Free Backup Men by Ross Thomas Page B

first.”
    “You didn’t,” he said and before I could say how did he know, he went on. “I can look at a guy and tell whether he’s been hard up against it. You think I’m kidding? I can look at you and tell that you’re the kind of a guy who’d say screw it if you had to eat in a White Tower and then go and do something else. Maybe that’s why you went into the restaurant business, so you’d never have to eat in a White Tower.”
    “Maybe,” I said, “but I’ve eaten in them.”
    “But not because you had to.”
    “It was my own choice.”
    “That’s what I thought. When I first started out in the plumbing business I got a little impatient too. I wanted it big right away, but it doesn’t work like that unless you got the capital. So I put some lines out and started taking on the odd job now and then. I did pretty much what Padillo once did except that I didn’t stick to government work exclusively, if you know what I mean.”
    I told him that I did and he nodded and said, “I’m still not saying anything, not anything important anyhow, but those odd jobs provided the expansion capital I needed. Now I don’t really need the outside work, but that’s not why I’m saying no to Padillo.”
    “Why then?”
    “He and I don’t owe each other anything. We never worked together. But I know about him and he knows about me and I always figured if I really needed somebody, I maybe could call him in. Maybe. I guess he figured the same way.”
    “I guess he did.”
    “Well, like I said, I’ve still got my lines out and I think I know what Padillo’s on and who he’s up against and I don’t want any part of it. No hard feelings, understand?”
    “I think so.”
    “Amos Gitner,” he said quickly and watched my face closely for its reaction. There must have been some because he smiled for the first time. “I was pretty certain,” he said. “Now I’m sure.”
    “That it’s Gitner?”
    Plomondon shook his head. “That I don’t want any part of it.”
    He rose then and held out his hand and said, “Tell Padillo I’m sorry we couldn’t do business.” I shook his hand and he turned away, but turned back and leaned on the table, his large head thrust toward me. “Maybe you’d better tell him the real reason, too,” he said.
    “All right.”
    “Tell him,” he said slowly, “that I’m not good enough anymore.” He paused, as if thinking of something he wanted to add, but wasn’t sure whether he really should. Finally, he said, “Tell him that I hope he is.”
    “I’ll tell him.”
    Plomondon seemed satisfied that I would and nodded at me in a friendly fashion before he turned and headed for the door and out into the world where there were now enough stuffed-up toilets so that he no longer had to eat at the White Tower.
    I walked slowly back to the office and sat behind the partners’ desk for a while. After a few minutes I took down a two-year-old copy’ of the World Almanac and looked up Llaquah. The Almanac said that Llaquah was under British protection until it became independent in 1959, that it had nearly a third of the free world’s estimated oil reserves, that it was an absolute monarchy, that it was destined to become one of the richest nations in the world, at least on a per capita basis, and that it had a standing army of 2,000.
    I put the World Almanac back on the shelf and sat there at the desk, admiring my view of the alley. I looked at my watch and saw that it was nearly three. I continued to sit there, thinking of Llaquah and speculating about how its citizens were going to spend all that oil money. I also wondered who had used the garrote on Walter Gothar and why they’d chosen my apartment, and pondered the capricious fate that had turned me into a saloonkeeper, and then tried to figure out what income tax bracket we would be elevated into if Fredl got the raise that she intended to demand, and finally wondered how badly Padillo really needed Plomondon the Plumber who