There was a long silence. Finally, Draper Haere said, “One question.”
“Maybe I’ll answer it; maybe I won’t.”
“Whose money was it — the thirty-five to fifty million?”
“Didn’t I say? Uncle Sam’s.”
“Cash?” Citron said.
“Cash.”
“How much of this did you tell Jack Replogle in Singapore?”
“Not a hell of a lot more than I just told you. I gave him some names is all, and he forked over ten thousand without a blink and thought he’d made the buy of the year. But Replogle was one smart son of a bitch, although I don’t have to tell you that.”
“He’s also dead,” Haere said.
Meade shrugged. “What more do you need?” he asked. “I mean, I could sit around here all day selling you on the quality of my goods. But I don’t have to. You were there. You saw him get it. Hell, you almost got it yourself. I don’t know how you could want a better fuckin’ testimonial than that.”
“Now we get to the key question,” Haere said. “Just who are they?”
Meade only smiled and slowly shook his head. Haere rose. “Let’s have another beer,” he said, collected the empty cans, and headed for the refrigerator. While Haere was getting the beer, Meade studied Citron.
“You look like somebody,” he said. “Somebody I used to know.”
“Who?”
Meade gave his head a small irritated shake. “I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
Haere came back with three more cans of beer, which he handed around. As he held out the can to Meade, he said, “You might as well forget about four hundred thousand, or three fifty, or even three hundred. We might — and I’m stressing might — well, we just might come up with one hundred, and then we’d only buy it in twenty-five-thousand-dollar chunks. If you started running dry or making it up toward the end, we wouldn’t pay. That’s our offer and it’s take it or leave it.”
Meade popped open his can, drank from it, wiped his mouth, belched softly, frowned, and said, “Cash?”
“That’ll be a problem.”
“Checks don’t do me any good.”
“Okay. Cash.”
“When?”
“I don’t know,” Haere said. “I’ll have to check around. It’ll be tomorrow at the earliest.”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“Afternoon.”
“Where?”
Haere looked at Citron. “What about your place?”
“That should do,” Citron said. Meade frowned. “Who else?”
“Who else what?” Haere said. “Who else will be in on it — when we talk, I mean?”
“Nobody else. Just you, me, and — uh—” For a moment Haere couldn’t remember the alias he had given Citron. Meade grinned coldly. “Mitch here.”
“That’s right,” Haere said with a small smile. “Mitch.”
Chapter 15
The first black, the tall lean one with the cast in his right eye, stumbled and seemed to trip over his own feet. With hands outstretched he fell hard against Morgan Citron and knocked him backward across the hood of the rented Cadillac limousine. The second black, the squat one with the build of a fat fireplug, bustled over and helped the tall lean one raise Citron back up onto his feet. They brushed him off, apologizing for their clumsiness in soft liquid French, and as they brushed he could feel their expert hands explore for hidden weapons.
The rented limousine, its uniformed driver still behind the wheel, was parked in front of the Eastern Airlines terminal at Los Angeles International Airport. Behind the limousine was the black Ford LTD sedan Velveeta Keats had rented from Budget in Malibu with her Visa card. The limousine-rental people had preferred American Express.
“A single apology is sufficient,” Citron said in French as the two blacks still tried to rid him of some imaginary dust. “Too many tend to make me suspicious.”
“Did I not say it?” the fireplug demanded of the cockeyed beanpole. “Does he not possess a perfect Parisian accent?”
“It is as you claimed,” the beanpole agreed, turned, and said, “Rien,” to the fifty-three-year-old man with the narrow sun-baked face who stood waiting ten feet away.
“Rien,” the man said to Citron. “That means ‘nothing.’ It also means you’re not gonna pull a knife or a gun on me. I’m Keats. B. S. Keats, B for Byron, S for Shelley. My mama married beneath her raisin’ and I seem to have taken after Pap. He was a cracker, damn near white trash. That my limo?”
“That’s it,” Citron said.
“That my Ford?” Keats said, giving the black LTD a nod.
“Right.”
“You parlez-vous better’n I do,” Keats said. “Tell Jacques and Cecilio to follow us.”
Citron told the two blacks what Keats wanted. Jacques, the beanpole, smiled. “We know. We understand far more than he thinks.”
“That’s what I thought,” Citron said and gave him the keys to the Ford.
Before the uniformed driver could make it around the limousine, Keats had the door open and was climbing into the rear seat. Citron followed. Back behind the wheel, the driver turned and said, “Where to, Mr. Citron?”
“Nowhere,” Keats said. “Just sit tight until my niggers get the luggage. You can also roll up that divider and turn on the air conditioner.”
“We can’t park here too long, sir. The airport cops are very strict.”
“You get a ticket, I’ll pay for it,” Keats said. “Now roll up that divider.”
The driver started the engine and pushed buttons that raised the divider glass and turned on the airconditioning. Keats took two plump cigars from his pocket and offered Citron one. Citron shook his head.
“Mind if I do?” Keats said.
“Not at all.”
Keats lit his cigar carefully with a kitchen match that he took from the pocket of his tan cashmere jacket. Beneath the jacket was a pale-yellow polo shirt that was worn outside a pair of linen slacks the color of milk chocolate. On his feet were brown-and-white saddle shoes with red rubber soles. Yellow socks matched his shirt. Citron thought the saddle shoes made Keats look vaguely collegiate.
Keats got his cigar going, blew out some smoke, and turned his faded blue eyes on Citron. “Where’d you learn your French?”
“In France.”
“You live there?”
“I was born there.”
“I reckon I could speak it if I was born there. The reason we didn’t take the bag on the plane is because it’s got the niggers’ pieces in it. Cecilio carries a thirty-eight. Old Jacques likes a magnum.”
“Somebody going to kill you?”
“A few folks’d like to see me dead. What d’you think of ’em — Cecilio and Jacques?”
“They seem competent.”
“They’re Haitian. Boat people. Guess how much Cecilio made year before last?”
“When he was still in Haiti?”
Keats nodded.
“I have no idea.”
“He made two hundred and sixty-eight dollars — the whole fuckin’ year. You know how much I’m payin’ them a week?”
“Two hundred and sixty-eight dollars.”
Keats smiled. His teeth were almost an oyster white, and his smile stayed in place several seconds longer than necessary, as if he sometimes forgot it was there. His thinning hair was so sunbleached it was hard to tell whether it was blond or gray, and he combed it straight down over his forehead in short ragged bangs. The faded blue eyes squinted even in the shade, as if wary of any sudden light, and the long nose that poked out and up was separated from the thin bitter mouth by a well-clipped mustache. Beneath all that was a pointed chin with a scar that meandered across it like a white river.