“Four. Five. Around in there.”
“Why so late?”
“I need coffee,” she said, turned and left the room.
The kitchen was larger than Haynes had expected and filled with intimidating German appliances that looked expensive. There was even a breakfast nook, which measured the age of the apartment and its building as surely as tree rings. To Haynes, breakfast nooks belonged to a prehistoric age of nuclear families with four or five members who sat down to breakfasts of juice, cereal, eggs, bacon and toast. Haynes thought such families to be as nearly extinct as breakfast nooks. None of the families he knew ever ate sit-down breakfasts together. Or lunch or dinner for that matter.
It took the German coffeemaker ninety seconds to produce a pint or so of coffee. Erika poured it into a pair of Meissen cups, serving Haynes first and then herself. They sipped in silence until she said, “How’d you get in—Pop give you his key?”
Haynes nodded.
“Why?”
“There was some trouble at the hotel.”
“Is Pop all right?”
“He’s fine.”
“What kind of trouble?”
Haynes told her exactly what McCorkle had told him but left out Horace Purchase’s attempt to break into the hotel room. Erika listened intently, ignoring the coffee and not taking her eyes from his face. When he finished, she leaned back against the benchlike seat and said, “This guy Purchase was after you?”
“I’m not sure. Possibly.”
“Pop shouldn’t try that kind of stuff without Mike.”
“He seems to have done okay.”
“He could’ve been killed.”
“But he wasn’t,” Haynes said, drank the rest of his coffee, then asked, “Tell me about Padillo.”
“Tell you what about him?”
“Who he is and who he was.”
“Ask him.”
Haynes smiled what he hoped was his best smile. She quickly looked away, as if to avoid it. “Was what he used to do really all that rotten?” Haynes said.
She was frowning when she looked at him again. “I can’t decide.”
“About Padillo?”
“About you. Sometimes you remind me of Mike, sometimes of Pop. But you really aren’t like either of them. And maybe that’s why I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“That you didn’t sleep much last night although I don’t understand why.”
“You’re fishing.”
“I wasn’t aware of it.”
“Okay. Here it is. I’ve decided I don’t want to care about you too much. But that’s not something I can switch on and off. And that’s why I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“I’m sorry.”
“What’re you sorry for this time?”
“For all my faults,” Haynes said.
The wall telephone in the kitchen rang. Erika reached up and back, brought it down to her left ear and said hello. She listened, said, “Hold on,” and handed the phone to Haynes. “It’s Padillo.”
After Haynes said hello, Padillo said, “You’d better stay where you are till I get there.”
“Why?”
“Tinker Burns. They found him shot dead in Rock Creek Park.”
Chapter 38
Even dead, Tinker Burns wore his dove-gray Borsalino homburg at a slightly rakish angle. He sat on a wooden picnic bench, facing out, his back propped against the edge of the tabletop. There were two small black holes in the left lapel of his double-breasted gray suit—the one with the faint chalk stripe.
A civilian Metropolitan Police Department photographer squatted in front of the dead man for a close-up of the bullet holes. Burns’s topcoat was folded neatly on the bench beside him. His hands lay palms-up in his lap. His eyes were closed; his mouth slightly open. His lined face had lost little, if any, of its old tropical tan.
