by Ross Thomas
“Tinker Burns? Not quite.”
There was a silence caused by Mott waiting to hear what Haynes would say next, and by Haynes wondering whether he should say anything. Finally, he said, “Ever hear of a place in what used to be the Congo called Kilo Moto?”
“No,” Mott said.
“It’s known for its gold mines. In March of ’sixty-five it fell to Five Commando—Hoare’s outfit.”
“The mercenary they called Mad Mike?”
Haynes nodded. “Tinker was an officer, a captain, I think, in Five Commando when it took a town called Watsa and with it the gold mines of Kilo Moto.”
“I didn’t think the Congo mercenaries would accept Americans.”
“They wouldn’t,” Haynes said. “But by then Tinker was no longer an American. After his first five-year hitch in the Legion was up, he had the option of becoming a French citizen and grabbed it.”
A practiced listener, Mott only nodded.
“Steady was also back in the Congo then—doing good works for Mobutu Sese Seko, or the Supreme Guide, as he calls himself these days. Tinker and Steady had known each other before—from Nice in the late fifties. Some people think they met in Zaire but they didn’t. Anyway, Tinker got word to Steady that he’d liberated thirty kilos of gold bars—”
“About sixty-six pounds,” Mott said.
“Right. And if you’re beginning to wonder how I know all this, it’s because I heard it through a thin wall when I was thirteen and supposedly asleep. Tinker and Steady were on the other side of the wall and well into war stories and a bottle or two of Scotch.”
“But if Tinker Burns and Five Commando were trying to dump Mobutu, why get in touch with Steady, who was, from what little I know, Mobutu’s chief image polisher?”
“You really want to discuss ethics?”
“Sorry,” Mott said.
“As I said, Tinker got word to Steady that he’d liberated the gold. He needed a way to get it from Zaire into Uganda, which is next door in case you’re a little fuzzy on your African geography.”
Mott again said nothing.
“Well, the CIA had hired some Cuban pilots to fly and fight for Mobutu. They were a hard-luck bunch who hadn’t done all that well at the Bay of Pigs, which is where they’d last flown for the agency. Steady suborned one of the pilots—he was really quite good at suborning—and convinced him to ‘borrow’ a plane and fly to Watsa. There the pilot would secretly pick up a deserting officer from Five Commando. After he flew the deserter to Uganda for debriefing, the Cuban would be paid five thousand dollars. And that’s how Steady Haynes got Tinker Burns out of the Congo with a knapsack containing sixty-six pounds of gold bars. And that’s how Tinker acquired the capital to go into the arms business and possibly why Steady received that four thousand dollars every month.”
“What happened to the Cuban pilot?”
“Who knows?”
Mott nodded thoughtfully, spun around in his chair and stared out of his corner window. His view was of some other buildings very much like his own. Over their rooftops he could watch the planes as they descended and rose at National Airport.
Still watching the planes, Mott said, “Did you know Steady’s written a book?”
He spun back around just in time to see Haynes nod. “He and Isabelle. His memoirs—or autobiography.”
“It’s copyrighted, of course,” Mott said.
“So?”
“He assigned the copyright to you in his will. Except for the old Caddy, it’s your sole legacy.”
“My own copyright. Imagine.”
“Bear with me,” Mott said. “Steady deposited a sealed copy of the manuscript with me two weeks ago when he made out his will just before he and Isabelle checked into the Hay-Adams. He said it was the only copy. Of the manuscript, not the will.”
“The phrase ‘only copy’ has always bothered me.”
“Me, too,” Mott said. “But in this case it may be true.” He paused, as if beginning a new paragraph, and said, “About thirty or thirty-five minutes before you walked through my door, I got a call from what I’ll describe as a very well connected lawyer.”
“Which means he’s an ex-what?”
“An ex-U.S. senator with a client who, he says, wants very much to buy the copyright to an unpublished work by Steadfast Haynes. Meaning, of course, that the client wants to buy and control all rights—print, tape, film, stage and so forth—to Steady’s manuscript. The senator wasn’t authorized to divulge the name of his client, but he was authorized to make an offer.”
“On something he hasn’t even read,” Haynes said.
“Exactly.”
“How much?”
“One hundred thousand.”
“Somebody wants to bury it deep.”
“Apparently.”
“Call him back and tell him the son and heir wants half a million firm and see what he says.”
“He’ll say no.”
“Then tell him the son and heir’s lined up some offshore development money and plans to write, direct and star in a feature based on his father’s unpublished manuscript.”
Mott stared at Haynes, not bothering to conceal the rapid reassessment his mind was making. “I thought you were a homicide cop.”
“I was but now I’m an actor.”
“I also believe you’re serious.”
“An actor’s job is to make you believe.”
“Steady could usually do that—make me believe almost anything. Note my stress on ‘almost.’ ”
“Then obviously I’ve inherited not only a car and a copyright but also a talent.”
“Take the hundred thousand,” Mott said. “That’s my best advice. If you try to squeeze them, you could be out a whole lot of money.”
“I already have a whole lot of money,” Haynes said.
“For some strange reason, I believe that, too.”
Mott fished a small key from his pants pocket and used it to unlock the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk. From the deep drawer he removed a package wrapped in heavy brown paper that was bound with twine. The package was sealed in three places with red wax. Mott handed the package to Haynes, who read the hand-printed label that bore his dead father’s name and Berryville, Virginia, address. The package also bore $3.61 worth of stamps. The words FIRST CLASS had been printed on the brown paper wrapping in red ink.
“He went to a lot of trouble to mail it to himself,” Haynes said.
“Check the seals?”
“Unbroken.”
“It’s one of our enduring myths that to copyright something you’ve written you have to mail it to yourself,” Mott said. “In fact, anything anyone writes is automatically copyrighted. If you want to announce it to the world, all you need to do is write the word ‘copyright’ on whatever you’ve written, followed by the year it was written and your name. Want to know anything else about copyrights?”
“That’ll do,” Haynes said.
“Then you might as well open it and take a look.”
Borrowing a pair of scissors from Mott, Haynes cut the twine, broke the wax seals and removed the brown paper that concealed a Keebord stationery box. He lifted off the box’s lid. Inside were what happened to be three or four hundred sheets of twenty-five percent cotton bond. Haynes read the first page, which was the title page, and noticed that its letters had been formed by an electric typewriter, probably an IBM Wheelwriter. He handed the first page to Mott, who read it silently:
MERCENARY CALLING
by Steadfast Haynes
At the bottom of the page was a line that read: “Copyright 1989 by Steadfast Haynes.”
“You’re sure it’s valid—the copyright?” Haynes asked.
“Absolutely,” Mott said.
Haynes read the second page and handed it to Mott. This page read:
These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth’s foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and ar
e dead.
—A. E. HOUSMAN
While Mott was reading Housman, Haynes quickly leafed through the rest of the pages. Mott looked up from the lines of poetry to accept the manuscript’s third page. It read: “For my son, Granville Haynes, with faint hope that he will find it of great profit.”
When Haynes silently handed over the fourth page, Mott saw that it was numbered page one. Not quite halfway down the page and centered was: CHAPTER ONE. Below that was a sentence that read: “I have led an exceedingly interesting life and, looking back, have no regrets. Or almost none.”
Mott looked up from the page, his eyes puzzled, his mouth opened by surprise. “That’s it—the whole fucking thing?”
Haynes smiled and nodded. “Except for three hundred and eighty-odd blank pages, all carefully numbered. Of course, he might’ve written the rest in invisible ink. Maybe even lemon juice.” He held a page up to the light from a window. “But I don’t think so.” He put the page down and looked at Mott. “You’re sure about the copyright?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Then let’s see whether they still want to buy it.”
“You’re asking me to help perpetrate a fraud, right?”
“I didn’t say I’d sell it to them. I said let’s see whether they really want to buy it and, if so, how high they’re willing to go.”
After considering what he first thought of as the proposal, but redefined as the proposition, Mott said, “My curiosity is overwhelming my judgment.”
“Then ask for five hundred thousand and see whether their initial bid’s got any climb to it.”
Before Mott could agree or argue, his telephone rang. He picked it up and said, “Yes,” listened for a moment or two and said, “Put him through in fifteen seconds.” As he waited, he nodded at Haynes, switched on the phone’s speaker, glanced at his watch and let a tight confident smile spread across his face. When he spoke it was as if he were addressing someone sitting two feet to the left of Granville Haynes.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Senator, but I was just discussing your offer with Mr. Haynes’s son.”
“And what does the boy say, Howie?” asked a voice that, although strained through the echoing speakerphone, was still full of pleasant southern ooze. Haynes thought the accent probably had originated somewhere between Natchez and Birmingham.
“He’s quite willing to sell the copyright to his father’s work, which, incidentally, is entitled Mercenary Calling, providing a more reasonable offer is made.”
“A hundred thousand’s awful reasonable down my way, Howie.”
“Down your way, I’m sure it is. But young Mr. Haynes is from Los Angeles and quite confident he can arrange offshore development money that would enable him to produce, write, direct and even star in a feature film based on his father’s work.”
“The kid’s an actor?”
“Not only that, but he bears a startling resemblance to Steady.”
There was a long weary sigh over the speaker. “How much, Howie?”
“Five hundred thousand.”
“Any wiggle room?”
“Maybe. But not much.”
“Then I’ll have to talk to my folks to see if they’re even interested in making a counteroffer. But I won’t be able to get back to you until Monday. Okay?”
“Monday’s fine. And by the way, would you like me to make a Xerox copy for your people so they can be sure they’re not buying a pig in a poke?”
The senator exploded over the speakerphone. “No copies, goddamnit! Not now. Not ever. You got that, Howie?”
“I merely assumed they’d want to read before buying.”
When he replied, soothing syrup again flowed from the senator’s mouth. “They don’t want to read it, Howie. They just want to buy themselves a fucking copyright. That clear?”
“Perfectly,” said Howard Mott.
Chapter 7
After pleading executive stress, Padillo went for a swim in the Watergate pool and left McCorkle to interview a prospective waiter, whom he hired; anglicize the spelling of the menu’s three dinner specials; and lend an unwilling ear to Tinker Burns, who had moved from banquette to bar after his two lunch guests left.
Burns had nearly finished his third cognac and a long involved gun-running tale of how he and two American mercenaries had escaped from Enugu in eastern Nigeria in a hijacked DC-3 during the final days of the Biafran war. The names of the two mercenaries, Burns said, spelling them carefully, in case McCorkle wanted to write them down, were Guice and Spates.
“I never heard from old Spates again,” he said. “But about a year ago I got a letter—well, a postcard really—from Guice in Tijuana, where he said he’d finally found a doctor who could cure his AIDS. You think that’s possible?”
McCorkle was saved from answering when the restaurant’s door opened and Granville Haynes entered. He stood for several moments, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the interior gloom, his left hand clutching a brown paper grocery bag by its folded-over top.
“Hey, Granny,” Burns called.
Haynes crossed to the bar, nodded at McCorkle, took a stool, placed the grocery bag on his lap and examined Burns. “Are you recently returned or still here?”
“Where would I go?”
“The National Gallery’s nice.”
“Already been.”
“Today?”
“Nineteen—” Tinker Burns broke off to search his memory for the correct year, finally located it and said, “—seventy-nine, right before they junked Somoza, who I’d just done a little business with and never got paid for. But you’re right. The Mellon’s nice although I think the Louvre’s a lot nicer. What’re you drinking?”
“Beer. Where’s Isabelle?”
“She left.” Burns turned his head and called, “Hey, Karl.”
Karl Triller, the fiftyish head bartender, had distanced himself as far as possible from his only paying customer. He sighed, put away his Wall Street Journal, moved down the bar to Tinker Burns, picked up a bottle of Rémy-Martin, poured an exact one and a half ounces into Burns’s glass and said, “You just failed to make the cut, Tinker, so sip it.”
Before Burns could protest, Triller turned to Haynes and said, “Beck’s okay?”
“Fine.”
As he poured the beer, Triller said, “You’re Steady Haynes’s son, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Karl Triller and I’m real sorry Steady died and wish I could’ve made it to the funeral or whatever it was. A few years ago, right after he broke up with your stepmother, Steady and I’d close the place up almost every night and go have dim sum or ribs at this Chinese joint up on Connecticut where he claimed all the embassy staff ate. The Chinese embassy.”
“Which stepmother was this?” Haynes said.
“Letty Melon—spelled with one l instead of two like the Pittsburgh Mellons. Letty’s only medium rich, if that.”
“Then she would’ve been stepmother number four. The one I never met.”
“Well, she and Steady weren’t really married all that long. But he still took it pretty hard after they split and started drinking more than usual. I’ll say this for Steady though: the more he drank, the more polite he got to everybody.”
“The last egalitarian?”
Triller thought about that, shrugged and turned to McCorkle. “You want anything now that I’m all the way down here?”
“No.”
“Good,” Triller said and headed back to the far end of the bar and his Wall Street Journal.
Haynes turned to McCorkle. “You have a minute?”
“Sure.”
“It’s private.”
McCorkle got down from the stool. “Then let’s go back to the office.”
The office was a small room at the rear of the restaurant behind the kitchen. Before Mac’s Place had been swallowed by the seven-story office building, the room had had a window and a view of the wall on the other side of the alley. The window had be
en bricked up and plastered over. In its place was a trompe l’oeil view of Washington as seen from the steps of the Jefferson Memorial. The painting had been a gift from Fredl McCorkle. Padillo always claimed he especially liked it because it was the only painting from that viewpoint that didn’t have the cherry blossoms in bloom.
Another, earlier gift from Fredl to McCorkle and Padillo was the fine old partners desk, which dominated the small office. McCorkle sat at the desk and Haynes on a brown leather couch that looked as if it had been designed to encourage long naps. The rest of the furniture included some chairs, a four-drawer steel filing cabinet, a Mosler safe manufactured the same year McCorkle’s father was born, and a wall calendar still turned to December 1988.
“So,” McCorkle said, took a small silverish square from his jacket pocket and started peeling it open. He removed an equally small square of something that looked very much like putty, eyed it with obvious loathing and popped it into his mouth.
“I know two-and-three-pack-a-day guys who switched to Nicorette gum,” Haynes said. “They don’t miss smoking at all. I also know junkies who don’t miss heroin as long as they have an assured supply of methadone. Some of the guys on Nicorette go to two or three doctors for extra prescriptions because they’re chewing thirty or forty pieces a day, which is about the same number of cigarettes they smoked. The main difference is that cigarettes cost about nine cents apiece in California but the nicotine gum costs them forty or forty-five cents a chew.”
McCorkle, still chewing, said, “You preach a nice sermon.”
He opened a desk drawer, took out a piece of blue Kleenex, spat the nicotine gum into it, wadded the tissue into a ball and dropped it in a wastebasket. After opening the desk’s center drawer, he took out a pack of unfiltered Pall Malls, lit one, inhaled deeply, blew the smoke out and said, “I’m well aware of the surgeon general’s opinion.”
Haynes rose, crossed to the desk and placed the brown grocery bag on its top. McCorkle blew some smoke at the bag and said, “I’m fairly sure that’s not eggs, bread and the milk.”
“It’s a manuscript.”
“A novel?”
“A fairy story. Steady’s memoirs.”
“Well, he did live a full life. Does he tell all?”