Backup Men Read Online Free PDF Page A

wife.”
    “What have you got, a police teletype in your bedroom?”
    “Just a phone.”
    Padillo shrugged and turned back toward the living room. “Let’s get it over with,” he said.
    I motioned Burmser to my chair where they had found Walter Gothar dead and he lowered himself into it without any obvious discomfort. I toyed with the idea of telling him who had sat in it last, but decided not to. It probably wouldn’t have bothered him; he might even have enjoyed it.
    “What happened to Gothar?” Burmser asked Padillo.
    “He got himself killed.”
    “Why here?”
    “Maybe because of its convenient in-town location.”
    “We knew the twins were around. We know that they saw you. We want to know why.”
    “Ask Wanda.”
    “I don’t want to have to put somebody on you, Padillo.”
    “I won’t mind as long as he’s got a cheery manner and doesn’t try to run up a tab.”
    I rose. “You want some coffee?” I said to Burmser.
    He looked at his watch. “It’s past two o’clock.”
    “I didn’t ask what time it was.”
    “No, thanks.”
    I made two cups of instant coffee and brought them into the living room, handing one to Padillo who claimed that it never kept him awake either. Burmser watched us drink it, not trying to hide his disapproval.
    “I realize that you’re no longer with us, Padillo.”
    “I never was. I was an indentured servant, if anything.”
    “You got paid.”
    “Not enough. Nobody’s ever paid enough for what you wanted.”
    “You could have said no.”
    “I can now; I couldn’t then. I tried, remember? How many times did I try to say no, a dozen? And each time until the last one you found a new pressure point that made me say yes and pack my bag and catch the next plane heading east for some place like Breslau with the odds eight to five and rising that I wouldn’t make it back.”
    “Well, you’re out of it for good now.”
    “Sure.”
    “All I’m after is information.”
    “I run a saloon, not an inquiry service.”
    “The twins wanted something. What?”
    Padillo rose, moved over to the window, pulled back the curtain slightly, and looked out. If he’d craned his neck a little, he could have seen the Washington Monument and beyond that, the Potomac. I don’t think he saw anything.
    “A backup man,” he said after several moments.
    “You?”
    “Me.”
    “Why you? I don’t mean that like it sounds.”
    “They thought I owed their brother something.”
    “Paul? He’s dead.”
    Padillo turned from the window. Burmser watched him carefully, as if waiting for him to go on with a particularly fascinating tale. When Padillo said nothing, but instead wandered over to look at a fairly good Irish seascape, Burmser cleared his throat.
    “What were they on?” he said, trying to make his question casual, and almost bringing it off.
    “A protection job.”
    “Who?”
    “They didn’t say. Somebody important enough to be able to afford them.”
    “Why a backup man?”
    Padillo turned from his inspection of the painting and smiled at Burmser for the first time. “Franz Kragstein,” he said, as if he enjoyed saying the name. “You remember Franz.”
    Burmser seemed to relax. He sank back into the chair that Walter Gothar had been strangled in and crossed his legs and produced a cigarette and lit it with a chrome lighter. Padillo wandered over to another painting, a turn-of-the-century portrait that I’d paid too little for a long time ago.
    “Kragstein shouldn’t have bothered them much,” Burmser said.
    Padillo cocked his head, as if trying to make up his mind about the portrait. “This guy really had it, didn’t he?” he said and, not expecting an answer, told Burmser, “It wasn’t Kragstein who bothered them. It was his new partner. Or maybe associate.”
    “Who?”
    “Amos Gitner,” Padillo said and turned to watch the show.
    It was worth it. Burmser let his jaw drop and then stubbed out his cigarette as if he were giving them up forever. When he