Twilight at Mac's Place

by Ross Thomas

  McCorkle had seen these same baleful glares on other occasions although Padillo apparently hadn’t noticed—or pretended he hadn’t. The glares came from men in their late fifties and early sixties who had known Padillo in the old days and now glared at him with envy, malice and even outrage.

  McCorkle interpreted the glares as accusations that charged Padillo with having stolen the secret of eternal middle age—if not of youth itself—and since he obviously wasn’t going to share his secret with anyone, the glares said he should be arrested, tried, convicted and maybe even hanged. McCorkle always thought of them as the Dorian Gray glares and noticed with some regret that none ever came his way.

  When they reached the pushed-together tables, Harry Warnock, the redheaded man, stood up with yet another grin and a few happy nods of welcome. He then scowled at the six still seated men and said, “Move down, you lot, and give the new lads a place to sit.”

  The six men, each of them either big or enormous, and all of them in their thirties or early forties, made the move without complaint. Padillo took the chair on Harry Warnock’s right; McCorkle on his left. One of the pretty cousins hurried over to take the order. Padillo stirred the air with a forefinger, signaling another round for all, and then whispered something in French that made the cousin laugh.

  After she left, Warnock said with an Irish lilt that came and went like the tide. “What’d you say to the lass, Michael? I could use a giggle myself.”

  “I told her that because I had to drive my father here home, I’d like some chilled Evian water in a martini glass.”

  Warnock stared at McCorkle. “Has he gone teetotal on us, Mac?”

  “No, but he has been getting notional.”

  “Well, since it’s himself who’s buying, I’d best make introductions. Okay, lads, the generous one’s Mike and the other’s Mac. Now, starting on my left and going clockwise is Mr. Stroh, Mr. Ranier, Mr. Jax, Mr. Pabst, Mr. Schlitz and, lemme think now, Mr. Coors.”

  “Why didn’t you just number them, Harry?” McCorkle said.

  “Because I’m not at all sure they can count to six.”

  The six big men grinned and elbowed each other in appreciation of their leader’s wit. A couple of them were still grinning when the pretty cousin returned and served the new round of drinks. Padillo gave her three $20 bills and waved away the change.

  When she was gone, Warnock picked up Padillo’s glass, sniffed its contents and announced, “Pure gin.”

  Padillo picked up the drink Warnock had put down, tasted it and said, “She must’ve made a mistake. Either that or I lied.”

  McCorkle smiled reassuringly at Warnock. “As I said, Harry, he’s getting a little notional.”

  “I’ll not be playing any of your mind-fucking games this night. Michael Padillo. So let’s get to what really brings the pair of you out to the far edge of town on this cold and miserable Sunday.”

  “My wife’s in Frankfurt,” McCorkle said.

  “Ah, well, then, had I known she was there and you were here, I’d’ve been there.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you,” McCorkle said.

  Padillo sipped a little more of his gin and said, “How’s business, Harry? Are the terrorists taking Sunday nights off these days?”

  Warnock sighed. “Business isn’t what it was, Michael, and that’s a fact. I blame some of the fall-off on the drop in oil prices which made a lot of my Arab clients cut back on security. But I blame most of it on Gorbachev himself and all that sweetness-and-light preaching of his. Jesus, it was but three, four years ago we had Libyan hit squads, sneaking across the borders up in Canada or down in Mexico, heading for the White House itself. My business shot up forty-two percent in that month alone.” He sighed again. “We’ll not be seeing the likes of those good times again.”

  “The cold war’s over then?” McCorkle asked.

  “Course it is. It’s just that the old dears who’d counted on apprenticing their sons and grandsons to the military-industrial trade are too stubborn to admit it—and who can blame ’em, say I?”

  “Heard about Steady Haynes?” Padillo asked.

  “I hear he died broke and the government had to bury him.”

  “He left a little something,” Padillo said.

  “Debts?”

  “His memoirs.”

  Warnock yawned. “I’ll wait for the paperback.”

  “Remember Isabelle Gelinet?” Padillo said. “I sent her to you when she was still with AF-P and researching a story on old Bill Casey. She said you were helpful.”

  “What about Isabelle?”

  “She helped Steady write his memoirs.”

  “She’s also dead,” Warnock said. “Somebody drowned her in her bath and before you ask me how I know what wasn’t in the papers, I’ll tell you it was Tinker Burns who found her and ’twas him who told me.”

  “Tinker in the market for some protection?” Padillo asked.

  “Old Tinker and I go back a few miles, we do,” Warnock said. “He made a nice bit of money off me, as well you know.”

  “Off the IRA,” Padillo said.

  “ ’Twas one and the same.”

  “Then.”

  Warnock shrugged. “That’s right. Then.”

  McCorkle said, “After you defected from the IRA—”

  “I never defected,” Warnock said. “I deserted.”

  “Right. After you deserted and went into business, I seem to remember you sent out a rather fancy announcement.”

  “All it said was that Warnock and Associates were a new security consultant firm, specializing in antiterrorism.”

  “Wasn’t there a line at the bottom in italics about ‘Twenty Years Experience with the IRA’?”

  “The best fucking credentials I could have,” Warnock said.

  “What I’ve always been curious about,” McCorkle said, “is who were the associates in Warnock and Associates back then? One day, Harry, you’re a room-and-a-half office on the wrong side of Fourteenth Street and three weeks later you’re half a floor at Nineteenth and M. Who furnished the clout? Bill Casey? The National Security Council. The Saudis?”

  “If you’re looking to hire me, Mr. McCorkle, sir, I’ve got many a fine reference you’ll be able to examine once a fee is agreed upon.”

  “We are in the market for some security stuff,” McCorkle said.

  “Is it your place you want swept then?”

  “We’re concerned about Steady’s kid,” Padillo said. “Except he’s no kid. Thirty-two or -three. Around in there. Steady left him the copyright to the memoirs. And the kid, Granville, has decided to sell them to a private collector instead of trying to get them published. He’s asked us to sort of look after him until the memoirs are sold.”

  Warnock gave his six associates a warning stare. “You’re not hearing a word of this, are you?”

  Mr. Coors said, “No, sir. Not a word.”

  Looking first at McCorkle, then at Padillo, Warnock said, “The kid wants you to baby-sit him?”

  “To mind how he goes,” Padillo said.

  “A bit of money involved, is there?”

  “Three quarters of a million,” McCorkle said. “At least. Maybe more.”

  The surprise that raced across Warnock’s wide pink face quickly changed into shock and then into anger. “What the fuck did Steady know that’s worth that?” he demanded. “He was never in on the real shit. He was always farting about in Africa or the Middle East or Central America—or out there in Southeast Slopeland doing his truth-juggling act. So what shocking revelations does old Steady have to tell? The CIA ran drugs, did it? Well, who the fuck cares? That they did in the Congo’s Lumumba, or had him done, along with maybe three or four dozen others over the years? So what? That they’ve kept a prime minister, a premier, a king or two and God knows how many other despots and satraps on their payroll? Who gives a shit? Christ, this country of yours lets some half-baked light-colonel run its so-called foreign policy out of the White House annex an
d when he’s caught, you turn him into a fucking hero. So why’d anyone give a good goddamn about the memoirs of a nobody called Steady Haynes? And what could old Steady possibly invent half as dirty as what’s really happened? And who the fuck’ll pay three quarters of a million for it?”

  Warnock glared up at the ceiling, as if the answer might be written there. He then brought his glare down to aim it first at McCorkle, then Padillo. “It just doesn’t parse.”

  In a very quiet voice Padillo said, “What do you care whether it parses or not?”

  Cocking his head to the left, Warnock leaned back in his chair to study Padillo. The examination went on long enough for the bright red in his face to vanish, replaced by its normal pink. “Well, now, Michael, you struck a nerve, you did. And you’re right, of course. All I care about is how much you’re willing to pay me.”

  “Your going rate,” McCorkle said. “Less the usual professional discount.”

  “No discounts to the trade,” Warnock said, still staring at Padillo.

  “I had to try,” McCorkle said.

  “So who’s the package to be, Michael? Steady’s kid, what’s his name, Granville?”

  “McCorkle and I are the package,” Padillo said. “If anybody comes for Granville, they’ll have to go through us. But McCorkle’s gone soft and I’ve lost a step, so to get to us, Harry, they’ll have to go through you.”

  Utter skepticism spread across Warnock’s face and crept into his tone. “When’ll you know for certain that it’s on?”

  “Tomorrow,” McCorkle said. “Tuesday at the latest.”

  “Who’s the opposition?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “Foreign or domestic?”

  “We don’t know that either,” Padillo said. “Does it matter?”

  Warnock smiled. “Would I be telling you if it did, Michael?”

  Chapter 31

  The trunk lid of the Mercedes coupe was open and one of the thieves, bent over, was rummaging around inside. The other thief, half in, half out of the open passenger door, was rifling the glove compartment. Padillo automatically noticed the slit in his car’s convertible top and berated himself for not having switched to the steel top on November 1.

  He waited as McCorkle, ducking low, slipped around the rear of four parked cars and came up behind the thief at the open trunk. McCorkle glanced back, got a nod from Padillo, took three long quick steps and slammed the trunk lid down on the thief’s back. The thief yelled. He yelled a second time when McCorkle raised the trunk lid and slammed it down again. There was a third yell when McCorkle, using the rear bumper as a stepping-stool, sat on the trunk lid, all 221 pounds of him.

  At the first yell, the thief rifling the glove compartment had backed hastily out of the car’s open right-hand door and turned, only to run his right cheek just below the eye into the point of a Swiss Army knife’s longest blade. The thief crossed his eyes, trying to see what kind of knife it was, but gave up when Padillo used the knife point to turn him around until he faced the car.

  “Hands on the roof, feet spread, just like always,” Padillo said.

  When the thief hesitated, Padillo touched the knife point to the back of the man’s neck. “If you try anything brave or dumb, the knife’ll go in exactly four centimeters and, unless I miss, you’ll be a vegetable. If I miss, you’ll be dead.”

  The thief leaned against the car, moved his feet back and spread them apart. Padillo searched him quickly and found a .25-caliber Beretta semiautomatic in an ankle holster. As Padillo rose, the thief in the trunk yelled something that may have been a plea. McCorkle replied by bouncing up and down once on the trunk lid.

  Padillo closed the Swiss Army knife and returned it to his pocket. He then touched the muzzle of the Beretta to the back of the leaning thief’s neck and said, “Now turn around and tell him what I’ve got.”

  The leaning thief turned and called, “He’s got my piece, Marv!”

  “Lemme out!” Marv yelled.

  McCorkle jumped down from the trunk, raised its lid, put a lock on Marv’s right arm, pulled him out of the trunk and marched him over to Padillo. Tears rolled down Marv’s cheeks toward a fixed smile that displayed a great deal of gum.

  “Big bastards, aren’t they?” McCorkle said.

  Padillo looked at the man with the apparently perpetual smile. “You’re Mr. Schlitz, right? And your partner here’s Mr. Pabst.”

  Schlitz’s tears had stopped but the smile was still in place as he nodded. Mr. Pabst wiped his tiny nose with the back of an immense hand.

  “Something funny?” McCorkle asked the smiling Schlitz.

  Schlitz shook his head but the smile didn’t go away. Pabst said, “He can’t help it. It’s a nervous thing.”

  “Reflex.” Schlitz explained, still smiling. “A nervous reflex.”

  “What did Harry Warnock say to look for in my car?” Padillo asked.

  Pabst shook his head and said, “You’re not gonna shoot us.”

  “What you mean is I’m not going to kill you,” Padillo said. “But try this on: a citizen comes out of a bar and finds two thieves stealing his car. The citizen takes a pistol away from one of the thieves and shoots him in the knee. The other thief comes down with a sudden case of good sense and surrenders. Think the cops will like that?”

  “They’ll love it,” McCorkle said. “But how do you decide whose knee?”

  “Flip a coin and let them call it.”

  “And the one who loses the call loses the kneecap,” said McCorkle, nodding judiciously. “It’s only fair.”

  “Harry didn’t send us,” Pabst said.

  “No?” Padillo said. “Who did?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Flip the coin,” Padillo said to McCorkle.

  “We heard you talking about the book.” Schlitz said, hurrying to get the words out. “The memoirs.” His smile was back after disappearing momentarily when he closed his lips to say the b’s and the m’s.

  “Why’d you think the memoirs would be in my car?”

  “The way you were talking in there,” Schlitz said. “You were talking real money, three quarters of a mill or more, so we figured you’d keep the thing close by.”

  “How’d you know this was my car?”

  “When you and him were in the head, we asked Pong what kind of cars you guys drive. He said he didn’t know about your partner here, but you always drove a real old dark green Mercedes coupe. It wasn’t hard to spot.”

  “And what were you going to do with the manuscript?” McCorkle asked.

  Pabst shrugged. “Sell it back to you.”

  “For how much?”

  “We hadn’t got that far.”

  His disbelief obvious, Padillo said, “And you thought all this up in the five minutes it took us to pee and tell Billy Pong good-bye?”

  “If you get an idea, you gotta go with it,” Schlitz said.

  McCorkle reached Schlitz with a single step. “I’d better pop this liar back in the trunk while you kneecap the other one.”

  The words came tumbling out of Pabst’s mouth, tripping over themselves. “Tinker Burns,” he said. “We were gonna take the thing to Tinker Burns.”

  Padillo looked first at McCorkle, who raised an eyebrow that managed to express doubt, surprise and even a little disappointment. Padillo looked back at Pabst. “From the beginning,” he said and glanced at his watch. “We’ve got all night.”

  It didn’t take all night. It took only fourteen minutes for Pabst and Schlitz, sometimes interrupting and contradicting each other, to describe how Tinker Burns had hired them through Harry Warnock for a vague one-shot that might involve a little breaking and entering.

  After first complaining about how little they had been paid, $2,000 apiece, they described how they had shot Steadfast Haynes’s horse, broken into his farmhouse, searched it and bound and gagged “some woman” who walked in on them. But they vehemently denied—despite repeated questions from Padillo and threats from McCorkle—that
they had found any trace of the Haynes manuscript.

  “What’d Tinker say when you told him all this?” McCorkle said.

  “He was sort of pissed off,” Pabst said.

  “If you think he was pissed off, imagine what Harry Warnock’s going to be when I tell him I caught you burgling my car.” Padillo paused. “And why.”

  Schlitz’s eyes darted quickly away to his left. Pabst stared down at the parking lot asphalt.

  “Harry’s mean,” McCorkle said, making it sound as if he were musing aloud. “And he also knows all those IRA interrogation techniques. The nasty stuff. The first thing he’ll probably ask you is whether you’re really working for him or for Tinker Burns. And no matter what you tell him, he’ll have to make sure you’re not lying.”

  Pabst, still staring at the asphalt, muttered, “Harry don’t have to know.”

  “Sorry?” Padillo said.

  Pabst looked up. “I said Harry won’t know if you don’t tell him.”

  “Why wouldn’t I tell him? You sliced my car top. But Harry won’t pay for it unless I tell him what you two did and why.”

  “Maybe we could work it out,” Schlitz said with a broad smile utterly lacking in confidence.

  “How?”

  “I mean if you guys need something done, well, maybe we could do it and that’d sort of pay for your car top and then Harry wouldn’t have to know about this.”

  Padillo studied Schlitz for a moment before asking, “Does Tinker Burns worry either of you?”

  “Nope,” Pabst said. It was a quick answer and McCorkle thought it was probably far too quick.

  “Then you wouldn’t mind lying to him, would you?” Padillo said.

  After a cautious nod, Pabst said, “Go on.”

  “We want you to call Tinker at his hotel,” Padillo said. “If he’s not there, leave a message. The message will say only that you’ve learned that McCorkle and Padillo have the Haynes manuscript. That’s all. But if Tinker himself answers the phone, tell him you were at Pong’s with Harry Warnock and the lads and heard talk that McCorkle and I have the Haynes manuscript. When Tinker asks for details, tell him that’s all you know. Absolutely all.”