Haere nodded.
“We think he was murdered.”
“Well,” Citron said because she seemed to expect him to say something.
“His name was Replogle. Jack Replogle.”
“Replogle Construction?” Citron said.
Haere looked surprised. “You knew him?”
Citron shook his head. “I used to see his signs in some of the countries I moved around in.”
“The hot countries.”
“Right,” Citron said. “The hot countries.”
Louise Veatch looked at Haere. “Tell him what happened, Draper.”
Haere again repeated everything Jack Replogle had told him about Singapore and Drew Meade and how Meade, according to the two FBI agents, had gone missing. Citron listened, made no notes, but asked Haere to repeat the names of the FBI agents. When Haere had finished, there was a silence, which was broken when Citron shoved his chair back, rose, and moved to the stove, where he picked up the knife and resumed slicing the remainder of the carrot into the pot au feu.
“Smells good,” Haere said. “What is it?”
“Stew,” Citron said, put down the knife, turned, and leaned against the sink, his arms folded across his chest as he examined the attractive, well-dressed woman and the man with the despairing face. Citron sensed that they were more than mere political colleagues. They spend a lot of time in bed together, he told himself, and was mildly surprised to find that he approved of the notion. It had been two years at least since Citron had last approved or disapproved of anything.
“What you want then is just the political stuff — the dynamite this guy Meade said he had.”
“That’s right,” Haere said. “Just the political stuff.”
Citron looked at Louise Veatch. “Who’d I be working for — your husband?”
“For me,” Haere said.
Citron continued to stare at Louise Veatch. “But for your husband really — at one remove.”
“My husband, Mr. Citron, knows nothing about this.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“If you believed it,” she said, “Mr. Haere wouldn’t hire you.”
Citron smiled. “Deniability, I think they’re calling it.”
“Or covering our ass,” Haere said.
Citron looked at Haere. “You don’t care who killed him? — Replogle, I mean.”
“I care,” Haere said. “I care very much, but Jack Replogle was dying of cancer, so whoever killed him put him out of his misery. We’ll let the cops and the FBI do their job and we’ll do ours. And if the stuff that he bought from Drew Meade does what he hoped it would do, it can be his memorial.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t just a hit-and-run accident and nothing more?”
Draper Haere looked down at his bandaged hands. “I’m sure.”
Citron moved back to the table, sat down, picked up his cup, and drank the rest of his coffee. There was another silence as he felt his worm of curiosity stir again. He wondered what he would say next and was faintly surprised to hear himself say, “How much?”
“Five hundred a week?” Haere said.
“Cash?”
“Sure. Why not? Cash.”
“I’ll need an advance — to buy some things.”
“What?”
“A typewriter. A small tape recorder.” He paused. “Maybe a suit. I don’t have any clothes. Or a bank account.”
“Two thousand do it?” Haere said, adding, “Cash, of course.”
“Fine,” Citron said. He looked first at Haere and then at Louise Veatch. “You know what you’re getting, don’t you?”
“I think so,” she said.
“What you’re getting is a little unused, maybe even rusty. I’m not sure it even functions anymore.”
Louise Veatch smiled, then nodded contentedly, as if what she saw was little short of perfection. “Mr. Haere and I have been in this peculiar business for some time, Mr. Citron — do you mind if I call you Morgan? Mr. Haere is very good at sizing people up, but I’m even better, and what I see sitting across the table from me I like, probably because there seems to be almost no bullshit about you. Anyone who tells me he’ll take the job provided I buy him a new suit can’t be much of a bullshitter, and in this town that’s as rare as green snow. What I’m really trying to say is that we’re glad you said yes — right, Draper?”
“Right,” Haere said, marveling as always at how Louise Veatch by tone and gesture, if not by the words themselves, could convince people of their own immense self-worth and the enormous esteem in which she seemed to hold them.
Citron smiled again, but only slightly, and looked at Haere. “How many political due bills have you people got in Washington?”
“You mean the three of us?” Louise Veatch said.
Citron nodded.
She turned to Haere for the estimate. He thought for a moment and then answered carefully. “Would plenty be enough?”
“Maybe,” Citron said.
An hour later, Draper Haere’s secretary called Citron and told him she was, to use her participle, “messengering” him out $2,000 in cash. Citron thanked her, hung up the phone, picked it back up, dialed information, and asked for the number of the FBI.
The number was 272-6161. When the woman operator answered with “FBI,” Citron said, “May I speak to Agent Richard Tighe, please.”
There was a brief hesitation and then the operator said, “Let me give you verification.”
After another pause, another woman’s voice said, “Verification,” and then gave her name, which Citron didn’t catch.
“Agent Tighe, please. Richard Tighe.”
This time there was no hesitation. “We don’t have an agent by that name,” she said.
“I see,” Citron said. “What about Agent Yarn — Y-A-R-N, first name John, middle initial D?”
“We don’t have an agent by that name either,” the verification woman said.
Citron said thank you and hung up with the conviction that he was already earning his money.
Chapter 8
He had decided to cross at Mexicali. The long bus ride up from Mexico City had tired him and made him look much older than his sixty-three years until he found a barber who gave him a shave, a massage, and a haircut for less than $2. On the way to the border entry, he bought a cheap sombrero, the kind a tourist might buy, and settled it firmly on his head. From his reflection in a plate-glass window he saw that it made him look ridiculous, which pleased him because that was exactly how he wanted to look.
He strolled up to the U.S. immigration official, who gave him the quick practiced glance of an experienced sorter. “Business in Mexico?”
“Just rubbernecking.”
“Place of birth?”
“Ohio,” he said, lying automatically. He had been born in Indiana. In Terre Haute.
The immigration official nodded and Drew Meade walked across the border into his native land, the country which he felt had betrayed him, although he never thought of it in quite those terms. When he railed to himself alone at night in cheap hotel rooms, he railed against having been handed the shitty end of the stick, which, arguably, is a form of betrayal.
The first thing Drew Meade did upon returning to the United States after an absence of thirteen years was to seek out a McDonald’s and order two Big Macs, a chocolate shake, and an order of French-fried potatoes. After gobbling it all down he talked one of the sullen sixteen-year-olds behind the counter out of a couple of handfuls of change and then spent an hour walking around Calexico looking for a pay phone that worked.
It took several conversations with various operators, but Meade finally got the number he wanted. While it was ringing he dropped in $2 worth of quarters against the long-distance operator’s stern advice. The number was answered on the fourth ring by a hollow hello. It was a woman’s voice.