carefully polished oak desk which was covered with what seemed to be galley proofs. Two sides of the room were lined with bookshelves that contained bound copies that had The Arbitrator lettered on them in gold ink and below that the year of their issue. They went all the way back to 1905.

  She looked at us with unwavering bright blue eyes that were covered with gold-rimmed spectacles. Her hair was white and she held a fat black editor’s pencil in her right hand. Next to her on a stand was an L. C. Smith typewriter. There was a black phone on the desk and against the outer wall were three cabinets that the door had banged against. Everything was spotlessly clean.

  She asked again if she could help us and Padillo hastily stuck his automatic
back in his waistband and said, “Security, ma’am. Just checking.”

  “This building hasn’t had a night watchman since nine-teen-sixty-three,” she said. “I do not think you are telling the truth, young man. However, you seem too well dressed to be bandits, especially the young lady. I like your frock, my dear.”

  “Thank you,” Wanda said.

  “I am Miss Orumber and this is my last night in this office so I welcome your company although I must say that well brought up young ladies and gentlemen are taught to knock before entering. You will join me in a glass of wine, of course.”

  “Well, I don’t think that—” Padillo didn’t get the chance to finish.

  “Nonsense,” she said, rising and moving over to one of the filing cabinets. “There was a time when we would have had champagne, but—” She let her sentence trail off as she brought out a bottle of sherry, placed it on the desk, returned to the file cabinet, and produced four long-stemmed wineglasses which she polished with a clean white cloth.

  “You, young man,” she said to me. “You look as though you may have acquired a few of the social graces along the way. There’s character in your face. Some would probably call it dissipation, but I choose to call it character. You may pour the wine.”

  I looked at Padillo who shrugged slightly. I poured the wine and handed glasses all around.

  “We will not drink to me,” she said, “but to The Arbitrator and to its overdue demise. The Arbitrator.” We sipped the wine.

  “In nineteen-twenty-one a man sent me a Pierce-Arrow. A limousine. The only condition was that I include his name in that year’s edition of The Arbitrator. A limousine, can you imagine? No gentleman would present a lady with a limousine unless he also provided a chauffeur. The man was a boor. Needless to say his name was not included.”

  She had a lined, haughty face with a thin nose and a still strong chin. She could have been a beauty fifty or sixty years ago, one of those tall imperious types that Gibson once drew.

  “What is The Arbitrator,” Padillo asked, “San Francisco’s social register?” I think he was trying to be polite.