Twilight at Mac's Place m-4

by Ross Thomas

  “She was French, I believe. Isabelle Gelinet.”

  Keyes nodded.

  “She came to see me a few years ago when she was doing a story for Agence France-Presse. Something silly about the wives of spies. My answers nearly bored her to tears.

  “And the story never ran.”

  “Are her death and Undean’s connected?”

  “If I were to guess, I’d say probably.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “How many friends would you say Steady had?” he asked.

  “I’d say dozens. Perhaps even hundreds.”

  “There were only four at the Arlington services. Four, including Undean, who’d known him only in Laos.”

  “You didn’t go?”

  “I sent Undean.”

  “You should’ve gone, Ham.”

  “Perhaps it’s just as well I didn’t. Of the four who were at Arlington, two have been killed. Murdered.”

  She shivered slightly. “Leaving only the son and who else?”

  “Tinker Burns. An ex-mercenary turned small-time arms dealer. He’s an old friend of Steady’s. Perhaps his oldest.”

  Muriel Keyes put her drink down and stared at her husband. “Tell me about your resignation and the offer to make you ambassador.”

  “That royal summons I received yesterday morning?”

  She nodded.

  “It was from a White House hatchet man. A new boy. They need a few slots to pay off some political debts—to the far right, I’d guess, but I could very well be wrong. Anyway, it seems, my job will do nicely. So I resigned before the chop landed, but then, at the last moment, maybe on impulse—”

  “You never did anything in your life on impulse.”

  Keyes smiled. “At the last moment, I told the White House hatchet wallah all about the memoirs of Steadfast Haynes. He turned quite green. That done, he ordered me to buy the memoirs and hang the cost.”

  “He would seem to be a real player.”

  “He wants to be, but lacks finesse. He even offered me ten percent of the memoirs’ price.”

  Muriel Keyes giggled again.

  “Somehow sensing his faux pas, he then offered me my old job back. I made him a counterproposal.”

  “Ambassador,” she said.

  Keyes nodded, smiling and looking quite pleased.

  “How much does young Haynes want for Steady’s memoirs?” she said.

  “Seven hundred and fifty thousand.”

  “Then it’s really quite simple, isn’t it? You buy the memoirs. Young Haynes gets three quarters of a million. The White House sleeps nights. And you become ambassador.”

  “It would be that simple,” Keyes said, “were it not for the mystery man.”

  She giggled for the third time. “A mystery man. Dear God.”

  “He’s the one responsible for the bidding escalation.”

  “When do you make your new offer to—Granville, isn’t it?”

  “Tonight. Whenever he gets back to his hotel room.”

  “What if the mystery man tops your bid?” she asked. “Will the White House raise back?”

  “I doubt it. They’d probably fall back on damage control instead. And I can forget about being ambassador.”

  “Was a particular posting mentioned?”

  “The Caribbean.”

  “Better than Chad.”

  “Much.”

  Muriel Keyes rose, went over to her husband’s chair, sat on its broad arm and absently began to massage his neck with one hand. “If the mystery man tops your bid of seven hundred and fifty thousand, he’ll probably go to eight hundred, right?”

  “Probably.”

  “I think we can afford to increase the White House bid with a personal contribution of, say, two hundred and fifty thousand.”

  He turned to stare up at her with a look that was part wonder and part admiration. “Making it a preemptive one million.”

  “Yes.”

  “I see no reason to mention your generosity to the White House.”

  “Why would you?” she said. “After all, they have no real need to know.”

  Tinker Burns found Letitia Melon’s house just before dark. It was a huge 201-year-old fieldstone place, three stories high, with a pair of newer two-story wings that were 143 and 96 years old respectively. The old house sat on the crest of a rise a quarter of a mile from the county blacktop. It was surrounded by tall pines whose branches were bowed under their burdens of snow and ice. A narrow concrete drive, only forty-four years old and clear of snow, ran from the county blacktop up to the house. At the top of the drive was a small green John Deere tractor that Burns assumed had done the snowplowing.

  He turned the Jeep Wagoneer into the drive, stopped and studied the house and the snow-covered roof of the long low horse barn which could be seen just beyond the crest of the rise. Burns looked for signs of life but found none. The last of the sun’s rays were turning the stonework of the house into old gold but Burns ignored the pretty-picture effect and instead examined the six chimneys for smoke. There wasn’t any.

  He drove up to the house and parked in front of its entrance on jigsaw slabs of black slate. Once out of the station wagon, he scanned the windows for chinks of light. Finding none, he went back to the station wagon and blew its horn five times. Somewhere, close by, a dog barked. Thus encouraged, Burns mounted the six steps and rang the doorbell. He rang it six times before trying the big brass knob only to find the door locked. Burns stubbornly jammed his right thumb against the doorbell and hammered the door itself with his left fist.

  He was still ringing and hammering away when a woman’s voice from behind him said, “Get the fuck off my property, Tinker.”

  Chapter 28

  Without turning, Tinker Burns stuck cold bare hands into his topcoat pockets and said, “How you doing, Letty?”

  “Get off my property. Now.”

  “We’ve gotta talk.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Mind if I turn around?”

  “You have to turn around to get off my property.”

  Burns turned slowly to his left and, when all the way around, smiled at Letty Melon and the pump shotgun she was aiming at his chest.

  “You look cold, Letty. Have a long wait?”

  “Go, Tinker. Now.”

  “I figured Howard Mott’d let you know I was coming. That’s why I didn’t call myself.”

  “You’ve got ten seconds to get in your car.”

  “Look. You know you’re not gonna shoot me and I know I’m not gonna leave till we talk. Now, we could stand out here all night freezing our butts off, but that’s sort of dumb. So why not go inside where it’s nice and warm and have a taste and a talk? After that, I’ll be on my way. I even brought a jug of Turkey along. You still drink Turkey, Letty?”

  Letty Melon said nothing. She wore a buttoned-up shearling coat and had tied a gray cashmere scarf over her head. The rest of her outfit consisted of blue jeans, boots and the pump shotgun. She raised the shotgun with her left hand, letting its barrel rest on her left shoulder. Her right hand dug a key out of her jeans pocket. She moved around Burns, went up to the front door, unlocked it and went inside. Burns turned and followed.

  They sat in front of an enormous fireplace where four oak logs blazed. They held tumblers half full of 101-proof Wild Turkey bourbon whiskey, the good stuff, undiluted by either ice or water. After a sip of whiskey, Letty Melon lit an unfiltered Camel. Tinker Burns swallowed a third of his drink and looked around the fifty-foot-long living room with obvious appreciation.

  “I never got invited here,” he said. “I got invited to that little place over by, what’s its name, Berryville, a couple of times when you and Steady were still married, but never here.”

  “We couldn’t stand each other’s friends,” she said. “I invited mine here; he invited his there. I reckon we couldn’t stand them because his friends were mostly women and mine were mostly men.”

  “Well, that’s how it goes somet
imes.”

  “What’s really on your mind, Tinker?”

  “That fire,” he said. “We come in here and it’s all dark and kind of cold, but you turn on a gas jet, put a match to it, throw on some logs, and a couple of minutes later we got ourselves a real nice fire going. Now, some people’d claim that’s no way to build a fire—that you oughta do it with kindling and—”

  “Is this some kind of allegory?” she said.

  Burns tried to look hurt and almost succeeded. “I was just trying to edge into it.”

  “Don’t edge. Jump.”

  Tinker Burns sipped his bourbon, stared at the fire and said, “Ever know a spook name of Undean? Gilbert Undean?”

  “No. Why?”

  “He died.”

  “So?”

  “He was one of the mourners at Steady’s burial at Arlington. There were only four of us there. Steady’s kid, me, Undean and Isabelle. Steady was buried Friday. Isabelle was killed the same day. Undean got killed this morning.”

  Letty Melon drank more bourbon, inhaled smoke, blew it out and said, “I heard about Isabelle.”

  “I found her body. I also found Undean’s—about noon today. Maybe a little after.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “I called the cops. What else?”

  “Where’d he live?”

  “Reston.”

  “So you zipped straight out here. What the hell for? I told you last night we’ve got nothing to talk about.”

  Burns took another mouthful of bourbon, rolled this one around on his tongue, swallowed and sighed his appreciation. “Did you know Steady’d written his memoirs—him and Isabelle?”

  “I know he’d threatened to for years.”

  “Well, he finally did.”

  “Have you read them?”

  “No.”

  “Who has?”

  “Maybe Granny. Maybe not.”

  “You ask him?”

  “No.”

  “How come?”

  “Lemme tell you how I got into this thing,” Burns said, finished his bourbon, put the glass down and leaned toward Letty Melon with the confident and faintly conspiratorial air of a man who’d spent much of his adult life selling dubious wares to suspicious customers.

  “I really don’t want to know, Tinker.”

  He ignored her and said, “About nine or ten days ago, right before Steady died, I get this call from a guy I once did some business with. I’m in Paris and he’s in, well, it doesn’t matter where he is. He tells me he’s heard Steady’s written his memoirs. Now, this guy knew Steady in Zaire when it was still the Congo. They later cut up a few touches together in Southeast Asia and Central America. Know what I mean?”

  “Not really.”

  “Did stuff they maybe shouldn’t’ve. Stuff that there’s no statute of limitations on.”

  “Shitty stuff,” she said. “Steady’s specialty.”

  “Yeah, all right. Shitty stuff. But since then this guy’s moved uptown. And now whenever the world’s about to end, he gets calls from CNN or maybe from that kid with the speech impediment on NBC and they want him to give ’em the exact time and date of Armageddon and a rundown on the aftermath in fifteen seconds or less.”

  “He’s in government then,” she said.

  “No. He’s not in government, but he makes a lot of money advising governments.”

  “I see. One of those.”

  “Yeah. Right. One of those. So he calls me and says he’s heard about Steady’s book and since I’m an old asshole buddy of Steady’s, he’s wondering if I can get a peek at the thing and see if Steady’s mentioned those touches they cut up together years ago. He also says he just happens to know where I can unload some twenty-year-old left-behind Vietnam ordnance I got rusting away down in Marseilles on a certain party with an end-use certificate who’ll pay in Swiss francs. So I tell this guy, sure, I’ll try and look into it. But before I get around to it, I get this call in Paris from Isabelle, who’s at the Hay-Adams, telling me Steady’s lying there dead in the bed. Okay so far?”

  “So far.”

  “Well, I fly over for the burial. And what gets me is that Steady knew hundreds and hundreds of people, but nobody shows up at Arlington except me, Granny, Isabelle and this old semi-retired spook, Gilbert Undean. So Isabelle, Granny and me have lunch and Isabelle starts talking about how she’d helped Steady write his memoirs. But I can’t talk to her in front of Granny and Padillo—”

  “You ate at Mac’s Place,” Letty Melon said. “How sweet. I think Steady practically lived there for a time after we split.”

  Burns ignored the interruption. “Anyway, an hour or two later I go in this limo I rented out to Isabelle’s apartment to see if I can talk her into letting me read the thing. Steady’s book. I go up to her floor, knock on her door, no answer. So I try the door and it opens. I go in and find her stark naked in the bathtub, wrists and ankles wired, drowned. Probably.”

  Letty Melon looked away from Burns and toward the far end of the big room. “How was the Undean guy killed?”

  “Shot.”

  She turned back to him. “You also found him, right?”

  Burns nodded. “Looks kinda funny, doesn’t it?”

  “Very.”

  “I can’t help how it looks. All I can do is keep nosing around, trying to find out who’s got Steady’s book.”

  “Maybe I should get up and poke the fire, Tinker. Isn’t that what people in movies do when they’re about to deliver the bad news?”

  Burns thought about it. “Yeah, I guess I’ve seen a lot of fire-poking in movies. You got some bad news, Letty?”

  Instead of answering his question, she said, “Right after Steady died, the next day, in fact, I got a call from one of our few mutual friends who told me Steady’d been quietly spreading the word around Washington that he’d written his memoirs. So I asked this mutual friend, a rather silly little bitch, ‘Why tell me?’ She said she just thought I might be curious about how Steady’d treated me in his book. I told her I didn’t give a damn and hung up.”

  “But you gave a real big damn, right?”

  “Sure I did. Mostly because he was such a liar.”

  “He could dream ’em up all right,” Burns said with obvious admiration.

  “The day after his burial,” she said, “I drove out to our—well, his place near Berryville. I still had a key. I went in and found a manuscript in the dining room. He and his girlfriend had turned it into an office of sorts. The manuscript was in a typewriter-paper box. I only read the title page, ‘Mercenary Calling,’ then his name and a line at the bottom about the copyright. I put the lid back on the box and took it out to my truck. After that I came back in and went into the kitchen to fix a cup of coffee. A couple of guys with paper sacks over their heads jumped me, tied me up, gagged me and locked me in a little dark closet where I’d still be if Erika McCorkle and Granville hadn’t shown up.”

  “The McCorkle kid was with Granny, huh?” Burns said, sounding interested. “You were lucky.”

  “You wouldn’t know anything about the two guys who jumped me, would you, Tinker?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Maybe who hired them?”

  “What makes you think somebody hired ’em?”

  “Because they didn’t steal anything.”

  Burns considered her logic, gave it a grudging nod of agreement and said, “You still got it?”

  “The manuscript? Of course.”

  Burns edged forward, his excitement partially concealed by an earnest expression. “Letty, I’d really appreciate it if I could just look through it real quick.”

  “See whether your friend is mentioned?”

  “Right. It won’t take long.”

  Letty Melon smiled for the first time. “No, it probably won’t.”

  She rose and began walking toward a wall of books at the room’s far end. Burns rose and followed. In front of the books was a black walnut library table. On it was a white Keebord stat
ionery box. Letty Melon indicated the box and said, “Help yourself.”

  Burns stared at the box, picked it up gently, gave it a little shake, put it down and carefully removed its lid. He bent over slightly to read the title page, then lifted out all 386 pages and placed them almost reverently on the table. After turning the title page facedown on the table, he read the Housman lines, turned them facedown, read the dedication to Granville Haynes, put it facedown on top of the other pages and began reading Chapter One. He read its two lines, stopped, read them again and slowly turned his head to glare at a now grinning Letty Melon.

  Burns opened his mouth, as if to say something, changed his mind and, his face now turning a dangerous red, flipped quickly through the remaining blank pages. It was then that he straightened, turned and bellowed his question: “Where the fuck is it, Letty?”

  “You’re looking at it, Tinker, just as I found it. A fake manuscript. If you want it, it’s all yours.”

  Tinker Burns turned back to the four-inch-high stack of mostly blank pages and, after arranging them neatly, put them back in the box and replaced the lid. He picked up the box, cradled it against his chest and looked around the room, as if trying to remember where he’d left his coat.

  “I’ll talk to Granny,” he said, more to himself than to Letty Melon. “He’s gotta know where it is.”

  “What if there isn’t any book?” she said. “What if it’s Steady’s farewell hoax? His last lie?”

  He stared at her long enough for his face to resume its normal tanned and weathered look. “Then a couple of people died for nothing, didn’t they?”

  Chapter 29

  Granville Haynes, propped up in bed on pillows and wearing only Jockey shorts, looked up from a New York Times feature about Hollywood agents to watch a nude Erika McCorkle stroll out of the bathroom, cross to the wheeled room-service table and pop a cold French-fried potato into her mouth. From there she went to the closet to slip on a long white terry-cloth robe that the Willard Hotel gently warned guests they would be billed for if they stole it.