Росс Томас - Twilight at Mac’s Place

“Have they figured out where the demand’s coming from?”

“They’re still working on that.”

“How bad do they want it?”

Undean shrugged. “Pretty bad.”

“What’s your lowball offer?”

“Thirty-five.”

“And you can bump it to what?”

“Fifty.”

“Cash?”

“Any way you want it.”

“What happens to the book?”

“What book?”

“Will they read it before it goes into the shredder?”

“I doubt it. If they read it, it’d ruin their deniability. If nobody reads it, then nobody knows what’s in it and they can deny all knowledge of its contents. Then it’d be just like it was never written.”

“What if I read it before I sold it to them?”

“I’d advise you not to mention it.”

“And fifty thousand is your best offer?”

“That’s it,” Undean said. “So what do I tell ’em?”

“Tell them I want a minimum of seven hundred and fifty thousand.”

“They’ll fall about laughing.”

“When they’re finished, tell them I know where I can put my hands on enough offshore development money to produce a feature film based on Steady’s book. Tell them I’ll also direct, write and play the lead. And finally, you can tell them the name of the film will be the same as the book, Mercenary Calling .”

Undean smiled for the first time that night. “I’ll also tell ’em you look just like him.”

“One more thing, Mr. Undean.”

Undean nodded, still smiling.

“Tell them I’ve already had an unsolicited offer of one hundred thousand for all rights to the manuscript but turned it down. So if they want to stay in the bidding, they’d better start thinking in terms of important money.”

Undean’s smile broadened until he looked almost delighted. “Know what else I can say? I can say you not only look and talk just like him, you also think just like him. Except faster. And right after I tell ’em that is when they’ll start passing peach pits.”

Howard Mott, the criminal defense lawyer, ignored the flashing red light that meant his telephone was ringing. With his feet up on an ottoman and the rest of him sunk into a favorite armchair, Mott was listening to the final act of Tosca on a new compact disc that magically had recaptured the voice of Leontyne Price with Karajan conducting.

It was 9:47 P.M. and Mott had been lost in the opera since a dinner of roast pork tenderloin that a second cognac was helping him digest in his study-cum-music room on the second floor of the large old house on Thirty-fifth Street Northwest in Cleveland Park. His household had been given firm instructions not to disturb him for any reason — his household consisting solely of his pregnant wife, the former Lydia Stallings.

The red telephone light stopped flashing, but stayed on, which meant that Lydia had taken the call. The light was still on a minute or so later when she entered and silently handed him the yellow three-by-five Post-it notepad she always used for messages. This message read: “G. Haynes on phone. I. Gelinet murdered. Needs advice & counsel.”

Mott sighed and looked at his watch. There were at least fifteen or twenty minutes of Leontyne Price to come. He took a ballpoint pen from his shirt pocket and scrawled something on the yellow notepad. Lydia read it, borrowed the pen and wrote, “He be hungry?”

Mott quickly answered the written question with a firm headshake, hoping it would discourage her from preparing a meal that would feed everyone within walking distance. He blamed his wife’s growing compulsion to feed the world on her pregnancy and the two years she had spent in the Peace Corps.

In the kitchen, Lydia Mott picked up the beige wall phone and said, “Mr. Haynes? Howie’s worried that you may not have eaten and wonders if you could make it out here by ten or ten-fifteen? He’ll be having some soup and sandwiches then and thought you might like to join him.”

Haynes hung up the hotel room phone and memorized the Thirty-fifth Street address he had written down. He put his hand back on the phone, hesitated, picked it up, tapped a number for an outside line, then tapped 411 and asked directory assistance for the number of Mac’s Place.

Haynes recognized the faintly Teutonic tones of Herr Horst when a man’s voice answered with, “Reservations.” Haynes identified himself and asked to speak to Michael Padillo, adding that it was a personal call.

Thirty seconds later another voice said, “This is Michael Padillo.”

“Granville Haynes. Sorry, but it’s bad news.”

“All right.”

“Isabelle’s dead. She was murdered sometime this afternoon in her apartment. Tinker Burns and I found her.”

There was the usual silence. When he had first joined homicide, Haynes often suspected that such silences would never end or, at best, continue on and on into next week. But he soon discovered that they ended quickly, usually with a sob, a curse or an expression of disbelief. Sometimes with all three.

Padillo, however, ended his brief silence with the essential question: “Who killed her?”

“They don’t know.”

“They have any idea?”

“Not yet.”

“What happened?”

“She was found in the bathtub, her head under water, her wrists and ankles wired with what looked like coat hangers. No other visible marks or abrasions.”

“Drowned?”

“Maybe. An autopsy will tell.”

There was another silence before Padillo said, “You’ve known her a long time, haven’t you?”

“About as long as I can remember.”

“Does this have anything to do with Steady?”

“It might.”

“I want... well, I’d like to talk to you about it.”

“All right.”

“Where are you now?”

“The Willard.”

“Can you come over here?”

“I have to see a lawyer first.”

“Can you make it by midnight?”

“Probably.”

“I’ll be here,” Padillo said.

The table was the one McCorkle and Padillo always reserved for themselves, the one near the swinging kitchen doors that everybody else shunned. It allowed them to keep an eye on both the help and the customers. It also allowed the chef to poke his head out occasionally to ask a question, register a complaint or merely satisfy himself that someone was really eating his cooking.

When the call for Padillo came, the three of them had almost finished a celebratory dinner in honor of Erika McCorkle’s completion of her university studies. All celebration ended when Padillo returned to the table, sat down as if he had grown suddenly weary, pushed away his plate and said, “Isabelle’s dead. Apparently murdered.” He then repeated in a low voice everything he had been told about the death.

McCorkle was the first to speak, but only after he leaned back in his chair to study Padillo carefully. It was then that he sighed and said, “I’m sorry, Mike. There was always something splendid and unique about Isabelle. I’m going to miss her.” He paused. “They have any idea of who did it?”

“No.”

Erika McCorkle had turned pale. When she tried to speak, it came out as a croak. She cleared her throat, and this time it came out as a whisper. “In her — bathtub?”

Padillo nodded.

“Drowned?”

“Possibly.”

Still whispering, she said, “Then it’s all my fault.”

“Why yours?” Padillo said. “And why all the whispering?”

She made no reply, letting the silence continue until she finally spoke again in a voice not much louder than her whisper. “Because I used to daydream about her drowning. But not in a bathtub. In the Anacostia.”

McCorkle, an eyebrow raised, looked at Padillo, as if hoping for an explanation. But Padillo only shrugged. McCorkle turned back to his daughter and asked, “Why did you dream about her... drowning?”