“Thanks.”
“I eat here quite a bit.”
“I know.”
“To eat here regular you’ve either got to have a lot of money or a loose expense account.”
“We planned it that way.”
“Yeah. Well, when I started out in the plumbing business right after Korea I couldn’t afford to eat in places like this. Sometimes I couldn’t even afford a White Tower.”
“A lot of people had to struggle at first.”
“You didn’t,” he said and before I could say how did he know, he went on. “I can look at a guy and tell whether he’s been hard up against it. You think I’m kidding? I can look at you and tell that you’re the kind of a guy who’d say screw it if you had to eat in a White Tower and then go and do something else. Maybe that’s why you went into the restaurant business, so you’d never have to eat in a White Tower.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but I’ve eaten in them.”
“But not because you had to.”
“It was my own choice.”
“That’s what I thought. When I first started out in the plumbing business I got a little impatient too. I wanted it big right away, but it doesn’t work like that unless you got the capital. So I put some lines out and started taking on the odd job now and then. I did pretty much what Padillo once did except that I didn’t stick to government work exclusively, if you know what I mean.”
I told him that I did and he nodded and said, “I’m still not saying anything, not anything important anyhow, but those odd jobs provided the expansion capital I needed. Now I don’t really need the outside work, but that’s not why I’m saying no to Padillo.”
“Why then?”
“He and I don’t owe each other anything. We never worked together. But I know about him and he knows about me and I always figured if I really needed somebody, I maybe could call him in. Maybe. I guess he figured the same way.”
“I guess he did.”
“Well, like I said, I’ve still got my lines out and I think I know what Padillo’s on and who he’s up against and I don’t want any part of it. No hard feelings, understand?”
“I think so.”
“Amos Gitner,” he said quickly and watched my face closely for its reaction. There must have been some because he smiled for the first time. “I was pretty certain,” he said. “Now I’m sure.”
“That it’s Gitner?”
Plomondon shook his head. “That I don’t want any part of it.”
He rose then and held out his hand and said, “Tell Padillo I’m sorry we couldn’t do business.” I shook his hand and he turned away, but turned back and leaned on the table, his large head thrust toward me. “Maybe you’d better tell him the real reason, too,” he said.
“All right.”
“Tell him,” he said slowly, “that I’m not good enough anymore.” He paused, as if thinking of something he wanted to add, but wasn’t sure whether he really should. Finally, he said, “Tell him that I hope he is.”
“I’ll tell him.”
Plomondon seemed satisfied that I would and nodded at me in a friendly fashion before he turned and headed for the door and out into the world where there were now enough stuffed-up toilets so that he no longer had to eat at the White Tower.
I walked slowly back to the office and sat behind the partners’ desk for a while. After a few minutes I took down a two-year-old copy’ of the World Almanac and looked up Llaquah. The Almanac said that Llaquah was under British protection until it became independent in 1959, that it had nearly a third of the free world’s estimated oil reserves, that it was an absolute monarchy, that it was destined to become one of the richest nations in the world, at least on a per capita basis, and that it had a standing army of 2,000.
I put the World Almanac back on the shelf and sat there at the desk, admiring my view of the alley. I looked at my watch and saw that it was nearly three. I continued to sit there, thinking of Llaquah and speculating about how its citizens were going to spend all that oil money. I also wondered who had used the garrote on Walter Gothar and why they’d chosen my apartment, and pondered the capricious fate that had turned me into a saloonkeeper, and then tried to figure out what income tax bracket we would be elevated into if Fredl got the raise that she intended to demand, and finally wondered how badly Padillo really needed Plomondon the Plumber who thought he was no longer good enough to cope with the likes of Amos Gitner. I thought about that last for quite a while and when I looked at my watch again it was nearly four.
I got up and went over to one of the three filing cabinets and opened a drawer that was labeled Miscellaneous. It contained a small transistor radio whose batteries had gone dead, a pair of binoculars that some customer had left and never returned for, an emergency bottle of Scotch which Padillo had described as ridiculous, and a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver with a one-inch barrel which I took out and dropped into an attaché case that contained two shirts, two pairs of shorts, some socks, a tie that I’d never really liked, and some toilet articles. I snapped the attaché case shut and used the phone to ask Herr Horst whether he could see me for a moment.
When he came into the office I said in German, “I am joining Herr Padillo in New York for a few days.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Take care of things.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Check out the new pastry chef.”
“With great care.”
“Do we have five hundred in the till?”
“I believe so.”
“Get it for me and I’ll fill out a cash voucher.”
When Herr Horst returned with the money I handed him the voucher. He politely followed me through the restaurant and to the front door which he held open. He bowed slightly and said, “Have a good journey, Herr McCorkle.” I looked at him, but there was nothing in his manner or on his face but polite, frozen reserve. If I’d told him that I wanted to burn the place down, he would have handed me the matches.
I thanked him and went out into the street and flagged a cab, cheering the driver a little when I told him that I wanted to go to National Airport.
As doughty McCorkle went rushing to the rescue down Seventeenth Street in his hired hack he remembered that he’d forgotten something. He’d forgotten to pack the bullets. That made him feel a bit foolish all the way out to the airport, but it was a feeling that seemed in perfect harmony with the rest of what he’d done that day.
10
I THOUGHT I’d lost them. They’d seemed clumsy at first, but later I decided that they weren’t clumsy at all, only indifferent about whether I knew that they were following me. They weren’t trying to hide, not with those twin blue blazers and those checked trousers and those pink shirts. Their ties were different though. The tall, muscular one with the thin dark face and the horseshoe moustache wore a dark red one that had a big knot and looked like satin. The other man, a little shorter, but not much, fair and almost pale, wore a purple and red striped tie that clashed with the pink of his shirt. At least I thought it clashed. He may have planned it that way.
They probably had followed me from the restaurant, but I was never sure. I didn’t notice them until I got in line for the Eastern shuttle. I tried to be last in line. I always do because it’s rumored that if Eastern doesn’t have a seat for you on its regular shuttle to New York, it will roll out a special plane just for you. I’d like that. That’s why I always try to be last in line. I kept hanging back, but so did they and finally, when it was obvious that there were plenty of seats and there wasn’t a chance of getting a plane all for myself, I handed over the yellow boarding pass and walked out to the airliner which I think was a DC-9, but I wasn’t sure. The new jets are as indistinguishable to me as the new cars.