“That was a pretty good guess — two hundred and sixty-eight-dollars — but a softy’s guess. I pay ’em one thousand bucks a week. Each. Now guess how much loyalty that buys.”
“All there is?”
“That’s close,” Keats said, paused, and puffed on his cigar. “You know what Haitians are? They’re ambitious. I never saw anybody, white or black, who’d work as hard as they do. You want a ditch dug? Shit, they’ll dig it — just tell ’em how wide and how close to China. I don’t hire anybody but Haitians anymore, although goddamn, I do wish they’d learn to speak American.” He paused again. “How’s Velveeta?”
“She seems all right,” Citron said.
“She tell you about fuckin’ her brother yet?”
Before Citron could reply, there was a tap on the window. Both men turned. Jacques was bent down, peering through the window, and smiling broadly as he pointed to the long, round buffalo-hide bag he carried in his left hand. Keats nodded and Jacques disappeared, heading back toward the Ford LTD. Keats pushed the button that lowered the glass divider.
“Let’s go, son,” he said to the driver.
“Yes, sir. Where to?”
“They got a scenic drive out here?”
The driver tried to think of someplace scenic. “Well,” he said finally, “we could go up the coast.”
“Sounds good,” Keats said and rolled the divider back up. The driver put the limousine into gear and eased it out into the heavy airport traffic.
“She had a brother all right,” Keats said, “and like she probably told you, he’s dead. He died when she was seven and he was nine. He died of polio in the summer of ’fifty-nine. They had polio licked by then, but he caught it and died anyway. Maybe Cash and Velveeta played doctor once or twice, but the rest she just makes up. Incest. It turns some people on — did you know that?”
Keats didn’t seem to expect an answer, and Citron gave none.Instead, he said, “She also mentioned a husband. Or did she make that up too?”
“No, she didn’t make that up. She was married to Jimmy. Jimmy Maneras. Jaime, really. He was older’n her. A Cuban. The Manerases and me were in bidness together. She tell you about that?”
“Yes.”
“Figured she would. That lady does like to talk. We ain’t speakin’, you know, her and me. Damn fool situation for a man to get himself into, but it happens. It happens.” He sighed and sucked on his cigar. “Who were they?”
“I don’t know,” Citron said.
“Kidnappers, you reckon?”
“If they were, they weren’t very determined.”
“Because they took off after you threw the pansies at ’em.”
“Carnations.”
“Carnations. Why’d you do a damn fool thing like that?”
“Reflex.”
“Before you thought, huh?”
Citron nodded.
Keats looked out the window. The view was of some gray-looking marshland. “Not much of a scenic drive,” he said.
“It gets better.”
“What’d they look like? I mean, were they white, black, brown, or what?”
“White. They had diving masks on. Wet suits. From the way they moved, I’d say they were in their late twenties, early thirties.”
“Voices?”
“Standard American.”
“What’d they say?”
“They said, ‘Not a sound’ or ‘Don’t make a sound.’ I don’t remember which, but they said it to your daughter. And then they said, ‘You either,’ to me. I think I said, ‘Okay’ or ‘Right.’ Nothing very memorable. Oh, one more thing. She bit one of them on the hand.”
“Bit him, by God!” Keats beamed. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“I forgot.”
“What’d he do?”
“He yelled.”
“Bit him, by God!” Keats nodded and smiled to himself for a few moments, then turned and gave Citron a careful inspection.
“You married?”
“No.”
“What d’you do for a living?”
“I’m a caretaker and a sometime writer.”
“What kind of writer?”
“Travel articles.”
“Pay anything?”
“Not much.”
“Been to college?”
Citron nodded.
“Ever been in jail?”
“Once.”
“How long?”
“Thirteen months.”
“What for?”
“I was never quite sure.”
“Where?”
“Africa.”
“Shit, that don’t count then.” Keats again looked out the window, frowned at the urban clutter that lined Lincoln Boulevard, and turned, still frowning, to Citron. “I ain’t gonna ask you if you’ve been beddin’ Velveeta because I already know the answer to that, but I am gonna ask you this. What d’you think of her?”
“I think,” Citron said slowly, “I think she’s a bit... puzzled.”
That seemed to satisfy Keats. He nodded as if confirming something and after a silence that lasted for nearly two blocks, said, “I’m rich. I mean, big rich.”
“So I understand.”
“Made it all off dope. Marijuana at first and then I went in early on coke, made a killing, and got out clean. You know what I’m in now?”
“No.”
“Shoes. Automated, self-service, discount shoestores. I sat down and thought about what people gotta have, good times and bad. Well, I came up with shoes. Cheap imported shoes. I got a chain of stores going now, a dozen in Florida, five in Alabama, and we’re moving into Mississippi and Louisiana next year. But, hell, you don’t wanta hear about my shoestores.”
“I can listen,” Citron said.
“No, what you really wanta hear about is what I’m leadin’ up to. And I’m gonna come right out with it. Velveeta, well, Velveeta’s sort of pretty and halfway smart, even if she is six bricks short of a load, and four, five years back I set her up this irrevocable trust, so there’s money there, but what I wanta know is if, for the next few weeks, you’d sort of be her fancy man.”
Citron turned to stare at Keats, whose faded blue eyes had lost their squint. They were nearly round now and, Citron thought, almost honest. “Fancy man,” he said. “Or do you mean keeper?”
Keats smiled. “Well, maybe a little of both.”
Chapter 16
With the pleasant taste of the $32-plus-tip lunch he had treated himself to in the elaborate Chinese restaurant on Rodeo Drive still lingering in his mouth, Drew Meade used the key Gladys Citron had given him to unlock the front door of her house. Meade had lunched early and alone at straight up noon. It was now only a little past one.
He did not go into the house cold. Meade wouldn’t go into a telephone booth cold. He had circled the block once on foot, eyeing the cars parked at the curb and in the driveways. Most seemed to be fairly expensive foreign makes — BMWs, Volvos, and a sufficiency of Mercedeses. He also noticed the white Ford van with the lettered sign that read “CART’S CUSTOM RUG CLEANING” and below that the phone number to call and the address on Santa Monica Boulevard. The van was parked four doors down from Gladys Citron’s house, and Meade made an automatic mental note of its license number. using his own mnemonic system, Meade could sometimes remember license numbers for years and telephone numbers forever.
He pushed the door open, entered the small foyer, stopped dead still, and listened. There was nothing to hear. He turned back, closed the door, shot the deadbolt, and fastened the chain.
They were waiting for him when he entered the living room, the pair of them, their mouths open slightly for silent breathing, neither much more than thirty, if that, one with blue eyes, the other with brown. Both wore cheap tan cotton uniform-type jackets with their first names stitched in red thread above the breast pockets. The one with the blue eyes was John; the one with the brown eyes was Dick.