by Ross Thomas
The senator stopped listening, opened his eyes and spoke into the phone. “I respect that, Frank, but we’ve still got a long way to go before we get to the well. Lemme call you back later today…Yes, sir, I’ll surely do that…G’bye.”
The senator put the phone back into its nook on the console and rose, right hand extended. “Mr. Burns. Sorry to be so rude.”
Burns half rose, gave the offered hand a quick shake and sat back down, confining his greeting to, “How you doing?”
“Not too sure,” the senator said, resuming his seat. “Not too sure at all. I was kind of hoping you could let me know.”
“I’m going to tell you what I think, Senator, and then I’m going to tell you what I know.”
“Logic would dictate the other way around but you just go right ahead.”
“I think Steady and Isabelle never wrote any memoirs, never intended to write any and that the whole thing’s been a shuck from start to finish.”
The senator stuck out his lower lip and nodded judiciously. “Early this morning—very early, I might add—you called to tell me you’d met with Letitia Melon, the former Mrs. Steadfast Haynes, and that she’d given you something ‘important,’ I believe you said.”
“Yeah. She gave me a copy of Steady’s manuscript that turned out to be three hundred and eighty-something mostly blank pages.”
“And from this you reason there is not now, nor has there ever been, a true manuscript?”
“I knew Steady a long, long time and I knew Isabelle all her life. What I’m pretty sure they did was hole up at Steady’s farm and map the whole thing out.”
“The shuck—not the manuscript?”
“Yeah. Then right before the inauguration, they check into the Hay-Adams and start spreading the word around town that Steady’s just finished his red-hot memoirs and needs a permanent seat at the North trial because it’s gonna provide him with the epilogue for his book. Now lemme ask you this: Was Steady really trying to end his book, or was he trying to scare the shit out of somebody?”
“An interesting question.”
“I say he was trying to scare the shit out of somebody,” Burns said. “Your client.”
“We will not discuss my client, Mr. Burns.”
“Okay. Fine. Then let’s discuss Steady’s kid and his backup, the grim reaper, who came pounding on my door at three o’clock this morning just like they were the Gestapo or the fucking FBI making a house call.”
“The grim reaper?”
“Michael Padillo. Know him?”
“We’ve met.”
“I imagine you have,” Burns said, paused and then continued. “Anyway, they barge in and start their rain dance that’s supposed to make me wet my drawers. And I’ve gotta admit, it’s not bad. Padillo can just sit there, saying nothing, and make you believe he’s gonna bite your nose off. And Granny, well, he’s the big bass drum, the talker, the one who tells you to get outta town. Mr. Deadly Do-right. But he also made damn sure he told me how he’s gonna auction off his old man’s memoirs and that the bidding’s gonna start at three quarters of a mill and climb on up from there. And it’s just about then that he says the two magic names.”
“What magic names?”
“Muriel Lamphier and Hamilton Keyes.”
Tinker Burns liked the way he had tossed in the two names right there at the end. He leaned back in the blue leather chair to study the senator, who had just shuttered his neon eyes again and was arranging his thin mouth into the faintest of smiles.
A moment later, the eyes opened and the smile, if it had been a smile, went away and the senator said, “Lamphier, I believe you said, and Keyes.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Keyes. He’s a top spook out at Langley. She’s rich.”
“How were the names mentioned?” the senator said. “I mean, in what context?”
“They came up all of a sudden. Granny wanted to know how well I knew Muriel Lamphier, who’s also Mrs. Hamilton Keyes. So I told ’em to get the fuck outta my room before I called security.”
“And they went without argument?”
“Like lambs.”
“Then what?”
“Then I went down to the lobby and called you from a pay phone and said—well, you know what I said.”
“That you were having second thoughts.”
“Yeah.”
The senator leaned back in his chief justice swivel chair and again gave the almost invisible smile permission to play around his thin lips for a second or two. “Are we now going to share these second thoughts of yours, Mr. Burns?”
“I can’t decide.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m a businessman, Senator. The kind who believes that market forces should set the price of everything. If there’s a strong demand, raise your price. If demand’s weak, drop it. And never, never give anything away.”
“Not even a sample.”
“Well, maybe a sample.”
“You’re very generous.”
“No, I’m not,” Burns said, paused, frowned, nodded to himself and said, “I got a lot of friends who used to fly for Air America.”
“When it was a CIA proprietary venture.”
“Yeah, then. Hell, some of my friends even used to fly for Chennault and Chancre Jack in China. But they’re all pushing eighty now and not too right in the head. But I’m talking about ex-Air America pilots who’re a lot younger’n that and used to fly out of Laos. Out of a place called Long Tieng, otherwise known as Spook Heaven. Ever hear of it?”
The senator only nodded.
“Well, I figured you would’ve since you were on one of those intelligence oversight committees. Anyway, these not-so-young-anymore Air America guys I know still like to drink and bullshit and they sort of look up to me because I was at Dien Bien Phu with the Legion and all, and they still think that was pretty hot shit. Okay?”
The senator nodded again.
“If I remember right,” Burns said, “the CIA went into Laos back in ’sixty-one but by ’sixty-three it was already a backwater operation—what old Dean Rusk called the wart on the hog or something like that. But there was still lots of dope. Lots of booze. Lots of flying. And just one hell of a lot of spooks. Okay?”
“Still with you, Mr. Burns.”
“Good. So now it’s nineteen eighty or eighty-one and I’m in Bangkok doing a little business when I bump into some of these ex-Air America hotshots I know who never went home. It was in some bar, Spiffy’s, I think, and they were all reminiscing about Laos in the good old days. For them, that’s just before the end in ’seventy-four when everything fell apart and you guys bugged out.”
“In May and June of nineteen seventy-four, I believe,” the senator said.
“That’s what I said. So we’re sitting around in Spiffy’s and they’re talking about all the weird and wonderful characters they’d known in Laos. But none of the names meant much to me till somebody mentions Steady Haynes.”
“Favorably?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. It was all about how Steady saved the neck of some young spook who made a real bad mistake. Tragic’s what they called it. And how Steady flip-flopped it to make it look like something else altogether. The young spook’s name was Lamphier and the reason I remember it now is because I asked them if that was Lamphier like in Crown-Lamphier glass and they said yes. And because they also said the spook was a she instead of a he.”
Burns stopped talking and began to smile.
“That’s my taste?” the senator said.
“That’s it.”
“Mr. Burns, when I retained you for a not inconsiderable fee in Paris just before Steadfast Haynes died so unexpectedly, all I asked of you was to exploit your friendship with Mr. Haynes and Miss Gelinet—”
Burns interrupted, his impatience obvious. “And talk ’em into giving me a peek at the memoirs.”
“Exactly. But you couldn’t for obvious reasons—Mr. Haynes’s death and then Miss Gelinet’s. But now you seem to be g
oing off on some tangent that I find alarming. Most alarming.”
“Sorry you feel that way, Senator.”
“No, you aren’t. But tell me this, and please think carefully before you do. Are you sure it was Granville Haynes and not Michael Padillo who first brought up Muriel Lamphier’s name?”
“Positive.”
“Then that suggests the memoirs really do exist and that young Haynes has read them.”
“Or that it’s what Granny wants you to think, Senator. You know, if I was Granny, I’d do just what he’s doing and try to jack up the price by hinting at how much I know. That’s what I’d do, if I was Granny. Now, if I was you, I’d call his bluff and tell him I need to read before I buy.”
“Don’t think I haven’t thought of that,” the senator said.
“Then why don’t you?”
“If I did, he’d simply threaten to send them to a publisher. And to prevent him from doing that, I’d again have to increase my bid.”
“Just can’t afford to take the chance, huh?” Burns said.
“No.”
“Then it doesn’t much matter if the memoirs are real or a make-believe because you’re still going to buy the rights for your client—whoever she is.”
“Goddamnit, Mr. Burns, I will not discuss my client with you.”
“Okay. Fine. We won’t discuss her.”
The senator took a deep breath and said, “But I think we had better discuss just what it is you have to sell.”
“Silence.”
“And how much does silence cost?”
“Not as much as you think,” said Tinker Burns.
Chapter 36
McCorkle sat in an immense wingback chair and watched Harry Warnock, the IRA deserter turned security consultant, work the lobby of the Willard Hotel. It was nearly 10 A.M. and McCorkle had been watching Warnock for an hour.
Wearing a neat dark blue suit and carrying a gray herringbone topcoat over his left arm, Warnock scanned each face as it came through the hotel entrance. McCorkle imagined a classification system inside Warnock’s head that stamped each face with yes, no or maybe. So far, there had been only no’s, except for one maybe. But when the maybe, a noticeably jumpy man in his mid-thirties, hurried over to a woman in her late sixties, kissed her cheek and called her “Mommy,” Warnock had turned away, looking a bit disappointed.
It was a few minutes after 10 A.M. when Warnock wandered over and stood beside McCorkle’s chair, looking not at him but at the hotel entrance. “I go off in ten minutes,” Warnock said.
“Who relieves you?” McCorkle asked.
“Mr. Coors. Remember him?”
“The big guy?”
“They’re all big,” Warnock said. “But he’s the one with the hint of human intelligence.”
“Now I remember him,” McCorkle said. “What happens if Granville Haynes leaves the hotel?”
“I’ve got a two-man team outside—aw, shit.”
McCorkle looked where Warnock was looking. The doors of one of the elevators had just opened and a man was hurrying across the lobby toward the Pennsylvania Avenue exit.
The hurrying man wore a dark gray suit, blue tie, white shirt and black wing tips. He was of average height, five-nine or -ten; average weight, around 155 pounds; and had fairly short hair the color of wet sand. He also had two small ears, two light gray eyes, a snub nose, an unremarkable mouth and appeared to be in his mid to late forties.
Harry Warnock turned away from McCorkle, stepped into the path of the hurrying man and said, “Hey, Purchase.”
The man called Purchase didn’t change expression or break stride. He was still twenty feet away from Warnock when his right hand darted across his stomach at belt level, vanished beneath his unbuttoned suitcoat in a cross-draw and reappeared a second later, holding a semiautomatic pistol. Still moving toward the exit, Purchase fired at Warnock. The round struck Warnock’s left side and knocked him halfway around.
Purchase broke into a trot that carried him past the still seated McCorkle. Without weighing the possible consequences, McCorkle stuck out his long right leg and tripped Purchase, who went into an awkward, stumbling fall. If he had dropped the pistol, he could have broken the fall with both hands. But he didn’t drop it and wound up sprawled on the marble floor, his right hand still clutching the gun.
McCorkle, now on his feet, slammed one heel down on the gun hand. Purchase grunted and released the pistol. McCorkle kicked it away, turned back and kicked Purchase in the face. The kick made Purchase grunt again.
McCorkle hurried toward Warnock, who, down on knees, was pressing his left side with his left hand just below the rib cage. His right hand held a revolver that McCorkle thought might be a five-shot Smith & Wesson.
McCorkle was ten feet away when Warnock roared, “Behind you, damnit!”
McCorkle spun around. Purchase was in a seated position and bleeding from his mouth and nose. His knees were up, as was his right pants leg, which revealed a black ribbed sock and an empty ankle holster. Purchase used both hands to aim a very small semiautomatic at McCorkle. Automatically classifying the small gun as a .22 caliber, McCorkle made a desperate side-hop to his right, alarmed and dismayed by the way the gun followed him, as if it were just waiting for him to land.
Purchase’s left eye disappeared with a bang. McCorkle, at the end of his hop and suffering from terror-induced detachment, tried to decide whether he had heard the gunshot before or after the left eye disappeared. He was still trying to decide when Purchase seemed to melt onto the marble floor of the lobby where he lay, dead or dying, in a small puddle of urine and blood.
Then the shouts began. One man cursed monotonously. A woman decided to scream. A pair of hotel security men, guns drawn, rushed up to the still kneeling Warnock, who snarled something that made them put away their guns, help him to his feet and into a chair. A few gawkers, mostly men, slowly circled the dead Purchase, staring down at him with morbid fascination.
Once seated in the chair, Warnock grimaced, looked around, located McCorkle and nodded toward the elevators. McCorkle hurried into one of them and, as its doors closed, lit a Pall Mall cigarette with hands that he suspected might never stop trembling.
McCorkle pounded on the door of Granville Haynes’s room until a man’s muffled voice demanded. “Who is it?”
“McCorkle.”
“You alone?”
“Christ, yes.”
“Prove it.”
“Open the door.”
“Not yet.”
“Then how the hell do I prove it?”
“Turn around and put your hands on your head,” Haynes said through the door. “After I open up, back in. If there’s a problem with you, he’ll have to go through you to get to me.”
“The problem’s down in the lobby—dead.”
There was a long silence before Haynes said, “We’ll still do it my way.”
McCorkle turned so that his back was to the room’s door. He held his cigarette between his lips and clasped his hands on top of his head. He heard the door open and Haynes say, “Back in.”
McCorkle backed in, hands still on his head. He lowered them and took the cigarette out of his mouth as Haynes closed the door, shot all of its bolts and fastened the chain lock. Haynes wore only boxer shorts. McCorkle thought his stomach was too flat.
Haynes turned, noticed McCorkle’s cigarette and said, “This is a nonsmoking room.”
McCorkle nodded politely and blew smoke at the ceiling.
Haynes said, “I had a visitor.”
“Tell me about him.”
“He came with a small bolt cutter for the door chain and a pass-card—one of those electronic gizmos you can stick in the slot to open any door in the hotel. You can buy them the way you used to buy passkeys, but they’re a lot more expensive.”
“What kept him out?” McCorkle said.
“Acting.”
“Acting?”
“He was working on the chain with the bolt cutter when I sta
rted playing two parts—myself and Tinker Burns. Tinker and I talked about what we’d do to the son of a bitch once we got him inside.”
Suddenly, an uncanny duplicate of Burns’s voice came out of Haynes’s mouth. “You hold him, Granny, and I’ll reach down his throat and yank his gizzard out.” Haynes paused and resumed speaking in his normal voice. “The guy left and I thought he might’ve stuck a piece in your face and made you come back with him. But you say he’s dead.”
“Shot dead,” McCorkle said and headed for the room’s small refrigerator. He removed a miniature bottle of Scotch whisky, poured its contents into a glass and drank half of it.
“Who was he?” Haynes asked.
“Harry Warnock called him Purchase.”
“And who’s Warnock?”
“The guy Padillo and I hired to look after us while we mind you till the auction’s over.”
“How’d it play out?”
“Purchase shot Warnock in the side. Then Warnock killed him.”
“Where were you?”
“After he shot Warnock. Purchase made a dash for the front entrance. I tripped him, stomped his gun hand and kicked his piece away.”
“Then turned your back on him, right?”
McCorkle nodded. “To see about Warnock.”
“Dumb move,” Haynes said. “You should’ve kicked his face in first.”
“I thought I had.”
“What were you doing in the lobby?”
“Making sure Harry was on the job.”
“He’s an ex-cop?”
“Ex-IRA. The Kuwaitis are said to dote on him.”
“But he got shot.”
“Right.”
“And let this guy Purchase make it up to my room.”
“When Harry gets better, maybe he’ll send you a nice little note of apology.”
“How hurt is he?”