“I think I saw his name in the Post,” Keyes said.
“Well, it looks like Purchase had three goals or assignments or targets—whatever. Number one was to switch my lights off and he damn near did it at the Willard. Number two: try and buy Steady’s old Caddie. Well, he couldn’t manage that, but he did do number three.”
Haynes shut up and waited for Keyes to ask what number three was. Instead, Keyes asked, “You’re quite sure Muriel hired him?”
“Who else would?”
Keyes shrugged and asked, “What was the third objective? Of the Purchase person, I mean.”
“It was kind of a fallback thing. If he couldn’t buy the Caddie, he oughta try and plant a sender on it. You know, an electronic transmitter.”
“And did he?”
“How the fuck d’you think Muriel found and shot at me out there at the Bellevue Motel where nobody knew I was?” Haynes chuckled. “Funny thing happened to that sender though.”
“What?”
“I found it and slapped it right up against the frame of some taxicab.” He chuckled again. “Must’ve driven whoever was tracking me nuts following that cab all over town and out to Dulles and everywhere.” This time Haynes giggled, hoping it would suggest neurosis.
He apparently succeeded because Keyes asked, “Are you all right?”
“Sure I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be all right?”
Keyes ignored the question to ask one of his own. “You still have a copy of the Undean memo?”
“Not of the original. What I got is a copy of the carbon and what you wanta know is how’d I get it, right?”
Keyes only nodded, not taking his eyes from the road.
“I figure Muriel found the original memo right after she shot old man Undean. But she missed the carbon. Now, who should waltz into Undean’s house two minutes later but Tinker Burns himself, the born snoop. Tinker finds the carbon under Undean’s desk blotter right after he calls the cops, which leaves him with nothing to do but snoop around till they get there. Now you gotta understand this. If the cops’d found that carbon it’d’ve been, So long, Muriel. I mean that memo really nails her. Motive. Opportunity. All that good shit. But when Tinker reads it, all he smells is money. And since he’s on her payroll anyway, he knows just which buttons to push.”
“On her payroll?” Keyes said, not trying to conceal his surprise.
“Well, maybe he was just on retainer. The senator’d hired him in Paris because Muriel’d heard rumors about Steady’s manuscript. And since Tinker was tight with both Steady and Isabelle, it seemed possible that they might let him peek at the memoirs and see if Muriel was mentioned or not. And, if so, how? You know, bad or good?”
“And is she mentioned?” Keyes asked.
“What’s that got to do with Tinker Burns?” Haynes said. “Let’s stick to him. Okay?”
“For now,” Keyes said.
“Before Tinker can even get started on seeing about the memoirs, Steady dies on him. But because he’s already been paid, Tinker flies over for the funeral and then starts snooping around, but finds fuck all—except for Isabelle’s body—until he stumbles across the Undean memo. Well, that memo is money in the bank to Tinker. The first thing he does is pay the senator a visit and put the arm on him. The senator reports all this to Muriel, who says she’ll take care of it. She and Tinker agree on Rock Creek Park as the payoff site. But there’s no payoff and it’s good-bye, Tinker.”
“You really think my wife killed Tinker Burns?”
“She’d already done two. What’s one more? Besides, who else would’ve killed him?”
“Muggers,” Keyes said. “Old enemies.”
Haynes gave him a pitying look. “Since when do muggers or even old enemies leave six or seven hundred bucks in the victim’s wallet?”
“I’m surprised that Burns wasn’t more suspicious.”
“He was suspicious, all right,” Haynes said. “How the hell do you think I got a Xerox copy of the Undean carbon? Tinker Fed-Exed it to Howard Mott in an envelope marked, ‘Don’t Open Unless I’m Dead’ or something like that. And inside that envelope was a smaller one addressed to me and marked personal, and in it was the Undean memo.”
“So what’re you going to do with it?” Keyes asked, suddenly brisk and businesslike.
“That’s exactly what I need to talk to you about. I could give it to a certain homicide cop I know, a guy named Pouncy, and he could probably nail Muriel with it because he’s pretty smart and probably a damn good digger. I even thought that you and me oughta go talk to Muriel—maybe try and talk her into giving herself up.”
“Muriel wouldn’t agree to that,” Keyes said.
“No? Well, she’s sure gotta pay somehow for what she did. I mean, you can’t murder three people and expect to get away with it. What the fuck kind of civilization would that be?”
Keyes sighed. “I have the feeling we’re talking about money now.”
“Did I mention money? Even once?”
“How much?” Keyes made his question sound old and tired.
“Well, for a million I guess I could forget all about Muriel Keyes and the Undean memo.”
“A million in the morning and another million in the afternoon,” Keyes said. “This must be one of your more profitable days.”
“It could be,” Haynes said. “Except for one thing.”
“What?”
“There’s something in that Undean memo that still itches me.”
“What itches you, Mr. Haynes?”
“Call me Granny. Well, it’s when Undean writes about how Isabelle bought it. He goes into a lot of gruesome detail. But Isabelle got killed Friday afternoon and the Post only ran a couple of short graphs on it Saturday. You know: Woman Slain, Cops Investigate. When did you hear about it?”
“I think it came in late Friday afternoon on one of the wire services. Maybe UPI.”
“But would UPI give out her address and apartment number and the fact that her wrists and ankles were tied with coat-hanger wire? Or the fact that she’d been gagged? That’s the one that really bothers me. The gag. Because she sure didn’t have one in her mouth when Tinker and I found her. So how the hell could Undean write on Saturday that she’d been gagged when the cops didn’t even know it until two P.M. Saturday when they found the gag in the trash and ran tests on it.” Haynes paused, stared at Keyes and said, “You must’ve figured out what it means, Ham.”
“Sorry.”
“Well, shit, it means Undean didn’t write the memo, that’s what.”
“Then who did?”
“The killer, that’s who.”
“Muriel?”
“You know something, I just changed my mind about Muriel. Here’s how I figure it now. If you wanta forge something with a typewriter, you gotta be careful. So I think whoever forged the memo used Undean’s office typewriter at Langley—probably used it while Undean was down at the Willard offering me fifty thou for Steady’s manuscript. I think the forger made an original and a carbon, then destroyed the original. And after the forger got through killing Undean Sunday, the carbon was slipped under the old guy’s desk blotter where the cops’d be sure to find it—if Tinker Burns hadn’t found it first. And like I said, that memo nailed Muriel for Isabelle’s murder plus all that mess in Laos. So why would she write it, much less leave it for the cops to find?”
“Finally, a good question,” Keyes said.
“So maybe Muriel didn’t kill anybody. Wonder why I didn’t think of that before? But if I’m finally thinking straight, then you’re the only one who could’ve forged that memo on Undean’s typewriter out at Langley. So I guess you killed him. And if you knew about that gag in Isabelle’s mouth, you must’ve stuffed it there, right? Either you or old Horse Purchase, who must’ve held her while you straightened out the coat hangers. Or was it the other way around? Never mind. And when poor old Tinker tried to blackmail you, what happened to him is kind of obvious. Jesus, Ham, you’re a real menace.”