Ross Thomas: Ah, Treachery!

“The Colonel has no family, Alice Ann, and you owe me one week’s pay and two weeks’ vacation.”

“Think I don’t know that? Think I didn’t rush all over town last night, ruining my Christmas Eve, just to get the cash together and pay you every last cent you got coming? Here.”

She thrust a white No. 10 envelope at him. “Go on. Count it. It’s all there.”

“Then there’s no need to count it,” Partain said, accepting the envelope and shoving it into the pocket of his old robe.

“Well, I don’t know, maybe you didn’t do everything Colonel Milkweed says you—”

“Colonel Millwed.”

“—everything he says you did, but I just can’t take the chance of some, well, of some wildman loose among my guns. No telling what might happen.”

“No telling,” Partain agreed.

“I know you’re gonna try and talk me out of it because you know what a softie I am. But this time I won’t change my mind. So don’t try and talk me out of it.”

“Okay,” Partain said. “I won’t.”

There wasn’t much to pack. There were a few books, the small Sony shortwave, the clothing and toilet articles, some personal papers, a camera and one and a half bottles of fair whiskey — just enough to fill an Army duffel bag and most of the old Cape buffalo overnight bag he had bought cheaply in Florence years ago.

There were no dishes, glasses, cutlery, pots, pans, furniture or bedding. All that belonged to Neal, the landlord, who said he was sorry to lose Partain as a tenant and thought being fired on Christmas Day was one for the fucking books. Partain agreed, said goodbye over the phone, then called a number in Washington, D.C. that was answered on the third ring by a man’s voice reciting the last four digits Partain had just dialed.

“It’s Partain,” he said. “They sent Millwed yesterday and I got fired this morning. My Christmas bonus.”

“If you were Greek Orthodox like me, the true Christmas would still be two weeks away and your self-pity would be considerably lessened. Millwed, huh? Ralph Waldo Millwed, our jumped-up colonel now said to be a comer.”

“Who says?”

“Rumor, of course.”

“Any suggestions?” Partain said.

“As a matter of fact — and no little coincidence — there is a possibility. But it’s more of a feeler than a definite offer.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“A wealthy aged person of sixty-two years lies dying in Los Angeles. Needs bright aggressive go-getter to help solve one final problem. You interested?”

“What’s the problem?”

“I don’t know, but it pays one thousand a week and found.”

“How many weeks?”

“Till death do you part, I suppose,” the Greek said.

With his next-to-last $50 bill, Partain paid off the driver of the gypsy cab he had hailed and haggled with at LAX. As the cab sped away, he pocketed the $25 in change and turned to inspect the private hospital that was on the north side of Olympic Boulevard a few blocks east of Century City.

It was just past 6 P.M. and dark on the January Tuesday that was Twelfth Night. Partain found himself wondering whether the hospital had already taken down its holiday decorations or just hadn’t bothered to put any up. He didn’t care either way but regarded his mild curiosity as surprising, perhaps even encouraging.

As Partain studied the hospital, he began to suspect its architect had been enamored of long slabs of pale granite, and that its landscape designer had been equally smitten by drought-resistant plants — the expensive kind that still look thirsty even in a hard rain. Significant money also had gone into the hospital’s outdoor security lighting system and Partain, who knew about such things, could find little fault with it.

He entered the hospital, carrying his Cape buffalo bag, avoided the reception desk, rode an elevator to the top floor, the sixth, and slipped into a spacious corner room where the Greek had told him his prospective employer lay dying of some rare but undiagnosed ailment.

Partain found her sitting cross-legged on a hospital bed, wearing a Chinese-red silk robe decorated with numerous small gold dragons who were either yawning or roaring at each other. She had just finished a slice — the last slice, he noticed — of a small pizza, eating it out of the box it had been delivered in, and was now washing the last bite down with what little remained in a bottle of Beck’s beer.

She lowered the bottle, stared at him for a moment with clever-looking, not quite gray eyes and said, “Edd-with-two-ds Partain, I hope and trust.”

“They sometimes called me that — Twodees,” he said. “In grade school mostly.”

“Then I’d almost bet the Partains were Cajuns and probably in the oil bidness down around where — Opelousas? Lafayette?” She gave him a quick grin, showing off perfect teeth that Partain took to be perfectly capped. “Sorry,” she said, “but I do like to make up tales about fellas I’ve just met.”

“My folks moved from El Paso to Bakersfield right after the war,” he said. “My old man was an over-the-road hauler and my mother ran a beauty shop out of their living room. I suspect the Partains were French Huguenots way back, but I never asked.”

“Well, you already know I’m Millicent Altford or you wouldn’t be here,” she said, laying the empty beer bottle on its side in the empty pizza box. She then removed both box and bottle from her lap, placed them on the bed, slipped gracefully from her cross-legged perch to the floor and asked, “Want a beer?”

Partain said yes, thanks, and thought her come-and-go Red River Valley drawl must have originated at least 40 miles northeast of Dallas and not much less than 190 miles south of Oklahoma City. When the drawl went away, it was replaced by something cool and crisp out of Chicago, where, the Greek said, she had spent four years at Foote, Cone and Belding before signing on as a fund-raiser for the second Adlai Stevenson presidential campaign in 1956.

Altford glided barefoot to a small built-in bar that provided gin, Scotch and vodka but no bourbon. There were also some glasses, a tiny stainless-steel sink and, below that, a miniature refrigerator sheathed in a grainy brown Formica that looked nothing at all like walnut veneer.

Bending from the waist, she opened the refrigerator door and, with legs still straight and eyes now almost at knee level, peered inside and offered to fix Partain a real nice pastrami on rye with stuff the Stage Deli had sent over. Partain thanked her but said he had eaten on the plane.

She straightened as effortlessly as she had bent over — a bottle of Beck’s in either hand — and turned to stare at him with an expression of what he assumed was sympathy. “You eat on planes?”

“An economy measure,” he said, lowering his overnight bag to the floor.

“Well, we’ll have to fix that, won’t we?” she said and shut the refrigerator door with a backward kick of her bare left foot — a movement Partain suspected of being practiced and maybe even choreographed.

After crossing the room to hand him a beer, Millicent Altford turned and sank down onto a dark blue three-cushion couch, giving its center one a couple of invitational pats. Once both were seated, a cushion between them, Partain tasted his beer and said, “They told me you were dying. I assume they lied.”

“I told ’em to lie. That way, if I didn’t take to you right off, I could say: ‘Sorry. Forget it. I’m just too busy dying.’ ”

“Since you’re neither sick nor dying, it might be suspected you’re hiding from something or somebody.” He again looked around the large private corner room. “Although this has got to be one hell of an expensive place to hide.”