Hundred-Dollar Baby

by Robert B. Parker

  “What about his dream of going national?” Susan said. “Is that real or persiflage.”

  “Yikes,” I said. “Persiflage.”

  “Must I continuously remind you,” Susan said, “that I went to Harvard?”

  “I love you anyway,” I said. “I don’t know about his dream.”

  “What about Ollie DeMars?” Susan said. “If April was in this with Lionel Whosis, why did Lionel Whosis hire Ollie to harass her, and why did she hire you to prevent it?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Who killed Ollie?”

  “Don’t know.”

  The waiter came by and looked at my empty glass. I nodded. He went to get me another martini.

  “What do you know for sure?” she said.

  “That everybody I have talked to so far has lied to me.”

  “Even Mrs. Utley?”

  I shrugged.

  “Maybe,” I said. “I can’t be sure she hasn’t.”

  “It does seem clear that Lionel is trying to pull off some scheme.”

  “Yes.”

  “And all of the people he’s to pull it off with,” Susan said, “or on, or however one says it, are women.”

  I nodded.

  “Wasn’t he the one you found because he’d been in jail?”

  “Yeah. Real-estate scam,” I said.

  “Do you know who he scammed?” Susan said.

  “You mean specifically?”

  “Yes.”

  I shook my head.

  “Maybe you should find out,” Susan said. “I wouldn’t be amazed to find that they were women, too.”

  “You think there’s some sort of misogyny at work?” I said.

  “Maybe he just finds them easier targets,” Susan said. “But maybe he likes to fuck them.”

  “You mean that literally,” I said.

  “I do,” she said, “but also colloquially, in the sense of fuck them up.”

  “It’s a pattern,” I said.

  “It would be interesting to find it was an even wider pattern,” Susan said.

  “So what would I know, if I knew that?” I said.

  My martini arrived. I took a sip.

  “I do the strategic thinking,” Susan said. “Up to you to implement it.”

  “My God,” I said. “You did go to Harvard.”

  She smiled at me and raised her glass. I touched it with mine.

  “At the moment, the assumption is that Lionel is doing this for money,” Susan said. “If you found reason to think he might be doing this out of misogynistic pathology, or for both reasons, you’d know something you don’t know now.”

  I nodded. We sat for a minute, enjoying us.

  “Well,” I said. “Better to know than not know.”

  “Much,” Susan said.

  38

  I was downtown on the second floor of the Moynihan Federal Courthouse, in the Open Records department with Corsetti. In front of me was an enormous case file in a big cardboard box.

  “Don’t look at me,” Corsetti said. “I got you in here. Wading through that slop is up to you.”

  “You’re just going to sit there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And do nothing?”

  “I might put my feet up,” Corsetti said, “and kind of squinch my eyes half shut and rest and look to see if any good-looking broads come through here.”

  “Nothing has happened so far,” I said, “to make me think they will.”

  Corsetti grinned at me and tilted his chair back and put his feet up and appeared to close his eyes.

  “Let’s see,” he said.

  I began to lumber through the file. After ten minutes, I felt that I might be facing extinction. If the dinosaurs had not been exterminated by a meteor, a few hours reading the language of the law would have done it. Corsetti was motionless but alert except for some periods when he snored. By late afternoon I had extracted six names and addresses from the quicksand of documents. All of the names were female. All of them were in the tristate area.

  I tapped Corsetti’s foot. He opened his eyes.

  “See any good-looking women?” I said.

  “None,” Corsetti said.

  “Maybe on the ride uptown,” I said.

  “East Side or West Side?” Corsetti said.

  “Sutton Place,” I said.

  “There’ll be some for sure,” Corsetti said.

  “You ever actually do any work for the NYPD?” I said to Corsetti as he drove us up the FDR.

  “Keeping an eye on you,” Corsetti said, “is a real example of protection and service.”

  “And you might get to bust somebody down here, one of these days.”

  “Would that be a thrill,” Corsetti said, “or what?”

  “There’s at least one homicide involved,” I said.

  “In Boston.”

  “But it may have connections down here,” I said.

  “Long as you keep buying me lunch,” Corsetti said.

  “In the service of justice,” I said, “mind if I use your name?”

  “Hell no,” Corsetti said.

  I took out my cell phone and dialed a number.

  “Mrs. Carter?” I said. “This is detective Eugene Corsetti, New York police.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m still tying up some loose ends on that real-estate case you were involved in.”

  “I thought that was all over and the bastard went to jail.”

  “I’ll explain when I get there,” I said. “Just routine follow-up. Nothing for you to worry about. Just wanted to know that you’d be there.”

  “I’m here,” she said. “It’s nothing bad, is it?”

  “No, no,” I said. “My partner and I will see you soon.”

  “My partner,” Corsetti said. “Nice. So when we go there she’ll think you’re a cop, too.”

  “You can tell her the truth,” I said.

  “I try not to,” Corsetti said. “If I don’t have to.”

  Corsetti pulled up and parked on 52nd Street in front of an apartment near the river. He put the cop light on top of the cruiser.

  “Keep the fucking traffic buzzards from hauling it off to the tow lot,” he said. “Who we going to see?”

  “Woman named Norah Carter,” I said. “One of the people defrauded by Farnsworth.”

  “I guess he didn’t get it all,” Corsetti said as we waited for the elevator in Norah Carter’s building. “Living around here costs more than you and I could scrape up together.”

  The elevator door opened. We stepped in. I punched 6. The door closed.

  “How do you know I’m not rich?” I said.

  “I’ve seen how you dress,” Corsetti said.

  39

  Norah Carter was maybe fifty-two, a little overweight but pulled together okay, and pretty, given an age and weight discount. Corsetti showed her his badge. She let us in, and we sat in her living room.

  “My,” she said. “Two formidable-looking men right here in my living room.”

  She offered coffee. We declined. She checked Corsetti’s left hand and mine. Corsetti wore a wedding ring. Her interest shifted subtly to me.

  “You were one of the people that Lionel Farnsworth swindled,” I said.

  She blushed a little and looked down at her lap.

  “Oh, that,” she said. “That thing about condos.”

  “Can you tell us about that?” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. “My. Well…” She raised her eyes. “I guess I have no sense about men. Larry—I knew him as Larry Farley—seemed so nice.”

  “How’d you meet him?” I said.

  She went back to looking down.

  “It’s embarrassing,” she said. “He picked me up in a bar.”

  “In the neighborhood?” I said.

  “Yes. A very nice bar. Very, ah, upscale. Not some kind of meat rack or anything.”

  “You were having a drink by yourself,” I said.

  “Yes, at the bar, in the late a
fternoon. It was always the loneliest time for me. I’d just been divorced…. I don’t know if either of you has been through that?”

  Neither Corsetti nor I said anything. Norah Carter raised her eyes.

  “Well, it’s crazy time. I was desperately unhappy. Lonely. Unsure of myself as a woman.”

  We nodded.

  “The bar, Lily’s, is on Second Avenue,” she said. “A nice bar where a lot of single people can gather.”

  “He met you there?”

  “Yes. He sat beside me at the bar. He was very polite. Excellent manners, and, well, he certainly is handsome.”

  I nodded. Corsetti’s face was entirely blank, as if he were thinking about something else, something happening in another place.

  “He walked me home and didn’t even ask to come in.”

  She giggled.

  “I was in a tsimmis about whether to invite him in,” she said. “I needed to know I was desirable. But I didn’t want to be some sort of first-date slut.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “He was so kind, as if he understood,” Norah Carter said. “He invited me to have dinner with him the next night.”

  “And you didn’t ask him in.”

  “Not that night. That was what was so nice. He let me know he’d be back anyway.”

  “And you had dinner,” I said.

  “Yes. Le Perigord, and it was lovely.”

  I nodded.

  “And then he came home with you.”

  She looked down again. I think she was trying to blush, but no color was showing.

  “Yes,” she said.

  She raised her eyes again and looked straight at me. The wedding ring had apparently made Corsetti a nonperson. If Corsetti minded, he wasn’t showing it.

  “And how long after that did the subject of condos in Jersey come up?” I said.

  “We saw each other once or twice a week for several months. It probably was at least a month before he suggested it. He said it was going to be a bonanza. He said he liked me enough to want me to benefit from a sure thing. It would make me financially secure for life.”

  “Did you get a good settlement in your divorce?” I said.

  “Yes. The bastard had to give me the apartment and half of everything.”

  “Lionel knew that,” I said.

  She tipped her head.

  “I guess he did,” she said. “We talked about everything. Most people after they are divorced talk about the divorce for a while.”

  “What was the plan?” I said.

  “About the condos?”

  “Yes.”

  “He said he knew where to get some properties cheap from people who had to sell. He’d buy them for me. Condoize them for me, and I’d have income for life. He guaranteed a positive cash flow.”

  “So you gave him some money,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “After a month I got what I thought was my first rent check.”

  “And after another month?” I said.

  “Nothing.”

  “When did he stop seeing you,” I said.

  “After the first rent check.”

  “Which was just a little bit of your own money.”

  “Yes. There were no condos. What properties there were were uninhabitable or couldn’t be developed because of permit problems, or…”

  She shrugged.

  “I turned it all over to my lawyer,” she said.

  “Did you ever go to his place?”

  “No. He said every penny he had was tied up in this real-estate project and he lived in one room. He said it would be embarrassing to him if I saw it.”

  “So how’d he afford dinner?” Corsetti said.

  She looked a little startled, as if Corsetti had suddenly re-materialized.

  She dropped her head again.

  “I felt sorry for him. I didn’t want to embarrass him or cost him a lot.”

  “You paid,” Corsetti said.

  Neither of us said anything. She looked up again. This time her look seemed to include Corsetti.

  “I know,” she said. “I sound like a fool. Desperate divorcée, fifty-two years old, easy pickings. And I guess that would be true. But dammit, Lionel did a lot for me. He filled my empty days. He made me feel like I mattered. He taught me some things about sex….”

  This time she actually managed a small blush.

  “He taught me things about myself. He stole my money. But I’m not sure it wasn’t a fair swap.”

  “You’re an attractive woman,” I said. “There are men who could have taught you those things and not stolen your money.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But they didn’t buy me a drink at Lily’s.”

  40

  It had snowed, just to remind us that it was still February and we weren’t in Palm Beach. I sat with Susan in the car in the parking lot at a Dunkin’ Donuts on Fresh Pond Circle. The heater was going. We had a bag of cinnamon donuts, two large coffees, and each other. Life could provide little more.

  “As far as I can see,” I said, “Farnsworth worked the upscale bars in affluent neighborhoods in Manhattan. He specialized in reasonably attractive middle-aged women who had some money from a divorce settlement and were looking for some sort of sexual validation.”

  “It is a period of legendary uncertainty,” Susan said.

  “We had our own sort of divorce back a while,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “I was pretty crazy, I think.”

  “Yes,” Susan said.

  “You were pretty crazy,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I was.”

  “And we leapt tall buildings at a single bound.”

  “We were probably leaping the wrong ones,” Susan said, “in those days.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But maybe those days helped us to leap the right ones now, and more gracefully.”

  “You metaphoric devil,” Susan said.

  She put her coffee in the cup holder, took out a donut, broke it in half, put one half back in the bag, and took a small bite out of the other half, leaning forward so that the cinnamon sugar wouldn’t spill onto her lap.

  “He was cool,” I said. “He had pretty good odds. Hang around, say, Sutton Place. See a woman alone at the bar. She’s wearing good clothes. She’s not unattractive. In a neighborhood like that, with a woman, say, over forty, you’ve got a fair chance of finding what you’re after. He didn’t rush things. But it worked out pretty well for him. They were paying for dinner and such, while he seduced them first for sex, and then for investment money.”

  Susan nibbled on her donut. I’d never seen anyone else nibble a donut. Sometimes she bought a single donut hole and nibbled on it.

  “And if it turned out they didn’t have money, or wouldn’t give him any,” Susan said, “he’d had sex for his troubles and could move on.”

  “Leaving no address,” I said. “Or name. He had a different name with each of the women.”

  “Good memory,” Susan said. “Keeping everything straight.”

  “So to speak,” I said.

  “An unfortunate choice of words,” Susan said. “Is he attractive?”

  “I think you’d find him sort of an Ivy League lounge lizard,” I said.

  “I’m attracted to hooligans,” Susan said. “But I assume many women would find him attractive.”

  “Apparently,” I said. “Probably why he specializes.”

  “Maybe,” Susan said.

  “Is that a shrink maybe?” I said.

  Susan took another nibble on her half-donut. I finished my second.

  “Maybe, or maybe he’s attractive to women because he wants to specialize.”

  “Most straight men have some such impulse,” I said.

  “Think about it for a minute,” Susan said. “In both the schemes we know about—the condo fraud and the boutique whorehouse trick—he gets women who are vulnerable and he fucks them.”

  “I love romanti
c talk like this,” I said.

  “Is he married?” she said.

  “Not that I know,” I said.

  “Has he ever been married?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Be interesting to know,” Susan said.

  She put the last small morsel of her first half-donut into her mouth and chewed carefully.

  “Some of the women seem to have enjoyed it,” I said.

  “That is not to their benefit,” Susan said. “But regardless, their response doesn’t change his intent.”

  I nodded. “And you think his intent was cruelty.”

  “Or revenge,” Susan said. “Or a need he doesn’t understand himself.”

  “Or you might be wrong,” I said.

  “Or I might be wrong,” Susan said.

  We both drank some coffee. Across the parkway, the ice on Fresh Pond was nearly gone. People and dogs plodded or dashed along the trail that circled the lake.

  “But you might want to look into his history with women,” Susan said.

  “Gee,” I said, “I was thinking about just having another donut.”

  “Instead of investigating Farnsworth’s psychosexual past?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” Susan said. “Then I’ll eat the other half of mine.”

  “Maybe after we finish,” I said.

  41

  It was bright sunshine, not very warm, but in the direct sun the snow was melting and water dripped past my window in a heartening way. In Florida, spring training was under way in full. And somewhere, almost certainly, the sound of the turtle was heard in the land. Belson came in with a takeout bag of coffee and donuts. He put the bag on my desk and set out the contents. I looked at the donuts.

  “Whole-wheat?” I said.

  “Nope.”

  “High-fiber?” I said.

  “Nope.”

  “My God,” I said. “You don’t believe in fiber?”

  “Fuck fiber,” Belson said.

  He pried the little triangle out of the plastic top of his coffee cup. I took a plain donut.

  “Is there anything you believe in?” I said.

  “My wife,” Belson said.