“Never trust a redheaded Mexican,” she once said. That one was lost on me because I didn’t even know what a Mexican was. My geography had been so neglected that I was quite sure that Berlin was just on the other side of the International Settlement and that San Diego lay a couple of miles farther on. One of the girls had once told me that the world was round like a ball, but that, I reasoned, was obviously a complete fabrication.
Tante Katerine, sitting before her vanity, slapping on creams and unguents, plucking an eyebrow or affixing an earring, would break off one of her more fanciful tales in which all the men were handsome and all the women beautiful, turn those dark green eyes of hers on me, lower her voice until it was almost a high baritone, and say: “Get this straight, my little Kuppler, free advice is the worst kind you can buy.” Or, “Listen well, petit ami, nobody’s ever as sad or as happy as they think they are. They’re more so.” But the one I liked best, because I was never sure that I really had it figured out, was one that she always said at the end of the two-hour operation when she was staring at herself in the mirror and perhaps patting a stray wisp of blond hair into place: “My known vices are my hidden virtues, did you know that, Lucifer?” and I would always say yes, I knew that.
Chapter 9
After Victor Orcutt got through telling me what he wanted done and how much he was willing to pay me to do it everyone sat there without speaking while I digested the information, much as if it were a half-dozen oysters that could have been a trifle long from the sea. Homer Necessary cleared his throat once. The fretful cable-car bells clanged and railed against the afternoon traffic. A foghorn moaned twice, as if seeking commiseration, or at least sympathy. I got up and mixed a drink and on the way back to the couch stopped to look at Orcutt, who seemed fascinated by the tip of his left shoe.
“How’d you get on to me?”
He looked up and smiled that meaningless smile of his “Do you mean how or why?”
“Both.”
“Very well,” he said. “I think you should know. First how. It was through Gerald Vicker. You know him, I believe.”
“I know him.”
“But you don’t like him?”
“It runs a little deeper than that. A mile or so.”
“He has quite an organization,” Orcutt said. “Expensive, but reliable.”
“Then he’s changed,” I said.
“Really? He came well recommended and he did produce on extremely short notice.”
“He recommended me?”
“Highly. But you weren’t our only candidate. There were three others who were put forth by organizations similar to Mr. Vicker’s.”
“Who?” I said.
“The candidates?”
“No. The organizations.”
“I don’t really believe that concerns you, Mr. Dye.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
I put my drink down on the coffee table and leaned forward, resting my arms on my knees. I stared at Orcutt, who stared back, not in the least perturbed but only curious about what came next, if anything.
“I don’t know you,” I said. “I only know what you’ve told me about yourself and that’s not much of a recommendation.”
“You can check him out,” Necessary said.
“I plan to. Maybe I’ll be surprised and find that it was just a run of bad luck that got you tied in with Vicker. That could be. But you claim Vicker put my name up for membership in the club. That doesn’t flatter me; it scares the hell out of me because I know the only thing that Vicker would recommend me for is something that he could send flowers to.”
“Mr. Dye, I assure you—”
“I’m not finished. Assurances aren’t any good, not if Vicker’s tied into them. I learned long ago to stay away from people who deal with Vicker. They’re usually thieves or even worse, fools. So I’ll stay away from you unless you tell me the names of the other three firms that you dealt with. Then I might believe it was just bad luck that got you in with Vicker. But if you don’t come up with their names, then we’ve just run out of things to talk about.”
Orcutt was quick. If he hesitated, it wasn’t for more than a second. “Chance Tubio. Singapore. Do you know him?”
“He’s okay,” I said. “Some of his people are a little slimy, but he’s okay.”
“Eugene Elmelder. Tokyo.”
“The biggest,” I said, “but stuffy, slow, and very, very proper.”
“My impression, too,” Orcutt said. “Max von Krapp. Manila.”
“The best of the lot. He combines Teutonic thoroughness with a vivid imagination. The von is phoney.”
“He was the most expensive,” Orcutt said.
“Then he’s gone up. How did you get involved with Vicker?”
“He was one of four names suggested by a completely disinterested party.”
“Why take Vicker’s recommendation — why choose me?”
“There is a time factor, Mr. Dye. None of the other three could recommend satisfactory candidates who were immediately available. Vicker could. He named you. It’s as simple as that — except for the frightfully large retainers that the other three organizations demanded.”
I lit a cigarette that I didn’t really need and leaned back on the couch. “If you want another drink help yourself,” I said to Necessary. He nodded, rose, and crossed over to the bottle.
“Why go looking in the East?” I said to Orcutt. “Local talent must be plentiful. I’ve heard that Europe’s swarming with it.”
“I needed someone who could command a certain degree of anonymity in the States. It seemed to me that a person who has lived in the Far East for an extended period of time might well have achieved this. More so than if he’d lived in Europe. But I also listed a number of other qualifications.”
“Such as?”
Orcutt waved a hand, his left one. He did it gracefully, I thought. “We were terribly frank with all of them,” he said. “Naturally, we didn’t tell them exactly what the candidate would do. Rather, we told them what he should be.”
“How much checking did you do on the people that you dealt with — Tubio, von Krapp, and the other two?”
“They came highly recommended.”
“By whom?”
“I simply cannot reveal that,” Orcutt said and I thought for a moment that he was going to pout.
“Hint.”
“All right,” he said. “He was a United States Senator. There’re a hundred or so of them, so you can take your choice.”
“Simple the Wise,” I said. “From Idaho.”
Necessary snorted, received a glare from Orcutt, and I knew I was right but it hadn’t been hard to guess.
“Senator Solomon Simple,” I went on. “And if I had a name like that I’d change it to Lucifer Dye. Chairman of the Senate External Security subcommittee. He doesn’t trust U.S. intelligence — any of it — and he spends a lot of government money with outfits like the ones you’ve just done business with. How much did he cost you? I mean he’s still on the take, isn’t he?”
“I made a small campaign contribution,” Orcutt said, his tone swathed in frost. “Perfectly legitimate.”
“Perfectly legitimate,” Carol Thackerty said from her outpost by the window, “but not so small. He nicked you for ten thousand.”