Росс Томас - Cast a Yellow Shadow

“So what do you want me to do? Go down to the FBI with you or take out my Husqvarna with the 7X scope and pop away at the old man?”

“If I go to the police, they’ll kill her,” I said.

“Yes.”

“I don’t want her killed. I don’t want me killed. I don’t even want you killed which proves how generous I’m getting now that the shock’s wearing off. But they’ll kill all three of us if you shoot him.”

“I can almost guarantee that they’ll kill you and Fredl,” Padillo said. “It might take longer for me, but then they’re not so much concerned about me because I’m not the kind to turn myself in for the murder of a visiting Prime Minister. They could take their time, but they’d put someone on it and some day I’d get careless or he’d get lucky.”

“They knew I’d figure it out,” I said. “They knew I’d realize that they wouldn’t want Fredl or me around after the assassination. They may know I’m not overly bright, but they must also know that I’m not that thick.”

Padillo took his head out of his hands and looked at me. “It’s your turn to get the drinks,” he said. “My side hurts.”

I got up and went over to the bar and mixed two more.

“They don’t think you’re thick,” he said. “They just think you suffer from something called hope — hope that they won’t kill Fredl if I kill Van Zandt, hope that they won’t kill you, and hope that you’ll be able to outsmart them. Hope even that they’ll change their minds and call it all off because it’s raining that day.” He paused for a moment. “But they believe that the only hope you really believe in is for me to kill him.”

“And you’d do it?”

“You call it.”

“There’s nothing else I can do.” I made it a statement, but I meant it as a question.

Padillo examined his glass for trespassers again. “Maybe I’m getting the DTs,” he said, “or maybe it was my African vacation. I’ve got the habit of looking for strangers.” He took a swallow of the drink. “There’s one thing that can be done,” he said.

“What?”

“Try to get her back before they kill her.”

“It’s a big town,” I said, “and there’s half of Virginia and Maryland to consider. Where do I start, a block away or fifty miles away? Should I just call up their embassy or trade mission or whatever it is and ask if I could speak to my wife for a moment before they do her in?”

“The trouble with the Van Zandt crowd,” Padillo said, “is that they don’t care much for majority rule, especially if the majority happens to be black and its members live in places that make Mississippi look like Happy Valley. The Van Zandt people are a little cracked maybe, a little over-imaginative, but they’re not dumb. They’d probably keep Fredl where you wouldn’t think of looking for her.”

“In the briar patch, Br’er Fox?”

“Exactly, Br’er Rabbit.”

“In a Negro district.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“There’re only about a couple of hundred thousand places where she could be.”

“We can look or we can sit around and drink some more Scotch.”

“What do you suggest?”

“This Hardman,” Padillo said. “How well do you know him?”

“Well enough. He’s a regular customer of mine and I’m a regular customer of his.”

“I didn’t know you were using.”

“Just some slow horses.”

“He know Fredl?”

“Fairly well. He likes her. She once did a story on him.”

“You’re seeing him tomorrow?”

“At one-fifteen.”

“That’s one appointment. We’ll make another for ten in the morning.”

“With whom?”

“With somebody who can put me in touch with three debtors.”

I stared at him. “What do they owe you?”

Padillo grinned. “Their lives. I’m calling the loans tomorrow.”

I was awake by seven that morning. I was in our big double bed which featured the high intensity lamps whose bulbs seemed to burn out every other day or so. I awoke with the feeling that I had something important to do and I thought of asking Fredl what it was until I remembered that she was gone. The bed seemed far too grand for one person. When we placed the special order for it, we had three purposes in mind: making love, sleeping and reading. It had served admirably, except for the reading, and that was because of the lamps that kept going out at odd times. They used the same kind of bulbs that are used in the taillights of cars and I wondered if I shouldn’t lay in a supply from the corner gas station. It might be cheaper.

It was something to debate and it took a while to decide that I should buy only one bulb as a trial. I cast around for some other trivial problem to resolve and Vietnam came to mind. But I soon gave up on that and lay in the big bed and stared up at the off-white ceiling and thought about Fredl. You can grieve when someone dies. But when someone is near death, and there is the chance that you might prevent it if you make the right decision, anxiety takes over. I fumbled on the table by the bed for a pre-breakfast cigarette which I didn’t want and wouldn’t enjoy but perversely lighted. I continued to lie in the bed and smoke the cigarette and make important decisions. I decided to go to the FBI. A few moments later I decided to let Padillo shoot the Prime Minister. When I began to plan my arrival at the White House where I would dramatically dump my problem into the lap of a concerned but admiring President, I got up and went into the bathroom.

I looked at the face in the mirror and blew some smoke at it, but the smoke came out the wrong way and I started coughing. It was either lung cancer or emphysema. Probably both. The coughing finally went away and I could look in the mirror again. The face that was there said, “You stink, McCorkle.” I nodded wearily and turned on the shower.

When I was dressed in my bankers’ grey flannel with the carefully muted chalk stripes that were supposed to take ten pounds off my weight, I headed for the kitchen. On the way, I knocked on the door of the guest bedroom where I could hear Padillo stirring. At least he didn’t whistle. In the kitchen I heated water for the instant coffee. I was drinking my first cup when Padillo came in wearing his Good Will clothes. I indicated the boiling teakettle and the coffee and he nodded and mixed a cup. He sat down at the table and sipped it.

“You have a couple of suitcases worth of clothes hanging in a closet down at the Mayflower,” I said.

“Fredl?”

“She had everything in your apartment in Bonn packed and shipped over. Most of it’s in storage, but she kept out some stuff. She says you have better taste than I do.”

“She has the reporter’s eye.”

“You’re also half-owner in a saloon not too far from here which you might like to drop in on someday.”

Padillo stirred his coffee carefully and then lighted a cigarette. It was probably his first that morning. “I have no claim, Mac.”

“Some people might not think so, but you spent about ten years of your life running the one we had in Bonn when you weren’t out chasing Helmut Dantine or whoever. And where else would you get a job at your age?”

“That’s a thought. What’s the setup?”

“It seats about one-twenty not counting the bar. I brought Karl over as head bartender and Hen Horst is maitre d’ and I upped his cut to six per cent of the net. He’s worth it. We’ve got twelve waiters, two cocktail girls, busboys and the kitchen help run by a better-than-fair chef whom I found in New York. He’s better than fair when he’s sober anyhow, which is most of the time. The waiters are on a split shift. We open at eleven-thirty and close at two a.m., except midnight on Saturday because then it’s the Sabbath which we don’t stay open for.”