Ah, Treachery!

by Ross Thomas

  “He say anything?”

  “He said, ‘Fun.’“

  “Fun?”

  “He looked like a possible client so I asked him if he liked fun. And he said ‘fun’ the way you just said it—as if he didn’t know what I was talking about. So I gave him my business card, the one with only my first name and phone number, and told him to call me anytime after six.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Nothing. He just smiled a little and put my card in his pocket.”

  General Hudson sighed, then nodded at Colonel Millwed, who rose behind Connie Weeks, grabbed her chin with one hand, the back of her head with the other, pulled hard right, pushed hard left and broke her neck.

  Ten minutes later, Colonel Millwed was wearing a suit and tie and holding a roll of Bounty paper towels as he looked around Connie Weeks's living room for something else to wipe down or mop up. The dead woman still lay on the polished hardwood floor near the cream couch.

  “Any suggestions?” the Colonel said, carefully stepping over her body.

  General Hudson, now in blue blazer, white shirt, tie and gray slacks, glanced around the room and said, “Just the semen in her vagina.”

  “That's yours. She swallowed mine.”

  “Let's go,” the General said and they left, taking with them Connie Weeks's Cartier watch, her other jewelry, her cash and her credit cards.

  They hurried along the apartment house corridor, met no one, took the stairs down one floor, caught an empty elevator, rode it to the basement garage and walked out separately, ten minutes apart. Colonel Millwed kept the cash and later threw the watch, the jewelry and the credit cards into the Potomac.

  It was Nick Patrokis who officially identified General Vernon Winfield after the Metropolitan Police found him dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The body lay not far from the large ornate desk in the library, which Partain had guessed contained 9,000 books.

  The homicide sergeant was Frank Tine, a tall light brown man of at least 40 who wore a handsome shockproof face and clothing chosen for comfort and warmth by someone, perhaps himself, perhaps his wife, who didn’t want him to go around looking all that handsome.

  “Know how it looks to me?” Tine asked Patrokis, who stared at the General's body as a police photographer shot frame after frame of 35mm film. “Looks to me like the General sat down at his desk and wrote it all out, then got up and walked over here and shot himself so he wouldn’t splatter anything on that new will of his that leaves everything to”—Tine looked down at his notes—”the Victims of Military Intelligence Treachery, whatever the fuck that might be.”

  “VOMIT,” Patrokis said. “He was one of its two founders. I’m the other one.”

  “He also wrote something else.”

  Patrokis didn’t ask what and looked around the huge room to see whether anything looked different. He decided that it looked as if somebody had died.

  “Want to know what else he wrote?” Tine said.

  “Sure.”

  “A confession.”

  “That he killed Emory Kite? Yeah, I heard that.”

  “How the hell’d you hear he wrote a confession?”

  “I didn’t. I heard he admitted he’d killed Kite. Mrs. Altford called me. After she called you.”

  Sergeant Tine nodded and turned slowly all the way around, as if inspecting, maybe even appraising, the library. “Think he’d read all these books?”

  “Most of them probably.”

  “How much you think he was worth?”

  “I think he was damn near broke and had been for some time.”

  “Big house like this?”

  “It's got a maximum mortgage on it.”

  “That mean you VOMIT folks aren’t gonna get much?”

  “Probably nothing,” Patrokis said.

  “Why d’you think he killed Kite?” the Sergeant asked, his tone lacking all curiosity.

  “I don’t know,” Patrokis said. “Think he was sick?” “Who—Kite?” “The General.” “No. He wasn’t sick.” “Kite blackmailing him?” “I doubt it.”

  “But that’d give the General a motive, wouldn’t it?” Sergeant Tinesaid. “Say some pissant private cop's threatening to ruin your life. That makes you mad enough to go do something about it. But you don’t think it through. And the glow from getting even lasts about two minutes, maybe less, before it hits you what you’ve really gone and done. So you go tell somebody about it, maybe your oldest friend, maybe this Altford lady, and then you go home, write some stuff, think if there's anything else you ought to do, decide there isn’t except one last thing and you go ahead and do it.”

  The Sergeant gave the big room another appreciative examination before he asked, “How many books in here, you think?”

  “About six thousand.”

  “That many?” he said, looked around some more, then turned back to Patrokis and said, “And the dumb funny thing about all this is that it happened to somebody who, from the looks of things, had it all, all his life.”

  “He did have it all,” Patrokis said. “It's just that he was never quite sure what to do with it.”

  “Like we would,” Tine said.

  Patrokis smiled slightly. “Like we would.”

  CHAPTER 40

  The only item not packed and ready for travel was the black leather overnight case that contained the one-point-two million dollars. It lay on the bed in Millicent Altford's hotel bedroom, its top flung carelessly back, its suspect contents indecently exposed.

  Partain watched as Altford, wearing tailored jeans, a thick white silk pullover and her dark gray cashmere topcoat, picked up two of the bound packets of $100 bills that contained $5,000 each, hesitated, picked up another one, turned, went over to Partain, grabbed his right hand and slapped the three packets into his palm.

  “Too much,” he said.

  “That's for me to decide,” she said, picked up a bottle on the room's dresser, poured its remaining two and a half ounces of Scotch into a pair of glasses, handed him one and asked, “You going back to L.A.?”

  “In a day or two.”

  “Well, you’ve got a first-class ticket with an open return, so take your time.”

  “Jessica around?” he asked.

  “Somewhere,” she said, finished her drink, put the glass down,went over to the bed, lowered the lid on the money case and zipped it closed. She wanted to lock it but had no key and asked Partain, “What d’you think? Carry-on or check it through?”

  “Check it through unless you want some security X-ray taking a peek inside.”

  There was a firm knock at the door of the suite's sitting room followed by the voice of a bellman announcing his presence. Altford hurried into the sitting room and opened the corridor door. The bellman was a young Latino, who smiled winningly and said, “Luggage?”

  “In the bedroom.”

  He nodded, hurried into the bedroom, grinned at Partain, picked up Altford's suitcase, then indicated the black overnight case on the bed and asked, “This too?”

  “That too,” she said.

  He picked it up, sagged to one side because of its unexpected weight, said, “Heavy, no?” and was gone.

  After the corridor door closed, Millicent Altford examined Partain briefly. “You wanta work for me steady?”

  “Doing what?” he said, finished his drink and put the glass down.

  “Who knows?”

  “What's it pay?”

  “The same as a light-colonel’d make.” He grinned. “I’ll let you know.”

  She nodded and left him with a smile and a conspiratorial wink. After he heard the corridor door in the sitting room close, Partain picked up the bedroom phone and dialed a number that was answered on the third ring.

  “It's Edd Partain, Shawnee. What’d you decide about dinner?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Shawnee Viar.

  Partain was wearing his new blue suit, a new white shirt, one of his two new ties and the Kevlar vest wh
en Shawnee Viar picked him up in her gray Volvo station wagon at 7 P.M., just north of the Mayflower entrance.

  Partain handed her the nicely drawn Xeroxed copy of a map to General Walker Hudson's house that someone had left in his hotel box. Shawnee looked at it for a long moment with the aid of the dashboard lights, nodded and said, “Yeah, I know where it is. Out there it's half-acre lots, pools, pine trees, dogs and not quite enough room for a horse.”

  After going through Georgetown they crossed Key Bridge, turned onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway and eventually turned left onto a twisting blacktop that went on for 1.7 miles until they came to the promised curb mailbox with a coxcomb of wooden letters that spelled “Hudson.”

  A fairly long paving-block drive led up to a sprawling one-story stone house with an immense chimney and extremely wide eaves. The builder had left as many pines as possible and there was only a trace of a proper yard.

  “What if—” she said.

  “I don’t know,” Partain said, not letting her finish.

  She stopped the Volvo at the top of the drive in front of the entrance, then switched off the engine and the headlights. Two lanternlike fixtures glowed on either side of the entrance door, which appeared to be made from thick slabs of oak.

  Partain got out first. Shawnee came out more slowly, wearing a long tan raincoat that almost met the tops of her speed-lace boots. Partain had no idea what was beneath the buttoned-up raincoat. Maybe shorts and a tank top. Maybe even a dress.

  “Is there a Mrs. General Hudson?” she asked.

  “There were three of them but they all left,” Partain said as hereached the oak door and pressed an inset ivory-colored button. Chimes rang inside. Partain counted to five and the door was opened on six by Colonel Ralph Millwed, wearing a false smile, a dress uniform and all of his ribbons.

  “Ms. Shawnee Viar!” the Colonel said, raising his voice and making a mock announcement of the guests’ names. “And Mr. Twodees Partain!”

  He opened the door wide and Shawnee Viar brushed past him. Partain followed her into the room and stopped, waiting for Millwed to close the door. It was a large oblong room with too much expensive furniture. At its far end, General Walker Hudson, also in dress uniform, was rising from a burgundy leather couch, wearing a wide smile.

  Partain heard the front door close, took two fast steps backward, used his right elbow as a piston and twice drove it deeply into Colonel Millwed's solar plexus, torturing its ganglia of sympathetic nerves.

  Partain spun around and waited, seemingly forever, until Millwed doubled over, clutching his midsection. It was then that Partain brought up his right knee and broke Millwed's nose.

  After the Colonel collapsed on the polished random-width pine floor, Partain knelt, searched him quickly and removed a small Beretta semiautomatic from the right hip pocket. It was just after he had the Beretta in his hand that Partain heard Shawnee Viar snarl her command. “Back down, asshole.”

  He turned to look. General Hudson was slowly lowering himself into the burgundy leather couch. Shawnee stood no more than four feet from him, both hands aiming a .38 Colt revolver at the General's chest. The barrel of the pistol wavered scarcely at all.

  Partain turned back to Colonel Millwed, who still lay curled up on the pine floor and was now making mewling noises interrupted by an occasional series of harsh grunts. Partain took out a handkerchief,thoroughly wiped the Colonel's Beretta, wrapped the handkerchief around the barrel and placed the weapon in the Colonel's right hand.

  “I’ll break all the fingers of your right hand if you don’t do exactly what I say,” Partain murmured. “I’m now going to aim the Beretta and you’re going to pull the trigger. When I say fire, you fire.”

  Partain aimed the weapon in Millwed's hand at a nearby overstuffed armchair and said, “Fire.” The gun went off and a round hole appeared in the chair's back.

  “Let go the gun,” Partain said.

  The weapon fell a few inches to the floor. Partain rose, kicked it six feet away, then turned and walked past it until he was a yard away from the General.

  “You two are in deep, deep shit,” General Hudson said in a pleased and confident voice, then leaned back on the couch and crossed his legs.

  “Both hands on that top knee after you put out your cigar,” Partain said.

  The General did as told and said, “Now what?” “You okay, Shawnee?” Partain asked. “Never better.”

  “We want two things,” Partain said to the General. “We want Hank Viar's thirty-two notebooks. That's first.”

  The General's eyes danced from Partain to Shawnee Viar and back. “What if I don’t have them?”

  “I get to shoot you,” Shawnee said.

  “And if I do have them?”

  “Then you live,” Partain said.

  “And the catch?”

  “We’ll get to that.”

  The General nodded at a cherrywood cabinet to Partain's left. “See that cabinet over there?”

  Partain looked, nodded and turned back.

  “Well, it's not exactly a cabinet, although it's got that nice Tiffany lamp on it. It's a safe. Viar's stuff's inside it.” “Is there an alarm?” “No alarm.”

  “If it's a silent one, you won’t finish the night.” “No alarm.”

  “What's the combination?”

  The General rattled it off. Partain went over to the cabinet, knelt, cautiously opened the wood door, revealing a sturdy gray steel safe. Partain worked the combination, waited, pulled down the safe's handle, tugged at it and opened the safe.

  There were two steel shelves. The bottom one held the thirty-two red spiral notebooks of Henry Viar. The top shelf was packed almost solid with currency, mostly banded $50 and $100 bills. Partain guessed there was nearly $400,000.

  Partain removed the spiral notebooks, closed the safe's door and rose.

  “Let's make him read us the part where they tried to make Hank disappear your wife,” Shawnee said.

  “We might,” Partain said and put the spiral notebooks on a table. “Not taking the cash?” the General said.

  “It's not mine,” Partain said, then turned to look at Colonel Mill-wed, who now lay on his left side and was inching his way toward the Beretta that still lay five feet away.

  “No closer, Ralph,” Partain said, “or I’ll have to bust something else.”

  The Colonel whimpered and lay still. “Now comes the catch,” the General said.

  Partain agreed with a nod and took a small .22-caliber revolver from his jacket pocket. “This is the same weapon that General Winfield used to kill Emory Kite this morning. You heard about Kite, of course.”

  “I heard.”

  “Well, you get to use it on Colonel Millwed.” “Kill him?” Partain nodded.

  “No,” the General said, snapping the word out. “Never.”

  “Think about it,” Partain said. “He's already shot at you and missed with his Beretta. This was after your argument that ended in a brief brutal fight that’ll explain Ralphie's bumps and bruises.”

  “You broke his fucking nose, mister.”

  “And you put up a great fight. But to save your own life, you eventually had to shoot him and you regret it very, very much.” “Let's hear the rest of it,” General Hudson said. “If you don’t shoot him, Shawnee here shoots you.” “Then she dies in jail.”

  “I’ve already spent a year in a locked ward, dickhead,” Shawnee said. “The most I’ll get is six months and I’ll be out in two. I’m Hank Viar's loony grief-crazed daughter, remember? You murdered my daddy and I went bonkers.”

  The General cleared his throat and said, “And if I shoot him?”

  “You fuck!” the Colonel screamed.

  “It’ll probably end your Army career but you’ll be alive.”

  “Let's get it over with, then,” the General said.

  “GODDAMN YOU, WALKER!” the Colonel yelled.

  The three of them ignored him as Partain took the .38-caliber revolver from S
hawnee Viar, aimed it at the General and said, “Let's go see Millwed. That's when I hand you the twenty-two and you shoot him. I’d suggest the temple but you might have your own preference.”

  “Partain, you fuck,” Millwed said, not bothering to scream or yell.

  As the General and Partain went slowly over to the prostrate Colonel, Shawnee Viar gathered up the thirty-two red spiral notebooks,pressed them to her chest and followed the two men. Her eyes were wide and bright and amused.

  When the two men reached him, the Colonel looked up and begged. “Please, Walker. Don’t kill me. For God's sake, don’t.”

  “Let's do it,” the General said to Partain.

  Partain used his right hand to stick the barrel of the .38-caliber revolver into the General's right ear. “Insurance,” Partain said, then handed over the .22.

  “I’M GODDAMN BEGGING YOU, YOU FUCK!” the Colonel roared and then squeezed his eyes shut.

  “Sorry, pal,” the General said, squatted, held the small revolver two inches away from Millwed's temple and pulled the trigger. There was a loud snap and a click.

  The General turned pale. The Colonel began to weep. Partain bent over, removed the .22 from the General's hand, straightened, put the small gun away and said, “Let's go, Shawnee.”

  The General rose slowly, staring at Partain. Fear had settled on his face for the first time. His voice sounded old and scratchy when he asked, “What happens to Viar's diaries?”

  “The Army gets them,” Partain said. “You guys can work out a defense between you. I suspect the Colonel's will be that he was only following orders, right, Ralph?”

  “Fuck you, Partain,” the Colonel whispered.

  “Can I kick him just once in the balls?” Shawnee Viar said.

  “If you really want to,” Partain said.

  “No,” she said. “I guess I don’t.”

  CHAPTER 41

  When the United 747 was forty miles west of Dulles, Edd Partain stopped a passing flight attendant in the first-class section and said, “There's a Ms. J. Carver back in steerage who needs to upgrade her seat.” He indicated the vacant aisle seat next to his. “This one's empty. Can you arrange it?”