Ross Thomas: Ah, Treachery!

“What if he wants to fuck?”

Carver shrugged. “Think of it as therapy.”

Shawnee Viar turned to Patrokis and said, “Let’s go.”

They both rose. Partain, still seated, looked up at Shawnee Viar and asked, “Was that really what the journal said?”

“Not word for word,” she said. “But close. Very close.”

After they left, Partain and Jessica Carver sat in silence for what seemed to her an interminable three minutes until she ended it with a question. “You going to sit and brood all night?”

He shook his head. “Of course not. I’ll get you a cab.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll walk back.”

“Walk?”

He ignored the question. “Tell your mother I need to see her. Tonight. Late. After eleven.”

“Should I mention General Winfield and his dirty plastic?”

“Not yet.”

She leaned forward to examine him carefully, even critically, as if for character fissures or crumbling resolve. “I don’t want anything to happen to Millie,” she said. “A little mild excitement and adventure, fine. But nothing bad.”

He nodded.

“As for you, you’ve just had a rotten shock. How rotten I can’t even imagine. After you see Millie, I’ll sit up with you all night. Get drunk with you. Listen to you.” She paused. “Come as you are. Anytime. No reservation needed.”

He wanted to smile at her and felt his lips stretch into something that he hoped resembled one. He then tried to make his eyes crinkle, although he wasn’t at all sure what muscles to use.

“Does it hurt?” she asked.

“What?”

“You look like you’re in pain.”

“I am,” he said, rose and went around the table. “Let’s get you a cab.”

Partain walked south down the east side of 14th Street to L, then turned west and went the rest of the way to Connecticut Avenue and the Mayflower Hotel. He was propositioned by no whores. Importuned by no beggars. Threatened by no jackrollers. A patrol car slowed beside him near 14th and T. The near cop gave him a long speculative look and, in return, received a savage smile. The cop car rolled on.

As he walked he wondered why he hadn’t suspected long ago that his dead wife’s lack of politics would’ve been interpreted as a disguise. A Salvadoran intellectual marries a mustang major in the U.S. Army assigned to intelligence, but claims she has no interest in the politics of her own country. That’d bother them all right — enough to make them go to the Major’s superiors, to that fucking Hudson, and maybe that equally fucking Millwed, and say this woman of Major Partain’s is a cleverly disguised spy and something must be done about her either by you or us. So those two fuckers, Hudson and Millwed, hand the problem off to the Great Ditherer, Hank Viar, the Pepys of El Salvador, who says nothing to me, does nothing, as those two fuckers knew he wouldn’t. But tells dear diary he maybe ought to do something. But doesn’t. And they, whoever they are or were, make her disappear. And isn’t it awful that Viar is dead and you can’t ask him what really happened to her and then kill him no matter what his reply.

Partain’s rage had diminished, if not vanished, by the time he knocked on the door of Millicent Altford’s suite. She asked who it was through the door. He replied. The door opened. He went in and she said, “Who ran over your puppy?”

“Let’s talk about something else,” Partain said. “Let’s talk about that keeper of the guttering flame, General Vernon Winfield, because he’s onto you, lady.”

“You drunk?” she said.

“No.”

“Wanta be?”

“Maybe.”

“Sit down.”

Partain sat down on a couch and waited for her to hand him a drink. He didn’t care what it was and she, sensing this, handed him two ounces of iced Scotch. He remembered to thank her and noticed she was wearing a suit he hadn’t seen, a Hershey-brown one with cream piping. “New suit?” he said.

She sat down in an armchair with her own drink and crossed her legs. “I bought it just before I checked into the hospital,” she said.

“Shows off your legs.”

“Well, you advertise whatever’s left,” she said, sipped her drink and then asked, “What d’you mean Vernon’s onto me?”

“He knows your sun-dried one-point-two million’s missing.”

“Does he, now?”

Partain nodded. “He really must have a yen for you.”

“A yen? You could’ve said he longs for me. Yearns for me. Even has the hots for me. But yen sounds like diluted desire.”

“He’s broke,” Partain said.

She started to giggle, tried to stop but couldn’t until Partain said, “You don’t believe me.”

“I didn’t say that. I asked you a question, then giggled at your answer. So how d’you know he’s broke?”

“His American Express card’s canceled. His VISA card’s maxed out. He’s two, maybe three months behind on his BMW lease.”

“You call that broke?”

Partain ignored the question and said, “He also did something else. He refinanced that chateau of his on Kalorama Circle for one-point-two million exactly. The same amount that was stolen from your safe and the same amount you’ve got squirreled away in that safe-deposit box in Santa Paula.”

“Ran a check on him, did you?” she said.

“I had somebody run one.”

“Here in Washington?”

He nodded.

“I reckon it didn’t quite stretch to Aspen, did it? Thought not. You see, dear heart, Vernon’s been buying up Aspen since 1958. Must own half of it now. Well, maybe three or four percent anyway. Check out his total net worth and you’ll find it’s between fifteen and twenty million.”

“So why the bad plastic?”

She sighed. “It’s somebody to talk to. Once in a while, he gets lonely. So he lets his car lease ride and gets a call from the BMW store and that’s good for a fifteen-minute chat. Amex uses mostly girls and they can be a lot of fun, if you’re sixty-seven or so. Same goes for VISA. Then he’ll pay up, although usually he overpays, and the girls’ll call back all aflutter about his new credit balance.”

She paused, frowned and said, “One-point-two million, huh? Not in cash, I hope.”

“I don’t know,” Partain said.

“He must’ve got a whiff from somewhere.”

“That it was stolen?”

She nodded. “He probably thinks that’s why I checked into the hospital — because I let it be stolen and didn’t know what to do about it. He may even have it all planned out that when he and I meet to tot up the books next month, I’ll ’fess up that all the money’s gone for good and then ask, Sweet Jesus, whatever can I do? And Vernon maybe hopes to snap open a big new shiny black attaché case, plumb full of hundred-dollar bills, and say, ‘Don’t worry, little darlin’, everything’s gonna be just fine.’ ”

“You don’t believe that.”

“No, sir. I don’t.”

Partain finished his drink and said, “How’d he find out?”

“Somebody told him,” she said. “Not me. Not you. That leaves the thief.”

“Or somebody the thief told,” Partain said, placed his glass on a table and rose. He stood there for a moment, looking as if he had forgotten something and uncertain about whether he really wanted to remember it.

She leaned forward and looked up to examine him more closely. “What’s eating you, Twodees?” she said, her voice gentle, almost coaxing.

“I found out what caused the disappearance of my wife,” he said.

She closed her eyes for several seconds, then opened them and asked, “What’re you going to do about it?”

“Right now, I’m going to go get drunk with your daughter.”

“I couldn’t suggest anything better,” said Millicent Altford.