asked. “Came out two, three years back and Granny goes down into the basement of this big old house. The one in Hangingtree Lane. And there’s this fat sack of slime down there with an ax. Now, this is Granny’s first feature speaking role. So just before this guy with a face like a four-cheese pizza takes Granny’s head off with the ax, Granny gets to say, ‘Listen! Please! I’m here to help you!’ And then his head goes flying off and they cut to the corner of the basement and there’s Granny’s head, looking surprised as hell.”
“Guess I missed it,” Pouncy said. “How much you figure he got paid for doing all that?”
“Probably SAG minimum. Maybe four hundred bucks.”
“What’s SAG?”
“Screen Actors Guild.”
“He was a cop then?”
“Sure.”
“Out there you let cops be actors?”
“Lemme ask you something,” Stroud said. “If you’ve gotta moonlight, which’d you rather be—an actor or a liquor store security guard in some low-rent neighborhood?” Without waiting for an answer, Sergeant Stroud chuckled his good-bye and broke the connection.
The driver of Tinker Burns’s hired limousine had chosen Park Road as the best route to Sixteenth Street. It was nearly 8 P.M. and they were somewhere in darkest Rock Creek Park when Burns ended the long silence in the backseat. “I’ll take care of Isabelle’s cremation and funeral and everything.”
“They’ll have to do the autopsy first,” Haynes said.
“I mean after that.”
“Will the cops call Madeleine?” Haynes asked. Madeleine was Madeleine Gelinet, mother of the dead Isabelle and former mistress of Tinker Burns.
“You think Sergeant Pouncy speaks French?”
“Maybe Madeleine’s learned English.”
“Never,” Burns said. “I figured I’d go back to the hotel, have a couple of drinks and then call her.”
“Does she know about Steady?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You can tell her about him, too.”
Burns shifted uneasily in the seat, not quite squirming. “Maybe you’d rather call her?” he asked without hope.
“No thanks,” Haynes said. “She still in Nice?”
“Where else? She’ll never part with that house.”
There was another silence that lasted until they turned south down Sixteenth Street. It was then that Burns asked, “Who d’you think killed her?”
“No idea.”
“Guess.”
“Maybe a guy prowling for a TV set. Maybe the neighborhood rapist. Maybe even some weirdo who followed her home and got off on tying her up and drowning her in the bathtub.”
“They said there weren’t any signs of forced entry.”
“Forced…. entry,” Haynes said, spacing the words as if to savor them. “Let’s say he rings the bell from downstairs. Isabelle asks ‘Who is it?’ over the intercom and he says it’s Federal Express. Well, Federal Express people are about as common as mailmen. I know guys in Century City who use Federal Express to send scripts from the tenth to the thirty-sixth floor by way of Memphis. So Isabelle buzzes him up. He knocks at her door. She opens it on the chain and sees this guy with a clipboard and a Federal Express packet he’s fished out of the trash can. She opens the door all the way and winds up dead in the bathtub.” Haynes paused. “How’d you get in?”
“When I pulled up in the limo there was an old couple coming out who held the door for me. Isabelle’s door was unlocked.”
“A limo’s almost as good as being from Federal Express. You don’t expect a killer to take one to work. Although there were two guys in L.A. who used to hire limos whenever they decided to go stick up a bank.”
“Know what I think?” Burns said.
“What?”
“I think it’s got to do with that book she and Steady wrote.”
“Must be some book.”
Burns turned to give Haynes his coldest stare. “The difference between you and me, kid, is I’ve got a damn good idea of what Steady did over the years. How he did it and who to. Who paid him and how much. And last, but as sure as hell not least, who told him to go do it.”
“What about lately, Tinker? Fifteen, ten, even five years ago is ancient history.”
“You’re forgetting it’s a brand-new administration.”
“No, it’s not. It’s a succession.”
“But the guy who took the oath last Friday was DCI when certain people at Langley went after Steady back during the Ford administration. Jesus. It was like a vendetta. Let’s all jump up and down on Steady Haynes. Then it
