Missionary Stew (11 page)

“Morgan! It's been years. I read in one of our local rags how you’d been eaten by cannibals or something equally bizarre. Didn’t believe it for a second, of course.”

“How’ve you been, Lionel?”

“Mustn’t grumble, can’t complain. What’re you working on?— something naughty, I trust.”

“I’m just fooling around with a piece that may or may not pan out.”

Lo giggled. It was the only incongruous thing Citron had ever noticed about the man. It was a high-pitched giggle that sometimes turned into a titter.

“I think,” Lo said, “no, in fact, I’m almost positive that was exactly what you said to me—when? ten years ago?—after they kicked you out of Saigon and you wound up here on my doorstep with all of those oh-so-innocent questions. What a lot of bother the answers turned out to be.”

“You got promoted, Lionel.”

“How kind of you to remind me.”

“I need to ask you about someone.”

“Ask away.”

“What, if anything, can you tell me about a guy called Drew Meade?”

There was only silence. Citron could picture Lo sitting at his well-ordered metal desk with the tape running; the phone clamped to one neat ear, the left; the thick black hair precisely parted—two inches long on the right, three on the left; two pens and one pencil in the pocket of the short-sleeved white shirt that was starched and ironed just so: the dark tie; the carefully pressed, very dark gray slacks; the oval face with its wide nose, thin, dubious lips, and those black eyes that seemed to snap at you. Forty-five now at least, Citron estimated, and maybe even a touch of gray in the hair, but probably not. And that mind, that slippery remarkable mind that made even the quick and the clever feel dull. That mind was working now, Citron knew, because there was only silence. Citron was about to say something when he heard Lo sigh.

“You Americans.”

“Think of me as French, if it’ll help any.”

“I don’t like the French either.” Lo sighed again. “What long ears you have,
Grand-pere”
“Tell me about it.”

“Where are you anyway, Morgan?”

“L.A.”

“I know, but where in L.A.—Bel-Air, Beverly Hills?”

“Malibu.”

“Of course. Where else. Well, there you are on the beach in Malibu and there's just a whisper of something in Singapore and suddenly you’re on the phone.”

“Am I the first?”

“Well, yes and no.”

“Who else?”

“Your Langley chaps. A swarm of them all over the place.”

“Just them?”

“There’re others. One of the Langley lads described them as the crosstown rivals.”

“The FBI.”

“A gaggle of them, at least. Rather a rare bird in these parts. And the strangest thing of all, they’re not even speaking to each other.”

“The CIA and the FBI?”

“Precisely.”

“How do you know?”

“This is my town, Morgan. I’m
paid
to know.”

“Did they come to you?”

“Not at first. So I went calling on the station chief and politely asked if we could possibly assist them in their inquiries. I mentioned, in passing, of course, that we do have a certain amount of expertise in such matters and so forth and so on.”

“What’d he say?”

“He grew quite testy and said that it was none of my fucking business.”

“My.”

“So I decided to find out what their romp through my patch was really about. I think it took about an hour. Both were looking for this Drew Meade.” He paused. “Now the next thing I’m going to tell you, Morgan, I probably shouldn’t, but I was really quite miffed. Still am.”

There was another brief silence. Citron broke it with, “Go on.”

“Well, they offered a reward for this Meade chap.”

“A reward?”

“Yes.”

“Publicly? I mean, did they send out fliers?”

“Oh my, no. It was all rather sub rosa. They just passed the word around.”

“How much?”

“The reward? Seventeen thousand five hundred. American, of
course. Why the odd amount I have no idea. Perhaps they’ve fallen on hard times.”

“When was all this?”

“About two weeks ago.”

“Did they find him?”

“No, but we did. Or so they say.”

“You’ve just lost me.”

“There was an anonymous call. In poor Cantonese. One of my chaps took it. He was given an address down on the docks. When we got there, we found a body floating in the water. It was very badly decomposed. The fish had been at it, naturally. But the passport and the Maryland driver's license were perfectly preserved in a wallet all neatly wrapped up in an airtight plastic bag that was tucked away in a hip pocket that was buttoned. Now I ask you.”

“Drew Meade, huh?”

“Both the CIA and the FBI swore to it. Separately.”

“But you don’t believe them?”

“Hardly.”

Citron's hand tightened on the phone. “What do you believe, Lionel?”

There was another of Lo's long silences followed by yet another sigh. “I do owe you, don’t I, Morgan?”

“A little.”

“Well, what I believe is this. First of all, they bought themselves an Anglo body somewhere. Secondly, they soaked it in the ocean for a time. And thirdly, they salted it with the Meade passport and driver's license and the other pocket litter. That's what I believe.”

“Why’d they go to all the bother?”

“Why? Because they wanted him thought of as dead.”

This time it was Citron who created the silence. At least five seconds went by before he said, “Whatever for?”

Lo giggled and then said, “I really must go now, Morgan. Do keep in touch.”

The phone went dead. Citron slowly replaced the handset and wondered how long he had talked to Lionel Lo. Then he remembered his new watch, looked at it, and found the conversation had lasted nine minutes. He wondered how much it had cost. After that he started wondering about Drew Meade.

After five minutes of wondering and a glass of red wine, Citron called long-distance information, was given the number he asked for, and then dialed New York directly. He was calling what arguably was the World's Finest Newspaper. When the switchboard answered, Citron asked to be connected with a man he had once known fairly well in such backwaters as Lagos, Belfast, Addis Ababa, and Tananarive. The man had spent twenty-five years as a journeyman foreign correspondent, and Citron remembered him as a very intelligent reporter, if not quite brilliant, who wrote crisp, clear copy very quickly.

The man would have remained a foreign correspondent of the utility infielder type until retirement if—as he always put it—”the legs hadn’t given out.” He now lived in Connecticut, raised Jack Russells, commuted to work, and wrote the obituaries of famous foreigners he had known and whom he expected to die soon. Or relatively soon. He himself had four years to go until retirement, and when Citron called he was working on the obituary of the still-vigorous Chief Obafemi Awolowo of Nigeria.

“Not calling your own obit in, are you, Morgan?” he said after they said hello.

“No. Not yet.”

“Some guys do that, you know. They retire and the phone doesn’t ring anymore and they start brooding about how they’re going to be remembered, so they call it in—just to make sure we’ve got the facts right. But what they’re really worried about is that we’ll forget who they were and what they did on the Federal Power Commission back in nineteen-forty-seven. They also get garrulous, like me. What can I do for you?”

“Drew Meade. Does it ring a bell?”

“Meade. Meade. I-led-nine-lives Meade, you mean?”

“Was it that many?”

“Close. He never did cash in on it like Philbrick did, though. Philbrick only led three lives, if you recall, which few do except for ancients like me. What’re you working on, a feature?”

“Thinking about it. Is he still alive?”

“Philbrick or Meade?”

“Meade.”

“Let's see what the trusty computer has to say.”

There was the sound of the phone being put down, then being picked up again. “Died in Singapore the day after the election. That would be election day our time. We used it in the first edition as a filler and then dropped it to make room for the election stuff. So all Meade's nine lives got was two graphs from AP.”

“Can you read it to me?”

“Sure. ‘The body of Drew Meade, sixty-three, a former employee of both the FBI and the CIA, was found here Wednesday by Singapore police. A spokesman for the police said Mr. Meade apparently had drowned.’

“Second graph: ‘A member of the Office of Strategic Services during World War Two, Mr. Meade joined the FBI in nineteen-forty-seven and later transferred to the CIA in the early ‘sixties, according to a U.S. Embassy spokesman here. Funeral arrangements are pending.’ That's it. No mention of his nine lives. No kith or kin either. It sounds like an embassy handout.”

“So he's dead, huh?” Citron said.

“So AP claims. You know, Morgan, if I really gave a shit anymore, which I don’t, I’d say you were working on more than just a feature.”

“I’m just fooling around.”

“Uh-huh. Let me ask you another one. Was old what's-his-name really a cannibal?”

“Sure he was.”

“You’ve made my day.”

“The least I could do.”

At 6:07
P
.
M
., Citron resumed his role as building superintendent and changed a light bulb in a ceiling fixture in Unit C for Miss Rebecca Clay, a very pert and very short twenty-nine-year-old senior copywriter who worked for J. Walter Thompson in Century City. Miss Clay invited Citron to have a glass of white wine, which he accepted. While they drank their wine, Miss Clay told him about some of her adventures in the advertising business and about the screenplay she was writing, which was based on these same adventures. Citron listened politely, thanked her for the wine, and went back to his own apartment. It was 6:37.

At 6:57, Citron was shaved, showered, and dressed in his newly purchased suit. He picked up the bouquet of carnations he had bought from the young blond woman who sold them out of the back of a pickup at the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and the Pacific Coast Highway. They had cost $1.50. He had asked Draper Haere to pull over and stop so he could buy the flowers. Haere asked if he had a date, or if he just liked flowers. Citron replied that he had a date with Velveeta Keats for dinner.

“Velveeta—like the cheese?”

“Like the cheese.”

“Who's she?”

“A remittance woman, she says.”

“Malibu,” Haere had said.

At 6:59
P
.
M
., Citron—who was seldom late and often early— knocked at the door of Unit E, his bouquet of carnations in hand. When there was no answer he knocked again. Because he could hear loud music coming from either a radio or a stereo unit, Citron tried the door. It was not locked. He went in.

There were two of them. Both wore black wet suits and diving masks that obscured their faces. They were holding Velveeta Keats. One of them had a hammerlock on her right arm. The other had a
hand, his left, clamped over her mouth. Without thinking, Citron threw the bouquet of carnations at them. They ducked. Velveeta Keats bit down on the hand over her mouth. The hand went away from her mouth and she started to scream. She screamed once and then stopped when the .38 caliber revolver was jammed up under her chin.

“Not a sound,” said the man with the revolver. “Understand?”

Velveeta Keats nodded.

“You either,” the man with the revolver said to Citron.

“Right,” Citron said.

The two men backed carefully toward the large sliding glass doors that opened onto the balcony. The man without the gun slid the door open. Both backed through it onto the balcony. The man without the gun jumped over the railing of the balcony and down to the sand. The man with the gun followed him.

Citron moved cautiously to the balcony and watched the two men enter the surf. He saw that they wouldn’t have a long swim. Anchored a hundred yards out was a small cabin cruiser. The two men were already swimming toward it.

“Thank you for the flowers,” Velveeta Keats said.

Citron turned. Velveeta Keats had gathered up the carnations from the floor. “Want me to call the cops?” he said.

She shook her head. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

“What was all that about?”

“Something to do with Papa, I reckon.”

“Want me to call him for you?”

“No.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No, they didn’t hurt me.”

“Any idea about who they were?”

“No. None. I guess they’re just mad at Papa about something.”

“Maybe I should call him for you.”

She gestured toward the small round table that was placed in front of the sliding doors. It was set for two. The plates, Citron saw, were
gold-rimmed. The wine goblets were lead crystal. The silver place settings were laid out exactly. The white napkins had been carefully folded and twisted into the shape of giraffes. They stuck up out of the wine goblets. Two red candles were still to be lit. Velveeta Keats had gone to no little trouble, so Citron turned to her and said, “It looks very nice, but I still think you’d better call someone.”

“We’re having veal,” she said. “Do you like veal?”

“Very much.”

“I thought we’d eat first, and then maybe fool around a little, and after that, well, maybe I’ll call somebody. How does that sound?”

“That sounds fine,” Citron said.

“Hold me, will you?”

Citron put his arms around her. She was trembling.

“Hold me real tight,” she said.

CHAPTER 12

It was a little past 7:00
P
.
M
. when Drew Meade got off the Los Angeles RTD bus near the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and walked two and a half blocks south until he came to the small mission-style, tile-roofed bungalow with a metal sign that claimed it was guarded night and day by an “armed response” private security service. The small round sign glowed in the dark.

Meade stood across the street under a sycamore and studied the bungalow. Lights were on in what seemed to be the living room. A dark-blue or black Mercedes 450 SEL sedan was parked in the drive. Meade wondered if there was a second car in the detached garage at the rear of the house.