Росс Томас - Twilight at Mac’s Place

“Not till I was seventeen. It was just after he and Letty split, and Steady was using Pop’s place as a kind of headquarters. That was the summer before I went off to school and I was helping out, doing scut work mostly. Steady was there night and day, looking for somebody to talk to. When I wasn’t busy, I listened. Sometimes he even talked about you, which must be what you’re really interested in.”

“Am I,” Haynes said, somehow not making it a question.

“He could never understand why you became a cop.”

“He never asked.”

“I’ll ask.”

“Because I needed a job and they were willing to hire me.”

“That’s what I guessed, but Steady claimed it was a lot more complicated than that.”

“Well, if you’re a lapsed Quaker turned anarchist who hires out to prop up rotten governments you despise, everything might seem complicated. Even getting out of bed.”

“Did he know you despised him so much?”

“I never knew him well enough to despise him.”

“He once told me he was worried that you’d never got over the death of your mother.”

There was no trace of the inherited charm in Haynes’s bleak smile. “That sounds too pat even for Steady,”

“Why?”

“Because my mother died when I was three and I can’t even remember her. Three months later, Steady married a French woman who was stepmother number one. She and I were very close. When I was nine, he divorced her and married an Italian and the three of us went to live in Italy. Stepmother number two and I became such good pals that she wanted me to go on living with her after Steady got the Mexican divorce. And I did.”

“Then what?”

“Then I was thirteen and Steady brought me to the States and popped me into St. Alban’s here. I still get birthday letters from stepmothers one and two, but I never did meet stepmother number four. What was she like?”

“Pretty and rather rich. Letty once told my mother that she married Steady because he could make her giggle. Not laugh. Giggle.”

“ ‘Giggles Ended, Wife Charges.’ ”

“Was she there?” Erika asked.

“At Arlington? No”

“Who was?”

“Some guy from the CIA. Me. Tinker Burns. And Isabelle Gelinet.”

“Dear Isabelle,” she said. “When I was thirteen I used to daydream about her drowning. Sometimes she drowned in the C and O Canal. Sometimes just below Great Falls, But the one I liked best was her drowning over and over in the yuckiest stretch of the Anacostia.”

Haynes smiled. “Jealous?”

“Of her brains, looks, style and foreign correspondent job. What thirteen-year-old wouldn’t be? But most of all I was jealous of her hopping into bed with Michael Padillo anytime she wanted to.”

“You and Padillo? Dear me.”

“I fell in love with him when I was five and wrote him all about it when I was six. I wrote it with a crayon. A blue one. Pop was my mailman. Padillo wrote back that we should wait awhile. I’m still waiting, but Isabelle didn’t have to. And neither did about a hundred and one other bimbos.”

“Still want her to drown?”

“I guess not.”

“Just as well. She’s a damn good swimmer.”

“How do you know?”

“We used to go skinny-dipping together.”

“When?”

“When she was seven and I was six. Or maybe vice versa. In Nice.”

“I bet she was gorgeous even then.”

“I always told her she was too fat.”

Just past the Hilton Hotel where Reagan was shot, Connecticut Avenue began curving its way to the bridge that was guarded by the stone lions. A block or so before the bridge, Erika McCorkle flicked her left hand at an imposing gray stone apartment building that Haynes guessed to be sixty or seventy years old.

“Where my folks live,” she said. “It’s one of the city’s first condos. They bought theirs in ’sixty-eight during the riots when Padillo convinced them that riots and revolutions are the best time to buy property and diamonds.”

“Sounds like an oft-told family tale,” Haynes said.

“It is — and ’sixty-eight must’ve been one weird year. Can you remember it?”

“Only the Italian version.”

“What d’you remember most about the sixties?”

Haynes didn’t reply for several seconds. “The music,” he said. “And, in retrospect, the innocence.”

It was 4:47 P.M. when Erika McCorkle parked next to a NO STOPPING, NO STANDING sign in front of the seven-story apartment building at 3801 Connecticut Avenue. Because the rush hour was nearing its peak, Connecticut Avenue had increased the number of lanes going north and Haynes had only a moment to thank her for the lift.

She gave the building a curious glance. “Who lives here?”

“Isabelle.”

“Shit.”

An irate driver behind the Cutlass started honking. Erika McCorkle gave him the finger.

“That can get you shot in L.A.,” said Haynes as he climbed quickly out of the car. The irate driver honked again.

“Fuck off,” Erika McCorkle snapped as Haynes slammed the door. The Cutlass sped away. Haynes watched it go, wondering whether her farewell had been aimed at him or the honker.

He turned to study the apartment building from the sidewalk. It was built of a brick that Haynes, for some reason, had always thought of as orphanage yellow. The only frill the architect had allowed was the white stone facing around the severe casement windows. A sign in front claimed that one-bedroom and studio apartments were available. Minimum maintenance, maximum rents, Haynes thought, and wondered whether Isabelle Gelinet, after moving in with his father at the Berryville farm, had kept her apartment as a bolthole.

After he reached the building entrance with its inch-thick glass door, Haynes noticed the intercom system to the left that featured the usual tiny speakerphone and the usual row of black buttons. He ran a finger down the buttons until it came to the inked-in name of I. Gelinet. He pushed the button and waited for the speaker to ask who he was. Instead, the buzzer sounded, unlocking the glass door.

Haynes made no move toward the door until the buzzer stopped. He then reached over to give the metal handle a tug. The door was locked. Haynes turned back to the intercom and again pushed the I. Gelinet button. Again, the speaker failed to ask his name or business. But when the unlocking buzzer sounded this time, Haynes went quickly through the glass door and into the lobby.

Unless four newspaper vending machines and rows of stainless-steel mailboxes counted, there was no furniture in the lobby. To the right of the mailboxes was a narrow reception cubicle with an alrhost chest-high counter that was guarded by a steel mesh screen. Safely behind the steel mesh was a three-sided brass stick with raised letters that read, MANAGER. But no manager was in sight.

Haynes crossed to the four newspaper vending machines that offered the Washington Post , the New York Times , the Washington Times and USA Today . Haynes bought a copy of the New York Times and rang for the elevator.

When he got out on the fourth floor, the news section of the Times was rolled into a tight cylinder that was one foot long and two inches thick.

Haynes went slowly down the corridor until he came to apartment 409. Standing well to the right of the door, he knocked on it with his left hand. When nothing happened, he knocked again. When there was still no response, he used his left hand to try the doorknob. It turned.

Haynes pushed the door open and found no lights on in the apartment. He took one slow step inside and was turning back to flick on the light switch when an arm wrapped itself around his neck in what he immediately diagnosed as an interesting variation on the chokehold he had been taught at the Los Angeles Police Academy. He also had been taught how to break it.