Burns stopped talking and began to smile.
“That’s my taste?” the senator said.
“That’s it.”
“Mr. Burns, when I retained you for a not inconsiderable fee in Paris just before Steadfast Haynes died so unexpectedly, all I asked of you was to exploit your friendship with Mr. Haynes and Miss Gelinet—”
Burns interrupted, his impatience obvious. “And talk ’em into giving me a peek at the memoirs.”
“Exactly. But you couldn’t for obvious reasons—Mr. Haynes’s death and then Miss Gelinet’s. But now you seem to be going off on some tangent that I find alarming. Most alarming.”
“Sorry you feel that way, Senator.”
“No, you aren’t. But tell me this, and please think carefully before you do. Are you sure it was Granville Haynes and not Michael Padillo who first brought up Muriel Lamphier’s name?”
“Positive.”
“Then that suggests the memoirs really do exist and that young Haynes has read them.”
“Or that it’s what Granny wants you to think, Senator. You know, if I was Granny, I’d do just what he’s doing and try to jack up the price by hinting at how much I know. That’s what I’d do, if I was Granny. Now, if I was you, I’d call his bluff and tell him I need to read before I buy.”
“Don’t think I haven’t thought of that,” the senator said.
“Then why don’t you?”
“If I did, he’d simply threaten to send them to a publisher. And to prevent him from doing that, I’d again have to increase my bid.”
“Just can’t afford to take the chance, huh?” Burns said.
“No.”
“Then it doesn’t much matter if the memoirs are real or a make-believe because you’re still going to buy the rights for your client—whoever she is.”
“Goddamnit, Mr. Burns, I will not discuss my client with you.”
“Okay. Fine. We won’t discuss her.”
The senator took a deep breath and said, “But I think we had better discuss just what it is you have to sell.”
“Silence.”
“And how much does silence cost?”
“Not as much as you think,” said Tinker Burns.
Chapter 36
McCorkle sat in an immense wingback chair and watched Harry Warnock, the IRA deserter turned security consultant, work the lobby of the Willard Hotel. It was nearly 10 A.M. and McCorkle had been watching Warnock for an hour.
Wearing a neat dark blue suit and carrying a gray herringbone topcoat over his left arm, Warnock scanned each face as it came through the hotel entrance. McCorkle imagined a classification system inside Warnock’s head that stamped each face with yes, no or maybe. So far, there had been only no’s, except for one maybe. But when the maybe, a noticeably jumpy man in his mid-thirties, hurried over to a woman in her late sixties, kissed her cheek and called her “Mommy,” Warnock had turned away, looking a bit disappointed.
It was a few minutes after 10 A.M. when Warnock wandered over and stood beside McCorkle’s chair, looking not at him but at the hotel entrance. “I go off in ten minutes,” Warnock said.
“Who relieves you?” McCorkle asked.
“Mr. Coors. Remember him?”
“The big guy?”
“They’re all big,” Warnock said. “But he’s the one with the hint of human intelligence.”
“Now I remember him,” McCorkle said. “What happens if Granville Haynes leaves the hotel?”
“I’ve got a two-man team outside—aw, shit.”
McCorkle looked where Warnock was looking. The doors of one of the elevators had just opened and a man was hurrying across the lobby toward the Pennsylvania Avenue exit.
The hurrying man wore a dark gray suit, blue tie, white shirt and black wing tips. He was of average height, five-nine or -ten; average weight, around 155 pounds; and had fairly short hair the color of wet sand. He also had two small ears, two light gray eyes, a snub nose, an unremarkable mouth and appeared to be in his mid to late forties.
Harry Warnock turned away from McCorkle, stepped into the path of the hurrying man and said, “Hey, Purchase.”
The man called Purchase didn’t change expression or break stride. He was still twenty feet away from Warnock when his right hand darted across his stomach at belt level, vanished beneath his unbuttoned suitcoat in a cross- draw and reappeared a second later, holding a semiautomatic pistol. Still moving toward the exit, Purchase fired at
