Росс Томас - Cast a Yellow Shadow

“Obviously you couldn’t carry out your assignment if you are under strict surveillance,” Van Zandt said. “But how do we know that you are?”

“I’ll be back at my hotel at six tonight,” Padillo said. “Just have someone in the lobby. There’ll be at least two from the FBI there; perhaps more. They’re not hard to spot.”

“Someone will be there, Mr. Padillo,” Darragh said. “I can assure you.”

“You can also be there at six in the morning. They’ll be there then, too.”

Van Zandt shook his head. “I don’t like this, Wendell. I don’t like to have plans go wrong.”

“They haven’t necessarily gone wrong,” Padillo said. “The assassination can still be brought off.”

“By whom?”

“By a professional.”

There was another silence and then the old man went into another coughing fit.

“How could we trust him?” he said between coughs.

“You engage me as the contractor. I just subcontract it out. The chief difference is that I’ll have to have the seventy-five thousand dollars you mentioned in Lomé. The man I have in mind doesn’t come cheap.”

“Our hold on you would still be Mrs. McCorkle?”

“With one exception. McCorkle must be allowed to talk to her at length Monday night. He must also be allowed to talk to her just prior to the assassination.”

“You don’t seem to trust us, Mr. Padillo,” Van Zandt said.

“I don’t trust you at all. I think you’re desperate and I think you’re scared. When you killed Underhill, you showed how desperate you are. You’re also sloppy. Boggs here talks to his wife who talks to her sister who is Underbill’s wife. This is supposed to be a conspiracy. I agree with McCorkle. It’s becoming a convention.”

“We have taken steps to make sure that Mrs. Boggs doesn’t talk to anyone else,” Boggs said.

“I’ll bet you have,” Padillo said. “But you do things after the fact. When this is over, there’ll still be McCorkle and his wife and me around. We’ll know what happened. What do you plan to do with us?”

Darragh spread his hands in an open gesture. “You’ll have become involved, Mr. Padillo. You were to have been the killer; now you’ll be an accessory. So will Mr. McCorkle.”

“And his wife?”

“I doubt that she would jeopardize her husband.”

“This fellow you say you know. Who is he?” Van Zandt asked.

“He’s a professional.”

“Does he have a name?”

“He has several.”

Van Zandt stared at Darragh. “I don’t like things to go wrong, Lewis. And things have gone wrong. Now we must employ yet another person. We have endangered the entire plan.”

“Perhaps not,” Darragh said smoothly. “We would like to meet this professional, as you call him, Mr. McCorkle. Can that be arranged?”

“Yes.”

“Today?”

“Probably.”

“And could you give us a name that he has used so that we might determine his qualifications?”

“The name would depend upon what country you plantied to make your inquiry in.”

“Spain? Madrid, perhaps.”

“Ask about a man who called himself Vladisla Smolkski therein 1961.”

Darragh asked how it was spelled and Padillo told him. “We will send a cable to our representative there at once. We should have an immediate answer. If it is satisfactory, we wish to meet this man.”

“He’ll be available.”

“How shall we contact you?”

“Call either McCorkle or myself. The meeting will be set up for an office on Seventh Street.” He gave them the address and Darragh wrote it down next to Dymec’s other name.

“I suggest that you bring money,” Padillo said.

“I don’t think we would like to pay all at once,” Boggs said.

“Just half. And you pay it to me, not to the man you meet.”

Van Zandt chuckled. “You intend to make a profit from my death, Mr. Padillo.”

“Just covering expenses. I may have to take a long trip when this is over.”

“Do you feel that you can bring it off successfully?” Van Zandt asked.

“It shouldn’t be too hard. You won’t have much protection, if any. The United States doesn’t seem to think you’re important enough.”

“It should stir the world,” the old man said. Darragh and Boggs squirmed some more in their chairs. Van Zandt’s flights seemed to embarrass them.

“We’ll make definite plans tonight,” Boggs said.

“The exact time, the place, everything,” Padillo said. “There’s just one more thing.”

“What?” Boggs said.

“Mrs. McCorkle. I suggest that you make sure that she is returned unharmed after this is over.”

“We intend to keep our bargain,” Boggs said.

Padillo stood up. “I’m glad that you do,” he said, “because you wouldn’t live long enough to regret that you didn’t.”

Boggs and Darragh followed us out into the hall when we left. Van Zandt continued to sit at the large carved desk, his pale green eyes gazing out from under the white forest of his eyebrows. He wasn’t watching us leave. He may have been looking at his country as it was sixty years ago, before the automobiles and the airplanes and the Coca-Cola, Or he may have been deciding whether to take a pill to kill the pain.

“Don’t threaten us, Padillo,” Boggs said when the sliding doors were closed.

“I wasn’t threatening you. I was just describing what was going to happen if Fredl McCorkle isn’t returned safely. You tried to buy me and you tried to frighten me and neither worked, so you pressured me through another person. That was a mistake on your part.”

“Then you also have the irate husband to consider,” I said. “You’ve convinced me that you might kill her if I went to the police, or if the assassination doesn’t come off. I’ll put up with all of that. I might even put up with a little more, just to make sure she’s all right. But not much more. Especially, not as much as having her scream over the telephone at me. That was another mistake you made.”

Boggs looked around to see who was listening. There was nobody.

“How much do you think we have riding on this, Jocko?” His voice was low and fast. He seemed furious, and a flush started rising from his collar-line. By the time it reached his ears, it was a bright pink. “We’re not playing for coppers, we’re playing for an entire country and the death of that old man in there is the winning ticket. If he’s not killed next Tuesday, then Darragh and I and a half-dozen other chaps may as well pack it in.” He was talking so fast that a trace of spittle formed at the corner of his mouth. Darragh nodded his dark head in agreement. His mouth was turned down at the corners.

“We don’t give a damn about what you feel or think or threaten,” Boggs went on. “You’re nothing and your woman’s nothing. You’re just a trigger finger to us and that trigger finger had better work when it’s supposed to.”

We were standing in the hall, the pair of them facing the pair of us. Darragh hunched his shoulders and leaned forward and his voice was as low and as fast as Boggs’s. “You mean as much to us as a couple of niggers, and nothing means less than that.”

Padillo looked first at Boggs and then at Darragh. “Is that all?” he asked.

Boggs took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the corners of his mouth. He was still pink. He nodded his head. “Could I say it more plainly?”

“No,” Padillo said. “You couldn’t.” He turned to me. “I take it you understood the gentlemen?”

“We don’t mean much to them,” I said.

“Well,” Padillo said, and smiled brightly at them, “it was nice talking to you.”

The flush started rising again on Boggs’s neck. “Have that man available, Padillo.”