Ross Thomas: Ah, Treachery!

The General rose slowly, staring at Partain. Fear had settled on his face for the first time. His voice sounded old and scratchy when he asked, “What happens to Viar’s diaries?”

“The Army gets them,” Partain said. “You guys can work out a defense between you. I suspect the Colonel’s will be that he was only following orders, right, Ralph?”

“Fuck you, Partain,” the Colonel whispered.

“Can I kick him just once in the balls?” Shawnee Viar said.

“If you really want to,” Partain said.

“No,” she said. “I guess I don’t.”

When the United 747 was forty miles west of Dulles, Edd Partain stopped a passing flight attendant in the first-class section and said, “There’s a Ms. J. Carver back in steerage who needs to upgrade her seat.” He indicated the vacant aisle seat next to his. “This one’s empty. Can you arrange it?”

“Who’s buying?” the attendant asked.

“I am.”

“She have a cheapo ticket?”

“Probably.”

“It’ll cost you a bundle.”

Partain reached into a pocket of his new brown herringbone jacket, came up with some folded-over $100 bills and said, “Here’s a thousand. If it’s more, let me know.”

The flight attendant, a handsome 50, fussed over Jessica Carver for almost five minutes, urging her to have another breakfast, which was refused, or a drink, which was accepted. Carver swallowed some of her Bloody Mary and asked Partain, “Where were you last night?”

“With Patrokis and Shawnee. Most of the time.”

“And earlier?”

“Shawnee and I put on a recital for General Hudson and Colonel Millwed.”

“You going to tell me about it?”

Partain turned to stare down at the cloud layer 15,000 feet below, then turned back and said, “Sure. Why not? But Shawnee comes out as the heroine.”

“Good.”

It took Partain twenty minutes to tell her and when he was done, she asked, “Who else knows?”

“Just Patrokis — and you.”

“When’s it all coming out?”

Partain smiled. “On the first real slow news day.”

Over the Grand Canyon, Partain said, “Your mother wants me to go to work for her.”

“Doing what?”

“Probably apprentice rainmaker.”

“You going to?”

“Maybe.”

“That means we’ll both have jobs,” she said. “I got an offer from the transition team yesterday.”

“What kind of offer?”

“They’re looking for the best baby-talk writer in the country and a guy who has this hot ad agency in Venice recommended me.”

“What’s a baby-talk writer?”

“Someone who can boil a one-hundred-page position paper down into three words. Maybe four.”

“Like a billboard?”

“Exactly.”

“Did you take it?”

“It’s a five-hundred-a-day consultant’s job. I told them I’d have to work out of L.A., not Washington, and that made them antsy until I described how wonderful modern telecommunications are. Fast, too.”

“Then you’ll have to find a place to live,” Partain said.

“We both will,” she said.

Their welcoming committee at LAX consisted only of the LAPD homicide Detective Sergeant Ovid Knox, as resplendent as ever in cashmere and gabardine. Both Partain and Carver had only carry-on luggage. Knox took it away from them, piled it on a cart he had rented, and offered them a ride into town.

When they were on the 405 in Knox’s plain brown Chevrolet sedan and heading for Wilshire, he said, “I busted a guy called Manny Rosales on an old felony rap three days ago, squeezed him some and he gave up a Washington private cop called Emory Kite. Ever hear of him?”

“He’s dead,” Partain said.

“So I found out. But it seems Kite was the one who took out your ex-boyfriend, Dave Laney, and also Jack Thomson, the doorman.”

“Why?” Jessica Carver said.

Knox ignored the question and said, “So that about wraps up Manny, Kite, Laney and Thomson. But the Washington cops tell me are tired brigadier general did Kite yesterday, then went home, wrote a confession, and did himself.”

“General Winfield was an old friend of my mother’s,” Carver said.

There was a long silence until Sergeant Knox said, “Got any questions? Because if you don’t, I do.”

“One,” Partain said. “You wouldn’t happen to know where we could rent a nice two-bedroom apartment, would you?”

Knox thought about it, then asked, “Brentwood okay?”