The Sinister Pig - 15 (17 page)

Dashee was glowering at him.

[160] “I see you already have my route all planned. You took ole Cowboy for granted again.” Dashee shifted into his copy of Chee’s voice: “ ‘Just go on over to Second Mesa and get Cowboy. He’s easy. He’ll believe whatever you tell him.’ ”

“Ah, come on Cowboy. You know—”

“Just kidding,” Cowboy said. “Let’s go.”

“I owe you one,” Chee said.

“One?” Cowboy said. “You already owe me about six.”

Budge got Winsor’s Falcon 10 jet ready to fly and reassured himself that arrangements had been properly made to clear this journey into Mexico. Then he found a comfortable chair in the transient flights waiting room and sat trying to decide what to do. Progress on that was slow. Memories of Chrissy kept intruding.

The first time he’d met her, almost the first moment in fact, she had made him aware that she was not the usual type of young woman Winsor sent him to collect. He’d been following his standard limo driver pattern, arriving about fifteen minutes early, waiting about ten minutes, and then ringing the bell and announcing that he was early but available at her convenience. But this time Chrissy had spoken first.

“Oh, my,” she had said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m late. I’ll hurry. I’ll be right down.”

The young women Winsor had previously collected [162] had without any exceptions actually been late, had never apologized, had never hurried, and had never shown any interest in whether he minded waiting out in the frosty darkness. They were so far away on the upper side of the class barrier that limo drivers were invisible to them. They showed no more interest in who was driving the car than they would for the spare tire in the trunk. The first few times he’d done this chore, he had ventured a friendly welcome, or one of those “nice evening” remarks. The responses, if any, had been cool and terse, letting him know that it was pushy and intrusive of him to dare to speak to a debutante from whichever expensive and exclusive finishing school had finished them.

Chrissy had been different. She had hurried out of the apartment house entry and reached the car in such a rush that she’d had her hand on the door handle before he could get there to open it for her.

“Golly,” she said. “I’m sorry I’ve kept you waiting. My dad taught us that being late is really rude. It tells the other person you think you’re more important than they are.”

“Actually, I was a little early,” Budge had said. And when they were en route he ventured a “nice evening” remark. This time it had touched off a conversation. Chrissy actually introduced herself to him. And so it had gone. During the dozens of times he’d been her driver since that day, they’d become friends in a strange sort of way, answering one another’s biographical questions, exchanging opinions of current Washingtonian uproars and controversies, agreeing that this city was interesting but had more than its share of people way, way too driven [163] by greed and ambition. And gradually it became more and more personal.

“I guess I’m one of those greedy ones, too,” Chrissy had said one day. “I came here to try to get into law school at George Washington University, and I did, so now I’m in it, and making good grades, and I’m surrounded by lawyers. And by law students. And all they seem to think about is either getting money or getting power. And I’m not sure anymore I want to be one.”

“Yeah,” Budge had said. “I used to be a political activist. ‘Power to the People,’ you know. Or, as we used to shout over in Catalonia when I was a kid,
‘A la pared por los ricos’
—‘Firing squad for the rich folks.’ Dreamed of being the czar of the universe. I was going to reform everything, start with the soccer rules, work up to the United Nations, and then see what I could do with human nature.”

“But no more?” she asked. “Did you give up on all that?” Her voice sounded sad, but maybe that was just to play along with his joke.

“It was just a dream,” he said. “My family was always on the wrong side, from the fight against Franco and the fascists to running to South America and getting with the losing side down there.”

“Well, now you’re a success. You’re making a lot of money,” she said. “I know you’re not just getting paid to drive the limo. You’re sort of an aide to Mr. Winsor. I’ve heard him talking about you.”

“And what did he say?”

“Well, once I heard him tell Mr. Haret, the man who works with Congress for him, he told him that you were the only one he had he could absolutely count on. And on [164]the telephone once, he was telling someone that when things get out of control he turns it over to Budge, and he knows Budge will fix it.”

“Did he mention why he can depend on me?”

“No,” she said, then hesitated. “Unless he said you owed him a great big favor. Maybe that was it.”

“It was.”

“So what was the favor?”

“Let’s see,” Budge said. “How can I explain it. It gets very complicated. But I guess the bottom line is he keeps me from being deported, and that keeps me out of jail.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “How does he do that?”

He sighed. “Here’s where the complexity comes in. In Guatemala, and other places like that, the Central Intelligence Agency uses people like me, sort of off the record, and when things go wrong they get some of them out, somewhere safe, or maybe even into the United States. Arrange papers for them so they can get lost in the crowd. All quietly, no papers signed, nobody admitting anything. So if I started telling my story—not that it’s very interesting—to the newspapers, or if someone else did and some committee called me to testify about what happened down there, the CIA would swear they never heard of me, and nobody could prove otherwise.”

“Oh,” Chrissy said, sounding thoughtful. “But how does Mr. Winsor keep you from being deported?”

“By keeping his mouth shut,” Budge said.

Chrissy produced one of those “what do you mean by that” looks.

Budge considered how to explain. “Let’s say I was no longer a true and faithful servant and became more trouble than I was worth. Mr. Winsor is now keeping me from [165]being deported very simply. Just not tipping off the Immigration folks, or by refraining from telling one of his lawyer friends in the State Department that the people now running my former country have a warrant out for me under my former name. If he wanted me deported, he’d simply make a telephone call to the right person.”

Silence. Then she said: “Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so nosey.”

“No offense taken,” Budge said.

“I can’t believe you did anything very wrong.”

“Well, I guess you could say I haven’t been a great benefactor for society,” Budge said, and laughed.

“Don’t laugh at yourself. Anyway, you’re fine now. Good job, good prospects. I get the impression that Mr. Winsor will be putting you in charge of things. There’d be a lot more money with that.”

“The Beatles taught us about money. Remember? It won’t buy you love.”

Her response to that sounded slightly angry.

“You like to make fun of money,” she said. “I have to tell you I don’t. I bet you’ve never been poor or you wouldn’t talk like that. I bet you’ve never had to watch your mother trying to borrow money, or been embarrassed in school because of the way you dressed. Or your shoes. Or hearing the other girls telling about what they did during the summer, and all you could do was listen. Things like that.”

“No,” Budge said. “Never anything like that.”

“Well, I have,” she said. “You dream of having money. Like dreaming of paradise. Having money like those people I see when I’m with Rawley.”

All the anger was out of her voice now. It sounded dreamy.

[166] “Listening to them talking about the party in Tokyo. Or being on somebody’s yacht going up the Thames. Being introduced to the Queen. The view from somebody’s villa on the cliff in Sicily. The candlesticks. The silver.” She stopped, sighed. “Oh, well. Maybe someday.”

Winsor’s other young women had never talked like that. One sunny Saturday afternoon when he picked up Chrissy he’d been tempted to tell her about the very blond, very chic, very shapely girl he had delivered to the Winsor address two days earlier. Just make a casual remark about it. See how Chrissy would respond. To learn if she understood how she fit into Winsor’s scheme of things and knew what was happening to her. But he didn’t tell her. He told himself he didn’t tell her because it would have been cruel to tip her off if she didn’t know and insulting if she did. But the real reason he was silent was that he was afraid it would destroy this friendship. And he had come to treasure that.

Then the day came, about a month ago, just as he started the limo engine and was pulling away from the curb, when Chrissy clicked on the intercom and said:

“Budge. I think I’m pregnant.”

That surprised him. It shouldn’t have, perhaps. But it did. And he said nothing at all for a bit, and then he said, “Oh?”

“We’re going to get married. Rawley’s given me an engagement ring. It’s spectacular. I’d show it to you, but I can’t wear it yet. This is going to be secret until he can get his divorce finalized and the wedding arrangements made.”

And he’d said: “Well, Chrissy, I wish you a lot of happiness.” And he’d wondered why he hadn’t heard about [167] this impending divorce. From what he’d been hearing, Winsor was still solidly married to a very socially prominent woman named Margo Lodge Winsor. He’d driven her out to Reagan Airport about two months ago on a flight to their vacation home in the Antilles. He’d never been sent out to pick her up, and Winsor had talked a time or two about his plans for joining her there.

He had no idea what, if anything, to say to Chrissy about that, and a damper fell on their friendly chats for a couple of their trips. But then came that terrible day that forced him to make some decisions.

Budge was remembering that day now, just as Winsor arrived and stood looking down at him.

“Up and at ’em,” Winsor said. “Get moving. You’ve got the plane ready, I trust. Everything all set?”

“For where?” he said, not moving.

“For the old smelter in Sonora,” Winsor said. “Come on. You’re wasting my time.”

Budge looked at his boot tips, then up at Winsor. “OK,” he said. “Away we go.”

The flight from El Paso’s Biggs Field to the old smelter is a mere hundred and fifty or so air miles over a stretch of the emptiest segment of Chihuahua to the emptiest part of Sonora. Dry country, relatively flat, and the pilot’s role complicated only by the chance of encountering the helicopters and radio-controlled drone surveillance aircraft the Border Patrol uses to watch the bottom edge of New Mexico and Arizona.

Winsor sat behind him now, silent, reading papers in a folder. Budge identified the bumpy shape of Sierra Alto Azul Mountain, his navigating mark for the smelter, adjusted his controls, and looked at the desert below him.[168] Grim, dry, hungry, unhappy country, not intended for any life beyond javlina, cactus wrens, and reptiles. Too harsh and cruel for humans, and that returned his thoughts to the last time he’d seen Chrissy, the afternoon Winsor had summoned him into that luxurious office, asked him to sit down—a first for that—and offered him a cigar, which was another first.

“Budge,” he’d said, “I’ve been thinking of the things you’ve managed for me. Four years now, isn’t it, and you’ve never let me down.”

“Four years,” Budge said. “I guess that’s about right.”

“I’m going to give you a bonus,” Winsor said. He was smiling.

“A pay raise?”

“No. Better than that. Cash.” He opened a drawer, extracted a manila envelope, dropped it on the desktop.

“Well, thanks. That’s nice of you,” Budge said. The envelope looked rather thick, which meant probably quite a bit of money, which meant what Winsor now wanted him to do was probably either dangerous or something unusually nasty. The fact it was cash certainly meant Winsor was willing to give up the tax deduction he’d get by making it salary. Therefore, Winsor wanted to leave no way it could be tracked back to Winsor.

Winsor picked up the envelope and tossed it to Budge. He let it fall onto his lap.

“What have I done to deserve this?”

“I didn’t make a list,” Winsor said, smiling again. “But the first thing that comes to mind is that time we had the head shyster for Amareal Corporation over here. And I let you know that I really needed to get a look at what was on those papers he was carrying in his briefcase, you [169] remember that, and that night after you hauled the wino bastard back to his hotel, you came back with copies for me.”

Budge nodded, remembering. The man had been drunk, but not as drunk as he wanted to be. When Winsor had sent Budge a scrawled note, telling him what was needed, he had remembered an all-night Kinko’s copy center around the corner from a convenient bar. He’d suggested his passenger might like a nightcap, stopped at a bar, explained limo drivers have to stay with their vehicle, and, when his passenger was on the bar stool, extracted the folder from the case, hurried it into Kinko’s, got the copies done, got the refilled folder back into the briefcase, and talked his tipsy passenger out of the bar, back into the limo, and turned him over to the hotel doorman.