Missionary Stew (6 page)

“Would you like me to say a few words?” the man with the accent said.

“Sure,” Haere said. “If you want to.”

The man with the accent reached down, picked up a clod or two of red clay, and tossed the earth down on the casket.

“I knew this comrade,” said the man with the accent. “He was steadfast in the pursuit of justice all his life.”

The man from Sylacauga snorted in disgust, turned, and walked away. Draper Haere never saw either man again.

At virtually the same time that Draper Haere and his bleak thoughts were passing over the Grand Canyon on their way to Los Angeles, Morgan Citron was parking his 1969 Toyota sedan on the edge of the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.

From the highway, Craigie Grey's apartment building didn’t look like six million dollars to Citron. Or five million. Or even four. It was only two stories in height and a bare fifty feet in width. Its architecture
was mineshaft modern, and it was protected from Valley marauders by a seven-foot-high redwood fence that had a locked gate. Citron tried the key Craigie Grey had given him in the gate's lock and was mildly surprised to find that it worked.

He went through the gate and into a small bricked patio. The bricks were used and divided into squared-off sections by old railroad ties. The patio also boasted a small green jungle of potted succulents and ferns illuminated by an outside floodlight that was mostly focused on the gate. From the light Citron could determine that the apartment building was constructed of redwood and shingle, which would burn quite merrily when one of the periodic fires swept down from the Santa Monica mountains and hopped the highway. If the place was really worth upward of four million dollars, Citron decided it must be because of the sound caused by the bang and crash of a heavy surf, which was so loud he could scarcely hear the highway traffic.

The grungy downstairs back apartment seemed to be Unit A. Using the same key he had used on the gate, Citron unlocked the apartment door and went in. He felt for the light switch, turned it on, and found himself in a one-room studio with a large single window overlooking the patio. The furnishings were sparse: a phone, a couch that he assumed pulled out into a bed, a round Formica-topped table with four chairs made out of bent iron and molded plastic, a shabby armchair that seemed to be of the reclining variety, and an old seventeen-inch black-and-white General Electric television set. The floor was covered with linoleum of the speckled-white-and-gold kind. It was almost worn through in the space in front of the Pullman kitchen. On the walls there was nothing. Not even a calendar.

It took Citron only two trips out to the Toyota to bring in everything he owned. As he was storing away the last of his three aluminum cooking pots, a woman's voice said from the still-open door, “Can you fix a running toilet?”

Without turning, Citron said, “No.”

“What about a broken heart?”

“Not that either,” he said and turned.

His first impression was that although she was not very old, she was not nearly as young as she looked, which would have made her around nineteen, possibly twenty. Twenty-one at most. Somehow Citron knew she was at least thirty. It might have been the melancholy that peered out through her eyes, which were large and almost the color of woodsmoke. She had a beach dweller's careless sun-streaked hair and an oval face with a rather interesting nose and a wide mouth set above a quite small chin that nevertheless looked defiant—or perhaps only stubborn. She was effortlessly pretty and with a little artful makeup might even have been beautiful in a vulnerable sort of way.

“I’m in Apartment E—in front,” she said. “My name's Keats. Velveeta Keats.”

“Velveeta.”

“Sort of tips you off, doesn’t it? I mean, about my family. You’re wondering what kind of folks would name their youngest daughter Velveeta.”

“Am I?”

“Sure. The answer is: my kind of folks. The Keatses. The Florida Keatses. Or to pinpoint it: the Miami Keatses. My family was very big in the drug trade down there in the sixties and seventies.”

“But no more,” Citron said.

“They cashed out and went into T-bills. At least, that's what they were in a year or so ago. They may be in municipal bonds by now. You ever notice how fast things move nowadays? The Keatses went from dirt-poor to hog-rich to banker-stuffy in one generation. But when I was born back in ‘fifty-two they named me Velveeta because back then they thought it sounded pretty and tasted good.”

“They still like Velveeta?”

“The name?”

“The cheese.”

“They don’t like either one anymore. Mama calls me Vee now and they switched to Brie. Mama puts it on crackers with slivered almonds and sticks it in the microwave for a few seconds. If you’re wondering what I’m doing out here, I’m a remittance woman. Are you the new super?”

“Caretaker really.”

“What's your name?”

Citron told her.

“That's nice. French, isn’t it?”

“French.”

“Well, I’ve got this running toilet.”

“Jiggle it.”

“The handle?”

“Right.”

“I did that.”

“Try taking the top off. There's a round ball in there that floats. Bend the rod that holds the ball. Bend it down. That sometimes works.”

“I did that, too.”

“Have you got a radio?”

“Sure.”

“Well, put the radio in the bathroom and turn it on. If you play it loudly enough, you won’t hear the toilet.”

She came farther into the apartment and looked around curiously. “Mind if I ask you a personal question?”

“Not at all.” He gestured toward the recliner, but Velveeta Keats chose instead one of the bent-iron-and-plastic chairs. Citron took a half gallon of Gallo red out of one of the two cardboard cartons he had carried in from the Toyota and poured wine into a pair of mismatched Kraft cheese glasses. He handed one of them to Velveeta Keats and then sat down opposite her at the table.

She examined her glass. “I remember these. Pimento cheese used
to come in them. The Keatses always drank out of these and jelly glasses. Back when we were poor. Are you poor?”

“Extremely,” Citron said.

“What’d you do—before you got poor?” she said. “That's my personal question.”

“I wrote and traveled.”

“You mean you were a travel writer? What's doing in Omaha? Beautiful, unspoiled Belize. Tierra del Fuego on twenty a day. Stuff like that?”

“I guess I was really more of a writing traveler.”

“What's the difference?”

“Well, I’d travel to someplace where not too many people go, live there awhile, maybe six months, sometimes longer, and then write about what it was like.”

“Is that what you’re doing here—in Malibu?”

Citron shook his head. “No.”

“What happened?”

“I think I ran out of places.”

“How long’ve you known the landlady?”

“Craigie Grey? Not long.”

“How long's not long?”

“About five hours.”

“You’re right. That's not long.”

Velveeta Keats finished her wine, put the glass down, and cupped her face in her palms. “I was married to a Cuban for three years.”

Citron waited for the rest of the tale. When there was nothing but silence for almost fifteen seconds, he said, “Well. A Cuban.”

“His family used to own all the milk in Cuba.”

“Before Castro.”

“Uh-huh. I don’t know how anyone could own all the milk in Cuba, but that's what he always said. When I married him, he was in the dope business. That's really why I married him, so the Keatses and
the Manerases could combine operations. It worked out okay. Sort of, I reckon. For a while. You ever been married?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“The usual reasons.”

“Name two.”

Citron thought for a moment. “Well, one died and the other one said no thanks.”

“Then you’re not gay?”

“I don’t think so.”

“The guy who was here before you, he was gay. I mean, he was gay gay. I’d be feeling low and he’d pop over with a plate of fudge and the latest gossip and have me in stitches in no time.” She examined Citron carefully. “Somehow, I don’t think you’re the type to pop over with a plate of fudge.”

“Who can tell?” Citron said.

Velveeta Keats rose. “Well, thanks for the wine and the plumbing advice.”

“You’re welcome.”

She moved to the still open door, stopped, and turned. “I’m a good cook,” she said.

Citron smiled. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Yes,” she said. “You do that.” She then turned and went through the door.

After Velveeta Keats had gone, Citron continued to sit at the table with his almost empty glass. He felt it stir then, almost uncoil, the first faint signs of the disease that had killed a billion or so cats. Curiosity. He began to wonder how it would all turn out and where he would be a year later. He was not accustomed to thinking of the future in terms of more than a day or a week—a month at most. The thought of a year was unsettling. It seemed like infinity. For a moment he thought of repacking his two cardboard cartons and returning to the comfort
ing hopelessness of the Cadillac People. Instead, he rose, rinsed out the two glasses, transformed the couch into a bed, brushed his teeth, and got between what seemed to be a pair of reasonably clean sheets. After fifteen minutes or so, the sound of the surf put him to sleep. He dreamed of Africa.

CHAPTER 6

For the past fourteen years home to Draper Haere had been a two-story red brick commercial building on Main Avenue at the northern fringe of Venice, almost in Ocean Park, a community that helps spell out the difference between Venice and Santa Monica.

It had been a cheap neighborhood back in 1968, a blowzy, end-off-the-line kind of place with dim prospects and depressed real estate prices, which was why Haere had moved there: It was all he could afford. He had paid $27,500 for the old building with ten percent down. Less than thirteen years later an Iranian offered him $425,000 for it, cash, thus convincing Haere that property, after all, was indeed theft.

In the seventies, speculators discovered Venice. The usual pattern followed. Out went the old retired Jews, the aging Beats, the students, the artists, the radicals, the dopers, the crazies, the pool cleaners, the professional tire changers, and in came the trendy young moneyed whom Haere often suspected of existing solely on cheese and chablis.

The Haere Building was forty feet wide and one hundred feet long, and ran from the sidewalk to the alley. The downstairs was vacant when he bought it, the last tenant having been a paint store that went broke. The upstairs was divided into small offices occupied at the time
by a bail bondsman, an answering service, a collection agency, a couple of jobbers, and a freelance bookkeeper, all of them on a month-to-month basis. When Haere hinted he might have to raise their rents by ten dollars a month, they promptly moved out.

With the last tenant gone, Haere had all the partitions knocked down. That gave him one enormous room, forty by a hundred, four thousand square feet. Since much of his life had been spent in ffur-nished rooms, including those in some extremely pricy hotels, he decided, perhaps perversely, to create the most enormous room of them all. The only enclosed space would be a rather indulgent bath.

Haere started at the rear on the alley and installed an elaborate kitchen. The kitchen lurched into the dining area, which jumped or fell into the living-work area, which more or less wandered into the sleeping area. He also built a great many bookcases, cabinets, and closets. Or had them built. It took four years to get everything just right, because Haere kept running out of money. When at last all was done, he found it magnificent. Nearly everyone else thought it monstrous.

Haere lived over the shop. Downstairs in the former paint store were the leased IBM computers that stored the names and the elaborate machinery that printed the God-ain’t-it-awful letters that were sent to the names pleading for money to rescue the Republic from ruin. Haere employed a staff of twenty-three direct-mail and computer specialists, whom he overpaid and who were fanatic in their loyalty. Ten years after he began the Haere Company, his employees had presented him with an oil portrait of himself, dressed in his usual three-piece blue pinstripe, standing with one hand resting formally on an ancient mimeograph machine. The small brass plate on the portrait's oak frame read:
Our Founder
. Haere hung the portrait in the company's small reception room.

Haere was a bachelor not only by choice, but also by misadventure. For nearly ten years now he had been in love with a married woman. It was a hopeless affair that he felt was doomed to grow even more so. There had, of course, been others along the way, at least
seven women that he had been fairly serious about. Possibly eight. One had died. Four had married. Two had fled, one to Rome, the other to Costa Rica, and one had simply disappeared—suddenly, mysteriously, absolutely. Late at night Haere often worried about her.

Finally, Haere did what all bachelors are said to do: he got a cat. It cost $10 at the local animal shelter and it came to live with him at about the same time that, in a last gesture of vanity, he had his teeth capped. That had cost $2,355 back in 1975, and for a while Haere spent considerable time marveling at them in the mirror.

The cat was an extremely garrulous castrated half-Siamese tom that Haere named Hubert. When Haere traveled, he boarded Hubert at the Musette Hotel for Cats in Santa Monica, where Hubert seemed to like it, possiblybecause he could talk endlessly to a captive audience.

On the night that Haere flew in from Denver, he took a taxi from the airport to the cat hotel, ransomed Hubert, and tipped the driver ten dollars to lug the cat carrier up the stairs, which was something Haere didn’t want to attempt with his bandaged hands. After freeing Hubert, Haere got into pajamas, robe, and slippers. Next year, he thought, a tasseled nightcap.

His wondrous refrigerator's automatic icemaker and cold-water dispenser enabled him to mix a Scotch and water without too much difficulty. He had just taken the second long swallow when the downstairs buzzer rang. Haere crossed to the intercom, pressed the button, and asked: “Who is it?”