Росс Томас - Twilight at Mac’s Place

“On her payroll?” Keyes said, not trying to conceal his surprise.

“Well, maybe he was just on retainer. The senator’d hired him in Paris because Muriel’d heard rumors about Steady’s manuscript. And since Tinker was tight with both Steady and Isabelle, it seemed possible that they might let him peek at the memoirs and see if Muriel was mentioned or not. And, if so, how? You know, bad or good?”

“And is she mentioned?” Keyes asked.

“What’s that got to do with Tinker Burns?” Haynes said. “Let’s stick to him. Okay?”

“For now,” Keyes said.

“Before Tinker can even get started on seeing about the memoirs, Steady dies on him. But because he’s already been paid, Tinker flies over for the funeral and then starts snooping around, but finds fuck all — except for Isabelle’s body — until he stumbles across the Undean memo. Well, that memo is money in the bank to Tinker. The first thing he does is pay the senator a visit and put the arm on him. The senator reports all this to Muriel, who says she’ll take care of it. She and Tinker agree on Rock Creek Park as the payoff site. But there’s no payoff and it’s good-bye, Tinker.”

“You really think my wife killed Tinker Burns?”

“She’d already done two. What’s one more? Besides, who else would’ve killed him?”

“Muggers,” Keyes said. “Old enemies.”

Haynes gave him a pitying look. “Since when do muggers or even old enemies leave six or seven hundred bucks in the victim’s wallet?”

“I’m surprised that Burns wasn’t more suspicious.”

“He was suspicious, all right,” Haynes said. “How the hell do you think I got a Xerox copy of the Undean carbon? Tinker Fed-Exed it to Howard Mott in an envelope marked, ‘Don’t Open Unless I’m Dead’ or something like that. And inside that envelope was a smaller one addressed to me and marked personal, and in it was the Undean memo.”

“So what’re you going to do with it?” Keyes asked, suddenly brisk and businesslike.

“That’s exactly what I need to talk to you about. I could give it to a certain homicide cop I know, a guy named Pouncy, and he could probably nail Muriel with it because he’s pretty smart and probably a damn good digger. I even thought that you and me oughta go talk to Muriel — maybe try and talk her into giving herself up.”

“Muriel wouldn’t agree to that,” Keyes said.

“No? Well, she’s sure gotta pay somehow for what she did. I mean, you can’t murder three people and expect to get away with it. What the fuck kind of civilization would that be?”

Keyes sighed. “I have the feeling we’re talking about money now.”

“Did I mention money? Even once?”

“How much?” Keyes made his question sound old and tired.

“Well, for a million I guess I could forget all about Muriel Keyes and the Undean memo.”

“A million in the morning and another million in the afternoon,” Keyes said. “This must be one of your more profitable days.”

“It could be,” Haynes said. “Except for one thing.”

“What?”

“There’s something in that Undean memo that still itches me.”

“What itches you, Mr. Haynes?”

“Call me Granny. Well, it’s when Undean writes about how Isabelle bought it. He goes into a lot of gruesome detail. But Isabelle got killed Friday afternoon and the Post only ran a couple of short graphs on it Saturday. You know: Woman Slain, Cops Investigate. When did you hear about it?”

“I think it came in late Friday afternoon on one of the wire services. Maybe UPI.”

“But would UPI give out her address and apartment number and the fact that her wrists and ankles were tied with coat-hanger wire? Or the fact that she’d been gagged? That’s the one that really bothers me. The gag. Because she sure didn’t have one in her mouth when Tinker and I found her. So how the hell could Undean write on Saturday that she’d been gagged when the cops didn’t even know it until two P.M. Saturday when they found the gag in the trash and ran tests on it.” Haynes paused, stared at Keyes and said, “You must’ve figured out what it means, Ham.”

“Sorry.”

“Well, shit, it means Undean didn’t write the memo, that’s what.”

“Then who did?”

“The killer, that’s who.”

“Muriel?”

“You know something, I just changed my mind about Muriel. Here’s how I figure it now. If you wanta forge something with a typewriter, you gotta be careful. So I think whoever forged the memo used Undean’s office typewriter at Langley — probably used it while Undean was down at the Willard offering me fifty thou for Steady’s manuscript. I think the forger made an original and a carbon, then destroyed the original. And after the forger got through killing Undean Sunday, the carbon was slipped under the old guy’s desk blotter where the cops’d be sure to find it — if Tinker Burns hadn’t found it first. And like I said, that memo nailed Muriel for Isabelle’s murder plus all that mess in Laos. So why would she write it, much less leave it for the cops to find?”

“Finally, a good question,” Keyes said.

“So maybe Muriel didn’t kill anybody. Wonder why I didn’t think of that before? But if I’m finally thinking straight, then you’re the only one who could’ve forged that memo on Undean’s typewriter out at Langley. So I guess you killed him. And if you knew about that gag in Isabelle’s mouth, you must’ve stuffed it there, right? Either you or old Horse Purchase, who must’ve held her while you straightened out the coat hangers. Or was it the other way around? Never mind. And when poor old Tinker tried to blackmail you, what happened to him is kind of obvious. Jesus, Ham, you’re a real menace.”

“And you’re certifiable,” Keyes said as he reached down as if to adjust his seat either forward or backward.

The McCorkle Chief’s Special appeared in Haynes’s right hand. “Bring it up by the barrel, Mr. Keyes. Very, very slowly, if you don’t mind.”

Keyes froze in his slightly bent-over position, peering at the traffic ahead, his eyes barely above the top of the steering wheel. Finally, Keyes’s left hand came into view, its thumb and three fingers holding a small .25-caliber Beretta semiautomatic by the barrel.

Haynes switched his revolver to his left hand and poked its muzzle into Keyes’s right ear. Haynes’s right hand reached for the Beretta. Once he had it, he slipped it into his topcoat’s right-hand pocket, then removed the revolver from Keyes’s ear.

“Mr. Keyes, I suggest we go around the block very slowly, then back down Connecticut and over to your house, where we’ll have a talk with Mrs. Keyes.”

“About money?”

“Possibly.”

“Who were you?” Keyes said as he turned right off Connecticut to circle the blpck.

“When?”

“During the last twenty-five or thirty minutes?”

“Well, that was old Hardcase Haynes of Homicide.”

“I didn’t much like him.”

“I’ve now reverted to what a friend has called my Mr. Manners role.”

“I don’t like him either,” said Hamilton Keyes.

Trailed by Haynes, Hamilton Keyes entered his living room at 11:28 A.M. to find McCorkle and Padillo seated side by side on a couch, eating liverwurst-on-rye sandwiches and drinking pale ale.

Muriel Keyes sat across from them in an easy chair, a glass of what looked like Scotch and very little water in her right hand, a cigarette in her left.

Hamilton Keyes stopped to glare first at Padillo, then at McCorkle. Haynes didn’t stop and kept moving until he could press the revolver in his topcoat’s right pocket against Keyes’s back. Keyes ignored the pressure, turned to his wife and asked, “Why are they here?”