Росс Томас - Twilight at Mac’s Place

Haynes’s expression turned sly, his voice insinuating. “Muriel a pretty fair skier?”

“She didn’t go skiing in McLean.”

“No, but she skied right up to old Gilbert Undean’s front door in Reston, didn’t she? All masked and goggled and bundled up so nobody could tell if she was male, female or in between. Undean let her in. Can’t really blame him for that since she was pointing her piece at him. They go up the stairs to his office. Maybe they talk a little; maybe they don’t. Or maybe they reminisce about old times in Vientiane when Muriel got caught fucking some woman’s husband, and how the woman got mad and shot him and then fought Muriel for the gun, but Muriel won and shot the woman dead. All that was in the Undean memo.”

“Really,” Keyes said.

“This is all old stuff to you, isn’t it, Ham? In the memo it says you were the guy who brought the money from Saigon to Vientiane that paid off the slope general who covered the whole mess up. What a nasty piece of shit he must’ve been. But it wasn’t a total loss because that’s when you met Muriel, right?”

“That’s when I met her,” Keyes said, stopping for a light at Connecticut and Columbia Road.

“Can’t be too hard to fall for a beauty who’s got sixty million bucks in the bank. Most guys wouldn’t have any trouble at all — even if Muriel is kinda weird. Take old Gilbert Undean. He was still covering up for her after all these years.”

“Covering up what?” Keyes said, sounding a bit interested for the first time.

“In his memo Undean claims the two-hundred-thousand-dollar pay off to the slope general was spook money. But it wasn’t. It was Muriel’s. Of course, that’s no flash to you since you were the bag man who toted it to Vientiane.”

Keyes frowned, looking almost puzzled. “You’re claiming the two hundred thousand wasn’t agency money?”

“Hey! I said something he didn’t already know. Lemme ask you this: Where’d you pick up all that cash in Saigon? At a bank? The embassy?”

“It was delivered to me.”

“Who by?”

“You don’t ask.”

“White man?”

“Yes.”

“You sign for it?”

“Never.”

“Well, there you go. It wasn’t agency money. It was Muriel’s. You wanta know what really happened?”

Keyes shrugged.

“I didn’t hear that, Ham.”

“I’ll listen.”

“Okay. Here’s the no-shit story. After Steady makes his deal for the cover-up with the general, he tells Muriel she’s gotta come up with two hundred K — all cash. Now, Muriel could’ve asked the spooks for it. And maybe they’d’ve come up with it and maybe they wouldn’t have. But she’d’ve had to tell ’em all about what a wife-killer she was and once they heard that, they’d’ve bounced her back home and out of the agency, right?”

“Perhaps.”

“Well, two hundred K’s no problem to Muriel,” Haynes said, recalling the information Erika McCorkle had relayed to him from Padillo. “But the slope general is an all-cash kind of guy, and there’s no way Muriel can lay hands on that much cash in twelve hours or whatever time she’s got. But Steady knows how.”

“He would” Keyes said.

“Steady knows some three-for-two black-market guys in Saigon who’ll front Muriel the two hundred K if she’ll pay back three hundred K in a week or ten days. Well, what’s a hundred thou in vigorish to somebody like Muriel? So she says, swell, let’s do it.”

“I doubt that she said ‘swell,’ but go on.”

“Okay. She and Steady’ve got the money all lined up. But now they’ve gotta figure out how to get it from Saigon to Vientiane fast. Very fast. And that’s where you come in, Ham.”

“Steady’s choice. I suppose I should be flattered.”

“You were first pick because Steady figured that when you heard the Lamphier name, bells would go off. Cash register bells. You know the kind in old-timey cash registers that rang when you—”

“You’re wearing it out,” Keyes said.

Haynes smiled not only at his cash register metaphor but also at the irritation it had caused Keyes. “Bet it was love at first sight. You and Muriel.”

“Hardly,” Keyes said. “Are you sure Undean didn’t know it was Muriel’s money?”

“Absolutely positive. The only ones who knew were Muriel and Steady — plus the three-for-two guys in Saigon.”

“But you said none of this was in Undean’s memo.”

“You calling me a liar, Ham?” Haynes said, trying to turn the question into a softly spoken death threat and not at all displeased with the result.

“Merely curious,” Keyes said.

“I accept your apology.”

“I made none.”

“But the thought was there and I shouldn’t blame you for asking dumb questions. If I was married to somebody who’d knocked off three people, I’d sure as hell want to learn everything about her I could.”

“Please answer my question,” Keyes said.

“Okay. I found out about the money stuff in Steady’s memoirs.”

“You read them?”

“What else would I do — lick it off the page?”

“When?”

“Right after I found them yesterday — or was it the day before? But lemme tell you one thing about the memoirs and it’s just what I said in the senator’s office. They’d make just one hell of a picture.”

“May I ask where you found the manuscript?”

“Sure. In Steady’s car. He had this old Caddie ragtop that he left me in his will and I’ve been driving it around. Well, it had a flat and when I changed it, there was the manuscript in a nice safe nest under the spare. And you wanta know something else about Muriel — about her and the old Caddie?”

Keyes nodded once as if he no longer trusted himself to speak.

“Muriel tried to buy the Caddie on the Q.T. because she figured the manuscript might be in it. She didn’t try herself, of course. What she did was hire some pro hitter, a guy called Horace Purchase, to buy it. Ever hear of him?”

“I think I saw his name in the Post ,” Keyes said.

“Well, it looks like Purchase had three goals or assignments or targets — whatever. Number one was to switch my lights off and he damn near did it at the Willard. Number two: try and buy Steady’s old Caddie. Well, he couldn’t manage that, but he did do number three.”

Haynes shut up and waited for Keyes to ask what number three was. Instead, Keyes asked, “You’re quite sure Muriel hired him?”

“Who else would?”

Keyes shrugged and asked, “What was the third objective? Of the Purchase person, I mean.”

“It was kind of a fallback thing. If he couldn’t buy the Caddie, he oughta try and plant a sender on it. You know, an electronic transmitter.”

“And did he?”

“How the fuck d’you think Muriel found and shot at me out there at the Bellevue Motel where nobody knew I was?” Haynes chuckled. “Funny thing happened to that sender though.”

“What?”

“I found it and slapped it right up against the frame of some taxicab.” He chuckled again. “Must’ve driven whoever was tracking me nuts following that cab all over town and out to Dulles and everywhere.” This time Haynes giggled, hoping it would suggest neurosis.

He apparently succeeded because Keyes asked, “Are you all right?”

“Sure I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be all right?”

Keyes ignored the question to ask one of his own. “You still have a copy of the Undean memo?”

“Not of the original. What I got is a copy of the carbon and what you wanta know is how’d I get it, right?”

Keyes only nodded, not taking his eyes from the road.

“I figure Muriel found the original memo right after she shot old man Undean. But she missed the carbon. Now, who should waltz into Undean’s house two minutes later but Tinker Burns himself, the born snoop. Tinker finds the carbon under Undean’s desk blotter right after he calls the cops, which leaves him with nothing to do but snoop around till they get there. Now you gotta understand this. If the cops’d found that carbon it’d’ve been, So long, Muriel. I mean that memo really nails her. Motive. Opportunity. All that good shit. But when Tinker reads it, all he smells is money. And since he’s on her payroll anyway, he knows just which buttons to push.”