Ross Thomas - Backup Men

One of them had a turned-up nose and pale blue eyes. He glanced down at a small four-by-five-inch photograph that he held in his left hand. “You don’t look much like this wire-photo of Mr. Smythe, friend.”

“I just take messages for him.”

“We’d rather talk to Mr. Smythe,” the other one said, rising from his chair. His nose leaned a little to the left, as if a football cleat might have smacked into it once. He was larger than his partner and he had brown eyes that were almost hazel. Neither of them was over thirty.

“Mr. Smythe’s tied up,” I said, “and I’d still like that drink.”

The taller one looked at his partner and then back at me. “You McCorkle?”

I nodded. He held out his hand and I reached into my pocket and took out my billfold. Slowly. If they worked for Burmser, I didn’t want to upset them. I handed him a D.C. driver’s license, which had my photograph on it in color. He looked at the photograph and then at me and then back at the photograph. It wasn’t all that bad. He handed the license back, turned, and signaled to a cocktail waitress who came over, smiling expectantly.

“One Scotch and water and two Cokes,” he said and then motioned me to sit down across the cocktail table from them. I sat down and looked around and smiled to show how nice I thought everything was. They didn’t smile back. They didn’t say anything until the drinks were served and the waitress had left. I picked mine up and took a large swallow. They didn’t touch theirs.

“We heard about you,” the one with the snub nose said. “They said you were a semi-pro. Not quite sharp enough for the minors.”

“I won’t even play next year,” I said. “What about the message?”

“You had trouble in New York,” the tall one with the almost hazel eyes said.

“Some,” I agreed.

“They can’t sit on it more than forty-eight hours. Tell your Mr. Smythe that.”

“All right.”

“And tell him that they want both Kragstein and Gitner out of the way within forty-eight hours. Especially Gitner.”

“Out of the way,” I said. “Just where would that be?”

They exchanged glances and then the one with the snub nose leaned forward and said softly, “That would be dead.”

“Oh.”

“Have you got it?”

“It’s simple enough,” I said. “There’s just one thing.”

“What?” the taller of the two said.

“What happens after forty-eight hours if they’re not out of the way?”

They rose together as if they had practiced it. Maybe they had. The one with the snub nose looked down at me and his blue eyes seemed to drop far below freezing. “What happens?” he said. “Anything that’s necessary. Tell him that. Anything that’s necessary.”

I watched them leave while I finished my Scotch. The cocktail waitress came over and let me pay for the drinks. Back in the waiting room I found Padillo standing with his back to the wall about ten feet from the king and Scales.

“What did they want?” he said.

“They want Kragstein and Gitner dead within forty-eight hours,” I said. “Especially Gitner.”

Padillo looked at me and then past me, through the glass windows that faced west toward the mountains which the smog seemed to have soiled. “It’s not going to take that long,” he said either to himself or to the mountains. From the way he said it, I was almost glad that he wasn’t talking to me.

16

WE DROVE all night and the king didn’t get to see much of California until we got to San Jose at dawn. But he had had a good look at the Grand Canyon on our way to Los Angeles from Denver because the United Airlines pilot had circled it once and had even given a brief little lecture on its geological formation which the king seemed to find fascinating. As for the canyon itself, the king went along with everybody else and called it magnificent.

We rented a Ford Galaxie at the Los Angeles airport and Padillo drove, claiming that he knew the town better than I. But it was still nearly dark before we got to Ventura because he read a sign wrong and landed us on the Santa Monica freeway which forced us to take Alternate 101 through Malibu and Topanga Beach. Southern California to me had always been lollipop land but the route made the king happy since it let him look at the ocean.

We had a sandwich on the other side of Santa Barbara along with a flat left front tire and together they killed an hour and a half. After that Padillo and I switched off on the driving, stopping for coffee every hour or so, not going much over sixty, and talking hardly at all. After Santa Barbara the king and Scales slept most of the way.

I suppose everybody has to have a home town and San Francisco was mine although I don’t think that we cared too much for each other anymore. I had been born there in the old French Hospital at Sixth and Geary and I had grown up in the Richmond District in a middle-class neighborhood which then had a large number of Russian families. I assume that it still does. We had lived on Twenty-sixth Avenue about two blocks north of Golden Gate Park. Fredl and I had once spent a week in the Bay area and I had shown her the house and the neighborhood where I had lived until I got out of George Washington High School and went into the Army, but all she had said was, “It doesn’t look much like you, does it?”

I decided that over the years both the city and I have changed, perhaps neither of us for the better. San Francisco reminds me of nothing so much as a middle-aged hooker relying solely on technique now that her looks have gone. But I suspect that my real antagonism stems from being taken for a tourist in my own home town. There’s nothing much worse than that.

Padillo was awake now as were the king and Scales. The Freeway isn’t the most scenic approach to San Francisco, but when we neared the Ninth Street Civic Center exit, the two in the back seat got their first glimpse of the Bay Bridge on their right and later they got a look at Golden Gate Bridge, neither of which led anywhere that I wanted to go.

“I used to come up here from L.A. on weekends sometimes,” Padillo said. “I knew a girl who lived on Russian Hill. She got mad when I called it Frisco.”

“The natives have a lot of civic pride,” I said.

“She was from New Orleans.”

Padillo wanted a motel so we checked into one called the Bay View Lodge at Van Ness and Washington which, because of its in-town location, offered as expensive lodgings as we could hope to find. We got two double rooms and after Padillo made sure that the king and Scales were safely tucked away in theirs and that room service would bring them some breakfast he joined me in our room where I lay on the bed, the telephone to my ear, ordering our own breakfast which consisted of scrambled eggs, ham, rye toast, a quart or so of coffee, and two double Bloody Marys which the young lady on the other end of the telephone didn’t seem to think that I really wanted at seven fifteen in the morning. I eventually won her consent, if not her approval.

Padillo took the automatic from his waistband and slipped it under the pillow before lying down on the other bed. He folded his arms beneath his head and stared at the ceiling. I lit a cigarette, which tasted foul, and blew some smoke at the spot on the ceiling that Padillo stared at.

“Now what?” I said.

“First we get some sleep.”

“Have we got time for that?”

“We’ll take it.”

“And then.”

“Then I locate Wanda and find out where she wants those two delivered and when.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“What’s the most fashionable hotel in town, the Fairmont?”

I thought a moment. “I think it’s a toss-up between that and the St. Francis.”