Twilight at Mac's Place

by Ross Thomas

  “Fuck off,” Erika McCorkle snapped as Haynes slammed the door. The Cutlass sped away. Haynes watched it go, wondering whether her farewell had been aimed at him or the honker.

  He turned to study the apartment building from the sidewalk. It was built of a brick that Haynes, for some reason, had always thought of as orphanage yellow. The only frill the architect had allowed was the white stone facing around the severe casement windows. A sign in front claimed that one-bedroom and studio apartments were available. Minimum maintenance, maximum rents, Haynes thought, and wondered whether Isabelle Gelinet, after moving in with his father at the Berryville farm, had kept her apartment as a bolthole.

  After he reached the building entrance with its inch-thick glass door, Haynes noticed the intercom system to the left that featured the usual tiny speakerphone and the usual row of black buttons. He ran a finger down the buttons until it came to the inked-in name of I. Gelinet. He pushed the button and waited for the speaker to ask who he was. Instead, the buzzer sounded, unlocking the glass door.

  Haynes made no move toward the door until the buzzer stopped. He then reached over to give the metal handle a tug. The door was locked. Haynes turned back to the intercom and again pushed the I. Gelinet button. Again, the speaker failed to ask his name or business. But when the unlocking buzzer sounded this time, Haynes went quickly through the glass door and into the lobby.

  Unless four newspaper vending machines and rows of stainless-steel mailboxes counted, there was no furniture in the lobby. To the right of the mailboxes was a narrow reception cubicle with an almost chest-high counter that was guarded by a steel mesh screen. Safely behind the steel mesh was a three-sided brass stick with raised letters that read, MANAGER. But no manager was in sight.

  Haynes crossed to the four newspaper vending machines that offered the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Washington Times and USA Today. Haynes bought a copy of the New York Times and rang for the elevator.

  When he got out on the fourth floor, the news section of the Times was rolled into a tight cylinder that was one foot long and two inches thick.

  Haynes went slowly down the corridor until he came to apartment 409. Standing well to the right of the door, he knocked on it with his left hand. When nothing happened, he knocked again. When there was still no response, he used his left hand to try the doorknob. It turned.

  Haynes pushed the door open and found no lights on in the apartment. He took one slow step inside and was turning back to flick on the light switch when an arm wrapped itself around his neck in what he immediately diagnosed as an interesting variation on the chokehold he had been taught at the Los Angeles Police Academy. He also had been taught how to break it.

  Haynes stamped down hard with his right heel, drove back hard with his left elbow and connected both times. Behind him somebody’s breath exploded. The chokehold loosened just enough for Haynes to tear himself away, whirl and thrust his pointless paper spear up as hard as possible, hoping for an eye.

  But the light from the still open corridor door gave him a glimpse of his would-be strangler and made him deflect the thrust just enough to miss the left eye and smash the paper spear into Tinker Burns’s nose. The resulting flow of blood was immediate and, Haynes felt, most gratifying.

  “For Chrissake, Granny,” said a snarling, bleeding Burns. “How the fuck’d I know it was you?”

  Leaning forward to let the blood drip onto the carpet instead of his expensive gray suit, Burns plucked the silk display handkerchief from his outside breast pocket and applied it to his nose.

  “Where’s the kitchen?” Haynes said. “You might as well go bleed in the sink.”

  “Over there. One of those Pullman things.”

  The only light in the apartment came from the open corridor door. Haynes switched on a lamp, closed the door and steered Burns to the stainless-steel kitchen unit. Burns bent over the small sink, turned on the cold water, soaked his handkerchief and reapplied it to his nose. “I don’t bleed long,” he announced.

  “Where’s Isabelle?” Haynes said.

  “For Chrissake, give me a second, will you?”

  Burns stood up straight, threw his head back, stared at the ceiling for nearly half a minute, brought his head down, gently blew his nose into the wet handkerchief and inspected the results with obvious satisfaction.

  Back at the sink again, Burns carefully rinsed out his bloody handkerchief, wrung it nearly dry, folded it carefully and tucked it away in a hip pocket. He then switched on the garbage disposal unit and let it and the cold water run for another thirty seconds.

  It was only then that Tinker Burns turned to Haynes and said, “What’d you use?”

  Haynes raised the New York Times, still in its semi-blunt-instrument form.

  “Shit, I taught you that.”

  “I believe you did.”

  “Cute,” Burns said, patted his pockets, found his cigarettes and lit one. “Come on.”

  As they crossed the studio apartment, heading toward a closed door, Haynes took note of the beige couch that probably folded out into a bed; the blond desk that held a personal computer; the round Formica-topped breakfast table just large enough for two; the small TV set and its attendant VCR; and a pair of old Air France posters that gave the otherwise monochromatic room its only touch of color.

  Burns opened the door of what turned out to be the bathroom and switched on a light. Haynes followed him in. A green plastic shower curtain decorated with yellow daisies concealed the bathtub. Burns studied Haynes briefly, reached out, grasped the shower curtain and quickly pulled it back.

  Isabelle Gelinet lay on her left side in the white tub. She was naked and her wrists were bound behind her with coat-hanger wire. Another coat hanger had been used to bind her ankles. Her left cheek rested on the bottom of the tub that was filled with water up to its overrun drain. Haynes knew Isabelle Gelinet was dead but wasn’t at all sure she had drowned.

  Chapter 9

  The forty-one-year-old homicide detective-sergeant from the Metropolitan Police Department was pretending he couldn’t keep all the players straight. It was a useful stratagem that Haynes himself had sometimes used and he thought Detective-Sergeant Darius Pouncy was carrying it off nicely.

  Pouncy was also carrying ten or fifteen more pounds than he needed on a six-foot-even frame that was clothed in a salt-and-pepper tweed suit, white shirt and quiet tie. On his dark brown face he wore a look of almost utter detachment. It was the look of a man who asks questions for a living and expects nothing in return but lies and evasions. Haynes had known Los Angeles detectives who had perfected that same look but couldn’t recall any who’d worn salt-and-pepper tweed suits.

  Pouncy had walked Haynes down to the end of the corridor to question him while another detective questioned Tinker Burns in the dead Isabelle Gelinet’s apartment. Pouncy stood with his back to the narrow casement window, letting what little light there was fall on Haynes’s face.

  Looking up suddenly from notes he’d written on a small spiral pad, Pouncy said, “Granville Haynes. What do your friends call you? Granny?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “You say you all went to your dad’s funeral around noon today. You, Burns and Gelinet.”

  “It wasn’t really a funeral. It was the interment.”

  “Burial.”

  “Yes.”

  “You all the only ones there?”

  “There were six soldiers who fired three volleys over the grave, a bugler and a color sergeant. I think they call them color sergeants.”

  “But you all were the only mourners?”

  “There was also a man from the CIA. A Mr. Undean.”

  “First name?”

  “Gilbert.”

  Pouncy wrote the name down and said, “But that’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Your dad with the CIA?”

  “You’ll have to ask them.”

  “But he’d served in some branch of the service?”


  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Then how come they buried him in Arlington?”

  “Miss Gelinet arranged it.”

  “How?”

  “You’ll have to ask the people at Arlington.”

  “How long’d you known her?”

  “As long as I can remember.”

  “And Burns?”

  “How long’ve I known him or how long has he known her?”

  “Both.”

  “I can’t remember when I didn’t know Tinker Burns and I’m sure he knew Miss Gelinet all her life.”

  “Burns a good friend of your dad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was Gelinet sleeping with him?”

  “Who? Burns?”

  “Your dad.”

  “Two or three years ago she moved out to his farm near Berryville to help him write his autobiography. I don’t know whether she was sleeping with him. I didn’t ask; she didn’t say.”

  “So after the funeral or whatever, the three of you go to lunch at, uh, Mac’s Place. Then you leave for an appointment with your dad’s lawyer. When you get back to Mac’s Place, Gelinet’s gone but Burns is still there. That right, Granny?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I talked with Mr. McCorkle in his office.”

  “The owner?”

  “One of them.”

  “When you came out of his office was Burns still in the restaurant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’d you go then, Granny?”

  “Mr. McCorkle’s daughter gave me a ride here but on the way we stopped for coffee.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Erika McCorkle.”

  “Where’d you have the coffee?”

  “At the Odeon near Connecticut and R.”

  “How long you in there?”

  “Fifteen, twenty minutes.”

  “And she dropped you off here?”

  “Yes.”

  “How’d you get in?”

  “I rang her apartment and somebody buzzed the front door, but didn’t ask who I was. So I didn’t go in.”

  “Made you suspicious, huh?”

  “I didn’t think Isabelle would buzz somebody in without knowing who it was. I rang again and the same thing happened. But this time I went in.”

  “And did what?”

  “Bought a New York Times.”

  “Okay, Granny. Now you’re in the lobby and you’ve got yourself something to read on the way up in the elevator. You get to the fourth floor, go down the hall and knock on Gelinet’s door. Then what?”

  “There wasn’t any answer so I tried the door. It was unlocked and I went in.”

  “Can we get to the blood on the carpet now?”

  “Sure. Mr. Burns grabbed me from behind the moment I came through the door. I broke away, turned and whacked him on the nose before we recognized each other.”

  “Where’d you learn to roll a paper up all nice and tight like that?”

  Haynes shrugged. “High school maybe.”

  “They teach it in arts and crafts? Never mind. So when you went up there with the Times all rolled up nice and tight, who were you expecting to hit?”

  “Nobody. It was just in case.”

  “Just in case of what, Granny?”

  “In case I might have to defend myself.”

  “Because nobody asked who you were over the intercom?”

  “Right.”

  “So you and Burns had a little tussle and you gave him a bloody nose.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what?”

  “When his nose stopped bleeding we went into the bathroom and he showed me Miss Gelinet’s body.”

  “Then?”

  “Then we called the police.”

  “What’s Burns do for a living?”

  “He sells weapons.”

  “Where?”

  “Paris.”

  “What’d he do before he did that?”

  “He was a professional soldier.”

  “In whose army?”

  “The American Army and after that the French Foreign Legion. There may have been other armies after the Legion, but you’ll have to ask him.”

  “He an American citizen?”

  “French.”

  “But he used to be American?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re an actor, that right, Granny?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what’d you do before you got to be an actor?”

  “I was a homicide detective.”

  The detachment left Detective-Sergeant Pouncy’s face, shoved aside by sudden anger. “No call for smartass stuff. No call for that at all.”

  “I was with the LAPD for almost ten years, seven of them in homicide.”

  “You gotta know I’m gonna check it out.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “So how come you didn’t lemme know right away from the start?”

  “Because if I’d found some guy in a dead woman’s apartment who right away wants me to know he’s an ex-D.C. homicide cop, I probably wouldn’t’ve let him loose till around midnight. If then.”

  “Figure he’s dirty, huh?”

  “It’d make me wonder.”

  “You really an actor?”

  Haynes nodded.

  “Been in anything I might’ve seen?”

  “You watch TV?”

  “Not unless she makes me.”

  “I was in a Wiseguy, a Jake and the Fatman, and I had two speaking roles in a couple of Simon and Simon s.”

  “That the one with the black cop called ‘Downtown Brown’?”

  “Yes.”

  “You ever know a real cop that’d tell a private one what year it was?”

  “Never.”

  “Then how come they’re always such asshole buddies on TV?”

  “Because the private cop has to have a legitimate connection to law and order.”

  “Who says?”

  “Hollywood ethics.”

  “What the fuck’s Hollywood ethics?”

  “Nobody knows,” said Granville Haynes.

  Chapter 10

  It wasn’t until after he had used the dead Isabelle Gelinet’s telephone to call the Los Angeles Police Department and speak to the irrepressible Sergeant Virgil Stroud in robbery and homicide that Detective-Sergeant Darius Pouncy was nearly convinced that Haynes and even Tinker Burns were probably what they claimed to be.

  After an exchange of the usual amenities and the usual information about the weather (a high of seventy-two degrees and fair in Los Angeles; down to forty-one degrees and looking like rain or snow in Washington), Pouncy asked, “You ever have a real slick article out there in homicide by the name of Granville Haynes?”

  “Haynes…Haynes,” said Sergeant Stroud. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Claims he used to work for you people.”

  “And you need his home phone number, right?”

  “What the fuck I want with his phone number?”

  There was a brief silence until Stroud said, “Oh. You mean Granny Haynes. Sure. He used to work here. What’s he up to?”

  “Up to his ass in a homicide investigation, is what.”

  “Who bought it—somebody rich?”

  “Not hardly.”

  “Reason I asked is because Granny’s the one we liked to send when rich folks bought it. Real nice manners. Neat dresser. Spoke French, Italian and fair Spanish. Made some damn good cases, too. You’re lucky you—”

  Pouncy broke it off. “Hey. We’re not looking to hire him. We just wanta check him out. Claims he used to be a homicide cop but now he’s an actor.”

  “Ever see a low-budget slasher flick called Thirteen Hangingtree Lane?” Stroud asked. “Came out two, three years back and Granny goes down into the basement of this big old house. The one in Hangingtree Lane. And there’s this fat sack of slime down there with an ax. Now, this is Granny’s first feature speaking role. So just b
efore this guy with a face like a four-cheese pizza takes Granny’s head off with the ax, Granny gets to say, ‘Listen! Please! I’m here to help you!’ And then his head goes flying off and they cut to the corner of the basement and there’s Granny’s head, looking surprised as hell.”

  “Guess I missed it,” Pouncy said. “How much you figure he got paid for doing all that?”

  “Probably SAG minimum. Maybe four hundred bucks.”

  “What’s SAG?”

  “Screen Actors Guild.”

  “He was a cop then?”

  “Sure.”

  “Out there you let cops be actors?”

  “Lemme ask you something,” Stroud said. “If you’ve gotta moonlight, which’d you rather be—an actor or a liquor store security guard in some low-rent neighborhood?” Without waiting for an answer, Sergeant Stroud chuckled his good-bye and broke the connection.

  The driver of Tinker Burns’s hired limousine had chosen Park Road as the best route to Sixteenth Street. It was nearly 8 P.M. and they were somewhere in darkest Rock Creek Park when Burns ended the long silence in the backseat. “I’ll take care of Isabelle’s cremation and funeral and everything.”

  “They’ll have to do the autopsy first,” Haynes said.

  “I mean after that.”

  “Will the cops call Madeleine?” Haynes asked. Madeleine was Madeleine Gelinet, mother of the dead Isabelle and former mistress of Tinker Burns.

  “You think Sergeant Pouncy speaks French?”

  “Maybe Madeleine’s learned English.”

  “Never,” Burns said. “I figured I’d go back to the hotel, have a couple of drinks and then call her.”

  “Does she know about Steady?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You can tell her about him, too.”

  Burns shifted uneasily in the seat, not quite squirming. “Maybe you’d rather call her?” he asked without hope.

  “No thanks,” Haynes said. “She still in Nice?”

  “Where else? She’ll never part with that house.”

  There was another silence that lasted until they turned south down Sixteenth Street. It was then that Burns asked, “Who d’you think killed her?”