Twilight at Mac's Place

by Ross Thomas

  It was Schlitz who repeated a reasonably close version of the instructions and asked, “When d’you want us to call him?”

  “Now,” Padillo said.

  “I’ll use your car phone.”

  “I don’t have a car phone.”

  Not bothering to conceal his astonishment, Schlitz said, “Jesus, everybody’s got a—”

  “I don’t,” Padillo said.

  “He doesn’t have a fax machine either,” McCorkle said.

  “Well,” Schlitz said, “I guess we can use the phone in my car.”

  After McCorkle knocked on the hotel room door, it was opened by his daughter, who apparently wore nothing other than a man’s white oxford shirt and it rather loosely buttoned.

  “They have house phones in the lobby,” she said.

  “We can wait out here till you get—”

  McCorkle was interrupted by Granville Haynes’s voice from behind the partially open door. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Pop and the old guy who rides shotgun.”

  “Then ask them in.”

  “You’re invited,” she said, walked away from the half-open door and disappeared into the bathroom.

  McCorkle entered the room, followed by an amused looking Padillo. Once inside, McCorkle turned slowly, nodding at Haynes, who wore pants, shirt and loafers, but no socks. McCorkle continued his slow turn, noting the room-service cart, the empty and half-empty glasses, the discarded copies of the Sunday Washington Post and New York Times, the rumpled bed and, finally, Padillo’s amused expression.

  “What’s so funny?” McCorkle said.

  “Outraged fathers are always funny.”

  “Who says I’m outraged?”

  “Your choleric flush.”

  “Care for a drink?” Haynes said.

  McCorkle turned to stare at him. “Care? No. Need? Yes.”

  “Scotch, vodka, beer, what?”

  “Scotch.”

  “Mr. Padillo?”

  “Nothing, thanks.”

  “You may need one after you hear about our threatening phone call.”

  “Who from?”

  “Since Erika took the call, I’ll let her tell it.”

  After the drinks were poured and served, Erika McCorkle came out of the bathroom, wearing pants and over them the man’s white shirt, now buttoned except for the collar button and the one just below it. She went to the mini-refrigerator, removed a can of beer, popped it open and drank thirstily. She then turned to her father and said, “Okay. Let’s have it.”

  McCorkle took another look around the room. “I suppose this is as good a way as any to spend a long Sunday afternoon. Your mother and I used to spend them like this in Bonn a hundred years ago. Usually out at her place in Tannenbusch. She lived in a one-room studio on the top floor of a Hochhaus with a view of the Rhine and the Drachenfels. Padillo always opened up on Sundays, so I’d drop by Fredl’s around noon with a bottle of wine or two and a couple of steaks. People still ate steak then. Fredl would read the papers, all six or seven of them, and after that we’d talk and fool around, then eat, and talk and maybe even fool around some more. Around six or seven I’d drive out to Godesberg to take over from Padillo. Sometimes she’d come with me.”

  “She came with you most of the time,” Padillo said.

  McCorkle nodded. “I guess she did.”

  “You two weren’t married then?” Erika asked.

  “Not even engaged.”

  “How old was she?”

  “Fredl? Twenty-four, twenty-five.”

  “And you?”

  McCorkle looked at Haynes, who was leaning against the windowsill again and wearing what seemed to be a look of polite sympathy. “Thirty-two, thirty-three,” McCorkle said. “Around in there.”

  “This was the late fifties?”

  “The late, late fifties.”

  “You and Mutti never talk about it, do you?”

  “Not much.”

  “He’s not talking about it now,” Padillo said.

  “Then what’s he saying?”

  “For Christsake, Gurgles,” Padillo said.

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Gurgles?” Haynes asked.

  “When she was learning to talk,” Padillo said, “she couldn’t quite handle Erika McCorkle and it came out Erigga McGurgle. I called her Gurgles until she turned six and made me stop.”

  “That still doesn’t explain what Pop was saying.”

  Padillo shrugged. “Ask him.”

  She turned to McCorkle. “Well, what was it—a roundabout invitation to join the grown-ups?”

  “Who wants that?”

  “What then?”

  “I think it was a promise,” McCorkle said.

  “What kind of promise?”

  “That next time I’ll use the house phone.”

  Wearing her sunshine smile, she hurried over to McCorkle, went up on tiptoe, kissed him and, still smiling, turned to Granville Haynes and said, “You can tell we’re a very demonstrative family.”

  “If the demonstration’s over, maybe you should tell the family about the threatening phone call.”

  She turned automatically to Padillo, as if he were the usual receiver of bad news. “Mr. Tinker Burns called,” she said. “About twenty or thirty minutes before you got here. He was looking for you and Pop. After I told him we didn’t know where you were, he asked—no, he told me to give you a message. I asked him to hold on while I got something to write with. But he said I wouldn’t need anything because his message was short and simple.”

  “And was it?” Padillo said. “Short and simple?”

  She nodded. “Mr. Burns told me to tell you that unless you let him look at Steady’s manuscript, he’s going to break your fucking necks. Or have it done.”

  Chapter 32

  The four of them traded information for the next twenty minutes. Haynes and Erika went first with their account of Hamilton Keyes’s offer of $750,000 for all rights to the still unfound, unread memoirs of Steadfast Haynes. McCorkle and Padillo then described events leading up to their encounter outside Pong’s Palace with Mr. Schlitz and Mr. Pabst.

  After that they went back over everything—poking at this recalling that and speculating about other just-remembered bits and pieces, most of them inconsequential, until they suddenly stopped when it became apparent they were getting nowhere. A silence began and lasted nearly two minutes before it was ended by Granville Haynes.

  “Since Tinker’s obviously got his own deal going,” Haynes said, “I think I’ll drop by his hotel around two-thirty or three tomorrow morning and ask him what it is.”

  “He won’t tell you,” Padillo said.

  “His lies might tell me something.”

  “Gestapo stuff,” Erika said.

  It wasn’t much of a smile that Haynes gave her. “Tonight the knock on the door, tomorrow the national ID card. Where will it all end?”

  “You tell me, sunshine.”

  “Don’t worry about Tinker’s civil rights or liberties,” McCorkle told Haynes. “If you go knocking on his door in the small hours, he won’t open it unless it’s to tell you to buzz off.”

  “Maybe he still thinks there’s such a thing as the right to privacy,” Erika said.

  “Privacy vanished with the arrival of the driver’s license, the Social Security number and the credit card,” Haynes said.

  “What about the right to be left alone?” she said.

  “It no longer exists—if it ever did.”

  “And you think that’s just wonderful, don’t you?”

  “You haven’t a clue to what I think,” Haynes said.

  “I think I’ll go home,” McCorkle said before his daughter could either reply or explode. He rose, looked at her and asked, “Coming?”

  “You bet,” she said.

  The four of them stood silently just inside the Willard lobby, waiting for Erika’s aging Cutlass to be brought around from the hotel garage. She stared at Pennsylvania Avenue
through the glass door, ignoring the three men. They in turn ignored her silent rage.

  When her car arrived, Haynes said, “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Why?” she said and pushed through the glass door.

  McCorkle gave Haynes a small baffled smile and hurried after his ride home.

  Padillo watched them go, turned to Haynes and asked, “Hungry?”

  Haynes had to think about it. “Yes.”

  “Let’s eat then.”

  By 9 P.M. there were only a dozen or so diners left in Mac’s Place. The bar, however, was lined with drinkers, quietly stoking up for the Monday to come. Padillo chose a booth instead of his regular table near the kitchen. He and Haynes were just settling into it when Herr Horst slow-marched over to announce that Tinker Burns had been in twice, demanding to see either Padillo or McCorkle.

  “Sober?” Padillo asked.

  “Sober-mean.”

  “Any message?”

  “I believe he intends to do you both grave bodily harm.”

  Padillo nodded, as if at old news, and asked, “What’s good tonight?”

  “The duck,” Herr Horst said. “With wild rice and an exceptionally tasty cucumber and limestone lettuce salad.”

  Padillo looked at Haynes. “You like duck?”

  “Duck’s fine.”

  “An aperitif, Mr. Haynes?” Herr Horst asked.

  “A vermouth, please.”

  Herr Horst looked inquiringly at Padillo, who said he’d like a sherry.

  After the drinks were served and Haynes took his first sip of vermouth, he said, “Hamilton Keyes says he knows you.”

  “He drops by now and then.”

  “For conversation or food?”

  “He likes to talk about wine, but never about his job or his wife.”

  “What’s wrong with his wife?”

  “Nothing—except that when I knew her a long time ago she was still Muriel Lamphier.”

  “Lamphier as in Crown-Lamphier?”

  Padillo nodded.

  “What’s a long time ago?”

  “Seventeen, eighteen years back.”

  “What happened?”

  “Why?”

  Haynes smiled his inherited smile. “Just routine.”

  “You seem a hell of a lot more routinely interested in Mrs. Keyes than Mr. Keyes.”

  “I’m interested in money. It makes me curious. I’m especially curious about a guy who walks into my hotel room and in front of a witness offers me three quarters of a million for all rights to some memoirs that he hasn’t read and probably don’t even exist. He claims he’s offering me government money. Now I hear he’s married to the Lamphier in Crown-Lamphier, which used to make a third or maybe half of this country’s glass, but diversified into electronics, paper, solvents and, for all I know, catfish farming. The former Muriel Lamphier is major money. Keyes married it. You dated it. And my first question is did she and Steady ever have something going?”

  Padillo shook his head. “The only connection I know of between her and Steady is that her husband was Steady’s last handler at the agency—or as much of a handler as Steady ever put up with.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Padillo was silent for a moment, trying to remember. “Isabelle told me.”

  Haynes finished his vermouth and said, “Mind talking about it?”

  “About Muriel and me?”

  Haynes nodded.

  Padillo hesitated, then said, “Well, why not? Back then she was twenty-four or twenty-five and I was in my forties. It only lasted a few months. She was a little too rich and a little too wild. The rich I might’ve handled but the wild was just so much bother. After it ended she went out to Los Angeles and fell in with what used to be called the wrong crowd. I think they all had something to do with films.”

  “Did she want to act?”

  “She had the looks, God knows. But I don’t think she really knew what she wanted. Then something happened in L.A. I don’t know what. Maybe she just got bored. So she came back here and went with the agency.” Padillo paused. “To her it was probably just something to do.”

  “She have any qualifications?”

  “Looks, brains, connections, sixty or seventy million dollars, good French, fair German and a degree in medieval history. You might say she and the agency made a tight fit.”

  A waiter came over to serve the salad. Padillo asked Haynes whether he wanted his salad now or later. Haynes said now was fine.

  “Twenty years ago,” Padillo said, “about fifty percent of our dinner customers ate their salads last. Now only ten percent do.”

  “When I first got to L.A., some places were serving frozen forks with the salad.”

  “Why?”

  “I never asked.”

  They ate in silence until Haynes finished, put down his fork and said, “What’d she do at the CIA?”

  “She was a field hand in operations, which is where she met Keyes. He then seemed headed for one of the top slots, maybe even deputy director, but now he’s one of the might-have-beens. Karl the bartender keeps up with all this stuff and blames Keyes’s fall or decline on his bald head. It’s Karl’s theory that if two male candidates for anything have the same qualifications, the one with the most hair wins.”

  “I’ve heard dumber theories,” Haynes said. “But not many.”

  “Anyway, Muriel quit the agency in late ’seventy-four and married Keyes in ’seventy-five.”

  “She wasn’t with it very long then, was she?”

  “A couple of years at most.”

  “Ever see her around?”

  “The last time was four or five years ago at a Spanish embassy party. The ambassador’s sister and I were attempting a modified flamenco. Muriel came over to compliment us. After the ambassador’s sister drifted away, Muriel and I had a long chat about the weather.”

  “She went from wild to tame?”

  “So Isabelle said.”

  “How would she know?”

  “Remember Isabelle’s AF-P story that got killed?” Padillo said. “The one on Casey?”

  Haynes nodded.

  “While she was working on it, she decided she needed a sidebar on agency wives. Somebody suggested Muriel Keyes. After a lot of trying, Isabelle finally set up an interview and came away with forty-five taped minutes of what she called demure merde.”

  The duck arrived and was served with more precision than flourish by Herr Horst himself. He waited until Haynes tasted it, looked up and pronounced it marvelous. Herr Horst, smiling contentedly, turned and marched slowly away.

  “You told me you still had a copy of the story Isabelle wrote,” Haynes said, cutting himself another bite of duck.

  “In the office.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “It’s in French.”

  “I think I can handle that.”

  “Sorry,” Padillo said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  Herr Horst reappeared, carrying a telephone. He plugged it into a jack and placed it beside Haynes’s plate. “It’s Mr. Mott,” Herr Horst said.

  Haynes picked up the phone and said, “Yes, Howard?”

  “The ex-senator just called me,” Howard Mott said. “His client wants to postpone the bidding for two days. Until Wednesday.”

  “Why?”

  “The senator says that’s none of our business, but if we still want to do some business, we’d better agree to the postponement. I told him I’d have to check with my client.”

  Haynes said, “Call him back and tell him I’ve got a new firm offer of seven hundred and fifty thousand.”

  “I don’t lie well enough to convince him of that.”

  “You don’t have to. The CIA made the offer in person this afternoon in front of a witness.”

  “What witness?”

  “Erika McCorkle.”

  “Ah.”

  “What’s ‘ah’ mean this time?”

  “It means I’ll call the senator back and agree to the postp
onement—providing, of course, that he agrees the bidding will begin at seven hundred and fifty thousand.”

  “What d’you think he’ll do?”

  “I think that this Wednesday the senator will offer you eight hundred thousand dollars,” Mott said. “The real question, of course, is what will you do?”

  “See whether the CIA raises, what else?”

  Chapter 33

  Back in his room at the Willard Hotel, Haynes counted the rings of the phone call he was making. Halfway through the sixth ring, Howard Mott answered with a gruff hello.

  After Haynes identified himself, Mott said, “Now what?”

  “Suppose I wanted to find out—”

  “Why don’t we just skip the ‘suppose’?” Mott said.

  “All right. I want to find out where some CIA people worked in nineteen seventy-three and ’seventy-four.”

  “Ask the agency.”

  “They’d just tell me to fuck off.”

  “Sound advice.”

  Haynes said nothing, letting the silence build until Mott said, “You’re serious.”

  “Very.”

  There was another silence, briefer this time, before Mott said, “I can give you a number to call.”

  “What about a name?”

  “There’s no name. Just some rigamarole.”

  Haynes sighed. “Okay.”

  “Go to a pay phone and call the number I’m going to give you. You’ll reach an answering machine that’ll repeat the number you’ve just dialed. At the sound of the beep, you say, ‘Warren Oates,’ read off your pay phone’s number and hang up. Got it?”

  “Warren Oates,” Haynes said.

  “Two minutes after you hang up, the pay phone will ring. Pick up just after the first ring and, instead of saying hello, say—hold on a second—”

  “I say, ‘Hold on a second’?”

  “No, goddamnit, you don’t say that. I’ll tell you what to say in a moment.”

  In the brief silence that followed, Haynes pictured Howard Mott rummaging in the pigeonholes of his old rolltop oak desk, searching for the secret password.