Twilight at Mac's Place (5 page)

Haynes smiled and nodded. “Except for three hundred and eighty-odd blank pages, all carefully numbered. Of course, he might’ve written the rest in invisible ink. Maybe even lemon juice.” He held a page up to the light from a window. “But I don’t think so.” He put the page down and looked at Mott. “You’re sure about the copyright?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

“Then let’s see whether they still want to buy it.”

“You’re asking me to help perpetrate a fraud, right?”

“I didn’t say I’d sell it to them. I said let’s see whether they really want to buy it and, if so, how high they’re willing to go.”

After considering what he first thought of as the proposal, but redefined as the proposition, Mott said, “My curiosity is overwhelming my judgment.”

“Then ask for five hundred thousand and see whether their initial bid’s got any climb to it.”

Before Mott could agree or argue, his telephone rang. He picked it up and said, “Yes,” listened for a moment or two and said, “Put him through in fifteen seconds.” As he waited, he nodded at Haynes, switched on the phone’s speaker, glanced at his watch and let a tight confident smile spread across his face. When he spoke it was as if he were addressing someone sitting two feet to the left of Granville Haynes.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Senator, but I was just discussing your offer with Mr. Haynes’s son.”

“And what does the boy say, Howie?” asked a voice that, although strained through the echoing speakerphone, was still full of pleasant southern ooze. Haynes thought the accent probably had originated somewhere between Natchez and Birmingham.

“He’s quite willing to sell the copyright to his father’s work, which, incidentally, is entitled
Mercenary Calling,
providing a more reasonable offer is made.”

“A hundred thousand’s awful reasonable down my way, Howie.”

“Down your way, I’m sure it is. But young Mr. Haynes is from Los Angeles and quite confident he can arrange offshore development money that would enable him to produce, write, direct and even star in a feature film based on his father’s work.”

“The kid’s an actor?”

“Not only that, but he bears a startling resemblance to Steady.”

There was a long weary sigh over the speaker. “How much, Howie?”

“Five hundred thousand.”

“Any wiggle room?”

“Maybe. But not much.”

“Then I’ll have to talk to my folks to see if they’re even interested in making a counteroffer. But I won’t be able to get back to you until Monday. Okay?”

“Monday’s fine. And by the way, would you like me to make a Xerox copy for your people so they can be sure they’re not buying a pig in a poke?”

The senator exploded over the speakerphone. “No copies, goddamnit! Not now. Not ever. You got that, Howie?”

“I merely assumed they’d want to read before buying.”

When he replied, soothing syrup again flowed from the senator’s mouth. “They don’t want to read it, Howie. They just want to buy themselves a fucking copyright. That clear?”

“Perfectly,” said Howard Mott.

After pleading executive stress, Padillo went for a swim in the Watergate pool
and left McCorkle to interview a prospective waiter, whom he hired; anglicize the spelling of the menu’s three dinner specials; and lend an unwilling ear to Tinker Burns, who had moved from banquette to bar after his two lunch guests left.

Burns had nearly finished his third cognac and a long involved gun-running tale of how he and two American mercenaries had escaped from Enugu in eastern Nigeria in a hijacked DC-3 during the final days of the Biafran war. The names of the two mercenaries, Burns said, spelling them carefully, in case McCorkle wanted to write them down, were Guice and Spates.

“I never heard from old Spates again,” he said. “But about a year ago I got a letter—well, a postcard really—from Guice in Tijuana, where he said he’d finally found a doctor who could cure his AIDS. You think that’s possible?”

McCorkle was saved from answering when the restaurant’s door opened and Granville Haynes entered. He stood for several moments, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the interior gloom, his left hand clutching a brown paper grocery bag by its folded-over top.

“Hey, Granny,” Burns called.

Haynes crossed to the bar, nodded at McCorkle, took a stool, placed the grocery bag on his lap and examined Burns. “Are you recently returned or still here?”

“Where would I go?”

“The National Gallery’s nice.”

“Already been.”

“Today?”

“Nineteen—” Tinker Burns broke off to search his memory for the correct year, finally located it and said, “—seventy-nine, right before they junked Somoza, who I’d just done a little business with and never got paid for. But you’re right. The Mellon’s nice although I think the Louvre’s a lot nicer. What’re you drinking?”

“Beer. Where’s Isabelle?”

“She left.” Burns turned his head and called, “Hey, Karl.”

Karl Triller, the fiftyish head bartender, had distanced himself as far as possible from his only paying customer. He sighed, put away his
Wall Street Journal,
moved down the bar to Tinker Burns, picked up a bottle of Rémy-Martin, poured an exact one and a half ounces into Burns’s glass and said, “You just failed to make the cut, Tinker, so sip it.”

Before Burns could protest, Triller turned to Haynes and said, “Beck’s okay?”

“Fine.”

As he poured the beer, Triller said, “You’re Steady Haynes’s son, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Karl Triller and I’m real sorry Steady died and wish I could’ve made it to the funeral or whatever it was. A few years ago, right after he broke up with your stepmother, Steady and I’d close the place up almost every night and go have dim sum or ribs at this Chinese joint up on Connecticut where he claimed all the embassy staff ate. The Chinese embassy.”

“Which stepmother was this?” Haynes said.

“Letty Melon—spelled with one
l
instead of two like the Pittsburgh Mellons. Letty’s only medium rich, if that.”

“Then she would’ve been stepmother number four. The one I never met.”

“Well, she and Steady weren’t really married all that long. But he still took it pretty hard after they split and started drinking more than usual. I’ll say this for Steady though: the more he drank, the more polite he got to everybody.”

“The last egalitarian?”

Triller thought about that, shrugged and turned to McCorkle. “You want anything now that I’m all the way down here?”

“No.”

“Good,” Triller said and headed back to the far end of the bar and his
Wall Street Journal.

Haynes turned to McCorkle. “You have a minute?”

“Sure.”

“It’s private.”

McCorkle got down from the stool. “Then let’s go back to the office.”

The office was a small room at the rear of the restaurant behind the kitchen. Before Mac’s Place had been swallowed by the seven-story office building, the room had had a window and a view of the wall on the other side of the alley. The window had been bricked up and plastered over. In its place was a trompe l’oeil view of Washington as seen from the steps of the Jefferson Memorial. The painting had been a gift from Fredl McCorkle. Padillo always claimed he especially liked it because it was the only painting from that viewpoint that didn’t have the cherry blossoms in bloom.

Another, earlier gift from Fredl to McCorkle and Padillo was the fine old partners desk, which dominated the small office. McCorkle sat at the desk and Haynes on a brown leather couch that looked as if it had been designed to encourage long naps. The rest of the furniture included some chairs, a four-drawer steel filing cabinet, a Mosler safe manufactured the same year McCorkle’s father was born, and a wall calendar still turned to December 1988.

“So,” McCorkle said, took a small silverish square from his jacket pocket and started peeling it open. He removed an equally small square of something that looked very much like putty, eyed it with obvious loathing and popped it into his mouth.

“I know two-and-three-pack-a-day guys who switched to Nicorette gum,” Haynes said. “They don’t miss smoking at all. I also know junkies who don’t miss heroin as long as they have an assured supply of methadone. Some of the guys on Nicorette go to two or three doctors for extra prescriptions because they’re chewing thirty or forty pieces a day, which is about the same number of cigarettes they smoked. The main difference is that cigarettes cost about nine cents apiece in California but the nicotine gum costs them forty or forty-five cents a chew.”

McCorkle, still chewing, said, “You preach a nice sermon.”

He opened a desk drawer, took out a piece of blue Kleenex, spat the nicotine gum into it, wadded the tissue into a ball and dropped it in a wastebasket. After opening the desk’s center drawer, he took out a pack of unfiltered Pall Malls, lit one, inhaled deeply, blew the smoke out and said, “I’m well aware of the surgeon general’s opinion.”

Haynes rose, crossed to the desk and placed the brown grocery bag on its top. McCorkle blew some smoke at the bag and said, “I’m fairly sure that’s not eggs, bread and the milk.”

“It’s a manuscript.”

“A novel?”

“A fairy story. Steady’s memoirs.”

“Well, he did live a full life. Does he tell all?”

“There seems to be some concern about that.”

“And you want to do what—park it here for a day or so?”

Haynes agreed with a nod, then indicated the old safe. “Does that thing work?”

McCorkle rose, picked up the paper bag and went to the safe. He pulled its door open, placed the bag inside and closed the door, locking the safe and spinning its dial. “The combination’s my birthday in case I get hit by a truck.”

“And who else knows your birthday?”

“The IRS, the State Department, the Social Security folks, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the bank, the doctor, the dentist, my wife, two or three close friends and probably any reasonably clever thief who was hell-bent on opening it up.”

Haynes nodded, as though satisfied, and asked, “Where can I find Isabelle?”

“You try the Hay-Adams?”

“She checked out.”

“What about the farm in Berryville?”

“No answer although I’m not sure she’s had time to get there yet.”

“Is that where she was going?”

“I don’t know.”

McCorkle returned to the desk, sat down, picked up the telephone and tapped out a number from memory. Haynes guessed the call was answered two and a half rings later.

“It’s McCorkle, Sid. I need our D.C. billing address for Gelinet, Isabelle.”

He put the cigarette out in an ashtray, took a ballpoint pen and a scrap of paper from the middle drawer of the partners desk and wrote down the address.

“Phone number?”

McCorkle also wrote that down; thanked Sid, the accountant; hung up the telephone and handed the scrap of paper to Haynes. “Connecticut Avenue.”

Haynes looked up from the address. “Thirty-eight hundred block?”

“You remember Washington?”

“It’s been a while.”

“Remember Taft Bridge on Connecticut—the one with the lions?”

Haynes nodded.

“It’s a little more than a mile north of the lions on the right. Anything else?”

“I need a hotel.”

“Cheap, moderate, expensive, what?”

“Different.”

“Go to the Willard. You’ll find it completely restored in brand-new Second Empire style with just a touch of Potomac baroque thrown in. There’re also some old ladies sitting in its lobby who I’d swear were sitting there when I first came through Washington in nineteen fifty.”

“I already like it,” Haynes said.

“Want me to make you a reservation?”

“You’re sure it’s no trouble?”

“No trouble at all,” McCorkle said, again picking up the telephone.

He was just putting it down a few minutes later when someone knocked twice at the door. Before McCorkle could say “Come in” or “Who’s there?” the door opened and a yellow-haired woman of twenty-one or twenty-two swept in, wearing a belted camel’s-hair polo coat and a smile that, for some reason, reminded Haynes of California sunshine on a smog-free day.

Her smile was aimed at McCorkle but vanished at the sight of Haynes. She frowned, gasped slightly—or pretended to—and said, “My God. The ghost of Steady Haynes.”

“The son,” Haynes said.

“I was very fond of Steady.”

“As he must’ve been of you, whoever you are.”

McCorkle sighed. “My daughter, Erika; Granville Haynes.”

In only two long strides she was in front of Haynes, her right hand extended. Haynes discovered that the right hand of Erika McCorkle felt strong and dextrous, as if it could change a tire or sew a fine seam with equal proficiency. She was only a few inches shorter than Haynes, and her eyes, he noticed, were a far, far lighter blue than his own. They were, indeed, almost gray.

She held onto his hand just long enough to say, “I’m so very sorry about Steady and, God, you do look like him.”

“You’re very kind,” Haynes said.

“I left at seven this morning,” she said, turning to McCorkle. “I wanted to say good-bye to Steady at Arlington. But that piece of GM junk broke down again and by the time I got it fixed it was too late for Steady and too late to pick you up at Dulles. How’s Mutti bearing up under all the relatives?”

“Nobly,” McCorkle said. “How’s school?”

“It’s over. Done with.”

“You quit?”

“Graduated.”

McCorkle looked at Haynes. “Can this be June?”

He smiled. “For some perhaps.”

“A diplomat,” she said to Haynes and turned again to McCorkle. “My junior year?”

“At Heidelberg.”

“Well, there’s this very nice little man down in the basement of an administration building who, armed with nothing more than a Radio Shack computer, just happened to be running my midterm records through it and discovered I hadn’t been given nearly enough credits for the Heidelberg year. In fact, I have more than I need for a degree. So I said
auf Wiedersehen
and told them to mail me the diploma.”

McCorkle rose, went around the desk and gave his daughter a long hug. “I’m awfully damned proud of you.”

“You’re also off the fees and tuition hook.”

“And now your mother can have her warm winter coat.”

Her alarmingly sunny smile reappeared. “Where’s Mike?”

“He went for a swim,” McCorkle said. “Are you okay for dinner?”

“Of course. I only wish Mutti were here.”

“We’ll call her.”

“Around ten. It’ll be around three in the morning there. She’ll love that.”

His daughter went up on her toes to give McCorkle a quick kiss, turned to Haynes and said, “I’m glad we met. Steady spoke of you often.”

“I have to be going, too,” Haynes said.

“Can I give you a lift?”

He smiled then, the smile that McCorkle suspected could melt both rocks and female hearts. “If you’re heading out Connecticut.”

“Let’s go,” she said.

The sudden discomfort McCorkle felt as they left was in the region where his heart was supposed to be. For a moment he experienced a mild shortness of breath. The symptoms vanished as quickly as they came and McCorkle found himself hoping it was his first angina. If it weren’t, then he knew he had just suffered his first serious attack of male parentitis.

Padillo entered the office twenty minutes later to find McCorkle sitting at the partners desk, glumly drinking Irish whiskey.

“Somebody else die?” Padillo said as he located a glass and poured himself a measure of Bushmills.

“Childhood,” McCorkle said.

“Well, it couldn’t last forever—not even yours.”

“Erika’s. They somehow messed up her college credits and discovered she had more than enough to graduate now instead of in June. We’re celebrating tonight. You’re invited.”