by Ross Thomas
McCorkle, still chewing, said, “You preach a nice sermon.”
He opened a desk drawer, took out a piece of blue Kleenex, spat the nicotine gum into it, wadded the tissue into a ball and dropped it in a wastebasket. After opening the desk’s center drawer, he took out a pack of unfiltered Pall Malls, lit one, inhaled deeply, blew the smoke out and said, “I’m well aware of the surgeon general’s opinion.”
Haynes rose, crossed to the desk and placed the brown grocery bag on its top. McCorkle blew some smoke at the bag and said, “I’m fairly sure that’s not eggs, bread and the milk.”
“It’s a manuscript.”
“A novel?”
“A fairy story. Steady’s memoirs.”
“Well, he did live a full life. Does he tell all?”
“There seems to be some concern about that.”
“And you want to do what—park it here for a day or so?”
Haynes agreed with a nod, then indicated the old safe. “Does that thing work?”
McCorkle rose, picked up the paper bag and went to the safe. He pulled its door open, placed the bag inside and closed the door, locking the safe and spinning its dial. “The combination’s my birthday in case I get hit by a truck.”
“And who else knows your birthday?”
“The IRS, the State Department, the Social Security folks, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the bank, the doctor, the dentist, my wife, two or three close friends and probably any reasonably clever thief who was hell-bent on opening it up.”
Haynes nodded, as though satisfied, and asked, “Where can I find Isabelle?”
“You try the Hay-Adams?”
“She checked out.”
“What about the farm in Berryville?”
“No answer although I’m not sure she’s had time to get there yet.”
“Is that where she was going?”
“I don’t know.”
McCorkle returned to the desk, sat down, picked up the telephone and tapped out a number from memory. Haynes guessed the call was answered two and a half rings later.
“It’s McCorkle, Sid. I need our D.C. billing address for Gelinet, Isabelle.”
He put the cigarette out in an ashtray, took a ballpoint pen and a scrap of paper from the middle drawer of the partners desk and wrote down the address.
“Phone number?”
McCorkle also wrote that down; thanked Sid, the accountant; hung up the telephone and handed the scrap of paper to Haynes. “Connecticut Avenue.”
Haynes looked up from the address. “Thirty-eight hundred block?”
“You remember Washington?”
“It’s been a while.”
“Remember Taft Bridge on Connecticut—the one with the lions?”
Haynes nodded.
“It’s a little more than a mile north of the lions on the right. Anything else?”
“I need a hotel.”
“Cheap, moderate, expensive, what?”
“Different.”
“Go to the Willard. You’ll find it completely restored in brand-new Second Empire style with just a touch of Potomac baroque thrown in. There’re also some old ladies sitting in its lobby who I’d swear were sitting there when I first came through Washington in nineteen fifty.”
“I already like it,” Haynes said.
“Want me to make you a reservation?”
“You’re sure it’s no trouble?”
“No trouble at all,” McCorkle said, again picking up the telephone.
He was just putting it down a few minutes later when someone knocked twice at the door. Before McCorkle could say “Come in” or “Who’s there?” the door opened and a yellow-haired woman of twenty-one or twenty-two swept in, wearing a belted camel’s-hair polo coat and a smile that, for some reason, reminded Haynes of California sunshine on a smog-free day.
Her smile was aimed at McCorkle but vanished at the sight of Haynes. She frowned, gasped slightly—or pretended to—and said, “My God. The ghost of Steady Haynes.”
“The son,” Haynes said.
“I was very fond of Steady.”
“As he must’ve been of you, whoever you are.”
McCorkle sighed. “My daughter, Erika; Granville Haynes.”
In only two long strides she was in front of Haynes, her right hand extended. Haynes discovered that the right hand of Erika McCorkle felt strong and dextrous, as if it could change a tire or sew a fine seam with equal proficiency. She was only a few inches shorter than Haynes, and her eyes, he noticed, were a far, far lighter blue than his own. They were, indeed, almost gray.
She held onto his hand just long enough to say, “I’m so very sorry about Steady and, God, you do look like him.”
“You’re very kind,” Haynes said.
“I left at seven this morning,” she said, turning to McCorkle. “I wanted to say good-bye to Steady at Arlington. But that piece of GM junk broke down again and by the time I got it fixed it was too late for Steady and too late to pick you up at Dulles. How’s Mutti bearing up under all the relatives?”
“Nobly,” McCorkle said. “How’s school?”
“It’s over. Done with.”
“You quit?”
“Graduated.”
McCorkle looked at Haynes. “Can this be June?”
He smiled. “For some perhaps.”
“A diplomat,” she said to Haynes and turned again to McCorkle. “My junior year?”
“At Heidelberg.”
“Well, there’s this very nice little man down in the basement of an administration building who, armed with nothing more than a Radio Shack computer, just happened to be running my midterm records through it and discovered I hadn’t been given nearly enough credits for the Heidelberg year. In fact, I have more than I need for a degree. So I said auf Wiedersehen and told them to mail me the diploma.”
McCorkle rose, went around the desk and gave his daughter a long hug. “I’m awfully damned proud of you.”
“You’re also off the fees and tuition hook.”
“And now your mother can have her warm winter coat.”
Her alarmingly sunny smile reappeared. “Where’s Mike?”
“He went for a swim,” McCorkle said. “Are you okay for dinner?”
“Of course. I only wish Mutti were here.”
“We’ll call her.”
“Around ten. It’ll be around three in the morning there. She’ll love that.”
His daughter went up on her toes to give McCorkle a quick kiss, turned to Haynes and said, “I’m glad we met. Steady spoke of you often.”
“I have to be going, too,” Haynes said.
“Can I give you a lift?”
He smiled then, the smile that McCorkle suspected could melt both rocks and female hearts. “If you’re heading out Connecticut.”
“Let’s go,” she said.
The sudden discomfort McCorkle felt as they left was in the region where his heart was supposed to be. For a moment he experienced a mild shortness of breath. The symptoms vanished as quickly as they came and McCorkle found himself hoping it was his first angina. If it weren’t, then he knew he had just suffered his first serious attack of male parentitis.
Padillo entered the office twenty minutes later to find McCorkle sitting at the partners desk, glumly drinking Irish whiskey.
“Somebody else die?” Padillo said as he located a glass and poured himself a measure of Bushmills.
“Childhood,” McCorkle said.
“Well, it couldn’t last forever—not even yours.”
“Erika’s. They somehow messed up her college credits and discovered she had more than enough to graduate now instead of in June. We’re celebrating tonight. You’re invited.”
“You’re sure it’s a celebration and not a memorial service?”
“You didn’t see the smile,” McCorkle said, once more staring into his glass.
“What smile?”
“The one Haynes gave her.”
“Ah. That one.”
“Exactly.”
“Don’t worry,” Padillo said. “The Haynes kid is four or five times as smart as his old man ever was, which is very bright indeed, and maybe ten times as honest, which brings him up to about average. But if you really need something to brood about these long January nights, think on this: who does Granville Haynes remind you of—other than Steady? Take your time.”
McCorkle continued to stare down into his drink. He was still staring down into it fifteen seconds later when he said, “Of you.”
“And somebody else.”
“Who?”
“Yourself,” Padillo said.
McCorkle only grunted.
“Erika could do worse,” Padillo said.
McCorkle finally looked up. “How?”
Chapter 8
They scarcely talked until Erika McCorkle stopped her five-year-old Oldsmobile Cutlass for a red light at Connecticut and R. She indicated the venerable Schwartz drugstore on the intersection’s northwest corner and said, “I used to hang out there when I was a real little kid.”
“How little?” Haynes said.
“Six or seven. The world’s two fastest soda jerks worked there. One had a bad leg; the other had terribly crossed eyes and both must’ve been well over forty. Pop sometimes took me there for what he said were the best ice cream sodas in town. We’d sit at the fountain and watch the two guys work. God, they were fast. I remember Pop kept telling them they were an endangered species. Think they’re still there?”
“We could find out,” Haynes said.
“You’re serious?”
“Sure.”
As the light changed to green, Erika McCorkle spotted an empty metered parking space just south of Larimer’s market, raced a BMW for it and won. She stopped parallel with the car in front of the empty space, shifted into reverse, spun the steering wheel to the right, backed up, spun the steering wheel again, this time to the left, and shot the Cutlass into the empty space, its two right wheels coming to a stop no more than three inches from the curb.
Haynes dug into a pants pocket for some quarters to feed the meter. “Very smooth,” he said.
“More slick than smooth.”
They crossed Connecticut on the green light only to find themselves marooned on the center traffic island. “When you were hanging out with the sandwich and soda artists,” Haynes said, “did you live around here?”
“My folks’ve always lived within a mile of Dupont Circle. It’s because Pop likes to walk to work although lately he’s been taking a lot of cabs.”
“Nothing wrong with him, is there?”
“Yes,” she said, stepping off the curb as the light changed. “He’s lazy.” She glanced at Haynes. “Known him long?”
“We talked once in nineteen seventy-four. It was my eighteenth birthday and Steady took me to dinner at Mac’s Place. Your father stopped by the table and later sent over two cognacs that made me feel all grown-up.”
“That makes you thirty-three then, doesn’t it?” she said.
“Not until August.”
There were no longer any soda jerks or a fountain for them to work behind in the Schwartz drugstore. The young Nigerian pharmacist in the rear told Haynes the fountain had been gone for at least ten years, maybe even twelve. The drugstore now seemed to concentrate on selling toiletries, discount vitamins, over-the-counter cure-alls, junk food and the occasional prescription.
They were in the drugstore just long enough for Haynes to question the young pharmacist. After they left, Erika McCorkle stood on the corner, looking around and glowering, as if trying to will the neighborhood back into what it had been when she was six or seven.
“I’m not old enough to hate change,” she said more to herself than to Haynes.
“You hate it most when you’re five or six.”
“Nothing changed when I was five or six.”
“Then you obviously had a happy childhood.”
“What I had were two older but remarkably well suited and reasonably well adjusted parents.”
“Then you were also lucky,” Haynes said. “Want some coffee?”
“The Junkanoo,” she said. “The bastards tore down the Junkanoo.”
“A nightclub, wasn’t it?”
“Right over there,” she said, pointing to a missing-tooth gap on the east side of Connecticut Avenue in the 1600 block. “I knew it closed. But now it’s gone. It just—aw, fuck it. Let’s get that coffee.”
They found a small Greek restaurant up the street called the Odeon that seemed willing, if not anxious, to serve them. He drank his coffee with cream and sugar; she drank hers black. As he stirred the coffee, Haynes said, “You see much of Steady?”
“Not till I was seventeen. It was just after he and Letty split, and Steady was using Pop’s place as a kind of headquarters. That was the summer before I went off to school and I was helping out, doing scut work mostly. Steady was there night and day, looking for somebody to talk to. When I wasn’t busy, I listened. Sometimes he even talked about you, which must be what you’re really interested in.”
“Am I,” Haynes said, somehow not making it a question.
“He could never understand why you became a cop.”
“He never asked.”
“I’ll ask.”
“Because I needed a job and they were willing to hire me.”
“That’s what I guessed, but Steady claimed it was a lot more complicated than that.”
“Well, if you’re a lapsed Quaker turned anarchist who hires out to prop up rotten governments you despise, everything might seem complicated. Even getting out of bed.”
“Did he know you despised him so much?”
“I never knew him well enough to despise him.”
“He once told me he was worried that you’d never got over the death of your mother.”
There was no trace of the inherited charm in Haynes’s bleak smile. “That sounds too pat even for Steady.”
“Why?”
“Because my mother died when I was three and I can’t even remember her. Three months later, Steady married a French woman who was stepmother number one. She and I were very close. When I was nine, he divorced her and married an Italian and the three of us went to live in Italy. Stepmother number two and I became such good pals that she wanted me to go on living with her after Steady got the Mexican divorce. And I did.”
“Then what?”
“Then I was thirteen and Steady brought me to the States and popped me into St. Alban’s here. I still get birthday letters from stepmothers one and two, but I never did meet stepmother number four. What was she like?”
“Pretty and rather rich. Letty once told my mother that she married Steady because he could make her giggle. Not laugh. Giggle.”
“ ‘Giggles Ended, Wife Charges.’ ”
“Was she there?” Erika asked.
“At Arlington? No.”
“Who was?”
“Some guy from the CIA. Me. Tinker Burns. And Isabelle Gelinet.”
“Dear Isabelle,” she said. “When I was thirteen I used to daydream about her drowning. Sometimes she drowned in the C and O Canal. Sometimes just below Great Falls. But the one I liked best was her drowning over and over in the yuckiest stretch of the Anacostia.”
Haynes smiled. “Jealous?”
“Of her brains, looks, style and foreign correspondent job. What thirteen-year-old wouldn’t be? But most of all I was jealous of her hopping into bed with Michael Padillo anytime she wanted to.”
“You and Padillo? Dear me.”
“I fell in love with him when I was five and wrote him all about it when I was six. I wrote it with a crayon. A blue one. Pop was my mailman. Padillo wrote back that we should wait awhile. I’m still waiting, but Isabelle didn’t have to. And neither did about a hundred and one other bimbos.”
“Still want her to drown?”
“I guess not.”
“Just as well. She’s a damn good swimmer.”
“How
do you know?”
“We used to go skinny-dipping together.”
“When?”
“When she was seven and I was six. Or maybe vice versa. In Nice.”
“I bet she was gorgeous even then.”
“I always told her she was too fat.”
Just past the Hilton Hotel where Reagan was shot, Connecticut Avenue began curving its way to the bridge that was guarded by the stone lions. A block or so before the bridge, Erika McCorkle flicked her left hand at an imposing gray stone apartment building that Haynes guessed to be sixty or seventy years old.
“Where my folks live,” she said. “It’s one of the city’s first condos. They bought theirs in ’sixty-eight during the riots when Padillo convinced them that riots and revolutions are the best time to buy property and diamonds.”
“Sounds like an oft-told family tale,” Haynes said.
“It is—and ’sixty-eight must’ve been one weird year. Can you remember it?”
“Only the Italian version.”
“What d’you remember most about the sixties?”
Haynes didn’t reply for several seconds. “The music,” he said. “And, in retrospect, the innocence.”
It was 4:47 P.M. when Erika McCorkle parked next to a NO STOPPING, NO STANDING sign in front of the seven-story apartment building at 3801 Connecticut Avenue. Because the rush hour was nearing its peak, Connecticut Avenue had increased the number of lanes going north and Haynes had only a moment to thank her for the lift.
She gave the building a curious glance. “Who lives here?”
“Isabelle.”
“Shit.”
An irate driver behind the Cutlass started honking. Erika McCorkle gave him the finger.
“That can get you shot in L.A.,” said Haynes as he climbed quickly out of the car. The irate driver honked again.
