Haere didn’t ask him what the only thing was. Instead, he let the silence grow. Hubert wandered over, yowled, and jumped up on the table. Haere scratched his ears and said, “Who sent you, Slippery?”
Slipper sipped his brandy. “You know, for a fact, it’s really difficult to say.”
“Who?” Haere asked again.
“Wilde, Harrington and Litz,” Slipper said, giving the names of the founders of the Washington-New York-Paris law firm, only one of them still alive, a mock-sonorous intonation. Among Wilde, Harrington and Litz’s senior partners were six former U.S. Senators, three former cabinet members, and a failed Presidential nominee.
Slipper sighed. “It was actually old Gene Litz himself, eighty-seven if he’s a day. He dropped by my place cold at eight A.M. No warning. I think it must have taken us thirty minutes to get him out of that fool Packard he’s still driven around in and then into my place. Shuffle. Shuffle. Shuffle. That’s the body. But the mind. Ah, that mind. He was born in ’ninety-five, Draper, and he hasn’t forgotten one meal he ever ate, one crap he ever took, one person he ever met, or one word he ever read. And yet I must confess he remains the world’s greatest bore. All fact and no charm. No charm at all. You ever meet him?”
“No.”
“I’ll try to give you the flavor. He comes into my house, looks around, nods, and says by way of greeting, ‘Still live in the alley, I see.’ Well, the chauffeur and I finally get him lowered into a chair. He looks up at the chauffeur and says one word: ‘Out.’ The chauffeur leaves. Old Gene looks at me and says, ‘I’ll have a toddy with one spoonful of sugar. I want the water just off the boil.’
“Well, I fix his toddy and he takes a sip. Then he says, ‘There is a serious problem that must be solved. You are authorized to proceed to California. There you will confer with the governor-elect. Know him?’I said I did. ‘Thought so,’ he says. ‘Knew so, in fact. You will inform young Veatch that if he entertains any hopes at all of securing the party’s nomination in either ’eighty-four or ’eighty-eight, he will immediately abandon his research into the circumstances surrounding the death of John T. Replogle. Is that clear?’ ”
“What’d you say?” Haere asked.
“I asked him who his client was and he comes back with one of his Delphic answers. ‘The nation,’ he says. ‘Mark you, not this administration. I care not a fig for this administration. Third-rate people. Madmen, knaves and actors. But we will not see this nation crippled.’ So I ask, ‘Who is we?’ His answer is another question: ‘You knew Replogle, of course?’ I told him I’d just returned from his funeral. Well, he stares at me with those eyes of his that’ll still freeze marrow and says, ‘Those who destroyed him, we will destroy. Tell young Veatch that, and also that other young man out there, Haere, the one whose father was a radical. Tell them it will all be taken care of in time. If young Veatch refuses to accede to our request, inform him that he will never... never... never win the nomination.’ Then he says, ‘Call my man and help me up.’ So I call the chauffeur in and we start shuffling him back out to the Packard. But just before we get to the door, he stops and says, ‘Your fee for this particular service will be one hundred thousand dollars. The amount reflects my principals’ deep concern.’ Then we start for the door again, but again he stops and looks back. ‘I didn’t see your wife around,’ he says.
“ ‘She’s been dead for twenty years, Gene,’ I said. ‘That’s impossible,’ he says, shuffles on out the door and into the Packard, and drives off.”
David Slipper rose, moved to the sink, picked up the brandy bottle, read its label, put it down, came back to the table, and resumed his seat. “My advice, Draper? Call Veatch off. If he won’t listen to you, have Louise work on him.”
“No,” Haere said.
Slipper sighed. “Then I’ll have to go see him and lay it all out.”
“Tell them this back in Washington, Slippery. If Veatch backs out, I’ll go it alone.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m in too deep.”
“Already?”
Haere nodded
“Is Veatch?”
“No,” Haere said. “Not yet.”
“Then I’d better go bail him out.”
“You’ll have a problem with Louise.”
“Will you help?”
“No.”
Slipper again rose, turned to the sink, again picked up the brandy bottle, and this time refilled the two glasses. “It’s not just the money, Draper,” he said.
“Isn’t it?”
Slipper shook his head as he sat back down. “I’ve got enough money. More than enough. What it is, if you don’t mind an old man’s embarrassed confession, is that I need to know if I can still help change things.”
“If you still matter.”
“That’s right. If I still matter.”
“You matter, Slippery, you’ve just picked the wrong side.”
David Slipper nodded, smiled, and rose. “Well, it won’t be the first time.” He continued to smile down at the still-seated Haere. “This one’s going to be interesting, isn’t it, Draper?”
“Very,” Haere said as he rose. “I want to thank you again for the hatrack. That was a damn nice thing to do. Can I call you a cab?”
“I’ve got a limo waiting.” He paused by the hatrack, which still stood in the middle of the room. “They’ll send somebody after you, Draper. Somebody nasty. But you know that, don’t you?”
“I know.”
“Well, just so you do.” David Slipper turned, smiled his most charming smile, and stuck out his hand. Haere accepted it without hesitation.
“Take care, Slippery,” he said.
The white-haired man winked, turned, and was gone. Haere listened to his footsteps hurry down the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Chapter 21
On their way back from the restaurant, Velveeta Keats drove and revealed in a low, hesitant voice a half-dozen of her more bizarre sexual fantasies. She wanted to know if Morgan Citron would be interested in helping her realize some of them. Citron said he found the first two interesting, but the third one, the one involving a generous use of Log Cabin syrup, sounded a little messy. And although the remaining three offered intriguing possibilities, he wasn’t quite sure they could get around to all of them in a single evening. Velveeta Keats suggested that they limit themselves to the first two or three, and then see what happened. Citron said that seemed sensible to him.
“You don’t think I’m weird, do you?” she asked.
“Not at all.”
“They just come to me.”
“Your ideas.”
“Uh-huh. Do you think they’re awful?”
“I think they’re fine,” he said. “All except the Log Cabin syrup thing. That doesn’t do much for me.”
She frowned and then brightened. “Maybe we could try it with Wesson oil instead.”
Citron said he thought that might be an idea.
It was nearly midnight when Citron gently detached the sleeping Velveeta Keats’s iron grip, sat up on the edge of her bed, and started pulling on his shorts.
She stirred, awoke, and smiled sleepily. “You leaving?”
“I’ve got a couple of things to do.”
“I want to thank you for a real wonderful evening.”
“It was different,” he said as he zipped up his pants. Velveeta Keats giggled her agreement as Citron slipped on his shirt and started buttoning it up. “Do you have a passport?” he asked.
“Sure. Why?”
“I may have to take a trip. Maybe you’d like to come along.”