Ross Thomas - Backup Men

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Backup Men: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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A saloon owner and a former CIA agent team up to help a pair of assassins escape death The twins who walk into Mac McCorkle's bar look identical, despite their differing genders. Their names are Wanda and Walter Gothar, and from the steel in their eyes it's apparent that their business isn't the friendly kind. They've come seeking help from Mac and his partner, Padilla, an ex-CIA agent who has skulked in the world's darkest corners.   Anxious for a big payday, the twins took an assignment out of their depth, working as bodyguards for a Saudi prince who came to Washington to sign an oil deal. The job fell apart, and now the twins are being pursued by the world's two finest killers­—who take out Walter without breaking a sweat. Now Mac and Padilla are faced with a choice: Save Wanda, or join her in the grave.

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Once more in the room that contained the bar, Padillo picked up one of the phones and dialed ten numbers. He waited nearly a minute until someone said hello and then he said, “This is Padillo, Burmser. Amos Gitner just shot and killed Amanda Clarkmann in her New York apartment. I’m leaving for San Francisco with the king. Fix it.” Then he hung up.

I had gone around the bar and poured two double Scotches. I handed him one and he drank it down slowly, not taking the glass from his lips until it was empty.

William burst into the room, his usually imperturbable face contorted into fear and horror and, I suppose, even rage. He stopped short when he saw the automatic in Padillo’s right hand which he was still holding and had held, even when he’d dialed the phone.

Padillo looked at him. “Mrs. Clarkmann has been killed,” he said in an almost toneless voice.

“I—I—I” William stopped to gulp down some air.

“Don’t say anything,” Padillo said. “Just listen. The police will be here shortly. But before they arrive, there’ll be some men here from the Government. The Federal Government. They’ll tell you what to do and what to say. Do you understand?”

It took him four tries to get it out, but finally William said, “Yes, sir.”

“Now you need to do three things. Are you listening?”

“Yes, sir,” William said, some calmer now, but not much.

“Get me the keys to Mrs. Clarkmann’s Oldsmobile. That’s one. Two, find Mr. Kassim and Mr. Scales and tell them to meet me here. Three, cover up Mrs. Clarkmann. Use a blanket.”

This time William only nodded before he hurried away, but his face had lost some of its tortured look. He seemed almost glad that there was someone around to tell him what to do.

Padillo turned back toward me and then looked down at his hands which were holding the empty glass and the automatic. He handed the glass to me and stuck the gun back in the waistband of his trousers.

“You want another one?” I said, gesturing with the glass.

He nodded, not looking at me, not looking really at anything.

“They must have tapped into the central panel box,” he said, more to himself than to me.

I handed him his drink. “I thought that was a tough job, especially in this building.”

Padillo shook his head. “Not for Kragstein. He’d have someone legitimate from the phone company do it. It wouldn’t cost him anything. He’d blackmail them into it. He works that way, not because he has to but because he likes to.”

“That’s how they knew about the armored truck.”

“That’s how.”

“Do you think they hijacked it?”

“God knows,” Padillo said. “Maybe they rented one and then called Amanda and told her that they’d be fifteen minutes early. You can rent anything you want in New York if you have the connections, and Kragstein has them.”

“I don’t know what to say about Amanda,” I said, not wanting to look at Padillo, but forcing myself to.

Padillo’s face tightened. “There’s nothing to say.”

“Yes. Well, I thought—”

“There’s nothing to say,” and from the way he said it, I decided that there really wasn’t.

He put his drink down on the bar and again looked at me. “You didn’t pick up that little gray box she was carrying, did you?”

“The one with the ring? No.”

“Well, if it’s worth half a million dollars, I don’t suppose we should leave it lying around like that.”

“No,” I said. “I don’t suppose we should.”

It wasn’t hard to find the ring. It was still in the box and the box was still in Amanda Clarkmann’s left hand. Padillo lifted the blanket away, reached down for the box, and handed it to me. He stood there, holding the blanket, and looking at Amanda Clarkmann for what seemed to be a long time. I opened the box and looked at the ring. It may have been worth a half million dollars, but just then I wouldn’t have given a dime for it.

I drove out of the basement entrance and onto Sixty-fourth just as a carload of men in dark suits and white shirts got out of a black Ford Galaxie and flashed some identification at the three doormen. Two of the men looked at us and then looked away quickly, as if we were someone whom they’d cross the street to avoid meeting. Maybe we were.

Padillo sat next to me. The king and Scales were in the rear. Neither of them had said much other than some murmured condolences to Padillo about Amanda Clarkmann’s death. Padillo had turned away before they were half through with their murmurings. We were just coming out of the Lincoln Tunnel when I said, “What’ll we do with the car?”

“Leave it in the parking lot and mail the ticket back to William.”

“I have another question.”

“You worry too much.”

“Only over nonessentials such as our reservations.”

“What about them?”

“If you made them over the phone and Kragstein was tapped in, then he knows where we’re going.”

“I didn’t make them over the phone,” Padillo said.

“Who did?”

“No one. We don’t have any.”

Because there is only one direct flight a day from Newark to Denver and because not too many persons seemed interested in making the trip, we had no trouble getting first-class reservations on United Flight 855 which would get us into Denver at four o’clock, just in time to make connections with United Flight 367 to Los Angeles, leaving Denver at 4:40 and arriving in Los Angeles at 5:53 providing that no one decided to go to Cuba.

Padillo turned to me and said, “How much money have you got?”

“Around five hundred.”

“Can you pay for your own ticket?”

“Sure,” I said and handed over two hundred dollars. The United man gave me $13 in change. He actually owed me $13.10, but Congress now lets them round it off to the next highest dollar so if your ticket actually costs $162.02, you pay $163.00, which not only simplifies the airlines’ bookkeeping, but also nets them $50 million a year. It also gives me something else to brood about.

When I looked at the ticket that Padillo had handed me I saw that my new name was R. Miller.

“What did you call our two friends?”

“F. Jones and L. Brown.”

“And yours?”

“Q. Smythe—with a y and an e.”

“That’s real class,” I said. “What’s the Q stand for?”

“Quaint.”

There were those who once swore by the air in Denver, claiming that it could cure anything from rickets to tuberculosis. I don’t suppose they do anymore, not if that gray, greasy-looking blanket of smog that I saw out of the plane’s window occurs every other day or so. I could still see the frosted mountains in the background, but the smog even made them look as though they needed to be hosed down.

“I didn’t know Denver had smog,” I said to Padillo. “What do they do, import it from L.A.?”

“They grow their own,” he said. “Everybody does nowadays.”

As soon as we were inside Stapleton Airport, the public address system started calling for Mr. Q. Smythe. “Mr. Q. Smythe, will you please report to the United Airlines information counter.”

“Do you think there might be two of them?” I said.

Padillo shook his head and turned to the king and Scales. “Sit down over there,” he said, motioning toward two chairs. “Don’t move.” He turned back to me. “You go. I don’t want to leave them loose.”

“Who do you think it is?”

“Somebody from Burmser.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Nothing. Just listen.”

I nodded and walked to the information counter where a blond with silvered eyelids smiled at me and said that two gentlemen were waiting for me in the VIP lounge. She gave me directions to the lounge and once inside it wasn’t hard to spot them. They both wore vests and no sideburns and nice, quiet ties and quiet, hard looks. I walked over to them and said, “I’ve got time for just one drink. A Scotch and water.”

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