by Ross Thomas
Haynes opened the can and drank. “Tell me what it said.”
She frowned. “What d’you mean?”
“Build a case for me. Pretend you’re a lawyer.”
She reached for the memo.
“No,” Haynes said. “From memory.”
“I don’t understand what you want.”
“That’s a two-page single-spaced memo. I don’t think Undean just sat down and batted it out. I think it was very carefully composed and went through maybe three or four drafts before all the holes were plugged.”
“I’ll have to tell it my own way then.”
“Fine.”
She took a deep breath. “Okay. It’s Laos, early nineteen seventy-four. March. They were all in Vientiane, the capital. Steady. Muriel Lamphier, later to become Muriel Keyes, and Undean. Muriel’s a young CIA—what—operative?”
“You’re telling it,” Haynes said.
“Okay. She’s an operative, junior grade, with some kind of embassy cover job. Steady’s doing his usual propaganda stuff and Undean’s analyzing whatever he analyzes. Then somebody—and it’s not clear from the memo who—suspects that a young American married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Fred—uh—Nimes aren’t really doing church-sponsored relief work, but are actually homegrown antiwar lefties who’re spying for the opposition, the Pathet Lao. Well, what to do?
“The solution somebody comes up with is to send in a femme fatale. So they send in Muriel to seduce Fred, feed him some false stuff and see if it’s passed on. Well, Muriel gets Fred in the sack all right, apparently on more than one occasion. But one afternoon when they’re rolling around in bed, Mrs. Nimes comes home unexpectedly. Her name’s Angie—for Angela.
“What happens next is what the memo calls a ‘domestic altercation.’ Angie picks up a bottle and cracks it over Fred’s head. Fred slams Angie up alongside the head. Angie produces a gun and shoots Fred dead. She then turns the gun on Muriel. But Muriel doesn’t want to die and the two ladies wrestle for the gun. It goes off and Angie takes a bullet in the face and dies.
“Muriel gets dressed, well, I guess she got dressed, the memo doesn’t say, and bolts out of the house, almost petrified. But she has enough sense to find Steady. He goes to the Nimes house and has a look. Then he goes to see the CIA’s pet Laotian general and offers him two hundred thousand U.S. dollars to put the fix in. The general agrees but wants cash in advance. Okay?”
“You’re doing fine,” Haynes said.
“Steady confides in Undean that he needs two hundred thousand for a special ultra-secret operation. But Undean isn’t buying, probably with good reason, and insists on knowing the details. Steady tells him. Undean suggests that Steady get word to Hamilton Keyes in Saigon. Steady does and Keyes flies to Vientiane with the money. Steady hands it over to the general. I think all this took about a day. Meanwhile, the tropics are going to work on the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Nimes.
“Well, once the pet general has the cash in hand, he orders six fourteen- and fifteen-year-old Laotian soldiers to burn down the Nimes house that night. They do and at dawn the kid soldiers are arrested, tried, convicted and shot for having raped Mrs. Nimes, killed Mr. Nimes, who tried to defend her, and then, to cover it all up, burned down the Nimes house.
“The two Nimes bodies, what’s left of them, are gathered up, boxed and buried. Steady writes letters to their respective parents, lamenting the young folks’ death and praising them for having done the Lord’s work. Meanwhile, Hamilton Keyes instructs Undean to run an exhaustive check on the Nimeses’ background. Undean does and discovers they weren’t secret agents for another foreign power after all, but merely a couple of left-leaning, run-of-the-mill do-gooders. Undean doesn’t make a written report of his findings, but does make separate verbal ones to Keyes and Steady.
“Keyes decides the best thing to do is arrange for their pet general to receive a special commendation and forget the whole thing—except for the beautiful Muriel Lamphier, whom he consoles, woos and, once they’re both back in the States, weds. And that’s the terrible secret of Mrs. Hamilton Keyes, née Lamphier.” Erika paused, then asked, “Does that sound like some of your late daddy’s handiwork?”
“Exactly,” Haynes said.
“Okay,” she said, “now we—what do they call it in Hollyweird?—we cut to—”
“Dissolve would be better,” Haynes said.
“Okay, we dissolve to Washington some fifteen years later—make it almost sixteen. Steadfast Haynes is spreading word around town that he’s just finished his searing memoirs. The word reaches Mrs. Hamilton Keyes. She contacts her lawyer, a distinguished former U.S. senator from the great state of Alabama, and instructs him to buy up the memoirs and hang the cost. But before negotiations can begin, Steady dies. The lawyer quickly contacts the son and heir’s new lawyer, Mr. Howard Mott, and makes an offer of one hundred thousand dollars for the memoirs, sight unseen. But the son and heir, that’s you, demurs and asks for half a million bucks. All this money talk happened the same day Steady was buried at Arlington.
“Well, that same afternoon, Mrs. Hamilton Keyes—or so Gilbert Undean suspects—goes calling on Mlle Isabelle Gelinet and demands to know where the manuscript is.” Erika paused and frowned. “Why would Muriel do that?”
“Maybe she panicked,” Haynes said.
Erika shook her head and said, “Anyway, Isabelle refuses to divulge—another Undean word—where the manuscript is and Muriel—you want me to go into all that? There’s a whole lot of gruesome detail.”
“No need,” Haynes said.
“Undean suggests that regardless of whether or not Isabelle revealed where the manuscript was, Muriel couldn’t let her live because Isabelle knew her festering Laotian secret. That festering phrase is mine, not Undean’s. So Isabelle dies and you and Tinker Burns discover her body. As soon as Hamilton Keyes learns of Isabelle’s death, he summons Undean and instructs him to offer up to fifty thousand for the memoirs. Undean then goes into a lot of self-justification about how, earlier that same day, he had urged Keyes to buy the memoirs from you and how Keyes pooh-poohed the idea. Anyway, Undean finds you and offers the fifty thousand and you turn it down. Undean then reports to Keyes about how you’d also turned down the one hundred thousand from the senator and are now asking five hundred thousand because you think you can make a film out of Steady’s life. Undean then counsels Keyes to walk away from the deal. And that’s the end of the Undean memo.”
“You did very well,” Haynes said.
“I have a good memory.”
“What was left out?” Haynes asked. “By Undean?”
“Well, he couldn’t tell how Muriel killed him.”
“Well, no,” Haynes said. “But what else?”
“There’s almost no mention of Tinker Burns and none of Horace Purchase.”
“Undean wouldn’t have known about Purchase and must’ve assumed that Tinker found Isabelle’s body by accident.”
“Maybe,” she said.
“What’s your overall impression?”
“It all seems to be aimed at giving Muriel Keyes sufficient motive. If she can’t buy or destroy the memoirs, she can at least do away with the remaining witnesses to the Laotian mess. With Steady gone, the only witnesses left are Undean, her husband and—since she wrote the memoirs—Isabelle.”
“Why do you think Tinker was killed?”
“I guess he was trying to blackmail her with the Undean memo.”
“A logical guess.”
“Why did you ask me to make that…that recitation?” she asked. “Your real reason?”
“The memo’s too smooth—too logical. Too neat. I wanted to see how it would sound if it came out disjointed.”
Erika’s eyes went wide. “You bastard! You know who killed them all—Isabelle and Undean and Tinker Burns.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You know something. I can tell.”
“The only thing I know for a fact is that Gilbert Undean didn’t write that memo.”
; Chapter 45
McCorkle shifted his position again, trying to accommodate his long legs to Padillo’s 280 SL. After failing to cross them for the third time, he said, “You ever think of buying something a little more sedate and comfortable—maybe a Volvo station wagon?”
Padillo ignored the question and said, “He should’ve left by now.”
“It’s only a little after nine and the meeting’s not till ten.”
“Keyes isn’t one to arrive last at any meeting,” Padillo said. “Especially this one.”
They were parked on California Street two houses east of the Georgian one that belonged to Hamilton and Muriel Keyes. They assumed that when Keyes left he would probably head west—away from them—then south. Otherwise, he would have to cope with California Street when it suddenly turned one-way.
“He’s in there, sipping his second cup of coffee out of a gold-rimmed Haviland cup,” McCorkle said. “And we’re trapped in this clapped-out roadster with a slit top that lets in wind with a chill factor of fifteen degrees. And what have we got to drink? Cold Roy Rogers coffee in plastic cups.”
“Howard Johnson coffee,” Padillo said.
“I haven’t had a cup of Ho-Jo coffee in twenty years and, by my troth, it hasn’t improved any.”
“I’d almost forgotten,” Padillo said.
“What?”
“What a sunbeam you are in the morning.”
“Mind if I smoke?”
“Open the window.”
“It’s thirty-three degrees.”
“And life is a series of hard choices.”
“I’ll chew instead,” McCorkle said and produced a packet of Nicorette gum.
“Here he comes.”
“So he does,” McCorkle said, putting away the Nicorette.
The automatic overhead door of the Keyeses’ three-car garage was nearly all the way up. A moment later a dark blue Buick sedan, with Keyes at the wheel, backed out onto the turnaround slab. Keyes then drove down the driveway and turned west, away from Padillo’s coupe.
“Which car does she drive?” McCorkle asked as the garage door came back down.
“The Mercedes sedan.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw it.”
“When—the night you forgot to tell me who she was?”
“I didn’t forget,” Padillo said, started the engine and drove less than seventy-five yards before turning into the Keyes driveway. He stopped his car a foot away from the overhead door, blocking it nicely. He and McCorkle got out, walked to the front door and pushed a bell that rang some chimes. A moment later the door was opened by the Salvadoran maid.
Padillo snapped out a sentence in rapid Spanish that was much too fast for McCorkle. The only words he got were “la Señora” and “los Señores Padillo y McCorkle.” But the maid understood perfectly, especially the imperious tone, which caused her to duck her head, open the door wider and invite them inside to wait while she informed la Señora.
“The help must’ve loved you back at the old hacienda, mi jefe,” McCorkle said.
“It was a verbal shortcut.”
“Which scared the hell out of her.”
“She heard worse in El Salvador.”
“How do you know where she’s from?”
Before Padillo could reply, the maid returned, still scurrying and bobbing a little, to announce that la Señora would join them presently in the room of reception.
Padillo gave her his most charming smile, thanked her graciously and inquired if her longing for San Salvador remained acute. She replied that it had lessened a little in recent months. Padillo said he hoped she would soon be able to return for a visit in safety. She thanked him and said he was very kind.
By then they were in the living room that was filled with antiques. The maid left and Padillo and McCorkle sat on what seemed to be the two sturdiest chairs. A few minutes later Muriel Keyes entered, wearing fawn slacks, sandals, a silk blouse the color of bitter chocolate and a nervous smile.
Padillo rose quickly, McCorkle more slowly. Muriel Keyes chose to ignore McCorkle, except for a brief glance, and smiled at Padillo. “Michael, how nice.”
“Muriel.”
After she offered him her cheek to brush with his lips, he said, “I think you met my partner, Mr. McCorkle, when you were playing Reba Skelton, noted calligrapher.”
“Fast! Accurate! Prompt!” McCorkle said.
“Is that why you’re here?” she asked Padillo.
“Not really.”
She turned to McCorkle and said, “I apologize, Mr. McCorkle. It was very stupid of me.”
“You were really very good,” he said.
“But obviously not good enough.” She looked at Padillo. “What gave it away?”
“You shuffled in but loped out. That Lamphier lope, once seen, is hard to forget.”
“I was so damned frightened.”
“Not as much as I was,” McCorkle said.
“Please sit down,” she said. “Could I offer you some coffee? It’s probably still too early for a drink.”
“Coffee’ll be fine, Muriel,” Padillo said as he sat down. “Especially since we’re going to be here a while.”
“Oh?” she said, going to the near wall to press an ivory button.
“There’s something we’d like you to read,” McCorkle said as he resumed his seat.
“Read? Read what?”
Before either of them could reply, the maid, who must’ve been hovering just outside the living room door, entered to find out what she would be asked to fetch or carry. Muriel Keyes, using serviceable, if halting, Spanish, asked for coffee and rolls.
When the maid left, Muriel Keyes turned back to McCorkle and said, “You said you wanted me to read something?”
Padillo said, “A memo from the late Gilbert Undean.” He paused. “You did know him, didn’t you?”
“A long time ago.”
“Seen him recently?”
“Yes. He came to see my husband last—Friday, I think. Rather late.”
McCorkle and Padillo said nothing. After the silence had gone on for thirty seconds, she said, “Why would Mr. Undean send you a memorandum, Michael?”
“He didn’t send it to me.”
“Then who did?”
“Tinker Burns sent it—indirectly. Tinker’s the one your lawyer hired in Paris to do some work for you here.”
“What kind of work was that?”
“Find out whether Steady Haynes had mentioned you in his memoirs. You’re still interested in the memoirs, aren’t you?”
“Not nearly as much as I was. I think that particular—what should I call it—problem?—”
“Problem’s good,” McCorkle said.
“I think that particular problem’s been resolved.”
“Sorry, Muriel,” Padillo said. “It’s just beginning.”
Granville Haynes, driving the old Cadillac, was nearing McCorkle’s Connecticut Avenue apartment building at 9:45 A.M. when Erika said, “I’ll be your slave for a year if you can work me into that meeting.”
Haynes smiled. “I would if I could.”
“But I’ll get a full play-by-play later?”
“Everything.”
“God, that’ll be interesting,” she said and leaned over to kiss him good-bye just as he stopped in front of the old gray building’s no-standing zone. The car behind honked immediately.
“Stick by the phone,” he said as she got out and turned to give the honker the finger, which produced yet another honk. Just as she closed the door, Haynes raised his voice to say, “And keep your doors locked.” She nodded that she understood and hurried toward the building.
Haynes continued down Connecticut, went around Dupont Circle and found a parking place in front of 1633 Connecticut next door to where the razed Junkanoo nightclub had once stood.
He dropped some coins into the meter, looked at his watch and saw that he had five minutes. He pulled the collar of his new topcoat up around his ch
in, stuck his hands down into its pockets and rediscovered McCorkle’s pistol. It felt cold to the touch and he saw no need to wrap his right hand around its butt.
Although he was exactly on time, Haynes was the last to arrive at the 10 A.M. meeting in the former senator’s office. Haynes thought the place had the leathery smell of a shoe store—or the way shoe stores smelled before they started selling so many athletic shoes.
Haynes shook hands with Hamilton Keyes first because it seemed to be part of some business ritual. He even shook hands with Howard Mott, who introduced him to the former senator. The senator had retained his professional politician’s quick-release handshake.
Haynes sat down in one of the three leather armchairs in front of the ornate desk. He sat next to Mott, who separated him from Hamilton Keyes. The senator, presiding from behind the desk, smiled a brief smile of commerce and said, “Well, gentlemen, I think we can begin.”
When no one objected, he continued. “We will entertain offers this morning for the copyright to a written work by the late Steadfast Haynes, entitled Mercenary Calling, said copyright being the property of Mr. Haynes’s son, Granville, who is the sole owner.”
He looked around for confirmation and received a nod from Howard Mott. “Papers for the consummation of the sale have been drawn up by Mr. Mott, who is Mr. Haynes’s attorney. I have examined them and find them to be in order. Any questions?”
There weren’t any. The senator nodded again and said, “There are two parties who plan to tender offers for the copyright. One is Mr. Keyes, representing Write-Away, Incorporated, of Miami, Florida. The other is a client of mine who wishes to remain anonymous.”
Haynes decided to nod. So did Hamilton Keyes.
“Very well. Since Mr. Keyes is present he is entitled to make the first offer.”
“Seven hundred and fifty thousand,” Keyes said.
“Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” the senator said. “I will now telephone the only other bidder to see whether Mr. Keyes’s bid will be topped.”
The senator pushed a single button on his telephone console. He listened just long enough for a phone to ring once somewhere before he said, “Seven hundred and fifty.” There had been no faint click of a phone call being answered, nor of a voice saying hello. The senator listened for a moment to what seemed to be a silent voice, looked up at Keyes and said, “Eight hundred thousand dollars is bid.”