Росс Томас - Twilight at Mac’s Place

“When was it supposed to have been finished?”

“Eight days ago. He wanted it delivered to the Hay-Adams Hotel, but when I went there today, they told me he was dead.”

“He died a week ago Thursday,” McCorkle said.

“That’s what the hotel people said. So when I asked them where I could find Isabelle Gelinet because, you know, she was with him when he delivered the thing—”

“Delivered it where?”

“To my place in Hyattsville. Here.” She reached a gloved hand into the pocket of her raincoat, brought out a business card and handed it to McCorkle. It read: “Reba Skelton, Professional Typist, Word Processor & Calligrapher (Eleven Years Experience!), 4706 40th Ave., Hyattsville, MD, 20781.” There was also a telephone number with a 301 area code and, below that, a last line that boasted: “FAST! ACCURATE! PROMPT!”

McCorkle dropped the card into a desk drawer and asked, “What’d the hotel say when you asked for Miss Gelinet?”

“Well, they went all, you know, funny. And then they told me she was dead and right after they told me that, they went all snotty and said if I wanted to know anything else about her, I’d have to ask the police. So I left and went to a pay phone and called them.”

“The police?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“Well, they pretended they didn’t know anything about any Isabelle Gelinet and kept transferring my call from one person to another until finally they transferred me to a Sergeant Pouncy, who was colored—”

“How could you tell?”

“Well, you can just, you know, tell .”

“I didn’t know that,” McCorkle said. “So what’d the sergeant say?”

He said the Gelinet woman was, let’s see, the subject of an ongoing homicide investigation. And then he wanted to know who I was and why I wanted to talk to her and all that. And I, well, I just hung up on him.”

“Good thinking,” McCorkle said. “But why come here?”

“Because I’m looking for Mr. Haynes’s son.”

“Granville?”

“Yes. At least that’s what he’s called in the manuscript.”

“I still don’t understand why you’d expect to find him here.”

“Well, after I hung up on that Sergeant Pouncy, I started thinking. So I called the Hay-Adams back and told them a fib. I told them I was Miss So-and-So with American Express and that we had some outstanding charges on Mr. Steadfast Haynes’s account and wanted to know who was handling his estate. I was talking to the hotel accounting people this time, and they weren’t nearly so snotty as those stuck-up things on the desk.”

“When did you talk to the accounting people?”

“Today. Just before noon.”

“What’d they tell you?”

“They told me to call his lawyer, Howard Mott. So I called his office right away, even if it is Saturday, but by then it was beginning to snow and nobody answered. So I looked up his home number and called that, but he wasn’t there. I did get to talk to Mrs. Mott and told her I was looking for Granville Haynes and she was very nice. She told me to try the Willard Hotel and, if young Mr. Haynes wasn’t there, maybe somebody at Mac’s Place might know where I could find him.”

McCorkle leaned back in his chair and studied the woman in the red knitted cap. “You’re quite a detective, Miss Skelton.”

“What I am, Mr. McCorkle, is broke.”

“You want me to give Granville a message?”

“No, what I’d like you to give him is this.” She lifted the white package an inch or so off her lap.

“That’s the typed manuscript?”

“Plus all the original stuff. And my bill’s right on top where he can’t miss it. Three hundred and eighty-two pages at a dollar fifty a page comes to five hundred and seventy-three dollars.”

“Granville’s out of town,” McCorkle said. “But he’ll probably be back later today.”

“Will you see him then?”

“Maybe.”

“Can you make sure he gets this?” Again she lifted the white package a few inches from her lap.

“Yes, I can do that,” McCorkle said, anticipating the expression on Haynes’s face when confronted with yet another true copy of Steady’s memoirs.

“I’d hate to see it get lost or misplaced or anything,” she said. “It’s the only copy.”

“I just happen to have a safe.”

“Oh, wow! A safe would be great!” she said, obviously relieved. “Could you also give me a receipt?”

McCorkle nodded, rose and went to the old safe. “What’d you think of it?” he said, giving the combination a turn.

“Of what?”

“The manuscript.”

“Oh, well, I thought it was awfully complicated. All those different countries and funny foreign names. I don’t follow the news much anymore and—” She stopped when McCorkle tugged open the old safe’s door.

“Please turn around, Mr. McCorkle,” she said in a new voice that McCorkle found cold and hard and full of authority.

Instead of turning, he said, “I know that voice. That’s the one they always use when there’s a gun in their hand.”

“It’s a thirty-two-caliber Sauer semiautomatic with a one-shot silencer,” she said.

McCorkle slowly turned around and took in the small semiautomatic with its four-inch silencer. The gun was aimed at his chest, a fairly large target. She held it in a gloved right hand that showed no sign of a tremor. The sealed white package that had been on her lap was now on the partners desk.

“There’s no money in the safe,” he said. “Although you’re welcome to look.”

“But there is a brown paper sack in there. I want you to take it out and place it on the desk. I want you to do that now.”

“Maybe I keep a gun in the safe.”

“Maybe you do.”

McCorkle faced the safe again and removed the brown paper sack that contained the mostly blank manuscript Howard Mott had given to Granville Haynes. McCorkle turned yet again, went slowly over to the desk and placed the sack on it.

“Now pick up the package I brought,” she said.

“And after I pick it up?”

“You lock it in the safe.”

“Sort of a trade, right?” McCorkle said and picked up the white package.

“Right.”

“Now we take it to the safe,” he said as he turned and went back to the old Mosler. “Now we place it just inside.” Slowly, almost tenderly, he put the package inside the safe. “Now we close the safe’s big door.” When that was done, he gave the combination a spin and asked, “So now what do we do?”

“You’ve locked a bomb in your safe,” she said in the same matter-of-fact voice. “It’s powerful enough to blow the safe door and do considerable damage to your office and anyone in it. But the bomb is easily disarmed. All you need to do is remove the package from the safe, unwrap it carefully and lift off the lid. It will then be disarmed. That should take you approximately three minutes. You may wish to look at your watch now because the bomb is timed to go off exactly” — she glanced at her own watch — “three minutes and twenty-two seconds from now.”

McCorkle, still at the safe, his back still to her, looked at his watch and said, “Good-bye, Miss Skelton.”

“Good-bye, Mr. McCorkle.”

When Padillo looked up from his dinner and saw the woman hurrying across the dining room, carrying the brown paper sack, he murmured a quick excuse to the impoverished widow, rose and hurried after the woman with the sack.

Padillo came out of Mac’s Place in time to see her climb into the driver’s seat of a black Mercedes sedan that had tinted windows and a license plate whose numbers had been hidden by packed dirty snow. The Mercedes, its headlights off, rolled away silently and disappeared into the snowy night.