some neighborhood traffic. I made the down payment.”
It was completely dark outside. The kerosene lantern gave off its soft warm glow. The Scotch bottle was getting low. The silence seemed thick and thoughtful.
“They came once more, and that time they weren’t polite. So now I’m doing to you what they did to me. I need a cover in Bonn, and you’ve been thoughtful enough to provide a perfect one.”
“What if I say no?”
Padillo looked at me cynically. “Been having a little trouble getting the necessary permits and licenses approved and issued?”
“A little.”
“You’d be surprised how easy it is if you have the right connections. But if you still insist on saying no, the odds are five hundred to one that you’ll never sell your first Martini.”
“It’s like that, huh?”
Padillo sighed. “Yes. It’s exactly like that.”
I took another drink and shrugged a shrug I did not feel. “O.K. It looks as if I have a partner.”
Padillo looked down at the floor. “I’m not sure I wanted you to say that, but then again I’m not sure I didn’t. You were in Burma, weren’t you?”
I said yes.
“Behind the lines?”
I nodded.
“There were some tough boys there.”
I nodded again. “I learned a little.”
“It might come in handy.”
“How?”
He grinned. “Tossing out the drunks on Saturday night.” He got up and walked over to the typewriter, picked up the certified check and handed it to me again. “Let’s go over to the club and spend some of this on getting stoned. They won’t like it, of course, but there’s not a hell of a lot they can do about it.”
“Should I ask who ‘they’ are?”
“No. Just remember you’re the cloak and I’m the dagger.”
“I think I can keep that straight.”
Padillo said, “Let’s get that drink.”
We got drunk that night, but before we entered the club’s bar Padillo picked up a phone and made a call. All he said was “It’s all right.” Then he cradled the phone and looked at me thoughtfully. “You poor bastard,” he said. “I don’t think you really deserve it.”
CHAPTER 3
During the next decade we prospered, adding such symbols of success as a touch of gray at the temples, a series of fast expensive cars, another series of fast expensive young ladies, bench-made shoes, London suits and jackets, and a comfortable inch or so around the waists.
There were also those certain days when I would drop down to the place around ten in the morning to find Padillo already sitting at the bar, a quart of dimple-bottle in front of him, staring into the mirror.
All he ever said was “I got one.”
All I ever asked was “How long?” He would say two weeks or ten days or a month and I would say: “Right.” It was very clipped, very British, just like Basil Rathbone and David Niven in
We had made a good business team after Padillo taught me the fundamentals of saloon-keeping. He was an excellent host, and his ease with languages made the place a favorite with the embassy staffs in Bonn, including the Russians, who sometimes came by in twos and threes. I ran the business end, and our accounts at Deutsche Bank in Bad Godesberg grew pleasantly fat.
To compensate for Padillo’s “business trips” I occasionally flew to London and the States, presumably in search of new ideas. I came back loaded with catalogues of kitchen equipment, eye-catching contemporary furniture, and cocktail-time gimmicks. But we didn’t change the place. It just grew a little shabbier and a little more relaxed. The customers seemed to like it that way.
The trip to Berlin presumably had been on business. I had gone there to see about a bartender who could mix drinks American style. He was working at the Berlin Hilton, but when I told him he would have to live in Bonn, he refused. “Those Rhinelanders are jerks,” he said, and went on carving up Mr. Hilton’s oranges.
Herr Maas kept up his chatter as I drove through the narrow streets of Godesberg and parked in one of the two reserved spaces in front of Mac’s Place that Padillo had managed to wrangle from the city fathers. We got out and Herr Mass was still murmuring his thanks as I held the door for him. It was three-thirty in the afternoon, too early for the cocktail hour. Inside the place was as dim and dark as always, and Herr Maas blinked to adjust his eyes. At table number six in the far corner a man sat, a glass before him. Maas thanked me once more and headed toward him. I moved to the bar where Padillo stood watching Karl, the bartender, polish some glasses that didn’t need polishing.
“How was Berlin?”
