“I bet,” Pall said, frowned and asked, “You claim Steadfast Haynes never worked for us officially and was always paid in either cash or gold, right?”
Keyes nodded.
“Well, if there’s no record, why don’t we just say we never heard of the son of a bitch?”
“Because I must assume that Steady had acquired proof to the contrary.”
An almost wistful note crept into Pall’s voice when he asked, “Isn’t it possible that the Haynes stuff isn’t nearly as bad as you think?”
Keyes conceded the point with a nod, then promptly obliterated his concession. “You can probably measure the damage it could cause by the one-hundred-thousand-dollar price somebody’s apparently willing to pay for it. Then there’s Steady’s rather curious behavior just prior to his death.”
“Curious how?”
“He reserved a room at the Hay-Adams for the next three months and was all over town, calling in old markers to get himself a permanent seat at the North trial.”
“Jesus,” Pall said.
“Of course, it could’ve been mere advertising.”
“For what?”
Keyes shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe his manuscript. Or he even may have been hinting that he knew something awfully juicy about North, Poindexter and company — or perhaps about other White House residents, past and present, whose names needn’t be mentioned.” Keyes paused. “Unless you want me to, of course.”
Pall swiveled away from Keyes to stare at the top left corner of the room behind the desk. Still staring, he said, “The Haynes kid turned down your offer of fifty K and that other so-called offer of a hundred K. So what’s his asking price?”
“I understand it to be seven hundred and fifty thousand.”
Pall spun around to face Keyes. “Buy ’em.”
“The memoirs?”
Pall nodded.
“With what?”
“With any currency he wants, in any bank he chooses.”
“You’ll arrange the money,” Keyes said and succeeded in not making it a question.
Pall again nodded.
“But suppose,” Keyes said, “just suppose that the memoirs turn out to be nothing more than a rehash of wicked deeds done long ago and very far away — in the Congo, for instance?”
“You believe that?”
“No, but it remains a possibility.”
“Buy ’em,” Pall said again. “Once they’re bought, you get a ten percent finder’s fee. Seventy-five thousand bucks, cash in hand.”
Keyes sighed and looked away as if faintly embarrassed.
“This is extremely awkward, but I do feel I should mention that my wife is rather rich and awfully generous.”
It took a moment or two for Pall to erase his surprised look and replace it with a knowing gray smile. “I get it. You want your old job back.”
“Not really.”
“Then what?”
“Ambassador.”
First came a pained expression, then a sigh and, finally, the question. “Where?”
“I rather fancy the Caribbean.”
“The Caribbean,” Pall said, staring at Keyes with a mixture of wonder and dislike. “Okay. You’ve got it. But let me spell out what else you’ve got. And that’s exactly one week to get ahold of the Haynes memoirs. If you’ve got ’em by then, we’ll announce your nomination as ambassador to the democratic island republic of Rumandsun or some such.”
Pall fell silent for a moment, leaned forward, bared most of the light gray teeth in a snarling smile and said, “But if you haven’t got ahold of ’em by then, we’ll leak it that you’ve been fired from the agency for gross incompetency or worse. Probably a lot worse.” He paused to let the awful smile vanish. “Did I make all that clear?”
“Yes, I do believe you did,” said Hamilton Keyes.
Twenty
Erika McCorkle gave up eighteen miles out of Berryville when she saw the Tall Pine Motel’s blue neon vacancy sign winking at her through the snowfall.
She and Granville Haynes had left his dead father’s farm shortly before 5 P.M. It was now 6:07 P.M. and dark, but they had managed to drive only eighteen miles, their progress impeded first by the snow, which gave no sign of letting up, and then by four wrecks, the last a Chevrolet pickup that had spun out on a curve and flipped over, killing its fifty-two-year-old driver and his thirty-seven-year-old girlfriend.
Haynes and Erika McCorkle reached this fourth accident just after state troopers had set out warning flares. Two patrol cars, bar lights flashing, aimed their headlights at the wreck. Haynes rolled down his window and talked to one of the troopers briefly while waiting for him to wave them on. When the trooper did, Haynes stared at the dark pool beneath the upside-down pickup and decided it was blood and not engine oil after all.
As the Cutlass slid to a stop on the packed snow in front of the Tall Pine Motel office, Erika McCorkle said, “See if you can get two rooms. If not, try for twin beds. But if all they have left is a double bed, we can work it out.”
“There’s nothing to work out,” Haynes said.
“Like hell.”
“If there’s only one bed,” he explained, “I’ll sleep in it. You’re welcome to join me, of course. But if you feel that’s too intimate, there’s either the floor or the bathtub.”
“Just get the room, prince, before a two-man line forms with you at the end.”
Haynes got out, brushed snow and ice off the car’s Virginia license plate, memorized the number and entered the motel office. He came out five minutes later, carrying a paper sack full of something. Back in the car with the sack on his lap, he said, “We got the last room left — down at the end on your right.”
“Twin beds?” she asked as she put the car into reverse and backed up.
“I didn’t ask.”
They drove to the room in silence. The Tall Pine Motel formed a curve that bowed back from the highway. There were eighteen units, nine on each side of the office. The motel was built of used brick and covered with a sharply pitched shake-shingle roof. Each unit had a window, a door and space for a single car. Haynes looked for the tall pine but couldn’t find it and blamed his failure on the snow.
After she pulled to a stop in front of their room, Erika McCorkle ended the silence with a question: “What’s in the sack?”
“Dinner,” Haynes said. “Four Cokes, two Baby Ruths, four almond Hersheys and four packets of things that look like peanut butter between Ritz crackers.”
“Those peanut butter things aren’t bad,” she said.
Erika McCorkle came out of the bathroom after a ten-minute shower, wearing her camel’s-hair polo coat as a robe. Haynes sat near the double bed in one of the room’s two chairs, watching a rerun of The Scarecrow and Mrs. King.
Erika McCorkle stood, watching the program and running a comb through her damp hair. When a commercial came on she said, “I never understood the premise of that show.”
“James Bond meets Erma Bombeck.”
“Let’s eat,” she said.
She traded him her Baby Ruth for one of his almond Hersheys because she said Baby Ruths always tasted like Ex-Lax. They divided the packets of peanut butter and Ritz crackers evenly, washing everything down with Coke. They ate and drank in silence, Haynes in his chair, Erika McCorkle now on the bed, leaning against its headboard.
After another commercial came on she said, “You watch TV a lot?”
“No. Do you?”
“I like disaster reruns. A president or a premier gets shot. A shuttle blows up. A crown prince falls off his horse. A cardinal checks into Betty Ford’s. Why accept substitutes when you can watch the real thing?”
“You may have a point,” Haynes said, leaned forward and switched off the set.
She finished the last of her Coke, carefully crushed the can, aimed it at the wastebasket, made the shot and said, “When you were a cop, did it ever happen to you — the real bad shit?”