“Sit down, Mac. Coffee?”
“That’ll do.”
“Sugar?”
“If you have it.”
He picked up one of the bottles of Scotch and disappeared into the kitchen. A couple of minutes later he handed me my coffee and then went back for his drink: a half-tumbler of Scotch with a milk chaser.
“Breakfast. Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
He took a long gulp of the Scotch and quickly washed it down with the milk.
“I fell off a week ago,” he said.
“You’ll make it.”
He shook his head sadly and smiled. “Maybe.”
“What do you hear from New York?” I asked.
“They’re billing more than thirty-seven million a year now and the money is still being banked for me.”
At twenty-six Cooky had been the boy wonder of Madison Avenue public-relations circles, a founder of Baker, Brickhill and Hillsman.
“I got on the flit and just couldn’t get off,” he had explained to me one gloomy night. “They wanted to buy out my interest, but in a moment of sobriety I listened to my lawyers and refused to sell. I’ve got a third of the stock. The more lushed I got, the more stubborn I became. Finally I made a deal. I would get out and they would bank my share of the profits for me. My attorneys handled the whole thing. I’m very rich and I’m very drunk and I know I’m never going to quit drinking and I know I’m never going to write a book.”
Cooky had been in Bonn for three years. Despite Berlitz and a series of private tutors, he could not learn German. “Mental block,” he had said. “I don’t like the goddamn language and I don’t want to learn it.”
His job was to fill one two-minute news spot a day and occasionally do a live show. His sources were the private secretaries of anyone in town who might have a story. In methodical fashion he had seduced those who were young enough and completely charmed those who were over the edge. I had once spent an afternoon with him while he had gathered his news. He had sat in the big chair, the private-joke smile fighting to break through. “Wait,” he had said. “In three minutes the phone will ring.”
It had. First there had been the girl from the Presse Dienst. Then it was one who worked as a stringer for the London Daily Express: when her boss had a story, she made sure that Cooky had it too. The phone had continued to ring. To all Cooky had been charming, grateful and sincere.
By eight o’clock the calls had ended and Cooky had gone over his notes. Between us we had managed to finish a fifth. Cooky had glanced around and found a fresh bottle conveniently placed by his chair on the floor. He had tossed it to me. “Mix us a couple more, Mac, while I write this crap.”
He had swung the typewriter toward him, inserted a sheet of paper, and talked the story as he typed. “Chancellor Ludwig Erhard said today that...” He had had two minutes that night, and it had taken him five to write it. “You want to go to the studio?” he had asked.
More than mellow, I had agreed. Cooky had stuck a fifth of Scotch into his mackintosh and we had made the dash to the Deutsche Rundfunk station. The engineer had been waiting at the door.
“You have ten minutes, Herr Baker. They have already called you from New York.”
“Plenty of time,” Cooky had said, producing the bottle. The engineer had had a drink, I had had a drink, and Cooky had had a drink. I had been getting drunk, but Cooky had seemed as warm and charming as ever. We had gone into the studio and he had gotten on the phone to his editor in New York. The editor had started to reel off the AP and UPI stories that had come over the wire from Bonn.
“I’ve got that... got that... got that. Yeah. That, too. And I’ve got one more on the Ambassador... I don’t give a goddamn if AP doesn’t have it; they’ll move it after nine o’clock.”
We had all had another drink. Cooky had put the earphones on and had talked over the live mike to the engineer in New York. “How they hanging, Frank? That’s good. All right; here we go.”
And Cooky had begun to read. His voice had been excellent, a fifth of Scotch apparently having made no effect. There had been no slurs, no flubs. He had glanced at the clock once, slowed his delivery slightly, and finished in exactly two minutes.
We had had another drink and had then proceeded to the saloon, where Cooky and I were to meet two secretaries from the Ministry of Defense. “That,” he had said, on the way to Godesberg, “is how I keep going. If it weren’t for that deadline every afternoon and the fact that I don’t have to get up in the morning, I’d be chasing little men. You know, Mac, you should quit drinking. You’ve got all the earmarks of a lush.”
“My name is Mac and I’m an alcoholic,” I had said automatically.
“That’s the first step. The next time I dry up, we’ll have a long talk.”
“I’ll wait.”
Through what he termed his “little pigeons,” Cooky knew Bonn as few others did. He knew the servant problem at the Argentine Embassy as well as he knew the internal power struggle within the Christian Democratic Union. He never forgot anything. He had once said: “Sometimes I think that’s why I drink: to see if I can’t black out. I never have. I remember every Godawful thing that’s done and said.”
“You’re not shaking very much today,” I said.
“The good doctor is giving me daily vitamin injections. It’s sort of a crash program. He has a theory that I can drink as much as I want as long as I get sufficient vitamins. He was a little looped when he left today and insisted on giving himself a shot.”
I sipped my coffee. “Mike says our place should be swept. My apartment too. He says you know who can do it.”
“Where is Mike?”
“In Berlin.”
“How soon do you want it?”
“As soon as possible.”
Cooky picked up the phone and dialed ten numbers. “The guy’s in Düsseldorf.”
He waited while the phone rang. “This is Cooky, Konrad... Fine... There are two spots in Bonn that need your talents... Mac’s Place in Godesberg — you know where it is? Good. And an apartment. The address is...” He looked at me. I told him and he repeated it over the phone. “I don’t know. Phones and everything, I would think. Hold on.” He turned to me and asked: “What if they find something?”
I thought a moment. “Tell him to leave them in, but to tell you where they are.”
“Just leave them, Konrad. Don’t bother them. Call me when you’re through and give me a rundown. Now, how much?” He listened and then asked me: “You go for a thousand marks?” I nodded. “O.K. A thousand. You can pick it up from me. And the key to the apartment, too. Right. See you tomorrow.”
He hung up the phone and reached for a convenient bottle.
“He does my place once a week,” he said. “I got a little suspicious once because of some phone noise when one of the pigeons was calling.”
“Find anything?” I asked.
He nodded. “The pigeon lost her job. I had to find her another.”
He took a gulp of Scotch and chased it with another of milk. “Mike in a jam?”
“I don’t know.”
Cooky looked up at the ceiling. “Remember a little girl named Mary Lee Harper? Used to work downtown. She was from Nashville.”
“Vaguely.”
“She used to work for a guy named Burmser.”
“And?”
“Well, Mary Lee and I became friendly. Very friendly. And one night, after X-number of Martinis, right here in this place, Mary Lee started to talk. She talked about the nice man, Mr. Padillo. I gave her some more Martinis. She didn’t remember talking the next morning. I assured her she hadn’t. But Mary Lee’s back in Nashville now. She left quite suddenly.”
“So you know.”
“As much as I want to. I told Mike I knew, and I also told him that if he needed anything...” Cooky let it trail off. “I guess he decided he did.”