Ross Thomas - Missionary Stew

Drew Meade hung up. The phone rang. He picked it up and cautiously said hello. It was the long-distance operator, advising Meade that he owed an additional sixty-five cents. Meade told her to fuck off and hung up again.

At the Calexico bus station, the first Trailways out was bound for Redlands. Meade bought a ticket. From Redlands he would bus his way up and over to Santa Barbara and then come down into Los Angeles from the north. With any luck he would be there late that evening or, at the outside, early tomorrow morning. The bus to Redlands would leave in ten minutes. Meade bought provisions for the trip. They consisted of two packs of Camels, a giant-size Mr. Goodbar, and a pint of Jim Beam. The sombrero he shoved into a waste bin.

They had performed their early-afternoon sexual acrobatics in the Sir Galahad, a beach side motel on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica just south of Pico. They had giggled for a while at an X-rated film the motel supplied for $3.50 over its closed-circuit television system. The film involved a threesome, and while it was still running they had made love for almost thirty minutes. Now both lay naked on the bed, watching the film with a kind of clinical detachment.

“You want to see how this shit ends?” he said.

She shook her head. “Not especially.”

Draper Haere rose, crossed to the TV set, and switched it off. He turned and smiled down at Louise Veatch. “You are, without a doubt, the best-looking naked lady I ever saw in my life.”

“Pretty just happened.”

“Pretty and smart with it.”

Louise Veatch smiled. “They used to say that down home. ‘She’s pretty and smart with it.’ ”

“I know,” Haere said, sat back down on the edge of the bed, and lit one of his occasional cigarettes.

“How’d it go in New York?” she said, reaching down for her panties on the floor. “All I got out of Baldy was a satisfied grunt.”

“The guy was a toe tester.”

“You mean he stuck his toe into the political waters and found them lukewarm?”

“He thought they were lukewarm, but Mommy thought they were ice-cold. If he’d jumped in with a big splash, she would’ve said wonderful and whipped out her checkbook. But he didn’t, and she won’t.”

“Then he’s out.”

“He’s out.”

As they talked, they dressed slowly, unhurriedly, as if it were morning and they had risen early and had been married for twenty years.

“You mean out in ’eighty-four or all the way out?”

Draper Haere tucked in his shirttails. The shirt was a white oxford-cloth button down. It was almost the only kind of shirt Haere ever wore except for exact copies in blue. “Out in ’eighty-four,” he said. “After that, who can say?”

“You still think Baldy’s got a real no-shit chance?” Louise Veatch asked as she buttoned up the simple silk cream-colored blouse that went nicely with the simple straight-line light-gray skirt that was complemented by the simple dark-gray double-breasted cashmere jacket. Haere estimated that all that simplicity cost three or four times the price of one of his blue pinstripes, and Haere spent $550 on his suits at Lew Ritter’s.

“Baldy’s got a chance,” Haere said, after giving it some thought. “Not much of one, but a chance — provided things break just right for him, and provided he turns out to be just one hell of a governor.”

“But you’re talking about ’eighty-eight, aren’t you? Not ’eighty-four.”

“I figure ’eighty-four is the jinx year.”

“Oh, hell, Draper.”

“Look. ’Eighty-eight’s his best shot. Four years as governor, and then he gets re-elected in ’eighty-six. He’s got a record he can point to with pride. The old hacks will have dropped out from exhaustion and Baldy’ll be what by ’eighty-six — forty-six?”

“Forty-seven,” she said.

“Not too young and certainly not too old. He starts out after it in ’eighty-six and leaves you behind to run the state.”

“Draper,” she said, “he’s not going to wait.”

“He’d better.”

“Okay, what would it take to get him the nomination in ’eighty-four — besides money and luck? You can get him the money and he’s got all the luck in the world. So what else would it take?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bullshit,” she said. “What about this Replogle stuff that Citron’s going after? This dynamite that could blow them out of the White House? Isn’t that what Jack Replogle said?”

Haere sighed. “He said it could blow those fuckers out of the White House in ’eighty-four. An exact quote. Almost, anyway.”

“And you believed him?”

Haere started knotting his tie. “Jack Replogle, when it came to politics, was a man much given to understatement. Hyperbole in almost everything else, but not in politics.”

“Then it is dynamite, isn’t it?”

“Maybe.”

“Which is just what Baldy needs.”

“It wouldn’t do him any harm,” Haere admitted as he crossed to the bathroom and looked behind its door to see if anything had been left hanging there. He did it out of sheer habit, for they had checked into the room empty-handed. After his inspection, he looked down at his still-bandaged hands and said, “Funny thing about dynamite, though.” He looked up at her. “Sometimes when it gets old it gets unstable.”

“It could blow up in our faces, right?”

He nodded. “Right.”

“Well, that’s the chance we’re all willing to take, isn’t it?”

Haere again looked down at his hands and then back up at Louise Veatch. “Sure it is,” he said.

Morgan Citron came through the redwood gate carrying a large sturdy shopping bag that held a used Olivetti Lettera 32, a new Sony hand-held tape recorder with various attachments, and a box containing a $159 light-brown mohair suit that he had bought on sale at Henshey’s department store in Santa Monica.

Citron noticed the envelope lying on the floor when he entered Unit A. It was a square, off-white envelope, and when he picked it up he saw that it was made by the Crane people out of some very expensive paper. On its front his name had been written in black ink by someone with a broad-nibbed pen and a sound knowledge of the Palmer method. The carefully written message inside said: “Come to dinner tonight at 7 or I’ll throw myself in the ocean.” It was signed “Velveeta.”

Citron was hanging up his new suit in his one closet when the knock came at the apartment’s door. He went to the door and opened it. The man who stood there was slender, graceful, more pretty than handsome, and not much more than twenty-four.

“My name is Dale Winder,” he said, “and I work for your mummy.”

“Christ,” Citron said.

“She wants to see you.”

“No thanks.”

“Don’t you love your mother, dear boy?”

“No,” Citron said. “I don’t love anybody.”

Dale Winder actually clapped his hands once in apparent joy. “Oh, you can quote it! I just somehow knew you could. May I come in?”

“Sure,” Citron said. “Come in.”

Winder glided into the apartment and looked around, hands on hips. He wore a white cashmere pullover, but no shirt, very tight jeans and Gucci loafers, but no socks. Citron had the feeling that Dale Winder thought anyone who would wear socks with his loafers was hopelessly out of it.

“Wonders — just wonders could be done with this place with so little effort,” Winders said regretfully and even clucked a couple of times when he noticed the worn linoleum in front of the Pullman kitchen.

“How’d you find me?” Citron said.

“It wasn’t hard.”

“What does she want?”

“Just to say hello. After all, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Not long enough.”