The Cold War Swap

Chapter 22

You can probably find a couple of thousand spots like Mac’s Place in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles. They are dark and quiet with the furniture growing just a little shabby, the carpet stained to an indeterminate shade by spilled drinks and cigarette ashes, and the bartender friendly and fast but tactful enough to let it ride if you walk in with someone else’s wife. The drinks are cold, generous and somewhat expensive; the service is efficient; and the menu, although usually limited to chicken and steaks, affords very good chicken and steaks indeed.

In Washington you can walk up Connecticut from K Street and turn left after a couple of blocks or so and find Mac’s Place. It might have a slight aura of sauerkraut, but the head bartender speaks a very bright line of chatter and cruises around town in a prewar Lincoln Continental. The maître d’ is of the old school and runs the place with the firm hand of a Prussian martinet, which he used to be.

The owner, a little grayer and spreading a bit in the paunch, usually arrives around ten-thirty or eleven, and his eyes dart toward the bar, and he has been told that there is a slight look of disappointment in them because whoever he’s looking for is never there. And sometimes, on rainy days, he goes to the bar and pulls down the Pinch bottle and has a couple by himself, waiting for the luncheon trade. He usually has lunch with a blonde who looks something like a younger Dietrich and who, he says, is his wife. But they seem to like each other too much for that.

If you went to the bother, you could check the liquor license and learn that it’s made out to the owner, whose name is McCorkle, and to a man named Michael Padillo, whose address is listed as a suite in the Mayflower Hotel; but if you call there they’ll tell you that Mr. Padillo is out of town.

Once the owner got a postcard from Dahomey in West Africa. All it said was “Well,” and it was signed with a “P.” After that the same advertisement started to appear in the Personal Columns of the Times of London every Tuesday. It reads: