by David Stukas
Gorski and Monette helped Marc get fitted into his body armor suit, over which they had Marc wear a long-sleeved shirt.
“This will stop anything,” Gorski said, smiling at the genius of its inventor. “I took a bullet once wearing one of these. Kicked me back a few feet, but I survived. I was bruised for a month, but these babies work like a charm.”
Kicked me back a few feet, I thought. I pictured Marc taking a bullet from a faceless assassin and flying through the air like a stuntman in an action picture. Unfortunately, there were no wires involved in this stunt, and this was something the stuntmen’s union would never agree with.
I was scared shitless—a fact that I shared with Marc.
“How do you think I feel?” Marc said, grinning. “I just don’t want to crap my pants, because I’m afraid I’ll explode in this suit. I’m afraid I’ll pepper the house with shrapnel.”
He was being so brave.
“Listen, this is something I have to do—for Rex and Leo. Rex could be a real prick sometimes, but he took me under his arm and gave me a job and taught me a lot. And Leo, well, he was just a good guy. I have to do this for them. And you know, it’s bigger than even that. I’m standing up for those who refuse to be frightened by others; I’m going to make this Red Party a success. For Rex and Leo, yes, but for me too. To show to myself that I can do it.”
And just like that, I saw in Marc something that was more admirable than the daring architecture of his house, the way he took command of the Red Party all by himself, or the fact that he still had the original album of Petula Clark’s Greatest Hits. No, Marc had become heroic right in front of my eyes. He was going to prove to himself that he could do the impossible. It was an idea that appealed to me more than life itself.
Monette approached the two of us.
“You ready?” she asked.
“Yes, yes, I am,” Marc said, pulling himself up to all five feet eleven inches.
To me, however, he stood much taller than that. In a room filled with a six-foot-four-inch lesbian, Sergeant Gorski, and several burly policemen, he looked like he could pierce the clouds.
Monette took him into the study and counseled Marc on what he was going to do. I stayed a safe distance away, not wanting to disturb Marc’s concentration. After an eternity went by, Marc rose and went to the phone. Monette and Gorski motioned for everyone to remain quiet.
Marc dialed the phone.
“It’s Marc. Marc Baldwin.... Yes, that Marc Baldwin. I’m calling because I know you killed Rex Gifford. But that wasn’t enough, was it? You killed Leo, too, didn’t you? I know all about how you called Rex from Leo’s party. Yeah, called from a phone in Leo’s house the night of the party. You lured him up here to my house, took the money, and pushed him into my pool. Then you threw an electric cord into the pool.... Fuck you! ... No, you listen to me, you fuck-wad. And I saw how you poisoned Leo’s protein powder the night of Leo’s party. I know you talked to Leo at the party and asked him about his workout routines.... How do I know? He told Robert, my boyfriend, that someone else asked him about his nutrition program at the party. That person was you.... Yeah, well, I am pretty smart. I knew what you were up to, so I watched you as you put the poison in Leo’s protein powder, knowing that he wouldn’t drink it until the next day.... Huh! I also know that you sent the threatening letters. You cut them out of some of your magazines—you know, the ones that have the glossy, expensive paper.... Oh, don’t fuck with me, asshole! You have those magazines because you use ‘em in your line of work! ... Oh really! You’re a pretty sloppy killer, you shit-head; you left a telltale clue that night on Hillview Road.... Uh-huh ... That’s right! Before the auto hit the embankment. You’re not a very good shot are you? Or are you? ... What? ... The cops? No, they couldn’t find their asses to wipe ’em,” Marc, said, winking at the five of us standing there. “What do I want? Boy, you aren’t very smart, are you, dick-wipe? I want money! You come over here and bring one-point-five million with you, chowderhead. You can keep the rest. After all, you did the murders yourself; consider that your pay.... No . . . no ... the cops aren’t here anymore. They think the killings have stopped, so they dropped the twenty-four-hour protection.... No, there’s no one here.... What!? ... Do you think I’m stupid? I’ve busted my ass for T-Rex and Rex gave me squat for all my hard work! So now I’m going to get my fair share for all my work, and you’re going to give it to me. It’s a far cry more than I would have made working for that prick. So get your pretty ass over here pronto and give me the money I earned!”
He slammed down the phone and looked at our crew.
“How did I do?” he asked.
“Perfect,” Gorski answered. “Now we wait.”
Everyone took their positions as darkness worked its way into the valley, leaving everything in its inky blackness. Gorski oiled the hinges on the door leading to Marc’s walk-in pantry (so it wouldn’t squeak, Gorski informed us) and Monette, Gorski, and I got inside, leaving the door open a crack. The other cops went somewhere inside the house, and one went out the front door and disappeared into the night.
And we waited. It was dead quiet for a long time as we huddled in the pantry. There was the boom-boom of a car stereo that passed by outside, then faded away like a radio going dead.
Gorski’s walkie-talkie squawked suddenly, scaring Monette and me with its outburst.
“Car pulling into driveway. This is it, everyone!” a voice said on his walkie-talkie.
Gorski reached around and turned a switch on the communicator, and the device went silent with a static click.
Marc left the kitchen and disappeared. He must have switched on his stereo, because we could hear music thumping from the living room. And then the doorbell chimed. My pulse raced as I heard Marc open the front door, exchange some muffled words with the killer, and close the door. I heard footsteps on the polished concrete floor and saw two forms enter the kitchen.
“I’m so glad you could come over on such short notice, Colorado,” Marc said coldly.
“You didn’t give me any alternatives, did you?” Colorado shot back—not literally.
“I see you brought the money. Good. You had me stumped for a while there. But the magazines you used to send the threatening letters gave you away. They came from World of Interiors, didn’t they? That’s a very expensive paper they use.”
“What are you, some kind of cop?” Colorado asked.
“No, I just have my sources.”
“But you’re wrong about all the letters. I only sent them to myself, you, and Leo. Rex sent the first few to himself.”
“To himself?” Marc wondered.
“Yes, your fucking prick of a boss had terminal pancreatic cancer. He found out almost a year ago. So he hatched a plan where he’d make it look like someone was going to stop the Red Party unless he paid up. The White Party people had nothing to do with any part of it, but Rex made it look like they did.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Yes, so Mr. T-Rex decided to rip off his own company to get his hands on everyone’s money by making it look like he went to pay off his tormentors. He planned to abandon his car on a side road and disappear, making his way across the border to Mexico, where he’d fly to Uruguay and live the last days of his life.”
“But you found out about Rex’s plans, probably by snooping around his office, and you told him you’d tell the police if he didn’t meet you—at my house,” Marc deduced.
“Very good, Markie, baby. I called him on his cell phone from Leo’s bedroom and told him I was on to him.”
“But why kill Leo? He never hurt you.”
“I needed to keep the finger of blame pointing at the White Party people. Kip, Martin, Brian—it didn’t matter. All of them had enough motive to threaten Rex.”
“But they never did, did they?”
“No.”
“So why stage the accident with your car?”
“I thought you were the smart one, Marc,” Colorado snapped. “As a victim,
no one would consider me a suspect. I was just like you—out of the running. And just to make sure I was in the clear, I planned that accident so I’d be in the hospital and beyond suspicion.”
“I figured that out already,” Marc admitted falsely. “You drove up Hillview Road, knowing it was deserted. You shot out your own windshield, then drove a short distance down Highway 111 and swerved off the road and into the wash, knowing that your air bag would save you. After all, you can’t drive far with a shattered windshield before someone notices, so I figured the spot where you shot out your windshield couldn’t be far from your accident. That’s where I went looking for shattered glass, and I found it. Very good. You were a perfect victim.”
“Like you’re about to be,” Colorado remarked with an icy coldness that sent chills down my spine.
I couldn’t see everything from my vantage point crouching beneath Sergeant Gorski (a position that I found strangely erotic), but I could catch glimpses through the slit of light that entered the pantry. Colorado had a gun and was brandishing it about.
“How stupid do you think I am, Markie? Did you think I was going to go to all this trouble and let you come in and walk away with most of it? This is where you finally get yours.”
A lot happened in the next few nanoseconds. I could actually hear the sergeant’s lungs fill quickly with air, readying his body for action. At the same time, I prepared to spring out the door and tackle Colorado myself—that is, if Michael Stark hadn’t entered the kitchen door behind Colorado.
“What the fuck is going on here?” Michael asked, suddenly coming out of the blue, startling even me in the safety of the pantry.
Colorado spun 180 degrees to face Michael. As he did, both Sergeant Big Arms and I shot out of the pantry at the same time, tripping each other and collapsing in a pile like a third-rate circus act. Behind me, Monette burst out of the pantry and delivered a gut-wrenching kick to Colorado’s groin, sending him down like a sack of potatoes. Like a person who had done this every day of her life, she calmly stepped on his hand and lifted the gun from his limp digits, holding it carefully to avoid putting her fingerprints on it.
Michael, who was clearly impressed by what he had just seen, shook his head and put his hands in his hips. “Huh . . . and I thought I was the one out having all the fun,” he snorted.
Several hours later, we were all gathered at Clifford and Grayson’s house, recounting the high-voltage evening we had all just been through.
“Thank you so much for having us over so late . . . and for fixing this magnificent dinner,” I said.
“After what you’ve been through,” Grayson said, snapping his napkin in the air to release it from the swan it had been folded into, “Clifford and I thought you could use a little celebration dinner. Clifford, could you open the champagne?”
Clifford, the cute but libidinous grandfather, got up and uncorked a bottle of champagne, the cork flying across the room and hitting a porcelain Russian wolfhound that stood guard at the entrance to the dining room, separating its right ear from its head with a clean cut.
“Oops!” Clifford exclaimed.
Grayson rolled his eyes. “Merv Griffin gave us that,” he confided to us in a whisper, not wanting to upset Clifford. “Oh, well, life is precarious, I suppose. So, tell me, Monette, apparently you were the first to get to the root of this affair.”
“Affair.” I thought the word was a little underwhelming in comparison to what had actually happened, but like many things in life, I let it slide.
Monette, who loved to be onstage almost as much as Michael—almost, I said—brightened whenever her talent was recognized.
“The clue that tipped me off was in the notes,” she started.
“Monette,” I interrupted, “I have been over those notes a hundred times, and I still don’t see what was so telling. I read the words backwards; I looked at the colors of the letters, how they were combined, everything. And I turned up a great big nothing.”
“And you call yourself a writer,” she shamed me ever so gently.
“I work in advertising, Monette. What I do is prostitution, not writing. Plus, what does that have to do with the letters?”
Grayson added, “Monette, dear, I looked the letters over all day and I didn’t see anything amiss about them, either.”
Monette smiled her Cheshire-cat smile. “I spotted the difference even before the forensic department noticed that the letters came from two dissimilar magazines—which isn’t a good clue in and of itself. Perhaps the killer just changed magazines.”
“And . . .?” I pleaded.
“The letters sent to Rex had no punctuation in them between sentences. Not even commas. The ones sent to Leo, Marc, and Colorado did. No one changes their grammatical style like that. Punctuation is so ingrained in people, they follow a certain style whether they realize it or not. It’s almost subconscious. So I knew we had two people involved. Then, when Marc and Robert and I were all watching a bad made-for-TV movie about Jackie O, we discovered that it was a multipart movie. Eureka! I thought; that’s what was going on here. Plus, we discovered that for a while, Rex had the only subscription to Party Production magazine, which would have meant that suspicion for the letters—however slight—might be shifted to Rex. That’s why he bought subscriptions to Party Production for everyone at T-Rex: to make them all possible suspects.”
Grayson leaned forward. “So what got you thinking it was Colorado?”
“Just a hunch, but my hunch was confirmed when Sergeant Gorski got a crucial piece of information from Martin Stevers. My question was, what did he see at The Zone bar the night of Rex’s death? And the answer was, nothing.”
“But how did that lead you to zero in on Colorado?” Grayson continued.
“Because,” Monette stated, “Colorado said he was there that night. It was a slow night, so Martin would have mentioned if he had seen Colorado there. After all, they hated each other—Martin would have noticed if he were there.”
“Okay, so you’ve told us how you figured out that Colorado was involved. But how did you come to the conclusion that Rex was the other person involved?” Grayson puzzled.
“When Robert and I checked out the first attempt on Rex’s life—well, nothing checked out. Even Rex’s naked houseman, Vince, was shocked that Rex had claimed to be hiking. When Robert and I hiked Spitz Trail, we found it would have been impossible to roll a boulder at a victim from above. The second attempt—the palm tree—was too easy to arrange. Rex probably precut the tree earlier in the evening, then slipped out the door that leads from his master bath outside, cut the tree some more, and then let the wind do the rest. And the grill, cutting the propane hose—a kid could’ve done it.”
“Okay, so now we know about Rex and his part in it, but where does Colorado come in?” Grayson asked, pausing from daintily devouring his goat-cheese tart.
Monette continued, “About a year ago, Rex learned that he had terminal cancer. The problem is, so did Colorado, who probably scoured through Rex’s office on a regular basis. I mean, everyone at T-Rex had access to that office. So Colorado found out about Rex’s illness and probably told Rex he’d use it against him somehow, like telling Rex’s clients, who wouldn’t book with him since he could die, leaving them in the lurch. In fact, almost no one associated with T-Rex could see how Rex could tolerate someone as repulsive as Colorado. But the answer was easy if you asked the right question: Why was Rex tolerating him and paying him to do almost nothing?”
“Okay, so how does South America come into this?” Grayson challenged.
“Well,” Monette continued, “Robert found a drawing of a building labeled with the words Butia, A.D.”
“So this was his plan for after death. Was it a mausoleum?” Grayson asked, riveted by the unfolding story. In fact, even though most of us who were at Marc’s house in the recent fracas knew most of the story by now, it sounded even more exciting as we heard it in its entirety. Michael was the only one who looked uncomfortable, si
tting there and keeping a close eye on Clifford, who sent an occasional sly wink in his direction.
“No, it was a house he had built in Uruguay. Butia is the name of a native palm that grows in the region, and its fruit is made into a jelly by the inhabitants of a small fishing village on the Atlantic coast called Aguas Dulces. A.D.”
A collective “Ohhhh” rose up around the table as everyone finally understood the significance of the two initials.
“I think,” Monette mused, “that Rex also probably found it ironic that the initials also stood for after death.”
“So Rex planned to rip off his own company and head to Urlugay?” Michael finally jumped in, mangling the name of our South American neighbor.
“Yes, he withdrew the payoff money the day of Leo’s party and planned to pay off his tormentors, who didn’t exist. He would then disappear and head to Urlugay,” Monette said, making fun of Michael’s pronunciation without his even realizing it. “But Colorado was on to Rex’s plan for months now, and he set in motion a plan of his own. Earlier that day, he sent a threatening letter to Leo and Marc, knowing that they’d arrive at their destinations the next day, after Rex was dead and Leo was already—or about to be—dead.
“At the party, Rex gets a call from his supposed extortionists, asking for the payoff. He conducts a heated conversation in front of Robert, Marc, and me so there would be witnesses. What happened was quite ingenious. Rex had programmed his computer to call his cell phone at a specific time, trying to send him a fax. We know this because Robert and I found a list on his computer that confirms this. So, when Rex received the fax, he just talked excitedly into his cell phone, acting like there was another person on the line. Colorado then swung into action, knowing that Rex was just minutes away from heading to Mexico with the money he had in the trunk of his car. Colorado went into Leo’s bedroom and called Rex’s cell phone, threatening to expose Rex’s grand theft if Rex didn’t meet him at Marc Baldwin’s house with the money. Colorado gets there first, plugs an extension cord into an ungrounded outlet, and hides the cord behind some bushes. When Rex arrives, Colorado takes the suitcase full of money, pushes a surprised Rex into the pool, and then tosses the extension cord in after him. In a few minutes, he withdraws the cord and puts it back behind the bushes where it was found. Colorado is now a wealthy man, and the finger of blame is pointed in the direction of the White Party.”