by Ross Thomas
“How old was she?” Haynes asked.
“More than thirty,” McCorkle said. “Less than fifty.”
Haynes finished his drink and turned away from McCorkle to put it down on a side table. Still turned away, he asked, “How’d she know the manuscript was in your safe?”
McCorkle winked at Padillo and said, “That’s been bothering me. It’s been bothering me so much that when I woke up this morning the first thing I asked myself was: Who knew I’d put the thing in my safe?”
“I knew,” Haynes said. “You knew.” He indicated Padillo with a nod. “And so did he.”
“Did Mott know?” Padillo asked.
“He knew I had the manuscript. He didn’t know it was in your safe.”
“Remember when I got out of the cab Friday afternoon and mistook you for Steady?” McCorkle said. “You were headed for Howard Mott’s office empty-handed.”
Haynes nodded.
“The next time I saw you was at the bar—just you, me, Tinker Burns and Karl. And by then you were carrying that folded-over grocery bag.”
Haynes again nodded.
“But when you left with Erika, you weren’t carrying anything. A fairly observant person might’ve noticed this and concluded you’d left the grocery bag with me for safekeeping.” McCorkle paused to sip his drink. “Safekeeping suggests a locked box of some kind. Maybe even a safe.”
“Someone had a tail on him,” Padillo said.
“Maybe,” Haynes said. “I wasn’t in Howard Mott’s office more than ten minutes before he got a call. By then he’d handed me all those blank pages. The call was from a lawyer, some ex-senator who wants to buy all rights to Steady’s memoirs for an anonymous client. He offered one hundred thousand. On my instructions, Mott told him I wanted five hundred thousand because I claim to know where I can raise enough offshore money to turn Steady’s life into a film I’d write, direct and star in. Mott may even have told him I was going to produce it.”
“What’d the ex-senator say?” McCorkle asked.
“He moaned and groused, then said he’d have to consult his client and get back to Mott on Monday. Tomorrow.”
“Any other offers?” Padillo said.
“One.”
“Who from?”
“After Isabelle was killed,” Haynes said, “and after I’d talked to the cops and was up in my room at the Willard, a guy from the CIA dropped by and offered me fifty thousand.”
“Sight unseen?” McCorkle said.
“Nobody seems to want to read the thing,” Haynes said. “They just want to bury it. I told the CIA guy about the hundred thousand I’d just turned down, then gave him the same crap about turning the memoirs into a feature and finished by telling him my new asking price was seven hundred and fifty thousand.”
“What’d he say when he recovered?”
“He seemed pleased—in a strange kind of way.”
“Heard from him since?” Padillo said.
“Indirectly,” Haynes said. “He’s the dead body Tinker Burns discovered out in Reston. Gilbert Undean.”
McCorkle leaned back in his chair and gazed up at the ceiling. Padillo rose and stood, staring at the fire. Finally, he turned to Haynes and said, “Steady left you a mess, didn’t he?”
“He led a messy life.”
“Our lady of the silenced Sauer,” McCorkle said, still gazing at the ceiling. “I keep wondering just how pissed off she was as she leafed through those three hundred and eighty-odd blank pages.”
“If she is pissed off,” Haynes said, “she’s pissed off at you guys, not at me. She might even suspect you two of pulling a switch. She might even suspect that you know where the true manuscript is.”
“I think,” Padillo said to McCorkle, “that we’ve just been invited to the dance.”
“Summoned is more like it,” McCorkle said. “I wonder if it’ll be fast or slow and if I can remember the steps.”
“You might still manage a waltz,” Padillo said. “If it’s not too brisk.”
“You’ve already accepted, right?”
Padillo nodded and said, “Isabelle,” as if the dead woman’s name explained everything.
McCorkle took a moody swallow of his drink, the last swallow, placed the glass on a table and turned to Haynes. “What d’you plan to do—auction the memoirs off, or at least pretend to?”
“Only the rights to them.”
“What if the bidders demand a quick peek?”
“Each bidder is already convinced of what’s in them,” Haynes said. “If they weren’t convinced, they wouldn’t be bidding.” He smiled then, that charming smile he had inherited from his dead father. “But the important thing now is to convince the bidders that the true manuscript is guarded by a pair of dragons.”
“He means us,” Padillo said.
“Then he means a pair of old dragons with dull claws, missing teeth and not too much fire left in their bellies.”
Haynes smiled his inherited smile again and said, “You could even let it be known around town that for a slice of the gross you’ve agreed to handle—what’s the best thing to call it, the security?—on a very fat but very murky deal.”
“I suppose we could drop a discreet word here and there,” Padillo said, looking at McCorkle, who frowned, as if trying to think of ears a discreet word could be dropped into. A moment later the frown disappeared and he smiled contentedly.
“I believe this is called setting out the bait,” Padillo said.
Haynes nodded. “If the prospective buyer or buyers believe they can steal what otherwise they’d have to pay a great deal of money for, I think they’ll try to steal it.”
“Especially,” McCorkle said, “if they’re convinced that only the Alzheimer boys will be guarding it.”
“It might be better,” Haynes said, “if they hear that I’m guarding the true manuscript and that you two’re guarding me.”
“How easy or hard do you want us to make it for them?” Padillo said.
“Medium hard.”
“And after they get past us—then what?”
“Well, then I suppose I’ll have to make some kind of citizen’s arrest, won’t I?” said Granville Haynes.
Chapter 26
It was shortly before 1:45 P.M. that Sunday when the Salvadoran maid appeared on the south-facing glassed-in sun porch where Hamilton and Muriel Keyes were just finishing a lunch of ham salad, with custard still to follow. The maid was carrying a beige telephone, which she plugged into a jack, while informing Keyes in Spanish that a functionary from his bureau was determined to speak with him, even if it meant violating the meal.
Keyes thanked the maid and waited until she disappeared into the house before he picked up the phone and greeted his caller with, “Now what?” After listening without expression for two minutes, Keyes said, “I’m leaving now,” broke the connection and put the phone down beside his scarcely tasted glass of white wine.
“Well?” Muriel Keyes said.
“It’s Undean. Gilbert Undean.”
She frowned and said, “Whatever does he want now?”
Keyes stared at his wife with the unseeing expression of someone who is thinking hard about other things. “Nothing. He’s been shot.”
She bit her lower lip as if in minor penance for the snippiness of her last question. “I’m sorry. Suicide?”
“No,” Keyes said as he rose and looked at his watch. “I should be back by five or five-thirty.”
“Please be careful. I almost spun out twice in McLean this morning.”
“How was she? You never said.”
“Dilly?” Muriel Keyes shrugged. “Well, Dilly’s depressed and Dilly’s despondent. Maybe even suicidal. She’s finally realized he isn’t coming back this time.”
“Can’t blame him,” Keyes said. “But I wish he would so you could resign as her chief hand-holder.”
“Poor Dilly,” she said. “And poor Mr. Undean. Did he have a family?”
“No.”
&nb
sp; “He lived alone?”
“In Reston.”
“How very sad.”
It was the forty-three-year-old sheriff of Fairfax County himself who briefed Hamilton Keyes in a small conference room in the Reston Library. A three-man team of CIA specialists was still prowling through Undean’s house, hunting for possibly classified material and ignoring the gibes of the county homicide investigators.
Keyes and the sheriff sat at the six-foot-long conference table, the sheriff at one end, Keyes at the other. The sheriff wore a dark blue suit, white shirt and a red and blue tie. Keyes suspected him of having attended church that morning. Keyes, who hadn’t attended church in twenty years, wore what he often wore on Sundays: a gray tweed jacket, a very old and frayed pink shirt with a button-down collar, gray wide-wale corduroy pants, rather new, and a pair of gleaming fifteen-year-old cordovan loafers that had been resoled three times. The sheriff had given the pink shirt a dubious glance.
“You want it from the beginning, I expect,” the sheriff said, producing a long notebook that Keyes thought resembled those used by newspaper reporters.
“If you would, please.”
After placing the notebook on the table, the sheriff removed his gold-rimmed glasses, held them up to the ceiling’s fluorescent lights for a cleanliness inspection and resettled them over gentle brown eyes that Keyes thought were possibly a disguise.
The glasses rested on jug-handle ears and a born-to-pry nose. The ears were partially camouflaged by a mass of auburn hair that had been shaped by an artist. Below the glasses and nose was a wide thick-lipped mouth, curiously pale, that reigned over a smallish chin. From six feet away, Keyes thought he caught a faint whiff of Canoe after-shave.
The sheriff opened the notebook, studied it for a few moments, frowning, and then used a bass drone to describe how a male Caucasian, identifying himself as Tinker Burns, had used 911 to report the death of Gilbert Undean, 67. After two deputies arrived at the house of the deceased, they determined that Mr. Undean was indeed dead, apparently from a single gunshot wound in the forehead. A quick search revealed no weapon, virtually ruling out suicide.
Mr. Burns refused to give the investigating deputies any information other than his name, age (66) and place of permanent residence (Paris, France) until he talked with his lawyer. The lawyer arrived fifty-seven minutes later and conferred with his client. Mr. Burns then agreed to make a statement.
“Who’s the lawyer?” Keyes asked.
“Howard Mott himself.”
“Well, now.”
Again consulting his notebook, the sheriff said Mr. Burns claimed to have met the deceased for the first time two days before at the funeral of a mutual friend, a certain Steadfast Haynes. This morning, on impulse, Mr. Burns decided to visit the deceased to reminisce about their friend. When Mr. Burns reached Reston, he hesitated to drive down the steeply sloping street to Mr. Undean’s house because of the deep snow. Instead, he had walked. It was while walking to the deceased’s house that Mr. Burns saw someone come out of it, shoulder a pair of skis and start up the street toward him.
As the sheriff paused to turn a page, Keyes said, “Then what?”
“Mr. Burns asked the person with the skis which house was Mr. Undean’s. But the person replied with a headshake and continued up the street.”
“Person?” said Keyes.
“Mr. Burns claims he couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman because the person was wearing sunglasses, ski mask, knitted cap, parka, ski pants, gloves and, of course, ski boots.”
“Tall, short, what?”
“Medium.”
Keyes sighed and gave the sheriff a go-ahead nod. Resuming his report, the sheriff said Tinker Burns rang the deceased’s doorbell repeatedly. When there was no response, Mr. Burns tried the door, found it unlocked and entered the house, discovering the victim’s body on the third floor in a small bedroom converted into a study. Upon questioning, Mr. Burns admitted making five calls from the dead man’s telephone. These calls were confirmed by the telephone company. The first call was to the Willard Hotel. The second and third calls were to numbers in the District of Columbia. The fourth call was to 911 and the final call was to the home of the lawyer, Howard Mott, also in the District.
“Who got the second and third calls?” Keyes asked.
Again, the notes were consulted. “The second call was to an establishment called Mac’s Place and the third, was to a Mr. Michael Padillo,” the sheriff said, rhyming Padillo with Brillo. “Know him?”
“I believe he owns half of Mac’s Place,” Keyes said. “A saloon.”
The sheriff made a careful note of that before disclosing that a subsequent investigation turned up two observant housewives who independently confirmed what Burns had said about encountering the ski person.
“The neighborhood watch and ward society?” Keyes said.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Keyes said. “Where’s Burns now?”
“We let him walk.”
“You check him out with D.C. homicide?”
The sheriff, not taking his eyes off Keyes, closed his notebook and carefully stored it away in a breast pocket. “Should I?”
“Merely a suggestion,” said Keyes and went on to outline how the Federal government trusted that Fairfax County would handle the body of Gilbert Undean, his effects and any publicity concerning his death.
In a Wendy’s on the Leesburg Pike, Howard Mott sipped coffee and reading upside down, watched Tinker Burns write a check for 2,000 pounds on a Knightsbridge branch of Barclays’ Bank in London.
“I prefer dollars,” Mott said.
Burns finished signing Tinker to the check and looked up. “Why the fuck didn’t you say so? Cash okay?” He reached into a pants pocket of his gray suit and brought out an impressive roll of hundred-dollar bills.
“Cash is definitely not okay,” Mott said. “I’ll take the pounds instead.”
“What’s wrong with cash?” Burns asked as he added his surname to the check.
“Cash is becoming virtually illegal in this country,” Mott said. “Dope has tainted cash and inflation has debased it. A one-hundred-dollar bill is now worth what three tens were fifteen years ago, but nobody likes to accept hundreds because it’s claimed that ninety percent of them bear a faint residue of cocaine. That may well be bullshit, of course. But it may also be true, especially when you consider that our five percent of the world’s population snorts, smokes or injects eighty percent of the world’s dope.”
Burns grinned, tore out the check and handed it to Mott. “Sounds like the IRS is auditing your ass.”
Mott folded the check and stuck it into his shirt pocket. “The cost of a continuous IRS audit is factored into the fees we charge our clients, who, for the most part, are alleged embezzlers, con men, mountebanks, swindlers and malefactors of great and medium wealth. My firm’s task is to keep them out of jail or, failing that, secure them the most lenient sentences possible. Grateful clients often wish to pay in cash. But we insist upon certified checks drawn on reputable domestic banks.”
Burns’s grin grew wider. “What’s my uncertified check for two thousand quid buy me?”
“Bought, not buy,” Mott said. “It bought you temporary release from the clutches of the Fairfax County sheriff, who’ll be anxious to ask you a few hundred more questions once he finds out you discovered the body of Isabelle Gelinet.”
“When that happens, I want you representing me.”
“I’m awfully expensive.”
“And I’m kind of rich. It’s a perfect match.”
“There could be a conflict of interest.”
“Who with?”
“I already represent Granville Haynes.”
“What’s representing Granny got to do with representing me?”
“You can answer that far better than I.”
Tinker Burns again produced his checkbook. “Would a five-thousand-quid retainer clear up that conflict-of-interest question?”
/> Mott shook his head. “Tell you what. When the sheriff hauls you in again, give me a ring and we’ll try to work something out.”
“That a guarantee?”
“A guarantee suggests a refund,” Mott said. “We’ll call it a promise.”
Outside the Wendy’s, Mott was unlocking the door of his wife’s Volvo sedan when Tinker Burns, the door of his rented Jeep Wagoneer already open, turned and said, “What’s the best way to Middleburg?”
Mott turned around slowly to stare at Burns for several seconds. “You don’t want to go to Middleburg.”
“Why not?”
“The snow.”
“I got four-wheel drive and snow tires. Besides, a lot of it’s melted by now.”
Mott examined Burns for another five seconds before giving directions. “Straight out the Pike till you get to Leesburg. Then south on U.S. Fifteen till you hit U.S. Fifty. West on Fifty for seven or eight miles and you’ll be in Middleburg.”
“Thanks,” Burns said, got in the Wagoneer, started its engine and drove off as directed.
After watching him leave, Mott went back into the Wendy’s and located the pay phone next to the men’s toilet. He briefly considered the ethics of his decision, then looked up a name and phone number in his pocket address book and used a phone company credit card to place a long-distance call to Letty Melon, the former Mrs. Steadfast Haynes, at her 360-acre horse farm near Middleburg, Virginia.
Chapter 27
At a little past 5P.M. that Sunday, Hamilton Keyes stood at the large window of his library, staring out at the snow-blanketed garden and wondering what it would be like to go outside and build a twilight snowman. Finding it to be a mild temptation, easily resisted, he instead took a long swallow of his iced vodka and, without turning, made an announcement.
“After I resigned yesterday they offered to make me an ambassador.”
Muriel Keyes was sitting on the odd-size leather couch, wearing gray slacks, white Reeboks, a turtleneck of black silk and holding a Scotch and water. The announcement made her slosh a little of her drink onto a burled-walnut parsons table.
