“Favorably?”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. It was all about how Steady saved the neck of some young spook who made a real bad mistake. Tragic’s what they called it. And how Steady flip-flopped it to make it look like something else altogether. The young spook’s name was Lamphier and the reason I remember it now is because I asked them if that was Lamphier like in Crown-Lamphier glass and they said yes. And because they also said the spook was a she instead of a he.”
Burns stopped talking and began to smile.
“That’s my taste?” the senator said.
“That’s it.”
“Mr. Burns, when I retained you for a not inconsiderable fee in Paris just before Steadfast Haynes died so unexpectedly, all I asked of you was to exploit your friendship with Mr. Haynes and Miss Gelinet—”
Burns interrupted, his impatience obvious. “And talk ’em into giving me a peek at the memoirs.”
“Exactly. But you couldn’t for obvious reasons — Mr. Haynes’s death and then Miss Gelinet’s. But now you seem to be going off on some tangent that I find alarming. Most alarming.”
“Sorry you feel that way, Senator.”
“No, you aren’t. But tell me this, and please think carefully before you do. Are you sure it was Granville Haynes and not Michael Padillo who first brought up Muriel Lamphier’s name?”
“Positive.”
“Then that suggests the memoirs really do exist and that young Haynes has read them.”
“Or that it’s what Granny wants you to think, Senator. You know, if I was Granny, I’d do just what he’s doing and try to jack up the price by hinting at how much I know. That’s what I’d do, if I was Granny. Now, if I was you, I’d call his bluff and tell him I need to read before I buy.”
“Don’t think I haven’t thought of that,” the senator said.
“Then why don’t you?”
“If I did, he’d simply threaten to send them to a publisher. And to prevent him from doing that, I’d again have to increase my bid.”
“Just can’t afford to take the chance, huh?” Burns said.
“No.”
“Then it doesn’t much matter if the memoirs are real or a make-believe because you’re still going to buy the rights for your client — whoever she is.”
“Goddamnit, Mr. Burns, I will not discuss my client with you.”
“Okay. Fine. We won’t discuss her.”
The senator took a deep breath and said, “But I think we had better discuss just what it is you have to sell.”
“Silence.”
“And how much does silence cost?”
“Not as much as you think,” said Tinker Burns.
Thirty-six
McCorkle sat in an immense wingback chair and watched Harry Warnock, the IRA deserter turned security consultant, work the lobby of the Willard Hotel. It was nearly 10 A.M. and McCorkle had been watching Warnock for an hour.
Wearing a neat dark blue suit and carrying a gray herringbone topcoat over his left arm, Warnock scanned each face as it came through the hotel entrance. McCorkle imagined a classification system inside Warnock’s head that stamped each face with yes, no or maybe. So far, there had been only no’s, except for one maybe. But when the maybe, a noticeably jumpy man in his mid-thirties, hurried over to a woman in her late sixties, kissed her cheek and called her “Mommy,” Warnock had turned away, looking a bit disappointed.
It was a few minutes after 10 A.M. when Warnock wandered over and stood beside McCorkle’s chair, looking not at him but at the hotel entrance. “I go off in ten minutes,” Warnock said.
“Who relieves you?” McCorkle asked.
“Mr. Coors. Remember him?”
“The big guy?”
“They’re all big,” Warnock said. “But he’s the one with the hint of human intelligence.”
“Now I remember him,” McCorkle said. “What happens if Granville Haynes leaves the hotel?”
“I’ve got a two-man team outside — aw, shit.”
McCorkle looked where Warnock was looking. The doors of one of the elevators had just opened and a man was hurrying across the lobby toward the Pennsylvania Avenue exit.
The hurrying man wore a dark gray suit, blue tie, white shirt and black wing tips. He was of average height, five-nine or — ten; average weight, around 155 pounds; and had fairly short hair the color of wet sand. He also had two small ears, two light gray eyes, a snub nose, an unremarkable mouth and appeared to be in his mid to late forties.
Harry Warnock turned away from McCorkle, stepped into the path of the hurrying man and said, “Hey, Purchase.”
The man called Purchase didn’t change expression or break stride. He was still twenty feet away from Warnock when his right hand darted across his stomach at belt level, vanished beneath his unbuttoned suitcoat in a cross-draw and reappeared a second later, holding a semiautomatic pistol. Still moving toward the exit, Purchase fired at Warnock. The round struck Warnock’s left side and knocked him halfway around.
Purchase broke into a trot that carried him past the still seated McCorkle. Without weighing the possible consequences, McCorkle stuck out his long right leg and tripped Purchase, who went into an awkward, stumbling fall. If he had dropped the pistol, he could have broken the fall with both hands. But he didn’t drop it and wound up sprawled on the marble floor, his right hand still clutching the gun.
McCorkle, now on his feet, slammed one heel down on the gun hand. Purchase grunted and released the pistol. McCorkle kicked it away, turned back and kicked Purchase in the face. The kick made Purchase grunt again.
McCorkle hurried toward Warnock, who, down on knees, was pressing his left side with his left hand just below the rib cage. His right hand held a revolver that McCorkle thought might be a five-shot Smith & Wesson.
McCorkle was ten feet away when Warnock roared, “Behind you, damnit!”
McCorkle spun around. Purchase was in a seated position and bleeding from his mouth and nose. His knees were up, as was his right pants leg, which revealed a black ribbed sock and an empty ankle holster. Purchase used both hands to aim a very small semiautomatic at McCorkle. Automatically classifying the small gun as a .22 caliber, McCorkle made a desperate side-hop to his right, alarmed and dismayed by the way the gun followed him, as if it were just waiting for him to land.
Purchase’s left eye disappeared with a bang. McCorkle, at the end of his hop and suffering from terror-induced detachment, tried to decide whether he had heard the gunshot before or after the left eye disappeared. He was still trying to decide when Purchase seemed to melt onto the marble floor of the lobby where he lay, dead or dying, in a small puddle of urine and blood.
Then the shouts began. One man cursed monotonously. A woman decided to scream. A pair of hotel security men, guns drawn, rushed up to the still kneeling Warnock, who snarled something that made them put away their guns, help him to his feet and into a chair. A few gawkers, mostly men, slowly circled the dead Purchase, staring down at him with morbid fascination.
Once seated in the chair, Warnock grimaced, looked around, located McCorkle and nodded toward the elevators. McCorkle hurried into one of them and, as its doors closed, lit a Pall Mall cigarette with hands that he suspected might never stop trembling.
McCorkle pounded on the door of Granville Haynes’s room until a man’s muffled voice demanded. “Who is it?”
“McCorkle.”
“You alone?”
“Christ, yes.”
“Prove it.”
“Open the door.”
“Not yet.”
“Then how the hell do I prove it?”