“He’s got some aunts and some cousins, but no uncles, except by marriage.”
“I don’t suppose they count,” I said.
Gitner turned to Kragstein. “What’s he talking about?”
“We were discussing the possibility of working out an accommodation with Padillo before we became sidetracked,” Kragstein said. “Shall we continue?”
“Fine,” Padillo said.
Kragstein nodded. “We could arrange it several ways, of course, Michael. The one I prefer is that you come to your understanding with Miss Gothar and then be not nearly as proficient as you usually are.”
“In other words, you take a dive,” Gitner said.
“For how much?” Padillo said.
Kragstein pointed the end of his beard at the dirty ceiling. “Oh, say twenty-five thousand. Dollars, of course.”
“And I’d also be expected to tip you off about where Kassim might be stashed away,” Padillo said.
“Yes,” Kragstein said. “That would be expected.”
“All for twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“That’s right,” Gitner said. “Twenty-five thousand. That’s good money for doing what you’d be doing which is nothing. I’d like to make twenty-five big ones for doing nothing.”
“How much front money?” Padillo said.
Kragstein ran a thick, nicely cared for hand over his gleaming scalp before answering. “Possibly seventy-five hundred.”
Padillo laughed. It wasn’t really a laugh, it was more of a sharp, wordless bark of contempt. “Both you and Wanda,” he said.
“Both of us what?” Kragstein said.
“You’re both working on spec. How much oil do they guess is underneath Llaquab—eighty billion barrels?”
“Ninety,” Kragstein said.
Padillo leaned toward him across the table and switched from German to English. “That means a country whose annual income has been hovering around zero will get to watch it shoot up to seven or eight hundred million dollars a year—which is more than Kuwait gets. But that’s all sweet bye and bye money. Right now there’s not enough hard cash in this deal on either side to buy a pack of cigarettes.”
“The money will be there,” Kragstein said.
“What’s your asking price, Franz, a quarter of a million?”
“That’s close enough,” Gitner said.
“And you’re offering me ten percent, except that all you can scrape up between you in front money is seventy-five hundred. That means that you’re both almost broke and that’s why you’ve taken it on spec—because there’s nothing better around.”
“You’re not rejecting our offer, are you, Padillo?” Kragstein said in a new, soft low tone that made what he’d said sound more like a threat than a question.
Padillo rose. “That’s right,” he said. “Maybe your new partner doesn’t know that I’ve never worked on the cheap, Franz, but you do.”
“I’ve heard that about you, Padillo,” Gitner said. “That and a lot of other things. Maybe now I can find out if some of them are true.”
I was standing by Padillo now as he looked down at Amos Gitner. He looked at him steadily for several moments before he shifted his gaze to Kragstein.
“Maybe you’d better tell him, Franz,” he said. “Somebody should.”
“Tell him what?”
“That’s he’s not all that good.”
Kragstein did something with his mouth so that his teeth showed through the thicket of his beard. It could have been a smile. “I think he is,” he said.
“You’re talking about technique, aren’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Then you forgot something.”
“What?”
“Brains,” Padillo said. “He hasn’t got enough.”
8
OUTSIDE I waved at a Diamond cab but he sailed on by after looking us over carefully. It may have been that he didn’t care for the cut of my forest green cavalry twill suit, the double-breasted one that caused kindly friends to ask whether I hadn’t lost a few pounds. Or it may have been that the black scowl on Padillo’s face bothered him. It would have bothered me.
“Smile, for Christ’s sake,” I said, “or start walking.”
Padillo pulled his lips back and showed his teeth. “It hurts,” he said.
“It was just like in the movies,” I said, waving at a Yellow cab whose driver nodded cheerfully at me as he drove on past.
“How?”
“A Western,” I said. “Old Gunfighter, living on nothing but his reputation, drifts into End-of-the-line, New Mexico, slapping the alkali dust from his chaps—”
“End-of-the-line’s good.”
“And runs into none other than Big Rancher’s only son who’s craving to get out from under Daddy’s shadow and make it on his own.”
“So Only Son challenges Old Gunfighter to a showdown.”
“You’ve seen it,” I said as an Independent cab rolled to a stop in front of us.
“I never could sit through to the end,” Padillo said as he climbed in. “How does it turn out?”
“Sad,” I said and told the driver that we wanted to go to the Hay-Adams Hotel.
“You know how I’d end it?” Padillo said.
“How?”
“I’d have Old Gunfighter wait for a moonless night and then sneak quietly out of town.”
“You may be the last of the romantics, Mike.”
“How’d you know I wanted to go to the Hay-Adams?”
“Wanda Gothar’s message. I figured it out. I think.”
“‘In or out by four in six-two-one.’”
“That means you’re supposed to make up your mind by four o’clock today. She’s in room six-twenty-one. I can also do large sums in my head.”
“You’re a comfort.”
“What’re you going to tell her?”
“That I’m in.”
“How do you think she really took her brother’s death?”
“Hard,” he said and then looked at me. “You’re actually curious, aren’t you?”
“I get that way about people who’re killed in my own living room,” I said and hoped that the cabdriver was enjoying the conversation.
“So now you want to see act two?”
“Only if it doesn’t drag.”
“For some reason,” Padillo said, “I don’t think it will.”
The Hay-Adams is a middle-aged hotel on Sixteenth Street right across from Lafayette Square where they recently went to a lot of trouble to build some new sidewalks and trash baskets for the crowds who gathered under the trees to say nasty things about the war in Indochina, pollution, the economy, and the man who lived in the big white house on Pennsylvania Avenue across the street from the square. The crowds and what they said must not have bothered the man much because up until then he hadn’t done a great deal about the things that they complained about.
We took an elevator up to the sixth floor. Padillo knocked twice on 621 and Wanda Gothar’s voice asked, “Who is it?” before she opened the door after Padillo identified himself.
She nearly winced when she saw me, but all that she said was, “Still the mute witness, Mr. McCorkle?”
“I speak up from time to time.”
After we were in the room she turned to Padillo. “Well?”
“I’m in.”
“How much?”
“How much can you afford?”
“Fifty thousand, plus ten thousand for whoever killed my brother.”
“Just the name?”
“Just the name.”
“Amos Gitner thinks you might have done it.”
“That’s not worth ten thousand.”
“I didn’t think it would be. How much front money, Wanda?”
She looked away from him and ran her left forefinger up and down the dark blue material that made up the pants of her suit. “Five thousand.”
“Business must be bad all over. Kragstein and Gitner could only offer me seventy-five hundred and from what I hear, they’ve been working regularly.”