Ross Thomas - Backup Men

“It’s a long way from Santa Monica Boulevard,” I said.

Padillo glanced around the room. “Too far?”

“Not with your charm.”

“I met her at a party.”

“You must know her pretty well if you can dump three unexpected weekend guests on her.”

“I know her pretty well,” he said.

“Is it serious?”

“It pleases her to think so and I like to please her.”

I tasted my Scotch again. It was expensive stuff, too expensive for me even at wholesale prices. I waved my glass around again, but gently so as not to spill any. “There probably would be a tense period of adjustment, but I think I just might be able to get used to all this. A matter of self-discipline, I suppose.”

Padillo grinned, but it was the wry kind that contained more regret than humor. “You’d last six months,” he said. “Maybe a year.”

“And you?”

“I think I’m afraid to find out.”

“Maybe,” I said, giving the room another look, “but I can see why you’ve spent so many weekends in New York. You used to hate it.”

“There’s that keen insight of yours again.”

“Not really.”

“What would you call it?”

I sighed and finished my drink. “Envy,” I said. “The green kind.”

13

EVEN IF her father and grandfather hadn’t supplied half of the nation’s chocolate bars, I could still see why the papers might have tagged her as the Kandy Kid. She had taffy-colored hair and cinnamon eyes and a creamy nougat complexion and a voice that was as smooth and as rich as melted butterscotch.

She was also a little over thirty, but with eighty million dollars you don’t have to look it and she didn’t. She came through the door to the bar, wearing something off-white that everyone would be wearing two or three years from then, and held out her hand and said, “I’m Amanda Clarkmann; you must be the McCorkle that he keeps talking about.” She shook hands with me, a nice, firm friendly shake, and then she turned and kissed Padillo and it was a long, unabashed kiss which I watched and discovered what must have been a trace of voyeurism that I didn’t know existed.

When it was over, Padillo said to me, “I’ve mentioned you a couple of times in passing.”

“I can see why you changed your mind about New York.”

“I’ve been trying to convince him that he should marry me for my money,” she said. “Or sex. Even love.”

“Offer to pay off his debts,” I said.

“Does he owe much?”

I nodded. “He’s in to me for nine bucks and our head bartender told me to remind him of the five he borrowed last month when he needed cab fare.”

“Bankruptcy—or the threat of it—has been known to make men do strange things,” Padillo said. “Some commit suicide. Some try the South Seas. Some even get married.” He mixed Amanda Clarkmann a drink and handed it to her.

“Tell me about his women,” she said, smiling a little to let me know it was a joke, but not one funny enough to keep her from listening if I had something juicy to reveal.

“What can I say? Some were short and some were tall. The rest were kind of in between.”

“How many?” she said, once more smiling, as if she hoped that the smile would erase the interest in her voice, but it didn’t. She really wanted to know. Most women do.

“Ask him,” I said.

“He won’t talk about them.”

“Then compliment him on his reticence.”

“Were there many?”

“Women?”

“Yes.”

“I never noticed a surplus,” I said, “but neither was there a shortage. When it came to women, he always maintained what they used to call an evernormal granary.”

“If you have to talk about me,” Padillo said, “would you try the present tense? The past tense gives me a perspective that I don’t much care for.”

“So what brings you back to New York so soon, Michael?” she said. “Mr. McCorkle here looks most presentable, but William sighed when I asked about your other two friends. That means they’re a little odd.”

“One of them’s a king,” Padillo said.

“Does he work at it?”

“He hopes to.”

“He’s the king of what? I should be able to guess because there aren’t too many of them around anymore.”

“Of Llaquah,” Padillo said.

“His brother just died, didn’t he? He was a pleasant man. A little frivolous, but pleasant.”

“You knew him?” Padillo said.

She nodded. “We met a couple of times. Once in Paris and once in Madrid, I think. I didn’t know him well. What do you call the new king?”

“I call him Mr. Kassim.”

“Wouldn’t he prefer ‘your Majesty’ or ‘your Highness’?”

“Scales calls him that,” I said.

“And who is Mr. Scales?”

“The royal adviser,” Padillo said. “He used to be Kassim’s tutor.”

“The royal adviser has a torn sleeve, according to William.”

“He fell down,” I said.

She looked at Padillo and then at me and then back at Padillo. “Well, I can’t say that the rest of his royal entourage is overly elegant.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What it lacks in elegance it makes up for in quiet competence and dogged loyalty.”

“There’s something else about it, too,” Padillo said.

“What?” she asked.

“It’s cheap.”

“And the king is poor?”

“Today, he’s broke. Next week he may be the richest king in the world.”

“Then I know what I’ll do,” she said.

“What?” Padillo said.

“I’ll try to cheer him up. Most of the kings I’ve known have been awfully sad.”

The dining room that we gathered in that Friday night must have been the one that was used for those small, intimate parties of not more than a dozen guests. I don’t know what it was called, or even if it had a name. The staff may have just referred to it as “Auxiliary Dining Room number six.” Or seven. Or even eight.

Nor do I know who worked out the protocol, but we sat at a large round table with Kassim on Amanda Clarkmann’s right, Padillo on her left, with me next to the king and Scales next to Padillo. In this case, “next” meant about three feet away.

The king seemed to be interested in the world’s nicer things. He inspected the silver carefully, either to make sure that it was sterling or that it was clean. He turned a plate over to read its maker’s name and whoever it was seemed to satisfy him. For someone who had just spent five years in a monastery, Kassim appeared inordinately interested in secular stuff. I decided that he may have felt that he had missed out on a lot and was now trying to catch up.

There were two to serve, a middle-aged man whom I’d have liked to have hired for the saloon and a younger one who was nearly as good. I would have given the chef a job, too, if I’d thought that we could afford him. He had done something miraculous to the veal and when the older man skillfully spooned another portion onto my plate, as if he thought of gluttony as a virtue, I knew how easily I might be corrupted. It didn’t bother me.

Amanda Clarkmann kept the conversation going with effortless ease, directing most of it at the king who responded in monosyllables between bites. If his table talk and manners lacked polish, there was nothing wrong with his appetite. Whenever his hostess tried to steer the conversation toward Llaquah, the king redirected it toward the food, praising the veal so lavishly that she felt constrained to force a third portion on him.

After dinner, the king and Scales excused themselves, pleading weariness. Amanda Clarkmann, Padillo and I had brandy in a drawing room whose main feature was a Thomas Eakins portrait that hung above the fireplace. Padillo and I were on our second brandy and Amanda was still on her first when William, whom I took to be the household’s major domo, brought in a phone, plugged it in, and informed Padillo that he had a call.