Before Burns could protest, Triller turned to Haynes and said, “Beck’s okay?”
“Fine.”
As he poured the beer, Triller said, “You’re Steady Haynes’s son, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Karl Triller and I’m real sorry Steady died and wish I could’ve made it to the funeral or whatever it was. A few years ago, right after he broke up with your stepmother, Steady and I’d close the place up almost every night and go have dim sum or ribs at this Chinese joint up on Connecticut where he claimed all the embassy staff ate. The Chinese embassy.”
“Which stepmother was this?” Haynes said.
“Letty Melon — spelled with one / instead of two like the Pittsburgh Mellons. Letty’s only medium rich, if that.”
“Then she would’ve been stepmother number four. The one I never met.”
“Well, she and Steady weren’t really married all that long. But he still took it pretty hard after they split and started drinking more than usual. I’ll say this for Steady though: the more he drank, the more polite he got to everybody.”
“The last egalitarian?”
Triller thought about that, shrugged and turned to McCorkle. “You want anything now that I’m all the way down here?”
“No.”
“Good,” Triller said and headed back to the far end of the bar and his Wall Street Journal
Haynes turned to McCorkle. “You have a minute?”
“Sure.”
“It’s private.”
McCorkle got down from the stool. “Then let’s go back to the office.”
The office was a small room at the rear of the restaurant behind the kitchen. Before Mac’s Place had been swallowed by the seven-story office building, the room had had a window and a view of the wall on the other side of the alley. The window had been bricked up and plastered over. In its place was a trompe l’oeil view of Washington as seen from the steps of the Jefferson Memorial. The painting had been a gift from Fredl McCorkle. Padillo always claimed he especially liked it because it was the only painting from that viewpoint that didn’t have the cherry blossoms in bloom.
Another, earlier gift from Fredl to McCorkle and Padillo was the fine old partners desk, which dominated the small office. McCorkle sat at the desk and Haynes on a brown leather couch that looked as if it had been designed to encourage long naps. The rest of the furniture included some chairs, a four-drawer steel filing cabinet, a Mosler safe manufactured the same year McCorkle’s father was born, and a wall calendar still turned to December 1988.
“So,” McCorkle said, took a small silverish square from his jacket pocket and started peeling it open. He removed an equally small square of something that looked very much like putty, eyed it with obvious loathing and popped it into his mouth.
“I know two-and-three-pack-a-day guys who switched to Nicorette gum,” Haynes said. “They don’t miss smoking at all. I also know junkies who don’t miss heroin as long as they have an assured supply of methadone. Some of the guys on Nicorette go to two or three doctors for extra prescriptions because they’re chewing thirty or forty pieces a day, which is about the same number of cigarettes they smoked. The main difference is that cigarettes cost about nine cents apiece in California but the nicotine gum costs them forty or forty-five cents a chew.”
McCorkle, still chewing, said, “You preach a nice sermon.”
He opened a desk drawer, took out a piece of blue Kleenex, spat the nicotine gum into it, wadded the tissue into a ball and dropped it in a wastebasket. After opening the desk’s center drawer, he took out a pack of unfiltered Pall Malls, lit one, inhaled deeply, blew the smoke out and said, “I’m well aware of the surgeon general’s opinion.”
Haynes rose, crossed to the desk and placed the brown grocery bag on its top. McCorkle blew some smoke at the bag and said, “I’m fairly sure that’s not eggs, bread and the milk.”
“It’s a manuscript.”
“A novel?”
“A fairy story. Steady’s memoirs.”
“Well, he did live a full life. Does he tell all?”
“There seems to be some concern about that.”
“And you want to do what — park it here for a day or so?”
Haynes agreed with a nod, then indicated the old safe. “Does that thing work?”
McCorkle rose, picked up the paper bag and went to the safe. He pulled its door open, placed the bag inside and closed the door, locking the safe and spinning its dial. “The combination’s my birthday in case I get hit by a truck.”
“And who else knows your birthday?”
“The IRS, the State Department, the Social Security folks, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the bank, the doctor, the dentist, my wife, two or three close friends and probably any reasonably clever thief who was hell-bent on opening it up.”
Haynes nodded, as though satisfied, and asked, “Where can I find Isabelle?”
“You try the Hay-Adams?”
“She checked out.”
“What about the farm in Berryville?”
“No answer although I’m not sure she’s had time to get there yet.”
“Is that where she was going?”
“I don’t know.”
McCorkle returned to the desk, sat down, picked up the telephone and tapped out a number from memory. Haynes guessed the call was answered two and a half rings later.
“It’s McCorkle, Sid. I need our D.C. billing address for Gelinet, Isabelle.”
He put the cigarette out in an ashtray, took a ballpoint pen and a scrap of paper from the middle drawer of the partners desk and wrote down the address.
“Phone number?”
McCorkle also wrote that down; thanked Sid, the accountant; hung up the telephone and handed the scrap of paper to Haynes. “Connecticut Avenue.”
Haynes looked up from the address. “Thirty-eight hundred block?”
“You remember Washington?”
“It’s been a while.”
“Remember Taft Bridge on Connecticut — the one with the lions?”
Haynes nodded.
“It’s a little more than a mile north of the lions on the right. Anything else?”
“I need a hotel.”
“Cheap, moderate, expensive, what?”
“Different.”
“Go to the Willard. You’ll find it completely restored in brand-new Second Empire style with just a touch of Potomac baroque thrown in. There’re also some old ladies sitting in its lobby who I’d swear were sitting there when I first came through Washington in nineteen fifty.”
“I already like it,” Haynes said.
“Want me to make you a reservation?”
“You’re sure it’s no trouble?”
“No trouble at all,” McCorkle said, again picking up the telephone.
He was just putting it down a few minutes later when someone knocked twice at the door. Before McCorkle could say “Come in” or “Who’s there?” the door opened and a yellow-haired woman of twenty-one or twenty-two swept in, wearing a belted camel’s-hair polo coat and a smile that, for some reason, reminded Haynes of California sunshine on a smog-free day.
Her smile was aimed at McCorkle but vanished at the sight of I laynes. She frowned, gasped slightly — or pretended to — and said, “My God. The ghost of Steady Haynes.”
“The son,” Haynes said.
“I was very fond of Steady.”
“As he must’ve been of you, whoever you are.”
McCorkle sighed. “My daughter, Erika; Granville Haynes.”
In only two long strides she was in front of Haynes, her right hand extended. Haynes discovered that the right hand of Erika McCorkle felt strong and dextrous, as if it could change a tire or sew a fine seam with equal proficiency. She was only a few inches shorter than Haynes, and her eyes, he noticed, were a far, far lighter blue than his own. They were, indeed, almost gray.