“The kind you should avoid answering,” Haynes said.
Just before leaving Mac’s Place, Haynes had called United Airlines to have the bag he had left in its care sent to the Willard. When the rented gray limousine dropped him at the hotel, after first depositing Tinker Burns at the Madison, Haynes was pleasantly astonished to discover the bag had been delivered.
A Latino bellhop was dispatched to collect it from the checkroom. Haynes used the time to inspect the restored lobby that boasted a concierge desk that resembled a flower petal built out of rich-looking yellow marble. There was also a long, long corridor or promenade that led off the main lobby and seemed to go on forever. A bellhop later told him it was called Peacock Alley and went all the way to F Street. Both it and the lobby boasted big comfortable-looking chairs, convenient tables and a near jungle of potted palms growing out of glazed Chinese pots.
It all looked like old expensive stuff or like new old stuff that was three times as expensive. Haynes thought a fifth of the lobby must have been dipped in gilt. There was an abundance, maybe even a wealth of intricate plaster moldings. Huge milky chandeliers of the half-globe variety hung down from thick bronze chains. Haynes started to count them and had reached number twelve when the bellhop returned with his bag.
In the elevator, the bellhop boasted that the mint julep had been introduced to Washington in the Willard bar by a certain Señor Henry Clay. Haynes said he hadn’t known that.
After the bellhop was tipped and gone, Haynes discovered yet again that regardless of price a hotel room is primarily a box the bed comes in. His $145-a-night box also came with a bath, two phones, a radio, a TV set, a miniature refrigerator and a window with a view of the National Press Building across Fourteenth Street where quite a few people, mostly men in shirt sleeves, still seemed to be working.
Haynes had just finished hanging up his other jacket and his other pair of pants when he heard the knock. After opening the door he found Gilbert Undean standing in the corridor, wearing a sheepish look and the same clothes he had worn to Steadfast Haynes’s interment.
“Got a minute?” Undean said.
“Come in.”
Undean entered the room and looked around curiously. “First time I’ve been up in one of these rooms in twenty-five years. I was out of the country when they closed the place in ’sixty-eight after downtown business went to hell.” He nodded approvingly. “Pretty fancy. They claim Julia Ward Howe wrote ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ here. Or in the Willard that was here way back then. But it’s probably bullshit.”
“I sometimes enjoy bullshit,” Haynes said. “Care for a beer or something?”
“A beer’d be fine—if you’re having one.”
Haynes removed two cans of Heineken from the small refrigerator, opened both and handed one to Undean, who took a long swallow, sighed and sat down in an armchair. Haynes chose the edge of the bed.
“They heard about Isabelle Gelinet,” Undean said.
“They?”
“The agency.”
“You must be their utility mourner.”
“I’m not here to express condolences. I’m here because of that book Steady wrote.”
“What about it?”
“They want to buy it.”
“Why not just suppress it the way they did some others I can think of?”
“That’s what I told ’em. They said they can’t because, one, Steady’s dead, and two, he never worked for them. At least they can’t prove he ever did.”
“How do they know about the book?”
“Gelinet. She used it to blackmail them into burying Steady at Arlington.”
“That’s all she asked for?” Haynes said. “No money?”
“Just a plot of hallowed ground,” Undean said. “I’m quoting them. They thought they’d got off cheap.”
“Have they read it?”
Undean drank two more swallows of beer, then shook his head. “Say they haven’t.”
“But they think Isabelle’s murder and the book are somehow connected.”
“They get paid to think like that. First I heard of the book was this afternoon right after they buried Steady. I told ’em to buy it and save themselves a lot of grief. They laughed it off.”
“Why’d you tell them to buy it, Mr. Undean?”
“Because I knew Steady. Saw him operate and know some of the corners he cut, the lies he told, the deals he made, the promises he broke, the deaths he caused.”
“He killed people?”
“The things he did and the lies he told caused people to die. And those who died put the fear of God in the ones who managed to stay alive. Their minds got changed. And maybe their politics. When you get right down to it, Steady was sort of a mental terrorist.”
“My father, the mindfucker.”
“And damned good at it, too.”
“In Laos?”
“That’s where I watched him work. Even hurrahed him on some. I’ve only heard about what he did in other places, but I believe eighty percent of what I’ve heard.”
“What’s the real reason they didn’t try to buy the book after Isabelle told them about it?”
“No demand.”
Haynes frowned. “I just lost my place.”
“No demand for dog vomit,” Undean said after a swallow of beer. “That’s what they figured Steady’s book’d be and why there’d be no demand for it. Even if it got published, nobody’d buy it. But when Gelinet got killed, the price of dog vomit shot up and now they figure there must be a big demand for it after all.”
“Have they figured out where the demand’s coming from?”
“They’re still working on that.”
“How bad do they want it?”
Undean shrugged. “Pretty bad.”
“What’s your lowball offer?”
“Thirty-five.”
“And you can bump it to what?”
“Fifty.”
“Cash?”
“Any way you want it.”
“What happens to the book?”
“What book?”
“Will they read it before it goes into the shredder?”
“I doubt it. If they read it, it’d ruin their deniability. If nobody reads it, then nobody knows what’s in it and they can deny all knowledge of its contents. Then it’d be just like it was never written.”
“What if I read it before I sold it to them?”
“I’d advise you not to mention it.”
“And fifty thousand is your best offer?”
“That’s it,” Undean said. “So what do I tell ’em?”
“Tell them I want a minimum of seven hundred and fifty thousand.”
“They’ll fall about laughing.”
“When they’re finished, tell them I know where I can put my hands on enough offshore development money to produce a feature film based on Steady’s book. Tell them I’ll also direct, write and play the lead. And finally, you can tell them the name of the film will be the same as the book, Mercenary Calling.”
Undean smiled for the first time that night. “I’ll also tell ’em you look just like him.”
“One more thing, Mr. Undean.”
Undean nodded, still smiling.
“Tell them I’ve already had an unsolicited offer of one hundred thousand for all rights to the manuscript but turned it down. So if they want to stay in the bidding, they’d better start thinking in terms of important money.”
Undean’s smile broadened until he looked almost delighted. “Know what else I can say? I can say you not only look and talk just like him, you also think just like him. Except faster. And right after I tell ’em that is when they’ll start passing peach pits.”
Chapter 11
Howard Mott, the criminal defense lawyer, ignored the flashing red light that meant his telephone was ringing. With his feet up on an ottoman and the rest of him sunk into a favorite armchair, Mott was listening to the final act of Tosca on a new compact disc that magically had recaptured the voice of Leontyne Price with Karajan conducting.