Free Missionary Stew by Ross Thomas Page B

do, it can be his memorial.”
    “You’re sure it wasn’t just a hit-and-run accident and nothing more?”
    Draper Haere looked down at his bandaged hands. “I’m sure.”
    Citron moved back to the table, sat down, picked up his cup, and drank the rest of his coffee. There was another silence as he felt his worm of curiosity stir again. He wondered what he would say next and was faintly surprised to hear himself say, “How much?”
    “Five hundred a week?” Haere said.
    “Cash?”
    “Sure. Why not? Cash.”
    “I’ll need an advance—to buy some things.”
    “What?”
    “A typewriter. A small tape recorder.” He paused. “Maybe a suit. I don’t have any clothes. Or a bank account.”
    “Two thousand do it?” Haere said, adding, “Cash, of course.”
    “Fine,” Citron said. He looked first at Haere and then at Louise Veatch. “You know what you’re getting, don’t you?”
    “I think so,” she said.
    “What you’re getting is a little unused, maybe even rusty. I’m not sure it even functions anymore.”
    Louise Veatch smiled, then nodded contentedly, as if what she saw was little short of perfection. “Mr. Haere and I have been in this peculiar business for some time, Mr. Citron—do you mind if I call you Morgan? Mr. Haere is very good at sizing people up, but I’m even better, and what I see sitting across the table from me I like, probably because there seems to be almost no bullshit about you. Anyone who tells me he’ll take the job provided I buy him a new suit can’t be much of a bullshitter, and in this town that's as rare as green snow. What I’m really trying to say is that we’re glad you said yes—right, Draper?”
    “Right,” Haere said, marveling as always at how Louise Veatch by tone and gesture, if not by the words themselves, could convince people of their own immense self-worth and the enormous esteem in which she seemed to hold them.
    Citron smiled again, but only slightly, and looked at Haere. “How many political due bills have you people got in Washington?”
    “You mean the three of us?” Louise Veatch said.
    Citron nodded.
    She turned to Haere for the estimate. He thought for a moment and then answered carefully. “Would plenty be enough?”
    “Maybe,” Citron said.
    An hour later, Draper Haere's secretary called Citron and told him she was, to use her participle, “messengering” him out $2,000 in cash. Citron thanked her, hung up the phone, picked it back up, dialed information, and asked for the number of the FBI.
    The number was 272-6161. When the woman operator answered with “FBI,” Citron said, “May I speak to Agent Richard Tighe, please.”
    There was a brief hesitation and then the operator said, “Let me give you verification.”
    After another pause, another woman's voice said, “Verification,” and then gave her name, which Citron didn’t catch.
    “Agent Tighe, please. Richard Tighe.”
    This time there was no hesitation. “We don’t have an agent by that name,” she said.
    “I see,” Citron said. “What about Agent Yarn—Y-A-R-N, first name John, middle initial D?”
    “We don’t have an agent by that name either,” the verification woman said.
    Citron said thank you and hung up with the conviction that he was already earning his money.

CHAPTER 8
    He had decided to cross at Mexicali. The long bus ride up from Mexico City had tired him and made him look much older than his sixty-three years until he found a barber who gave him a shave, a massage, and a haircut for less than $2. On the way to the border entry, he bought a cheap sombrero, the kind a tourist might buy, and settled it firmly on his head. From his reflection in a plate-glass window he saw that it made him look ridiculous, which pleased him because that was exactly how he wanted to look.
    He strolled up to the U.S. immigration official, who gave him the quick practiced glance of an experienced sorter. “Business in Mexico?”
    “Just rubbernecking.”
    “Place of