Ross Thomas - Backup Men

“I can’t,” Padillo said.

“She said no. Just one word again, n-o. No. She said it fourteen times in a row because I started counting.”

“You gave up on fourteen?” I said.

“I gave up at six, but went on to fourteen and then quit because all I’d get to number fifteen or sixteen or even thirty-two was that same one-word answer, no. So I didn’t get much this morning, not from her, not from you, not even from the people who run this place, except some bad advice, but I can get that from them every day.”

“You got something else,” Padillo said.

“What?”

“A message for me.”

A broad white smile split Schoolcraft’s dark face. It was a boy’s smile really, a happy boy, and I felt that he seldom had much cause to show it off.

“That’s right,” he said. “I did get that. It’s some message. You ready?”

“I’m ready,” Padillo said.

“She said to tell you, ‘In or out by four in six-two-one.’ Isn’t that some message?”

“Some message,” Padillo agreed.

“You got it?”

“I’ve got it.”

“You know what it means?”

“Yes.”

“But you’re not going to tell me.”

“No.”

“You want me to tell you what it means?”

“All right.”

Schoolcraft put his feet back on the floor, rose, and leaned over his desk toward Padillo. “It means that you and me will be seeing a lot more of each other.”

7

IT WAS fifteen past three when we came out of police headquarters and started walking west toward Fourth Street in search of a cab. I was about to tell Padillo that I thought I’d figured out Wanda Gothar’s message, and ask whether he wanted to be dropped off at her hotel, when a green Chrysler New Yorker sedan pulled up a few feet in front of us and a man got out of the seat next to the driver.

Padillo touched my sleeve and said, “If I say go, run.”

“Friends of yours?”

“Acquaintances.”

The man who got out of the Chrysler wore a spade-shaped beard that was running to gray, and which almost compensated for the high gloss of his cream-colored scalp. A pair of dark glasses rested on his long white nose and his mouth seemed to be trying to smile through the beard at Padillo. He was neither tall nor short and he moved easily as if he still liked to make hard use of his body, even though it was more than fifty years old.

When he got within a few feet of us he stopped smiling long enough to say, “How are you, Padillo?” and then turned the smile back on before Padillo had the chance to reply, rotten or awful or even tolerable fair.

The only other thing I noticed about the man was that he kept his hands motionless and in plain sight, well away from his body.

“Down to pay a traffic ticket?” Padillo said as he turned his left side to the man, his own hands relaxed, but held at belt level so that he could either block a quick left or wave for a cab.

“Actually, we were looking for you,” the man said, not offering to shake hands, but still smiling when he wasn’t speaking as his own hands moved slowly and carefully behind his back.

“Why?” Padillo said.

“We thought we should talk.”

“About Walter Gothar?”

The man brought his hands out in sight again and used them to help him shrug. “Walter—and other things.”

“Where?”

There was that smile again, a glint of white porcelain through a well-kept forest of gray and black. “You know my preference,” he said.

Padillo, not taking his eyes from the man, said, “Do you know a sleazy bar close by, Mac? Mr. Kragstein prefers to conduct his business in them. The seedier the better.”

“Sixth Street,” I said. “I can think of several.”

“Name one.”

“The Chatterbox.”

“Sleazy?”

“Foul,” I said.

“Excellent,” Kragstein said.

“He’s coming along, you know,” Padillo said, nodding his head toward me.

“Of course, of course,” Kragstein murmured and turned toward the Chrysler. He opened the rear door for us. Before we got in, Padillo said, “My partner, Mr. McCorkle; Franz Kragstein.”

“Hello,” Kragstein said, but didn’t offer to shake hands. I didn’t mind. He waved toward the man at the wheel. “You know Amos, don’t you, Padillo?”

“We’ve met,” Padillo said and ducked to enter the back seat. I followed and when I’d closed the door, Padillo said, “How are you, Amos?”

The man called Amos turned slowly in the front seat to look at Padillo. He was the youngest one in the car, still in his late twenties. He looked at Padillo for a moment and then nodded to himself, as if resolving some question that had long bothered him. He looked at me next and the dismissal whipped across his face so quickly that I wasn’t really sure that it had been there at all. He smiled faintly at Padillo and said, “Fine, Mike, and you?”

“Okay,” Padillo said. “Mr. Gitner, Mr. McCorkle.”

Amos Gitner gave me a nod before turning back to the wheel. “Where to?” he asked Kragstein.

“It’s a place called The Chatterbox, on Sixth Street, I believe.”

“I hope it’s crummy enough for you,” Gitner said.

“Mr. McCorkle assures me that it is.”

The Chatterbox drew a mixed clientele in that half of the customers were drunk while the other half were trying to get that way and would soon succeed, if their money held out. We took the last booth in a row of seven that lined the left side of the room. I sat next to the wall, facing Kragstein. Padillo and Gitner, in the outside seats, faced each other across the booth’s formica table top.

The Chatterbox must have been a retail store once, a none too prosperous venture that couldn’t sell enough hard ware or work clothes or maybe notions. Now it sold a little food and a lot of cheap wine, beer, blended bourbon, and gin. I didn’t think there was much call for Scotch.

Remodeling had been kept to the absolute minimum: there was the row of cheap booths; an L-shaped bar with a dozen or so stools; a kitchen which I could smell and had no desire to inspect; a jukebox, and a cigarette machine. I figured that the jukebox and the cigarette machine took care of the rent. The beer companies had taken care of the decorations.

There were six customers at the bar, four of them black, two of them white. No women. One of the blacks was drunk, but pleasantly so, if that’s possible, and both of the whites, their necessary cigarettes all but forgotten between their fingers, had reached the point where they huddled morosely over their wine and perhaps hoped that these were the drinks that contained oblivion. Clean them up a little, find them some new clothes, and they could join the morning Bloody Mary crowd at Mac’s Place and nobody would know the difference until they fell off their stools, and perhaps not even then.

The bartender was probably the owner. He wouldn’t need much hired help: a relief bartender, a cook, a couple of dishwashers who could also swamp out the place, and maybe a waitress or two at noon and at night. It was a cheap place that catered to hard drinkers and the only difference between it and the saloon that I owned half of was a couple of clean shirts and a $100,000 line of credit.

“Admirable,” Kragstein said, looking around. “Really excellent. I’m surprised that you know such places, Mr. McCorkle.”

“I use them to think in,” I said.

Kragstein nodded approvingly, as if he believed me. “I myself find them conducive for business purposes.”

Before he could tell me how business was, the bartender came over, took a couple of cursory swipes at the table with a fairly clean rag, and asked us our pleasure. Kragstein’s was gin. Padillo and I asked for bottled beer. Gitner wanted a Coke, perhaps because he was driving. Nobody said much until the bartender returned with the drinks. He was a stocky, dark-complexioned man, possibly a Greek, and he wasn’t much impressed with his uptown trade. He served the drinks and then waited to see who would pay. They don’t run tabs in places like the Chatterbox.