Twilight at Mac's Place

“Never.”

“I’d call that passing strange, Michael, except you’ve been out of it for years—or so they say.”

“They’re right.”

“Well, young Horse Purchase joined the Army at eighteen in nineteen sixty-three and after they measured his IQ, which was way up there, and noticed his fine eyesight, reflexes and coordination, they shipped him off to Special Forces—poor Mr. Kennedy’s pet outfit. Horse did six years, most of it in Vietnam, and enjoyed his work. He enjoyed it so much the Army thought it’d best get rid of him. And that it did in ’sixty-nine. Horse never married. Never drank. Never did dope. But he had his trade and his trade was his life so be decided to hire himself out.”

“Who to, Harry?” Padillo asked.

“Well, he sure as shit didn’t run any ad in Soldier of Fortune, did he? But the word got around as it always does and he was choosy. Horse’d only work for those who could come up with twenty-five thousand cash.”

“I heard fifty,” McCorkle said.

“That was later. Twenty years ago when Horse was just starting out, twenty-five thousand was worth what seventy-five is today.”

“You can hire a semi-pro in this town or Baltimore for two thousand,” Padillo said. “If it’s toward the end of the month and the rent’s due, the price drops to seventeen fifty. New York’s about the same, although I heard it’s slightly higher west of the Rockies.”

“And for those prices it’s careless work you’ll be getting, too,” Warnock said. “Horse was a pro, a dedicated craftsman, and ’tis very, very lucky I am to be alive today.”

McCorkle looked concerned. “Does it hurt much when your Irish starts hemorrhaging like that, Harry?”

Warnock grinned up at him, then looked at Padillo. “So it’s who hired Horse that you want to know, is it? Well, you should be asking yourself this, Michael: Who can lay out fifty or seventy-five thousand cash for the services the late Horse Purchase was so willing and even anxious to provide?”

“Major dope dealers,” Padillo said.

“To be sure. But who else?”

“The rich—private or corporate.”

“And three?”

“Governments.”

“Ah!”

“How’d you know Purchase, Harry?” McCorkle said.

“We met but once—late in my former life.”

“Your IRA days,” Padillo said.

Warnock ignored him and went on talking to McCorkle. “He and I once held some exploratory talks that went nowhere.”

“Why not?”

“Because Horse felt the risk too great and the reward too small. But we parted amicably.”

“You mentioned governments, Harry,” Padillo said.

“You mentioned them, Michael. Not I.”

“Which governments?”

“How would I be knowing a wicked thing like that?”

“It’s your stock-in-trade.”

“Well, far be it from me to spread rumors—even about the likes of such a shit as Horse Purchase, God rest his soul. But I have heard a whisper or two about how he once did bits of piecework for the lads out at Langley.” Warnock paused to paint a coat of piety across his face. “But I don’t believe that for a minute, do you, Michael?”

“Not even for a second,” Padillo said.

Dark’s Garage in Falls Church, Virginia, had a sign inside that read: “Foreign & Domestic, The Older the Better. Ledell Dark, Prop.” Erika McCorkle read the sign aloud with obvious approval. As she read, Granville Haynes looked around the long narrow garage and noticed a Packard from the 1940s, an Avanti, a 1948 Buick Roadmaster, an ancient Citroen sedan (the getaway model), a Humber Super Snipe and a TR-3 that looked almost new.

The Cadillac that Steadfast Haynes had bequeathed to his son was being driven from the rear of the garage at a stately 2 mph by Ledell Dark, Prop. It was a 1976 Eldorado convertible, the last one made, with a glossy black finish, a black canvas top that looked new, black leather seats and what Haynes guessed to be a thousand pounds of glittering chrome. It also looked a block long.

It came to a slow stop the way a large boat might. Ledell Dark got out and removed the 6-foot-long, 2¹/2-foot-wide strip of reddish paper, ripped from a butcher’s roll, that had protected the driver’s seat. After discarding the paper, Dark stripped off his immaculate white cotton gardening gloves and stuffed them into a pocket.

A contented-looking man in his forties, Dark wore a studious, almost pedantic air and a pair of white coveralls with “The Older the Better” stitched across the back in red letters. He had the build of the average man in his forties who shuns exercise. There was a slight stoop. A bit of a paunch. And a face that Haynes classified as American-mild—except for the blazing green eyes that could only belong to a fanatic.