After dinner, the king and Scales excused themselves, pleading weariness. Amanda Clarkmann, Padillo and I had brandy in a drawing room whose main feature was a Thomas Eakins portrait that hung above the fireplace. Padillo and I were on our second brandy and Amanda was still on her first when William, whom I took to be the household’s major domo, brought in a phone, plugged it in, and informed Padillo that he had a call.
“Is there another jack in this room?” Padillo said.
“Yes, sir, there is.”
“Can you get another phone and plug it in?”
William nodded, made a swift exit, and was back shortly with another phone which he also plugged in.
“Get on it,” Padillo said to me.
“Would you like me to leave?” Amanda Clarkmann said.
Padillo shook his head. “I’ll be listening mostly, not talking.”
We picked up the phones together and Padillo said hello. There was a short pause and then a voice said, “Is that you, Padillo?” I didn’t have any trouble placing the tone or the accent. Both of them belonged to Franz Kragstein.
“Give it up, Michael,” he said with what seemed to be a touch of regret in his voice. “It’s hopeless.”
“You haven’t done too well so far, Franz,” Padillo said. “You can’t even keep a line on McCorkle.”
“It is hard to get competent help these days, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“While amiable enough, Mr. McCorkle doesn’t seem to be overly experienced.”
“He’s fairly bright though. Inexpensive, too.”
“We would like to reopen negotiations.”
“No.”
“Really, Michael, I don’t understand why—”
“You don’t have to understand why. All you need to know is that you and Gitner will have to go through me. If you want to try it, fine.”
“I was only trying to be sensible. I am really quite fond of you, Michael, in my own way. It’s paternal, I suppose. That is why I wanted to give you this—oh, I suppose I should call it this last opportunity. And no recriminations, of course.”
“Hang up, Franz.”
“I see. Well, I did try.”
“Sure you did.”
“One final item, Michael.”
“All right.”
“It’s such a very long way to San Francisco.”
“I’ve been there before.”
“I’m sorry, Michael, that you won’t again.”
There was a click as Kragstein hung up and when the dial tone came on it seemed to have a shrill, insistent note that I hadn’t heard before. But that may well be how all the dial tones sound in New York.
14
THE KING was going for a grand slam in spades when Padillo came in and went behind the bar to mix himself a drink. Trumps were all in and the king used a spare one to get back to the board so that he could finesse his jack of hearts through me, but Amanda Clarkmann nailed the jack with her queen and the king was down one and doubled. He took it hard.
We had been playing bridge for nearly two hours that morning for a cent a point and the king and Scales were nearly thirty-five dollars ahead, probably because I hadn’t played in more than ten years and hoped that it would be another ten before I was talked into trying it again, even with a partner who played as well as Amanda Clarkmann.
On the next hand the bidding stopped when she went to four hearts which would be not only game, but also rubber. It made me dummy so after I laid down my hand, I joined Padillo at the bar. It was nearly noon and I had nothing to do until Wanda Gothar called that evening so I went behind the bar and mixed a martini, lying to myself as usual that it was needed to spark the appetite.
“Who’s winning?” Padillo said as I debated about whether I wanted an olive.
“They are,” I said, deciding that I didn’t really need the extra calories.
“I ordered the armored truck.”
“The armored truck,” I said wisely and took a quick swallow of the martini.
“It’s due at four.”
“The banks will be closed by then,” I said, once again demonstrating that I can keep up my end of any conversation.
“It’s not going to a bank.”
“Of course not.”
“It’s going to the airport.”
“LaGuardia,” I said, just to give him the chance to correct me. It made him feel better.
“Kennedy.”
“Well, I’ve heard that they make them so that they’re pretty comfortable nowadays.”
“We won’t be in it.”
“This came to you in the night, I assume.”
“Around two.”
“As a diversionary measure,” I said, “it has a touch of genius.”
“It’s half good and it gives us half a chance,” he said, “which is about one hundred percent better than we had before.”
“What’s going to the airport? In the armored car, I mean.”
“The ring.”
“The good one, of course.”
“Amanda says that it’s insured for five hundred thousand.”
“And where does the ring go once it gets to the airport?”
“To a jeweler in San Francisco. He’ll clean it and send it back.”
“But our nemeses, Mr. Kragstein and Mr. Gitner, will think that this is just a ruse—that we’re really inside the armored truck.”
“That’s it.”
“And while they’re following or pursuing the armored truck, we’ll be heading somewhere else.”
“Newark,” Padillo said.
“Ah, Newark.”
“Then to Denver.”
“Of course.”
“And from Denver guess where.”
“If I said San Francisco, I’d be wrong so I’ll say Los Angeles.”
“You’re right.”
“Where we rent a car and drive to San Francisco, sneaking in the back door so to speak. Whose armored truck is it, Brink’s?”
“It’s the other outfit,” he said, “the one with the red ones.”
“I’ve never ordered an armored truck,” I said, “probably because I felt that they’d be picky about having me as a customer. Did they give you any static?”
“I doubt that they’d give me the time. But then my Dun and Bradstreet rating doesn’t glow in the dark the way Amanda’s does.”
“She ordered it,” I said.
Padillo nodded.
“I can’t think of any disadvantages in being rich,” I said.
Padillo looked around the room. “Only one,” he said.
“What?”
“Worrying that someday you might be poor.”
After the game broke up and Amanda and I paid the king and Scales the $31.58 that we owed them, she excused herself, and the older of the two men who had waited on us the night before served lunch in the same room where we had played bridge.
Lunch was a shrimp cocktail with a sauce whose recipe I would have paid $100 for, thick rare roast beef sandwiches, and a Mexican beer that I’d never tried before but liked very much. The king said he didn’t drink beer, so he was brought a Coca-Cola.
During lunch Padillo told the king and Scales about the armored truck. They exchanged glances and after the king caught Scales’s almost imperceptible nod, he beamed and complimented Padillo on his deviation.
“I think you mean deviousness, your Majesty,” Scales murmured, looking a little embarrassed. The king beamed happily and said yes, that’s what he had meant all along. “It will also give me the opportunity to see more of your great country than I had thought possible,” he said, making it sound as though he felt that Padillo and I ranked not too far below the President and considerably above the Secretary of State.
Just before the coffee was served, the king got another one of those almost invisible nods from Scales. He rose, smoothing his bald head again, and begged to be excused, mentioning that it was time for his afternoon meditations.
When he was gone, Scales leaned across the table toward us in a confidential if not conspiratorial manner, said “uh” a couple of times, and then asked, “I had no wish to alarm his Majesty, of course, but are you quite convinced that this is our safest route to San Francisco?”