Ah, Treachery!

by Ross Thomas

  “Does it?” Partain said.

  Something flitted across the General's face, either regret or inspiration. Whichever it was made him look uncomfortable as he said, “I misspoke.”

  “When?” Partain said.

  Instead of answering, the General turned to Millicent Altford and said, “Could you make a reservation for lunch tomorrow for me and two guests at some place that film people frequent?”

  “Sure—if I can ask why?”

  “I want to invite someone to lunch and I need to offer an inducement.”

  “This someone a star-fucker?” “I can only presume so.”

  “Then I’ll call Le Dome,” she said, rose, went to the phone, made the call and returned to the couch. “One o’clock tomorrow. Le Dome's on Sunset. You’ll have what they call a preferred table.”

  “Thank you,” the General said, rose, went to the phone, dialed information, got the number of the Peninsula Hotel, called it and said, “Mr. Emory Kite's room, please.”

  After the call went through, Winfield said, “Mr. Kite? Vernon Winfield. Sorry to call you so late but I wonder if you could possibly join me at one tomorrow for a business lunch at Le Dome on Sunset Boulevard?”

  The General listened, then said, “Yes, I understand film people do eat there.”

  After more listening, he said, “I need your professional advice about a fatal shooting a friend of mine witnessed earlier this evening.”

  Winfield listened just long enough for Kite to ask a brief question, then said, “You met him at the airport today.” Another pause. “That's right. Mr. Partain. He’ll be joining us for lunch.” One final pause and, after that, the General said, “Good. Tomorrow at one, then.”

  After Winfield returned to the couch, looking content, if not quite smug, Altford asked Partain, “Who the hell's Mr. Kite?”

  “A real short guy from Washington who's the only person except you and Patrokis who knows I’m out here with the General.”

  “What else is Kite?” she asked.

  “He rents space from us at VOMIT,” the General said. “By trade, he's a skip-tracer turned detective.”

  Partain rested his elbows on his knees, leaned toward the General and said, “You forgot to mention why I’d want to consult with Kite about a dead doorman.”

  “I didn’t forget,” Winfield said. “You’re Millicent Altfford's securityconsultant and fairly new to the trade. You need to know who the doorman really was—his background, job history, friends and criminal record, if any. But what you especially want to know is if there's anything about Jack that might further embarrass Ms. Altford, who's already been politically embarrassed by a dead body being dumped on her driveway—the body of a young man romantically involved with her daughter in Mexico.”

  “I don’t think romance had a whole lot to do with it,” Altford said.

  “Who's going to pay Kite if he says yes?” Partain asked.

  “I will,” the General said.

  “Is Kite licensed in California?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “What if he turns me down?”

  “We should feel relieved,” the General said.

  “And if he accepts?”

  “Then,” Winfield said, “we begin our reassessment of Emory Kite.” A long silence began that was ended by a question from Altford to the General. “You don’t like him much, do you, your Mr. Kite?” “Is it that obvious?”

  She nodded. “Maybe you should wear a disguise tomorrow.” “A disguise?”

  “You know,” she said. “A smile.”

  CHAPTER 22

  It was almost midnight when Partain stopped the rented Taurus in front of the Eden and noticed Tom, the day doorman, talking to a uniformed policeman. Tom excused himself and hurried around the front of the car as Partain opened the door and got out.

  Instead of saying hello or good evening, Tom said, “They say you guys were right here when it happened—you and Jessica.”

  “That's right.”

  “Jack was one helluva guy,” Tom said, paused for two seconds, then asked, “Rented a Taurus, huh? How d’you like it?”

  “Nice car,” Partain said, handing over the keys. “You knew Jack pretty well?”

  “It's like I told the cops. We weren’t exactly buddies but we got along fine. He was into acting. I’m into surfing. I work days. He worked nights. That left him free for his auditions and acting jobs, except he didn’t get a lot of either. When the cops asked how come I knew how many acting jobs he got, I asked them how many actors with steady work did night doorman as a hobby?”

  “You two ever trade off?” Partain said.

  “Yeah. Once in a while—mostly when Jack got himself invited to a screening where he could bump noses and smell assholes with anyone who might do him some good. Or if the surf was way up, we might trade. Jack was real nice about that.”

  “Jack interested in politics?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, he and Ms. Altford seemed to hit it off. And if they had this mutual interest, I thought Jack might’ve traded with you on, say, election night so he could stay home and watch the returns.”

  Although the question sounded lame to Partain, it didn’t seem to bother Tom. “You mean in November?”

  Partain nodded.

  “What day?”

  “The third.”

  “I mean what day of the week?” “It's usually on a Tuesday.”

  “Nah. I’d’ve remembered that if we had. Traded. I don’t vote much and Jack said he was voting for Perot. When I ask him why, he says it’d be a vote against typecasting.” Tom frowned, now obviously puzzled, then smiled. “I get it. You wanta know if Jack and me had regular trade-off days. And if today was one of ‘em and we called it off, then it should’ve been me who got zapped instead of Jack.” He frowned again, more puzzled than ever. “But who the fuck’d wanta shoot me?”

  “Or Jack?” Partain said.

  “Yeah. Him either?”

  Even after Tom vouched for Partain, the uniformed Los Angeles cop still demanded ID, checked the Wyoming driver's license against a list of names, then nodded and let Partain use his key card to enter the Eden.

  He let himself into 1540 and found Jessica Carver waiting in the apartment's foyer. “You find them?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I followed them from Morton's to the hospital. Your mother didn’t know who was following her, tried to lose me and almost did.”

  “How’d she take it?”

  “She was more concerned about you than Jack.” “That's nice,” she said, studied him for a moment or two, then asked, “Like a drink?”

  Again, Partain nodded. “Very much.”

  From behind the living room bar, Jessica Carver set a generous measure of iced Scotch in front of Partain and asked, “Where's the General?” “Still at the hospital.”

  She glanced at her watch, saw it was almost midnight and said, “That means he’ll spend the night. It happens four or five times a year either here or in Washington. It's got to be one of the most enduring bicoastal liaisons on record.”

  “I assume it went on while they were both married to somebody else.”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “They have my blessing,” he said and drank some of his whisky.

  “You ever married?” she said after tasting her own drink.

  “Once. For fifteen months.”

  “What happened?”

  “She disappeared.”

  “You mean she split.”

  “No. She just—disappeared.”

  “Where?”

  “San Salvador.”

  She waited for him to continue, but when he didn’t she slapped the bar with her palm and used a loud voice to say, “Wake up, Partain!” He stared at her. “I’m awake.”

  “You sure you don’t suffer from seizures of the eyes-wide-open kind? Or is it just too, too painful to talk about? When you start something, finish it. Even if it's the saddest of all sad tales.”


  “You’re curious,” he said, sounding surprised.

  “That's quick of you.”

  “Why?”

  “You mean why am I curious? Because I’m normal and have a lot of respect for beginnings, middles and endings. You did pretty good with the beginning. ‘She just—disappeared.’ Why don’t you just go on from—”

  He interrupted her. “You’re a good mimic, aren’t you? You had my intonation and pause down pat. Even my featureless California accent. Okay. The rest of the story. She was Salvadoran and eleven years younger than me. Or I, if you’re a grammarian. We were living in San Salvador. One morning she went out to buy stationery. She liked the thick creamy stuff, which was hard to find. She’d heard of a small shop nearby where she might buy some. She’d walked exactly forty-two meters up our street when a black nineteen-eighty-nine SEL four-fifty sedan stopped and three guys got out. Maybe they wore masks. Maybe they didn’t. Witnesses differ. They forced her into the backseat. The driver stayed behind the wheel. The car drove off and she disappeared.”

  Her eyes now as wide as they could go, Jessica Carver gave her head a small hard side-to-side shake, as if to dispel the image of the abduction. “That's awful,” she said. “God, that's awful.”

  Partain nodded.

  “You never found any trace of—”

  “No trace,” he said. “No body. Nothing.”

  “Any chance she's still—” Carver read the answer in Partain's expression and said, “No. I suppose not. What about the four guys—”

  Again, he didn’t let her finish. “They were never identified. It was apparently a political abduction but she was totally without politics. The only political crime she ever committed was marrying me. If she’d been of the right or the left, somebody might’ve done something. Retaliated, if nothing else, or even tracked down the guys who kidnapped her. But the apolitical have no headquarters, no chairman, no cadre, no money, no muscle. So nobody did anything.”

  “What’d you do?” she asked.

  “Offered a reward. Had three thousand posters printed. Paid kids to put them up everywhere. Then I had to give up.” “Why?”

  “Because she disappeared just nineteen days before I beat up the Colonel.”

  “You think he—”

  Partain again didn’t let her finish. “No, I don’t think that. If I thought that, he’d’ve never made general.”

  The slight noise awoke Partain. It lasted only a few seconds, just long enough for him to identify it as the sound of leather heels and soles on the foyer's black and white marble floor. The General, he thought and looked at his watch—squinted at it really because of what he diagnosed as a medium hangover. It was 5:22 A.M. and he guessed that the General had left the hospital at 5 A.M. and, with little traffic, had made it to the Eden in less than twenty minutes.

  There was another sound. It was a long sigh and Partain turned to look at the sleeping Jessica Carver. After their second drink, she hadcome around the bar to sit on a stool next to him. A drink or so later he had kissed her and she had kissed back and they had stayed there for a time, doing all the things a pair of overly experienced teenagers might have done, until by mutual consent they came down off the barstools and headed for the nearest bedroom, which happened to be his. There they had shucked off each other's clothes, giggled over a condom and fallen into bed.

  She was experienced, creative and eager. He was experienced, creative and overeager. That was the first time. The second time had been like sex between old lovers too long apart. Nothing had gone wrong. Nothing he could remember anyway.

  He heard yet another sound, this time from the kitchen. It was the unmistakable, if faint, clink of a china cup being placed in a saucer. Partain rose, pulled on his pants and the old plaid robe and headed barefoot for the kitchen, where he found General Winfield in pants, shirt and socks. The General already had the Braun coffeemaker primed and was conducting a search for the coffee itself.

  “She keeps it down here,” Partain said, knelt and opened a cabinet door beneath the sink.

  “What a perfectly illogical place,” the General said, accepting the can of coffee. “Did I wake you?”

  “You tempted me,” Partain said and rose. “The sound of a cup and saucer means coffee.”

  The General studied him for a moment. “Pleasant night?”

  “Not too bad. And you?”

  “Not too bad at all,” the General said as he spooned coffee into the machine.

  CHAPTER 23

  The Safeway was the one on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown and, after a forty-two-minute wait, Colonel Ralph Millwed's vigil was rewarded with the gray six-year-old Volvo station wagon that entered the parking lot and nosed into a space only one row up and four cars to his left.

  The driver of the Volvo continued to sit in the car for a minute or so before she slowly got out, as if either stiff or tired, and headed for the Safeway's entrance. She wore a denim skirt, a man's white shirt and black leather speed-lace boots that didn’t quite reach mid-calf. The right boot even had a small snap-close pocket for a jackknife. For warmth, she wore an obviously old double-breasted navy-blue coat that would’ve had six ivory buttons if one of them hadn’t been missing. She wore the coat over her shoulders like a cape.

  Shawnee Viar Lewis, only child of a CIA pensioner and widow of an AIDS victim, was halfway to the supermarket entrance when she turned, went back to the Volvo and locked it. The Colonel waited until she was well inside the Safeway before he got out of his rented black Mustang convertible.

  Millwed wore what he’d always regarded as standard casual dress: a tweed jacket, tieless white shirt, sleeveless black cashmere sweater and twill pants of that peculiar shade once called officer's pinks. On his feet were black cashmere socks and old but well-cared-for brown loafers.

  They met at the frozen pizzas. Her shopping cart contained milk, a carton of Pall Malls, bread, butter, eggs, bacon, salad stuff and a matched pair of Idaho potatoes. The Colonel's cart contained far more wholesome fare of nonfat milk, broccoli, three kinds of fruit, oatmeal and a small roasting chicken.

  Shawnee Viar was reading the label on a twelve-inch pepperoni pizza when the Colonel said, “It's none of my business, but if you’re going to eat that crap, you might as well eat the best. Here.”

  He handed her a pizza that bore the name of Wolfgang Puck, a West Coast restaurateur who skillfully marketed not only his frozen pizzas but himself. Shawnee Viar put the pepperoni pizza back, accepted the one offered by the Colonel, examined it dubiously and said, “What's so great about these?”

  “They’re almost like the real thing.”

  “Well, that's about as close as I ever get,” she said, dropped the Puck pizza into her cart, gave his cart a quick inspection, looked up and said, “What happens when you come down with an acute attack of the munchies?”

  “I drink a little gin or whiskey.”

  “Then you’re no purist?”

  “Purity's pretty boring.”

  She smiled slightly. “You’re trying to pick me up, aren’t you?”

  “I’m inviting you to have a drink.”

  “Where?”

  “Know the Last Call way out on Wisconsin?” “Damn near to Bethesda?” He nodded.

  “Afraid somebody’ll see us?”

  The Colonel shrugged. “I’m not sure how broad-minded your husband is.”

  “He's dead. What about your wife?”

  “When last heard from, she was still living in Tulsa.”

  After two drinks at the Last Call, they drove in her car to the Sunrise Motel in Rockville, Maryland, where the Colonel registered them as Mr. and Mrs. F. Pierce and handed the room clerk $200 in lieu of a credit card. He also made up a license number for the Mustang, invented an address (741 N. Locust Street), a town (Mt. Morrison, Iowa) and used his own birthday, 71154, for a zip code. The room clerk scarcely glanced at any of it.

  The motel room was neither larger nor smaller, cleaner nor dirtier than most motel rooms. It had a b
athroom with a molded plastic tub and shower. The bed was queen-size. A sign on the big new Sony TV set offered free HBO but warned that the salacious-movie channel cost $8.00.

  Shawnee Viar was sitting in the chair that went with the kneehole desk when the Colonel returned with two cans of Diet 7-Up and a bucket of ice. He placed them on the desk next to a bottle of Absolut vodka. After he mixed two drinks and handed her one, she tasted it, looked up at him and said, “This is almost like a real assignation, isn’t it?”

  “Why almost?”

  “Well, assignations are usually made up of people who know each other.”

  “You’re thinking of trysts.”

  “Am I? I thought they were the same.” She drank more of the vodka, inspected the room, then looked up at the Colonel again. “What do we do now, take off our clothes and hop into bed?”

  “If that's what you want. But I thought you might want to talk a little and make sure you haven’t hooked up with some weirdo.”

  “I don’t mind weirdos.”

  “Know many?”

  “Well, I’m back living with my father and on a weirdo scale of one to ten, he’d rate a nine. Maybe a ten. My late husband was only a four, maybe even a three, and I, well, I’m maybe a ten. Some days even a ten-plus.”

  “What's so weird about you?”

  “The fact that I’m sitting here drinking your booze and it's not yet noon. That's weird for me. And the fact that ten or fifteen minutes from now I’ll probably rip off my clothes, jump into bed and, with any luck, do stuff I never did with my husband, who believed there was some law that said people can only fuck Saturday nights—if they fuck at all.”

  “Your husband died when?”

  Shawnee Viar looked down into her drink, thought for a moment, looked up at him and said, “A year and three weeks ago tomorrow.” “And you live with your father now.” She nodded. “In Georgetown?”

  “Maybe, but I’m not giving you my name, address or phone number till I find out if you’re a weirdo or not.”

  “Then let's find out,” he said, went over to her, put his drink on the desk, did the same with hers, gently pulled her to her feet and started unbuttoning her man's white shirt.