“What kind of shape is Steady’s ’seventy-six Cadillac convertible in?”
“You’re changing the subject again,” Mott said, his tone suddenly wary.
“Am I?”
“It’s in perfect shape,” Mott said. “Steady babied that car, even nurtured it.”
“Where is it?”
“I had a mechanic in Falls Church go pick it up. He’s the same one who’s serviced it for the past seven years.”
“What’s it worth?”
“It’s the last convertible Cadillac made—until they started making those fifty-thousand-dollar jobs in Italy nobody’ll buy. I guess Steady’s would bring at least ten or fifteen thousand. Maybe twenty.”
“You ever ride in it?”
“Twice, and salivated both times.”
“It’s your retainer.”
“You always strike at the most vulnerable spot?”
“Always.”
Mott sighed. “Okay. You have yourself a lawyer. Anything else?”
“What’s Mr. McCorkle’s home number?”
Mott reeled it off from memory.
“May I use your phone?”
Mott nodded at the phone on his desk, then asked, “Want me to leave?”
“What for?” Haynes said as he rose, went to the desk, picked up the phone and tapped out the number. It rang three times before it was answered with a woman’s hello.
“Erika?” Haynes said.
“Yes.”
“Granville Haynes. Do you know the way to Berryville?”
Chapter 14
After the taxi stopped in front of Mac’s Place, Haynes paid off the driver, got out and held the door open for a fiftyish U.S. senator from one of the western states—either Idaho or Montana, he thought—who was accompanied by a pretty woman in her late twenties.
The senator read, classified and dismissed Haynes with a practiced glance and a nod of thanks. But the woman noticed him the way many women did—with a slight start, as if struck by the notion that he must be somebody important, famous or at least rich. But a second glance, which she now gave him, produced the usual counterconviction that Haynes, despite his looks, was nobody at all. And as always, the reassessment caused more relief than disappointment.
Haynes held the taxi door for them until they were inside, closed it carefully and, after a faint smile from the woman, entered the restaurant to keep his midnight appointment with Michael Padillo. Although now 11:58 P.M. in Washington and the rest of the eastern time zone, it was, as ever, twilight at Mac’s Place.
This lighting, or lack of it, had been chosen by McCorkle and Padillo long ago after a series of unscientific experiments had convinced them that midsummer twilight—at a certain moment not too long after sunset, but well before moonrise—was precisely what was needed to flatter the features of customers over thirty, yet enable them to read the menu without striking a match. Customers under thirty, McCorkle had argued, would regard the gloom as atmosphere, maybe even ambience.
Haynes counted four solitary males at the long bar, all of whom bore the stamp of practicing topers. At widely separated tables, two obviously married couples dawdled over coffee and dessert, as if dreading the prospect of home and bed. A pair of waiters, one old, the other young, stood talking quietly in their native tongue. Something the young waiter said made the old one yawn.
Herr Horst, his coat off, was making short work of a trout at the management table near the kitchen’s swinging doors. He looked up from his supper, saw Haynes and pointed, thumb over shoulder, to the office in the rear, then returned to the trout.
When he reached the office door, Haynes knocked, waited for the “Come in” and entered to find Padillo, in shirt sleeves and loosened tie, seated at what Haynes thought was his side of the partners desk, a pot of coffee and two cups at his elbow. Padillo indicated the brown leather couch. Haynes sat down.
“Why would anyone kill her?” Padillo asked.
Haynes said, “Where’d you first meet Steady?”
“Coffee?” Padillo said.
Haynes shook his head.
Padillo poured himself a cup, sipped it, put the cup down, leaned back in the chair, put his feet on the desk and crossed them at the ankles, revealing muted argyle socks but no shoes. “I met him in Africa,” Padillo said. “In the early sixties.”
“Where in Africa?”
“What’re we going to do—trade confidences?”
“It might be useful.”
After thinking about it, Padillo said, “Then I’ll go first and begin with Isabelle. Maybe I’ll get to Steady later. Maybe not.”
“Fine,” Haynes said.
With his feet still on the desk, his hands and forearms relaxed on the arms of his chair, Padillo, staring at Haynes, began to speak in a voice so quiet and uninflected it was almost a monotone. Leaning forward a little to make certain he missed nothing, Haynes suspected Padillo must have used that same quiet voice to tell truths, half-truths and lies to other trained listeners, and found himself wondering who they were and what languages had been spoken.
“Nine years ago this month,” Padillo said, “a twenty-four-year-old French woman walked in here and introduced herself as Isabelle Gelinet of Agence France-Presse. She said she’d been sent over from Paris to write fluff features on the presidential campaign and election. But she didn’t want to write fluff and wondered whether I could help her with advice, tips, introductions, anything. Her sole personal reference was a letter from Tinker Burns to me.”
“Not the most impeccable reference,” Haynes said.
“But an interesting one.”
“Where’d you first meet Tinker?” Haynes asked.
“In France.”
“When?”
“March of ’forty-five.”
“Was that after he parachuted in with the fifty thousand in gold that fell into the Loire and never quite made it to the Resistance?”
“One of Steady’s taller tales, right?”
Haynes confirmed the guess with a nod and said, “They send you after Tinker?”
“Who?”
“The OSS.”
“I had better things to do,” Padillo said. “But in ’forty-six in Marseilles, I believe I did bump into Tinker again and mention that the Army’s CID was getting warm, thus earning his eternal gratitude. On Tinker time, of course, eternity is about two and a half weeks.”
“That must’ve been when he joined the Legion.”
“About then,” Padillo said. “But to get back to Isabelle. When she walked in here with nothing but Tinker’s letter, it hit me that she might be more than just another kid reporter looking for the big break.” He paused. “Although God knows this town’s always had a surplus of them.”
“L.A., too,” Haynes said.
“So I introduced her to Karl Triller.”
“Your bartender.”
“And minority stockholder.”
“The one who helped nurse Steady through his fourth divorce.”
“The same,” Padillo said. “For more than twenty years Karl has studied congressional antics. It’s been a very thorough, very German study, and notice I said antics, not actions.”
“I noticed.”
“What began as a hobby turned into an informal clearinghouse of information.”
“A gossip exchange.”
Ignoring Haynes’s clarification, Padillo said, “Karl gets quoted a lot by air and print reporters, although never by name. He’s always a veteran Congress watcher, a well-informed source, or that grand old standby, the seasoned Washington observer. It was Karl who tipped Isabelle off to a couple of stories that she beat AP on and impressed her editors so much that, after the nineteen eighty conventions, they assigned her to the Bush campaign and, in the final month, to Reagan’s.”
“A couple of nice hops,” Haynes said.
“So nice that soon after the election she began getting invitations. To dinners. Embassy receptions. Various balls. Intimate gatherings of twelve in Spring Valley. Things like that. Sometimes she needed an escort; sometimes she didn’t. When she did, she usually asked me, probably because I had a dinner jacket and knew how to tango.”