“It was a quarter past three or a little earlier,” he said as he later recounted the incident to Padillo. “And he was in the shade and the sun was just low enough to stab me right in the eyes. So when I looked away from the sun into the shade, there he was—same tennis-pro build, same walk that makes you wonder when he’ll start tap-dancing and that same face.”
“But a face at least twenty-five years younger,” Padillo said.
“Not if you’re half blind from the sun and looking into deep shade through dirty dark glasses. So what I saw were the same moves, height, build—plus a face that shade, sunglasses and memory were adding twenty-five years to.”
“The world’s most honest face,” Padillo said.
“I always felt it was those flag-blue eyes.”
“Plus the resolute chin and that most serene brow.”
“But somehow you knew nobody could be as honest as Steady looked,” McCorkle said. “So just before you started edging away from him, he’d grin that god-awful kid’s grin that could melt rocks.”
“And also make you want to believe everything he said.”
“Another mistake,” McCorkle said. “How big a tab did he run up?”
Padillo shrugged. “A few hundred dollars that we might as well eat.” He paused, obviously curious. “So what’d you say to him?”
“Well, since I didn’t know he was dead, I said, ‘How the hell are you, Steady?’ ”
Granville Haynes said, “I’m afraid he’s dead, Mr. McCorkle.”
McCorkle put the old suitcase down, removed his dirty sunglasses, stared at Haynes and said, “When?”
“About a week ago. A stroke.”
“Then you’re…Granville, right?”
Haynes nodded. “We buried him earlier today. At Arlington.”
“I’m very sorry,” McCorkle said. “I didn’t know. I would like to have been there.”
“Thank you. Tinker Burns flew in. Isabelle Gelinet was there. And some guy from Langley.”
“I know Padillo would’ve gone except—”
Haynes interrupted him with a smile. “He told me.”
McCorkle found the smile to be an exact and uncanny replica of the one the late Steadfast Haynes had so successfully employed. “How long will you be in town?”
“A day or two. I have to see a lawyer whose office seems to be in this same building.” He looked up. “They just built it over and around you, didn’t they?”
“We were lucky,” McCorkle said.
“The lawyer’s name is Mott. Howard Mott. You know him?”
“He’s one of our landlords.”
“What’s he like?”
“I don’t know how he is on probate,” McCorkle said, “but if I ever got in a real jam, he’s the one I’d call.”
Haynes smiled his inherited smile again. “Sounds like Steady’s lawyer, doesn’t it?”
Chapter 6
Mott, James, Lovelandy & Nathan specialized in the defense of white-collar criminals and had grown from two to fourteen partners in less than eight years. With offices that now occupied the top three floors of their seven-story building that crouched over Mac’s Place, the firm was prospering almost indecently because of the bevy of frightened clients who had retained its costly services during the final years of the Reagan administration.
Howard Mott, one of the two founding partners, looked as if he had been assembled from mismatched parts by unskilled labor. He stood a bit under five-ten, had a long, long trunk supported by stubby legs and required custom shirts with thirty-seven-inch sleeves. For eyes he had a pair of shiny black vibrant things that glared out from deep inside the two small dark caves they dwelt in.
But most people, especially those in jury boxes, usually forgot what Mott looked like once he opened his mouth. He had a deep voice that would do anything: entreat, thunder, cajole, accuse, reason and even sing a remarkably bawdy parody of how they were hanging Michael Deaver in the morning.
Mott’s principal asset, however, was his mind, which a respectable majority of the Washington legal fraternity, not all of them admirers, agreed was brilliant.
He lived in an old three-story house in Cleveland Park with his thirty-six-year-old wife, Lydia, who was expecting their first child in July. Mott usually felt that he was as lucky as anyone deserves to be and it bothered him, although not very much, to discover he was almost envying the man who sat in the client’s chair across the desk.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t make the services,” Mott said. “But I had to be in court all morning. And I’m very, very sorry that Steady’s gone.”
“Thank you,” Granville Haynes said.
“You sure as hell look like him, don’t you?”
“So I’m told.”
“I’ve sometimes wondered how it would be to go through life with Steady’s looks.”
“It makes some people, especially women, mistrust you.” Haynes paused, didn’t quite smile and added, “At first.”
“Then it’s just like being ugly, isn’t it?”
“I never quite thought of it like that, Mr. Mott.”
After a deep sigh, Mott said, “Better call me Howard. When I’m through with what I have to say, you may want to go back to ‘Mr. Mott.’ ”
“Bad news?”
Mott leaned back in his chair to study Haynes. “Depends upon your expectations.”
“Nonexistent.”
“That’s fortunate because Steady died broke—or damn near.”
Haynes said nothing.
“His principal assets consist of the farm near Berryville and a ’seventy-six Cadillac convertible with around forty-three thousand miles on it.”
“Now comes the ‘but,’ ” Haynes said.
“A realist, I see,” Mott said with a small approving nod. “But the farm is only twenty acres and has a ramshackle 119-year-old house, a fair barn and two very fat mortgages. If sold, it might net twenty or even thirty thousand, once the two mortgages are paid off.”
“He left it to me?”
“To Isabelle Gelinet.”
“Good.”
“You know her, I understand.”
“Since I was three and she was four. Or maybe it was the other way around. We grew up together for a time. Playmates. In Nice. Then Steady married stepmother number two and we moved to Italy.”
“Sounds like a strange childhood.”
“Different anyway,” Haynes said. “Does Isabelle know about the farm?”
“Not from me, but Steady might’ve told her.”
“What about his debts?”
“Maybe two or three thousand around town and to American Express. Nothing major.”
“I’ll take care of them.”
“No rush.”
“How’d he live?” Haynes asked. “I mean he hadn’t really worked at anything for two or three years, had he?”
Mott inspected the ceiling. “I’m trying to decide how circumspect I should be.”
“As much as you like.”
Mott brought his gaze back down. “We did Steady’s taxes because he always said he wanted one-stop service. Our house CPA did them. Steady received a check for four thousand dollars every month from Burns Exports et Cie. in Paris. The check was always earmarked ‘For Consultative Services.’ ”
Sounding more amused than surprised, Haynes said, “So old Tinker was carrying him.”
“Out of what? Compassion? Moral obligation?”
“Tinker Burns? Not quite.”
There was a silence caused by Mott waiting to hear what Haynes would say next, and by Haynes wondering whether he should say anything. Finally, he said, “Ever hear of a place in what used to be the Congo called Kilo Moto?”
“No,” Mott said.
“It’s known for its gold mines. In March of ’sixty-five it fell to Five Commando—Hoare’s outfit.”
“The mercenary they called Mad Mike?”
Haynes nodded. “Tinker was an officer, a captain, I think, in Five Commando when it took a town called Watsa and with it the gold mines of Kilo Moto.”