Missionary Stew (13 page)

“What do you want me to tell him?”

“Just tell him what happened and that I’m okay, but that I thought he oughta know about those two kidnappers or whatever they were.”

The number in Miami rang six times before it was answered with an “allo.” It was a male voice.

“I’d like to speak to Mr. Keats, please.”

“Je ne comprendspas.”

Citron switched to French. “I would like to speak with Mr. Keats. My name is Citron.”

“Ah, Citron. You are French?”

“Is Mr. Keats there?”

“You speak very good French. Are you from Paris?”

“Just tell him I wish to talk to him about his daughter.”

A deep voice boomed over the line. “What about my daughter, mister?”

“Are you Mr. Keats?”

“I’m Keats. Get off the fuckin’ phone, Jacques.”

Citron could hear an extension phone being put down.

“My name is Citron.”

“I heard all that. I’m getting so I can
parlez-vous
a little bit, but it's sure as shit harder’n Spanish. Hell, anyone can learn to
habla espanol
, but you gotta talk way up there in the front of your mouth and move your tongue around real quick to
parlez-vous
French. Now what's all this about somebody claiming to be my daughter?”

“Velveeta Keats.”

“Never heard of her.”

“I must have the wrong number.”

“No, you ain’t got the wrong number. Why don’t you just go ahead and tell me about this daughter I’m supposed to have.”

Citron could hear a woman's voice in the background. And then Keats was yelling at her. “Goddamnit, Francine, I’m gonna find out what's wrong. Just lemme do it my way.” Keats then resumed his conversational rumble. “Now go on with what you were saying, Mr.—uh—”

“Citron. Morgan Citron.”

“Citron. That's ‘lemon’ in French, ain’t it?”

“Right.”

“Okay. Let's have it.”

“I’m a friend and neighbor of your daughter's—”

“Where?”

“In Malibu.”

“What's the address?”

Citron reeled off the five-digit number on the Pacific Coast Highway.

“Okay. That checks. What number you callin’ from?”

Citron read off Velveeta Keats's number.

“Hang up and I’ll call back. Just make sure it's you who answers.”

The phone went dead. Citron hung it up and looked at Velveeta. “He said he’ll call back.”

She shrugged. “Papa's sort of, well, suspicious, I reckon.”

A moment later the phone rang. Citron picked it up and said hello.

“Okay, buddy, let's hear it.”

“As I was saying, Mr. Keats, I’m a friend and neighbor of your daughter's.”

“So?”

“Last night she invited me to dinner. At seven o’clock, I knocked on her door. There was no answer. The door was unlocked so I went in. Two men dressed in wet suits were holding Velveeta. I threw something at them.”

“What?”

“Flowers.”

“You mean like—like pansies or something?”

“Carnations.”

“You must have clabber for brains, brother.”

“You may be right. Anyway, they pulled a gun.”

“They shoot her?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“They left. Velveeta has a balcony facing the beach. They went over that, down to the surf, and swam out to a small cabin cruiser.”

“You call the cops?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Velveeta said not to.”

“This happened last night?”

“Yesterday evening. Around seven.”

“And you’ve been fuckin’ her ever since, huh?”

Citron sighed. “She just wanted to let you know.”

“Hell, I don’t mind. She's thirty, going on thirty-one. She can do any goddamn thing she wants to. But you say you’re a friend of hers, huh?”

“That's right.”

“Okay. I’m gonna take the next flight out to L.A. I want you to meet me at the airport. You. Not her. My missus will call back and tell you what flight it is. I want you to rent a limousine with a driver and a Hertz Ford. A big Ford.”

“I don’t have a credit card.”

“Goddamn, she sure can pick ‘em. Use her credit card. She's got credit cards coming out the kazoo.”

“Why two cars?” Citron said.

“Because I never travel alone.”

“Who's coming with you?”

“Who?” Keats said. “My two French niggers, that's who.”

It was 7:15 A.
M
. when the phone rang at the crucial moment during Draper Haere's ritualistic preparation of his breakfast. He picked up the kitchen's yellow wall telephone, said, “Call back in five minutes,” hung up, and used the stainless-steel spatula to flip his two frying eggs over gently.

At 7:20 the phone rang again. Haere rose from the table, again picked up the long-corded yellow phone, this time in his left hand, sat back down, cut into one of the eggs with a fork, and was pleased to see it had been cooked to perfection. He then said, “Hello.”

The man's voice said, “Is this Draper Haere?”

“Himself.”

“What?”

“Yes, this is Haere,” he said and forked some grits mixed with egg yolk into his mouth.

“How soon can you get to a pay phone?”

Haere clamped the phone between his left shoulder and ear, put down the fork, picked up a biscuit, broke it open, and spread both halves with butter. “I don’t know,” he said. “An hour. A day. Maybe a week. Why?” He took a large bite of the buttered biscuit and chewed it with pleasure. Haere rarely found anything to fault in his cooking.

“Well, fuck it then,” the man said. “I’ll just have to risk it.”

“Risk what?”

“Telling you who I am.”

“Okay. Who?”

“Drew Meade.”

Haere had a square inch of homemade sausage about halfway to his mouth. He put the fork down, then picked it up again, examined the morsel of sausage carefully, put it into his mouth, and chewed it thoroughly before speaking. “Let's talk.”

“Fine,” Meade said. “Where?”

“My place in an hour.”

“What's the address?”

Haere told him.

“You remember me, huh?” Meade said.

“I remember you.”

“Yeah,” Meade said. “I figured you would.”

After the connection was broken, Haere rose and placed the yellow wall phone back on its hook. He turned, looked down at his partly
eaten breakfast, picked up the plate, and started to dump its contents into the sink, but paused. On the plate was an untouched biscuit and a leftover sausage patty. He sliced the biscuit open, placed the sausage patty between the two halves, and wrapped it up in wax paper. He knew he would be hungry later, and cold biscuit and sausage would be not only good, but also comforting. It had often been his lunch or even dinner in Birmingham. My heritage, he thought, as he turned on the faucet, again picked up the plate, scraped its contents into the sink, and switched on the garbage disposal. As he watched what was left of his breakfast being ground up and sluiced away, Haere thought about his dead father and the man who long ago had accused him of political heresy. Haere discovered there was no anger left, or even any bitterness. Nothing now remained other than a kind of cold curiosity. It would be interesting to see how Drew Meade had survived the years. It would be even more interesting to find out just what it was he had for sale. If anything. Haere decided a witness to the meeting would be both useful, and, indeed, necessary. He turned back to the wall phone, picked it up, and called Morgan Citron.

Citron answered on the first ring. “I was just about to call you,” he said after Haere identified himself.

“What’ve you got?” Haere said.

“I called Singapore yesterday. Also New York. Then I tried to call you, but couldn’t get you.”

“I was in a meeting,” Haere said.

“The guy I talked to in Singapore can be described as either a highly reliable source or an authoritative spokesman. Take your pick.”

“I like authoritative spokesman.”

“Right. Well, according to him both the CIA and the FBI were looking all over hell for your Drew Meade in Singapore. When they couldn’t find him, they bought themselves an Anglo body, dumped it in the ocean, let it be found, and then swore it was the late Mr. Meade.”

“Why?”

“That my authoritative source wouldn’t say—or didn’t know. Anyway, Meade's supposedly dead and buried. AP made it official with a two-paragraph story they filed election day—or the day after, Singapore time. My authoritative source didn’t believe a word of it.”

“He's right,” Haere said. “I’m meeting with Meade at my place in about forty-five minutes.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“I need a witness.”

“Me.”

“Right.”

“Fine,” Citron said, “but I have to meet someone at the airport at noon.”

“Anything to do with this?”

There was a long pause before Citron answered. “I don’t really know,” he said.

Gladys Citron turned from the medicine cabinet and handed Drew Meade her razor. He had already brushed his teeth with one of her spare toothbrushes. “Didn’t you bring
anything?”
she said.

“Just me, darlin’.”

She leaned against the bathroom doorjamb and watched as Meade soaped his face and began shaving with quick, impatient strokes. She was wearing one of her Chanel suits, the dark-gray, almost black one. The Legion d’Honneur ribbon was in place on the lapel. Meade was bare to the waist. She could detect no flab—not even at sixty-three.

“What do you do, work out?”

“Me? Christ, no.”

“How do you stay in shape?”

“I don’t sit around on my butt, that's how. People get out of shape because they sit around on their butts. You gotta keep moving. That's one thing you can say about me: I’ve kept moving.”

“When’re you going to move out of here?”

Meade looked back over his shoulder at her and grinned. The white soap made his teeth seem more yellow than they really were. “What's the matter, Gladys, not used to a man around the house?”

“Younger men, usually.”

“We didn’t do too bad last night for a couple of old crocks. I mean, you still know how to wiggle pretty good.” He pressed up his nose with a thumb and shaved under it. When he was done, he rinsed off the razor, put it back in the medicine cabinet, and turned. “You know, I was just thinking about the first time you and me made it—back in ‘forty-four just outside Dijon. Remember?”

“Vaguely.”

“They’d just co-opted you into OSS to liaise with the Resistance and I was your new wire man.”

“I remember.”

“We stayed at that farm, that dairy farm, the one where you’d stashed that kid of yours. Whatever happened to him, anyway?”

“He's around.”

“I remember he was only four or five then and didn’t speak anything but French. He went on to become some kind of reporter, didn’t he? A hotshot, I heard.”

“Something like that.”

“Back then, in ‘forty-four, he didn’t even hardly know who you were.”

“He knows now,” she said and turned to leave.

“Gladys,” he said.

She turned back.

“I’m going to need a little cash to go see Haere.”

“I can let you have a hundred. It's all I’ve got unless you can cash a check somewhere.”

“No checks.”

“When do I get a sample of what you’re peddling, Drew?”

Meade thought about it. “Three o’clock?”

“Where?”

He reached for his shirt, which was hanging on the bathroom doorknob. “What's wrong with right here?”

“Nothing,” Gladys Citron said.

CHAPTER 14

Drew Meade didn’t much like what he saw. Instead of one, there were two of them. There was the tall skinny one in the cheap new tan suit, and the other one, not quite so tall, wearing the banker blue suit and looking as if somebody had just run over his dog. Both were about the same age: forty, maybe even forty-one. He stared at each of them separately, memorizing them, and then gave a quick, careful examination to his surroundings.

“Just the one big room, right?” he said.

“Right,” Draper Haere said.

“You’re Haere.”

Haere nodded.

“You got older. I don’t even think I’d’ve recognized you. Who's he?” Meade nodded at Morgan Citron.

“A friend.”

“The witness, huh? He got a name?”

“Mitchell.”

“What's Mitchell's first name?”

“Mitch.”

“Mitch Mitchell,” Meade said, still staring at Citron. “Middle initial
probably M. Okay, I can live with that. Let's get the other thing out of the way.”

“What?” Haere asked.

“Your old man. I wanta clear the air about him.”

“Go ahead. You want to sit down?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

Meade chose the walnut armchair. He patted its left armrest appreciatively. “Nice old chair.”

“It used to belong to Henry Wallace,” Haere said, taking his usual seat in the Huey Long chair.

Meade was unimpressed. “Wallace, huh? Old bubblehead.”

Citron chose the leather couch. He sat, leaning forward, arms on his knees. Hubert, the cat, jumped up on the couch and inched his way onto Citron's lap.

“About my old man,” Haere said.

“He was a commie.”

“Was he now.”

“Sure. And I nailed him. It's what they paid me to do. It was a living, that's all, and not much of one at that. They offered me the job back in ‘forty-nine, I took it, they paid me, and I did it. I didn’t have anything against your old man. Not personally. In fact, he was a pretty nice guy. We used to have some laughs and a few beers together.”

“While you were setting him up.”

“Him and the others. You gotta remember I nailed him and six others out of that old Mine, Mill bunch. By rights, your old man should’ve gone to jail with the rest of ‘em for contempt, except Replogle jerked hard on a few wires and got him off. You know it and I know it, but what the hell, it's all ancient history now. But if you wanta get steamed about it, well, go ahead. I just wanta get it over and done with.”

There was only silence as Draper Haere examined the big grayhaired
man who now sat slumped in the old chair, one long leg, his left, stuck straight out in front, the other, the right, dangling over the chair's padded arm. A mercenary, Haere decided, forever reenlisting on life's losing side. And a believer yet in all the old recruiting lies and tired blandishments, but perhaps a bit puzzled now by why the war is still not won. Of course, there's always the one big battle to come, the decisive one, the last one, the one that’ll win the war and then, afterward, there’ll be loot, booty, and spoils for all.