“You know him very well, don’t you?”
“Padillo?”
“Yes.”
“I know him fairly well.”
“Doesn’t he ever need anyone?”
“Like you?”
“Yes. Like me, damn it.”
“I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.”
“I did ask him.”
“What did he say?”
She was silent for a moment and when she spoke she seemed to be speaking to her hands which rested in her lap. “He said he didn’t have any more time to be lonely — that his time for being lonely had run out years ago.”
“What else did he say?”
“Something I’m not sure I understand.”
“What?”
“He said that he casts a yellow shadow. What does that mean?”
“It’s what the Arabs say, I think. It means he carries a lot of luck around. All bad.”
“Does he?”
“For others. For those who get too close.”
“I don’t believe in luck,” she said.
“That’s funny,” I said. “Neither does Padillo.”
Twenty-Two
I met Padillo at the saloon the next morning at ten and we spent an hour doing some work that needed to be done if we were to continue in the business of selling liquor and food to people who already bought too much of both. We went over some invoices and Padillo made a couple of suggestions that would probably save us a thousand or so a year. We called in Herr Horst and talked about a waiter who kept forgetting to come to work.
“I believe he drinks,” Herr Horst said, and added: “Secretly.”
“It’s not much of a secret if you know about it,” Padillo said.
“He’s a good waiter,” I said. “Give him one more chance, but tell him that’s just what it is.”
“It won’t do any good,” Padillo said.
“It makes me feel like a humanitarian.”
“I shall speak to him,” Herr Horst said. “Again.”
We discussed the week’s menu, decided to give a new wholesale produce dealer a try, went over the merits of two employee health and hospital insurance programs and decided on one, and agreed to run some small space advertisements in a concert program. It was more work than I had done in a week.
Herr Horst left and sent us in some coffee by a busboy. Pa-dillo sat behind the desk of the office; I sat on the couch.
“How’s your side?” I asked.
“Better, but I should get the bandage changed before tomorrow.”
“You want the doctor?”
“No. I’ll let Sylvia do it.”
“She’ll like that. She wants to do things for you.”
“She’ll make someone a good wife.”
“I think she’s been writing ‘Mrs. Michael Padillo’ just to see how nice it looks.”
“I’m too old or she’s too young or both.”
“She thinks you’re in your prime.”
“I passed that ten years ago. I was an early bloomer. Now it’s only a few years away from one of those places with planned leisure activities.”
“She’s a nice kid; you could do worse.”
Padillo lighted a cigarette. “That’s right. I could, Mac, but she couldn’t.”
He got up and walked over to the grey steel file and pulled a drawer open. He looked into it, seemed to find nothing that was interesting, closed it, and opened the second drawer. It was the absentminded, aimless action of someone who is thinking of other things.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said, and abruptly closed the file drawer.
“Are we going somewhere or is it just a nice day?”
“We’ll pay a visit to the roof garden of the Roger Smith.”
“All right.”
We told Herr Horst that we would be back and walked over to Eighteenth and up to K Street and down past where Mr. Kiplinger writes his newsletter, and crossed a street to the Roger Smith Hotel which rises eleven stories above the corner of Eighteenth and Pennsylvania Avenue. The United States Information Agency is just across the street at its faintly patriotic address at 1776 Pennsylvania.
There are Roger Smith hotels in other towns such as Stamford, Connecticut, White Plains and New Brunswick. They cater to the tourist and the person who travels on a limited expense account. In Washington, visitors like the hotel because it’s only a block and a half from the White House and the rates are reasonable even during the Cherry Blossom Festival.
We took the automatic elevator to the tenth floor, got out, and walked up a flight of stairs to some French doors that were fastened with a hook and eye. We undid that and stepped out onto the roof garden. On the Pennsylvania Avenue side a curved blue metal shield formed a shell for the orchestra which played for the dancers on summer evenings. The dance floor was of marble and chairs were stacked against the cube-like part of the roof which housed the elevator works. From the chest-high cement railing that ran around the roof you could look down Pennsylvania and see the grey mass of the Executive Office Building which once was considered plenty large enough for the State Department as well as the entire military establishment — now bursting the seams of the Pentagon.
Everything was painted red and yellow and blue on the roof and it had the air of a party that had come to an unpleasant end. Padillo and I leaned on the cement railing and looked down the avenue.
“It would be an easy job,” he said. There was a clear view to Seventeenth and Pennsylvania where Van Zandt’s car would make its turn. The cement banister would even provide a convenient gun rest.
“Has he looked it over?” I asked.
“Dymec?”
“Yes.”
“He came up yesterday. I talked to him last night after Mush brought him the rifle.”
“What does he have?”
“What he wanted. The Winchester model 70.”
“Why did he want it so early?”
“His real reason is probably that he wants to zero it in. The excuse he gave me is that he wants to decide how to conceal it when he brings it up here.”
“Have you figured out how you’re going to stop him?”
Padillo looked down at the avenue again. “I think so,” he said. “It depends on what happens tomorrow when you go after Fredl.”
“Have you arranged where everybody meets tomorrow?”
Padillo leaned against the rail and nodded. “Hardman picks you and Magda up at eleven. Then you, the pickup and the moving van follow Sylvia out to the trade mission. Mush and I will be moving around in his car — in this general area. Price waits in the lobby from two until Dymec goes up to the roof.”
“That’ll be around two-thirty.”
“The official tour leaves the trade mission at two. You’ll go in after Fredl and Sylvia around one-thirty, I’d say. That should give you time to get down here.”
“You want anyone else to come with me — Hardman?”
“No.”
I looked at my watch. “I have to go to the bank. Hardman’s coming by for lunch — and for the money.”
“O.K. I wired Zurich yesterday. They’ll transfer some funds. They should be here tomorrow.”
We walked down the stairs to the tenth floor and took the elevator down. We caught a cab to my bank. I wrote out the check and winced at its size and then took it over to a vice-president so that I could get it cashed without fuss. He didn’t like to see that much money go out, but he got it rounded up and handed it to me in a thick manilla envelope.
“Real estate transaction, Mr. McCorkle?” he asked knowingly.
“The cards were bad,” I said and walked away from the thoughtful look that appeared on his face.
“You can ride shotgun,” I told Padillo and we walked back to the restaurant. Hardman was waiting for us in the office. “Sorry I’m late,” I told him and handed over the envelope.