“Thank you. I did study elocution, of course.”
“That’s obvious.”
“And you’re in the theater, too, I gather, Grigori?”
“There it is again! You don’t perhaps hear softly playing violins, my dear Agrafina?”
“What I hear actually sounds like a mariachi band. I asked if you, too, are a thespian.”
“Well, let’s say I’m playing a role.”
“All the world’s a stage, as they say.”
“Indeed it is. May I make a somewhat intimate suggestion, my dear Agrafina?”
“I sort of like the way Agrafina rolls off your lips, too, Grigori. Yes, you may, with the understanding that if I were to take offense at your somewhat intimate suggestion, I will break your legs.”
“What I was going to suggest is since you have that absolutely marvelous borscht, the kind my mother, may she rest in peace, used to make, and I have two liters of Stolichnaya and a pound of caviar, we merge our assets.”
Agrafina turned to the general manager of the Royal Aztec and the bellmen.
“After you put my roses in water,” she said, “our caviar on the table on the balcony, and hand me our Stolichnaya, you may leave me alone with this silver-tongued devil.”
PART XI
[ONE]
When he had time, later, to reconstruct the disaster at the Old Ebbitt, Edgar Delchamps was forced to conclude that he was at least partially responsible for it.
There had been no question in his mind when he met Roscoe J. Danton at Dulles International that the journalist needed a little — more than a little — liquid courage before going to the White House to explain what he was doing in Las Vegas when he was supposed to be in Budapest.
Especially since the story Charley Castillo had come up with to explain Danton’s presence there seemed to stretch credibility. When Castillo had called to tell him that he wanted Delchamps and Two-Gun to meet Danton and see (a) that he got to the White House, and (b) that he had his story for the President right, he had both explained his concern that Roscoe might be considering desertion from the Merry Outlaws and related the story he had given Roscoe to explain his presence in Las Vegas.
Danton was to tell the President that when he had heard from various sources, whose identity he was honor-bound as a journalist to not make public, the rumors about the formation of the committee to build the President Joshua Ezekiel and Mrs. Belinda-Sue Clendennen Presidential Library and Last Resting Place, he had prevailed upon Castillo to make a quick stop in Las Vegas en route to Cozumel so that he could check out the rumors.
As a manifestation of his great admiration for the President and the First Lady, Danton was to tell the President, he wanted to be the one to break the story to his millions of readers in his syndicated column and to the millions more who couldn’t or wouldn’t read but who watched him on Wolf News.
Roscoe was to tell the President that no sooner had he gotten off Castillo’s Gulfstream than another identical Gulfstream had appeared. A large crowd of journalists was on hand to meet the second airplane and, his journalist’s curiosity naturally aroused, he had stood with them to see which famous person was arriving.
What had happened next, Roscoe was to tell the President, was that a porn star named Red Ravisher, whom Roscoe recognized even though he had never met her in his life, got off the airplane, apparently in her cups, picked a fight with a French cameraman, and then threw him at the crowd of journalists in which he was innocently standing. A riot had then ensued.
Aware that the President’s political foes might attempt to somehow connect this shameful event to the President Joshua Ezekiel and Mrs. Belinda-Sue Clendennen Presidential Library and Last Resting Place, and determined that that should not be permitted to happen, Roscoe had immediately gotten back on Castillo’s Gulfstream and they had instantly taken off and flown on to Cozumel, where Castillo was going to train SEALs and members of the Delta Force to take back pirated ships from their Somalian captors.
Delchamps thought the story smelled worse than a twenty-five-pound catfish left to rot in the Mississippi sun for ten days. But on the other hand, he thought that if President Clendennen believed that public-spirited citizens had donated ten million dollars to his library because of their admiration for him, he was likely to believe anything, up to and including this cockamamy yarn Roscoe was going to try to feed him.
The other mistake he had made, Delchamps was forced to admit later, was taking Roscoe to the Old Ebbitt, instead of, for example, to the Round Robin Bar in the Willard Hotel, which was right around the corner.
He had taken Roscoe to the Old Ebbitt because he knew Roscoe was an habitué of the establishment, and also because he and Two-Gun Yung, too, were fond of the Old Ebbitt’s version of the Bloody Mary.
He completely forgot that others knew that Roscoe was an habitué of the establishment — especially before and at lunchtime — and that one or more of these people might go there looking for Roscoe, which might complicate things.
As it turned out, three such people were there when they led Roscoe in and ordered double Bloody Marys for the three of them.
He didn’t see any of them at first. This was because two of them — C. Harry Whelan and Matthew “Hockey Puck” Christian — had immediately hidden behind their copies of the enormous Old Ebbitt’s menu cards so as not to be seen by Delchamps, Yung, and Danton when they saw them come in.
Delchamps, who was, after all, as a result of his long service with the Clandestine Service of the CIA, skilled in deducing things, had deduced that both journalists had come — independently — to the Old Ebbitt hoping to see Roscoe. If he showed up, Mr. Whelan intended to corner Roscoe to demand to know what “out of the box” story vis-à-vis President Clendennen he was chasing.
Mr. Christian intended to corner Roscoe to learn the identity of the woman whom he had seen throwing the French paparazzo at Danton. Christian knew that it wasn’t Miss Red Ravisher, as her attorneys were suing him and Continental Broadcasting for mis-identifying her as the thrower. He didn’t think they would be seeking fifty million dollars in slander damages if there was any chance at all she had indeed been the thrower.
The third person to have come to the Old Ebbitt in the hope of encountering Mr. Danton was Miss Eleanor Dillworth, who at one time — before she had been, in her judgment, unfairly terminated by the CIA — had been the CIA station chief in Vienna, Austria.
Miss Dillworth planned to share with Mr. Danton — and through him with his millions of readers and viewers — some little jewels of CIA mistakes and blunders that, when Mr. Danton made them public, would make those miserable bastards in Langley really rue the day when they had messed with Miss Eleanor Dillworth.
Everything at first had gone smoothly. As they appreciatively imbibed their first two double Bloody Marys, Edgar and Two-Gun had rehearsed Roscoe over and over until they were satisfied he had his cockamamy story for President Clendennen down pat.
That accomplished, a celebratory third double Bloody Mary was certainly called for. Edgar had just taken his first sip when he was assaulted by Miss Dillworth.
One moment he was patting Roscoe on the shoulder, telling him not to worry, and the next he was on his back on the floor with a more than Rubenesque fiftyish blonde lady — Miss Dillworth — sitting on his chest, and choking him.
“At first I couldn’t believe my eyes,” she screamed. “But then I knew it was you, you sonofabitch!”