Missionary Stew by Ross Thomas Page B

chance we’re all willing to take, isn’t it?”
    Haere again looked down at his hands and then back up at Louise Veatch. “Sure it is,” he said.
    Morgan Citron came through the redwood gate carrying a large sturdy shopping bag that held a used Olivetti Lettera 32, a new Sony hand-held tape recorder with various attachments, and a box containing a $159 light-brown mohair suit that he had bought on sale at Henshey's department store in Santa Monica.
    Citron noticed the envelope lying on the floor when he entered Unit A. It was a square, off-white envelope, and when he picked it up he saw that it was made by the Crane people out of some very expensive paper. On its front his name had been written in black ink by someone with a broad-nibbed pen and a sound knowledge of the Palmer method. The carefully written message inside said: “Come to dinner tonight at 7 or I’ll throw myself in the ocean.” It was signed “Velveeta.”
    Citron was hanging up his new suit in his one closet when the knock came at the apartment's door. He went to the door and opened it. The man who stood there was slender, graceful, more pretty than handsome, and not much more than twenty-four.
    “My name is Dale Winder,” he said, “and I work for your mummy.”
    “Christ,” Citron said.
    “She wants to see you.”
    “No thanks.”
    “Don’t you love your mother, dear boy?”
    “No,” Citron said. “I don’t love anybody.”
    Dale Winder actually clapped his hands once in apparent joy. “Oh, you can quote it! I just somehow knew you could. May I come in?”
    “Sure,” Citron said. “Come in.”
    Winder glided into the apartment and looked around, hands on hips. He wore a white cashmere pullover, but no shirt, very tight jeans and Gucci loafers, but no socks. Citron had the feeling that Dale Winder thought anyone who would wear socks with his loafers was hopelessly out of it.
    “Wonders—just wonders could be done with this place with so little effort,” Winders said regretfully and even clucked a couple of times when he noticed the worn linoleum in front of the Pullman kitchen.
    “How’d you find me?” Citron said.
    “It wasn’t hard.”
    “What does she want?”
    “Just to say hello. After all, it's been a while, hasn’t it?”
    “Not long enough.”
    “But you will see her?”
    “She's not sick or anything?”
    “Oh, heavens, no. Fit as a fiddle. You know Gladys. Well?”
    Citron was not at all sure that he really did know Gladys, and even less sure that he wanted to. His mother had always been a remote figure, almost the Mysterious Stranger that parents were said to warn their children about. Two months earlier he would have refused to see her. A month earlier he would have hesitated. Now he shrugged and said, “Okay. Let's go.”
    “She’ll be so pleased. Shall we go in my car? I’ll drive you there and back. It's such a nice day and I’ve got the top down and I do so love Malibu, don’t you?”
    Citron didn’t bother to answer as he followed Winder out into the patio. At the gate, Winder turned and smiled. He had a good tan and nice white teeth and a dimpled cheek and a left eye that was slightly bluer than the right. “I’ve just been dying to ask you. Was he really a cannibal?”
    “Sure he was,” Citron said. “Missionary stew every day.”
    “Oh, my God, I can’t stand it!” Dale Winder said and shivered with delight.

CHAPTER 9
    The West Coast bureau of The American Investigator occupied half of the twelfth floor of a three-sided building that rose up out of the old Fox back lot in Century City, but it resembled no newspaper or magazine office Morgan Citron had ever seen.
    What surprised Citron, perhaps even saddened him, was certainly not the walnut paneling or the thick taupe carpet or the beautiful blond twin sisters who held down the antique partners’ desk in the reception area. Nor was he overly impressed by the wonderfully faked Miro and Chagall and Braque that hung on the reception