baby,” he announced. “I’m going over to Colonel Lowell’s place for a couple of minutes. We’ll be back in a little while. And then we’re going to dinner.”
As he was closing the door, Hanni pushed the TALK and FRONT DOOR buttons on the intercom panel mounted on the wall and inquired, incredulously, “What did you say?”
Captain Portet did not respond, but instead walked to the Packard and got in.
I am almost certainly going to piss Lowell—probably his whole family—off, and/or cut off my own nose to spite my face— Hanni really loves that house—but I know myself well enough to know that if I don’t get this straight between us, it will get much worse. It’s better to settle it right here and now.
“I came down in a Learjet,” Lowell said. “A little less than two hours from wheels up.”
“I thought you said you just came from Argentina,” Portet replied.
“Buenos Aires, Miami; Miami, Washington; Washington, here. I am worn out and need a drink and shower badly,” Lowell said. “And in that order, I have just decided.”
“What were you doing in Argentina?” Portet asked, his curiosity overwhelming his intention to be polite but distant.
“I hope I succeeded in talking the Argentines out of blowing Che Guevara away,” Lowell said.
“I don’t think I understand that.”
“I shouldn’t have told you that much,” Lowell said. “Can you forget I said that?”
“Certainly,” Portet said.
“There’s an operation going on,” Lowell said. “If you’re willing to come to Washington, Colonel Felter will explain it all to you.”
“Why would he do that?”
“We need your help,” Lowell said. “That’s why I’m here. To ask for it.”
Lowell pulled up in front of 12 Surf Point Drive (aka House C). The lights were on, and as they got out of the car, the door was opened by a white-jacketed young man.
“Welcome home, Colonel,” he said. “How long will you be with us?”
“If I don’t leave tonight, I’ll be out of here before daylight,” Lowell said.
“I put things for breakfast in the refrigerator, Colonel.”
“You better come back tomorrow and freeze what you can, and get rid of the rest,” Lowell said. “And put the car back in the garage, too. I’ll leave it at the strip.”
“I saw that Air Force Lear come in. Was that you?”
“Yeah. And honest to God, this is business,” Lowell said.
“Yes, sir. Will there be anything else, Colonel?”
“That’ll do it. Thank you very much.”
“Good night, gentlemen,” the young man said, and walked to a golf cart and drove off.
“You didn’t tip him,” Portet said.
“No, we don’t tip here,” Lowell said. “Oh, God! JP, have you been trying to grease palms? I should have said something.”
“No problem,” Portet said. “But I didn’t know.”
And I thought that everybody’s refusal of a tip was another indication of Lowell’s family’s gratitude run amok.
“It’s a complicated system,” Lowell said as he walked to the bar. “I don’t really understand how it works; Helene Craig calls me once a year and tells me how much of a Christmas present I just made. Ask her to do the same for you until you learn the system.”
He pulled a bottle of a scotch Portet could not remember ever having seen before from an array behind the bar.
“I highly recommend this,” he said.
“Colonel, I don’t think we’ll be staying here, living here, at Ocean Reef,” Portet said.
"’Colonel’?” Lowell parroted. “There’s a certain icy I am pissed at you formality in that, Captain,” Lowell said. “You want to tell me what’s got your back up?”
He handed him a glass half full of scotch.
“If we ain’t buddies no more,” Lowell said, “fuck you, get your own ice.”
It was hard for Portet not to smile, but he managed not to.
“I thought I made it quite clear to Mr. Craig that his gratitude to Jacques for what happened at Stanleyville—”
“You’re stuck with that, JP, I’m afraid,” Lowell said. “My cousin’s only grandson, the apple of his eye, was in your Stanleyville apartment with a good chance of having really terrible things happen to him when Jack showed up and did his John Wayne routine. That happened. He has a reason to be grateful to Jack. We all do.”
“We don’t need a financial expression of that gratitude, Craig,” Portet said. “I made that point, I thought, to Porter Craig, but I apparently didn’t get through to him.”
“For example?”
“At first I thought I was being paranoid,” Portet said. “When I applied for a mortgage on the house, the banker told me I was stealing it. So I had it appraised. The price