Росс Томас - Twilight at Mac’s Place

“An interesting question.”

“I say he was trying to scare the shit out of somebody,” Burns said. “Your client.”

“We will not discuss my client, Mr. Burns.”

“Okay. Fine. Then let’s discuss Steady’s kid and his backup, the grim reaper, who came pounding on my door at three o’clock this morning just like they were the Gestapo or the fucking FBI making a house call.”

“The grim reaper?”

“Michael Padillo. Know him?”

“We’ve met.”

“I imagine you have,” Burns said, paused and then continued. “Anyway, they barge in and start their rain dance that’s supposed to make me wet my drawers. And I’ve gotta admit, it’s not bad. Padillo can just sit there, saying nothing, and make you believe he’s gonna bite your nose off. And Granny, well, he’s the big bass drum, the talker, the one who tells you to get outta town. Mr. Deadly Do-right. But he also made damn sure he told me how he’s gonna auction off his old man’s memoirs and that the bidding’s gonna start at three quarters of a mill and climb on up from there. And it’s just about then that he says the two magic names.”

“What magic names?”

“Muriel Lamphier and Hamilton Keyes.”

Tinker Burns liked the way he had tossed in the two names right there at the end. He leaned back in the blue leather chair to study the senator, who had just shuttered his neon eyes again and was arranging his thin mouth into the faintest of smiles.

A moment later, the eyes opened and the smile, if it had been a smile, went away and the senator said, “Lamphier, I believe you said, and Keyes.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton Keyes. He’s a top spook out at Langley. She’s rich.”

“How were the names mentioned?” the senator said. “I mean, in what context?”

“They came up all of a sudden. Granny wanted to know how well I knew Muriel Lamphier, who’s also Mrs. Hamilton Keyes. So I told ’em to get the fuck outta my room before I called security.”

“And they went without argument?”

“Like lambs.”

“Then what?”

“Then I went down to the lobby and called you from a pay phone and said — well, you know what I said.”

“That you were having second thoughts.”

“Yeah.”

The senator leaned back in his chief justice swivel chair and again gave the almost invisible smile permission to play around his thin lips for a second or two. “Are we now going to share these second thoughts of yours, Mr. Burns?”

“I can’t decide.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m a businessman, Senator. The kind who believes that market forces should set the price of everything. If there’s a strong demand, raise your price. If demand’s weak, drop it. And never, never give anything away.”

“Not even a sample.”

“Well, maybe a sample.”

“You’re very generous.”

“No, I’m not,” Burns said, paused, frowned, nodded to himself and said, “I got a lot of friends who used to fly for Air America.”

“When it was a CIA proprietary venture.”

“Yeah, then. Hell, some of my friends even used to fly for Chennault and Chancre Jack in China. But they’re all pushing eighty now and not too right in the head. But I’m talking about ex-Air America pilots who’re a lot younger’n that and used to fly out of Laos. Out of a place called Long Tieng, otherwise known as Spook Heaven. Ever hear of it?”

The senator only nodded.

“Well, I figured you would’ve since you were on one of those intelligence oversight committees. Anyway, these not-so-young-anymore Air America guys I know still like to drink and bullshit and they sort of look up to me because I was at Dien Bien Phu with the Legion and all, and they still think that was pretty hot shit. Okay?”

The senator nodded again.

“If I remember right,” Burns said, “the CIA went into Laos back in ’sixty-one but by ’sixty-three it was already a backwater operation — what old Dean Rusk called the wart on the hog or something like that. But there was still lots of dope. Lots of booze. Lots of flying. And just one hell of a lot of spooks. Okay?”

“Still with you, Mr. Burns.”

“Good. So now it’s nineteen eighty or eighty-one and I’m in Bangkok doing a little business when I bump into some of these ex-Air America hotshots I know who never went home. It was in some bar, Spiffy’s, I think, and they were all reminiscing about Laos in the good old days. For them, that’s just before the end in ’seventy-four when everything fell apart and you guys bugged out.”

“In May and June of nineteen seventy-four, I believe,” the senator said.

“That’s what I said. So we’re sitting around in Spiffy’s and they’re talking about all the weird and wonderful characters they’d known in Laos. But none of the names meant much to me till somebody mentions Steady Haynes.”

“Favorably?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. It was all about how Steady saved the neck of some young spook who made a real bad mistake. Tragic’s what they called it. And how Steady flip-flopped it to make it look like something else altogether. The young spook’s name was Lamphier and the reason I remember it now is because I asked them if that was Lamphier like in Crown-Lamphier glass and they said yes. And because they also said the spook was a she instead of a he.”

Burns stopped talking and began to smile.

“That’s my taste?” the senator said.

“That’s it.”

“Mr. Burns, when I retained you for a not inconsiderable fee in Paris just before Steadfast Haynes died so unexpectedly, all I asked of you was to exploit your friendship with Mr. Haynes and Miss Gelinet—”

Burns interrupted, his impatience obvious. “And talk ’em into giving me a peek at the memoirs.”

“Exactly. But you couldn’t for obvious reasons — Mr. Haynes’s death and then Miss Gelinet’s. But now you seem to be going off on some tangent that I find alarming. Most alarming.”

“Sorry you feel that way, Senator.”

“No, you aren’t. But tell me this, and please think carefully before you do. Are you sure it was Granville Haynes and not Michael Padillo who first brought up Muriel Lamphier’s name?”

“Positive.”

“Then that suggests the memoirs really do exist and that young Haynes has read them.”

“Or that it’s what Granny wants you to think, Senator. You know, if I was Granny, I’d do just what he’s doing and try to jack up the price by hinting at how much I know. That’s what I’d do, if I was Granny. Now, if I was you, I’d call his bluff and tell him I need to read before I buy.”

“Don’t think I haven’t thought of that,” the senator said.

“Then why don’t you?”

“If I did, he’d simply threaten to send them to a publisher. And to prevent him from doing that, I’d again have to increase my bid.”

“Just can’t afford to take the chance, huh?” Burns said.

“No.”

“Then it doesn’t much matter if the memoirs are real or a make-believe because you’re still going to buy the rights for your client — whoever she is.”

“Goddamnit, Mr. Burns, I will not discuss my client with you.”

“Okay. Fine. We won’t discuss her.”

The senator took a deep breath and said, “But I think we had better discuss just what it is you have to sell.”

“Silence.”

“And how much does silence cost?”

“Not as much as you think,” said Tinker Burns.

McCorkle sat in an immense wingback chair and watched Harry Warnock, the IRA deserter turned security consultant, work the lobby of the Willard Hotel. It was nearly 10 A.M. and McCorkle had been watching Warnock for an hour.

Wearing a neat dark blue suit and carrying a gray herringbone topcoat over his left arm, Warnock scanned each face as it came through the hotel entrance. McCorkle imagined a classification system inside Warnock’s head that stamped each face with yes, no or maybe. So far, there had been only no’s, except for one maybe. But when the maybe, a noticeably jumpy man in his mid-thirties, hurried over to a woman in her late sixties, kissed her cheek and called her “Mommy,” Warnock had turned away, looking a bit disappointed.