Missionary Stew

by Ross Thomas

“I know, but where in L.A.—Bel-Air, Beverly Hills?”

  “Malibu.”

  “Of course. Where else. Well, there you are on the beach in Malibu and there's just a whisper of something in Singapore and suddenly you’re on the phone.”

  “Am I the first?”

  “Well, yes and no.”

  “Who else?”

  “Your Langley chaps. A swarm of them all over the place.”

  “Just them?”

  “There’re others. One of the Langley lads described them as the crosstown rivals.”

  “The FBI.”

  “A gaggle of them, at least. Rather a rare bird in these parts. And the strangest thing of all, they’re not even speaking to each other.”

  “The CIA and the FBI?”

  “Precisely.”

  “How do you know?”

  “This is my town, Morgan. I’m paid to know.”

  “Did they come to you?”

  “Not at first. So I went calling on the station chief and politely asked if we could possibly assist them in their inquiries. I mentioned, in passing, of course, that we do have a certain amount of expertise in such matters and so forth and so on.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He grew quite testy and said that it was none of my fucking business.”

  “My.”

  “So I decided to find out what their romp through my patch was really about. I think it took about an hour. Both were looking for this Drew Meade.” He paused. “Now the next thing I’m going to tell you, Morgan, I probably shouldn’t, but I was really quite miffed. Still am.”

  There was another brief silence. Citron broke it with, “Go on.”

  “Well, they offered a reward for this Meade chap.”

  “A reward?”

  “Yes.”

  “Publicly? I mean, did they send out fliers?”

  “Oh my, no. It was all rather sub rosa. They just passed the word around.”

  “How much?”

  “The reward? Seventeen thousand five hundred. American, ofcourse. Why the odd amount I have no idea. Perhaps they’ve fallen on hard times.”

  “When was all this?”

  “About two weeks ago.”

  “Did they find him?”

  “No, but we did. Or so they say.”

  “You’ve just lost me.”

  “There was an anonymous call. In poor Cantonese. One of my chaps took it. He was given an address down on the docks. When we got there, we found a body floating in the water. It was very badly decomposed. The fish had been at it, naturally. But the passport and the Maryland driver's license were perfectly preserved in a wallet all neatly wrapped up in an airtight plastic bag that was tucked away in a hip pocket that was buttoned. Now I ask you.”

  “Drew Meade, huh?”

  “Both the CIA and the FBI swore to it. Separately.”

  “But you don’t believe them?”

  “Hardly.”

  Citron's hand tightened on the phone. “What do you believe, Lionel?”

  There was another of Lo's long silences followed by yet another sigh. “I do owe you, don’t I, Morgan?”

  “A little.”

  “Well, what I believe is this. First of all, they bought themselves an Anglo body somewhere. Secondly, they soaked it in the ocean for a time. And thirdly, they salted it with the Meade passport and driver's license and the other pocket litter. That's what I believe.”

  “Why’d they go to all the bother?”

  “Why? Because they wanted him thought of as dead.”

  This time it was Citron who created the silence. At least five seconds went by before he said, “Whatever for?”

  Lo giggled and then said, “I really must go now, Morgan. Do keep in touch.”

  The phone went dead. Citron slowly replaced the handset and wondered how long he had talked to Lionel Lo. Then he remembered his new watch, looked at it, and found the conversation had lasted nine minutes. He wondered how much it had cost. After that he started wondering about Drew Meade.

  After five minutes of wondering and a glass of red wine, Citron called long-distance information, was given the number he asked for, and then dialed New York directly. He was calling what arguably was the World's Finest Newspaper. When the switchboard answered, Citron asked to be connected with a man he had once known fairly well in such backwaters as Lagos, Belfast, Addis Ababa, and Tananarive. The man had spent twenty-five years as a journeyman foreign correspondent, and Citron remembered him as a very intelligent reporter, if not quite brilliant, who wrote crisp, clear copy very quickly.

  The man would have remained a foreign correspondent of the utility infielder type until retirement if—as he always put it—”the legs hadn’t given out.” He now lived in Connecticut, raised Jack Russells, commuted to work, and wrote the obituaries of famous foreigners he had known and whom he expected to die soon. Or relatively soon. He himself had four years to go until retirement, and when Citron called he was working on the obituary of the still-vigorous Chief Obafemi Awolowo of Nigeria.

  “Not calling your own obit in, are you, Morgan?” he said after they said hello.

  “No. Not yet.”

  “Some guys do that, you know. They retire and the phone doesn’t ring anymore and they start brooding about how they’re going to be remembered, so they call it in—just to make sure we’ve got the facts right. But what they’re really worried about is that we’ll forget who they were and what they did on the Federal Power Commission back in nineteen-forty-seven. They also get garrulous, like me. What can I do for you?”

  “Drew Meade. Does it ring a bell?”

  “Meade. Meade. I-led-nine-lives Meade, you mean?”

  “Was it that many?”

  “Close. He never did cash in on it like Philbrick did, though. Philbrick only led three lives, if you recall, which few do except for ancients like me. What’re you working on, a feature?”

  “Thinking about it. Is he still alive?”

  “Philbrick or Meade?”

  “Meade.”

  “Let's see what the trusty computer has to say.”

  There was the sound of the phone being put down, then being picked up again. “Died in Singapore the day after the election. That would be election day our time. We used it in the first edition as a filler and then dropped it to make room for the election stuff. So all Meade's nine lives got was two graphs from AP.”

  “Can you read it to me?”

  “Sure. ‘The body of Drew Meade, sixty-three, a former employee of both the FBI and the CIA, was found here Wednesday by Singapore police. A spokesman for the police said Mr. Meade apparently had drowned.’

  “Second graph: ‘A member of the Office of Strategic Services during World War Two, Mr. Meade joined the FBI in nineteen-forty-seven and later transferred to the CIA in the early ‘sixties, according to a U.S. Embassy spokesman here. Funeral arrangements are pending.’ That's it. No mention of his nine lives. No kith or kin either. It sounds like an embassy handout.”

  “So he's dead, huh?” Citron said.

  “So AP claims. You know, Morgan, if I really gave a shit anymore, which I don’t, I’d say you were working on more than just a feature.”

  “I’m just fooling around.”

  “Uh-huh. Let me ask you another one. Was old what's-his-name really a cannibal?”

  “Sure he was.”

  “You’ve made my day.”

  “The least I could do.”

  At 6:07 P.M., Citron resumed his role as building superintendent and changed a light bulb in a ceiling fixture in Unit C for Miss Rebecca Clay, a very pert and very short twenty-nine-year-old senior copywriter who worked for J. Walter Thompson in Century City. Miss Clay invited Citron to have a glass of white wine, which he accepted. While they drank their wine, Miss Clay told him about some of her adventures in the advertising business and about the screenplay she was writing, which was based on these same adventures. Citron listened politely, thanked her for the wine, and went back to his
own apartment. It was 6:37.

  At 6:57, Citron was shaved, showered, and dressed in his newly purchased suit. He picked up the bouquet of carnations he had bought from the young blond woman who sold them out of the back of a pickup at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and the Pacific Coast Highway. They had cost $1.50. He had asked Draper Haere to pull over and stop so he could buy the flowers. Haere asked if he had a date, or if he just liked flowers. Citron replied that he had a date with Velveeta Keats for dinner.

  “Velveeta—like the cheese?”

  “Like the cheese.”

  “Who's she?”

  “A remittance woman, she says.”

  “Malibu,” Haere had said.

  At 6:59 P.M., Citron—who was seldom late and often early— knocked at the door of Unit E, his bouquet of carnations in hand. When there was no answer he knocked again. Because he could hear loud music coming from either a radio or a stereo unit, Citron tried the door. It was not locked. He went in.

  There were two of them. Both wore black wet suits and diving masks that obscured their faces. They were holding Velveeta Keats. One of them had a hammerlock on her right arm. The other had ahand, his left, clamped over her mouth. Without thinking, Citron threw the bouquet of carnations at them. They ducked. Velveeta Keats bit down on the hand over her mouth. The hand went away from her mouth and she started to scream. She screamed once and then stopped when the .38 caliber revolver was jammed up under her chin.

  “Not a sound,” said the man with the revolver. “Understand?”

  Velveeta Keats nodded.

  “You either,” the man with the revolver said to Citron.

  “Right,” Citron said.

  The two men backed carefully toward the large sliding glass doors that opened onto the balcony. The man without the gun slid the door open. Both backed through it onto the balcony. The man without the gun jumped over the railing of the balcony and down to the sand. The man with the gun followed him.

  Citron moved cautiously to the balcony and watched the two men enter the surf. He saw that they wouldn’t have a long swim. Anchored a hundred yards out was a small cabin cruiser. The two men were already swimming toward it.

  “Thank you for the flowers,” Velveeta Keats said.

  Citron turned. Velveeta Keats had gathered up the carnations from the floor. “Want me to call the cops?” he said.

  She shook her head. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “What was all that about?”

  “Something to do with Papa, I reckon.”

  “Want me to call him for you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No, they didn’t hurt me.”

  “Any idea about who they were?”

  “No. None. I guess they’re just mad at Papa about something.”

  “Maybe I should call him for you.”

  She gestured toward the small round table that was placed in front of the sliding doors. It was set for two. The plates, Citron saw, weregold-rimmed. The wine goblets were lead crystal. The silver place settings were laid out exactly. The white napkins had been carefully folded and twisted into the shape of giraffes. They stuck up out of the wine goblets. Two red candles were still to be lit. Velveeta Keats had gone to no little trouble, so Citron turned to her and said, “It looks very nice, but I still think you’d better call someone.”

  “We’re having veal,” she said. “Do you like veal?”

  “Very much.”

  “I thought we’d eat first, and then maybe fool around a little, and after that, well, maybe I’ll call somebody. How does that sound?”

  “That sounds fine,” Citron said.

  “Hold me, will you?”

  Citron put his arms around her. She was trembling.

  “Hold me real tight,” she said.

  CHAPTER 12

  It was a little past 7:00 P.M. when Drew Meade got off the Los Angeles RTD bus near the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and walked two and a half blocks south until he came to the small mission-style, tile-roofed bungalow with a metal sign that claimed it was guarded night and day by an “armed response” private security service. The small round sign glowed in the dark.

  Meade stood across the street under a sycamore and studied the bungalow. Lights were on in what seemed to be the living room. A dark-blue or black Mercedes 450 SEL sedan was parked in the drive. Meade wondered if there was a second car in the detached garage at the rear of the house.

  He watched for another three minutes, then ran a hand through his thick gray hair, felt the stubble on his face with the same hand, shined his shoes one after the other on the backs of his trouser legs, hitched up his belt, and crossed the street. He went through an iron gate and up a cement walk that curved back and forth for no reason that he could see. On the small porch he found a button and pressed it. He could hear two-tone chimes ring inside. He waited, but the door didn’t open. He would have been disappointed if it had. Only dopes opened their doors at night. Meade had not come calling on any dope.

  Meade rang the doorbell again. A woman's voice from behind the still-closed door said, “Who is it?”

  “Me. Drew.”

  “Good Lord,” the woman's voice said.

  He could hear the chain being removed and the deadbolt being turned back. The door opened a crack. An eye peered out. The door then opened wide.

  “Good Lord,” the woman said again. “Come in.”

  “How the hell are you, Gladys, anyway?” Meade asked as he went through the door and into the living room.

  Gladys Citron was wearing an ivory raw silk robe with a high Chinese collar. She backed up as Meade came into the room. “They say you’re dead.”

  Meade nodded and looked carefully around the room. “Yeah, well, I’m not.” He smiled appreciatively at what he saw in the room. “You’re doing all right. You renting this place, or what?”

  “I bought it—five years ago.”

  “Well, shit, Gladys, aren’t you gonna ask me to sit down, take a load off, have a drink? You’re looking good, by the way. Real good.” “Well, shit, Drew, sit down. Take a load off. Have a drink. Bourbon?”

  “Bourbon.”

  Drew Meade picked one of the two wing-back chairs that were drawn up before the unlit fireplace and sat down. Gladys Citron turned to a tray that held bottles and glasses, and poured two drinks: bourbon for Meade, white wine for herself. She moved over to Meade, handed him his drink, and sat down in the opposite wing-back chair.

  “So,” she said. “I heard you got rich.”

  “Yeah, I did. For a while there.” He drank two large swallows and lit one of his Camels.

  “What happened?”

  “A couple of things fell apart.”

  “And they kicked you out.”

  “Who says they kicked me out?”

  “Don’t try that, Drew,” she said. “Not on me.”

  “Okay, so they kicked me out.”

  “Heroin, I heard.”

  “Some heroin, but a lot of hash. Mostly hash. I got set up by the slope generals.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “I took the fall.”

  “Pity.”

  “It was a long way down. The fall. You know what I’ve been doing for ten years now?”

  “What?”

  “Nickel-and-diming it, trying to come up with two bits. Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Djakarta—the circuit. Opals, a little gold, some blue-sky shares. Hell, I was even a tour guide in Bangkok for a couple of months. The real Bangkok, know what I mean?”

  “I can imagine,” she said. “Then what?”

  “Then—well, then I got lucky.”

  “Tell me,” she said. “I like happy endings.”

  “What happened is I ran into one of the Maneras brothers. Remember the Manerases?”

  She nodded. “At the Bay. They were to have gone in on the first wave, except they were no-shows.”

  “The Manerases always were pretty smart—for Cubans.”

 
“Which one did you run into?”

  “Bobby—he's the oldest, isn’t he?”

  Again, she nodded.

  “Well, Bobby’d got himself into a mess. They were all looking for him. The narcs, some hard cases, the feebies, not to mention a whole bunch of other people. I mean, he was in a real mess. And what's more, he was broke. When I ran into him in Singapore he was living off an American Express gold card he’d dipped off some tourist. Sowhat the hell, Gladys. You know me. I got a heart as big as a house. I took him in.”

  “Why?” she said.

  “You got any more of this bourbon?”

  “Help yourself.”

  “I will.”

  Meade crossed to the liquor and made himself another drink. On the way back to his chair he gave the living room another calculating inspection, and then sank down into his chair with a long pleased sigh.

  “Why’d you take him in?” she said.

  “Bobby? Because he had something to sell. Cheap.”

  “What?”

  “A story.”

  Gladys Citron leaned forward in her chair, caught herself, and leaned back. Drew Meade grinned. She noticed that he still seemed to have all his teeth. They were big teeth, nearly square and absolutely even. They were also a strange shade of very pale yellow, although she now remembered that they had always been that peculiar shade ever since she had first met him in France thirty-what?— dear God, thirty-eight years ago.

  “What kind of story?” she said.

  “Interested, huh?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “That's some sheet you help put out, Gladys. I’ve seen a couple of copies. One had a story about this little girl who was swooped up by a flying saucer and flown to the moon or someplace and had a talk with Jesus. Hell of a story. People really buy that crap, huh?”

  “Six million copies a week.”

  “You pay for some of those stories, right?”

  “We pay.”

  “You pay pretty good?”

  “We can be generous.”

  Meade looked around the living room again, much as a bank appraiser might have looked. “How much does a house like this go for?”

  “Three-fifty to three-seventy-five now. I paid three-twenty-five.”

  “Seems like a hell of a lot to me.”

  “It's in Beverly Hills.”

  “Jacks up the price, right?”