“Then you intend to pay taxes on it,” Keyes said.
“Disappointed?”
“Not in the least. It means we’ll be getting some of it back.” Keyes rose and handed Haynes a card. “Please ask Mr. Mott to call me at my home number once the bidding arrangements are completed.”
“Okay.”
Keyes went to the door, turned back and, nodding farewell to each in turn, said, “Mr. Haynes. Miss McCorkle.”
Erika McCorkle looked up from her crossword puzzle. “What’s a five-letter word for blackguard that begins with a k?”
“I tried ‘knave’ this morning,” said Hamilton Keyes. “And it worked quite nicely.” He opened the door and left, closing it softly behind him.
Chapter 30
Rumor insisted that it all began on a gloomy Bay of Pigs Sunday afternoon in 1961 when two depressed mid-level CIA careerists left the Old Executive Office Building next to the White House and, desperate for drink, wandered by chance into a dingy bar-cafe hard by the now demolished Roger Smith Hotel at Eighteenth and Pennsylvania.
Once inside, the careerists were pleasantly surprised to discover they could buy coffee cups of Scotch whisky in direct violation of the District of Columbia’s since-repealed Sunday prohibition law. It was shortly after this discovery that members of the capital’s intelligence and freebooter community made the scofflaw bar their unofficial rendezvous. They continued to drink, if not eat, there for nearly fourteen years until that day in 1975 when the last helicopter lifted off the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon.
The next day, as if compelled by some migratory instinct, they abandoned the bar back of the Roger Smith and trekked a few blocks farther west out Pennsylvania Avenue to another gin mill not quite opposite the now vanished Circle Theatre. And it was here, in what was always called “the new joint,” that five years later they held their notorious eighteen-hour-long postmortem on the botched U.S. hostage rescue mission that had ended with death and, some claimed, dishonor in a Persian desert.
It turned out to be less of a postmortem than a verbal brawl that began around noon and was still raging at 5:57 the next morning when Metropolitan Police, summoned by shouts, yells, oaths and the sound of breaking glass, arrived, closed the new joint down and sent everyone home in taxis.
A week after the disastrous postmortem session, they migrated yet again, this time far, far out Wisconsin Avenue, almost to the Maryland state line, where scouts had discovered a nearly bankrupt Thai restaurant called Pong’s Palace that was located in a strip mall and offered the four prime requisites: a valid liquor license, few customers, bad food and ample parking. Two weeks later, by silent acclamation, Pong’s Palace was elected to serve as the third unofficial sub-rosa watering hole.
The dark green seventeen-year-old Mercedes 280 SL turned into a parking space three doors up from Pong’s and came to a stop in front of Naughty Marietta’s XXX Video Shoppe. After the car’s engine was cut and its lights switched off, the driver’s door opened and Michael Padillo got out. McCorkle emerged from the passenger side a moment later. When they reached the entrance to Pong’s Palace, Padillo went in first.
When he opened the Palace in 1978, Pong had devoted most of its interior to a dining area, leaving only enough space for a small bar with a few stools where customers could have a drink while waiting for their tables.
But there had never been any waiting because there had never been any customers except for a few neighborhood ancients who didn’t much care what they ate as long as it was cheap and filling. Pong was seriously considering bankruptcy when the first of the scouts arrived.
The scouts were a clutch of white-haired OSS relics from the Second World War and the cold one that was its substitute. They were quickly followed by the assessors. These were prosperous-looking, gray-haired ex-Kennedy operatives, who still seemed to come in only two models, hearty or smooth.
After the assessors made their favorable report, the others descended on Pong’s. The largest contingent was composed of ex-CIA types (most of them dumped by Jimmy Carter) who, if pressed, admitted they still might be willing to do a little of this or a little of that. Right behind them came the new bunch—survivors of the longest war—whose thousand-yard stares had then been reduced by a third or even by half, and who kept asking everyone whether the jungles of Central America could really be all that fucking different from those of Southeast Asia.
Two months after what Pong and his wife always referred to as the invasion of les anciens espions, the Palace’s books were in the black. Pong quickly transformed the large dining area into a large drinking area; installed a much longer bar and fired his chef, replacing him with a microwave oven and a steady supply of almost edible frozen pizzas. He also hired his wife’s three pretty cousins to serve as barmaids. The cousins spoke little English but it didn’t seem to matter because many of les anciens espions spoke a semblance of French and a few even knew some Thai.
McCorkle and Padillo didn’t have to wait for their eyes to adjust inside Pong’s Palace, where the dominant colors were firecracker red and grass green and where it was always afternoon bright. As usual, most of the customers were intelligence types, past and present. There were also some mercenary hangers-on, hustling their suspect services. Unacknowledged accomplices were represented by an assortment of co-opted reporters and ambitious congressional committee staff members.
At the rear of the Palace two tables had been pushed together to accommodate seven men who sat, three to a side, with the seventh man at the far end, his back to the wall. The seventh man was a fortyish big-shouldered redhead whose bright pink skin and green eyes almost allowed him to blend in with Pong’s color scheme. The redhead now looked up, saw McCorkle and Padillo, and invited them over with a grin and a beckoning wave.
The noise in Pong’s was that of a cocktail party that had lasted ninety minutes too long. Padillo raised his voice to make himself heard. “We might as well start with Warnock.”
McCorkle agreed with a nod and a near shout. “I’ll pay the courtesy call.” He crossed to the bar and smiled at the small man who presided behind the cash register near the entrance. “How’s business, Billy?”
“It sucks. And yours?”
“Also.”
Billy Pong’s grin was gleeful. “We both a couple of fancy-pantsy liars, huh, Mac?”
Matching Pong’s grin, McCorkle said, “Still following Padillo’s advice—all cash, no plastic or checks?”
“What’s a check?” said Pong.
After McCorkle rejoined Padillo, they made their way past serious and even devout drinkers, some of them occasional customers at Mac’s Place. A few looked up to shoot quick baleful glances at Padillo.
McCorkle had seen these same baleful glares on other occasions although Padillo apparently hadn’t noticed—or pretended he hadn’t. The glares came from men in their late fifties and early sixties who had known Padillo in the old days and now glared at him with envy, malice and even outrage.
McCorkle interpreted the glares as accusations that charged Padillo with having stolen the secret of eternal middle age—if not of youth itself—and since he obviously wasn’t going to share his secret with anyone, the glares said he should be arrested, tried, convicted and maybe even hanged. McCorkle always thought of them as the Dorian Gray glares and noticed with some regret that none ever came his way.
When they reached the pushed-together tables, Harry Warnock, the redheaded man, stood up with yet another grin and a few happy nods of welcome. He then scowled at the six still seated men and said, “Move down, you lot, and give the new lads a place to sit.”