Price waved a hand as if he were brushing away a lazy fly. “It's all been so vague till now, you know. A chap does wonder a bit.”
“All right,” Padillo said, “you can quit wondering. Here's how it works: Magda, McCorkle and I will be going after McCorkle's wife while you two pull the fake assassination. We don't know exactly what we'll be doing because we don't know where she is yet. That's the loose part of the operation. It has to be. Your part isn't.” He paused and lighted a cigarette.
“The whole point,” he continued, “is to get Mrs. McCorkle back. The secondary phase is to expose the Van Zandt crowd to ridiculeâto disclose that they paid out seventy-five thousand dollars to have their own Prime Minister shot and that they paid it to con men.”
“That's a bit thick,” Price said.
“When it doesn't come off,” Dymec said, “what do you expect them to do: run down to the Better Business Bureau and file a complaint?”
“Your American is getting better, Dymec.”
“Thank you.”
“You're going to get cold feet, Dymec.”
“Why?”
“Suppose you actually carried out the assassination. What guarantee do you have that you'd get the rest of the money? None. What guarantee do you have that the Africans simply wouldn't tip off the law to start looking for you? If you told the law that they hired you, who'd believe you? Especially you. And what difference would it make?”
He paused again. “So here's what you do, Dymec. You ask them for a letter spelling out the details of their agreement with you. The whole thing. And that letter is to be on their official stationery, signed by Van Zandt, and bearing the official seal. It also has to be witnessed by Boggs and Dar ragh.”
“My God!” Price said.
Dymec looked skeptical. He looked the way I felt. “How would such a letter help?”
“Insurance, man,” Price said. “If they wrote a letter stating that they had hired you to assassinate their Prime Minister, that letter would be priceless. Of course they'd pay up to get the letter back.”
“They're not that stupid,” Dymec said.
“Have they any reason to doubt that you're going to kill Van Zandt?” Padillo said.
Dymec looked at him calmly. He had a fine face for poker. “None.”
“All right. You're taking all the risk. You'd like to share a little of it. You'd like to make sure you get paid. When the Prime Minister's dead, and you're paid, they get the letter back.”
“I could copy itâthere are a number of machines that can do that.”
“Not with the official wax seal on it,” Padillo said.
“Who keeps the letter?” Dymec said.
“You do, until it's all over.”
“I thought you'd have a tricky one, Padillo,” Dymec said. “What happens to the letter then?”
“It falls into Price's hands.”
“So that's why I'm in,” Price said.
“That's right.”
“I turn the letter over to my masters and they expose the entire thing.”
“Right. The British stand to profit more from this exposure than anyone else. You turn the letter over to them and they create the scandal. It should be a juicy one.”
“Who makes the proposition to the Africans?” Dymec said.
“You do.”
“What do I tell them?”
“You tell them that we don't believe they're going to release Fredl McCorkle when it's all over and we want some insurance that they will. The letter will do that. They'll get it back when we get Mrs. McCorkle. Second, tell them that you're getting nervous and that you also want some insurance. The letter will do that, too.”
“But I get the letter?” Dymec said.
“That's right.”
“And then I get it and turn it over to Price who'll make the best use of it.”
“Yes.”
“Fantastic,” Magda said. “Really fantastic. And you say you're not working any longer, Michael?”
“I wouldn't be turning the letter over to the British if I were still working.”
“True. But it all still hinges on one thing, doesn't it?”
“That's right.”
“And that's on getting Mrs. McCorkle back before the assassination is supposed to take place.”
“That's why we want the letter. If we don't find her, they won't do anything to her until they get it back. They'll trade for the letter.”
Price got up and started to pace the room. “Let me try to sum it up. I don't mind telling you first of all that this will be quite a feather in my cap.”
“I would imagine,” Padillo said and I admired the way he kept the sarcasm out of his voice.
“Let me see now: Dymec approaches the Van Zandt people. He tells them he wants a letterâto whom it may concern, I supposeâall properly sealed setting forth the fact that one, they have employed him or some unnamed person to assassinate their Prime Minister, and two, that the assassination is to take place on such and such a date at such and such a time at such and such a spot. And three, that for the aforementioned services they agree to pay the sum of seventy-five thousand dollars. Have I got it right so far?”
“You've got it right,” Padillo said.
“Now then, the reason that they write this letter is that Dymec here is getting a little worried not only about the rest of his commission, but also about what happens to him after it's all overâjust in case they have the idea of having him caught in the act, so to speak. And thirdly, you and McCorkle are worried about getting Mrs. McCorkle back and she and the letter are considered fair exchange. Of course, once the Prime Minister is assassinated, the letter would be worthless to you because you would implicate yourself in murder.”
“That's about it,” Padillo said. “If Van Zandt did die and I had the letter, they'd wire me to it.”
“Who's they?” I asked.
“My former employersâor Price's present ones.”
Price nodded. “Quite. But the assassination does not take place, you somehow rescue Mrs. McCorkle, and I turn the letter over to my government who uses it to excoriate Van Zandt and party in the press, the United Nations, and so forth.”
“That's it.”
“Then all we have to do is get the letter,” Dymec said.
“Yes. But you'll have to go through with the entire charade. You'll have to be up on top of the hotel because they'll have somebody around watching to see that you are. If anything goes wrong, if we don't have Fredl McCorkle safe by the time Van Zandt's car goes by, then I want it. It's all we'll have to get her back.”
“But if she is safe?” Dymec asked.
“Then you hand the letter over to Price.”
“I'll be at the hotel then?” Price said.
“You'll be on the roof with him.”
“Just one thing, Michael dear?” Magda said.
“Yes, precious?”
“Obviously, when this is all over, your African friends aren't going to pay us the rest of the agreed-upon fee. Where will it come from?”
“Out of my own pocket.”
“You must have done well in the gun trade.”
“It was profitable.”
“Speaking of moneyâ” Price said.
Padillo tapped the attaché case. “It's here,” he said. He opened the case and tossed each share casually on the table. Then he closed the case, picked it up, and headed for the door. I joined him. “Stay close to your telephones,” he told them. “I'll be calling you tonight.”
Once again they said nothing, but only nodded, as they kept on counting the money.
TWENTY
We walked down the stairs and out of the building and turned south on Seventh Street. When we neared the car, Padillo looked at his watch. “It's too late for breakfast and too early for lunch,” he said. “What do you suggest?”
“A drink, except that it's Sunday.”
“Don't you know some scoff-law barkeep?”
“Me,” I said.
“That'll have to do.”
The sermons were still going on as we traveled H Street over to Seventeenth and we missed the post-church traffic. “Let's go by the Roger Smith,” Padillo said.
I turned left and drove down to Pennsylvania and then right. “Van Zandt will turn at this corner and the four-car parade will follow the same route we're taking.”
Padillo ducked and looked up at the roof garden of the hotel. “It's closed this time of year, you say?”
“That's right.”
We turned right on Eighteenth and drove north until it ran into Connecticut Avenue again. I managed to find a parking place in front of the restaurant. Inside, I switched on one bank of lights which still left it dark enough to have made a flashlight handy. We felt our way to the bar, bumping once into a chair. Padillo went behind the bar and switched on the lights that illuminated the sinks and the bottles.
“What are you drinking?” he asked.
“I don't know.”
“Martini?”
“Why not.”
“Vodka?”
“Gin.”
“On the rocks?”
“No.”
He mixed the drinks deftly and placed mine before me. “That could help that sad look that Magda wanted to cure.”
“I bet she's a lot of fun.”
“A swell kid and a peachy dancer.”
“Is she good with that gun you were talking about?”
“Very good.”
“Is that good enough to go in after Fredl?”
“It is if she's on our team this week.”
“Is she?”
“I don't know. That's why you'd better go along.”
I nodded. “I was going to suggest it.”
Padillo took a sip of his drink. “After you rescue your wife and drop her off, you can come down to the Roger Smith and lend a hand.”
“There'll be a few loose toys still out of the box?”
“A few.”
I tried the martini. It was quite good. “Do you think they'll write that letter?”
“If Dymec leans on them hard enough. If he sits there with that âI-won't-budge-till-you-do' stare of his, they'll probably give it to him. They won't have much choice.”
“It's insurance for him.”
“He'd better think so. Of course, he could just simply tell them what we want to use it for.”
“I thought of that,” I said. “But there's not as much percentage in it for him.”
“Let's hope so. I also hope that it gets Price off my neck.”
“It should,” I said, “but I've never known you to be so considerate of people who shoot at you.”
Padillo held up the cocktail shaker and looked at it. “I'm not really. Let's have one more and then have some lunch.”
“All right.”
He mixed the drinks and poured them. “Funny about Price,” he said.
“How?”
“He wants the letter, but that alone won't keep him off my back.”
“What else?”
“How many times did he shoot at me last night?”
“Twice.”
“He missed twice. Five years ago he wouldn't have missed once. Three years ago he would have been dead if he had. You notice I didn't shoot back.”
“I took it for a sporting gesture.”
Padillo grinned. “Not quite. My hand was shaking too much.”
We walked over to Harvey's on Connecticut Avenue and had lunch there which was no better nor worse than the lunches they had been serving for the past 108 years. Afterwards, we drove back to Seventh Street, found a parking place, and climbed the stairs to the office with the folding steel chairs and the dust-covered desk. I asked Padillo how his side was and when he said it bothered him I offered him the chair behind the desk. I turned another chair around so that it would serve as a footrest and we sat there in the drab office on a Sunday afternoon and waited for the gangster men to arrive.
They arrived on time, at two p.m. Hardman brought them in, three Negroes of different shades of brown, all dressed in quiet, conservative dark suits, white shirts, muted ties and highly-polished shoes. He introduced us to them and then told us who they were.
“This Johnny Jay,” he said of a tall, thin man with dark skin, a bleak look, and wide mouth with thick rubbery lips. He looked to be about thirty-one or two. He nodded at us, took out a handkerchief, dusted off one of the folding chairs, and sat down.
“This here's Tulip,” Hardman said, indicating a man with a dark pitted face, a wide, stocky build, and curiously delicate-looking hands that flitted around like thick butterflies, lighting first on his lapels, then down to check the flaps on his jacket pockets, then the trouser pockets, then up to his head to smooth a hair back into place, and then to the knot of his blue and maroon striped tie.
The last man that Hardman introduced was a mulatto, a sleek-skinned, handsome lad whom he called Nineball. Nine-ball wore a double-breasted suit of dark grey flannel, a white shirt with a tab collar, a neatly knotted green and black foulard tie, and a well-clipped mustache. He wore them all well and gave us a friendly smile when Hardman mentioned his name.
“These the men you gonna be workin with,” Hardman told them. “They also the men who gonna pay you two thousand dollars to do whatever needs to be done like I told you, and I don't want no mess-ups.”
“I'll have the money for you first thing in the morning,” I said. “As soon as the banks open.”
Hardman took out his ostrich billfold and opened it so he could read something he had written on a notepad.
“Gonna cost you $10,247 for the whole thing. Six big ones for my three friends here, a thousand each to rent the moving van and the pickup, a thousand into the hip pocket of the man at the phone company to get them phones in first thing in the morning, a thousand to get the two cars painted, and $247 for expenses like uniforms and a couple of other items.”
Nineball spoke up. “We gonna have to zap anybody?”
“Not if we can help it,” Padillo said.
Nineball nodded and said: “But it just possibly might be necessary.”