Twilight at Mac’s Place

Twenty-four

The nine-hour blizzard had dumped eleven inches of snow on Reston, Virginia, the carefully planned new town that was no longer new and had been built twenty-four years ago not far from Dulles International Airport and — depending on the traffic — within reasonable commuting distance from the District line.

Reston’s eleven inches of snow would lie undisturbed for a day or so before it was either melted by the sun or, less likely, shoveled and plowed away by removal crews. Meanwhile, Reston residents could ice-skate on Lake Anne, the thirty-two-acre artificial pond that had been named for the daughter of the town’s visionary founder, who, pressed for cash, had sold out to Gulf Oil, which in turn had been swallowed by Chevron.

Whenever this much snow fell, some Restonites got out their skis to test weak ankles on gentle slopes. Others hauled out the $65 Flexible Flyers they had ordered by phone from the Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue during bouts of nostalgia, and went coasting down the steepest slopes they could find.

One skier, well bundled up against the cold in sweater, ski pants, ski mask, dark glasses and knitted cap, glided expertly down the center of the sloping Waterview Cluster Drive and came to a neat stop in front of 12430, a three-story town house that was almost at the end of the cul-de-sac.

The town house, one of the first built on the shores of the artificial lake, featured a small wooden dock, a loggia, two bedrooms, two baths, two fireplaces and an outside steel spiral staircase that went from the dock up to a second-floor balcony. When new in 1965, the town house had sold for $32,500 with ten percent down. Its mirror twin, three doors up, had sold a month ago for $225,000.

After leaning the skis against the house, the skier rang the door chimes. The door was opened two minutes later by Gilbert Undean, the sixty-seven-year-old Burma expert, who had had to walk down two flights of stairs from his third-floor office-study, where, dressed in an old blue flannel shirt, khaki pants and fleece-lined slippers, he had been reading a gloomy editorial in the Sunday Washington Post.

“I think you’d better let me in,” the skier said.

Undean, staring down at the small silenced semiautomatic pistol in the skier’s right hand, nodded and backed away. The skier entered, closed the door and used the gun to indicate the stairs. Undean started up them with the skier close behind.

On the second floor, they made a quick tour of the living room, dining alcove and kitchen before climbing the second flight of stairs to the third floor, where they inspected the master bedroom that had a view of the lake.

They then went down a short hall to the smaller bedroom that Undean thought of as his office. Except for the space taken up by two closet doors and a window that overlooked the street, the walls of the smaller room were covered from floor to ceiling by crowded bookshelves.

Again using the pistol to issue instructions, the skier waved Undean into a swivel chair behind an old golden oak flat-top desk. Once Undean was seated, the skier opened the closet door to reveal a pair of gray metal filing cabinets but no clothing. The rest of the closet was taken up by back copies of the New York Times that were piled in two five-foot-high stacks.

A wingback brown leather chair was the only inviting piece of furniture in the room. A brass floor lamp was positioned just so on the left-hand side of the chair. The skier, still wearing ski mask, gloves, dark glasses and knitted cap, sat down in the chair, aiming the pistol at Undean with both hands.

“You don’t seem surprised,” the skier said.

Undean shrugged. “You really going to do it?”

The skier nodded.

“There oughta be some way we could work it out.”

“Don’t beg.”

“Well, what the fuck,” Undean said. “I’d’ve been dead soon anyway.”

The silenced semiautomatic coughed almost apologetically. A small dark hole appeared in the lower left quadrant of Undean’s forehead. He rocked back, slumped forward and since there was nothing to prevent it, toppled out of the swivel chair onto the floor.

Tinker Burns sat behind the wheel of the rented Jeep Wagoneer, trying to decide whether he could make it through the two- and three-foot snow-drifts that blocked Waterview Cluster Drive. Burns had hoped to find pioneer tire tracks made by braver drivers and was disappointed that there weren’t any.

He did see footprints in the snow. But they only led from front doors to parked cars whose owners apparently had come out to brush snow off windshields before ducking back inside. Burns also noticed that someone had skied toward the bottom of the Waterview Cluster cul-de-sac, but he couldn’t quite make out where the ski tracks ended.

With little faith in the Wagoneer’s snow tires and four-wheel drive, and even less in his snow-driving ability, Burns got out of the station wagon and stepped into seventeen inches of drifted snow that came up over the tops of the rubber boots he had bought that morning at a Peoples Drugstore.

Having spent much of his adult life in hot countries, Burns detested snow, which he equated with famine, flood, plague, earthquakes and other natural disasters. As he slogged down the slope, cursing the white stuff, he noticed someone in a skiing outfit come out of a town house that was almost at the end of the cul-de-sac. After shouldering a pair of skis, the skier began plodding up the slope.

Burns noticed that the skier wasn’t very tall, no more than five-nine or — ten, if that, and was so masked and bundled up that the only distinguishing features were the lack of them. When they were almost abreast, Burns smiled and asked, “Know which house Mr. Undean lives in?”

The skier replied with a headshake and trudged on. Burns growled, “Thanks a lot, friend,” and resumed his inspection of the house numbers. When he found the one he was looking for, 12430, he realized it was the house the skier had just left. It was then that Burns, ever wary, almost turned and went back to his Wagoneer.

But because he had driven for nearly two hours on unfamiliar, snow-slick highways, most of them with only two lanes open to crawling traffic, Burns decided he should at least ring the doorbell to see who answered it. He rang it six times at ten-second intervals. When there was no response, he tried the doorknob. It turned and Tinker Burns went inside.

Through a glass door that led to the loggia he could see a fireplace, a redwood picnic table, the attached dock and, beyond that, the frozen lake. Burns stamped the snow off his boots onto the pebble-studded concrete floor, making as much noise as possible. But when no voice called down, demanding to know “Who’s there?”, Burns shouted up the staircase, “Hey, Undean! Anybody home?”

The answering silence increased Burns’s wariness. As he climbed the two flights of stairs, his wariness also mounted and, by the time he reached the third-floor landing, it had turned into trepidation. Panting slightly from the climb, Burns entered the master bedroom, found nothing, left it, walked slowly down the short hall and into the book-lined office-study, where he found Gilbert Undean dead on the floor.

After squatting down to make sure Undean was really dead, Burns rose and looked at his watch. It was exactly noon. He picked up the telephone on the oak desk, called the Willard Hotel and asked for Granville Haynes. Burns let the hotel room phone ring eight times before he broke the connection and called Mac’s Place. There the call was answered on the first ring by Karl Triller, the bartender, who said, “We’re not open yet.”

“Karl? Tinker Burns. I—”

Interrupting, Triller said, “Hold it a second, Tinker.”

Burns could hear Triller’s slightly muffled voice talking to someone. “Okay, here’re the car keys. When I get off the phone you guys get one bloody mary each but that’s the absolute limit.”

Burns heard some kind of protest, also muffled, which he couldn’t make out. And then came Triller’s normal voice. “Yeah, Tinker?”

“I need to find Granny Haynes because it’s an emergency and I don’t need any of your usual dumb questions.”

“What kind of emergency?”

“The bad-jam kind, asshole.”

There was a long pause — which anyone but Burns might have taken for a hurt silence — before Triller said, “Try Padillo,” recited a telephone number and hung up.

Burns tapped out the number which Padillo answered on the second ring with a neutral hello. “It’s me, Tinker. And I need to talk to Granny Haynes.”

“Why all the hard breathing?” Padillo said.

“I’m standing next to a dead body.”

“I’ll put him on.”

Burns heard an extension phone being picked up just as Haynes came on the line with a question. “Whose dead body?”

“Gilbert Undean’s. One neat shot to the head. Small caliber. In his house out in Reston.”

“You shot him or found him?”

“Found him.”

“What were you doing at Undean’s?”

“I was going to talk to him about Steady’s book.”

“Why would Undean know anything about it?”

“You saying he didn’t?”

“I’m not saying anything, Tinker. It’s your dead body. Your second one in three days.”

“Okay, right, it’s mine and I’m calling you because I may need a lawyer and thought maybe I oughta get what’s his name that Steady had.”

“Howard Mott.”

“Yeah. Mott.”

“No chance of walking away from it?”

“I already made three calls on Undean’s phone.”

“You’re fucked then.”

“I already know that, Granny. Now gimme Mott’s number.”

Haynes recited Mott’s home number only once and Burns said, “Now lemme talk to Padillo.”

“You’re out in Reston?” said Padillo when he came back on the line.

“Right.”

“Okay. That’s Fairfax County. Dial 911 and tell whoever answers your name, the address and that you’ve found a dead body. Then hang up and call your lawyer. In fact, you’d better call him first.”

“Christ, you’re making it sound like I got something to worry about.”

“Tinker, the D.C. and Fairfax County cops are going to climb all over anybody who finds two dead bodies in three days. So keep your mouth shut until your lawyer gets there.”

“You don’t think I oughta tell them how I saw the hitter coming out of the dead guy’s house wearing a ski mask, dark glasses and carrying a pair of skis over one shoulder?”

There was a long silence until Padillo said very softly, “I really wish you hadn’t told me that.”

Burns chuckled. “That’s what I figured you’d wish.”