“I can’t believe you did anything very wrong.”
“Well, I guess you could say I haven’t been a great benefactor for society,” Budge said, and laughed.
“Don’t laugh at yourself. Anyway, you’re fine now. Good job, good prospects. I get the impression that Mr. Winsor will be putting you in charge of things. There’d be a lot more money with that.”
“The Beatles taught us about money. Remember? It won’t buy you love.”
Her response to that sounded slightly angry.
“You like to make fun of money,” she said. “I have to tell you I don’t. I bet you’ve never been poor or you wouldn’t talk like that. I bet you’ve never had to watch your mother trying to borrow money, or been embarrassed in school because of the way you dressed. Or your shoes. Or hearing the other girls telling about what they did during the summer, and all you could do was listen. Things like that.”
“No,” Budge said. “Never anything like that.”
“Well, I have,” she said. “You dream of having money. Like dreaming of paradise. Having money like those people I see when I’m with Rawley.”
All the anger was out of her voice now. It sounded dreamy.
“Listening to them talking about the party in Tokyo. Or being on somebody’s yacht going up the Thames. Being introduced to the Queen. The view from somebody’s villa on the cliff in Sicily. The candlesticks. The silver.” She stopped, sighed. “Oh, well. Maybe someday.”
Winsor’s other young women had never talked like that. One sunny Saturday afternoon when he picked up Chrissy he’d been tempted to tell her about the very blond, very chic, very shapely girl he had delivered to the Winsor address two days earlier. Just make a casual remark about it. See how Chrissy would respond. To learn if she understood how she fit into Winsor’s scheme of things and knew what was happening to her. But he didn’t tell her. He told himself he didn’t tell her because it would have been cruel to tip her off if she didn’t know and insulting if she did. But the real reason he was silent was that he was afraid it would destroy this friendship. And he had come to treasure that.
Then the day came, about a month ago, just as he started the limo engine and was pulling away from the curb, when Chrissy clicked on the intercom and said:
“Budge. I think I’m pregnant.”
That surprised him. It shouldn’t have, perhaps. But it did. And he said nothing at all for a bit, and then he said, “Oh?”
“We’re going to get married. Rawley’s given me an engagement ring. It’s spectacular. I’d show it to you, but I can’t wear it yet. This is going to be secret until he can get his divorce finalized and the wedding arrangements made.”
And he’d said: “Well, Chrissy, I wish you a lot of happiness.” And he’d wondered why he hadn’t heard about this impending divorce. From what he’d been hearing, Winsor was still solidly married to a very socially prominent woman named Margo Lodge Winsor. He’d driven her out to Reagan Airport about two months ago on a flight to their vacation home in the Antilles. He’d never been sent out to pick her up, and Winsor had talked a time or two about his plans for joining her there.
He had no idea what, if anything, to say to Chrissy about that, and a damper fell on their friendly chats for a couple of their trips. But then came that terrible day that forced him to make some decisions.
Budge was remembering that day now, just as Winsor arrived and stood looking down at him.
“Up and at ’em,” Winsor said. “Get moving. You’ve got the plane ready, I trust. Everything all set?”
“For where?” he said, not moving.
“For the old smelter in Sonora,” Winsor said. “Come on. You’re wasting my time.”
Budge looked at his boot tips, then up at Winsor. “OK,” he said. “Away we go.”
The flight from El Paso’s Biggs Field to the old smelter is a mere hundred and fifty or so air miles over a stretch of the emptiest segment of Chihuahua to the emptiest part of Sonora. Dry country, relatively flat, and the pilot’s role complicated only by the chance of encountering the helicopters and radio-controlled drone surveillance aircraft the Border Patrol uses to watch the bottom edge of New Mexico and Arizona.
Winsor sat behind him now, silent, reading papers in a folder. Budge identified the bumpy shape of Sierra Alto Azul Mountain, his navigating mark for the smelter, adjusted his controls, and looked at the desert below him. Grim, dry, hungry, unhappy country, not intended for any life beyond javlina, cactus wrens, and reptiles. Too harsh and cruel for humans, and that returned his thoughts to the last time he’d seen Chrissy, the afternoon Winsor had summoned him into that luxurious office, asked him to sit down—a first for that—and offered him a cigar, which was another first.
“Budge,” he’d said, “I’ve been thinking of the things you’ve managed for me. Four years now, isn’t it, and you’ve never let me down.”
“Four years,” Budge said. “I guess that’s about right.”
“I’m going to give you a bonus,” Winsor said. He was smiling.
“A pay raise?”
“No. Better than that. Cash.” He opened a drawer, extracted a manila envelope, dropped it on the desktop.
“Well, thanks. That’s nice of you,” Budge said. The envelope looked rather thick, which meant probably quite a bit of money, which meant what Winsor now wanted him to do was probably either dangerous or something unusually nasty. The fact it was cash certainly meant Winsor was willing to give up the tax deduction he’d get by making it salary. Therefore, Winsor wanted to leave no way it could be tracked back to Winsor.
Winsor picked up the envelope and tossed it to Budge. He let it fall onto his lap.
“What have I done to deserve this?”
“I didn’t make a list,” Winsor said, smiling again. “But the first thing that comes to mind is that time we had the head shyster for Amareal Corporation over here. And I let you know that I really needed to get a look at what was on those papers he was carrying in his briefcase, you remember that, and that night after you hauled the wino bastard back to his hotel, you came back with copies for me.”
Budge nodded, remembering. The man had been drunk, but not as drunk as he wanted to be. When Winsor had sent Budge a scrawled note, telling him what was needed, he had remembered an all-night Kinko’s copy center around the corner from a convenient bar. He’d suggested his passenger might like a nightcap, stopped at a bar, explained limo drivers have to stay with their vehicle, and, when his passenger was on the bar stool, extracted the folder from the case, hurried it into Kinko’s, got the copies done, got the refilled folder back into the briefcase, and talked his tipsy passenger out of the bar, back into the limo, and turned him over to the hotel doorman.
Winsor had been waiting. “How’d you do that?”
Budge explained it.
Winsor laughed. “The son of a bitch never had a clue. Never guessed how we screwed him. And how about that time you got the Bible Belt congressman photographed with the bimbo. How’d you do that?”
Winsor already knew how that had been done. In fact, had outlined the plan himself. But Budge was patient. He explained it. With this much preparation, the next job Winsor intended to hand him must be something special. As he sat through two more examples of his undercover deeds, his sense of dread was growing.
Finally, Winsor got to it.
“One more problem I want you to handle for me,” he said. “This girl I’ve been having you drive here and there, she’s become a serious problem.”
Budge drew in his breath.
“Which one?”
“The feisty little brunette. Sorts out my lawyer paperwork, keeps it filed, thinks she’s going to be a lawyer. She’s copied off a bunch of very sensitive stuff. Letters, so forth. Confidential material. The little bitch wants to blackmail me with it.”