Ah, Treachery! Read online

  ah,

  treachery!

  also by Ross Thomas

  The Cold War Swap

  The Seersucker Whipsaw

  Cast a Yellow Shadow

  The Singapore Wink

  The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

  The Backup Men

  The Porkchoppers

  If You Can’t Be Good

  The Money Harvest

  Yellow-Dog Contract

  Chinaman's Chance

  The Eighth Dwarf

  The Mordida Man

  Missionary Stew

  Briarpatch

  Out on the Rim

  The Fourth Durango

  Twilight at Mac's Place

  Voodoo, Ltd.

  ah,

  treachery!

  Ross Thomas

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin's Press.

  AH,TREACHERY! Copyright © 1994 by Ross E. Thomas, Inc. Introduction copyright © 2004 by Joe Gores. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.minotaurbooks.com

  ISBN 0-312-32704-8

  First published by Mysterious Press

  First St. Martin's Minotaur Edition: March 2004

  10 987654321

  To Laura Sereno

  He loved treachery but hated a traitor.

  —PLUTARCH ON ROMULUS

  INTRODUCTION

  by Joe Gores

  Ross Thomas is an easy guy to tell stories about.

  I first met him in New York during Edgar Week a year or two after he won the Best-First Edgar for The Cold War Swap (1966). He had hired a taxicab to drive him up from D.C. a la Hammett hiring a cab in 1930 to drive him from L.A. to San Francisco for a chat with his old boss, Al Samuels of Samuel's Jewelers.

  A few years later I met Ross for dinner in L.A., and in the course of the evening told him he was the most cynical man I had ever met. “I’m not a cynic,” he said, “I’m a spoiled romantic.”

  At the time he had a welcome mat in front of the door to his house in Malibu that read GO AWAY.

  Once he and Brian Garfield were working on the script for a movie they were going to produce together that would be based on one of Ross's books set in Africa. Brian remarked that the locale wasn’t coming through enough in the script.

  “Then let's set it in Omaha,” said Ross. He was serious.

  A few years later he and Brian and I got together over a drink and a tape recorder to hash out the wondrous events surrounding the filming of my novel Hammett by Francis Coppola. It was shot in twosegments two years apart in two cities, San Francisco and L.A. (in between, Francis, the executive producer, had run out of money).

  I had written the first five scripts for two different directors, Ross had written the last three. In between three other writers had written twenty-four other scripts for the final director, Wim Wenders. You can see why I say wondrous.

  During the second-segment filming in L.A., the actors asked Coppola to ban Ross from the set. Francis asked them why.

  “Every time we change Ross's lines,” they explained, “he takes off his glasses and he sighs.”

  Ross stayed on the set.

  The last year the ABA (American Booksellers Association) convention was held in L.A., Ross, Don Westlake, and I all had new novels coming out from Mysterious Press. Mysterious had put together a little booklet made up of the first chapter of each of our respective novels. They were giving the booklets away free and had the three of us lined up behind a table—throw the ball, knock over the milk-bottle—to sign them for anyone who wanted them signed.

  After a while, one of us—I think all three—came up with the idea that we sign each other's chapters, either with the real author's name or with our own name, however the fancy struck us. It was the most fun I’ve ever had at a signing.

  Over dinner one night, Ross's agent, the late Gary Salt, told him there are several words a writer can never use in a book title if he wants the book to get published. Among them, Gary said, were “dwarf” and “Chinaman.”

  Ross subsequently wrote, and published, The Eighth Dwarf, and later, Chinaman's Chance—arguably his best novel, certainly one of his four best.

  He also gave Gary Salt's name to the sleazy, slimy, hypocritically pious pornographer in the film Hammett. I never heard what Gary'sreaction was. I imagine a belly laugh. In his wry, quiet way, Ross was very good at evoking belly laughs.

  Ah, Treachery! was Ross's twenty-fifth published novel (including five under his Oliver Bleek pseudonym). It was also his last published novel. He was either working on or had actually finished another when over lunch in New York his editor remarked that it seemed a strange subject for a Ross Thomas novel. Not complaining, mind, just commenting.

  Ross thought about it for a couple of minutes, nodded, said, “You’re right,” and went home and junked the novel.

  SoAh, Treachery! is the last one we will ever have.

  If it's the last Ross Thomas novel we must have, Ah, Treachery! is the perfect book to sum up his career. Because in a very real way it is a summing up of his work over almost three decades.

  It has the perfect Ross Thomas hero. Edd Partain—often called Twodees—is a former Army intelligence major cashiered for beating hell out of his commanding officer because the man lied to him. Partain is a man of principle: honest, honorable, upright. Virtues he keeps well-hidden.

  He is, also—and this seems important in a Ross Thomas hero— forty-one years old. Almost all of Ross's heroes hover around the 38-42 mark. To Ross I think this was the time of maximum mental and physical strength in a hero needing to face heavy odds against survival. Heavy negative odds for the hero are a must in any Ross Thomas novel.

  It has the perfect Ross Thomas plot. Which is to say, tricky, twisty, unpredictable, going in ways a reader can never expect and certainly never anticipate. For their own gradually revealed ends, on a certain Christmas Eve, the bad guys get Twodees fired from his subsistence job selling guns in Wanda Lou's Weaponry in Sheridan, Wyoming. Woe is them!

  An organization that flies the American flag upside down on its wall (the universal military distress signal), Victims of Military Intelligence Treachery (VOMIT—yes, VOMIT), gets Twodees a new job. He is to “ride shotgun” for Millicent Altford, a rainmaker for the Democratic party who had $1.2 million in soft money stolen from her safe and wants it back.

  But this isn’t really what the book is about. It's about some pretty awful things that happened a few years before in El Salvador, where Twodees had been a military intelligence officer.

  But this isn’t really what the book is about, either.

  It is about treachery.

  Finally, it has the perfect Ross Thomas cast of characters. Duplicitous former Army intelligence officers, a retired general who during Korea had funny politics—he was a Stevenson Democrat. It has a near-dwarf skip-tracer with the voice from hell that makes people he is seeking meekly come in and surrender. It has a scar-faced Greek who wears an eye patch and a pirate's headscarf, rides a Harley, and is an expert on murder and suicide.

  It also has the perfect cast of women for a Ross Thomas novel. One sounds lovely and fragile, and is dead before the novel begins. One is a rich woman who hides out in a luxury hospital feigning fatal illness to avoid being given an ambassadorship to Togo. She has a daughter who never ever cooks anything and makes big bucks reducing complicated ideas to two-word slogans that can go on billboards. Finally, the novel's other daughter asks the man who murdered her father to give the eulogy at his fune
ral.

  And like most of Ross's novels, after all the twists and turns and betrayals and murders and blood and assaults, it has a totally satisfying ending. Even a happy ending of sorts, in a Ross Thomas sort of way.

  Nobody else ever wrote ‘em like Ross Thomas, and to me Ah, Treachery! is Ross at his very best.

  Contents

  Chapter 01

  Chapter 02

  Chapter 03

  Chapter 04

  Chapter 05

  Chapter 06

  Chapter 07

  Chapter 08

  Chapter 09

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  CHAPTER 1

  At 7:33P.M.on Christmas Eve in 1992, the tall man with hair the color of pewter entered Wanda Lou's Weaponry in Sheridan, Wyoming, and pretended not to recognize Edd Partain, the cashiered Army Major turned gun store clerk.

  Outside, which was exactly 21.8 miles south of the Montana line, the weather was cold and dry with both the humidity and the Fahrenheit down in the low teens. Yet the man with the short gray hair wore what some executive down in Denver or even Santa Fe might have worn—a lamb's-wool topcoat of springtime weight with raglan sleeves and a conservative houndstooth check. On his feet were a pair of black thin-soled loafers, well on their way to being ruined by Sheridan's two-foot accumulation of dirty snow.

  Edd Partain let the gray-haired man look around for almost two minutes before offering a polite throat-clearing noise followed by an equally polite question: “Help you with something?”

  The man nodded but still didn’t look at Partain. “I need a last-minute gift or two,” he said to a display of allegedly bulletproof vests. “Any suggestions?”

  “Depends,” Partain said. “For either Mom, the Mrs., or the girlfriend, you’d do well to consider the relatively rare and eminently collectible .25-caliber Walther PPK—the streamline nineteen-thirteen vest pocket model, of course. For dear old Dad, perhaps a bespoke Purdy shotgun, which we can order from London, although we’ll need a five-thousand-dollar deposit and delivery might take two, three, even four years. But old Dad’ll appreciate your generosity and enjoy the years of anticipation.”

  The man turned from the bulletproof vests, walked slowly to the counter, leaned on its glass top with both hands and stared at the ex-Major with eyes whose color and warmth, Partain noticed, still resembled river ice just before the thaw.

  “I wasn’t absolutely sure it was you, Twodees,” the man said. “Not till you opened your mouth and the crap flowed out.”

  “And I scarcely recognized you, Captain Millwed, what with all that new gray hair.”

  “Colonel Millwed.”

  “My God. The Army would never—but of course it would. And has. Congratulations.”

  Colonel Millwed ignored the suspect commendation and asked, “Wanda Lou around?”

  “Wanda Lou, like Marley, has been dead these seven years. The Weaponry has passed on to Alice Ann Sutterfield, Wanda Lou's lovely daughter.”

  “She around?”

  “Not until Boxing Day—Saturday.”

  The Colonel turned to give the gun store another quick inspection, then turned back to ask, “The lovely daughter pay anything?”

  “Eight-sixty an hour,” Partain said. “But since I usually work a sixty-hour week—with no time-and-a-half, I’m ashamed to admit— the pay's all right. For Wyoming. Besides, my wants are few and I serve them myself.”

  “Emerson on masturbation?”

  “Or possibly Thoreau.”

  “So what did Alice Ann say after you told her about you and the Army and all?”

  “She never asked and I never volunteered. But I knew they’d eventually send someone to tell her—maybe a freshly minted and slightly pompous second john who’d caught some colonel's eye. Or more likely, an overage-in-grade captain. That's why I wasn’t surprised when you popped in, although I’m flattered they’ve sent a bird colonel to do the deed.”

  “Don’t be flattered,” Millwed said. “I volunteered.”

  “I should’ve guessed. But why now? Why not last year? The year before? Or even six months from now?”

  “TheNew York Times get out here?”

  “Yes, but I don’t buy it. To keep au courant I rely on Sheridan's sprightly daily and the BBC world service.” “

  No TV?”

  Partain frowned. “Really think I should buy a set?”

  “Only if you’re crazy about fires and jackkniffed semis. Stick with the BBC. They’ll have it soon enough.”

  Partain looked up at the old building's stamped tin ceiling, as if in search of a leak. “So it's all coming out,” he said to the ceiling, then let his gaze resettle on Colonel Millwed. “But the sanitized version, I suppose, with some kind of respectable imprimatur.”

  “It’ll come out in Spanish first, with the U.N.'s seal of approval,” the Colonel said. “The U.N. believes—or pretends to anyway—that it's dug up all the real bad shit, but you and I, Twodees, we know better.”

  “And you come in the guise of what—a friendly warning?”

  “Are warnings ever friendly?” the Colonel asked, obviously expecting no answer. “But if warnings give you the hives, think of my visit as the gentle nudge, which sure as shit's better than the hard shove.”

  Partain nodded thoughtfully, then brightened and gave Millwed a patently false smile. “Sure I can’t sell you a little something now that you’re here, my Colonel? Perhaps a nice cheap just-in-case throwdown?”

  Millwed returned the false smile tooth for tooth, revealing his to be a peculiar off-white. Even his teeth are going gray, Partain thought as the Colonel said, “Just looking, Twodees. That's all. Just looking.”

  Only one customer dropped in after the Colonel left, but she bought nothing. At 9 P.M., Partain activated the alarm system; lowered the outside steel shutters; made sure the steel back door was locked and bolted; switched off the lights; locked the front door, and walked the three blocks to his one-room apartment atop his landlord's two-car garage.

  Inside, Partain inspected and discarded his mail that included a Christmas card from a local bank where his checking account at last look was $319.41. He drank some bourbon and water, heated and ate a frozen Tex-Mex dinner, then sat up until midnight reading Freya Stark's The Valleys of the Assassins for the third time. He went to bed with the realization that, save for the Stark, this had been a virtual replay of all his Christmas Eves since 1989.

  On Christmas morning the pounding on Partain's door awoke him at 7:02. He rose slowly, put on a shabby plaid robe, went to the door and said, “Who the hell’re you?”

  A woman shouted the reply. “It's me and you’re fired.”

  Partain opened the door to reveal the too-thin, too-blond, 39-year-old Alice Ann Sutterfield. She stood shivering on the landing in the 11-degree temperature despite her gloves, sweater, flannel-linedjeans, boots and a heavy three-quarter length car coat. Her throat and mouth were hidden by a green and white wool scarf. Left exposed were crimson cheeks, glowing nose, squinty hazel eyes and dark brown eyebrows that betrayed the provenance of her butter-yellow hair.

  She examined Partain warily, as if expecting some sort of violent reaction, but wh
en he merely said, “And Merry Christmas to you, Alice Ann,” she sniffed and brushed past him into the apartment.

  After closing the door, Partain turned to find her, the scarf now loosened, standing slightly hipshot in the middle of the room. She was trying to glare at him with those squinty hazel eyes but her attempt only confirmed Partain's theory that squinty eyes, regardless of color, are incapable of really good glares.

  “I don’t want you in my store ever again, Edd, and I want my store keys right now.”

  Partain picked up the keys from the breakfast-dining-everything table and handed them over. “Been talking to the Colonel, have you?”

  “That man sacrificed Christmas with his family to fly all the way out here and warn a poor widow woman of all that terrible stuff you did down there in—in, well, in Central America someplace.”

  “The Colonel has no family, Alice Ann, and you owe me one week's pay and two weeks’ vacation.”

  “Think I don’t know that? Think I didn’t rush all over town last night, ruining my Christmas Eve, just to get the cash together and pay you every last cent you got coming? Here.”

  She thrust a white No. 10 envelope at him. “Go on. Count it. It's all there.”

  “Then there's no need to count it,” Partain said, accepting the envelope and shoving it into the pocket of his old robe.

  “Well, I don’t know, maybe you didn’t do everything Colonel Milkweed says you—”

  “Colonel Millwed.”

  “—everything he says you did, but I just can’t take the chance of some, well, of some wildman loose among my guns. No telling what might happen.”