Ross Thomas: Missionary Stew

“Gladys,” the man said, “looking back on it all, you didn’t really do me any favor.”

“Come on, Harley.”

“You really want to do me a favor, you’d come up here and we’d have a few drinks, and then I’d hand you my shotgun, that Purdey I bought in ’forty-five in London, remember? And then you could do me a real favor.”

“Call them, Harley.”

The man sighed. “Call me back in thirty minutes,” he said and hung up.

Gladys Citron entered an airport cocktail lounge and ordered a martini, the first martini she had tasted in five years. A forty-year-old Cuban with eyes the color of hot fudge tried to pick her up and it helped pass the time. She ended it by paying for both her and the Cuban’s drink, went back to the pay phone, and again called the man in Middleburg. He answered the phone on the first ring.

“I’ve got bad news,” he said. “You ready?”

“I’m ready.”

“According to a cable they got from the charge down there, a guy called Rink, not a bad guy, by the way, well, the good general court-martialed your son today and they’re going to shoot him tomorrow morning at six A.M., which would be seven A.M. Eastern Standard Time.”

“I see,” Gladys Citron said.

“That’s my Gladys,” the man said. “Tell her the fuckin’ world’s coming to an end at noon and she says, ‘I see.’“

“It’s solid, this information?” she said.

“They read me the fuckin’ cable, Gladys. This guy Rink says he thinks the general himself maybe due for the drop. They got a counterrevolution going on down there and Rink thinks it just might work.”

“I see,” she said. “Well, thank you, Harley.”

“For what?”

After she hung up, Gladys Citron sat in the phone booth for at least two minutes until she dropped another coin in and dialed B. S. Keats’s number from memory. When Keats answered she told him she had just arrived at the airport and suggested they meet in one hour at the place where they usually met when they didn’t want anyone to know they were meeting. Keats asked if she had heard anything. Gladys Citron said she had and that was what she wanted to talk about.

She drove in her rented Chevrolet past the Bob’s Big Boy restaurant and parked a block away. She walked back to the restaurant, went in, ordered a cup of coffee, and took it over to the booth where B. S. Keats sat with a Coca-Cola in front of him.

Gladys Citron put the coffee on the table and sat down in the booth across from Keats. She held her large Coach purse in her lap.

“Well?” Keats said.

“They’re going to shoot him in the morning. My son.”

“That ain’t so, Gladys.”

“He’s going to have him shot. Our friend, the general.”

“Never happen. Never.”

“Did you set him up — my son?”

“Me? Christ, I got my little girl down there. I even sent my two French niggers down just to make sure nothing happened to her or him. It’s gotta be some kind of fuckup, Gladys. That’s what it’s gotta be.”

“I know you set him up, B. S.” she said, took the .32 caliber Colt automatic from her purse, and shot him under the table three times. Keats clutched his stomach, said something she couldn’t understand, slumped forward over the table, and knocked over his Coca-Cola. Gladys Citron rose and shot him through the head, then turned and walked out of the restaurant. There were three other customers in the Bob’s Big Boy restaurant, plus the staff. None of them tried to stop her.

She turned in the rented car at the airport and checked on the earliest flight out. It was American’s Flight 138 nonstop to Kansas City. She paid cash for a first-class one-way ticket and gave her name as Mrs. Gordon Percy.

Seated in the first-class section of the DC-9, drinking the second martini she had had in five years, Gladys Citron came to the sensible conclusion that she might have gone quite mad. Her mind turned then to the comforting thought of suicide. When she arrived in Kansas City, she would check into a nice hotel, perhaps the Muehlbach, if it was still functioning, order dinner and a good wine up to her room, take a long bath, and think about suicide some more. It just might get her through the night. The thought did, in fact, get her all the way to Kansas City, where she was arrested by two homicide detectives as she came off the plane.

Draper Haere and Velveeta Keats walked back to the Inter-Continental from the U.S. embassy. They walked because all taxis seemed to have disappeared and because Haere said he wanted to. The streets were almost deserted except for Jeeps and army trucks filled with soldiers, most of whom seemed to be sixteen years old. Sometimes Velveeta Keats would take flash pictures of them with her Polaroid camera. None of the pictures turned out very well. Velveeta Keats didn’t seem to mind. After she examined each picture and showed it to Haere, she threw it away.

“Why take them?” he said.

“I like to see if what I see is what other people see.”

“And is it?”

“I don’t think so. I think other people see more than I do. When I look at the pictures I see a lot of things I missed. That’s why I use a Polaroid. I don’t like to wait. Not for anything.” She stopped, turned, and aimed the camera at Haere. He looked into its lens, unsmiling. She pushed the red button. The camera whirred and the picture rolled out. They continued walking as Velveeta Keats watched the picture develop.

She stopped and looked from the picture to Haere and back again. “You really are sad, aren’t you? I mean, way down deep inside.”

Haere smiled, took the picture from her, and looked at it. “Is that what you see?”

She nodded. “I thought it was just the way your face grew, you know, sort of accidental. But you really are sad. Not depressed. Just sad.”

Haere could think of nothing to say, so he gave the picture back to her. She said, “I think I’ll keep this one,” and put it away in her purse. They walked on in silence, listening to the distant gunfire.

“How far away are they?” she asked.

“A mile maybe. It could be less.”

“I wonder what Morgan’s doing.”

“I don’t know.”

She stopped again and stared at Haere. “We’re not going to let them shoot him, are we? I mean, we’re going to get him out. Somehow.”

“Sure we are,” Haere lied. “Somehow.”

The lobby of the Inter-Continental was jammed with print and television reporters and their crews. Most of them were Americans, but there was also a sprinkling of Europeans. They were all bunched around the reception desk, shouting their demands, elbowing each other out of the way, cursing the hotel management, and declaring their individual and corporate importance.

“Jesus,” Velveeta Keats said. “Where’d they all come from?”

“I guess they want in on the kill,” Haere said. He looked around the lobby and spotted a tall, mournful, almost middle-aged man who stood leaning against the wall as he sipped reflectively from a pint of Smirnoff vodka. Haere turned to Velveeta Keats. “Why don’t you go on up to your room and I’ll try to find out if these guys know anything.”

Velveeta Keats headed for the elevator. Haere went over to the tall man and said, “You’re a long way from St. Louis, Nessie.”

The tall man turned and from his six-foot-five height stared down at Haere. Surprise replaced his mournful look. He even smiled.The man was Nestor Leed, and for almost as long as Haere could remember Leed had covered Midwestern politics for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch .

“Draper,” he said. “My God. So you’ve sunk to this — fomenting revolutions in banana republics.”

“Not me,” Haere said. “I’m a tourist. What the hell do you know about Central America?”