Backup Men (8 page)

“Like chess pieces,” I said.

“No,” she said, “more like the game you call checkers. All counters have the same value.”

“He’s a true democrat,” I said.

“He asked what the man is because he wants to know how much the man has to lose if he eventually becomes my alibi. If he’s a bellhop or a taxi driver, then he has little to lose. A wife, perhaps, but he can always get another, can’t he, Padillo?”

“He’s Government, isn’t he, Wanda?”

“Yes, damn it, he’s Government.”

“I may have to have his name.”

“What will you do with it, blackmail him?”

Padillo smiled at her, but it wasn’t the kind of a smile that one returns. “No,” he said, “I’ll merely use it to make sure of something.”

“Of what?”

“Not much. Just that you’re not lying.”

9

IT WAS collect, of course. That’s the only kind of longdistance call I ever get at three o’clock in the morning and often as not it’s from someone I haven’t seen in fifteen years and haven’t thought of in ten. Usually, they just want to talk because they’re about three-fourths of the way through a bottle of bourbon and the wife has gone to bed and it seems like a damned good idea to call up old McCorkle and find out how the hell he is.

But sometimes they’ve run into a little trouble and need fifty dollars to get out of jail or a hundred to get to the next town where the new job is waiting and they can’t think of anybody else in the whole world who’ll lend it to them except me and please, for Christ’s sake, would I mind wiring it?

So I usually send the money because it’s as cheap a way as I can think of to make sure that they don’t call anymore. After I hang up I sometimes lie there in bed and try to think of whom I could call at three in the morning to send me fifty or a hundred. It’s not a long list.

This time it was Padillo and he was calling from New York and after I told the operator that I’d accept the call, I said, “How much do you need?”

“I’ve got a little trouble.”

“It’s not so little if you’re calling at three in the morning.”

“They made a try about two hours ago.”

“Where?”

“In Delaware,” Padillo said. “I was driving them up.”

“From Baltimore?”

“Right.”

“Was it Kragstein and Gitner?”

“It must have been, but it was too dark to tell.”

“What happened?”

“They pulled up alongside and tried.”

“Tried?”

“I caught on in time and they went off the road.”

“Anyone hurt?”

“You mean them or us?”

“Us,” I said. “You.”

“No. Kassim was barely ruffled.”

“What about the other guy, his adviser?”

“Scales? He’s another cucumber.”

“So what do you need?”

“Another hand.”

“Who?”

“Do you remember one of our customers called William Plomondon?”

“I see his trucks around town. Plomondon the Plumber. He’s a pretty big contractor.”

“Call him for me first thing tomorrow.”

“What’ll I tell him, that the sink’s stopped up?”

“Invite him to lunch. He won’t take it over the phone. Tell him that I can use him for three days in New York and that there’ll be a bonus.”

“He’ll know what I’m talking about?”

I could hear Padillo’s rare sigh. It wasn’t one of impatience. It was one of weariness that may have contained a touch of regret. “He’ll know.”

“Where’ll I tell him to call you?”

“No calls,” Padillo said. “I’m using a phone booth.”

“What’s the address?”

It was on Avenue A in Manhattan and I remembered the neighborhood. It would never win any prizes in the annual Spring paint-up, fix-up campaign.

“You’re right downtown,” I said. “When do you want him to show?”

“By seven o’clock tonight.”

“And you really need him?”

“I really need him.”

“What happened to Wanda?”

“That’s why I need him. She’ll be gone for three days and after that I’ll have to move Kassim and Scales again.”

“Any idea where?”

“West, I think,” he said. “But where west I don’t know.”

“Was Wanda with you when Gitner and Kragstein made their try?”

“No. She left as soon as she got the news.”

“What news?”

“Kassim’s older brother.”

“What about him?”

“He died six hours ago. The kid is now king.”

“Give him my congratulations,” I said.

“I’ll do that,” Padillo said and hung up.

Padillo had been gone for nearly two days when he called me at three Friday morning. I’d last seen him at the Hay-Adams, still negotiating his uneasy truce with Wanda Gothar. Since then I’d kept fairly busy at the none too arduous tasks that compose saloonkeeping. If it had been hard work, I’d have gone into something else. But I’d signed some purchase orders; hired a new pastry chef who claimed to make a remarkable kirsch torte; turned down the Muzak salesman for the ninth time; approved a recommendation by Herr Horst to buy some new uniforms for the waiters and busboys, and had a fairly friendly, explorative talk with the business agent for Local 781 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union (AFL-CIO) who thought I should be paying the help a little more money. I told him that I thought they should be working a little harder, so we left it at that for the time being and had a drink and talked about the kind of restaurant he planned to open once he got out of what he described as the “labor game.”

After Padillo called I’d made the late luncheon date with William Plomondon and I was sitting at the bar waiting for him when Karl moved down to my end and started rearranging some glasses that didn’t much need it.

“What’s new?” I said.

“The duchess was in the bag again,” he said.

“That’s not new.”

“I thought you’d like to know.”

She wasn’t really a duchess. She was the wife of a cabinet member with whom I’d finally had to have a little chat because the Mrs. insisted on having lunch at our place at least twice a week, which was all right, except that she usually drank it and needed help to make it out the front door. We’d come to an arrangement so that whenever she showed up Herr Horst would call a certain number in the cabinet member’s office and a departmental limousine would be dispatched to take her home or on to her next appointment. She drank straight double vodkas and Padillo predicted that she would wake up in a drying-out place within three months. I gave her six and Karl, less tolerant or perhaps more realistic, claimed that she had only a few weeks left.

“How big was her party?” I said.

“Five other broads. Nobody important. The duchess is supposed to show at the Spanish Embassy reception tonight, but I don’t think she’ll make it. If she does, she’ll probably jump in the goldfish pool again.”

Karl had worked for Padillo and me in Bonn where he’d been bored by both the Bundestag and whatever passed for social life in that village on the Rhine. Although I found it difficult to decide which of the capital cities was duller, Karl thought that Washington glittered and regarded Congress as an endless drama. He was on a first-name basis with at least fifty Representatives and a dozen Senators, knew how the rest of them voted on every issue, was a primary source of backstairs gossip for half of the town’s society reporters, and was occasionally consulted by a couple of syndicated columnists who also put great faith in the philosophical pronuncia-mentos of New York cabdrivers. In addition, Karl was also the best bartender in town. Padillo had seen to that.

“When’s Mike coming back?” he said.

“In a couple of days.”

“Where is he?”

“Out of town.”

“I was hoping I could talk to you guys about something.”

I sighed and turned from my vigil at the door. Plomondon could find me easily enough when he arrived. I had a more important problem. My bartender wanted to borrow some money.

“What barn did you find it in?” I said.

“You’ll never believe it.”

“That’ll make it easier to say no.”

“Listen,” Karl said and patted a stray lock of long blond hair back into place. I think he may have pioneered the trend because he’d worn it long for more than a dozen years. “It’s a Dues.”

“You can’t afford a Duesenberg,” I said. “Nobody can.”

“It’s a 1934 blown SJ with a Rollston body.”

“What kind of shape is it in?” I said, getting interested in spite of myself.

“Cherry.”

In addition to being the town tattle, Karl was also a classic car buff. He’d owned a series of them beginning with a 1939 Lincoln Continental that I’d found for him in Copenhagen. He’d keep one awhile and then sell it for a respectable profit in what seemed to be a steadily rising market. I didn’t share his passion, but after all, they’d only made 500 of the things, and he probably wanted this one so much that it hurt.

“How much?” I said.

Karl busied himself with the glasses again. “Twenty-five,” he said in a voice so low that it was hard to decide whether it was a whisper or a whimper.

“Jesus,” I said.

“Look,” he said, whipping out a ballpoint pen and using a paper napkin to figure on. “I know where I can get fifteen tomorrow for the Hispano-Suiza.” That’s what he was then driving. “I got five saved so really all I need is another five.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Twenty-five thousand dollars for a car that’s nearly forty years old.”

“It’ll be worth thirty-five easy in less’n five years.”

“It’s in good shape?” I said, feeling myself weakening and hating it.

“Perfect.”

“I’ll talk to Padillo when he gets back.”

“This guy can’t hold it forever.”

“When Mike gets back.”

“I’ll call the guy and tell him I’ll take it.”

“Look, I didn’t say—”

“I think your luncheon date’s here,” Karl said.

I turned and watched Plomondon the Plumber move across the room toward the bar. He was a small, compact man, not quite forty and not over five-five who walked on the balls of his feet and swung his arms a little more than necessary, something like a British soldier who’s never off parade. He had brown curly hair that was cut close to his head, which may have been a little too big for his body, but which he carried at a proud angle with chin out and shoulders back.

He nodded at me as he came and when he was close enough he stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Bill Plomondon.”

I shook his hand, which was dry and hard and also too large for the rest of him, and said that I was glad to see him and asked whether he would prefer to have lunch in a private room.

“I like things out in the open.”

I nodded and turned to survey the dining room. It was a little past two because Plomondon had said he couldn’t make it any earlier so there were several tables available. I caught Herr Horst’s eye and he nodded and glided across the room toward us.

“Number eighteen, I think, Herr Horst,” I said.

“Of course, Herr McCorkle,” he said with the stiff formality that we’d both maintained in private as well as public for nearly fifteen years.

We could have squeezed another ten tables into the dining room and perhaps no one would have complained, but a lot of our customers ate with us because we kept the tables far enough apart so that they could describe their latest triumphs and disasters in a normal conversational tone without fear of being overheard.

When we were seated, Plomondon waved away the menu. “I’d like a small steak rare and a salad. If you’re having a drink, I’ll take a martini any way that they like to make it.”

To celebrate this no-nonsense approach I ordered the same thing and when the drinks came, he took a sip, put it down, folded his arms on the table, leaned forward and stared at me with brown eyes that didn’t seem overly impressed with what the world had to offer.

“How’s Mike?” he said.

“All right.”

Plomondon shook his head. “If he was all right, he wouldn’t have you inviting me for lunch.”

“He said he can use you in New York for three days and that there’d be a bonus.”

Plomondon didn’t nod or frown or do anything other than blink at me twice with those seen-it-all eyes of his. “No,” he said. “Tell him that. No.”

“He said he needed you by seven tonight.”

“It’s still no.”

“All right,” I said.

Plomondon moved his head to look first right and then left and then over his shoulder. He had a small face for the size of his head. There was a great deal of forehead and chin and they seemed to have shoved his mouth, nose and eyes together into a neat, compact area that could be easily attended to. His nose tilted up at its end and his mouth didn’t have much upper lip which made him look as if he pouted a lot, although I don’t think he really did. When he was satisfied that nobody was eavesdropping, he leaned forward again and said, “You don’t talk about it a lot, do you?”

“About what?”

“About Padillo and what he does.”

“He runs a saloon,” I said.

“Good. I run a plumbing company. A big one.”

“I’ve seen your trucks.”

“I also take on the odd job now and then. Not often. Just now and then. So you see I’ve got my lines out.”