Twilight at Mac’s Place

Nine

The forty-one-year-old homicide detective-sergeant from the Metropolitan Police Department was pretending he couldn’t keep all the players straight. It was a useful stratagem that Haynes himself had sometimes used and he thought Detective-Sergeant Darius Pouncy was carrying it off nicely,

Pouncy was also carrying ten or fifteen more pounds than he needed on a six-foot-even frame that was clothed in a salt-and-pepper tweed suit, white shirt and quiet tie. On his dark brown face he wore a look of almost utter detachment. It was the look of a man who asks questions for a living and expects nothing in return but lies and evasions. Haynes had known Los Angeles detectives who had perfected that same look but couldn’t recall any who’d worn salt-and-pepper tweed suits.

Pouncy had walked Haynes down to the end of the corridor to question him while another detective questioned Tinker Burns in the dead Isabelle Gelinet’s apartment. Pouncy stood with his back to the narrow casement window, letting what little light there was fall on Haynes’s face.

Looking up suddenly from notes he’d written on a small spiral pad, Pouncy said, “Granville Haynes. What do your friends call you? Granny?”

“Sometimes.”

“You say you all went to your dad’s funeral around noon today. You, Burns and Gelinet.”

“It wasn’t really a funeral. It was the interment.”

“Burial.”

“Yes.”

“You all the only ones there?”

“There were six soldiers who fired three volleys over the grave, a bugler and a color sergeant. I think they call them color sergeants.”

“But you all were the only mourners?”

“There was also a man from the CIA. A Mr. Undean.”

“First name?”

“Gilbert.”

Pouncy wrote the name down and said, “But that’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“Your dad with the CIA?”

“You’ll have to ask them.”

“But he’d served in some branch of the service?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Then how come they buried him in Arlington?”

“Miss Gelinet arranged it.”

“How?”

“You’ll have to ask the people at Arlington.”

“How long’d you known her?”

“As long as I can remember.”

“And Burns?”

“How long’ve I known him or how long has he known her?”

“Both.”

“I can’t remember when I didn’t know Tinker Burns and I’m sure he knew Miss Gelinet all her life.”

“Burns a good friend of your dad?”

“Yes.”

“Was Gelinet sleeping with him?”

“Who? Burns?”

“Your dad.”

“Two or three years ago she moved out to his farm near Berryville to help him write his autobiography. I don’t know whether she was sleeping with him. I didn’t ask; she didn’t say.”

“So after the funeral or whatever, the three of you go to lunch at, uh, Mac’s Place. Then you leave for an appointment with your dad’s lawyer. When you get back to Mac’s Place, Gelinet’s gone but Burns is still there. That right, Granny?”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“Then I talked with Mr. McCorkle in his office.”

“The owner?”

“One of them.”

“When you came out of his office was Burns still in the restaurant?”

“Yes.”

“Where’d you go then, Granny?”

“Mr. McCorkle’s daughter gave me a ride here but on the way we stopped for coffee.”

“What’s her name?”

“Erika McCorkle.”

“Where’d you have the coffee?”

“At the Odeon near Connecticut and R.”

“How long you in there?”

“Fifteen, twenty minutes.”

“And she dropped you off here?”

“Yes.”

“How’d you get in?”

“I rang her apartment and somebody buzzed the front door, but didn’t ask who I was. So I didn’t go in.”

“Made you suspicious, huh?”

“I didn’t think Isabelle would buzz somebody in without knowing who it was. I rang again and the same thing happened. But this time I went in.”

“And did what?”

“Bought a New York Times.”

“Okay, Granny. Now you’re in the lobby and you’ve got yourself something to read on the way up in the elevator. You get to the fourth floor, go down the hall and knock on Gelinet’s door. Then what?”

“There wasn’t any answer so I tried the door. It was unlocked and I went in.”

“Can we get to the blood on the carpet now?”

“Sure. Mr. Burns grabbed me from behind the moment I came through the door. I broke away, turned and whacked him on the nose before we recognized each other.”

“Where’d you learn to roll a paper up all nice and tight like that?”

Haynes shrugged. “High school maybe.”

“They teach it in arts and crafts? Never mind. So when you went up there with the Times all rolled up nice and tight, who were you expecting to hit?”

“Nobody. It was just in case.”

“Just in case of what, Granny?”

“In case I might have to defend myself.”

“Because nobody asked who you were over the intercom?”

“Right.”

“So you and Burns had a little tussle and you gave him a bloody nose.”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

“When his nose stopped bleeding we went into the bathroom and he showed me Miss Gelinet’s body.”

“Then?”

“Then we called the police.”

“What’s Burns do for a living?”

“He sells weapons.”

“Where?”

“Paris”

“What’d he do before he did that?”

“He was a professional soldier.”

“In whose army?”

“The American Army and after that the French Foreign Legion. There may have been other armies after the Legion, but you’ll have to ask him.”

“He an American citizen?”

“French”

“But he used to be American?”

“Yes”

“And you’re an actor, that right, Granny?”

“Yes”

“And what’d you do before you got to be an actor?”

“I was a homicide detective.”

The detachment left Detective-Sergeant Pouncy’s face, shoved aside by sudden anger. “No call for smartass stuff. No call for that at all.”

“I was with the LAPD for almost ten years, seven of them in homicide.”

“You gotta know I’m gonna check it out.”

“Go ahead.”

“So how come you didn’t lemme know right away from the start?”

“Because if I’d found some guy in a dead woman’s apartment who right away wants me to know he’s an ex-D.C. homicide cop, I probably wouldn’t’ve let him loose till around midnight. If then.”

“Figure he’s dirty, huh?”

“It’d make me wonder.”

“You really an actor?”

Haynes nodded.

“Been in anything I might’ve seen?”

“You watch TV?”

“Not unless she makes me.”

“I was in a Wiseguy, a Jake and the Fatman, and I had two speaking roles in a couple of Simon and Simons!”

“That the one with the black cop called ‘Downtown Brown’?”

“Yes.”

“You ever know a real cop that’d tell a private one what year it was?”

“Never.”

“Then how come they’re always such asshole buddies on TV?”

“Because the private cop has to have a legitimate connection to law and order.”

“Who says?”

“Hollywood ethics.”

“What the fuck’s Hollywood ethics?”

“Nobody knows,” said Granville Haynes.