Haynes smiled and nodded. “Except for three hundred and eighty-odd blank pages, all carefully numbered. Of course, he might’ve written the rest in invisible ink. Maybe even lemon juice.” He held a page up to the light from a window. “But I don’t think so.” He put the page down and looked at Mott. “You’re sure about the copyright?”
“Of course I’m sure.”
“Then let’s see whether they still want to buy it.”
“You’re asking me to help perpetrate a fraud, right?”
“I didn’t say I’d sell it to them. I said let’s see whether they really want to buy it and, if so, how high they’re willing to go.”
After considering what he first thought of as the proposal, but redefined as the proposition, Mott said, “My curiosity is overwhelming my judgment.”
“Then ask for five hundred thousand and see whether their initial bid’s got any climb to it.”
Before Mott could agree or argue, his telephone rang. He picked it up and said, “Yes,” listened for a moment or two and said, “Put him through in fifteen seconds.” As he waited, he nodded at Haynes, switched on the phone’s speaker, glanced at his watch and let a tight confident smile spread across his face. When he spoke it was as if he were addressing someone sitting two feet to the left of Granville Haynes.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Senator, but I was just discussing your offer with Mr. Haynes’s son.”
“And what does the boy say, Howie?” asked a voice that, although strained through the echoing speakerphone, was still full of pleasant southern ooze. Haynes thought the accent probably had originated somewhere between Natchez and Birmingham.
“He’s quite willing to sell the copyright to his father’s work, which, incidentally, is entitled Mercenary Calling, providing a more reasonable offer is made.”
“A hundred thousand’s awful reasonable down my way, Howie.”
“Down your way, I’m sure it is. But young Mr. Haynes is from Los Angeles and quite confident he can arrange offshore development money that would enable him to produce, write, direct and even star in a feature film based on his father’s work.”
“The kid’s an actor?”
“Not only that, but he bears a startling resemblance to Steady.”
There was a long weary sigh over the speaker. “How much, Howie?”
“Five hundred thousand.”
“Any wiggle room?”
“Maybe. But not much.”
“Then I’ll have to talk to my folks to see if they’re even interested in making a counteroffer. But I won’t be able to get back to you until Monday. Okay?”
“Monday’s fine. And by the way, would you like me to make a Xerox copy for your people so they can be sure they’re not buying a pig in a poke?”
The senator exploded over the speakerphone. “No copies, goddamnit! Not now. Not ever. You got that, Howie?”
“I merely assumed they’d want to read before buying.”
When he replied, soothing syrup again flowed from the senator’s mouth. “They don’t want to read it, Howie. They just want to buy themselves a fucking copyright. That clear?”
“Perfectly,” said Howard Mott.
Chapter 7
After pleading executive stress, Padillo went for a swim in the Watergate pool and left McCorkle to interview a prospective waiter, whom he hired; anglicize the spelling of the menu’s three dinner specials; and lend an unwilling ear to Tinker Burns, who had moved from banquette to bar after his two lunch guests left.
Burns had nearly finished his third cognac and a long involved gun-running tale of how he and two American mercenaries had escaped from Enugu in eastern Nigeria in a hijacked DC-3 during the final days of the Biafran war. The names of the two mercenaries, Burns said, spelling them carefully, in case McCorkle wanted to write them down, were Guice and Spates.
“I never heard from old Spates again,” he said. “But about a year ago I got a letter—well, a postcard really—from Guice in Tijuana, where he said he’d finally found a doctor who could cure his AIDS. You think that’s possible?”
McCorkle was saved from answering when the restaurant’s door opened and Granville Haynes entered. He stood for several moments, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the interior gloom, his left hand clutching a brown paper grocery bag by its folded-over top.
“Hey, Granny,” Burns called.
Haynes crossed to the bar, nodded at McCorkle, took a stool, placed the grocery bag on his lap and examined Burns. “Are you recently returned or still here?”
“Where would I go?”
“The National Gallery’s nice.”
“Already been.”
“Today?”
“Nineteen—” Tinker Burns broke off to search his memory for the correct year, finally located it and said, “—seventy-nine, right before they junked Somoza, who I’d just done a little business with and never got paid for. But you’re right. The Mellon’s nice although I think the Louvre’s a lot nicer. What’re you drinking?”
“Beer. Where’s Isabelle?”
“She left.” Burns turned his head and called, “Hey, Karl.”
Karl Triller, the fiftyish head bartender, had distanced himself as far as possible from his only paying customer. He sighed, put away his Wall Street Journal, moved down the bar to Tinker Burns, picked up a bottle of Rémy-Martin, poured an exact one and a half ounces into Burns’s glass and said, “You just failed to make the cut, Tinker, so sip it.”
Before Burns could protest, Triller turned to Haynes and said, “Beck’s okay?”
“Fine.”
As he poured the beer, Triller said, “You’re Steady Haynes’s son, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Karl Triller and I’m real sorry Steady died and wish I could’ve made it to the funeral or whatever it was. A few years ago, right after he broke up with your stepmother, Steady and I’d close the place up almost every night and go have dim sum or ribs at this Chinese joint up on Connecticut where he claimed all the embassy staff ate. The Chinese embassy.”
“Which stepmother was this?” Haynes said.
“Letty Melon—spelled with one l instead of two like the Pittsburgh Mellons. Letty’s only medium rich, if that.”
“Then she would’ve been stepmother number four. The one I never met.”
“Well, she and Steady weren’t really married all that long. But he still took it pretty hard after they split and started drinking more than usual. I’ll say this for Steady though: the more he drank, the more polite he got to everybody.”
“The last egalitarian?”
Triller thought about that, shrugged and turned to McCorkle. “You want anything now that I’m all the way down here?”
“No.”
“Good,” Triller said and headed back to the far end of the bar and his Wall Street Journal.
Haynes turned to McCorkle. “You have a minute?”
“Sure.”
“It’s private.”
McCorkle got down from the stool. “Then let’s go back to the office.”
The office was a small room at the rear of the restaurant behind the kitchen. Before Mac’s Place had been swallowed by the seven-story office building, the room had had a window and a view of the wall on the other side of the alley. The window had been bricked up and plastered over. In its place was a trompe l’oeil view of Washington as seen from the steps of the Jefferson Memorial. The painting had been a gift from Fredl McCorkle. Padillo always claimed he especially liked it because it was the only painting from that viewpoint that didn’t have the cherry blossoms in bloom.
Another, earlier gift from Fredl to McCorkle and Padillo was the fine old partners desk, which dominated the small office. McCorkle sat at the desk and Haynes on a brown leather couch that looked as if it had been designed to encourage long naps. The rest of the furniture included some chairs, a four-drawer steel filing cabinet, a Mosler safe manufactured the same year McCorkle’s father was born, and a wall calendar still turned to December 1988.