by Ross Thomas
There was a brief silence. The old man looked at Padillo and then at Boggs and Darragh. It was Darragh who sighed as he spoke.
“I don’t like to keep mentioning Mrs. McCorkle, but—”
“You don’t have to mention her,” Padillo said. “I only said that I couldn’t do it. I didn’t say it couldn’t still be done.”
“Why can’t you do it, Mr. Padillo?” Van Zandt asked.
“Because the FBI is interested in me. They’re interested in the guns I ran in Africa. They’ve had a tail on me since I’ve been here.”
“We’ve been watching you, too, Padillo,” Boggs said. “We haven’t noticed the tail, as you say.”
“Then you haven’t looked. We shook them off to come here. But that will only make them interested. They’ll make sure they stick next time.”
“Obviously you couldn’t carry out your assignment if you are under strict surveillance,” Van Zandt said. “But how do we know that you are?”
“I’ll be back at my hotel at six tonight,” Padillo said. “Just have someone in the lobby. There’ll be at least two from the FBI there; perhaps more. They’re not hard to spot.”
“Someone will be there, Mr. Padillo,” Darragh said. “I can assure you.”
“You can also be there at six in the morning. They’ll be there then, too.”
Van Zandt shook his head. “I don’t like this, Wendell. I don’t like to have plans go wrong.”
“They haven’t necessarily gone wrong,” Padillo said. “The assassination can still be brought off.”
“By whom?”
“By a professional.”
There was another silence and then the old man went into another coughing fit.
“How could we trust him?” he said between coughs.
“You engage me as the contractor. I just subcontract it out. The chief difference is that I’ll have to have the seventy-five thousand dollars you mentioned in Lomé. The man I have in mind doesn’t come cheap.”
“Our hold on you would still be Mrs. McCorkle?”
“With one exception. McCorkle must be allowed to talk to her at length Monday night. He must also be allowed to talk to her just prior to the assassination.”
“You don’t seem to trust us, Mr. Padillo,” Van Zandt said.
“I don’t trust you at all. I think you’re desperate and I think you’re scared. When you killed Underhill, you showed how desperate you are. You’re also sloppy. Boggs here talks to his wife who talks to her sister who is Underbill’s wife. This is supposed to be a conspiracy. I agree with McCorkle. It’s becoming a convention.”
“We have taken steps to make sure that Mrs. Boggs doesn’t talk to anyone else,” Boggs said.
“I’ll bet you have,” Padillo said. “But you do things after the fact. When this is over, there’ll still be McCorkle and his wife and me around. We’ll know what happened. What do you plan to do with us?”
Darragh spread his hands in an open gesture. “You’ll have become involved, Mr. Padillo. You were to have been the killer; now you’ll be an accessory. So will Mr. McCorkle.”
“And his wife?”
“I doubt that she would jeopardize her husband.”
“This fellow you say you know. Who is he?” Van Zandt asked.
“He’s a professional.”
“Does he have a name?”
“He has several.”
Van Zandt stared at Darragh. “I don’t like things to go wrong, Lewis. And things have gone wrong. Now we must employ yet another person. We have endangered the entire plan.”
“Perhaps not,” Darragh said smoothly. “We would like to meet this professional, as you call him, Mr. McCorkle. Can that be arranged?”
“Yes.”
“Today?”
“Probably.”
“And could you give us a name that he has used so that we might determine his qualifications?”
“The name would depend upon what country you plantied to make your inquiry in.”
“Spain? Madrid, perhaps.”
“Ask about a man who called himself Vladisla Smolkski therein 1961.”
Darragh asked how it was spelled and Padillo told him. “We will send a cable to our representative there at once. We should have an immediate answer. If it is satisfactory, we wish to meet this man.”
“He’ll be available.”
“How shall we contact you?”
“Call either McCorkle or myself. The meeting will be set up for an office on Seventh Street.” He gave them the address and Darragh wrote it down next to Dymec’s other name.
“I suggest that you bring money,” Padillo said.
“I don’t think we would like to pay all at once,” Boggs said.
“Just half. And you pay it to me, not to the man you meet.”
Van Zandt chuckled. “You intend to make a profit from my death, Mr. Padillo.”
“Just covering expenses. I may have to take a long trip when this is over.”
“Do you feel that you can bring it off successfully?” Van Zandt asked.
“It shouldn’t be too hard. You won’t have much protection, if any. The United States doesn’t seem to think you’re important enough.”
“It should stir the world,” the old man said. Darragh and Boggs squirmed some more in their chairs. Van Zandt’s flights seemed to embarrass them.
“We’ll make definite plans tonight,” Boggs said.
“The exact time, the place, everything,” Padillo said. “There’s just one more thing.”
“What?” Boggs said.
“Mrs. McCorkle. I suggest that you make sure that she is returned unharmed after this is over.”
“We intend to keep our bargain,” Boggs said.
Padillo stood up. “I’m glad that you do,” he said, “because you wouldn’t live long enough to regret that you didn’t.”
FOURTEEN
Boggs and Darragh followed us out into the hall when we left. Van Zandt continued to sit at the large carved desk, his pale green eyes gazing out from under the white forest of his eyebrows. He wasn’t watching us leave. He may have been looking at his country as it was sixty years ago, before the automobiles and the airplanes and the Coca-Cola, Or he may have been deciding whether to take a pill to kill the pain.
“Don’t threaten us, Padillo,” Boggs said when the sliding doors were closed.
“I wasn’t threatening you. I was just describing what was going to happen if Fredl McCorkle isn’t returned safely. You tried to buy me and you tried to frighten me and neither worked, so you pressured me through another person. That was a mistake on your part.”
“Then you also have the irate husband to consider,” I said. “You’ve convinced me that you might kill her if I went to the police, or if the assassination doesn’t come off. I’ll put up with all of that. I might even put up with a little more, just to make sure she’s all right. But not much more. Especially, not as much as having her scream over the telephone at me. That was another mistake you made.”
Boggs looked around to see who was listening. There was nobody.
“How much do you think we have riding on this, Jocko?” His voice was low and fast. He seemed furious, and a flush started rising from his collar-line. By the time it reached his ears, it was a bright pink. “We’re not playing for coppers, we’re playing for an entire country and the death of that old man in there is the winning ticket. If he’s not killed next Tuesday, then Darragh and I and a half-dozen other chaps may as well pack it in.” He was talking so fast that a trace of spittle formed at the corner of his mouth. Darragh nodded his dark head in agreement. His mouth was turned down at the corners.
“We don’t give a damn about what you feel or think or threaten,” Boggs went on. “You’re nothing and your woman’s nothing. You’re just a trigger finger to us and that trigger finger had better work when it’s supposed to.”
We were standing in the hall, the pair of them facing the pair of us. Darragh hunched his shoulders and leaned f
orward and his voice was as low and as fast as Boggs’s. “You mean as much to us as a couple of niggers, and nothing means less than that.”
Padillo looked first at Boggs and then at Darragh. “Is that all?” he asked.
Boggs took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the corners of his mouth. He was still pink. He nodded his head. “Could I say it more plainly?”
“No,” Padillo said. “You couldn’t.” He turned to me. “I take it you understood the gentlemen?”
“We don’t mean much to them,” I said.
“Well,” Padillo said, and smiled brightly at them, “it was nice talking to you.”
The flush started rising again on Boggs’s neck. “Have that man available, Padillo.”
“Sure,” he said, and smiled again. “Let’s go.”
We left the four-story house and walked towards the car.
“We didn’t seem to do too well playing the heavies,” I said.
“It was a draw,” Padillo said. “Although they had better lines.”
I made a U-turn on Massachusetts and started back towards downtown. I drove quickly, darting through traffic, and taking a couple of chances on two women drivers who thought that twenty miles an hour was reasonable haste. Padillo turned around and looked out the rear window.
“The green Chevrolet?” he asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“A girl’s driving.”
“She was parked up the street from the trade mission.”
“Don’t lose her,” Padillo said.
“I just wanted to make sure that she knew who we were.”
“Let’s talk to her.”
“Where?”
“You have any ideas?”
I thought a moment. “Rock Creek Park. The trees are just turning.”
“It should be pleasant.”
I turned right at Waterside Drive and the green Chevrolet followed. I drove through Rock Creek Park until I came to the first spot that had picnic tables, shifted down into second, and turned in. The Chevrolet shot past, stopped, then backed up. Padillo and I got out of the car. The Chevrolet pulled into the parking place. The girl behind the wheel cut the engine and sat in the car looking at us. Then she opened the door and got out.
She was a brown-eyed blonde and her hair was cut short so that it seemed to form a helmet over her head. She walked towards us slowly, one hand in the deep leather purse that she had slung over her right shoulder. She wore a brown tweed coat and a beige skirt. She had long slim legs and the dark brown pumps she wore picked their way carefully through the gravel of the parking lot. Her brown eyes rested first on my face and then on Padillo’s and then back on mine. The eyes were wide and they seemed a little frightened. She was all of twenty-two.
“Which one of you is Michael Padillo?” she asked, and her lower lip trembled a little when she said it. Her voice was soft and low and it sounded reminiscent of another voice I had heard before.
“If you plan to shoot him with that gun you have in your purse,” Padillo said, “he’s not here.” As he talked he moved to his right. I moved to my left. The girl’s eyes tried to keep us both in sight, but we were too far apart.
“Damn,” she said, “damn, damn, damn.” Then she took her hand out of her purse. “All right,” she said. “No gun.”
“You didn’t really want to shoot me anyhow. I’m Michael Padillo.”
“What happened to my father?”
“Do I know your father?”
“He came here to see you and now he’s dead.”
“Your name is Underhill then.”
“Sylvia Underhill.”
“Your father was run down by a car.”
“They told me that,” she said. “They told me the car didn’t stop.”
“That’s right,” Padillo said. “It didn’t stop.”
“Why didn’t it stop?”
“This is Mr. McCorkle, Miss Underhill.”
She looked at me. “He mentioned your name, too.”
“I met him briefly.”
“I flew all night and all day,” she said. “May I sit down?”
We sat on the wooden benches of the picnic table and the girl looked around as if she realized for the first time that she had traveled twelve thousand miles and wanted to find out if the tour was all that the travel agent had said it would be.
“It’s nice here,” she said. “This is a beautiful park.”
“Would you like a drink?” Padillo asked.
“A drink?”
“What do we have?” he asked me.
“The emergency ration in the rear. Brandy.”
“Brandy?” he asked her.
“That would be fine, thank you.”
I got the bottle of brandy out of the car and three small plastic cups. It was cool under the trees, almost chilly in the mid-October afternoon, and the brandy tasted warm and reassuring to me. But then it always did.
“How did you know us?” Padillo asked.
“I guessed. I arrived this morning and saw the police and went to your restaurant this afternoon. They said you had gone so I asked what kind of auto you drove. I didn’t know where else to go so I drove to the trade mission. I saw a car that could have been yours. I waited. When you came out, I followed.”
“Do you know why your father wanted to see me?” Padillo said.
She nodded her head. “Yes. Did he get the chance to tell you?”
“Yes; he did.”
She paused and looked around and then she looked down into her plastic cup. “Did you agree?” She seemed to hold her breath after she said it.
Padillo looked at me. I nodded slightly. “Yes. We agreed.”
Her breath came out in a soft sigh. “I’m afraid I don’t have the money—it wasn’t with his things, they said.”
“We have the money.”
Her shoulders slumped in relief and she drank the rest of the brandy. “I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do. I was frantic when we heard about Dad and then they called the meeting and decided that I would have to go.”
“Who called a meeting?” I asked.
“They’re just people who believed as Dad did. Some farmers, some professors, a few lawyers and doctors and—well—just people. Some of them were in the parliament with Dad. They’re not organized. They’re not even the kind to form an organization. They’re just people who don’t agree with Van Zandt, who hate what he’s trying to do.”
“And they appointed you to take your father’s place?” Padillo asked.
“There was no choice. Most of them couldn’t get exit visas on such short notice. I could—or Mother could—because of Dad’s death. Somebody had to come. There just wasn’t anyone else.”
“How old are you?” Padillo said.
She looked at him. “I’m twenty-one.”
“What were you going to do if I hadn’t agreed to go along with your father’s suggestion?”
“Anything that would be necessary to make you change your mind, Mr. Padillo,” she said. “Anything.”
“You’re awfully young for anything.”
“Perhaps that would be an advantage.”
He nodded. “You’re not as young as I thought.”
She took a cigarette from her purse and I lighted it for her. It didn’t make her look any older. “Could you tell me about it?” she asked.
“How much do you know?”
“I know that Dad came here to see you after he found out about you. I know that he and the rest of them raised seventeen thousand pounds. It was all they could raise. They’re not very popular and business has been bad for some. He was going to offer you the seventeen thousand to expose the plot—to make sure that Van Zandt wasn’t killed.”
“They have Mr. McCorkle’s wife,” Padillo said. “They say they’ll kill her if the assassination doesn’t come off.”
The girl looked at me and her eyes were wide. “That’s terrible. That’s incredible.”
He looked at his watch. It was five-twen
ty. “Where are you staying?”
“I’m not staying anywhere. I went to the police and then I went to your restaurant and then I rented the car and came here.”
“We’d better make it some place safe,” I said.
“Your place?”
I nodded.
“I couldn’t—”
Padillo cut her off short. “He’s harmless. He’s in love with his wife.”
“If you whistle at breakfast, the deal’s off,” I said.
She smiled. It made her look about six years old at Christmas. “I’m sorry I objected. It wasn’t that, it was—I’ll promise not to whistle.”
Padillo looked at his watch. “I have an appointment at six.”
“Take my car,” I said. “We’ll go in hers.” I unclipped the ignition key from my ring and gave it to Padillo. “How long do you think it will take?”
“An hour; maybe two. It depends upon how well I lie.”
“Call me at the apartment. We’ll have dinner.”
“Good.”
Padillo got in the Corvette and drove off. I gathered up the cups and the brandy bottle. “Can you put these in that purse of yours along with the gun?”
“It’s a very small gun.”
“Nothing worries me more than a small gun, unless it’s an unloaded one.”
She wanted me to drive so I did. We came out on P Street and I drove east.
“Will you tell me about it, please?” she finally asked. “About all of it? I’m terribly sorry about your wife, but I have to know what Dad was doing when he died. I have to know if it makes any sense.”
“I can tell you about that right now,” I said as I turned into the basement garage. “None of it makes any sense.”
I got her suitcase out of the back seat and we took the elevator up to my apartment. I showed her the guestroom and bath and said that I would be in the livingroom. She came in a few moments later, looking a little less tired, or maybe she had done something to her face. She was an extremely pretty girl and without her topcoat the rest of her complemented her long slender legs. I asked her if she wanted a drink and she said no, she would like a cup of coffee so I went into the kitchen and heated the water and smoked a cigarette while I waited for it to boil. There was a coffeepot some place, but we never used it. Fredl had grown up on black-market American instant coffee and she insisted it was better than the ground variety. It was one of the major compromises of our marriage.