By the time Padillo arrived, McCorkle had learned that Ozella Pouncy taught music and art in a District junior high school, was an assistant choir director at her church and that there were two Pouncy children, Graham, fifteen, and Amelia, twelve.
Once the introductions were made, Padillo sat down next to Sergeant Pouncy. When Ozella Pouncy asked if he would like some coffee, Padillo smiled and said he had already reached his limit for the evening.
Pouncy leaned forward, rested his elbows on the table and dropped his voice into a conspiratorial murmur. “I could’ve called you guys with what I’m gonna say, but I figured they might’ve tapped your phones by now.”
He ended the statement with a glance at Padillo. If Pouncy was expecting a reaction, all he received was a polite nod. Pouncy nodded back thoughtfully and turned to McCorkle. “We closed the file on Horace Purchase early this evening. In fact, it was just after I dropped you off at your house with a message for Granville Haynes. He ever get my message?”
“He got it,” McCorkle said.
“Haven’t heard from him.”
“He has a lot on his mind.”
“Who closed the file on Purchase?” Padillo asked.
“Maybe you oughta be asking why, not who.”
“All right. Why?”
“Because we were told to.”
“Who told you?”
“The mayor told the chief and the chief told the captain who told the lieutenant who told me. I didn’t have nobody left to tell so I started closing it out. You’ll have to guess who told the mayor because juicy stuff like that never quite dribbles down to my level.”
“What’re you closing it out as?” McCorkle asked.
“Either self-defense or justifiable homicide,” Pouncy said. “They were still arguing about it when I got up and left.”
“It was both,” McCorkle said.
“Well, you were there and I wasn’t so I won’t argue. Besides, we got plenty of eyewitnesses who back you up. But that ain’t the point.”
“What is?” Padillo said.
“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.”
Forty-two