“We took it on a contingency basis.”
“So did they.”
She turned back to him and when she spoke her voice was low and level and very hard. “Just get me that name and you’ve got the ten thousand, Padillo, even if it takes every last cent I’ve got.” She turned away again, as if the melodrama of the statement embarrassed her. “What did Kragstein and Gitner say?”
“That they didn’t kill Walter.”
“What else?”
“That they get a bonus if Kassim doesn’t sign certain papers. No bonus if he does sign, but doesn’t make it back to Llaquah.”
“A sliding scale,” she said. “Did they mention who’s paying them?”
“No.”
“Did you ask?”
“Yes.”
“And you turned them down?”
“That’s right.”
“What did they say?”
“Not much.”
“Gitner must have said something.”
“He seemed to think that I’m getting old.”
She inspected him carefully, much as she might inspect a cold-storage chicken that had been a trifle long in the freezer. “You are, you know.”
“Everybody is,” Padillo said.
“Well, does the five thousand hold you?”
“Forget it.”
“What do you mean, forget it? What are we playing now, Padillo, one of your clever little games?”
“No games. I’m in for free and if I find out who killed Walter, you get that for nothing, too.”
“I don’t like anything when it’s free,” she said. “If it’s a gift horse, I look in its mouth. Since it’s from you, I might even ask for X rays.”
“Don’t.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said, “you might find out how old and tired he really is.”
Wanda Gothar’s room wasn’t the best that the Hay-Adams had to offer, nor was it the worst. The view from the two windows was mostly of AFL-CIO headquarters, which was across Sixteenth Street, and the room was furnished with a double bed, a few chairs, a combination dresser-writing table, and the inevitable television set. It was a commercial traveler’s room, one to sleep in for a couple of nights, three at the most, before hastening back home or on to the next town. From the looks of the room she could have been there for an hour or for a month because there was nothing in it that seemed to belong to her. No suitcase, no cosmetic kit, nor even a box of Kleenex or a paperback book. I decided that she was either a highly experienced traveler or a compulsive neatener, one of those who gag at the sight of a crushed-out cigarette in an ashtray.
She was turned toward the windows, her back to Padillo and me, when she said, “All right. When do you start?”
“As soon as you give me some answers,” he said.
“Such as?”
“Why did you fake the note from Paul?”
She turned from the window and made a small gesture with her left hand, as if the question were hardly worth an answer. “We were almost broke and we needed help. The only way we landed this assignment was by assuring them that you’d be in on it. You and Paul had been close and we thought that you might feel something—a sentimental obligation perhaps. That was dumb of us.”
“You should’ve remembered that I knew he didn’t read or write English.”
She shrugged. “It was a chance we took. Not many knew it because he spoke it perfectly. He had that block, which for some reason kept him from either reading or writing it. Walter forged his handwriting.”
“He was always good at that,” Padillo said.
“That and other things.”
“It still doesn’t make sense.”
“Why?”
“You could have written it in German just as easily. Whose idea was it to write in English?”
She turned back to the window. “Mine.”
“Because you didn’t really want me in, did you, Wanda?”
“No. You don’t have to ask why, do you?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“It’s different now,” she said as she turned, walked across the room to a straight-backed chair, and lowered herself onto it in that easy, graceful way that they once taught in the better finishing schools.
“How?” Padillo said.
“I need you,” she said, gazing at the gray carpet. She stared at it a moment before looking up. “I don’t like admitting it, but I do. I’m the last of the Gothars. That doesn’t mean anything to anyone other than me, but I’d like to stay alive. Did you hear how Paul was killed in Beirut?”
“No,” Padillo said. “I just heard that it was messy.”
“His throat was cut.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
She nodded. “It is, isn’t it? He was good, wasn’t he?”
“I’d say he was almost the best.”
“Which means that it was somebody he knew. And trusted.”
“As much as he’d trust anyone,” Padillo said.
“The same thing must have happened to Walter. He was no easy mark either.”
“Why was your brother in my apartment?” I said.
She shook her head twice. “I don’t know. He was supposed to have been with them.”
“Who’s them?” Padillo said.
“Kassim and Scales. You don’t know about scales, do you?”
“No.”
“He knows about you. He hired us on the condition that you’d be part of things.”
“I still don’t know him.”
“Emory Scales. He was Kassim’s tutor until the boy went into the monastery.”
“English?”
“Yes.”
“And now he’s what?”
“He’s Kassim’s adviser.”
“And just popped up after Kassim’s brother had the car wreck?”
“Kassim sent for him, I understand.”
“And Scales got in touch with you.”
“Yes.”
“What’s he been doing recently? I mean was he still in Llaquah or back in England when Kassim sent for him?”
“He was back in England,” she said.
“You mentioned that Walter was supposed to have been with them when he came visiting McCorkle. I assume that means they’re here in Washington.”
Wanda Gothar shook her head again. “Baltimore.”
Padillo rose from the room’s one easy chair and walked over to the window. “Why would he want to see McCorkle?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Guess.”
“Maybe he thought that he could persuade McCorkle to persuade you.”
“That’s thin.”
“Have you got something better?”
“Not yet. What do Kassim and Scales say?”
“About what?”
“Come on, Wanda.”
“They don’t say anything about why he left them in Baltimore. They said he told them that he had an appointment and that he’d be back and that they should remain where they were.”
“And where’s that?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m moving them.”
“When?”
“As soon as Kassim’s brother dies.”
“What’s the latest report?” Padillo asked.
“He’s still in a coma.”
“Where’re you moving them to?”
She looked at Padillo and then at me. “There’s nothing in it for McCorkle,” Padillo said.
“Perhaps that’s what worries me,” she said.
“There could be something in it for me,” I said.
“What?” she said.
“I’d like to know why your brother got killed in my apartment. So would the police. They’ll stop bothering me as soon as they find out who killed him and why. The quicker they find out, the better I’ll like it.”
“Where’re you moving them to, Wanda?” Padillo said.
“To New York first,” she said.
“Then where?”
She looked at Padillo for nearly fifteen seconds. It was a searching, suspicious look such as she might give the two-carat diamond ring that could be had for only fifty dollars along with a touching hard luck story. “I don’t think you should know that just yet,” she said.