“So,” McCorkle said, took a small silverish square from his jacket pocket and started peeling it open. He removed an equally small square of something that looked very much like putty, eyed it with obvious loathing and popped it into his mouth.
“I know two-and-three-pack-a-day guys who switched to Nicorette gum,” Haynes said. “They don’t miss smoking at all. I also know junkies who don’t miss heroin as long as they have an assured supply of methadone. Some of the guys on Nicorette go to two or three doctors for extra prescriptions because they’re chewing thirty or forty pieces a day, which is about the same number of cigarettes they smoked. The main difference is that cigarettes cost about nine cents apiece in California but the nicotine gum costs them forty or forty-five cents a chew.”
McCorkle, still chewing, said, “You preach a nice sermon.”
He opened a desk drawer, took out a piece of blue Kleenex, spat the nicotine gum into it, wadded the tissue into a ball and dropped it in a wastebasket. After opening the desk’s center drawer, he took out a pack of unfiltered Pall Malls, lit one, inhaled deeply, blew the smoke out and said, “I’m well aware of the surgeon general’s opinion.”
Haynes rose, crossed to the desk and placed the brown grocery bag on its top. McCorkle blew some smoke at the bag and said, “I’m fairly sure that’s not eggs, bread and the milk.”
“It’s a manuscript.”
“A novel?”
“A fairy story. Steady’s memoirs.”
“Well, he did live a full life. Does he tell all?”
“There seems to be some concern about that.”
“And you want to do what—park it here for a day or so?”
Haynes agreed with a nod, then indicated the old safe. “Does that thing work?”
McCorkle rose, picked up the paper bag and went to the safe. He pulled its door open, placed the bag inside and closed the door, locking the safe and spinning its dial. “The combination’s my birthday in case I get hit by a truck.”
“And who else knows your birthday?”
“The IRS, the State Department, the Social Security folks, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the bank, the doctor, the dentist, my wife, two or three close friends and probably any reasonably clever thief who was hell-bent on opening it up.”
Haynes nodded, as though satisfied, and asked, “Where can I find Isabelle?”
“You try the Hay-Adams?”
“She checked out.”
“What about the farm in Berryville?”
“No answer although I’m not sure she’s had time to get there yet.”
“Is that where she was going?”
“I don’t know.”
McCorkle returned to the desk, sat down, picked up the telephone and tapped out a number from memory. Haynes guessed the call was answered two and a half rings later.
“It’s McCorkle, Sid. I need our D.C. billing address for Gelinet, Isabelle.”
He put the cigarette out in an ashtray, took a ballpoint pen and a scrap of paper from the middle drawer of the partners desk and wrote down the address.
“Phone number?”
McCorkle also wrote that down; thanked Sid, the accountant; hung up the telephone and handed the scrap of paper to Haynes. “Connecticut Avenue.”
Haynes looked up from the address. “Thirty-eight hundred block?”
“You remember Washington?”
“It’s been a while.”
“Remember Taft Bridge on Connecticut—the one with the lions?”
Haynes nodded.
“It’s a little more than a mile north of the lions on the right. Anything else?”
“I need a hotel.”
“Cheap, moderate, expensive, what?”
“Different.”
“Go to the Willard. You’ll find it completely restored in brand-new Second Empire style with just a touch of Potomac baroque thrown in. There’re also some old ladies sitting in its lobby who I’d swear were sitting there when I first came through Washington in nineteen fifty.”
“I already like it,” Haynes said.
“Want me to make you a reservation?”
“You’re sure it’s no trouble?”
“No trouble at all,” McCorkle said, again picking up the telephone.
He was just putting it down a few minutes later when someone knocked twice at the door. Before McCorkle could say “Come in” or “Who’s there?” the door opened and a yellow-haired woman of twenty-one or twenty-two swept in, wearing a belted camel’s-hair polo coat and a smile that, for some reason, reminded Haynes of California sunshine on a smog-free day.
Her smile was aimed at McCorkle but vanished at the sight of Haynes. She frowned, gasped slightly—or pretended to—and said, “My God. The ghost of Steady Haynes.”
“The son,” Haynes said.
“I was very fond of Steady.”
“As he must’ve been of you, whoever you are.”
McCorkle sighed. “My daughter, Erika; Granville Haynes.”
In only two long strides she was in front of Haynes, her right hand extended. Haynes discovered that the right hand of Erika McCorkle felt strong and dextrous, as if it could change a tire or sew a fine seam with equal proficiency. She was only a few inches shorter than Haynes, and her eyes, he noticed, were a far, far lighter blue than his own. They were, indeed, almost gray.
She held onto his hand just long enough to say, “I’m so very sorry about Steady and, God, you do look like him.”
“You’re very kind,” Haynes said.
“I left at seven this morning,” she said, turning to McCorkle. “I wanted to say good-bye to Steady at Arlington. But that piece of GM junk broke down again and by the time I got it fixed it was too late for Steady and too late to pick you up at Dulles. How’s Mutti bearing up under all the relatives?”
“Nobly,” McCorkle said. “How’s school?”
“It’s over. Done with.”
“You quit?”
“Graduated.”
McCorkle looked at Haynes. “Can this be June?”
He smiled. “For some perhaps.”
“A diplomat,” she said to Haynes and turned again to McCorkle. “My junior year?”
“At Heidelberg.”
“Well, there’s this very nice little man down in the basement of an administration building who, armed with nothing more than a Radio Shack computer, just happened to be running my midterm records through it and discovered I hadn’t been given nearly enough credits for the Heidelberg year. In fact, I have more than I need for a degree. So I said auf Wiedersehen and told them to mail me the diploma.”
McCorkle rose, went around the desk and gave his daughter a long hug. “I’m awfully damned proud of you.”
“You’re also off the fees and tuition hook.”
“And now your mother can have her warm winter coat.”
Her alarmingly sunny smile reappeared. “Where’s Mike?”
“He went for a swim,” McCorkle said. “Are you okay for dinner?”
“Of course. I only wish Mutti were here.”
“We’ll call her.”
“Around ten. It’ll be around three in the morning there. She’ll love that.”
His daughter went up on her toes to give McCorkle a quick kiss, turned to Haynes and said, “I’m glad we met. Steady spoke of you often.”
“I have to be going, too,” Haynes said.
“Can I give you a lift?”
He smiled then, the smile that McCorkle suspected could melt both rocks and female hearts. “If you’re heading out Connecticut.”
“Let’s go,” she said.
The sudden discomfort McCorkle felt as they left was in the region where his heart was supposed to be. For a moment he experienced a mild shortness of breath. The symptoms vanished as quickly as they came and McCorkle found himself hoping it was his first angina. If it weren’t, then he knew he had just suffered his first serious attack of male parentitis.