Ross Thomas - Ah, Treachery!

“You find, we fetch,” Major Hudson said.

Kite began his hunt with an Army-supplied list of the names and last known addresses of one hundred deserters. Within a week he had tracked down seventy-three of them by phone and, using only his voice from hell, convinced sixty-four of the seventy-three to stay put until either Federal marshals or the military police dropped by to pick them up.

Twenty-two years later the 51-year-old Emory Kite looked up from his Big Mac with those still-amused blue eyes and asked, “How come we gotta meet way the fuck out here in Silver Spring to eat hamburgers when we could be having something decent down at Zeibert’s?”

“Because I don’t know anybody who’d eat lunch at two forty-five in a McDonald’s, especially a McDonald’s in Silver Spring.”

After that Colonel Ralph Millwed took his second and last bite of his Quarter Pounder and put it back on the tray, never to touch it again.

“So how’s General Hudson doing?” Kite asked, his mouth full of hamburger and French fries.

Millwed looked away. “Fine.”

“Been a while since I saw him.”

“Three years, seven months and thirteen days,” Millwed said, still glancing around the almost empty restaurant. He continued to look around until he thought the open-mouth mastication might have ended. He looked back, only to find Kite’s hand poised over the Colonel’s abandoned Quarter Pounder. “You gonna finish it?” Kite asked.

“No.”

“I might as well, then,” Kite said, picked up the remains, had a large bite and said, “Me and the General used to be real tight, you know.”

The Colonel looked away again and said, “We go through this every time.”

“I just want you to let him know I understand,” said Kite. “Christ,a two-star general can’t be buddy-buddy with a guy like me or something shitty might rub off on him. I know that. I bet when you get to be a general, Ralphie, you’ll have yourself some tame major to eat lunch with me — probably out at the Roy Rogers in Hyattsville.”

“Hyattsville does sound promising,” the Colonel said.

Kite sucked up the last of his Coke with a straw, pushed away his tray, rested his elbows on the table and leaned toward Millwed. “What’s up?”

“We want you to find us someone.”

“Like the three I already found you? The one in Montana, the other one to hell and gone in Texas and the one with the ha-ha name way to fuck out in Wyoming? Twodees. Old Edd-with-two-ds Partain.”

Kite cocked his head to one side to study Millwed. The Colonel thought it made the detective look rather like a reasonably intelligent rat terrier.

“You and the General,” Kite was saying. “You and him must’ve made just one hell of a lot of enemies down there in Central America and wherever else the fuck you guys were.”

“We made all the right enemies, Emory,” said Millwed. “Which is as important as making all the right friends. The General and I think of you as a friend — although an expensive one.”

“I’m not all that expensive. Fact is, I’ve been kind of cheap.”

The Colonel reached into a pocket of his tweed jacket and brought out a slip of paper. After glancing at it, he said, “Since January of nineteen-ninety, your fees and expenses have amounted to $231,373. All cash. And all, I trust, unreported to the IRS.”

The Colonel produced an old Zippo and set fire to the slip of paper. He looked around for an ashtray, but finding none, dropped the burning slip into his coffee. Kite watched the paper burn, then drown and said, “If you guys think I cost too much, go take from somebody else.”

“I like it when you pretend to hurt feelings,” Millwed said. “It always reminds me of a sensitive scorpion.”

“The General and me used to kid back and forth like this,” Kite said. “Before he got to be a general.”

“You think I’m kidding?”

“I sure hope so, Ralphie,” Kite said, smiled his thin wide smile and asked, “So who d’you want me to find this time?”

“Somebody to fix Partain.”

Kite nodded judiciously, curling the corners of his wide mouth down into small hooks. “When?”

“We’ll let you know.”

“How much you willing to spend?”

“What’s the going rate?”

“The going rate,” Kite said, spacing the words. “Well, I didn’t check the price list this morning, so I can’t give you an exact figure. But it’s sort of like asking, How much does a house cost? You see, Ralphie, when you hire somebody who’s in the business of doing what you want done, you’re dealing with the loose-wire crowd. It might be fifty thousand, five thousand or five hundred. Or the price can depend on if it rains or shines. Know what I’m saying?”

“You’re saying you’ll do it yourself for the right price.”

Kite’s eyebrows formed two surprised arcs above the blue eyes that remained cool and amused. “Never crossed my mind.”

“Think about it,” the Colonel said. “You’ve got two minutes.”

“Your pal Twodees, huh?”

The Colonel nodded.

“He expecting it?”

“No.”

“You want it done right, of course. I mean, you don’t want some amateur job. You want it done by a pro who’ll be in and out but not so fast he don’t clean up after himself.”

“You to a T, Emory,” Colonel Millwed said.

“Maybe.”

“How much?”

“Fifty thousand — plus expenses,” Kite said. “Half in advance, half when it’s done. That’s the no-dicker price.”

The Colonel stared at him before he finally asked, “How’re things at VOMIT?”

“The usual.”

“The usual what?”

“The usual ‘Lordy, Lordy, look what they went and done now.’ ”

“Has Partain been back in touch with the Greek — Patrokis?”

“Nope.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m there from nine to six, six days a week, practically sitting in Nick’s lap. He’s there from nine to nine, seven days a week. So what the fuck happens on Sunday I can’t say. But far as I know, Nick’s only talked to your friend Twodees twice since Christmas Day.”

“You were there Christmas?”

“Sure. It’s one of my best days. Maybe the very best. You call up Christmas morning around seven or eight and tell the guy you’re on your way over for the pickup or the TV or the VCR or maybe even the stove and icebox, and that really puts the fear of God in him. He not only comes up with the cash, he even wants to bring it down to you.” Kite smiled at the Colonel. “Twodees went to work for her, didn’t he — out there in L.A.? For Millicent Altford?”

“Maybe.”

“That why you want him fixed?”

“No.”

“Old scores, huh?”

“You don’t really need to know the why, Emory. Only the who.”

“And the how much?”

“I can okay the price.”

“So that just leaves the when, don’t it?”

The Colonel rose. “I’ll let you know.”

Millicent Altford stared at the red carpet of her corner room for nearly a minute before she said,” ‘Sid Solo said for Jessie to tell her mother to cancel the hunt.’ ”

The words had come out in the near monotone that some use for quoting or reading aloud. Altford now looked up at Edd Partain and asked in a normal voice, “Why isn’t Jessie telling me this?”

“Because she wouldn’t talk to Dave. So after some Percodan and beer, he told me.”

“What’d he need Percodan for — that scrap you all had?”

Partain nodded.

“You on Percodan?”

“I had a root canal three months ago. The dentist gave me a prescription for twelve Percodans. I have ten left.”

Altford nodded her approval of Partain’s abstemious ways, then asked, “Could you please hand me my purse over there on the bed?”