Twilight at Mac's Place (4 page)

Mott, James, Lovelandy & Nathan specialized in the defense of white-collar
criminals and had grown from two to fourteen partners in less than eight years. With offices that now occupied the top three floors of their seven-story building that crouched over Mac’s Place, the firm was prospering almost indecently because of the bevy of frightened clients who had retained its costly services during the final years of the Reagan administration.

Howard Mott, one of the two founding partners, looked as if he had been assembled from mismatched parts by unskilled labor. He stood a bit under five-ten, had a long, long trunk supported by stubby legs and required custom shirts with thirty-seven-inch sleeves. For eyes he had a pair of shiny black vibrant things that glared out from deep inside the two small dark caves they dwelt in.

But most people, especially those in jury boxes, usually forgot what Mott looked like once he opened his mouth. He had a deep voice that would do anything: entreat, thunder, cajole, accuse, reason and even sing a remarkably bawdy parody of how they were hanging Michael Deaver in the morning.

Mott’s principal asset, however, was his mind, which a respectable majority of the Washington legal fraternity, not all of them admirers, agreed was brilliant.

He lived in an old three-story house in Cleveland Park with his thirty-six-year-old wife, Lydia, who was expecting their first child in July. Mott usually felt that he was as lucky as anyone deserves to be and it bothered him, although not very much, to discover he was almost envying the man who sat in the client’s chair across the desk.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t make the services,” Mott said. “But I had to be in court all morning. And I’m very, very sorry that Steady’s gone.”

“Thank you,” Granville Haynes said.

“You sure as hell look like him, don’t you?”

“So I’m told.”

“I’ve sometimes wondered how it would be to go through life with Steady’s looks.”

“It makes some people, especially women, mistrust you.” Haynes paused, didn’t quite smile and added, “At first.”

“Then it’s just like being ugly, isn’t it?”

“I never quite thought of it like that, Mr. Mott.”

After a deep sigh, Mott said, “Better call me Howard. When I’m through with what I have to say, you may want to go back to ‘Mr. Mott.’ ”

“Bad news?”

Mott leaned back in his chair to study Haynes. “Depends upon your expectations.”

“Nonexistent.”

“That’s fortunate because Steady died broke—or damn near.”

Haynes said nothing.

“His principal assets consist of the farm near Berryville and a ’seventy-six Cadillac convertible with around forty-three thousand miles on it.”

“Now comes the ‘but,’ ” Haynes said.

“A realist, I see,” Mott said with a small approving nod. “
But
the farm is only twenty acres and has a ramshackle 119-year-old house, a fair barn and two very fat mortgages. If sold, it might net twenty or even thirty thousand, once the two mortgages are paid off.”

“He left it to me?”

“To Isabelle Gelinet.”

“Good.”

“You know her, I understand.”

“Since I was three and she was four. Or maybe it was the other way around. We grew up together for a time. Playmates. In Nice. Then Steady married stepmother number two and we moved to Italy.”

“Sounds like a strange childhood.”

“Different anyway,” Haynes said. “Does Isabelle know about the farm?”

“Not from me, but Steady might’ve told her.”

“What about his debts?”

“Maybe two or three thousand around town and to American Express. Nothing major.”

“I’ll take care of them.”

“No rush.”

“How’d he live?” Haynes asked. “I mean he hadn’t really worked at anything for two or three years, had he?”

Mott inspected the ceiling. “I’m trying to decide how circumspect I should be.”

“As much as you like.”

Mott brought his gaze back down. “We did Steady’s taxes because he always said he wanted one-stop service. Our house CPA did them. Steady received a check for four thousand dollars every month from Burns Exports et Cie. in Paris. The check was always earmarked ‘For Consultative Services.’ ”

Sounding more amused than surprised, Haynes said, “So old Tinker was carrying him.”

“Out of what? Compassion? Moral obligation?”

“Tinker Burns? Not quite.”

There was a silence caused by Mott waiting to hear what Haynes would say next, and by Haynes wondering whether he should say anything. Finally, he said, “Ever hear of a place in what used to be the Congo called Kilo Moto?”

“No,” Mott said.

“It’s known for its gold mines. In March of ’sixty-five it fell to Five Commando—Hoare’s outfit.”

“The mercenary they called Mad Mike?”

Haynes nodded. “Tinker was an officer, a captain, I think, in Five Commando when it took a town called Watsa and with it the gold mines of Kilo Moto.”

“I didn’t think the Congo mercenaries would accept Americans.”

“They wouldn’t,” Haynes said. “But by then Tinker was no longer an American. After his first five-year hitch in the Legion was up, he had the option of becoming a French citizen and grabbed it.”

A practiced listener, Mott only nodded.

“Steady was also back in the Congo then—doing good works for Mobutu Sese Seko, or the Supreme Guide, as he calls himself these days. Tinker and Steady had known each other before—from Nice in the late fifties. Some people think they met in Zaire but they didn’t. Anyway, Tinker got word to Steady that he’d liberated thirty kilos of gold bars—”

“About sixty-six pounds,” Mott said.

“Right. And if you’re beginning to wonder how I know all this, it’s because I heard it through a thin wall when I was thirteen and supposedly asleep. Tinker and Steady were on the other side of the wall and well into war stories and a bottle or two of Scotch.”

“But if Tinker Burns and Five Commando were trying to dump Mobutu, why get in touch with Steady, who was, from what little I know, Mobutu’s chief image polisher?”

“You really want to discuss ethics?”

“Sorry,” Mott said.

“As I said, Tinker got word to Steady that he’d liberated the gold. He needed a way to get it from Zaire into Uganda, which is next door in case you’re a little fuzzy on your African geography.”

Mott again said nothing.

“Well, the CIA had hired some Cuban pilots to fly and fight for Mobutu. They were a hard-luck bunch who hadn’t done all that well at the Bay of Pigs, which is where they’d last flown for the agency. Steady suborned one of the pilots—he was really quite good at suborning—and convinced him to ‘borrow’ a plane and fly to Watsa. There the pilot would secretly pick up a deserting officer from Five Commando. After he flew the deserter to Uganda for debriefing, the Cuban would be paid five thousand dollars. And that’s how Steady Haynes got Tinker Burns out of the Congo with a knapsack containing sixty-six pounds of gold bars. And that’s how Tinker acquired the capital to go into the arms business and possibly why Steady received that four thousand dollars every month.”

“What happened to the Cuban pilot?”

“Who knows?”

Mott nodded thoughtfully, spun around in his chair and stared out of his corner window. His view was of some other buildings very much like his own. Over their rooftops he could watch the planes as they descended and rose at National Airport.

Still watching the planes, Mott said, “Did you know Steady’s written a book?”

He spun back around just in time to see Haynes nod. “He and Isabelle. His memoirs—or autobiography.”

“It’s copyrighted, of course,” Mott said.

“So?”

“He assigned the copyright to you in his will. Except for the old Caddy, it’s your sole legacy.”

“My own copyright. Imagine.”

“Bear with me,” Mott said. “Steady deposited a sealed copy of the manuscript with me two weeks ago when he made out his will just before he and Isabelle checked into the Hay-Adams. He said it was the only copy. Of the manuscript, not the will.”

“The phrase ‘only copy’ has always bothered me.”

“Me, too,” Mott said. “But in this case it may be true.” He paused, as if beginning a new paragraph, and said, “About thirty or thirty-five minutes before you walked through my door, I got a call from what I’ll describe as a very well connected lawyer.”

“Which means he’s an ex-what?”

“An ex-U.S. senator with a client who, he says, wants very much to buy the copyright to an unpublished work by Steadfast Haynes. Meaning, of course, that the client wants to buy and control all rights—print, tape, film, stage and so forth—to Steady’s manuscript. The senator wasn’t authorized to divulge the name of his client, but he was authorized to make an offer.”

“On something he hasn’t even read,” Haynes said.

“Exactly.”

“How much?”

“One hundred thousand.”

“Somebody wants to bury it deep.”

“Apparently.”

“Call him back and tell him the son and heir wants half a million firm and see what he says.”

“He’ll say no.”

“Then tell him the son and heir’s lined up some offshore development money and plans to write, direct and star in a feature based on his father’s unpublished manuscript.”

Mott stared at Haynes, not bothering to conceal the rapid reassessment his mind was making. “I thought you were a homicide cop.”

“I was but now I’m an actor.”

“I also believe you’re serious.”

“An actor’s job is to make you believe.”

“Steady could usually do that—make me believe almost anything. Note my stress on ‘almost.’ ”

“Then obviously I’ve inherited not only a car and a copyright but also a talent.”

“Take the hundred thousand,” Mott said. “That’s my best advice. If you try to squeeze them, you could be out a whole lot of money.”

“I already have a whole lot of money,” Haynes said.

“For some strange reason, I believe that, too.”

Mott fished a small key from his pants pocket and used it to unlock the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk. From the deep drawer he removed a package wrapped in heavy brown paper that was bound with twine. The package was sealed in three places with red wax. Mott handed the package to Haynes, who read the hand-printed label that bore his dead father’s name and Berryville, Virginia, address. The package also bore $3.61 worth of stamps. The words FIRST CLASS had been printed on the brown paper wrapping in red ink.

“He went to a lot of trouble to mail it to himself,” Haynes said.

“Check the seals?”

“Unbroken.”

“It’s one of our enduring myths that to copyright something you’ve written you have to mail it to yourself,” Mott said. “In fact, anything anyone writes is automatically copyrighted. If you want to announce it to the world, all you need to do is write the word ‘copyright’ on whatever you’ve written, followed by the year it was written and your name. Want to know anything else about copyrights?”

“That’ll do,” Haynes said.

“Then you might as well open it and take a look.”

Borrowing a pair of scissors from Mott, Haynes cut the twine, broke the wax seals and removed the brown paper that concealed a Keebord stationery box. He lifted off the box’s lid. Inside were what happened to be three or four hundred sheets of twenty-five percent cotton bond. Haynes read the first page, which was the title page, and noticed that its letters had been formed by an electric typewriter, probably an IBM Wheelwriter. He handed the first page to Mott, who read it silently:

MERCENARY CALLING

by Steadfast Haynes

At the bottom of the page was a line that read: “Copyright 1989 by Steadfast Haynes.”

“You’re sure it’s valid—the copyright?” Haynes asked.

“Absolutely,” Mott said.

Haynes read the second page and handed it to Mott. This page read:

While Mott was reading Housman, Haynes quickly leafed through the rest of the pages. Mott looked up from the lines of poetry to accept the manuscript’s third page. It read: “For my son, Granville Haynes, with faint hope that he will find it of great profit.”

When Haynes silently handed over the fourth page, Mott saw that it was numbered page one. Not quite halfway down the page and centered was: CHAPTER ONE. Below that was a sentence that read: “I have led an exceedingly interesting life and, looking back, have no regrets. Or almost none.”

Mott looked up from the page, his eyes puzzled, his mouth opened by surprise. “That’s it—the whole fucking thing?”