Twilight at Mac's Place (20 page)

“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.”

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 postponement—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?”

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.

Mott came back on the phone with a question. “What’s the date—the twenty-ninth?”

“Right.”

“Okay. New Hampshire is alphabetically the twenty-ninth state. So you say, ‘Concord.’ ”

“Which is its capital.”

“State capitals are the code of the month.”

“State capitals and dead actors,” Haynes said. “Then what?”

“Then you’ll have thirty seconds to explain what you want.”

“Who are these nuts?” Haynes asked.

This time it was Mott who sighed. “You don’t want to know, Granville, and they don’t want to know who you are. Think of them as misguided do-gooders. Very expensive misguided do-gooders.”

“Okay,” Haynes said. “What’s the number I call?”

Mott spoke the number slowly, then repeated it even more slowly and hung up without saying good-bye. Haynes put down the hotel room phone, took the elevator to the lobby, got two dollars in quarters from the cashier, went to a pay phone, dropped in fifty cents, which he knew to be too much, and tapped out the number Mott had given him.

After two rings a man’s recorded voice murmured the number Haynes had just dialed. At the beep, Haynes said, “Warren Oates,” read off the number of his pay phone and hung up.

Two minutes later the pay phone rang. Immediately after the first ring, Haynes picked it up and said, “Concord.”

A woman’s voice said, “You got thirty seconds.”

“I want to know where and exactly when four CIA employees were stationed in nineteen seventy-three and ’seventy-four. Their names are Hamilton Keyes, Steadfast Haynes, Muriel Lamphier and Gilbert Undean.”

“Spell ’em,” said the woman’s voice.

After Haynes spelled them, she said, “We can work a whole lot faster if you know if they were stateside or overseas.”

“Overseas. Maybe Laos.”

“Okay. No sweat. What’s the time now?”

Haynes looked at his watch. “Eleven thirty-three.”

“Bring three thousand in fifties and twenties—”

“Where the hell am I going to get that at this hour?”

“That’s your problem. Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

“Three thousand in a sealed envelope. Connecticut and Woodley Road. Northeast corner. Second streetlight north. There’ll be a big old yellow brick at its base. What you want’ll be under the brick. Leave the money envelope in its place. Got it?”

“What time?”

“Two-eleven
A.M
. exactly. If you don’t leave the money, I guarantee it’ll get messy.”

She hung up. Haynes pressed down on the pay phone hook, released it, dropped in another fifty cents and tapped out a different number. The voice that answered said, “Mac’s Place. We’re closed.”

Haynes recognized the voice of Karl Triller, the head bartender. “This is Granville Haynes. Padillo still around?”

“Hold on,” Triller said.

A few moments later, Padillo came on the line with, “You need something, right?”

“I need to cash a check for three thousand in twenties and fifties. Can you handle it?”

“If you hurry.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Haynes said.

Seated on his side of the partners desk, Padillo counted $3,000 into three $1,000 piles as Haynes watched. After looking up and getting a nod from Haynes, Padillo took a plain No. 10 envelope from a desk drawer, placed the $3,000 inside and handed it to Haynes unsealed. Without recounting the money, Haynes ran his tongue over the envelope’s flap and sealed it.

Padillo put Haynes’s check and a thin leftover sheaf of tens, twenties, fifties and hundreds into a steel cash box, closed its lid, rose and put the box in the old safe.

“You didn’t lock it,” Haynes said.

“The cash box? We lost the key. But then we decided if a thief opens the safe, a cash box won’t present any problem.”

After closing the old safe’s door and giving the combination a couple of spins, Padillo turned to Haynes and said, “Need a lift?”

“I can get a cab.”

“I think you need a lift.”

“I don’t want to keep you up.”

“I don’t sleep much anymore.”

Haynes smiled. “Well, maybe I could use a lift at that.”

At 1:17
A.M
., Padillo dropped Haynes off at Connecticut Avenue and Calvert Street, then continued out Connecticut for five blocks before he turned around, drove back down the same broad street and parked on its west side only thirty yards up and across from the streetlight where money would be swapped for information.

At 2:03
A.M
., a dark blue Ford panel van stopped in front of the streetlight. Padillo couldn’t tell whether the driver was a man or a woman. But when the driver didn’t stir from behind the wheel, Padillo assumed someone in the van’s rear was making use of the sliding door. Counting by thousands, Padillo timed the transaction at less than thirty seconds because he had just reached 28,000 when the Ford van pulled away.

At 2:09
A.M
., Haynes came into view, walking north along the east sidewalk of Connecticut Avenue. By 2:11
A.M
., Haynes had reached the designated streetlight. He knelt down, as if to tie a shoelace, rose, turned around and walked south, retracing his steps.

The blue van reappeared twenty seconds later. Again, the driver didn’t stir from behind the wheel. Counting once more by thousands, Padillo had reached 16,000 when the van sped away from the curb and north on Connecticut.

Padillo waited four minutes, then started his aging Mercedes coupe’s engine and drove south. He stopped at the stone lion at the south end and west side of Taft Bridge. Haynes opened the passenger door and got in.

“Where to?” Padillo asked.

“The Madison.”

“It was a blue Ford van,” Padillo said as he drove away. “It was too dark to read the license plate and I couldn’t tell whether the driver was a man or a woman, but whoever it was never left the wheel. So there had to be at least two of them.”

“You have a map light?” Haynes asked.

Padillo switched it on.

Haynes held a plain three-by-five-inch card to the light. The card contained four lines of typing. Haynes read them aloud:

“ ‘Hamilton Keyes, Saigon, South Vietnam, 8-3-72 to 6-1-74.

“ ‘Muriel Lamphier, Vientiane, Laos, 10-2-73 to 4-15-74.

“ ‘Gilbert Undean, Vientiane, Laos, 2-13-68 to 5-1-74.

“ ‘Steadfast Haynes, no official trace, repeat, no official trace.’ ”

“You spent three thousand for that?” Padillo said.

“Right.”

“Why?”

“That’s what I’m going to ask Tinker—among other things.”

“Want me to help you ask him?”

“No need.”

“I think I will anyway,” Padillo said.