There was one light on and it came from a lamp that illuminated the easy chair occupied by Hamilton Keyes, who rose gracefully and said, “I’d almost given you up.”
“Sorry we’re late,” Haynes said.
Keyes parried the thrust with a small polite smile and said, “Good evening, Miss McCorkle.”
“I think evening’s long gone,” she said.
Keyes nodded his agreement and turned back to Haynes. “I apologize for my intrusion, but something’s come up. If I could’ve reached anything other than Howard Mott’s answering machine, I wouldn’t have bothered you.”
“Before you ask him what’s come up,” Erika said, “ask him how he got in.”
“Hotel security let him in,” Haynes said. “After he gave them a brief lecture on how the nation trembles for my safety.”
“I was rather convincing,” Keyes said as he sat back down. “And they were rather anxious not to have another dead body littering their hotel.”
Haynes turned and went to the refrigerator. He opened it and went down on one knee to inventory its contents. “Drink, Mr. Keyes?”
“Thank you, no.”
“Erika?”
“A beer would be good.”
Haynes removed two Heinekens and poured them into a pair of glasses. He handed one to Erika, who was now seated in an easy chair and separated from Keyes by the lamp. Holding his own glass in his left hand, Haynes sat on the bed, facing Keyes. He slipped his right hand back down into the topcoat’s pocket and asked, “What came up?”
Keyes tugged at the vest of his gray worsted suit that had a tiny herringbone weave. He wore a gold watch chain across the vest, but no Phi Beta Kappa key. Haynes assumed the key was lying forgotten in some top bureau drawer.
After the vest was to his liking, Keyes said, “One might say the level of anxiety came up. Or rose. We’d like to advance the meeting to ten tomorrow morning instead of ten Wednesday morning.”
“Who had the anxiety attack?”
“My betters.”
“What about the money?”
“That’s been arranged.”
“So everything remains the same—except the date?”
“Precisely.”
“Then it’s okay with me,” Haynes said. “But I may have to drive out to Mott’s and pound on his door to let him know about the new time.”
“Perhaps you could call him early tomorrow morning.”
“I’ll think about it,” Haynes said.
“Then I’ll disturb you no longer,” Keyes said, rose and picked up the navy-blue cashmere topcoat he had draped over the back of his chair. It was not quite a bow that he gave Erika. “Miss McCorkle.”
“Mr. Keyes.”
Keyes went to the door, opened it, turned once more and said, “Again, my apologies,” and was gone.
There was a brief silence until Erika said, “So what d’you think, chief?”
“He knows how to make an exit,” Haynes said, put his beer down on a table, picked up the bedside phone and tapped out a number.
Herr Horst answered with his usual, “Reservations.”
“This is Granville Haynes. Is Padillo still there?”
“One moment, please.”
After Padillo came on, Haynes said, “I have a problem.”
“Can it be solved over the phone?”
“No.”
“Then you’d better get over here.”
It took twenty minutes for Haynes, seated on the leather couch in the office at Mac’s Place, to tell Padillo about finding the true manuscript; target practice at the Bellevue Motel; the bugged Cadillac and the late night visit from Hamilton Keyes.
Padillo responded with his eyes, using them to signal interest, approval, surprise or simply, “Get on with it.” He sat slumped low in the high-backed chair with his feet up on the partners desk, his shoes off and his hands locked behind his head. Haynes noticed that his socks were again argyle, but this time they offered shades of brown that ranged from chocolate to taupe.
“You say you and Erika read it—Steady’s book?” Padillo said after Haynes stopped talking.
Haynes nodded.
“How was it?”
“It goes very quickly, once your disbelief is hanging by the neck.”
“Then Isabelle must’ve furnished the quick and Steady the embellishment.”
“If the CIA wanted to,” Haynes said, “it could safely issue the thing as the world’s longest press release.”
“They haven’t read it yet?”
“Not that I know of.”
“But they’re still going to bid for it tomorrow, unread or not?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re going to take their money?”
“Right again.”
“Then what’s your problem?”
“This,” Haynes said, reached into a breast pocket and brought out the envelope that contained the note from Tinker Burns and the memo by Gilbert Undean to his files. He handed the envelope to Padillo.
“Read the note from Tinker first,” Haynes said.
Padillo nodded and, stockinged feet still up on the desk, read the note. When finished he shook his head sadly and began the memo from Undean.
After the first paragraph, Padillo’s feet dropped to the floor and he sat up in his chair. He placed the memo on top of the desk and bent over it, elbows on the desk, head in his hands, his concentration total.
When finished, he looked up at Haynes and asked, “Anyone else read this?”
“Just you and I and Tinker Burns.”
“And whoever has the original.”
“I’d almost forgotten about the original.”
Padillo tapped the memo. “Now I understand your problem. Tomorrow you have to be in two places at the same time.”
“Exactly.”
“And you want me to be at the other place.”
“You and McCorkle.”
Padillo grimaced slightly, as if at some seldom-felt tinge of regret or even a pang of self-reproach. “I should’ve told McCorkle.”
“You knew?”
“Not when she came in. She fooled me with her frumpy outfit and that shuffling walk. But when she came out of the office, she was in a hurry, forgot her shuffle and shifted into her long athletic stride that’s hard to forget once you’ve seen it. And that’s when I knew it was Muriel Keyes.”
“But you didn’t know about the fake bomb then?”
“Not then.”
“And you haven’t told McCorkle it was Mrs. Keyes?”
“No. I haven’t told him.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe because he wasn’t hurt—except for some injured pride. Or because of my secretive nature. Or because of Muriel and me a long time ago. Or maybe I was waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“It just dropped.”
“So it did,” Padillo said and again tapped the Undean memo. “This suggests that Mrs. Hamilton Keyes walked in here with a fake bomb and out with an equally fake manuscript to save her husband’s career and her neck.”
“You believe that?”
“I don’t know,” said Padillo. “But why not let McCorkle ask her tomorrow?”
Chapter 44
At 3:21 A.M. that Tuesday, Granville Haynes left Howard Mott’s house on Thirty-fifth Street Northwest and drove back to the Willard in twenty-four minutes. At eight minutes to four he entered his room to find Erika McCorkle propped up in bed, reading a paperback novel that had on its cover a huge Nazi swastika formed out of human bones.
“Who’s winning?” Haynes asked as he stripped off his topcoat and jacket and hung them in the closet.
“The Krauts—but it’s only nineteen forty.”
Haynes removed two sheets of stapled-together paper from his jacket’s inside breast pocket and crossed to the bed. “More ancient history,” he said as he handed them over.
Erika put her book down and accepted the stapled papers without glancing at them. “You look tired,” she said.
“I am.”
“Come to bed.”