Росс Томас - Twilight at Mac’s Place

“Nine years ago this month,” Padillo said, “a twenty-four-year-old French woman walked in here and introduced herself as Isabelle Gelinet of Agence France-Presse. She said she’d been sent over from Paris to write fluff features on the presidential campaign and election. But she didn’t want to write fluff and wondered whether I could help her with advice, tips, introductions, anything. Her sole personal reference was a letter from Tinker Burns to me.”

“Not the most impeccable reference,” Haynes said.

“But an interesting one.”

“Where’d you first meet Tinker?” Haynes asked.

“In France.”

“When?”

“March of ’forty-five.”

“Was that after he parachuted in with the fifty thousand in gold that fell into the Loire and never quite made it to the Resistance?”

“One of Steady’s taller tales, right?”

Haynes confirmed the guess with a nod and said, “They send you after Tinker?”

“Who?”

“The OSS.”

“I had better things to do” Padillo said. “But in ’forty-six in Marseilles, I believe I did bump into Tinker again and mention that the Army’s CID was getting warm, thus earning his eternal gratitude. On Tinker time, of course, eternity is about two and a half weeks.”

“That must’ve been when he joined the Legion.”

“About then,” Padillo said. “But to get back to Isabelle. When she walked in here with nothing but Tinker’s letter, it hit me that she might be more than just another kid reporter looking for the big break.” He paused. “Although God knows this town’s always had a surplus of them.”

“L.A., too,” Haynes said.

“So I introduced her to Karl Triller.”

“Your bartender.”

“And minority stockholder.”

“The one who helped nurse Steady through his fourth divorce.”

“The same,” Padillo said. “For more than twenty years Karl has studied congressional antics. It’s been a very thorough, very German study, and notice I said antics, not actions.”

“I noticed.”

“What began as a hobby turned into an informal clearinghouse of information.”

“A gossip exchange.”

Ignoring Haynes’s clarification, Padillo said, “Karl gets quoted a lot by air and print reporters, although never by name. He’s always a veteran Congress watcher, a well-informed source, or that grand old standby, the seasoned Washington observer. It was Karl who tipped Isabelle off to a couple of stories that she beat AP on and impressed her editors so much that, after the nineteen eighty conventions, they assigned her to the Bush campaign and, in the final month, to Reagan’s.”

“A couple of nice hops,” Haynes said.

“So nice that soon after the election she began getting invitations. To dinners. Embassy receptions. Various balls. Intimate gatherings of twelve in Spring Valley. Things like that. Sometimes she needed an escort; sometimes she didn’t. When she did, she usually asked me, probably because I had a dinner jacket and knew how to tango.”

Haynes grinned, which again caused Padillo to realize how closely the son resembled the dead father. “Anyway,” Padillo said, “we lasted eighteen months, maybe twenty, and then came Steady.”

“What’d he have to offer other than limitless charm?”

“New directions.”

“Leading where?”

“To covert action fiascoes. Terrorism, theirs and ours. An assortment of foreign intrigue imbroglios. Homegrown money spies. Redefecting defectors. It was heady times and Isabelle began to wonder if it wasn’t mostly because old Bill Casey was back.”

“Back?”

“From his glory days in OSS.”

“You knew him then?”

“In a way.”

“And Isabelle?”

“Eventually, she did an unauthorized and very unflattering three-part profile on Casey,” Padillo said. “She had a lot of help from Steady and a mixed bag of Casey watchers he’d rounded up for her. A few even let her quote them by name. She later sent me a copy of the piece. I think I still have it somewhere — a hell of a story. But twenty minutes after AF-P moved it, they sent out a kill. Isabelle got mad and quit, did some freelancing for a while, then moved in with Steady at his farm either to write or help him write his memoirs — or so I gathered from what she said at lunch today.”

After studying Padillo for almost fifteen seconds, Haynes said, “You haven’t always run a saloon, have you?”

“I’ve always wanted to.”

“What’d you do before you and McCorkle opened this one?”

“We ran one in Bonn.”

“What happened to it?”

“They blew it up.”

“Who’re they?”

“McCorkle’s always been convinced it was the CIA who supplied the bomb and the KGB who threw it.” He smiled slightly. “But then McCorkle has a rather jaundiced view of world events.”

Another silence was again ended by Haynes, talking at first to the floor, then to Padillo. “Isabelle was my oldest friend. We grew up almost next door in Nice. When Tinker came back from the Legion, Dien Bien Phu and all that, he rented a room in the house of a pregnant widow in Nice. Three months later, Isabelle was born. Tinker stayed on as Madeleine Gelinet’s paying guest, lover and surrogate father to Isabelle. In nineteen fifty-nine my mother died. I was three. Steady and I moved from Paris to Nice and rented a house three doors up from Madeleine Gelinet. That’s how Steady and I met Isabelle and Tinker.”

“I’ve wondered,” Padillo said.

“Not long after Steady married my stepmother number one, he and Tinker were off to the Congo — but on different sides. When Tinker came back, he started up his arms business and resumed his on-again, off-again affair with Isabelle’s mother.”

“Where’d he get the capital?” Padillo asked. “One day Tinker’s an out-of-work mercenary, the next day he’s a budding international arms dealer.”

“He stole it. He and Steady. Want the details?”

“I don’t think so,” Padillo said. “When’d you last see Isabelle — before today?”

“Almost twenty years ago. It was just before Steady had me fly here to enroll in St. Alban’s. By then, I was living in Italy with stepmother number two. As always, Steady sent cash. So I took a bus to Nice, saw Isabelle and caught a flight from Paris to Washington. But before I left Nice, Isabelle and I swore our undying love, which expired six or seven months later. But we always wrote each other long letters at Christmas — until she moved in with Steady.”

“Who stopped writing?”

“She did ”

“I would’ve guessed you.”

“Along with my old man’s goofy smile, I also inherited a lot of his goofy laissez-faire attitudes.”

Padillo took his feet down from the desk and slipped them into a pair of black loafers. As he bent down to tug the left shoe up over his heel, he said, “Is there really a book?”

“Steady’s lawyer and your landlord handed me a manuscript this afternoon.”

“You look at it?” Padillo said, once more leaning back in his chair.

Haynes nodded.

“A lot of people in this town would pray they’re not in it”

“Think you’re in it?”

“I hope so. It might give our lunch business a boost.”

Haynes rose. “Like to see it?”

Padillo nodded. “Especially if it has an index.”

“It doesn’t, but McCorkle was kind enough to put it in your safe for me this afternoon.”

Padillo examined Haynes thoughtfully. “The Willard has a much better safe ”

“I’m sure it does.”

“But the Willard also gives receipts and keeps records.”

“Right again,” Haynes said.

Padillo rose, went over to the old safe, spun the combination and tugged open the heavy door. From the safe he took the folded-over grocery sack and handed it to Haynes, who placed it on the partners desk. “Have a look,” Haynes said.