“A place name. Tucamondo.”
Haere nodded as he drew a mental map and pinpointed Tucamondo. “Is that where it happened — the small secret war Meade was going to tell us about?”
“Maybe.”
Haere had some more of his Scotch. “How’d you find out — if you don’t mind my asking?”
“There’s a guy from Miami called B. S. Keats. The B. S. stands for Byron Shelley. He’s got a remittance-woman daughter who he wants me to baby-sit. Mr. Keats was once very active in the cocaine trade. He wanted to pay me to baby-sit his daughter, who’s a touch fey. I agreed, but instead of money, I asked him to make a few phone calls. He did and came up with Tucamondo.”
“Just like that?”
Citron nodded.
Haere sighed and said, “I think you’d better tell me about Mr. Keats and his daughter.”
“Yes,” Citron said. “I think I’d better.”
They were on their second drink, singles this time, when Citron finished his report. The report was delivered to an impressed Haere in short paragraphs, none more than two sentences long. Citron had spoken in a flat, almost uninflected voice, pausing at the end of each sentence, pausing even longer before a new paragraph began, and spelling out each name as if he thought Haere might want to write it down. The most important facts were grouped together first, and the rest were recited in their descending order of interest and importance. He’s calling in a story, Haere marveled, as Citron ended his report with a precise accounting of how much of Haere’s money he had spent thus far.
Draper Haere was silent for almost a minute as he digested what he had been told. “I rather liked the two Haitians,” he said. “The two bodyguards.” He paused. “And Keats, too. B. S. Keats. B for Byron, S for Shelley. I liked him, too. And all it took him was a couple of phone calls.”
“Four actually.”
“Four.”
There was another silence. Haere finished his second drink and said, “That’s it, then?”
“Not quite.”
Haere nodded slowly. “I sort of expected there’d be something else. A kicker.”
“Velveeta Keats.”
“Velveeta. I like her, too. The name, I mean.”
“She was once married to someone called Maneras.”
“R. Maneras, maybe?”
“J. Maneras. J for Jimmy — or Jaime.”
“Maneras. That’s a pretty common name, isn’t it?”
“About like, oh, say, Hansen or Nichols.”
“Still a pretty common name.”
“Not if you find it written on a card that’s folded up and stuck down inside some dead man’s watch pocket just a couple of hours after you agree to baby-sit a lady who was once married to somebody called Maneras. I’d say that makes it a rather unusual name.”
Haere rattled the ice in his empty drink. “So where are we?”
“I think we’re being pointed in a certain direction, don’t you?”
“The right direction?”
“I don’t know.”
Haere rattled his ice again. “Velveeta Keats,” he said. “It’s a pretty name, if you forget about the cheese.”
“I thought I’d take her to dinner tonight.”
“Someplace nice.”
“Yes.”
“Buy her some wine.”
“She likes wine.”
“Maneras,” Haere said. “I wonder who B. Maneras is.”
“I’ll try to find out.”
“If you do, call me.”
“No matter how late?”
“Anytime,” Haere said.
Chapter 19
At 7:45 that night the two men who sometimes called themselves Yarn and Tighe parked their Oldsmobile 88 behind the Mercedes sedan in Gladys Citron’s driveway. John D. Yarn was behind the wheel, Richard Tighe beside him. They examined the house briefly. A light was on in the living room. The porch light had also been turned on.
Without speaking, they got out of the car and walked through the iron gate and up the curving cement walk to the front door. Tighe rang the bell. The door was opened almost immediately by Gladys Citron. Nothing was said. The two men went inside, through the small foyer, and into the living room. Gladys Citron followed them.
Tighe headed for the tray that held the bottles and glasses. He spoke over his shoulder to Yarn. “What d’you want, Scotch?”
“Scotch.”
“Gladys?”
“Nothing,” she said.
Tighe mixed the two drinks, turned, and handed one to Yarn. Gladys Citron crossed to the wing-back chairs, hesitated, then sat down in the one where Drew Meade had died. She was wearing a long-dressy robe of dark-blue silk. It went nicely with her hair. She leaned her head back against the chair, closed her eyes, and said, “Well?”
Tighe sat down in the chair opposite her and took a swallow of his drink. Yarn continued to stand, sipped some of his Scotch, and said, “I like that, Gladys. The way you plopped down in old Drew’s chair.”
“It’s my chair,” she said, her eyes still closed. “He merely died in it.”
“Well, it went about like we thought it would,” Tighe said. “They dumped him over in Culver City.”
“And?”
“They found the card.”
“You’re sure?” she said.
“It was gone, anyway.”
“I wonder which one,” Tighe said.
Yarn looked at him. “Which one what?”
“Found it.”
“Haere. I’d say Haere.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” Yarn said. “Maybe just because he’s foxier.”
Gladys Citron opened her eyes. “I won’t have him hurt.”
Tighe smiled at her. “You should’ve thought of that before, Gladys.”
“He’s still my son. They won’t have to hurt him.”
“We’ll tell them that, won’t we?” Tighe said to Yarn.
Yarn grinned and nodded. “Maybe we can hang a sign around his neck. ‘Handle with Care.’ Something like that.”
Gladys Citron leaned forward in her chair. When she spoke, her tone was surprisingly soft, but her stare was hard and unwavering. “I must not be making myself clear.”
Tighe finished his drink. “Sure you are, Gladys. You’re playing Mommy — maybe forty years late, but you’re playing it pretty well. You have to understand something, though. If it comes to choosing between your son and us, and I’m talking about all of us, then a hard choice will have to be made. I mean, if it comes to us or him, who do we choose?”
Gladys Citron leaned back in the chair and again closed her eyes. “I’ve got a migraine,” she said. “Why don’t you two run out and play somewhere.”
“Who, Gladys?” Yarn said.
“It needn’t come to that,” she said, her eyes still closed.
“But if it does?”
She opened her eyes and stared up at the ceiling. “He was a very pretty baby. One of the prettiest I’ve ever seen. But then I was never really very much of a mother.”
“He was never much of a son either, was he?” Yarn said.
It was several moments before Gladys Citron answered, her gaze still fixed on the ceiling. “No,” she said, “not much.”
They drove to the restaurant in Santa Monica in Velveeta Keats’s dusty yellow Porsche, a 911 model that had been given to her on her thirtieth birthday.
“I just went out to get the mail that day,” she told Morgan Citron, “and there the keys were with a little note in the mail-box that said, ‘Happy Birthday, honey — Love, Mama,’ but of course it was Papa that went out and bought it and all.”
She was not a good driver. At the corner of the Pacific Coast Highway and Topanga Canyon she ran through a red light and just missed a pickup truck that had two large brown dogs in its bed. The dogs barked at her as she barely scraped by on the right. Citron closed his eyes automatically and opened them only when he was sure the danger had passed. “When was this?” he said.