Koko. Peter Straub
and Conor that he was offering room-service breakfast for everybody in his suite (en suite), commencing in thirty minutes at eleven hundred hours, and that Michael had better get hopping if he wanted more than one Bloody Mary.
‘More than one?’
‘I guess you didn’t get the kind of exercise I had last night.’ Beevers gloated. ‘A lovely lady, the kind I was telling you about, left about an hour or two ago, and I’m as mellow as a month in the country. Michael – try to persuade Pumo that there are more important things in the world than his restaurant, will you?’ He hung up before Poole could respond.
2
Beevers’ suite had not only a long living room with sliding windows onto a substantial balcony but was equipped with a dining room where Michael, Pumo, and Beevers sat at a round table laden with plates of food, baskets of rolls, racks of toast, pitchers of Bloody Marys, chafing dishes holding sausages, bacon, and eggs Benedict.
From the couch in the living room where he sat hunched over a cup of black coffee, Conor said, ‘I’ll eat something later.’
‘Mangia, mangia. Keep your strength up for our trip.’ Beevers waggled a fork dripping egg yolk and Hollandaise sauce. His black hair gleamed and his eyes shone. His white shirt had been fresh from its wrapping when Beevers had rolled up his sleeves and his soberly striped bow tie was perfectly knotted. The dark blue suit jacket draped over the back of his chair had a broad chalky stripe. He looked as though he expected to be standing before the Supreme Court instead of the Vietnam Memorial.
‘You’re still serious about that?’ Pumo asked.
‘Aren’t you? Tina, we need you – how could we do this without you?’
‘You’re going to have to try,’ Pumo said. ‘But isn’t the question academic anyhow?’
‘Not to me, it isn’t,’ Beevers said. ‘How about you, Conor? You think I’m just kidding around?’
The three men at the table looked down the length of the living room toward Conor. Startled at being the object of everyone’s attention, he straightened himself up. ‘Not if you’re loaning me the air fare, you’re not,’ he said. ‘Kidding, that is.’
Beevers was now quizzing Michael with his annoyingly clear, annoyingly amused eyes. ‘And you? Was sagen Sie, Michael?’
‘Do you ever exactly kid around, Harry?’ Michael asked, unwilling to be a counter in Harry Beevers’ newest game.
Beevers was still gleaming at him, waiting for more because he knew he was going to get it.
‘I suppose I’m tempted, Harry,’ he said, and caught Pumo’s sidelong glance.
3
‘Just out of curiosity,’ Harry Beevers leaned forward to say to the cabdriver, ‘how do the four of us strike you? What sort of impression do you have of us as a group?’
‘You serious?’ the cabbie asked, and turned to Poole, seated beside him on the front seat. ‘Is this guy serious?’
Poole nodded, and Beevers said, ‘Go on. Lay it on the line. I’m curious.’
The driver looked at Beevers in the mirror, looked back at the road, then glanced back over his shoulder at Pumo and Linklater. The driver was an unshaven, blubbery man in his mid-fifties. Whenever he made even the smallest movement, Poole caught the mingled odors of dried sweat and burning electrical circuits.
‘You guys don’t fit together at all, no way,’ the driver said. He looked suspiciously over at Poole. ‘Hey, if this is “Candid Camera” or some shit like that, you can get out now.’
‘What do you mean, we don’t fit together?’ Beevers asked. ‘We’re a unit!’
‘Here’s what I see.’ The driver glanced again at his mirror. ‘You look like some kind of bigshot lawyer, maybe a lobbyist or some other kind of guy who starts out in life by stealing from the collection plate. The guy next to you looks like a pimp, and the guy next to him is a working stiff with a hangover. This one here next to me, he looks like he teaches high school.’
‘A pimp!’ Pumo howled.
‘So sue me,’ said the driver. ‘You asked.’
‘I am a working stiff with a hangover.’ Conor said. ‘And face it, Tina, you are a pimp.’
‘I got it right, huh?’ the driver said. ‘What do I win? You guys are from “Wheel of Fortune”, right?’
‘Are you serious?’ Beevers asked.
‘I asked first,’ said the driver.
‘No, I wanted to know –’ Beevers began, but Conor told him to shut up.
The cabdriver smirked to himself the rest of the way to Constitution Avenue. ‘This is close enough,’ Beevers said. ‘Pull over.’
‘I thought you wanted the Memorial.’
‘I said, pull over.’
The cabbie swerved to the side of the road and jerked to a stop. ‘Could you arrange for me to meet Vanna White?’ he asked into the mirror.
‘Get stuffed,’ Beevers said, and jumped out of the cab. ‘Pay him, Tina.’ He held the door until Pumo and Linklater left the car, then slammed it shut. ‘I hope you didn’t tip that asshole,’ he said.
Pumo shrugged.
‘Then you’re an asshole too.’ Beevers turned away and stomped off in the direction of the Memorial.
Poole hurried to catch up with him.
‘So what did I say?’ Beevers asked, almost snarling. ‘I didn’t say anything wrong. The guy was a jerk, that’s all. I should have kicked his teeth in.’
‘Calm down, Harry.’
‘You heard what he said to me, didn’t you?’
‘He called Pumo a pimp,’ Michael said.
‘Tina’s a food pimp,’ Beevers said.
‘Slow down, or we’ll lose the others.’
Beevers whirled about to await Tina and Conor, who were about thirty feet behind. Conor looked up and smiled at them.
Beevers tilted his head toward Michael and half-whispered, ‘Didn’t you ever get tired of baby-sitting those two guys?’ Then he yelled at Pumo, ‘Did you tip that shithead?’
Pumo kept a straight face. ‘A pittance.’
Poole said, ‘The cabdriver I got yesterday wanted to ask me how it felt to kill someone.’
‘“How does it feel to kill someone?”’ Beevers said in a mocking, high-pitched voice. ‘I can’t stand that question. Let them kill somebody, if they really want to find out.’ He felt better already. The other two came up to them. ‘Well, we know we’re a unit anyway, don’t we?’
‘We’re savage killers,’ Pumo said.
Conor asked, ‘Who the fuck is Vanna White?’ and Pumo cracked up.
By the time the four of them got within a hundred yards of the Memorial they were part of a crowd. The men and women streaming from the sidewalk across the grass might have been the same people Poole had seen the day before – vets wearing mismatched parts of uniforms, older men in VFW garrison caps, women Poole’s age gripping the hands of dazed-looking children. Harry Beevers’ chalk-striped lawyer’s suit made him look like a frustrated, rather superior tour guide.
‘What a bunch of losers we are, when you come down to it,’ Beevers spoke