Росс Томас - Twilight at Mac’s Place

“Perhaps you could call him early tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll think about it,” Haynes said.

“Then I’ll disturb you no longer,” Keyes said, rose and picked up the navy-blue cashmere topcoat he had draped over the back of his chair. It was not quite a bow that he gave Erika. “Miss McCorkle.”

“Mr. Keyes.”

Keyes went to the door, opened it, turned once more and said, “Again, my apologies,” and was gone.

There was a brief silence until Erika said, “So what d’you think, chief?”

“He knows how to make an exit,” Haynes said, put his beer down on a table, picked up the bedside phone and tapped out a number.

Herr Horst answered with his usual, “Reservations.”

“This is Granville Haynes. Is Padillo still there?”

“One moment, please.”

After Padillo came on, Haynes said, “I have a problem.”

“Can it be solved over the phone?”

“No.”

“Then you’d better get over here.”

It took twenty minutes for Haynes, seated on the leather couch in the office at Mac’s Place, to tell Padillo about finding the true manuscript; target practice at the Bellevue Motel; the bugged Cadillac and the late night visit from Hamilton Keyes.

Padillo responded with his eyes, using them to signal interest, approval, surprise or simply, “Get on with it.” He sat slumped low in the high-backed chair with his feet up on the partners desk, his shoes off and his hands locked behind his head. Haynes noticed that his socks were again argyle, but this time they offered shades of brown that ranged from chocolate to taupe.

“You say you and Erika read it — Steady’s book?” Padillo said after Haynes stopped talking.

Haynes nodded.

“How was it?”

“It goes very quickly, once your disbelief is hanging by the neck.”

“Then Isabelle must’ve furnished the quick and Steady the embellishment.”

“If the CIA wanted to,” Haynes said, “it could safely issue the thing as the world’s longest press release.”

“They haven’t read it yet?”

“Not that I know of.”

“But they’re still going to bid for it tomorrow, unread or not?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re going to take their money?”

“Right again.”

“Then what’s your problem?”

“This,” Haynes said, reached into a breast pocket and brought out the envelope that contained the note from Tinker Burns and the memo by Gilbert Undean to his files. He handed the envelope to Padillo.

“Read the note from Tinker first,” Haynes said.

Padillo nodded and, stockinged feet still up on the desk, read the note. When finished he shook his head sadly and began the memo from Undean.

After the first paragraph, Padillo’s feet dropped to the floor and he sat up in his chair. He placed the memo on top of the desk and bent over it, elbows on the desk, head in his hands, his concentration total.

When finished, he looked up at Haynes and asked, “Anyone else read this?”

“Just you and I and Tinker Burns.”

“And whoever has the original.”

“I’d almost forgotten about the original.”

Padillo tapped the memo. “Now I understand your problem. Tomorrow you have to be in two places at the same time.”

“Exactly.”

“And you want me to be at the other place.”

“You and McCorkle.”

Padillo grimaced slightly, as if at some seldom-felt tinge of regret or even a pang of self-reproach. “I should’ve told McCorkle.”

“You knew?”

“Not when she came in. She fooled me with her frumpy outfit and that shuffling walk. But when she came out of the office, she was in a hurry, forgot her shuffle and shifted into her long athletic stride that’s hard to forget once you’ve seen it. And that’s when I knew it was Muriel Keyes.”

“But you didn’t know about the fake bomb then?”

“Not then.”

“And you haven’t told McCorkle it was Mrs. Keyes?”

“No. I haven’t told him.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe because he wasn’t hurt — except for some injured pride. Or because of my secretive nature. Or because of Muriel and me a long time ago. Or maybe I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“It just dropped.”

“So it did,” Padillo said and again tapped the Undean memo. “This suggests that Mrs. Hamilton Keyes walked in here with a fake bomb and out with an equally fake manuscript to save her husband’s career and her neck.”

“You believe that?”

“I don’t know,” said Padillo. “But why not let McCorkle ask her tomorrow?”

At 3:21 A.M. that Tuesday, Granville Haynes left Howard Mott’s house on Thirty-fifth Street Northwest and drove back to the Willard in twenty-four minutes. At eight minutes to four he entered his room to find Erika McCorkle propped up in bed, reading a paperback novel that had on its cover a huge Nazi swastika formed out of human bones.

“Who’s winning?” Haynes asked as he stripped off his topcoat and jacket and hung them in the closet.

“The Krauts — but it’s only nineteen forty.”

Haynes removed two sheets of stapled-together paper from his jacket’s inside breast pocket and crossed to the bed. “More ancient history” he said as he handed them over.

Erika put her book down and accepted the stapled papers without glancing at them. “You look tired,” she said.

“I am.”

“Come to bed.”

“I’ll take a shower while you read it.”

She looked at the first sheet. “The notorious Undean memo. I thought Howie Mott said nobody but you should read it.”

“He changed his mind,” Haynes said. “Padillo’s read it. And by now so has your dad. Mott is probably reading it for the fourth or fifth time.”

Erika read the memo’s first line, muttered, “My God,” and, without looking up, said, “Go take your shower.”

When Haynes came out of the shower ten minutes later, wearing a hotel robe, he found Erika still propped up in bed against the pillows, staring at the far wall, the memo now in her lap. She had locked her hands behind her head, which thrust her breasts out against the thin fabric of the thigh-length T-shirt that was her nightgown. Silk-screened across the front of the T-shirt was the line “This Space Available.”

She stopped staring at the wall to stare at Haynes. “Have you told the cops yet — Detective-Sergeant what’s his name?”

“Darius Pouncy. No.”

“Why not?”

“Because a lot of the memo’s conjecture and there’s no proof that Undean wrote it. Maybe Tinker wrote it.”

“Couldn’t they compare the typing with Undean’s typewriter? The FBI’s always doing that kind of stuff.”

“Maybe Tinker wrote it on Undean’s typewriter.”

“You really think she killed Isabelle and stuck a pistol in Pop’s face?”

“I believe she stuck a pistol in McCorkle’s face,” Haynes said.

“Why d’you believe that and not the other?”

“Because somebody recognized her leaving Mac’s Place.”

“Who did?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, turned, went to the small refrigerator and took out a small can with a label that claimed it contained pink grapefruit juice from Texas. He held the the can up for Erika to see and said, “Want some?”

“No.”

Haynes opened the can and drank. “Tell me what it said.”

She frowned. “What d’you mean?”

“Build a case for me. Pretend you’re a lawyer.”

She reached for the memo.

“No,” Haynes said. “From memory.”

“I don’t understand what you want.”

“That’s a two-page single-spaced memo. I don’t think Undean just sat down and batted it out. I think it was very carefully composed and went through maybe three or four drafts before all the holes were plugged.”