Twilight at Mac's Place (21 page)

Padillo, leaning on the counter, stared thoughtfully at the Madison Hotel front
desk clerk and managed to make a quiet suggestion sound like a death threat. “Why not call him, tell him we’re here and see what he says?”

The clerk swallowed, nodded, picked up a phone, tapped out a room number and listened to the rings. After what Granville Haynes guessed was the fourth ring, the clerk said, “This is Edwards at the desk, Mr. Burns. Sorry for the disturbance, but a Mr. Padillo and a Mr. Haynes insist on seeing you.”

Pressing the phone tightly against his ear, as if to muffle the shouts and curses, the clerk closed his eyes and began nodding almost rhythmically. He finally stopped nodding, opened his eyes and said, “I understand perfectly, Mr. Burns.”

After replacing the phone, the clerk looked first at Haynes, then at Padillo and said, “He says come up at your own risk.”

Tinker Burns opened the door of his room, stepped back and silently watched Haynes enter, followed by Padillo. Haynes looked around the room, as if comparing it to his own at the Willard. After crossing to the bathroom, he switched on its light, gave it a quick inspection, switched the light off, turned, walked past Burns again, still ignoring him, picked out a chair and sat down. Padillo chose a chair on the opposite side of the room.

Tinker Burns inspected the seated Padillo first, then Haynes. He nodded, as if at the answer to some troublesome question, tightened the belt of his white terry-cloth hotel bathrobe, went on huge bare feet to the small refrigerator, took out a can of beer, opened it, drank deeply, belched loudly and sat down on the bed.

“Let’s hear it, Tinker,” said Haynes.

“You just did,” Burns said, and belched again. “But now you’ve got me repeating myself.”

Padillo rose, went to the refrigerator and removed two miniatures of Scotch whisky. He located a pair of glasses and used them to pour two drinks. He gave one drink to Haynes and returned to his own chair with the other. Once seated, Padillo tasted the whisky, looked at Burns and said, “I called Letty Melon just before we got here. She was still up.”

“Still up and still smashed, right?”

“Not too bad,” Padillo said.

“Bet you told her how I hired those two dummies who tied her up and all. Schlitz called and told me you and McCorkle’ve got Steady’s manuscript. But that didn’t make any sense because you guys wouldn’t tell those two morons even if you did have it, which you don’t.”

“Herr Horst said you came looking for me,” Padillo said. “Twice.”

“I was just pissed off enough to wanta find out what you and McCorkle were up to.” Burns paused, drank more beer and said, “I finally figured out you were up to nothing.”

“Letty was awfully talkative,” Padillo said. “But she got even more so after I told her that Schlitz and Pabst were working for you.”

“Told you about that fake manuscript, did she?” Burns said.

Padillo answered with a nod. “But then she began telling me about that phone call you got in Paris just before Steady died. And that’s when I turned her over to Granville.”

“I didn’t believe her,” Haynes said. “At first.”

“Don’t blame you.”

“It was a crazy story, Tinker, all about an old friend of yours who’s now some big shot and wants a peek at Steady’s memoirs just to see whether he’s mentioned. Letty says that if you can swing that for him, this same very important somebody will provide you with access to an end-use certificate that’ll let you dump all that left-behind Vietnam ordnance you’ve got rusting away in those Marseilles warehouses.”

“Letty remembers pretty good,” Burns said. “Even when she’s deep in the sauce.”

“I believed some of what she told me,” Haynes said. “I believed the part about your getting a call in Paris before Steady died. But I don’t believe it was from anyone you knew.”

“I don’t give much of a shit what you believe, Granny.”

“I think the call was from somebody who wants to read Steady’s memoirs—maybe even buy them. I think you got the call because you’d known Steady forever and this same somebody thought you could arrange it somehow. I think you told this somebody you’d give it a try. But before you could, Steady died on you. I think this same somebody is still willing to pay you a lot of money for either the memoirs or just a peek at them. So you flew over here for the burial to see what could be salvaged. I also think that’s why you went to see Isabelle at her apartment.”

Haynes paused, as if to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything. “There’s something else I think, Tinker. No, I’m convinced of it. I’m convinced that if you hadn’t smelled money, there’d’ve only been three of us at Arlington: Isabelle, Undean and me.”

Burns rubbed his chin with a big hand as he studied Haynes. The palm of his hand made a slight rasping sound as it scraped across bone-white bristles.

“Know something, Granny?” Burns said. “I didn’t think anybody young as you could be so fucking sanctimonious. Steady was dead. D-e-a-d. You must know what dead is. Christ, you were in the trade. Steady never expected me to show up for his funeral any more’n I’d expect him to show up for mine. But I went anyhow and why I did’s none of your fucking business.”

“How much did he offer you, Tinker?” Padillo said. “This someday who called you in Paris?”

“Did somebody call me?” Burns said.

Haynes leaned forward, elbows resting on knees, both hands holding his barely tasted drink. His face suddenly seemed to acquire harsher planes and darker shadows. His stare grew bleak and his voice made each word sound like a slap.

“Butt out, Tinker,” Haynes said. “They’re my memoirs now. Steady left them to me in his will. I’m going to auction them off Wednesday. The bidding will start at three quarters of a million. But if you keep messing around, you’ll just fuck things up. So go back to Paris, Tinker. Go home and forget about the memoirs.”

Burns’s old tan couldn’t quite conceal the dark red flush that raced up his neck and spread to his cheeks and ears. “Who the hell’re you to tell me what to do? About anything? Especially Steady. I knew him better and liked him more’n you ever did. But you waltz in here at three in the morning like God’s last messenger, and who the fuck d’you bring with you? Why, it’s Señor Death himself, that’s who.” Burns jerked a thumb at Padillo. “What d’you really know about this guy, Granny?”

“A family friend,” Haynes said.

Burns grunted. “Some fucking family. Some fucking friend.”

“Tell him, Tinker,” Padillo said. “It might lower your blood pressure.”

Burns jumped to his feet and stretched one arm out full length to aim an accusatory finger at Padillo. Haynes thought Burns’s blazing eyes, quivering forefinger, bare feet and long white robe made him look rather biblical—like some ancient prophet with too much time in the wilderness.

“Know who they used to send when they needed somebody fixed?” Burns demanded. “They sent him. That’s who. Michael Padillo, the assassin’s assassin. How many did you fix over the years, Mike? Fifty? A hundred? Two hundred?”

Padillo smiled. “Counting the war?”

Burns opened his mouth to say or shout something. But before he could, Haynes said, “Just answer one question, Tinker. How well do you know the former Muriel Lamphier who’s now Mrs. Hamilton Keyes?”

It was then that Burns warned them to get the fuck out before he called the hotel security people.

In the elevator, Haynes asked, “What was all that assassin stuff?”

“History.”

“Real or invented?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“The hell I don’t.”

“Ask McCorkle.”

“Does he know?”

“He knows.”

“Will he tell me?”

“I have no idea.”

“What about Erika?”

“I think she suspects.”

“Should I ask her?”

“You can ask anyone you want to.”

“Will she tell me?”

“I don’t think so,” Padillo said.

Padillo gave the Madison’s drowsy doorman twenty dollars to let them park the old Mercedes coupe in front of the hotel’s Fifteenth Street entrance, where the big glass doors allowed them to watch the bank of pay telephones near the elevators. After they waited five minutes, Padillo said, “Maybe he used his room phone after all.”

“And leave a record of the phone number on his bill?” Haynes said. “Tinker’s way too cagey for that. Let’s give him another ten minutes.”

After two minutes of silence, Padillo said, “That was a nice performance you gave.”

Haynes smiled at the praise. “You mean the way I let my paranoia peep shyly forth?”

Padillo nodded. “You must’ve drawn on your time with the L.A. cops. I say that because half the cops I ever met were paranoid.”

“Half the cops,” Haynes said, “and all the actors.”

Thirty seconds later Tinker Burns came out of one of the two elevators they could see from the car and headed for the pay phones. Burns had dressed quickly and was wearing only a shirt, pants, shoes, but no socks. As he neared the pay phones, he hesitated, looked around, made a quick tour of the virtually empty lobby, then went back to the phones and dropped coins into one of them.

With Padillo’s powerful binoculars now up to his eyes and the long-memorized three-across-and-four-down Touch-Tone phone pattern firmly in mind, Haynes read off the seven numbers that Burns tapped as Padillo jotted them down on the back of an envelope.

“Four. Six. Five. Nine. One. Nine. One.”

“You’re sure?” Padillo said.

“Christ, no.”

“Good. I’d be a little edgy if you were.”

They watched Burns talk and listen for two minutes and thirteen seconds by Padillo’s watch. Burns then hung up and reentered the same, still waiting elevator. As its doors closed, Padillo said, “Any ideas?”

“About how we find out who belongs to 465-9191?”

Padillo nodded, started the engine and pulled away from the curb.

“Tonight?” Haynes asked.

“Why not?”

“I’m open to suggestions.”

Padillo glanced at him. “Are you much of a mimic?”

“Try me.”

“Do Tinker Burns.”

Haynes closed his eyes, breathed deeply two times, opened his eyes, deepened his voice, gave it a rough edge and bellowed, “Okay! That’s it! Now get the fuck outta here before I call security!”

Padillo smiled. “Perfect.”

They made the call from Padillo’s Foggy Bottom house. Haynes made it from the wall phone in the kitchen with Padillo on the living room extension.

After Haynes tapped out the 465-9191 number, it rang four and a half times before it was answered by a man’s sleepy mumbled hello.

“Tinker Burns again,” Haynes said. “There’s one more thing I forgot to tell you.”

“Mr. Burns, this is twice tonight that you’ve robbed me of sleep,” said the voice that once again reminded Haynes of soothing syrup. “I assure you we can discuss it, whatever it is, when we meet tomorrow morning. And now, sir, good night.”

The connection was broken. Haynes put the wall phone back on its hook and went into the living room. Padillo turned from the extension and said, “Well?”

“One, he’s a lawyer. Two, he’s an ex-U.S. senator. Three, he’s the guy who’s been talking to Howard Mott about buying all rights to the memoirs for some anonymous client. And four, he’s obviously from way down south.”

“Near Mobile,” Padillo said.

“Is that a guess or do you know him?”

“We’ve met,” Padillo said.

The one-term senator from Alabama practiced law in a three-story building that
sat on a small triangle of land where Connecticut Avenue met Nineteenth Street just north of Dupont Circle.

The building had once offered fine apartments, including one that a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, now dead, had lived in for years. It was still an article of faith in Washington that its weird taxicab zones had been redrawn to make sure the Speaker would pay the absolute minimum fare for his rides to and from the Capitol.

Tinker Burns paid off his own taxi, got out and examined the yellow brick building that time and smog were turning light tan. He hoped the senator hadn’t chosen the building for its quaintness. Burns despised and mistrusted anything that hinted of quaint.

The senator had made his law office look as much like his Senate office as possible. There were the same dark blue leather chairs and couches, the same massive desk and, on one wall, the same rather good watercolors of Mobile Bay. The other walls were covered by either bookshelves or the eighty-seven black-and-white photographs of the senator and eight-seven of his oldest and dearest friends, past and present. Some of the past friends had died and others had quickly—too quickly, some said—drifted away after the senator lost his bid for reelection in 1986.

But the photographs remained on display, offering informal portraits of the senator with three living former U.S. Presidents, one prince, six premiers, one chancellor, two prime ministers, twenty-one U.S. senators, thirteen U.S. representatives, nine state governors, three secretaries of state, five directors of Central Intelligence, one ex-President-for-Life and a five-year-old blue tick hound who was now curled up fast asleep on one of the leather couches.

The senator was on the telephone when his secretary ushered Tinker Burns into the paneled office. Burns was greeted with a warm smile and a beckoning hand that waved him silently into the most comfortable leather armchair.

Once assured that Burns was safely seated, the senator went back to his listening. He did it with his eyes closed. When open, the eyes were a remarkable blue that reminded one former Senate colleague, no admirer, of twin neon periods.

The rest of the face was lean, maybe even skinny, with scooped-out cheeks, sharp nose, thin gray lips and a chin that came to a point. The face was topped by lank gray hair that was inexpertly cut by his wife every three weeks. The kitchen haircut and the shabby suits he wore helped foster the senator’s chosen image—that of a sly rustic. At twenty-three and just out of law school, he had nicknamed himself Rube. Now fifty-three, he still liked to be called that by close friends.

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 going 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.