“Well, I went downtown with them and gave a story of sorts. I made a statement and signed it. I was mugged and fingerprinted. And then they took me in to see an assistant U.S. attorney general and he gave me a lecture and a choice. I could either join up or go to jail for draft evasion.”
Padillo joined the Army and applied for cooks and bakers school. In late 1942 he was happily running the bar of an officers’ club at a small Infantry Training Replacement Center in north Texas, not too far from Dallas and Fort Worth, before someone, browsing through his records, discovered that he could speak and write six languages.
“They came at night,” he said. “The top sergeant and the C.O. and this jerk in civilian clothes. It was all very bad, late TV. The olive-drab Packard, the silent ride to the airport, the tight-lipped pilots glancing at their watches while they paced up and down under the wing of the C-47. Pure corn.”
The plane landed in Washington and Padillo was shuffled from of fice to office. “Some of them were dressed in civilian clothes, some in uniform. I seem to remember that they all smoked pipes that year.”
They tested him on his languages. “I can speak English with either a Mississippi or an Oxford accent. I can talk like a Berliner or a Marseille pimp. Berlitz would love me.
“They sent me to Maryland then, where I learned some tricks and I taught them a few I’d picked up in Juárez. It was all very gung-ho with assumed names and identities. I said I was a towel boy in a Mexican whorehouse. The rest of the guys never busted me, but they liked to ask detailed questions about my occupation.”
When the Maryland training was over, Padillo was hustled back to Washington. It was a house on R Street, just west of Connecticut Avenue. They told him the colonel wanted to see him. “He looked very much like the Hollywood actor who used to play the colonel in all the VD movies they showed you in basic,” Padillo said. “I think it embarrassed him.
“He told me that I could make a very important contribution to what he called the ‘national effort.’ If I would agree to do so, I would be discharged, given American citizenship, and a certain amount of money would be paid to an account in my name at the American Security and Trust Company I could collect the money when I got back.
“So I asked him back from where.
“‘Paris,’ he said, sucked on his pipe, and stared out the window. He was having a fine time for a former assistant professor of French at Ohio State.”
Padillo spent two years in France with the underground, most of the time in Paris, where he operated as American liaison with the Maquis. After the war they shipped him back to the States. He collected his money from the bank, was handed a draft card that said he was 4-F, and received a discreet pat on the back from the General himself.
“I headed for L.A. It was still wacky in 1945, but it wasn’t like it was. But perhaps the reason I liked it is because it was so goddamned phony. I’d had enough of reality.
“I also had enough money so I could hang around the strip for a while. I got a few jobs as an extra and then started bartending in this small place on Santa Monica. I was even buying in when they came. You know: young, single-breasted suits, hats. They had a little job, they said, that would take two or three weeks. In Warsaw. Nobody would ever know I was gone, and there was a couple of grand in it for me.”
Padillo ground his cigarette out on the floor and lighted another. “I went. That time and maybe two dozen times more, and the last time they came around in their dark suits and their fraternity-house manners I told them no. They just got even more polite and reasonable and kept coming back. They started dropping hints about the fact that some question had been raised in Washington about the validity of my citizenship, but they were sure that if I took on this one more job everything could be straightened out.
“I got back part of the money I had invested in the place and headed east. I was working in Denver at the Senate Lounge on Colfax and they found me there. So I went to Chicago and from Chicago to Pittsburgh and from there to New York. In New York I heard about this place in Jersey. It was nice and it was quiet. Some college kids, some neighborhood traffic. I made the down payment.”
It was completely dark outside. The kerosene lantern gave off its soft warm glow. The Scotch bottle was getting low. The silence seemed thick and thoughtful.
“They came once more, and that time they weren’t polite. So now I’m doing to you what they did to me. I need a cover in Bonn, and you’ve been thoughtful enough to provide a perfect one.”
“What if I say no?”
Padillo looked at me cynically. “Been having a little trouble getting the necessary permits and licenses approved and issued?”
“A little.”
“You’d be surprised how easy it is if you have the right connections. But if you still insist on saying no, the odds are five hundred to one that you’ll never sell your first Martini.”
“It’s like that, huh?”
Padillo sighed. “Yes. It’s exactly like that.”
I took another drink and shrugged a shrug I did not feel. “O.K. It looks as if I have a partner.”
Padillo looked down at the floor. “I’m not sure I wanted you to say that, but then again I’m not sure I didn’t. You were in Burma, weren’t you?”
I said yes.
“Behind the lines?”
I nodded.
“There were some tough boys there.”
I nodded again. “I learned a little.”
“It might come in handy.”
“How?”
He grinned. “Tossing out the drunks on Saturday night.” He got up and walked over to the typewriter, picked up the certified check and handed it to me again. “Let’s go over to the club and spend some of this on getting stoned. They won’t like it, of course, but there’s not a hell of a lot they can do about it.”
“Should I ask who ‘they’ are?”
“No. Just remember you’re the cloak and I’m the dagger.”
“I think I can keep that straight.”
Padillo said, “Let’s get that drink.”
We got drunk that night, but before we entered the club’s bar Padillo picked up a phone and made a call. All he said was “It’s all right.” Then he cradled the phone and looked at me thoughtfully. “You poor bastard,” he said. “I don’t think you really deserve it.”
Chapter 3
During the next decade we prospered, adding such symbols of success as a touch of gray at the temples, a series of fast expensive cars, another series of fast expensive young ladies, bench-made shoes, London suits and jackets, and a comfortable inch or so around the waists.
There were also those certain days when I would drop down to the place around ten in the morning to find Padillo already sitting at the bar, a quart of dimple-bottle in front of him, staring into the mirror.
All he ever said was “I got one.”
All I ever asked was “How long?” He would say two weeks or ten days or a month and I would say: “Right.” It was very clipped, very British, just like Basil Rathbone and David Niven in Dawn Patrol. Then I would help myself to the bottle and we would both sit there, staring into the mirror. I think it always rained those days.
We had made a good business team after Padillo taught me the fundamentals of saloon-keeping. He was an excellent host, and his ease with languages made the place a favorite with the embassy staffs in Bonn, including the Russians, who sometimes came by in twos and threes. I ran the business end, and our accounts at Deutsche Bank in Bad Godesberg grew pleasantly fat.