Keyes started the engine and said, “I haven’t the slightest idea of what you’re talking about.”
“Stick up for her then. I don’t blame you.”
With a sigh, Keyes asked, “Where to?”
“Straight out Connecticut to the District line. Makes a nice drive and ought to give us plenty of time to talk.”
“About the Undean memo,” Keyes said, pulling away from the curb. “Whatever that is.”
Haynes said nothing for nearly two minutes, then snarled his question. “Where the fuck was she Sunday morning right after the big snow?”
“It’s none of your fucking business, but she was with an old friend in McLean.”
Haynes’s expression turned sly, his voice insinuating. “Muriel a pretty fair skier?”
“She didn’t go skiing in McLean.”
“No, but she skied right up to old Gilbert Undean’s front door in Reston, didn’t she? All masked and goggled and bundled up so nobody could tell if she was male, female or in between. Undean let her in. Can’t really blame him for that since she was pointing her piece at him. They go up the stairs to his office. Maybe they talk a little; maybe they don’t. Or maybe they reminisce about old times in Vientiane when Muriel got caught fucking some woman’s husband, and how the woman got mad and shot him and then fought Muriel for the gun, but Muriel won and shot the woman dead. All that was in the Undean memo.”
“Really,” Keyes said.
“This is all old stuff to you, isn’t it, Ham? In the memo it says you were the guy who brought the money from Saigon to Vientiane that paid off the slope general who covered the whole mess up. What a nasty piece of shit he must’ve been. But it wasn’t a total loss because that’s when you met Muriel, right?”
“That’s when I met her,” Keyes said, stopping for a light at Connecticut and Columbia Road.
“Can’t be too hard to fall for a beauty who’s got sixty million bucks in the bank. Most guys wouldn’t have any trouble at all—even if Muriel is kinda weird. Take old Gilbert Undean. He was still covering up for her after all these years.”
“Covering up what?” Keyes said, sounding a bit interested for the first time.
“In his memo Undean claims the two-hundred-thousand-dollar payoff to the slope general was spook money. But it wasn’t. It was Muriel’s. Of course, that’s no flash to you since you were the bag man who toted it to Vientiane.”
Keyes frowned, looking almost puzzled. “You’re claiming the two hundred thousand wasn’t agency money?”
“Hey! I said something he didn’t already know. Lemme ask you this: Where’d you pick up all that cash in Saigon? At a bank? The embassy?”
“It was delivered to me.”
“Who by?”
“You don’t ask.”
“White man?”
“Yes.”
“You sign for it?”
“Never.”
“Well, there you go. It wasn’t agency money. It was Muriel’s. You wanta know what really happened?”
Keyes shrugged.
“I didn’t hear that, Ham.”
“I’ll listen.”
“Okay. Here’s the no-shit story. After Steady makes his deal for the cover-up with the general, he tells Muriel she’s gotta come up with two hundred K—all cash. Now, Muriel could’ve asked the spooks for it. And maybe they’d’ve come up with it and maybe they wouldn’t have. But she’d’ve had to tell ’em all about what a wife-killer she was and once they heard that, they’d’ve bounced her back home and out of the agency, right?”
“Perhaps.”
“Well, two hundred K’s no problem to Muriel,” Haynes said, recalling the information Erika McCorkle had relayed to him from Padillo. “But the slope general is an all-cash kind of guy, and there’s no way Muriel can lay hands on that much cash in twelve hours or whatever time she’s got. But Steady knows how.”
“He would,” Keyes said.
“Steady knows some three-for-two black-market guys in Saigon who’ll front Muriel the two hundred K if she’ll pay back three hundred K in a week or ten days. Well, what’s a hundred thou in vigorish to somebody like Muriel? So she says, swell, let’s do it.”
“I doubt that she said ‘swell,’ but go on.”
“Okay. She and Steady’ve got the money all lined up. But now they’ve gotta figure out how to get it from Saigon to Vientiane fast. Very fast. And that’s where you come in, Ham.”
“Steady’s choice. I suppose I should be flattered.”
“You were first pick because Steady figured that when you heard the Lamphier name, bells would go off. Cash
