Twilight at Mac's Place

by Ross Thomas

  “Somebody,” Mott said, “is goddamned afraid of what Steady knew and of what he might’ve written. This same somebody is so afraid that he or she or even they were willing to kill Isabelle Gelinet, Gilbert Undean and Tinker Burns. Of these three, I think only Burns suspected he was in danger.” Mott stopped to stare at Haynes, then nodded to himself and said. “I also think Tinker may have left the cause of his suspicion to you.”

  “What d’you mean ‘left’?” Haynes said.

  Mott rose, went to his old rolltop desk and picked up a Federal Express envelope. “This arrived late this afternoon,” he said. “It’s from Tinker. It was sent yesterday morning around eleven—which means it had to go all the way down to the Federal Express hub in Memphis, then back up to Washington.”

  “Did he send it to you or to me?”

  “To me,” Mott said. “But inside the Fed Ex packet was a large manila envelope. Printed across it was a somewhat melodramatic message: ‘To Be Opened Only in the Event of My Death.’ And underneath that was Tinker’s signature. Well, since Tinker was indeed dead, I opened it. Inside was a small envelope addressed to you.”

  Mott went over to Haynes and handed him the smaller manila envelope. Haynes stared at the envelope. His name had been printed on it with a ballpoint pen. Down and a little to the right in big block letters was the one word PERSONAL, which had been underlined three times.

  Haynes ripped open the envelope and removed three sheets of paper of different size and weight. One was a sheet of guest stationery from the Madison Hotel. The others were a carbon copy of a two-page, single-spaced memorandum, dated the previous Saturday and written by Gilbert Undean. The intended recipient was “File.”

  “May I make a suggestion?” Mott said.

  “Sure.”

  “Read it to yourself first and then decide whether it’s necessary—or even wise—for us or anyone to know what it says.”

  “Okay,” Haynes agreed.

  He read the note from Tinker Burns first. Then he read Gilbert Undean’s memo to file. As Haynes read the memo, all expression left his face and it grew perfectly still except for his eyes, which danced from line to line. When he finished the memo, he looked up and Mott noticed that Haynes’s eyes were no longer dancing. They now looked as old and still as death and just as implacable.

  “I think you two should hear Tinker’s note to me,” Haynes said in a curiously formal tone as he looked first at Erika, then at Mott. Before either of them could reply, he began to read aloud:

  “ ‘Dear Granny: Here’s a carbon of a memo that Gilbert Undean wrote to his personal file and I found underneath his desk blotter out in Reston after I’d called the cops to tell them he was dead. I thought I could make a few bucks with it but since you’re reading this, I guess I made a mistake. The Big One. Ha. Ha. Anyway, do what you want to with it but play it smarter than I did and remember it’s a carbon and that somebody has got the original. If you need help, you can figure out from the memo who to ask. So long. Tinker.’ ”

  A long silence followed. Mott finally ended it by clearing his throat and saying, “I don’t think Erika and I should hear any more. In fact, we may’ve heard too much already.”

  “Okay,” Haynes said.

  “I want to ask one question,” she said.

  Haynes nodded.

  “When he said you’d know who to ask for help, who did he mean?”

  “Padillo,” Haynes said. “Who else?”

  Chapter 43

  It was easier to find the sender than an open service station after midnight. But Haynes finally found one far out on Georgia Avenue, almost to Silver Spring, where the old Cadillac made a hit with the two young black attendants and a gaggle of equally young kibitzers, who offered a steady stream of advice, if not assistance.

  Haynes pulled into the full-service bay and got out. He almost had to shout to make himself heard over the extra-loud boombox rap. After he asked one of the attendants to fill it up, check under the hood and make sure the tires were okay, Haynes began his search for the sender by running an exploratory palm beneath the fenders. When the attendant, who now had the hood up, asked in a near shout what he was looking for, Haynes shouted back, “Rattles.”

  He found the sender stuck up underneath the left rear fender. It was the ZC-II model, made in Singapore, and much favored by DEA agents—at least by the several Haynes had met in Los Angeles. Back behind the wheel of the Cadillac, he showed the transmitter to Erika, who examined it curiously. “This the stick-on magnet?” she said, touching its smooth, dark gray side.

  “Right.”

  “What’ll you do with it?”

  “Send it on its way.”

  “How?”

  “That cab in the self-service bay?”

  She looked and nodded.

  “Let’s go ask how much the fare is to Dulles. You do the asking.”

  They got out of the Cadillac and started toward the middle-aged cabdriver who was putting 87 octane into his two-year-old Chevrolet Caprice sedan. Erika went first. Haynes followed, using a white handkerchief to wipe fender grime from his hands.

  “Excuse me,” Erika said to the driver.

  He nodded at her, neither friendly nor unfriendly. Haynes dropped the handkerchief and knelt to retrieve it. The driver gave him a glance, then looked back at Erika.

  “I need to go to Dulles to meet someone coming in on a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt, and I was wondering how much the fare is?”

  Still kneeling, Haynes pressed the sender up against the taxi’s frame just as the driver said, “This time of night I can’t go out there for less’n sixty.”

  Haynes rose as Erika smiled ruefully and said, “That’s what I was afraid of. Sorry.”

  “So ’m I, lady.”

  She turned to Haynes. “Sixty.”

  “Jesus,” Haynes said.

  They went back to the Cadillac. Erika got in while Haynes handed a twenty to the attendant, who wanted to know the year of the Cadillac’s manufacture.

  “ ’Seventy-six,” said Haynes.

  “True slick,” said the attendant and handed Haynes his change.

  Looking frequently into his rearview mirror, Haynes turned either west or south every few blocks until he found himself on Nebraska Avenue Northwest, nearing Connecticut Avenue. He turned south on Connecticut and stayed on it. They rode in silence until they reached Calvert Street and were halfway across Taft Bridge. It was then that Erika spoke.

  “If you came this way because you’re thinking of dropping me off at Pop’s, forget it.”

  “You’ll be safer there.”

  “If I wanted safe, prince, I’d’ve taken one look at you and passed.”

  “You like getting shot at?”

  “No, but it’s a lot more interesting than looking for a job.” She paused. “You want to know what I really like?”

  “What?”

  “I like eating seventeen-dollar room-service cheeseburgers at the Willard and matching smarts with smooth numbers such as the elegant Mr. Hamilton Keyes and shrewd shitkickers like Sheriff Shipp-with-two-p’s, who’s probably twice as bright as most of the guys I ever met. I like checking into out-of-the-way motels and dining on Hershey bars and Ritz crackers. I like Lydia Mott’s full-belly policy and Howie Mott’s brains and Pop’s studied forbearance and Padillo’s panther walk. I like watching you switch from Mr. Manners to Hardcase Haynes of Homicide and back again. But most of all, I like us in bed.”

  She paused and added, “You just passed my house.”

  “I know.”

  “Are we turning around?”

  Haynes shook his head.

  “Where’re we going—Baltimore?”

  “To the Willard.”

  “What happened to Baltimore?”

  “To hell with Baltimore,” Haynes said.

  Haynes inserted the plastic card-key into the slot and opened the door to his room at the Willard. He stepped back out of habit to let Erika enter first, but changed his mind and he
ld out a cautionary right hand. He slipped the hand into the pocket of his topcoat and wrapped it around the butt of McCorkle’s revolver. Then he went in.

  There was one light on and it came from a lamp that illuminated the easy chair occupied by Hamilton Keyes, who rose gracefully and said, “I’d almost given you up.”

  “Sorry we’re late,” Haynes said.

  Keyes parried the thrust with a small polite smile and said, “Good evening, Miss McCorkle.”

  “I think evening’s long gone,” she said.

  Keyes nodded his agreement and turned back to Haynes. “I apologize for my intrusion, but something’s come up. If I could’ve reached anything other than Howard Mott’s answering machine, I wouldn’t have bothered you.”

  “Before you ask him what’s come up,” Erika said, “ask him how he got in.”

  “Hotel security let him in,” Haynes said. “After he gave them a brief lecture on how the nation trembles for my safety.”

  “I was rather convincing,” Keyes said as he sat back down. “And they were rather anxious not to have another dead body littering their hotel.”

  Haynes turned and went to the refrigerator. He opened it and went down on one knee to inventory its contents. “Drink, Mr. Keyes?”

  “Thank you, no.”

  “Erika?”

  “A beer would be good.”

  Haynes removed two Heinekens and poured them into a pair of glasses. He handed one to Erika, who was now seated in an easy chair and separated from Keyes by the lamp. Holding his own glass in his left hand, Haynes sat on the bed, facing Keyes. He slipped his right hand back down into the topcoat’s pocket and asked, “What came up?”

  Keyes tugged at the vest of his gray worsted suit that had a tiny herringbone weave. He wore a gold watch chain across the vest, but no Phi Beta Kappa key. Haynes assumed the key was lying forgotten in some top bureau drawer.

  After the vest was to his liking, Keyes said, “One might say the level of anxiety came up. Or rose. We’d like to advance the meeting to ten tomorrow morning instead of ten Wednesday morning.”

  “Who had the anxiety attack?”

  “My betters.”

  “What about the money?”

  “That’s been arranged.”

  “So everything remains the same—except the date?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Then it’s okay with me,” Haynes said. “But I may have to drive out to Mott’s and pound on his door to let him know about the new time.”

  “Perhaps you could call him early tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Haynes said.

  “Then I’ll disturb you no longer,” Keyes said, rose and picked up the navy-blue cashmere topcoat he had draped over the back of his chair. It was not quite a bow that he gave Erika. “Miss McCorkle.”

  “Mr. Keyes.”

  Keyes went to the door, opened it, turned once more and said, “Again, my apologies,” and was gone.

  There was a brief silence until Erika said, “So what d’you think, chief?”

  “He knows how to make an exit,” Haynes said, put his beer down on a table, picked up the bedside phone and tapped out a number.

  Herr Horst answered with his usual, “Reservations.”

  “This is Granville Haynes. Is Padillo still there?”

  “One moment, please.”

  After Padillo came on, Haynes said, “I have a problem.”

  “Can it be solved over the phone?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’d better get over here.”

  It took twenty minutes for Haynes, seated on the leather couch in the office at Mac’s Place, to tell Padillo about finding the true manuscript; target practice at the Bellevue Motel; the bugged Cadillac and the late night visit from Hamilton Keyes.

  Padillo responded with his eyes, using them to signal interest, approval, surprise or simply, “Get on with it.” He sat slumped low in the high-backed chair with his feet up on the partners desk, his shoes off and his hands locked behind his head. Haynes noticed that his socks were again argyle, but this time they offered shades of brown that ranged from chocolate to taupe.

  “You say you and Erika read it—Steady’s book?” Padillo said after Haynes stopped talking.

  Haynes nodded.

  “How was it?”

  “It goes very quickly, once your disbelief is hanging by the neck.”

  “Then Isabelle must’ve furnished the quick and Steady the embellishment.”

  “If the CIA wanted to,” Haynes said, “it could safely issue the thing as the world’s longest press release.”

  “They haven’t read it yet?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “But they’re still going to bid for it tomorrow, unread or not?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re going to take their money?”

  “Right again.”

  “Then what’s your problem?”

  “This,” Haynes said, reached into a breast pocket and brought out the envelope that contained the note from Tinker Burns and the memo by Gilbert Undean to his files. He handed the envelope to Padillo.

  “Read the note from Tinker first,” Haynes said.

  Padillo nodded and, stockinged feet still up on the desk, read the note. When finished he shook his head sadly and began the memo from Undean.

  After the first paragraph, Padillo’s feet dropped to the floor and he sat up in his chair. He placed the memo on top of the desk and bent over it, elbows on the desk, head in his hands, his concentration total.

  When finished, he looked up at Haynes and asked, “Anyone else read this?”

  “Just you and I and Tinker Burns.”

  “And whoever has the original.”

  “I’d almost forgotten about the original.”

  Padillo tapped the memo. “Now I understand your problem. Tomorrow you have to be in two places at the same time.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And you want me to be at the other place.”

  “You and McCorkle.”

  Padillo grimaced slightly, as if at some seldom-felt tinge of regret or even a pang of self-reproach. “I should’ve told McCorkle.”

  “You knew?”

  “Not when she came in. She fooled me with her frumpy outfit and that shuffling walk. But when she came out of the office, she was in a hurry, forgot her shuffle and shifted into her long athletic stride that’s hard to forget once you’ve seen it. And that’s when I knew it was Muriel Keyes.”

  “But you didn’t know about the fake bomb then?”

  “Not then.”

  “And you haven’t told McCorkle it was Mrs. Keyes?”

  “No. I haven’t told him.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe because he wasn’t hurt—except for some injured pride. Or because of my secretive nature. Or because of Muriel and me a long time ago. Or maybe I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  “It just dropped.”

  “So it did,” Padillo said and again tapped the Undean memo. “This suggests that Mrs. Hamilton Keyes walked in here with a fake bomb and out with an equally fake manuscript to save her husband’s career and her neck.”

  “You believe that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Padillo. “But why not let McCorkle ask her tomorrow?”

  Chapter 44

  At 3:21 A.M. that Tuesday, Granville Haynes left Howard Mott’s house on Thirty-fifth Street Northwest and drove back to the Willard in twenty-four minutes. At eight minutes to four he entered his room to find Erika McCorkle propped up in bed, reading a paperback novel that had on its cover a huge Nazi swastika formed out of human bones.

  “Who’s winning?” Haynes asked as he stripped off his topcoat and jacket and hung them in the closet.

  “The Krauts—but it’s only nineteen forty.”

  Haynes removed two sheets of stapled-together paper from his jacket’s inside breast pocket and crossed to the bed. “More ancient h
istory,” he said as he handed them over.

  Erika put her book down and accepted the stapled papers without glancing at them. “You look tired,” she said.

  “I am.”

  “Come to bed.”

  “I’ll take a shower while you read it.”

  She looked at the first sheet. “The notorious Undean memo. I thought Howie Mott said nobody but you should read it.”

  “He changed his mind,” Haynes said. “Padillo’s read it. And by now so has your dad. Mott is probably reading it for the fourth or fifth time.”

  Erika read the memo’s first line, muttered, “My God,” and, without looking up, said, “Go take your shower.”

  When Haynes came out of the shower ten minutes later, wearing a hotel robe, he found Erika still propped up in bed against the pillows, staring at the far wall, the memo now in her lap. She had locked her hands behind her head, which thrust her breasts out against the thin fabric of the thigh-length T-shirt that was her nightgown. Silk-screened across the front of the T-shirt was the line “This Space Available.”

  She stopped staring at the wall to stare at Haynes. “Have you told the cops yet—Detective-Sergeant what’s his name?”

  “Darius Pouncy. No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because a lot of the memo’s conjecture and there’s no proof that Undean wrote it. Maybe Tinker wrote it.”

  “Couldn’t they compare the typing with Undean’s typewriter? The FBI’s always doing that kind of stuff.”

  “Maybe Tinker wrote it on Undean’s typewriter.”

  “You really think she killed Isabelle and stuck a pistol in Pop’s face?”

  “I believe she stuck a pistol in McCorkle’s face,” Haynes said.

  “Why d’you believe that and not the other?”

  “Because somebody recognized her leaving Mac’s Place.”

  “Who did?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, turned, went to the small refrigerator and took out a small can with a label that claimed it contained pink grapefruit juice from Texas. He held the the can up for Erika to see and said, “Want some?”

  “No.”