“All right,” he said, “you can tell me something else.”
“What?”
“Where were you last night when your brother was being garroted?”
“You really think you need to know, don’t you?”
“I think so.”
“It’s just as I told the police,” she said. “I was out.”
“You’ll have to do better than that,” Padillo said.
“I didn’t for the police.”
“You’ll have to for me.”
They exchanged another long look. “I was out with a man,” she said finally.
“Where?”
“In his bed. Actually, it’s only partly his. The rest of it belongs to his wife.”
“What is he?” Padillo said.
She turned to me. “Notice that he said what, not who. That’s what persons are to him. Things.”
“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.