“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 expose, 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.”
