“We don’t need the entire one hundred thousand, Baldy,” Haere said. “All we need is fifty, and I can get that.”
“Where?” Louise Veatch asked.
“I don’t want to know,” her husband said.
“This time, darling,” she said, “I think you’d better. Right, Draper?”
“It’s the pig-fucker money,” Haere said.
The governor-elect tightened his usually amiable mouth into a line of almost petulant disapproval. “I thought we’d agreed never to touch that except in extreme emergency.”
“What do you call this?” Haere said.
The pig-fucker money was $50,000 in cash that Haere kept for Veatch in a safety deposit box. It was all in twenties and fifties — mostly fifties — and was to be used only for counterattack against last-minute smears. It was untraceable, totally anonymous money and, if necessary, could be used to suborn and corrupt. It had lain unused for almost six years now. The name it bore stemmed from Draper Haere’s only meeting with Lyndon Johnson back in 1970 when the former President had asked Haere about a close Congressional race in which Haere’s candidate seemed to be trailing badly. Haere confessed that things did indeed look bleak and invited the sage’s counsel. “Hell, Draper, it’s simple,” the former President had said. “Just call him a pig fucker and let him deny it.” Haere’s candidate followed the advice and lost by less than five hundred votes.
“I just don’t like it,” the governor-elect said. “I don’t like it at all.”
“We’re only buying information,” Louise Veatch said. “It’s research, actually.” She looked at Haere. “Although I don’t understand how you’re going to buy for fifty thousand what’s advertised for a hundred.”
“I’m cheap,” Haere said. “I told Meade I’d only buy it in twenty-five-thousand-dollar chunks. He gives us the essential basic stuff for the first fifty and the rest is just details that Citron can dig up at five hundred a week.”
“How’s Citron working out?” Veatch said.
“Good. Very good. He’s very quick, very bright.”
Veatch looked at his wife. “Well?”
Again, they exchanged their silent confidences. Veatch turned back to Haere. “Okay. Do it. Just remember one item. This whole thing is apparently a cover-up. If they find out we’re trying to lift the lid off, they’ll try to stop us. You understand that, don’t you, Draper?”
“Whether we go ahead or not depends on just one thing, Baldy,” Haere said.
“What?”
“How badly you want the nomination.”
Veatch threw his napkin down on the table. “I want it, all right,” he said. “I want it damned bad.” He stood up. “It all seemed so simple at first.”
“It’s never simple,” Haere said.
Veatch looked at his watch. “I’ve got a meeting with the transition committee.” He looked at Haere. “Did you walk or drive?”
“I walked.”
“You want a ride?”
“I need the walk.”
“When will you be back?” Louise Veatch asked her husband.
“I don’t know. Late. Around six, six-thirty.” He again looked at Haere. “You might as well have some more coffee. Keep Louise company. She might think of something I forgot to ask.”
“All right,” Haere said. “I will.”
The governor-elect nodded as if he had said all he had to say, leaned down, kissed his wife on the cheek, turned to leave, but turned back.
“Let me know what happens,” he said.
Haere nodded. He and Louise Veatch watched the governor-elect turn, cross the patio, and enter the house. When he was inside, Louise Veatch filled Haere’s coffee cup. He thanked her and said, “Let’s go to bed.”
“Yes,” Louise Veatch said. “Let’s.”
B. S. Keats spoke his terrible Spanish with no trace of self-consciousness. He spoke it loudly, more or less bawling it into the telephone without regard for accent or grammar. He ignored both past and future tenses, and spoke only in the present. When his grasp for a Spanish word failed, he substituted an English one, sometimes tacking on an “o” or an “a” for harmony. He seemed to have absolutely no difficulty in making himself understood.
The calls, four of them, were all long-distance, international long distance, and had been placed to numbers that B. S. Keats read into the phone from a small notebook. Two calls had gone to Bogota, one to Costa Rica, and one to Panama. No names were mentioned, because Keats made all the calls station-to-station and charged them to his phone-company credit card.
The calls were made from Citron’s telephone and they had not begun until 3:30 P.M. When the limousine pulled up outside the apartment building, Keats had made Citron go in first to make sure Velveeta Keats was nowhere around. “I just don’t wanta see her, Morgan,” he had said. “That may be hard to understand, but that’s just the way it is.”
When the last long-distance call was completed, Keats hung up the phone and turned to Citron. “Tucamondo,” he said. “Got a fix on that in your head?”
Citron nodded.
“Well, that’s where it happened — just outside the capital.”
“Ciudad Tucamondo.”
“Right.”
“Mucha muerte, mucho dinero,” Keats said. “That means a lot of death, a lot of money. That’s all they knew — or all they’d tell me, anyway.”
“Did they say when it happened?”
“Five or six months back, give or take a week either way, but you know how the beaners are when it comes to time.”
Keats rose, glanced at his watch, stuck his left hand down into his pants pocket, and brought out a thick roll of bills. Citron saw that they were hundreds. Keats peeled at least a dozen of the bills from the roll without counting them. He offered the money to Citron. “It’s gonna cost something to be Velveeta’s best friend.”
Citron stared at the proffered money and wondered where greed had gone. Maybe that’s what the spur of poverty really does, he thought. It makes you indifferent instead of ambitious. Still staring at the money, he shook his head and said, “No, thanks.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
Keats glanced around the shabby studio apartment, shook his head as though unaccustomed to dealing with fools, and put the money back in his pocket. “You’ll look in on her, like we talked about?”
“I’ll look in on her.”
“My plane’s at six.”
“You’d better go then. Do you want me to tell Velveeta hello?”
B. S. Keats thought about it and his faded blue eyes grew round and almost innocent. “Well,” he said finally, “I don’t reckon that’d do any harm, would it?”
Chapter 18
The Mexican maid, a confidante and co-conspirator of Louise Veatch’s, awoke the sleeping couple at 5:15 P.M. By 5:30, Draper Haere was dressed and out of the house and walking his long walk back to his enormous room in Venice. It was a walk of a bit less than four miles, and Haere made it in just under sixty minutes. The sun had set by the time he left Louise Veatch, and it had been dark for almost an hour when he inserted his key into the Haere Building’s side entrance. Behind him, a car door slammed. Haere turned and saw Morgan Citron leave his Toyota and start walking toward him. “I’ve been waiting for you,” Citron said as he drew near.
“I was in a meeting,” Haere said, unlocked the door, pushed it open, and gestured for Citron to precede him up the stairs. At the landing, Haere used another key to unlock the door that led into the room. He went in first, found the switch, and turned on a lamp. When he saw Drew Meade propped up in the Huey Long chair, he said, “Shit.”