Twilight at Mac's Place m-4

by Ross Thomas

  Keyes tore his elbow loose from Haynes’s grasp, rubbed it and said, “Up the street.”

  “Let’s go take us a ride and have us a talk then. Topic A will be the Undean memo.”

  Keyes cocked his head to examine Haynes almost sympathetically. “You don’t even know you’re raving, do you?”

  Haynes raised a forefinger to his lips. “Shhh. They’ll hear us.”

  When they reached Keyes’s dark blue Buick sedan, Haynes stared at it for fifteen seconds, not moving, not even breathing.

  “I’ve seen this fucking car before,” he said and walked slowly all the way around it, pausing to kick two of the tires. He then whirled on Keyes and said, “This is the fucking car she shot at me from.”

  “She?”

  “Your heiress wife. Muriel Lamphier Keyes.”

  “Shot at you, did she?”

  “Last night at the Bellevue Motel out in Bethesda where nobody knew I was, except Muriel. She used a twenty-two rifle, probably loaded with longs. Could’ve wiped me out if she’d wanted to. Hell of a good shot.”

  “You saw her?”

  “I saw this same exact car take off like a scalded snake right after she shot at me. Now I’m about to be taken for a ride in it. You might like coincidences, but I hate ’em.” Haynes sounded even less happy when he asked, “This really your car?”

  Keyes quickly unlocked the passenger door, as if to prove ownership. Haynes got in. After Keyes was behind the wheel, Haynes said, “Muriel borrowed your car last night, right? Sure she did. Probably scooted over in the seat, rolled down this very same window, used the sill for a rest—maybe even had herself a scope—squeezed off three rounds, bang, bang, bang, and missed me by inches on purpose.”

  Keyes started the engine and said, “I haven’t the slightest idea of what you’re talking about.”

  “Stick up for her then. I don’t blame you.”

  With a sigh, Keyes asked, “Where to?”

  “Straight out Connecticut to the District line. Makes a nice drive and ought to give us plenty of time to talk.”

  “About the Undean memo,” Keyes said, pulling away from the curb. “Whatever that is.”

  Haynes said nothing for nearly two minutes, then snarled his question. “Where the fuck was she Sunday morning right after the big snow?”

  “It’s none of your fucking business, but she was with an old friend in McLean.”

  Haynes’s expression turned sly, his voice insinuating. “Muriel a pretty fair skier?”

  “She didn’t go skiing in McLean.”

  “No, but she skied right up to old Gilbert Undean’s front door in Reston, didn’t she? All masked and goggled and bundled up so nobody could tell if she was male, female or in between. Undean let her in. Can’t really blame him for that since she was pointing her piece at him. They go up the stairs to his office. Maybe they talk a little; maybe they don’t. Or maybe they reminisce about old times in Vientiane when Muriel got caught fucking some woman’s husband, and how the woman got mad and shot him and then fought Muriel for the gun, but Muriel won and shot the woman dead. All that was in the Undean memo.”

  “Really,” Keyes said.

  “This is all old stuff to you, isn’t it, Ham? In the memo it says you were the guy who brought the money from Saigon to Vientiane that paid off the slope general who covered the whole mess up. What a nasty piece of shit he must’ve been. But it wasn’t a total loss because that’s when you met Muriel, right?”

  “That’s when I met her,” Keyes said, stopping for a light at Connecticut and Columbia Road.

  “Can’t be too hard to fall for a beauty who’s got sixty million bucks in the bank. Most guys wouldn’t have any trouble at all—even if Muriel is kinda weird. Take old Gilbert Undean. He was still covering up for her after all these years.”

  “Covering up what?” Keyes said, sounding a bit interested for the first time.

  “In his memo Undean claims the two-hundred-thousand-dollar payoff to the slope general was spook money. But it wasn’t. It was Muriel’s. Of course, that’s no flash to you since you were the bag man who toted it to Vientiane.”

  Keyes frowned, looking almost puzzled. “You’re claiming the two hundred thousand wasn’t agency money?”

  “Hey! I said something he didn’t already know. Lemme ask you this: Where’d you pick up all that cash in Saigon? At a bank? The embassy?”

  “It was delivered to me.”

  “Who by?”

  “You don’t ask.”

  “White man?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sign for it?”

  “Never.”

  “Well, there you go. It wasn’t agency money. It was Muriel’s. You wanta know what really happened?”

  Keyes shrugged.

  “I didn’t hear that, Ham.”

  “I’ll listen.”

  “Okay. Here’s the no-shit story. After Steady makes his deal for the cover-up with the general, he tells Muriel she’s gotta come up with two hundred K—all cash. Now, Muriel could’ve asked the spooks for it. And maybe they’d’ve come up with it and maybe they wouldn’t have. But she’d’ve had to tell ’em all about what a wife-killer she was and once they heard that, they’d’ve bounced her back home and out of the agency, right?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Well, two hundred K’s no problem to Muriel,” Haynes said, recalling the information Erika McCorkle had relayed to him from Padillo. “But the slope general is an all-cash kind of guy, and there’s no way Muriel can lay hands on that much cash in twelve hours or whatever time she’s got. But Steady knows how.”

  “He would,” Keyes said.

  “Steady knows some three-for-two black-market guys in Saigon who’ll front Muriel the two hundred K if she’ll pay back three hundred K in a week or ten days. Well, what’s a hundred thou in vigorish to somebody like Muriel? So she says, swell, let’s do it.”

  “I doubt that she said ‘swell,’ but go on.”

  “Okay. She and Steady’ve got the money all lined up. But now they’ve gotta figure out how to get it from Saigon to Vientiane fast. Very fast. And that’s where you come in, Ham.”

  “Steady’s choice. I suppose I should be flattered.”

  “You were first pick because Steady figured that when you heard the Lamphier name, bells would go off. Cash register bells. You know the kind in old-timey cash registers that rang when you—”

  “You’re wearing it out,” Keyes said.

  Haynes smiled not only at his cash register metaphor but also at the irritation it had caused Keyes. “Bet it was love at first sight. You and Muriel.”

  “Hardly,” Keyes said. “Are you sure Undean didn’t know it was Muriel’s money?”

  “Absolutely positive. The only ones who knew were Muriel and Steady—plus the three-for-two guys in Saigon.”

  “But you said none of this was in Undean’s memo.”

  “You calling me a liar, Ham?” Haynes said, trying to turn the question into a softly spoken death threat and not at all displeased with the result.

  “Merely curious,” Keyes said.

  “I accept your apology.”

  “I made none.”

  “But the thought was there and I shouldn’t blame you for asking dumb questions. If I was married to somebody who’d knocked off three people, I’d sure as hell want to learn everything about her I could.”

  “Please answer my question,” Keyes said.

  “Okay. I found out about the money stuff in Steady’s memoirs.”

  “You read them?”

  “What else would I do—lick it off the page?”

  “When?”

  “Right after I found them yesterday—or was it the day before? But lemme tell you one thing about the memoirs and it’s just what I said in the senator’s office. They’d make just one hell of a picture.”

  “May I ask where you found the manuscript?”

  “Sure. In Steady’s car. He had this old Caddie ragtop that he left me in h
is will and I’ve been driving it around. Well, it had a flat and when I changed it, there was the manuscript in a nice safe nest under the spare. And you wanta know something else about Muriel—about her and the old Caddie?”

  Keyes nodded once as if he no longer trusted himself to speak.

  “Muriel tried to buy the Caddie on the Q.T. because she figured the manuscript might be in it. She didn’t try herself, of course. What she did was hire some pro hitter, a guy called Horace Purchase, to buy it. Ever hear of him?”

  “I think I saw his name in the Post,” Keyes said.

  “Well, it looks like Purchase had three goals or assignments or targets—whatever. Number one was to switch my lights off and he damn near did it at the Willard. Number two: try and buy Steady’s old Caddie. Well, he couldn’t manage that, but he did do number three.”

  Haynes shut up and waited for Keyes to ask what number three was. Instead, Keyes asked, “You’re quite sure Muriel hired him?”

  “Who else would?”

  Keyes shrugged and asked, “What was the third objective? Of the Purchase person, I mean.”

  “It was kind of a fallback thing. If he couldn’t buy the Caddie, he oughta try and plant a sender on it. You know, an electronic transmitter.”

  “And did he?”

  “How the fuck d’you think Muriel found and shot at me out there at the Bellevue Motel where nobody knew I was?” Haynes chuckled. “Funny thing happened to that sender though.”

  “What?”

  “I found it and slapped it right up against the frame of some taxicab.” He chuckled again. “Must’ve driven whoever was tracking me nuts following that cab all over town and out to Dulles and everywhere.” This time Haynes giggled, hoping it would suggest neurosis.

  He apparently succeeded because Keyes asked, “Are you all right?”

  “Sure I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be all right?”

  Keyes ignored the question to ask one of his own. “You still have a copy of the Undean memo?”

  “Not of the original. What I got is a copy of the carbon and what you wanta know is how’d I get it, right?”

  Keyes only nodded, not taking his eyes from the road.

  “I figure Muriel found the original memo right after she shot old man Undean. But she missed the carbon. Now, who should waltz into Undean’s house two minutes later but Tinker Burns himself, the born snoop. Tinker finds the carbon under Undean’s desk blotter right after he calls the cops, which leaves him with nothing to do but snoop around till they get there. Now you gotta understand this. If the cops’d found that carbon it’d’ve been, So long, Muriel. I mean that memo really nails her. Motive. Opportunity. All that good shit. But when Tinker reads it, all he smells is money. And since he’s on her payroll anyway, he knows just which buttons to push.”

  “On her payroll?” Keyes said, not trying to conceal his surprise.

  “Well, maybe he was just on retainer. The senator’d hired him in Paris because Muriel’d heard rumors about Steady’s manuscript. And since Tinker was tight with both Steady and Isabelle, it seemed possible that they might let him peek at the memoirs and see if Muriel was mentioned or not. And, if so, how? You know, bad or good?”

  “And is she mentioned?” Keyes asked.

  “What’s that got to do with Tinker Burns?” Haynes said. “Let’s stick to him. Okay?”

  “For now,” Keyes said.

  “Before Tinker can even get started on seeing about the memoirs, Steady dies on him. But because he’s already been paid, Tinker flies over for the funeral and then starts snooping around, but finds fuck all—except for Isabelle’s body—until he stumbles across the Undean memo. Well, that memo is money in the bank to Tinker. The first thing he does is pay the senator a visit and put the arm on him. The senator reports all this to Muriel, who says she’ll take care of it. She and Tinker agree on Rock Creek Park as the payoff site. But there’s no payoff and it’s good-bye, Tinker.”

  “You really think my wife killed Tinker Burns?”

  “She’d already done two. What’s one more? Besides, who else would’ve killed him?”

  “Muggers,” Keyes said. “Old enemies.”

  Haynes gave him a pitying look. “Since when do muggers or even old enemies leave six or seven hundred bucks in the victim’s wallet?”

  “I’m surprised that Burns wasn’t more suspicious.”

  “He was suspicious, all right,” Haynes said. “How the hell do you think I got a Xerox copy of the Undean carbon? Tinker Fed-Exed it to Howard Mott in an envelope marked, ‘Don’t Open Unless I’m Dead’ or something like that. And inside that envelope was a smaller one addressed to me and marked personal, and in it was the Undean memo.”

  “So what’re you going to do with it?” Keyes asked, suddenly brisk and businesslike.

  “That’s exactly what I need to talk to you about. I could give it to a certain homicide cop I know, a guy named Pouncy, and he could probably nail Muriel with it because he’s pretty smart and probably a damn good digger. I even thought that you and me oughta go talk to Muriel—maybe try and talk her into giving herself up.”

  “Muriel wouldn’t agree to that,” Keyes said.

  “No? Well, she’s sure gotta pay somehow for what she did. I mean, you can’t murder three people and expect to get away with it. What the fuck kind of civilization would that be?”

  Keyes sighed. “I have the feeling we’re talking about money now.”

  “Did I mention money? Even once?”

  “How much?” Keyes made his question sound old and tired.

  “Well, for a million I guess I could forget all about Muriel Keyes and the Undean memo.”

  “A million in the morning and another million in the afternoon,” Keyes said. “This must be one of your more profitable days.”

  “It could be,” Haynes said. “Except for one thing.”

  “What?”

  “There’s something in that Undean memo that still itches me.”

  “What itches you, Mr. Haynes?”

  “Call me Granny. Well, it’s when Undean writes about how Isabelle bought it. He goes into a lot of gruesome detail. But Isabelle got killed Friday afternoon and the Post only ran a couple of short graphs on it Saturday. You know: Woman Slain, Cops Investigate. When did you hear about it?”

  “I think it came in late Friday afternoon on one of the wire services. Maybe UPI.”

  “But would UPI give out her address and apartment number and the fact that her wrists and ankles were tied with coat-hanger wire? Or the fact that she’d been gagged? That’s the one that really bothers me. The gag. Because she sure didn’t have one in her mouth when Tinker and I found her. So how the hell could Undean write on Saturday that she’d been gagged when the cops didn’t even know it until two P.M. Saturday when they found the gag in the trash and ran tests on it.” Haynes paused, stared at Keyes and said, “You must’ve figured out what it means, Ham.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Well, shit, it means Undean didn’t write the memo, that’s what.”

  “Then who did?”

  “The killer, that’s who.”

  “Muriel?”

  “You know something, I just changed my mind about Muriel. Here’s how I figure it now. If you wanta forge something with a typewriter, you gotta be careful. So I think whoever forged the memo used Undean’s office typewriter at Langley—probably used it while Undean was down at the Willard offering me fifty thou for Steady’s manuscript. I think the forger made an original and a carbon, then destroyed the original. And after the forger got through killing Undean Sunday, the carbon was slipped under the old guy’s desk blotter where the cops’d be sure to find it—if Tinker Burns hadn’t found it first. And like I said, that memo nailed Muriel for Isabelle’s murder plus all that mess in Laos. So why would she write it, much less leave it for the cops to find?”

  “Finally, a good question,” Keyes said.

  “So maybe Muriel didn’t kill anybody. Wonder why I didn’t
think of that before? But if I’m finally thinking straight, then you’re the only one who could’ve forged that memo on Undean’s typewriter out at Langley. So I guess you killed him. And if you knew about that gag in Isabelle’s mouth, you must’ve stuffed it there, right? Either you or old Horse Purchase, who must’ve held her while you straightened out the coat hangers. Or was it the other way around? Never mind. And when poor old Tinker tried to blackmail you, what happened to him is kind of obvious. Jesus, Ham, you’re a real menace.”

  “And you’re certifiable,” Keyes said as he reached down as if to adjust his seat either forward or backward.

  The McCorkle Chief’s Special appeared in Haynes’s right hand. “Bring it up by the barrel, Mr. Keyes. Very, very slowly, if you don’t mind.”

  Keyes froze in his slightly bent-over position, peering at the traffic ahead, his eyes barely above the top of the steering wheel. Finally, Keyes’s left hand came into view, its thumb and three fingers holding a small .25-caliber Beretta semiautomatic by the barrel.

  Haynes switched his revolver to his left hand and poked its muzzle into Keyes’s right ear. Haynes’s right hand reached for the Beretta. Once he had it, he slipped it into his topcoat’s right-hand pocket, then removed the revolver from Keyes’s ear.

  “Mr. Keyes, I suggest we go around the block very slowly, then back down Connecticut and over to your house, where we’ll have a talk with Mrs. Keyes.”

  “About money?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Who were you?” Keyes said as he turned right off Connecticut to circle the block.

  “When?”

  “During the last twenty-five or thirty minutes?”

  “Well, that was old Hardcase Haynes of Homicide.”

  “I didn’t much like him.”

  “I’ve now reverted to what a friend has called my Mr. Manners role.”

  “I don’t like him either,” said Hamilton Keyes.

  Chapter 47

  Trailed by Haynes, Hamilton Keyes entered his living room at 11:28 A.M. to find McCorkle and Padillo seated side by side on a couch, eating liverwurst-on-rye sandwiches and drinking pale ale.