Twilight at Mac's Place (8 page)

“Thirty-five.”

“And you can bump it to what?”

“Fifty.”

“Cash?”

“Any way you want it.”

“What happens to the book?”

“What book?”

“Will they read it before it goes into the shredder?”

“I doubt it. If they read it, it’d ruin their deniability. If nobody reads it, then nobody knows what’s in it and they can deny all knowledge of its contents. Then it’d be just like it was never written.”

“What if I read it before I sold it to them?”

“I’d advise you not to mention it.”

“And fifty thousand is your best offer?”

“That’s it,” Undean said. “So what do I tell ’em?”

“Tell them I want a minimum of seven hundred and fifty thousand.”

“They’ll fall about laughing.”

“When they’re finished, tell them I know where I can put my hands on enough offshore development money to produce a feature film based on Steady’s book. Tell them I’ll also direct, write and play the lead. And finally, you can tell them the name of the film will be the same as the book,
Mercenary Calling
.”

Undean smiled for the first time that night. “I’ll also tell ’em you look just like him.”

“One more thing, Mr. Undean.”

Undean nodded, still smiling.

“Tell them I’ve already had an unsolicited offer of one hundred thousand for all rights to the manuscript but turned it down. So if they want to stay in the bidding, they’d better start thinking in terms of important money.”

Undean’s smile broadened until he looked almost delighted. “Know what else I can say? I can say you not only look and talk just like him, you also think just like him. Except faster. And right after I tell ’em that is when they’ll start passing peach pits.”

Howard Mott, the criminal defense lawyer, ignored the flashing red light that
meant his telephone was ringing. With his feet up on an ottoman and the rest of him sunk into a favorite armchair, Mott was listening to the final act of
Tosca
on a new compact disc that magically had recaptured the voice of Leontyne Price with Karajan conducting.

It was 9:47
P.M
. and Mott had been lost in the opera since a dinner of roast pork tenderloin that a second cognac was helping him digest in his study-cum-music room on the second floor of the large old house on Thirty-fifth Street Northwest in Cleveland Park. His household had been given firm instructions not to disturb him for any reason—his household consisting solely of his pregnant wife, the former Lydia Stallings.

The red telephone light stopped flashing, but stayed on, which meant that Lydia had taken the call. The light was still on a minute or so later when she entered and silently handed him the yellow three-by-five Post-it notepad she always used for messages. This message read: “G. Haynes on phone. I. Gelinet murdered. Needs advice & counsel.”

Mott sighed and looked at his watch. There were at least fifteen or twenty minutes of Leontyne Price to come. He took a ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket and scrawled something on the yellow notepad. Lydia read it, borrowed the pen and wrote, “He be hungry?”

Mott quickly answered the written question with a firm headshake, hoping it would discourage her from preparing a meal that would feed everyone within walking distance. He blamed his wife’s growing compulsion to feed the world on her pregnancy and the two years she had spent in the Peace Corps.

In the kitchen, Lydia Mott picked up the beige wall phone and said, “Mr. Haynes? Howie’s worried that you may not have eaten and wonders if you could make it out here by ten or ten-fifteen? He’ll be having some soup and sandwiches then and thought you might like to join him.”

Haynes hung up the hotel room phone and memorized the Thirty-fifth Street address he had written down. He put his hand back on the phone, hesitated, picked it up, tapped a number for an outside line, then tapped 411 and asked directory assistance for the number of Mac’s Place.

Haynes recognized the faintly Teutonic tones of Herr Horst when a man’s voice answered with, “Reservations.” Haynes identified himself and asked to speak to Michael Padillo, adding that it was a personal call.

Thirty seconds later another voice said, “This is Michael Padillo.”

“Granville Haynes. Sorry, but it’s bad news.”

“All right.”

“Isabelle’s dead. She was murdered sometime this afternoon in her apartment. Tinker Burns and I found her.”

There was the usual silence. When he had first joined homicide, Haynes often suspected that such silences would never end or, at best, continue on and on into next week. But he soon discovered that they ended quickly, usually with a sob, a curse or an expression of disbelief. Sometimes with all three.

Padillo, however, ended his brief silence with the essential question: “Who killed her?”

“They don’t know.”

“They have any idea?”

“Not yet.”

“What happened?”

“She was found in the bathtub, her head under water, her wrists and ankles wired with what looked like coat hangers. No other visible marks or abrasions.”

“Drowned?”

“Maybe. An autopsy will tell.”

There was another silence before Padillo said, “You’ve known her a long time, haven’t you?”

“About as long as I can remember.”

“Does this have anything to do with Steady?”

“It might.”

“I want—well, I’d like to talk to you about it.”

“All right.”

“Where are you now?”

“The Willard.”

“Can you come over here?”

“I have to see a lawyer first.”

“Can you make it by midnight?”

“Probably.”

“I’ll be here,” Padillo said.

The table was the one McCorkle and Padillo always reserved for themselves, the one near the swinging kitchen doors that everybody else shunned. It allowed them to keep an eye on both the help and the customers. It also allowed the chef to poke his head out occasionally to ask a question, register a complaint or merely satisfy himself that someone was really eating his cooking.

When the call for Padillo came, the three of them had almost finished a celebratory dinner in honor of Erika McCorkle’s completion of her university studies. All celebration ended when Padillo returned to the table, sat down as if he had grown suddenly weary, pushed away his plate and said, “Isabelle’s dead. Apparently murdered.” He then repeated in a low voice everything he had been told about the death.

McCorkle was the first to speak, but only after he leaned back in his chair to study Padillo carefully. It was then that he sighed and said, “I’m sorry, Mike. There was always something splendid and unique about Isabelle. I’m going to miss her.” He paused. “They have any idea of who did it?”

“No.”

Erika McCorkle had turned pale. When she tried to speak, it came out as a croak. She cleared her throat, and this time it came out as a whisper. “In her—bathtub?”

Padillo nodded.

“Drowned?”

“Possibly.”

Still whispering, she said, “Then it’s all my fault.”

“Why yours?” Padillo said. “And why all the whispering?”

She made no reply, letting the silence continue until she finally spoke again in a voice not much louder than her whisper. “Because I used to daydream about her drowning. But not in a bathtub. In the Anacostia.”

McCorkle, an eyebrow raised, looked at Padillo, as if hoping for an explanation. But Padillo only shrugged. McCorkle turned back to his daughter and asked, “Why did you dream about her…drowning?”

“I told you. I was jealous.”

“You didn’t tell me,” McCorkle said.

She frowned, staring at him. A moment later the frown vanished and she said, “Right. It wasn’t you. It was Granville Haynes I told. This afternoon.”

“You told him you were jealous of Isabelle because of her and Steady?”

The frown returned. “Not of her and Steady.” She looked at Padillo. “Of Isabelle and you.”

Padillo stared at her as his right hand dipped automatically into his shirt pocket, seeking the cigarettes he had abandoned five years ago. “Christ, kid,” he said. “Isabelle and I ended it when you were thirteen, maybe fourteen.”

Although her expression seemed to be one of pity, there was only scorn in Erika McCorkle’s voice when she said, “You have no idea, do you?”

“Of what?” Padillo said.

“Of what vicious daydreams a lovesick thirteen-year-old can have when the man she’s in love with is fucking somebody else?”

Nodding calmly, Padillo said, “Go on.”

“With what?”

“With why it’s all your fault.”

“Because I used to daydream about it and—and, oh God, I’m so sorry she’s dead.”

McCorkle leaned toward his daughter. “Erika, may I say something?” he asked in a gentle voice.

She nodded.

“This is the silliest goddamn conversation we’ve ever had.”

It was as if he had struck her. First came the surprise, then the hurt and finally the anger. “You guys can’t even remember what it was like being thirteen.”

“Thank God,” McCorkle said.

“It hurt.”

“Everybody hurts at thirteen,” Padillo said. “They hurt so much they later write books about it. The same book. Over and over. But you’re a long way from thirteen.”

“And you’re suddenly more—” She stopped and began again. “I’m sorry. I guess the shock brought on the silly talk. Poor Isabelle. When I was thirteen she was everything I wanted to be and now that she’s dead I just can’t accept it.”

“You and Haynes talked about her?”

Erika nodded. “He told me how they used to go skinny-dipping when they were six or seven, around in there, and I told him how I’d daydreamed about her drowning in the Anacostia but he said there wasn’t much chance of that because she was a damn fine swimmer and—aw, hell, Pop, can we go home now?”

“What a great idea,” McCorkle said.

It was the first time the Burma analyst, Gilbert Undean, had been to the house
of the courtly Hamilton Keyes. The house was in the exorbitantly priced Kalorama Triangle whose isosceles tip points south, just touching Dupont Circle, with legs formed by Connecticut and Massachusetts and a base that rests on a slice of Rock Creek Park to the north.

Located on California Street between Twenty-third and Twenty-fourth, the house had been bought by Keyes’s rich wife, the former Muriel Lamphier, while he was in Tegucigalpa on agency business. Keyes had always hated surprises and was furious when told of the purchase upon his return. But because it was Muriel’s money and because, from the first, they had agreed it was impossible and unnecessary to live on his government salary, Keyes said only that the house looked “terribly impressive,” letting Muriel interpret that any way she liked.

She chose to interpret it as a compliment of sorts, but seemed less interested in the house itself than in how cunningly she had outwitted a K Street lawyer, who had been trying to buy it for an unnamed South American—a Colombian, she suspected—but dropped out of the bidding after she topped his final offer with one of $535,000.

Ten years later the same K Street lawyer, now representing a Japanese industrialist, offered the Keyeses four times their purchase price, which they turned down with what each confessed was a certain amount of smug satisfaction.

Gilbert Undean, a widower, lived in Reston, Virginia, and seldom ventured into the District unless it was unavoidable. Although he had made no definite appointment to see Keyes, Undean still felt he was running late, especially after he took Connecticut Avenue out to California Street only to discover he couldn’t make a left turn—at least not there. After wandering around for fifteen minutes he finally got onto California and found the Keyeses’ house.

It was of enormous size but austere design that made it resemble what a talented six-year-old might draw if given a ruler. The giant three-story Georgian house was built of red brick with white trim and dark gray shutters that matched the slate of its dormered roof.

Softening the stern lines was a stand of fine old trees. Although it was now too dark to be certain, Undean would have been surprised if the trees weren’t elms. He was very surprised when Muriel Keyes herself answered the doorbell. Undean had been expecting a maid and hoping for a butler.

She held out her hand, gave him a memorable smile and said, “Mr. Undean. How nice to see you again.”

Her grip was firm, her hand was warm and she used the firm warm grip to guide him over the threshold and into a foyer with a marble floor, releasing him only after he was safely inside.

“Ham’s in the library,” she said with another one of her remarkable smiles.

“Not late, am I?” Undean asked, trying not to stare at the almost perfect face that featured a pair of soft warm gray eyes. The gray of her eyes complemented the natural frosting in her dark hair and almost matched the color of her cashmere sweater. It was the way she filled out the sweater that made Undean recall a tag of agency gossip, corridor stuff, that had Muriel Keyes, then Muriel Lamphier, taking a Hollywood screen test on a bet, but turning down a role they had offered her. Guessing that she was now forty or maybe even forty-two, Undean found himself almost basking in her soft warm glow of utter confidence, which, he suspected, came from old money, prudently invested.

Muriel Keyes assured Undean that he wasn’t at all late and led him down the nicely proportioned entry hall and into a living room stuffed with antiques. She glanced back, smiling again, as they crossed the living room and entered a smaller room that had a wall of books, most of them still in their shiny dust jackets.

“It’s Mr. Undean, Ham,” she said.

Hamilton Keyes rose from a desk that wasn’t nearly so fine as the one in his office, thanked his wife with a smile, nodded at Undean and said, “You want something?”

“To drink, he means,” Muriel Keyes said before Undean could misinterpret the question.

“No, thanks.”

“It’s been so nice to see you, Mr. Undean,” she said, smiled again and left.

“I’m having a Scotch,” Keyes said, moving to a silver tray that held bottles and glasses. “Sure you won’t join me?”

“I’m sure,” Undean said and took in the rest of the room while Keyes poured his drink. It was a long narrow room with the desk at one end. The desk faced away from French windows that overlooked a garden lit with low-wattage orange lamps. Against a wall was a brown leather couch that was too wide for two but not quite wide enough for three. A leather armchair matched the couch.

There were also a burled walnut coffee table, some reading lamps on more walnut tables, a few pictures and a fine oriental rug of some kind that covered at least a third of the gleaming quarter-sawn oak floor. With his drink now in hand, Keyes used it to motion Undean to the odd-size couch and chose the armchair for himself.

“How high’d you have to go?” Keyes asked, once they were seated.

“The limit. I went to fifty and Haynes turned it down. He says somebody else had already offered him a hundred thousand that he also turned down. He says he knows where he can raise some offshore development money—”

“He’s being offered foreign money?”

“He just claims he knows where he can raise enough of it to produce a picture show based on Steady’s memoirs that he’d also direct, write and star in—meaning he’d play Steady. That’s about the only thing he said that made a lot of sense because he sure as hell looks like him.”

“I believe I can safely classify that hundred-thousand-dollar offer as imaginary,” Keyes said.

“Think he’s lying, do you?”

“Don’t you?”

Undean shrugged. “I’m just telling you what he said. His main point seemed to be that if you’re serious about buying Steady’s book and all the rights thereto, you’d better start the bidding with important money. He thought three quarters of a million would be just about important enough.”

The amount didn’t seem to faze Keyes, who asked, “But he gave no hint of who else is bidding for it?”

“Are we talking about that imaginary bidder again?”

“All right, Gilbert,” Keyes said, making the words snap. “Perhaps there is a real bidder.”

“He didn’t hint because I don’t think he knows.”

Keyes leaned back in the armchair, looked up and seemed to inspect the off-white plaster ceiling carefully, as if for hairline cracks. “Let’s stipulate for the sake of discussion,” he said to the ceiling, “that the hundred-thousand offer is genuine. Next, let’s ask ourselves who’d profit most from securing all rights to an unvarnished account of the life of Steadfast Haynes, and whether this interested party would be foreign or domestic.”

“I don’t know squat about domestic,” Undean said.

“Foreign then,” said Keyes as he brought his eyes down from the ceiling. “After all, it is your bailiwick.”

“If it’s foreign money,” Undean said, “then it’s a good bet it comes from somewhere that Steady operated. That means the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia or Central America. Of those, I’d put my money on the Middle East, with the oil Arabs heading the roster and Israel close behind.”

“And after them?”

“I’d eliminate Africa, except for Libya, who’s showing signs of wanting to climb down off the top of our shit list.”

“It’s an oil Arab country anyway,” Keyes said, then asked, “You’re ruling out Central America?”

“Not much shock value left down there. Anything Steady might’ve done to them would only get yawned at now. Except for maybe the drug cartels. One of them might like to have Steady’s book in reserve if there’s ever any plea bargaining to be done.”

“Southeast Asia?”

“Nobody. But move a little north and you’ve got a number one suspect. Japan.”

“He never worked Japan.”

“Doesn’t matter. Let’s say one of the countries I’ve mentioned wants something we don’t want ’em to have. So Country X buys Steady’s steamy memoirs for seven hundred and fifty thousand, maybe even a million, and locks it away. The time comes when Country X brings Steady’s stuff out of the safe, dusts it off and offers to trade it for our yes, no or even our maybe, which could be worth billions to it.”

“What a peculiar mind you have, Gilbert.”

“Too much imagination. It’s what kept me from going any higher than I did.”

“What we’re talking about, of course, is blackmail.”

“Diplomacy’s other name,” Undean said. “But you started paying blackmail the moment you agreed to bury Steady at Arlington. And with my usual hindsight, it’s pretty obvious that Mlle Gelinet was just making a test run.”

“She’d be back for money the next time?”

“And the time after that.”

“But she, poor woman, is dead and now we must negotiate with Steady’s son.” A look of faint hope flickered across Keyes’s face. “Is it possible he might’ve killed her?”

“Tinker Burns was with him. Maybe they both killed her.”

“I really don’t like being patronized, Gilbert.”

“Just softening you up for some more free advice you don’t want.”

“Which is?”

“Walk away from it.”

“Only this afternoon you were urging me to buy.”

“That was this afternoon. If you’d’ve picked up the phone and bought all rights for twenty or thirty thousand, fine. But now you’re probably dealing with folks who can call and raise every time. You really want to go dollar for dollar against the Saudis? Japan? The Medellín cartel?”

“There are alternatives, I suppose.”

“Black-bag it, you mean.”

Keyes frowned. “Really, Gilbert.”

“I don’t want to know. But there are a couple of things you should know about young Haynes.” Undean rose and stared down at the still seated Keyes. “He looks like Steady. He smiles like Steady. He even walks and talks like Steady. But the kid is six times as smart as Steady ever was. And that’s fairly goddamn bright, you gotta admit.”

Hamilton Keyes rose, shaking his head in what seemed to be mild sorrow, much as if he had just been told of the death of a second cousin he had never met. “How unfortunate,” he said, paused and added, “I noticed that when you were reeling off that list of various nationalities who might like to lay hands on Steady’s manuscript, you steered away from one in particular.”

“Which one?”

“The Americans.”

“Like I told you, I never did understand those fuckers,” said Gilbert Undean.