Twilight at Mac's Place

by Ross Thomas

  McCorkle leaned toward his daughter. “Erika, may I say something?” he asked in a gentle voice.

  She nodded.

  “This is the silliest goddamn conversation we’ve ever had.”

  It was as if he had struck her. First came the surprise, then the hurt and finally the anger. “You guys can’t even remember what it was like being thirteen.”

  “Thank God,” McCorkle said.

  “It hurt.”

  “Everybody hurts at thirteen,” Padillo said. “They hurt so much they later write books about it. The same book. Over and over. But you’re a long way from thirteen.”

  “And you’re suddenly more—” She stopped and began again. “I’m sorry. I guess the shock brought on the silly talk. Poor Isabelle. When I was thirteen she was everything I wanted to be and now that she’s dead I just can’t accept it.”

  “You and Haynes talked about her?”

  Erika nodded. “He told me how they used to go skinny-dipping when they were six or seven, around in there, and I told him how I’d daydreamed about her drowning in the Anacostia but he said there wasn’t much chance of that because she was a damn fine swimmer and—aw, hell, Pop, can we go home now?”

  “What a great idea,” McCorkle said.

  Chapter 12

  It was the first time the Burma analyst, Gilbert Undean, had been to the house of the courtly Hamilton Keyes. The house was in the exorbitantly priced Kalorama Triangle whose isosceles tip points south, just touching Dupont Circle, with legs formed by Connecticut and Massachusetts and a base that rests on a slice of Rock Creek Park to the north.

  Located on California Street between Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth, the house had been bought by Keyes’s rich wife, the former Muriel Lamphier, while he was in Tegucigalpa on agency business. Keyes had always hated surprises and was furious when told of the purchase upon his return. But because it was Muriel’s money and because, from the first, they had agreed it was impossible and unnecessary to live on his government salary, Keyes said only that the house looked “terribly impressive,” letting Muriel interpret that any way she liked.

  She chose to interpret it as a compliment of sorts, but seemed less interested in the house itself than in how cunningly she had outwitted a K Street lawyer, who had been trying to buy it for an unnamed South American—a Colombian, she suspected—but dropped out of the bidding after she topped his final offer with one of $535,000.

  Ten years later the same K Street lawyer, now representing a Japanese industrialist, offered the Keyeses four times their purchase price, which they turned down with what each confessed was a certain amount of smug satisfaction.

  Gilbert Undean, a widower, lived in Reston, Virginia, and seldom ventured into the District unless it was unavoidable. Although he had made no definite appointment to see Keyes, Undean still felt he was running late, especially after he took Connecticut Avenue out to California Street only to discover he couldn’t make a left turn—at least not there. After wandering around for fifteen minutes he finally got onto California and found the Keyeses’ house.

  It was of enormous size but austere design that made it resemble what a talented six-year-old might draw if given a ruler. The giant three-story Georgian house was built of red brick with white trim and dark gray shutters that matched the slate of its dormered roof.

  Softening the stern lines was a stand of fine old trees. Although it was now too dark to be certain, Undean would have been surprised if the trees weren’t elms. He was very surprised when Muriel Keyes herself answered the doorbell. Undean had been expecting a maid and hoping for a butler.

  She held out her hand, gave him a memorable smile and said, “Mr. Undean. How nice to see you again.”

  Her grip was firm, her hand was warm and she used the firm warm grip to guide him over the threshold and into a foyer with a marble floor, releasing him only after he was safely inside.

  “Ham’s in the library,” she said with another one of her remarkable smiles.

  “Not late, am I?” Undean asked, trying not to stare at the almost perfect face that featured a pair of soft warm gray eyes. The gray of her eyes complemented the natural frosting in her dark hair and almost matched the color of her cashmere sweater. It was the way she filled out the sweater that made Undean recall a tag of agency gossip, corridor stuff, that had Muriel Keyes, then Muriel Lamphier, taking a Hollywood screen test on a bet, but turning down a role they had offered her. Guessing that she was now forty or maybe even forty-two, Undean found himself almost basking in her soft warm glow of utter confidence, which, he suspected, came from old money, prudently invested.

  Muriel Keyes assured Undean that he wasn’t at all late and led him down the nicely proportioned entry hall and into a living room stuffed with antiques. She glanced back, smiling again, as they crossed the living room and entered a smaller room that had a wall of books, most of them still in their shiny dust jackets.

  “It’s Mr. Undean, Ham,” she said.

  Hamilton Keyes rose from a desk that wasn’t nearly so fine as the one in his office, thanked his wife with a smile, nodded at Undean and said, “You want something?”

  “To drink, he means,” Muriel Keyes said before Undean could misinterpret the question.

  “No, thanks.”

  “It’s been so nice to see you, Mr. Undean,” she said, smiled again and left.

  “I’m having a Scotch,” Keyes said, moving to a silver tray that held bottles and glasses. “Sure you won’t join me?”

  “I’m sure,” Undean said and took in the rest of the room while Keyes poured his drink. It was a long narrow room with the desk at one end. The desk faced away from French windows that overlooked a garden lit with low-wattage orange lamps. Against a wall was a brown leather couch that was too wide for two but not quite wide enough for three. A leather armchair matched the couch.

  There were also a burled walnut coffee table, some reading lamps on more walnut tables, a few pictures and a fine oriental rug of some kind that covered at least a third of the gleaming quarter-sawn oak floor. With his drink now in hand, Keyes used it to motion Undean to the odd-size couch and chose the armchair for himself.

  “How high’d you have to go?” Keyes asked, once they were seated.

  “The limit. I went to fifty and Haynes turned it down. He says somebody else had already offered him a hundred thousand that he also turned down. He says he knows where he can raise some offshore development money—”

  “He’s being offered foreign money?”

  “He just claims he knows where he can raise enough of it to produce a picture show based on Steady’s memoirs that he’d also direct, write and star in—meaning he’d play Steady. That’s about the only thing he said that made a lot of sense because he sure as hell looks like him.”

  “I believe I can safely classify that hundred-thousand-dollar offer as imaginary,” Keyes said.

  “Think he’s lying, do you?”

  “Don’t you?”

  Undean shrugged. “I’m just telling you what he said. His main point seemed to be that if you’re serious about buying Steady’s book and all the rights thereto, you’d better start the bidding with important money. He thought three quarters of a million would be just about important enough.”

  The amount didn’t seem to faze Keyes, who asked, “But he gave no hint of who else is bidding for it?”

  “Are we talking about that imaginary bidder again?”

  “All right, Gilbert,” Keyes said, making the words snap. “Perhaps there is a real bidder.”

  “He didn’t hint because I don’t think he knows.”

  Keyes leaned back in the armchair, looked up and seemed to inspect the off-white plaster ceiling carefully, as if for hairline cracks. “Let’s stipulate for the sake of discussion,” he said to the ceiling, “that the hundred-thousand offer is genuine. Next, let’s ask ourselves who’d profit most from securing all rights to an unvarnished account of the life of Steadfast Haynes, and whether this interested pa
rty would be foreign or domestic.”

  “I don’t know squat about domestic,” Undean said.

  “Foreign then,” said Keyes as he brought his eyes down from the ceiling. “After all, it is your bailiwick.”

  “If it’s foreign money,” Undean said, “then it’s a good bet it comes from somewhere that Steady operated. That means the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia or Central America. Of those, I’d put my money on the Middle East, with the oil Arabs heading the roster and Israel close behind.”

  “And after them?”

  “I’d eliminate Africa, except for Libya, who’s showing signs of wanting to climb down off the top of our shit list.”

  “It’s an oil Arab country anyway,” Keyes said, then asked, “You’re ruling out Central America?”

  “Not much shock value left down there. Anything Steady might’ve done to them would only get yawned at now. Except for maybe the drug cartels. One of them might like to have Steady’s book in reserve if there’s ever any plea bargaining to be done.”

  “Southeast Asia?”

  “Nobody. But move a little north and you’ve got a number one suspect. Japan.”

  “He never worked Japan.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Let’s say one of the countries I’ve mentioned wants something we don’t want ’em to have. So Country X buys Steady’s steamy memoirs for seven hundred and fifty thousand, maybe even a million, and locks it away. The time comes when Country X brings Steady’s stuff out of the safe, dusts it off and offers to trade it for our yes, no or even our maybe, which could be worth billions to it.”

  “What a peculiar mind you have, Gilbert.”

  “Too much imagination. It’s what kept me from going any higher than I did.”

  “What we’re talking about, of course, is blackmail.”

  “Diplomacy’s other name,” Undean said. “But you started paying blackmail the moment you agreed to bury Steady at Arlington. And with my usual hindsight, it’s pretty obvious that Mlle Gelinet was just making a test run.”

  “She’d be back for money the next time?”

  “And the time after that.”

  “But she, poor woman, is dead and now we must negotiate with Steady’s son.” A look of faint hope flickered across Keyes’s face. “Is it possible he might’ve killed her?”

  “Tinker Burns was with him. Maybe they both killed her.”

  “I really don’t like being patronized, Gilbert.”

  “Just softening you up for some more free advice you don’t want.”

  “Which is?”

  “Walk away from it.”

  “Only this afternoon you were urging me to buy.”

  “That was this afternoon. If you’d’ve picked up the phone and bought all rights for twenty or thirty thousand, fine. But now you’re probably dealing with folks who can call and raise every time. You really want to go dollar for dollar against the Saudis? Japan? The Medellín cartel?”

  “There are alternatives, I suppose.”

  “Black-bag it, you mean.”

  Keyes frowned. “Really, Gilbert.”

  “I don’t want to know. But there are a couple of things you should know about young Haynes.” Undean rose and stared down at the still seated Keyes. “He looks like Steady. He smiles like Steady. He even walks and talks like Steady. But the kid is six times as smart as Steady ever was. And that’s fairly goddamn bright, you gotta admit.”

  Hamilton Keyes rose, shaking his head in what seemed to be mild sorrow, much as if he had just been told of the death of a second cousin he had never met. “How unfortunate,” he said, paused and added, “I noticed that when you were reeling off that list of various nationalities who might like to lay hands on Steady’s manuscript, you steered away from one in particular.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Americans.”

  “Like I told you, I never did understand those fuckers,” said Gilbert Undean.

  Chapter 13

  They ate in the kitchen of the large old three-story house on Thirty-fifth Street Northwest. Haynes had a sandwich of thinly sliced cold roast pork on home-baked bread and a bowl of interesting navy bean soup that Lydia Mott said was her own improvement on the U.S. Senate’s recipe. Haynes drank beer with the meal—his first food since the lunch with Tinker Burns and Isabelle Gelinet nine and a half hours earlier.

  Howard Mott drank a bloody mary as he finished off the last slice of a lemon meringue pie. Lydia Mott ate nothing and lingered only long enough to accept Haynes’s gracious and obviously sincere compliments on the soup and sandwich.

  After she left, Mott swallowed the last bite of the pie, pushed his plate away and said, “You found Isabelle?”

  “Tinker found her and showed her to me when I got there.”

  “Could he have killed her?”

  “Maybe, if he knows how to drown somebody in a bathtub without getting all wet. I suppose he could’ve done it naked, then put his clothes back on. Providing she really was drowned.”

  “What do the cops think?”

  “Nothing they’re willing to share with me.”

  After Haynes finished his sandwich, Mott said, “If you’d like dessert, Lydia baked some cookies.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Then let’s go upstairs.”

  Insisting that Haynes take the deep armchair with the ottoman, Mott sat in an old oak swivel chair that matched his equally old rolltop desk whose pigeonholes and slots were stuffed with letters, handwritten reminders, business cards, newspaper clippings, invitations to past and future events and an impressive number of bills. Haynes suspected that Mott remembered where he could instantly locate each item.

  “Who was Isabelle’s closest living relative?” Mott asked.

  “Her mother. Madeleine Gelinet. She lives in Nice.”

  “Then she’ll probably get Steady’s farm in Berryville—or the proceeds from its sale.”

  “When?”

  “After probate.”

  “She could use the money now.”

  “It’s possible, of course, that Isabelle made out a will.”

  “Unmarried thirty-three-year-olds seldom make out wills,” Haynes said.

  “True.”

  “I was just wondering.”

  “About what?”

  “Whether it would be okay for me to go up to the farm and look around. Inside the house.”

  Mott seemed to take the question under advisement for several seconds before he nodded gravely and said, “Steady’s will specifies that you’re to have your pick of his memorabilia—keepsakes, souvenirs, snapshots, family Bible and so forth, although I can’t recall his mentioning a Bible.”

  “There isn’t one.”

  Mott cocked his head to the left and gave Haynes an amused look. “I somehow get the feeling you’re really not much interested in Steady’s mementos.”

  “You’re right. I’m not.”

  “What you’re really hoping to find is a true copy of his memoirs tucked away someplace.”

  “Or even in plain sight.”

  “And I also suspect you think Isabelle’s death is an indication, if not evidence, that such a copy might actually exist.”

  “That’s occurred to me.”

  “Me, too,” Mott said, nodded again, this time more to himself than to Haynes, swiveled around to face the desk, studied the pigeonholes for a moment, reached into one of them and took out a key that was attached by wire to a cardboard tag.

  He swiveled around to toss Haynes the key. “It unlocks the front door,” Mott said as he again turned back to his desk, picked up a ballpoint pen and began drawing something on a yellow legal pad. “I’ll draw you a map of how to find the place after you get to Berryville.”

  Haynes looked at the tag that was wired to the key with a paper clip. Hand lettering on the tag read, “S. Haynes farm, front door.” He decided to give Howard Mott an A-plus for efficiency.

  Mott rose, went over to Haynes and handed him the sheet of ruled yellow
paper. “Berryville has two traffic lights,” he said. “When you get to the second one, turn south, go exactly one mile, turn west, go exactly another mile and you’re there.”

  Haynes examined the map for a moment or two, looked up and said, “Maybe I’ll take along a guide.”

  “You don’t like my map?”

  “A guide could also be a witness.”

  “To what?”

  “To whatever might happen.”

  “You have a guide in mind?”

  “Erika McCorkle.”

  “Ah.”

  “What’s ‘ah’ mean?”

  “It means you’ll be taking along someone who knew Steady rather well, which might prove useful, and who is also attractive enough to make a pleasant drive even more pleasant.” He paused. “That’s what ‘ah’ means.”

  Haynes ignored the explanation and said, “I’d like to retain you as my attorney.”

  “I cost too much.”

  “This would be strictly on an ‘in case’ basis.”

  “In case you land in the shit.”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’d cost less but still too much. Go pillage some government agency for a few million, then give me a call.”

  “What kind of shape is Steady’s ’seventy-six Cadillac convertible in?”

  “You’re changing the subject again,” Mott said, his tone suddenly wary.

  “Am I?”

  “It’s in perfect shape,” Mott said. “Steady babied that car, even nurtured it.”

  “Where is it?”

  “I had a mechanic in Falls Church go pick it up. He’s the same one who’s serviced it for the past seven years.”

  “What’s it worth?”

  “It’s the last convertible Cadillac made—until they started making those fifty-thousand-dollar jobs in Italy nobody’ll buy. I guess Steady’s would bring at least ten or fifteen thousand. Maybe twenty.”

  “You ever ride in it?”

  “Twice, and salivated both times.”

  “It’s your retainer.”

  “You always strike at the most vulnerable spot?”