Росс Томас - Twilight at Mac’s Place

Haynes stamped down hard with his right heel, drove back hard with his left elbow and connected both times. Behind him somebody’s breath exploded. The chokehold loosened just enough for Haynes to tear himself away, whirl and thrust his pointless paper spear up as hard as possible, hoping for an eye.

But the light from the still open corridor door gave him a glimpse of his would-be strangler and made him deflect the thrust just enough to miss the left eye and smash the paper spear into Tinker Burns’s nose. The resulting flow of blood was immediate and, Haynes felt, most gratifying.

“For Chrissake, Granny,” said a snarling, bleeding Burns. “How the fuck’d I know it was you?”

Leaning forward to let the blood drip onto the carpet instead of his expensive gray suit, Burns plucked the silk display handkerchief from his outside breast pocket and applied it to his nose.

“Where’s the kitchen?” Haynes said. “You might as well go bleed in the sink.”

“Over there. One of those Pullman things.”

The only light in the apartment came from the open corridor door. Haynes switched on a lamp, closed the door and steered Burns to the stainless-steel kitchen unit. Burns bent over the small sink, turned on the cold water, soaked his handkerchief and reapplied it to his nose. “I don’t bleed long,” he announced.

“Where’s Isabelle?” Haynes said.

“For Chrissake, give me a second, will you?”

Burns stood up straight, threw his head back, stared at the ceiling for nearly half a minute, brought his head down, gently blew his nose into the wet handkerchief and inspected the results with obvious satisfaction.

Back at the sink again, Burns carefully rinsed out his bloody handkerchief, wrung it nearly dry, folded it carefully and tucked it away in a hip pocket. He then switched on the garbage disposal unit and let it and the cold water run for another thirty seconds.

It was only then that Tinker Burns turned to Haynes and said, “What’d you use?”

Haynes raised the New York Times , still in its semi-blunt-instrument form.

“Shit, I taught you that.”

“I believe you did.”

“Cute,” Burns said, patted his pockets, found his cigarettes and lit one. “Come on.”

As they crossed the studio apartment, heading toward a closed door, Haynes took note of the beige couch that probably folded out into a bed; the blond desk that held a personal computer; the round Formica-topped breakfast table just large enough for two; the small TV set and its attendant VCR; and a pair of old Air France posters that gave the otherwise monochromatic room its only touch of color.

Burns opened the door of what turned out to be the bathroom and switched on a light. Haynes followed him in. A green plastic shower curtain decorated with yellow daisies concealed the bathtub. Burns studied Haynes briefly, reached out, grasped the shower curtain and quickly pulled it back.

Isabelle Gelinet lay on her left side in the white tub. She was naked and her wrists were bound behind her with coat-hanger wire. Another coat hanger had been used to bind her ankles. Her left cheek rested on the bottom of the tub that was filled with water up to its overrun drain. Haynes knew Isabelle Gelinet was dead but wasn’t at all sure she had drowned.

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?”