Ross Thomas - Ah, Treachery!

“It’d cost anybody else or their insurance company at least two thousand a day — plus.”

“Plus what?”

“Gourmet meals. The hospital went and hired itself a French chef with a yard-long menu, and now you can lie abed of a morning and spend an hour or so figuring out what you’re gonna eat for the rest of the day and on into the night. But to me it’s all free-gratis-for-nothing.”

“Why?”

“Because when they first started planning this thing back in ’eighty-three, they needed a million or so in seed money. I raised it in four days, didn’t charge a dime for my services and now, well, now I’ve got myself sort of a permanent due bill.”

“They actually cure anything here?”

“They’re said to be hell on the clap.”

To Partain she looked more like 52 than 62 despite the cap of thick short-cropped hair that had the color and sheen of old silver newly polished. Block out the hair, he thought, or dye it back to what must’ve been its original honey-blond, and she might, with the light behind her, pass for 41 — your age.

Altford moved her legs around beneath the long red silk robe until they were back in their cross-legged position. She had a swallow of beer from the bottle and stared at Partain for a moment before she said, “Tell me about you and Nick Patrokis and all those renegade ex-spooks who call themselves BARF or VOMIT or some such.”

Partain took his time before replying. “It began as Veterans of Military Intelligence, with VMI as its abbreviation. But when the Virginia Military Institute squawked, Nick and the rest of them thought up VOMI, which nobody liked. But because most of its members are fucked-over and otherwise disenchanted veterans of some kind of military intelligence, they decided, just for the hell of it, to call themselves Victims of Military Intelligence Treachery, which comes out VOMIT and makes an acronym nobody else’d want. It also got them some publicity, and that’s the other reason they chose it.”

“How long’ve you been a member?”

“I’m not anymore,” Partain said. “I can’t afford the dues.”

“How much are they?”

“Twenty-five a year.”

“Twenty-five hundred?”

“Twenty-five dollars.”

She grinned. “You are broke.”

“Or poor,” he said. “I think there’s a slight but significant difference.” He had more of his beer, then asked, “How’d you hook up with Nick?”

“I have an old boyfriend who’s a retired brigadier general?” she said, using the rising inflection indigenous to the Red River Valley and much of the South.

“Army or Marines?”

“Army. Truth is, he’s the only general I’ve ever really known. But when he was my boyfriend back during the tail end of the Korea thing, he was a captain with funny politics.”

“How funny?”

“He was a Stevenson Democrat.”

“That’s pretty funny from what I’ve read.”

“A dozen years later, early Vietnam time, he was a colonel.”

“And a fairly rapid riser.”

“Goddamn brilliant, too. They sent him to Vietnam in sixty-five and made him a brigadier in ’sixty-seven. By then, he had his twenty years in. So in ’sixty-eight he came out against the war and retired.”

“In that order?”

She thought about it. “In that order.”

“You still see him?”

“He’s had two wives and I’ve had three husbands. But he and I still get it on now and then. After I started looking for somebody, I called and told him I needed to hire me some brains and brawn. He said they seldom came in the same box but, if they did, Nick Patrokis’d probably know where. So I called Nick and he called back with your name.”

“Then you don’t really know Nick?”

“Just over the phone. But I expect you know him pretty well.”

“We met in Vietnam, where he had some rotten luck,” Partain said and waited for her to ask what kind of rotten luck. When she didn’t, his estimate of her rose a few degrees.

“Tell me about VOMIT,” she said.

“It’s really a one-man organization. Nick’s a cofounder and executive director. He’s also the publicist, fund-raiser, speakers’ bureau, bookkeeper, gofer and editor of its now-and-again newsletter. He and VOMIT share an office with a skip-tracer on Connecticut Avenue a few blocks north of Dupont Circle — you know Washington?”

She nodded.

“Well, the office is above a Greek restaurant owned by Nick’s uncle. Nick eats there free. The uncle also owns the building and doesn’t charge VOMIT any rent. A few of the more crabby members, some sympathizers and even a groupie or two usually show up Saturday afternoons to carp and bitch and clean up and help with the mailings and such.”

Altford nodded again, abruptly this time, signalling she now knew all she would ever need to know about VOMIT. “So how’d you get to be a victim of military intelligence treachery?” she said.

“I hit a superior officer and was permitted to resign my commission for the good of the service.”

“How superior?”

“A colonel.”

“And you were what?”

“A major.”

“How hard you hit him?”

“I beat the shit out of him.”

“Why?”

“You need a reason?”

“Yes, sir, I believe I do.”

“He lied to me.”

“All this happened where?”

“El Salvador.”

“When?”

“Nineteen-eighty-nine.”

A silence followed that Millicent Altford ended before it bothered either of them. “You say you were also in Vietnam. You don’t look old enough.”

“From nineteen-seventy to ’seventy-five.”

“Right to the rotten end, huh?”

He nodded.

“I thought all you guys went home after ’seventy-three.”

“A few stayed on.”

“Until ’seventy-five?”

He nodded again.

“Then where’d you go?” she asked.

“Back to the States for a while, then to Germany for four years, stateside again, then to Tegucigalpa and on to El Salvador.”

“Why there? I mean why you in particular?”

“I like to think it was because of my outstanding leadership qualities. Actually, it was because I speak Spanish.”

“Learned where — El Paso?”

“From my mother. Her name was Sandoval. Beatriz Sandoval.”

“How long were you in, all in all?”

“Nineteen years.”

“No pension?”

“None.”

“Where’ve you been working recently?”

“Until Christmas Day, I was a clerk at a gun store in Sheridan, Wyoming.”

“What happened — the economy?”

“Irreconcilable differences with management.”

Altford grinned, placed her now empty beer bottle on the blond coffee table and shifted around on the blue couch until, still cross-legged, she faced Partain.

“You wanta go to work for me?”

“Depends on what or who you’re hiding from.”

“Little Rock.”

Because she seemed to be expecting or even needing some kind of reaction, Partain said, “No kidding?” and “Why?”

“Partly because they’re real grateful for the two-point-six million in soft money I raised for the party. But shoot, that’s what I hired on to do. What they’re real, real grateful for is the two hundred and fifty-four thousand I bundled up for them , not the party, just three days after the New Hampshire primary. Check that after . And to do that I had to talk two hundred and fifty-four close personal friends into Fed Exing me checks for a thousand apiece made out to Little Rock’s campaign. And you’re damn right I delivered that bundle in person.”

“So why all the hide-and-seek?”

“Because Little Rock wants to do something nice for me, and to them something nice might mean ambassador to Togo or some such and I’m just not cut out for stuff like that. But I didn’t want to hurt their feelings, so I checked in here real sick and plan to stay that way ’til it all blows over and they forget about it, which I figure’ll take another three days, maybe four.”