“The point is that they’re not gonna go after who hired Horse Purchase.” Pouncy paused, frowned and said, “And that’s why I got so pissed off, excuse me, sugar.”
Mrs. Pouncy gave him a reluctant nod of absolution.
“They just say no?” Padillo asked.
“They don’t ever come out and give you a flat no on something like that,” Pouncy said. “They say it’d be inappropriate or maybe counterproductive or even—and this was a new one on me—nugatory.” Pouncy’s smile was bitter. “Nu-ga-to-ry. Shit.”
Before Pouncy could apologize to his wife again, McCorkle said, “So you’re dropping Purchase altogether?”
“Done dropped him right alongside of who hired him. Of course, that still leaves me with Gelinet, Undean and old Tinker Burns—except Undean’s outta my jurisdiction, although me and the Fairfax County sheriff’re trading back and forth on what we got, which ain’t much. But those three are a kind of natural progression. Gelinet, one; Undean, two; Burns, three—and four could be Granville Haynes. Course, I’m not too worried about Granville because he was in homicide out in L.A. and knows how to do. But I thought somebody oughta tell him we’re nugatorizing Horse Purchase and mention that whoever hired Horse is still on the loose. That means—well, Granville can figure out what it means for himself.”
“We’ll tell him when he checks in,” Padillo said.
“When you reckon that’s gonna be?”
“We don’t know.”
“Bet I know.”
“Okay. When?” Padillo said.
“When it’s too damn late. That’s when.”
Haynes watched Erika McCorkle read the final page of his father’s memoirs and place it on the upside-down manuscript that was next to her on the bed. She sighed, leaned back into the four pillows she had piled against the bed’s headboard, locked her hands behind her head and stared at the motel room’s ceiling.
She was still staring at it a minute later when Haynes began speaking in a clipped, mannered voice whose intonation and timbre bore an uncanny resemblance to that of his dead father:
“Had it not been for certain operations I conducted at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency in Africa, the Middle East, Central America and, to a certain extent, in Southeast Asia, at least five—and possibly six—third world countries would still be laboring beneath the yokes of their Marxist-oriented governments.” Haynes paused dramatically. “My only failure was in Southeast Asia. And that was a failure of nerve. But it was America’s nerve that failed—not mine.”
Erika brought her gaze down from the ceiling, her hands from behind her head, and clapped softly three times.
Haynes grinned. “A fair summation?”
“Fair but broad,” she said. “I’ve never read such crap.”
“Maybe not such well-written crap anyway. No dull moments. Lots of action and lots of gossip. A bit of potted and easily digested history. And you get yanked from one adventure to another so fast you barely have time to wonder what happens next. Isabelle did a great job. She even made it sound like Steady when he’d had two or three belts and was feeling expansive.”
“You’re still sure she wrote it?”
Haynes nodded. “I think Steady gave her the blueprints and the specifications and she put it together. Didn’t you notice the wire service urgency? Short punchy sentences with no more than two of them to a paragraph. All villains clearly defined, labeled and outnumbering our paramount hero—Steady, of course—by ten to one. But what’s especially clever is the way the CIA comes across as a bumbling, if benevolent, think tank staffed by nice tweedy chaps who smoke pipes and twinkle a lot. Twenty thousand Allen Dulleses guarding the Republic night and day. Wonderful.”
“That the Dulles they named the airport after?” she asked.
“That was John Foster, his brother and also secretary of state under Eisenhower. Allen was Director of Central Intelligence.”
“Now I remember.”
“Sure you do.”
“Well, it’s no steamy exposé, is it?”
“No.”
“Then how could the CIA object?”
“They couldn’t. That’s the point.”
“Of what?”
“Of Steady’s very long, very elaborate joke.”
“You sound relieved.”
“Wouldn’t you be if you discovered your father was a prankster instead of a blackmailer?”
“Not if his pranks got three people killed.”
“Four—counting Horace Purchase.”
“Okay. Four. But if Steady’s memoirs are some kind of never-ending practical joke, wouldn’t a lot of his satisfaction have come from making sure the CIA knew the joke was on them?”
“Sure. It would’ve come from that. And from the money. Don’t ever forget the money.”
“The money turns him into a con artist instead of a prankster.”
“Still better than a blackmailer.”
“So when was the CIA supposed to find out they were the butt of a joke?”
“After they paid Steady the money not to publish. And after they read the manuscript that he’d sent them to make sure they knew what they’d paid to suppress.”
“And learned they’d been had.”
Haynes looked thoughtful and, for the first time, a little sad. “He must’ve had it all planned out—everything except the part about his death.”
“His and the others,” she said, sat up and swung her feet to the floor. “Okay. Now what?”
“Now we go see Howard Mott, stash the car with him and figure out some way to get what Steady wanted.”
“The last laugh—or the money?”
Haynes grinned his inherited grin. “I don’t know yet,” he said. “Maybe both.”
Chapter 42
The first shot sounded like a stout stick being snapped in two. Haynes classified the weapon as a .22-caliber rifle and guessed the shooter to be at least fifty yards away because he heard the shot an instant after the round buried itself in the motel room door.
Haynes spun away from the door he had just closed and tackled Erika McCorkle from the rear, dumping her onto the walk in front of the old Cadillac’s grille. She lost her canvas overnight bag and it skidded beneath the car.
Still half lying on her, Haynes turned his head to stare up at the bullet hole just as another round smacked into the room’s door three inches to the left of the first one. The sound of the snapped-in-two stick again came a split second later.
A third shot took out the light above the motel room door. It was as if the shooter needed to prove that the first two rounds hadn’t been misses, but marksmanship. Haynes slipped McCorkle’s borrowed revolver from his topcoat pocket, crawled off Erika and wormed his way to the left side of the car where he peered around the front tire—the one that had replaced the flat.
As Haynes peered around the tire toward the top of the motel’s U, he glimpsed a dark blue or black sedan speeding off into the night. Haynes rose, stuck the revolver back into his topcoat and helped Erika to her feet. Her mouth was open as she tried to suck great gobs of air into her lungs.
“You hyperventilating?”
She shook her head and kept on gasping.
“I can go get that sack the food came in and you can breathe into that.”
She shook her head again, even more vigorously, and said still gasping, “Nobody—ever shot—at me—before.”
“The shooter’s gone,” he said.
“You sure?”
Haynes nodded. “He wasn’t shooting at us. He was shooting at the door and the light. He hit both.”
“Oh, shit, I’ve never been so scared.”
“You were supposed to be. How is it now?”
“I’m still shaking.”
“I mean your breathing.”
“It’s okay.”
“Then let’s go see Mott.”
“And where the hell can we go after that?”
“How do you feel about Baltimore?” Haynes said.