Twilight at Mac's Place (7 page)

“Where’s Isabelle?” Haynes said.

“For Chrissake, give me a second, will you?”

Burns stood up straight, threw his head back, stared at the ceiling for nearly half a minute, brought his head down, gently blew his nose into the wet handkerchief and inspected the results with obvious satisfaction.

Back at the sink again, Burns carefully rinsed out his bloody handkerchief, wrung it nearly dry, folded it carefully and tucked it away in a hip pocket. He then switched on the garbage disposal unit and let it and the cold water run for another thirty seconds.

It was only then that Tinker Burns turned to Haynes and said, “What’d you use?”

Haynes raised the
New York Times,
still in its semi-blunt-instrument form.

“Shit, I taught you that.”

“I believe you did.”

“Cute,” Burns said, patted his pockets, found his cigarettes and lit one. “Come on.”

As they crossed the studio apartment, heading toward a closed door, Haynes took note of the beige couch that probably folded out into a bed; the blond desk that held a personal computer; the round Formica-topped breakfast table just large enough for two; the small TV set and its attendant VCR; and a pair of old Air France posters that gave the otherwise monochromatic room its only touch of color.

Burns opened the door of what turned out to be the bathroom and switched on a light. Haynes followed him in. A green plastic shower curtain decorated with yellow daisies concealed the bathtub. Burns studied Haynes briefly, reached out, grasped the shower curtain and quickly pulled it back.

Isabelle Gelinet lay on her left side in the white tub. She was naked and her wrists were bound behind her with coat-hanger wire. Another coat hanger had been used to bind her ankles. Her left cheek rested on the bottom of the tub that was filled with water up to its overrun drain. Haynes knew Isabelle Gelinet was dead but wasn’t at all sure she had drowned.

The forty-one-year-old homicide detective-sergeant from the Metropolitan
Police Department was pretending he couldn’t keep all the players straight. It was a useful stratagem that Haynes himself had sometimes used and he thought Detective-Sergeant Darius Pouncy was carrying it off nicely.

Pouncy was also carrying ten or fifteen more pounds than he needed on a six-foot-even frame that was clothed in a salt-and-pepper tweed suit, white shirt and quiet tie. On his dark brown face he wore a look of almost utter detachment. It was the look of a man who asks questions for a living and expects nothing in return but lies and evasions. Haynes had known Los Angeles detectives who had perfected that same look but couldn’t recall any who’d worn salt-and-pepper tweed suits.

Pouncy had walked Haynes down to the end of the corridor to question him while another detective questioned Tinker Burns in the dead Isabelle Gelinet’s apartment. Pouncy stood with his back to the narrow casement window, letting what little light there was fall on Haynes’s face.

Looking up suddenly from notes he’d written on a small spiral pad, Pouncy said, “Granville Haynes. What do your friends call you? Granny?”

“Sometimes.”

“You say you all went to your dad’s funeral around noon today. You, Burns and Gelinet.”

“It wasn’t really a funeral. It was the interment.”

“Burial.”

“Yes.”

“You all the only ones there?”

“There were six soldiers who fired three volleys over the grave, a bugler and a color sergeant. I think they call them color sergeants.”

“But you all were the only mourners?”

“There was also a man from the CIA. A Mr. Undean.”

“First name?”

“Gilbert.”

Pouncy wrote the name down and said, “But that’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“Your dad with the CIA?”

“You’ll have to ask them.”

“But he’d served in some branch of the service?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Then how come they buried him in Arlington?”

“Miss Gelinet arranged it.”

“How?”

“You’ll have to ask the people at Arlington.”

“How long’d you known her?”

“As long as I can remember.”

“And Burns?”

“How long’ve I known him or how long has he known her?”

“Both.”

“I can’t remember when I didn’t know Tinker Burns and I’m sure he knew Miss Gelinet all her life.”

“Burns a good friend of your dad?”

“Yes.”

“Was Gelinet sleeping with him?”

“Who? Burns?”

“Your dad.”

“Two or three years ago she moved out to his farm near Berryville to help him write his autobiography. I don’t know whether she was sleeping with him. I didn’t ask; she didn’t say.”

“So after the funeral or whatever, the three of you go to lunch at, uh, Mac’s Place. Then you leave for an appointment with your dad’s lawyer. When you get back to Mac’s Place, Gelinet’s gone but Burns is still there. That right, Granny?”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“Then I talked with Mr. McCorkle in his office.”

“The owner?”

“One of them.”

“When you came out of his office was Burns still in the restaurant?”

“Yes.”

“Where’d you go then, Granny?”

“Mr. McCorkle’s daughter gave me a ride here but on the way we stopped for coffee.”

“What’s her name?”

“Erika McCorkle.”

“Where’d you have the coffee?”

“At the Odeon near Connecticut and R.”

“How long you in there?”

“Fifteen, twenty minutes.”

“And she dropped you off here?”

“Yes.”

“How’d you get in?”

“I rang her apartment and somebody buzzed the front door, but didn’t ask who I was. So I didn’t go in.”

“Made you suspicious, huh?”

“I didn’t think Isabelle would buzz somebody in without knowing who it was. I rang again and the same thing happened. But this time I went in.”

“And did what?”

“Bought a
New York Times.
”

“Okay, Granny. Now you’re in the lobby and you’ve got yourself something to read on the way up in the elevator. You get to the fourth floor, go down the hall and knock on Gelinet’s door. Then what?”

“There wasn’t any answer so I tried the door. It was unlocked and I went in.”

“Can we get to the blood on the carpet now?”

“Sure. Mr. Burns grabbed me from behind the moment I came through the door. I broke away, turned and whacked him on the nose before we recognized each other.”

“Where’d you learn to roll a paper up all nice and tight like that?”

Haynes shrugged. “High school maybe.”

“They teach it in arts and crafts? Never mind. So when you went up there with the
Times
all rolled up nice and tight, who were you expecting to hit?”

“Nobody. It was just in case.”

“Just in case of what, Granny?”

“In case I might have to defend myself.”

“Because nobody asked who you were over the intercom?”

“Right.”

“So you and Burns had a little tussle and you gave him a bloody nose.”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“When his nose stopped bleeding we went into the bathroom and he showed me Miss Gelinet’s body.”

“Then?”

“Then we called the police.”

“What’s Burns do for a living?”

“He sells weapons.”

“Where?”

“Paris.”

“What’d he do before he did that?”

“He was a professional soldier.”

“In whose army?”

“The American Army and after that the French Foreign Legion. There may have been other armies after the Legion, but you’ll have to ask him.”

“He an American citizen?”

“French.”

“But he used to be American?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re an actor, that right, Granny?”

“Yes.”

“And what’d you do before you got to be an actor?”

“I was a homicide detective.”

The detachment left Detective-Sergeant Pouncy’s face, shoved aside by sudden anger. “No call for smartass stuff. No call for that at all.”

“I was with the LAPD for almost ten years, seven of them in homicide.”

“You gotta know I’m gonna check it out.”

“Go ahead.”

“So how come you didn’t lemme know right away from the start?”

“Because if I’d found some guy in a dead woman’s apartment who right away wants me to know he’s an ex-D.C. homicide cop, I probably wouldn’t’ve let him loose till around midnight. If then.”

“Figure he’s dirty, huh?”

“It’d make me wonder.”

“You really an actor?”

Haynes nodded.

“Been in anything I might’ve seen?”

“You watch TV?”

“Not unless she makes me.”

“I was in a
Wiseguy,
a
Jake and the Fatman,
and I had two speaking roles in a couple of
Simon and Simon
s.”

“That the one with the black cop called ‘Downtown Brown’?”

“Yes.”

“You ever know a real cop that’d tell a private one what year it was?”

“Never.”

“Then how come they’re always such asshole buddies on TV?”

“Because the private cop has to have a legitimate connection to law and order.”

“Who says?”

“Hollywood ethics.”

“What the fuck’s Hollywood ethics?”

“Nobody knows,” said Granville Haynes.

It wasn’t until after he had used the dead Isabelle Gelinet’s telephone to call the
Los Angeles Police Department and speak to the irrepressible Sergeant Virgil Stroud in robbery and homicide that Detective-Sergeant Darius Pouncy was nearly convinced that Haynes and even Tinker Burns were probably what they claimed to be.

After an exchange of the usual amenities and the usual information about the weather (a high of seventy-two degrees and fair in Los Angeles; down to forty-one degrees and looking like rain or snow in Washington), Pouncy asked, “You ever have a real slick article out there in homicide by the name of Granville Haynes?”

“Haynes…Haynes,” said Sergeant Stroud. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Claims he used to work for you people.”

“And you need his home phone number, right?”

“What the fuck I want with his phone number?”

There was a brief silence until Stroud said, “Oh. You mean
Granny
Haynes. Sure. He used to work here. What’s he up to?”

“Up to his ass in a homicide investigation, is what.”

“Who bought it—somebody rich?”

“Not hardly.”

“Reason I asked is because Granny’s the one we liked to send when rich folks bought it. Real nice manners. Neat dresser. Spoke French, Italian and fair Spanish. Made some damn good cases, too. You’re lucky you—”

Pouncy broke it off. “Hey. We’re not looking to hire him. We just wanta check him out. Claims he used to be a homicide cop but now he’s an actor.”

“Ever see a low-budget slasher flick called
Thirteen Hangingtree Lane
?” Stroud asked. “Came out two, three years back and Granny goes down into the basement of this big old house. The one in Hangingtree Lane. And there’s this fat sack of slime down there with an ax. Now, this is Granny’s first feature speaking role. So just before this guy with a face like a four-cheese pizza takes Granny’s head off with the ax, Granny gets to say, ‘Listen! Please! I’m here to help you!’ And then his head goes flying off and they cut to the corner of the basement and there’s Granny’s head, looking surprised as hell.”

“Guess I missed it,” Pouncy said. “How much you figure he got paid for doing all that?”

“Probably SAG minimum. Maybe four hundred bucks.”

“What’s SAG?”

“Screen Actors Guild.”

“He was a cop then?”

“Sure.”

“Out there you let cops be actors?”

“Lemme ask you something,” Stroud said. “If you’ve gotta moonlight, which’d you rather be—an actor or a liquor store security guard in some low-rent neighborhood?” Without waiting for an answer, Sergeant Stroud chuckled his good-bye and broke the connection.

The driver of Tinker Burns’s hired limousine had chosen Park Road as the best route to Sixteenth Street. It was nearly 8
P.M
. and they were somewhere in darkest Rock Creek Park when Burns ended the long silence in the backseat. “I’ll take care of Isabelle’s cremation and funeral and everything.”

“They’ll have to do the autopsy first,” Haynes said.

“I mean after that.”

“Will the cops call Madeleine?” Haynes asked. Madeleine was Madeleine Gelinet, mother of the dead Isabelle and former mistress of Tinker Burns.

“You think Sergeant Pouncy speaks French?”

“Maybe Madeleine’s learned English.”

“Never,” Burns said. “I figured I’d go back to the hotel, have a couple of drinks and then call her.”

“Does she know about Steady?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You can tell her about him, too.”

Burns shifted uneasily in the seat, not quite squirming. “Maybe you’d rather call her?” he asked without hope.

“No thanks,” Haynes said. “She still in Nice?”

“Where else? She’ll never part with that house.”

There was another silence that lasted until they turned south down Sixteenth Street. It was then that Burns asked, “Who d’you think killed her?”

“No idea.”

“Guess.”

“Maybe a guy prowling for a TV set. Maybe the neighborhood rapist. Maybe even some weirdo who followed her home and got off on tying her up and drowning her in the bathtub.”

“They said there weren’t any signs of forced entry.”

“Forced…. entry,” Haynes said, spacing the words as if to savor them. “Let’s say he rings the bell from downstairs. Isabelle asks ‘Who is it?’ over the intercom and he says it’s Federal Express. Well, Federal Express people are about as common as mailmen. I know guys in Century City who use Federal Express to send scripts from the tenth to the thirty-sixth floor by way of Memphis. So Isabelle buzzes him up. He knocks at her door. She opens it on the chain and sees this guy with a clipboard and a Federal Express packet he’s fished out of the trash can. She opens the door all the way and winds up dead in the bathtub.” Haynes paused. “How’d you get in?”

“When I pulled up in the limo there was an old couple coming out who held the door for me. Isabelle’s door was unlocked.”

“A limo’s almost as good as being from Federal Express. You don’t expect a killer to take one to work. Although there were two guys in L.A. who used to hire limos whenever they decided to go stick up a bank.”

“Know what I think?” Burns said.

“What?”

“I think it’s got to do with that book she and Steady wrote.”

“Must be some book.”

Burns turned to give Haynes his coldest stare. “The difference between you and me, kid, is I’ve got a damn good idea of what Steady did over the years. How he did it and who to. Who paid him and how much. And last, but as sure as hell not least, who told him to go do it.”

“What about lately, Tinker? Fifteen, ten, even five years ago is ancient history.”

“You’re forgetting it’s a brand-new administration.”

“No, it’s not. It’s a succession.”

“But the guy who took the oath last Friday was DCI when certain people at Langley went after Steady back during the Ford administration. Jesus. It was like a vendetta. Let’s all jump up and down on Steady Haynes. Then it stopped. All of a sudden. It was just like Steady gave the rug a jerk. Just a little one—know what I mean?”

“Thirteen or fourteen years ago is the Ice Age.”

“Yeah, but what you’ve got now is the first Director of Central Intelligence ever to be President, which they don’t seem to mention much anymore. So maybe Steady decided it was time to give the rug another jerk, harder this time, just to see what’d happen. So he checks into the Hay-Adams with Isabelle and tries to fix himself up with choice seats at the North trial. He’s advertising, that’s what he’s doing, because you know damn well Steady’s not gonna pop for the Hay-Adams when Isabelle’s got a free-for-nothing pad up on Connecticut.”

“Advertising what?” Haynes said.

“That he’s got something to sell.”

“His book?”

“What else?”

“And after he died, you think Isabelle decided to solo?”

“How the hell you think she got him buried at Arlington? Remember when I asked her if she’d blackmailed them into it? And she said, ‘Of course.’ I was kidding. She wasn’t.”

“Tell me something, Tinker. Do you think you’re in Steady’s book?”

“What the fuck kind of question is that?”

“The kind you should avoid answering,” Haynes said.

Just before leaving Mac’s Place, Haynes had called United Airlines to have the bag he had left in its care sent to the Willard. When the rented gray limousine dropped him at the hotel, after first depositing Tinker Burns at the Madison, Haynes was pleasantly astonished to discover the bag had been delivered.

A Latino bellhop was dispatched to collect it from the checkroom. Haynes used the time to inspect the restored lobby that boasted a concierge desk that resembled a flower petal built out of rich-looking yellow marble. There was also a long, long corridor or promenade that led off the main lobby and seemed to go on forever. A bellhop later told him it was called Peacock Alley and went all the way to F Street. Both it and the lobby boasted big comfortable-looking chairs, convenient tables and a near jungle of potted palms growing out of glazed Chinese pots.

It all looked like old expensive stuff or like new old stuff that was three times as expensive. Haynes thought a fifth of the lobby must have been dipped in gilt. There was an abundance, maybe even a wealth of intricate plaster moldings. Huge milky chandeliers of the half-globe variety hung down from thick bronze chains. Haynes started to count them and had reached number twelve when the bellhop returned with his bag.

In the elevator, the bellhop boasted that the mint julep had been introduced to Washington in the Willard bar by a certain Señor Henry Clay. Haynes said he hadn’t known that.

After the bellhop was tipped and gone, Haynes discovered yet again that regardless of price a hotel room is primarily a box the bed comes in. His $145-a-night box also came with a bath, two phones, a radio, a TV set, a miniature refrigerator and a window with a view of the National Press Building across Fourteenth Street where quite a few people, mostly men in shirt sleeves, still seemed to be working.

Haynes had just finished hanging up his other jacket and his other pair of pants when he heard the knock. After opening the door he found Gilbert Undean standing in the corridor, wearing a sheepish look and the same clothes he had worn to Steadfast Haynes’s interment.

“Got a minute?” Undean said.

“Come in.”

Undean entered the room and looked around curiously. “First time I’ve been up in one of these rooms in twenty-five years. I was out of the country when they closed the place in ’sixty-eight after downtown business went to hell.” He nodded approvingly. “Pretty fancy. They claim Julia Ward Howe wrote ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ here. Or in the Willard that was here way back then. But it’s probably bullshit.”

“I sometimes enjoy bullshit,” Haynes said. “Care for a beer or something?”

“A beer’d be fine—if you’re having one.”

Haynes removed two cans of Heineken from the small refrigerator, opened both and handed one to Undean, who took a long swallow, sighed and sat down in an armchair. Haynes chose the edge of the bed.

“They heard about Isabelle Gelinet,” Undean said.

“They?”

“The agency.”

“You must be their utility mourner.”

“I’m not here to express condolences. I’m here because of that book Steady wrote.”

“What about it?”

“They want to buy it.”

“Why not just suppress it the way they did some others I can think of?”

“That’s what I told ’em. They said they can’t because, one, Steady’s dead, and two, he never worked for them. At least they can’t prove he ever did.”

“How do they know about the book?”

“Gelinet. She used it to blackmail them into burying Steady at Arlington.”

“That’s all she asked for?” Haynes said. “No money?”

“Just a plot of hallowed ground,” Undean said. “I’m quoting them. They thought they’d got off cheap.”

“Have they read it?”

Undean drank two more swallows of beer, then shook his head. “Say they haven’t.”

“But they think Isabelle’s murder and the book are somehow connected.”

“They get paid to think like that. First I heard of the book was this afternoon right after they buried Steady. I told ’em to buy it and save themselves a lot of grief. They laughed it off.”

“Why’d you tell them to buy it, Mr. Undean?”

“Because I knew Steady. Saw him operate and know some of the corners he cut, the lies he told, the deals he made, the promises he broke, the deaths he caused.”

“He killed people?”

“The things he did and the lies he told caused people to die. And those who died put the fear of God in the ones who managed to stay alive. Their minds got changed. And maybe their politics. When you get right down to it, Steady was sort of a mental terrorist.”

“My father, the mindfucker.”

“And damned good at it, too.”

“In Laos?”

“That’s where I watched him work. Even hurrahed him on some. I’ve only heard about what he did in other places, but I believe eighty percent of what I’ve heard.”

“What’s the real reason they didn’t try to buy the book after Isabelle told them about it?”

“No demand.”

Haynes frowned. “I just lost my place.”

“No demand for dog vomit,” Undean said after a swallow of beer. “That’s what they figured Steady’s book’d be and why there’d be no demand for it. Even if it got published, nobody’d buy it. But when Gelinet got killed, the price of dog vomit shot up and now they figure there must be a big demand for it after all.”

“Have they figured out where the demand’s coming from?”

“They’re still working on that.”

“How bad do they want it?”

Undean shrugged. “Pretty bad.”

“What’s your lowball offer?”