Twilight at Mac’s Place

Twenty-three

Erika McCorkle left the engine running as she and Haynes kissed good-bye at 9:27 that Sunday morning under the amused gaze of the Willard Hotel doorman. After the kiss ended at 9:29, the unshaved Haynes opened the Cutlass door and had his right foot on the curb when he turned back with a smile that raised goose bumps on her forearms.

She replied with a bawd’s grin that ratified the Treaty of the Tall Pine Motel where the question of sexual congress had been raised and settled. Once Haynes was out of the car, she sped off toward the U.S. Treasury Building that, shimmering in the snow-polished sunshine, looked as if it didn’t owe a dime to anyone.

After she drove away, Haynes entered the hotel and was heading for the concierge’s desk to check for messages when Detective-Sergeant Darius Pouncy rose from one of the lobby’s huge high-backed chairs that apparently had been built with guests the height of Lincoln in mind.

Pouncy’s dark blue vested suit was so well tailored it took at least fifteen pounds off his weight. A red and blue foulard tie used a half-Windsor knot to fill the collar of a beautifully ironed shirt that had never seen the inside of a commercial laundry. On his feet were plain black shoes with glossy toes.

With only a nod of greeting to Haynes, Pouncy turned to retrieve his dark gray Chesterfield topcoat from the back of the huge old-looking chair. Once he had the coat draped just so over his left arm, he turned back and said, “I was about to give up on you.”

“I was snowbound,” Haynes said.

“Where?”

“Twenty miles this side of Berryville.”

“That’s where they lived for a while, wasn’t it? On a farm near Berryville. Your daddy and Miss Gelinet.”

“Nobody ever called him my daddy, but that’s where they lived. For a while.”

“Find anything interesting?”

“A dead horse and a stepmother I’d never met. I think she may have come for the horse.”

Pouncy nodded solemnly, as if Haynes had just said something profound, then glanced at his watch. Haynes was vaguely relieved to see that it was a gold-plated Seiko.

“It’s nine thirty-three now,” Pouncy said. “And I gotta carry my wife to church about ten-thirty, so I expect we just got time for coffee and a jelly doughnut or two.”

“Sounds good,” Haynes said.

The Willard’s glittering Expresso Cafe was one of those glass, chrome and black-and-white-tile places with neon accents that Haynes always avoided in Los Angeles. But its coffee was good and if the menu was devoid of jelly doughnuts, it did offer fresh strawberry tarts in January. Pouncy ordered two of them and coffee. Haynes settled for coffee.

After disposing of both tarts, Pouncy gave his mouth a couple of dainty wipes with a cloth napkin and announced: “The autopsy says she drowned.”

“Was she conscious?”

“Probably. There wasn’t any concussion. No scrapes or bruises except where they wired her up. We found the gag they must’ve used to keep her quiet. It was in the trash. But no sign of opiate use and no alcohol to speak of.”

“She had a glass of wine at lunch,” Haynes said. “A vermouth.”

“Well, using that lunch to measure by, the coroner figures she wasn’t dead long when you and Burns showed up. So it looks like they wired her up, filled the tub and drowned her.”

“They?”

“Not too easy for one person to wire somebody up with coat hangers. You gotta use two hands to straighten the things out. So if you don’t bop your victim over the head first, how you gonna do it? Especially if the victim’s young, fit and—” Pouncy paused. “I was gonna say: and don’t wanta be drowned. But who the hell does? So I’m guessing it took two of ’em. At least two. Bathroom floor wasn’t even wet. Mop was dry. No wet towels.” He paused again. “She wasn’t raped or sodomized.”

“Anything missing?” Haynes asked.

“TV set, VCR and CD player are all still there. So’s that nice new personal computer. Her watch was still on her wrist.”

“That was a thirty-two-dollar Swatch.”

Pouncy praised Haynes’s memory with a tiny smile and said, “Don’t know if she had any diamonds, gold, pearls or stuff like that because we didn’t find any. But she did have a nice full-length mink and it’s still hanging in her closet. So if it wasn’t rape or robbery, it’s gotta be something else and I figure there’re two possibilities. One, somebody hated her to death. Or two, she wouldn’t tell somebody something they wanted to know.”

Pouncy finished his coffee, pushed the cup and saucer away, again used his napkin on his lips, leaned across the white marble-top table toward Haynes and said, “So that’s why you and me’re having strawberries and coffee at a quarter to ten of a Sunday morning.”

“Because you’ve decided I might know what they thought Isabelle knew — providing there was a they.”

Pouncy nodded.

“I saw Isabelle for the first time in almost twenty years at my old man’s grave at Arlington. She said maybe fifteen or twenty words. Then she, Tinker Burns and I had lunch at Mac’s Place, where she said maybe another fifty or seventy-five words. If that.”

“Talked about a book, I believe.”

“You’ve been busy.”

“Talked about your daddy’s autobiography. Memoirs.”

“They were mentioned.”

“She either wrote the thing or helped write it.”

Haynes nodded.

“What kind of book you think it is?”

“The story of his life.”

“Well, shit, I know that. I mean is it one of those red-hot exposé books? You know: Bill stole this. Tom stole that. But I didn’t steal nothing.”

“Some might think so.”

“Even worry about it?”

“Possibly.”

“Maybe even try to hush it up? Put a lid on it?”

“Who d’you have in mind?”

Pouncy shrugged. “The CIA. Who else?”

“Then ask them.”

“Your daddy worked for them, didn’t he?”

“A lot of people say he did, but you’ll have to ask the people out at Langley.”

“Already have,” Pouncy said. “At least, I got somebody to ask for me. Somebody with a little more clout than I got since mine’s right down there next to zero. Know what they told him, this deacon of mine with all the clout? Told him they got no trace of any Steadfast Haynes ever working for them.”

“I’m not surprised,” Haynes said.

“Not surprised at what? That they didn’t have any trace of him? Or that they’d lie about it?”

“Take your pick,” Haynes said.

After Sergeant Pouncy left to take his wife to church, Haynes checked with the concierge and found that he had eight messages. Six of them were from Mr. Burns. The other two were from Mr. McCorkle, who had called at 8:42 A.M., and Mr. Padillo, who had called at a quarter past nine.

Up in his room, Haynes called Tinker Burns first at the Madison Hotel and listened to the phone in room 427 ring nineteen times before the hotel operator suggested that Mr. Burns must not be in his room. Haynes agreed, thanked her, broke the connection and called McCorkle.

When his daughter answered the call, Haynes said, “Your dad left a message for me to call him. Is he apoplectic?”

“Apologetic,” she said.

“Why?”

“I’d better let him tell you.”

Although she obviously had covered the mouthpiece with her hands, Haynes could still hear the yell. “Pop. It’s Granville.”

There was the sound of an extension phone being picked up, followed by McCorkle’s voice. “Granville?”

“Yes.”

McCorkle was silent for a few seconds until he sighed and said, “Okay, Erika, hang it up.”

Once his daughter did so, McCorkle said, “I’ve got rotten news.”

“How rotten?”

“I was stuck up last night by a false frump with a dummy bomb and a silenced Sauer thirty-two.” He paused, sighed again and said, “She got Steady’s manuscript. I’m very sorry.”

There was a long pause that Haynes finally ended with, “A silenced Sauer is what a pro would use. But the dummy bomb’s a new touch. I’d like to hear about it after you answer one question.”

“What?”

“Was anyone hurt?”

“Only my pride.”

“Then you must’ve done everything exactly right.”

“Padillo doesn’t think so.”

“She take both of you?”

“Just me. But Padillo’s even more burnedthan I am. He saw her heading out the front door, carrying that grocery bag the manuscript’s in. He thinks he should’ve stopped her.”

“I think he’s lucky he didn’t try.”

“We’d like to get together” McCorkle said. “The three of us.”

“That must be what he called about,” Haynes said. “When?”

“Noon today?”

“At the restaurant?”

“His place,” McCorkle said and recited an address. “It’s a small town house in Foggy Bottom. The best way to get there is—”

“I’ll let the cabdriver find it,” Haynes said.

“Just one other thing,” McCorkle said. “I want to thank you for looking after Erika last night. I was worried about her being out in that blizzard.”

“It was my pleasure.”

“Yes,” McCorkle said. “I imagine it was.”