“Nobody. But move a little north and you’ve got a number one suspect. Japan.”
“He never worked Japan.”
“Doesn’t matter. Let’s say one of the countries I’ve mentioned wants something we don’t want ’em to have. So Country X buys Steady’s steamy memoirs for seven hundred and fifty thousand, maybe even a million, and locks it away. The time comes when Country X brings Steady’s stuff out of the safe, dusts it off and offers to trade it for our yes, no or even our maybe, which could be worth billions to it.”
“What a peculiar mind you have, Gilbert.”
“Too much imagination. It’s what kept me from going any higher than I did.”
“What we’re talking about, of course, is blackmail.”
“Diplomacy’s other name,” Undean said. “But you started paying blackmail the moment you agreed to bury Steady at Arlington. And with my usual hindsight, it’s pretty obvious that Mlle Gelinet was just making a test run.”
“She’d be back for money the next time?”
“And the time after that.”
“But she, poor woman, is dead and now we must negotiate with Steady’s son.” A look of faint hope flickered across Keyes’s face. “Is it possible he might’ve killed her?”
“Tinker Burns was with him. Maybe they both killed her.”
“I really don’t like being patronized, Gilbert.”
“Just softening you up for some more free advice you don’t want.”
“Which is?”
“Walk away from it.”
“Only this afternoon you were urging me to buy.”
“That was this afternoon. If you’d’ve picked up the phone and bought all rights for twenty or thirty thousand, fine. But now you’re probably dealing with folks who can call and raise every time. You really want to go dollar for dollar against the Saudis? Japan? The Medellín cartel?”
“There are alternatives, I suppose.”
“Black-bag it, you mean.”
Keyes frowned. “Really, Gilbert.”
“I don’t want to know. But there are a couple of things you should know about young Haynes.” Undean rose and stared down at the still seated Keyes. “He looks like Steady. He smiles like Steady. He even walks and talks like Steady. But the kid is six times as smart as Steady ever was. And that’s fairly goddamn bright, you gotta admit.”
Hamilton Keyes rose, shaking his head in what seemed to be mild sorrow, much as if he had just been told of the death of a second cousin he had never met. “How unfortunate,” he said, paused and added, “I noticed that when you were reeling off that list of various nationalities who might like to lay hands on Steady’s manuscript, you steered away from one in particular.”
“Which one?”
“The Americans.”
“Like I told you, I never did understand those fuckers,” said Gilbert Undean.
Chapter 13
They ate in the kitchen of the large old three-story house on Thirty-fifth Street Northwest. Haynes had a sandwich of thinly sliced cold roast pork on home-baked bread and a bowl of interesting navy bean soup that Lydia Mott said was her own improvement on the U.S. Senate’s recipe. Haynes drank beer with the meal—his first food since the lunch with Tinker Burns and Isabelle Gelinet nine and a half hours earlier.
Howard Mott drank a bloody mary as he finished off the last slice of a lemon meringue pie. Lydia Mott ate nothing and lingered only long enough to accept Haynes’s gracious and obviously sincere compliments on the soup and sandwich.
After she left, Mott swallowed the last bite of the pie, pushed his plate away and said, “You found Isabelle?”
“Tinker found her and showed her to me when I got there.”
“Could he have killed her?”
“Maybe, if he knows how to drown somebody in a bathtub without getting all wet. I suppose he could’ve done it naked, then put his clothes back on. Providing she really was drowned.”
“What do the cops think?”
“Nothing they’re willing to share with me.”
After Haynes finished his sandwich, Mott said, “If you’d like dessert, Lydia baked some cookies.”
“No, thanks.”
“Then let’s go upstairs.”
Insisting that Haynes take the deep armchair with the ottoman, Mott sat in an old oak swivel chair that matched his equally old rolltop desk whose pigeonholes and slots were stuffed with letters, handwritten reminders, business cards, newspaper clippings, invitations to past and future events and an impressive number of bills. Haynes suspected that Mott remembered where he could instantly locate each item.
“Who was Isabelle’s closest living relative?” Mott asked.
“Her mother. Madeleine Gelinet. She lives in Nice.”
“Then she’ll probably get Steady’s farm in Berryville—or the proceeds from its sale.”
“When?”
“After probate.”
“She could use the money now.”
“It’s possible, of course, that Isabelle made out a will.”
“Unmarried thirty-three-year-olds seldom make out wills,” Haynes said.
“True.”
“I was just wondering.”
“About what?”
“Whether it would be okay for me to go up to the farm and look around. Inside the house.”
Mott seemed to take the question under advisement for several seconds before he nodded gravely and said, “Steady’s will specifies that you’re to have your pick of his memorabilia—keepsakes, souvenirs, snapshots, family Bible and so forth, although I can’t recall his mentioning a Bible.”
“There isn’t one.”
Mott cocked his head to the left and gave Haynes an amused look. “I somehow get the feeling you’re really not much interested in Steady’s mementos.”
“You’re right. I’m not.”
“What you’re really hoping to find is a true copy of his memoirs tucked away someplace.”
“Or even in plain sight.”
“And I also suspect you think Isabelle’s death is an indication, if not evidence, that such a copy might actually exist.”
“That’s occurred to me.”
“Me, too,” Mott said, nodded again, this time more to himself than to Haynes, swiveled around to face the desk, studied the pigeonholes for a moment, reached into one of them and took out a key that was attached by wire to a cardboard tag.
He swiveled around to toss Haynes the key. “It unlocks the front door,” Mott said as he again turned back to his desk, picked up a ballpoint pen and began drawing something on a yellow legal pad. “I’ll draw you a map of how to find the place after you get to Berryville.”
Haynes looked at the tag that was wired to the key with a paper clip. Hand lettering on the tag read, “S. Haynes farm, front door.” He decided to give Howard Mott an A-plus for efficiency.
Mott rose, went over to Haynes and handed him the sheet of ruled yellow paper. “Berryville has two traffic lights,” he said. “When you get to the second one, turn south, go exactly one mile, turn west, go exactly another mile and you’re there.”
Haynes examined the map for a moment or two, looked up and said, “Maybe I’ll take along a guide.”
“You don’t like my map?”
“A guide could also be a witness.”
“To what?”
“To whatever might happen.”
“You have a guide in mind?”
“Erika McCorkle.”
“Ah.”
“What’s ‘ah’ mean?”
“It means you’ll be taking along someone who knew Steady rather well, which might prove useful, and who is also attractive enough to make a pleasant drive even more pleasant.” He paused. “That’s what ‘ah’ means.”
Haynes ignored the explanation and said, “I’d like to retain you as my attorney.”
“I cost too much.”
“This would be strictly on an ‘in case’ basis.”
“In case you land in the shit.”
“Exactly.”
“That’d cost less but still too much. Go pillage some government agency for a few million, then give me a call.”