“You know, buddy, I don’t know if this is stuff she needs to be talking about right now.” Sarge had puffed his chest out and squared his shoulders as he spoke. Hannibal was sure it was an unconscious response, the subtle signals he had learned to send in order to get his way as a bouncer without having to get physical with drunks. There was no percentage in conflict with Sarge. Hannibal kept his focus on Marquita LaPage.
“Ma’am, I know this other girl’s problems aren’t your concern, but I’m going to ask you to think about your life since Rod Mantooth left here. From what I saw, you’ve been punishing yourself and here’s why I think you’ve been doing that. I think you’ve been waiting for him to come back. And I think you hate yourself for wanting him to return. You’re doing everything he told you to do, hoping he’ll walk back in that door, but you know damn well that’s not what you ought to want.”
As Hannibal spoke, Marquita’s soft brown eyes widened and her breath became fast but shallow gasps. When she finally looked down, she appeared on the verge of tears. Long blonde tresses dropped over her lowered face like sheer curtains closing on a window that was too easy to see through.
“Stop it, man,” Sarge said, squeezing her hand. “Can’t you see what this is doing to her? Besides, that’s all bullsh…” Sarge’s eyes cut toward her for a second, “that’s all bull, man. The last thing in the world Marquita wants is for that bastard to come back here.”
“Uh-huh.” Hannibal nodded his skepticism, his lips drawn in against his teeth. “Right. So. Where’s the collar, Ms. LaPage?”
Marquita shook her head with such violence that her hair sashaying in front of her like a dancer’s skirt. Then she slowly looked up through the sheer wall of hair.
He asked again. This time it was just above a whisper. “Where’s your collar, Ms. LaPage?”
For a frozen moment, the only movement in the room was the rising of tiny dust motes in the shaft of light falling on the bed. Those bits of matter were so small that they needed only the heat of the sun to put them into mindless flight. For humans, weighed down by guilt and pain and self-loathing, movement can be considerably harder. Eventually, Marquita moved her head to the side, indicating the small table beside the bed on Hannibal’s side. A small sniffle came from behind her hair, and three drops of her soul rode gravity down to thump into the comforter.
Hannibal’s hand moved very slowly to the table, and quietly slid the drawer open. From inside he lifted her hated prize. It was gray suede with a silver buckle and tiny rhinestone studs along its length.
“What the hell?” Sarge said, his face contorted the way it would be if he drank sour milk. “You didn’t actually wear that thing, did you?”
Marquita’s head moved slowly up and down. Hannibal tossed the collar on the bed.
“You kept it close at hand. Symbolic of his ownership right? Evidence that you belong to him. But he abandoned you didn’t he? Cast you aside. Was a part of you hoping he’d appear at the door and require you to wear that collar again? No, more important question. Aren’t you tired of loving and hating this man, this life? Would you like to stop wondering if he’ll come back here?”
When Marquita spoke, her voice was small and distant. “I am so worthless. When he was here, I existed to serve, and I was, God forgive me, I was happy in his service. I did things I never believed I could do, but it gave him pleasure and somehow that became my only goal. I can’t explain. I hated him, hated myself for needing to please him.” When no one responded, she looked up, using one hand to part the curtain of her hair. “How can I ever be free of this man?”
“You’ll be free of him if I break his neck,” Sarge said.
Hannibal didn’t want to go there. “Mantooth has done bad things to other women, Ms. LaPage. He’s also a thief. If I find him, I’ll make sure he can’t come back here. That will take the decision out of your hands.”
“Hannibal can find anybody,” Sarge added.
Marquita stared at the collar in front of her. She raised her hand, then made a frustrated fist and lowered it, as if she was afraid to touch the thin leather strip. “What can I do to help?”
“Atta girl,” Sarge said with a smile. “The only way to get a monkey off your back is to shake it yourself.” He captured her hand again and she held his up, shaking it, as if drawing strength from him. Hannibal figured Sarge for the best tower of strength he knew. She would need it, for what he was about to ask.
“Ms. LaPage,” he began.
“Please call me Marquita. You may have saved my life, and that makes us too close to be so formal.”
“Ms. LaPage, I need to know more about how this man works. I need to know how he met you, and how he insinuated himself into your life.”
Marquita’s face collapsed in on itself, as if her very muscles were at war with each other. Then she nodded her head once, quickly, as if agreeing to something. Then, to Hannibal’s surprise, her eyes came up, clear and bright. When she finally spoke, it all came rushing out.
“How we met? He was a simple handyman when we met. When I moved up here, after daddy passed, I didn’t know anyone. But the investments were here, you see, the real estate holdings and so on. I bought this house, but it’s really too much for just me. Rod helped with the yard work, and did all that landscaping with the flowers out front. He also extended the deck.”
“Jesus, babe, why’d you get such a big house anyway?” Sarge asked.
Marquita’s smile returned for a moment, and her eyes sparkled as she looked at Sarge. “Ah, mon chere, I had to have space for big parties, didn’t I?” Her accent, well hidden at first, began to assert itself.
“Did Mantooth attend your parties?”
“Oh, mon Deux, non! He was not of the station. But we spoke, day to day. He told me he lived nearby and did a lot of work for local residents.”
Hannibal knew exactly where he was living at the time, or more accurately, whom he was living on. “And you liked him?”
“Not particularly at the time. We flirted a little. I guess I was flattered by his attention at first, but it soon became annoying. In fact I fired him.”
“He do something to you?” Sarge asked. His anger was still evident in his voice and his breathing, which had become deeper.
“One day, when I returned from the grocer, he was here working on the yard. He helped me bring the packages in. Then, when I thanked him he said he wanted a more personal thank you. He became very aggressive, and tried to kiss me, to hold me, but I pushed him away. I told him to get out, and that was the last I saw of him for a while.”
“Why would you ever see him again?” Sarge asked through clenched teeth.
Marquita held his big hand in both of hers. “Because I am a stupid, worthless woman, mon chere, that’s why.” Then to Hannibal, she said, “I saw him in Atlantic City. This was weeks later. He was dressed in very expensive clothes this time. I had only seen him in work clothes. And he had a new car, a huge red convertible, like a Cadillac but not really.”
Hannibal saw the confusion on Sarge’s face and said, “It’s a custom job, half Caddy, half Stingray. I’ve got a line on the car. So you saw him in a casino?”
“Yes. He recognized me, and walked right up, so forceful and full of himself. He was with another woman, but he just told her to go away. Then he looked me in the eye and told me I was going to be his. He had money now, and more coming, and I would belong to him.”
“What did you say?” Sarge asked.
“Well naturally I…” Marquita stopped herself, her hands falling to the bed between her covered legs. “Well the truth is, I found it rather exciting. This rough, tough man declaring that he would have me. But I walked away from him. That was on a Friday night. And the very next day, here he was at my door with flowers and tickets to a show, doing it the right way. I don’t know why I went with him. There was something about him that made it hard to say no.”
“Yes, I keep hearing that,” Hannibal said. He didn’t mean to be unkind, and he regre
tted the remark as soon as he made it. “How long did you date?”
Marquita became quiet for a moment. The rising sun shifted its beam of light lower in the room, taking the spotlight off Marquita. Without that glow she now looked more like an ordinary, vulnerable woman. But now the light was on her hand, locked in Sarge’s at the edge of the bed.
“There was no dating. Not really. We came here that same night. I didn’t intend to invite him in but he came in anyway. We drank. We kind of… well, he spent the night, you know. Then he…”
“You don’t have to do this,” Sarge said.
“He was just here, and he never left. He just took my life over. At first, I admit it; it felt good in a way to have someone take over. To have no responsibilities except just to do what he thought was best. Then he introduced me to the lifestyle.”
“The lifestyle?” Hannibal repeated, implying that he needed more of an explanation.
“He taught me how to be a submissive. And as long as I was good, did what I was told, he was so good to me and I was so happy and…”
The tears were back, but in an eerie way her breathing remained quiet. One sob shook her body. Sarge looked from Hannibal to Marquita, mouth partially open. He looked scared, an expression Hannibal had never seen on that dark, round face. He appeared to be waiting for Hannibal to do something, but Hannibal could not imagine what that could be.
“Marquita, I know this is difficult for you,” Hannibal said. “But knowing any of Mantooth’s contacts would be very helpful. You mentioned other men who came here?”
“Jesus, Hannibal, you don’t need to go into all that,” Sarge said. “And she don’t need to dredge it all up again. Just go find this bastard.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Marquita said, sending a dark laugh through her tears. “I’m sure it’s no secret. He brought his friends in here and treated them. Made me treat them. And I treated them good, I’ll tell you. They all had me. Every way you can imagine. Ways I never imagined before. Then after he left, he still sent them. Said if I was obedient he’d be back for me. So you see I’m just a whore, a common whore.”
Marquita was about to collapse, but Sarge gathered her in one of his big arms. “You are no such thing, Markie, this guy just knows how to manipulate people. Hannibal, you just get out there and find this guy so I can kill him. You hear me? Now, where’d the doc put those pills he left you, baby?”
While Sarge tried to calm his charge with one hand and searched the end table for medicine with the other, Hannibal stood.
“Yeah. Listen, I’ll check in a bit later. I’m going to get with the client and see if I can get any kind of lead on this guy. Listen, I’m sorry Marquita. I didn’t mean…” Words seemed pointless, so he stopped dropping them. Sarge was right. Hannibal needed to find this man before he broke one more spirit.
* * * * *
Anita opened the door to Hannibal the way she might greet an auditor from the Internal Revenue Service. Hannibal remained pleasant, because he understood. He was now a symbol of her problems, branded with the smell of her garbage, which he was poking through out of necessity. He was a walking reminder of all the things she had done, the things almost no one else even knew about. He was used to it. People hired him to go through their garbage, even when they themselves couldn’t stand the smell.
After declining her offer of coffee, Hannibal returned to the office downstairs. Anita followed, her eyes focused on him with a new intensity. He resisted an urge to tear through books and papers. Instead, he turned to Anita with a small, soft smile.
“Now, Ms. Cooper, You know I’ll be discreet with everything I learn, right?”
Sensing an incoming request, she smiled, lowered her lids and gave a shallow nod. “What else do you need to know?”
“I’m convinced the prize Rod took is something your father brought from work,” Hannibal said. “I’ve got to find out what your father was working on. To do that, I’ll need to speak to people who knew your father at work.”
“But I don’t know any of father’s coworkers.”
“I know,” Hannibal replied. “I need to find them, and that means I need to see correspondence. Where did he keep his letters, Anita?”
Anita lowered her head and slowly paced to one side of the room, as if searching for a memory on the floor. Then she turned, seeming to scan the bookshelves for input.
“I don’t think father ever wrote letters,” she said. “He had few distant friends, and he saw the people at the lab every day. I don’t think he ever communicated with them from home. Unless…”
Her voice trailed off as her head turned to her right. Hannibal’s eyes followed hers to the desk, and the keyboard that rested on it.
“Of course. E-mail.” Hannibal started toward the chair, and just as quickly backed off. “No. You. Sit down, Anita. You know the passwords and stuff.”
Anita dropped her slender frame on to the seat, her fingers poised over the keys.
“How many e-mail accounts did your father have?” Hannibal asked, standing close behind her, hands on knees.
“Only one, I’m sure.”
“Well, open it up,” Hannibal said.
Anita stared straight ahead at the screen. “You want me to open my father’s private e-mail?”
“What, don’t you know the password?”
“I do.”
“Then open it.”
His words prompted Anita’s fingers to immediate response. She was a puppet, and it was altogether too easy to pick up her strings. Hannibal resolved to make requests of this woman, rather than demands, from then on.
As the Microsoft Outlook window blossomed onto the screen it looked at first as if Anita’s father had never deleted a message. The list of received e-mails filled several pages. In some cases that would mean an exhaustive search to narrow down good targets for questioning. In this case it would not be that difficult. As Anita scanned down the list Hannibal saw that at least eighty percent of the messages were from her. Hannibal realized that he knew next to nothing about Anita’s father. The fact that he had kept every e-mail his daughter sent him from college suddenly cast him in a very different light from the overindulgent and obsessive biology nerd Hannibal had imagined up to that moment.
A tiny stifled sob returned Hannibal’s focus to the woman before him. Anita had opened the last e-mail on the list and was reading her final electronic communication with her beloved father. Her head shuddered, and he sensed that he would lose her completely if he didn’t force her to move on.
“All right, Anita, I need you to close that.”
“Daddy loved me so much.”
“Yes he did,” Hannibal said. “Now, I need you to get back to the list please and put those messages in order by the date, most recent on top.”
Scanning down the list, Hannibal saw only three or four other names that recurred on a regular basis. “Let’s take these three. Hathaway, Gaye and Trumble. Open each e-mail you see from them. Let’s see what we can find out.”
Hannibal scanned the notes as quickly as he could. He wasn’t looking for details, just to get a feel for the relationship. All three were apparently past coworkers, and after seeing a couple of notes from each of them it was clear that Trumble would be the first contacted.
“Why can’t they all be like you, Mr. Trumble,” he asked the computer monitor, “with a nice e-mail tag line with their phone number and address? It won’t be so easy to find the other two.”
“I don’t understand,” Anita said. “Can’t you just push reply and e-mail them?”
“It’s a nice thought,” Hannibal said, “but people don’t generally share information about their friends with strangers through e-mail. Still, it might not be real important if Trumble stayed in touch with all his old buddies the way your father did.”
* * * * *
“I was over optimistic,” Hannibal said while shaking small dots of steak sauce onto his porterhouse. “The phone call was pleasant, but it was a dead end.”
“I’m sorry.” Cindy brushed an errant strand of hair back and shared a broad smile that deepened her dimples. “Haven’t been able to get my brain away from work. What were you saying?”
Hannibal had hoped that a good steak would get her mind off her job. Bobby Van’s and one or two other places were contenders, but for his money Morton’s served the best aged, top-prime porterhouse steak in the city. Or, more accurately, for their money. Cindy always insisted they go Dutch at places like this.
“Just that this lead to Anita Cooper’s father didn’t pan out. This Ron Trumble character.” Hannibal took a deep, relaxing breath. It wasn’t the expensive appointments that drew him to a restaurant like this, or the attentive service. Hannibal loved being wrapped in the red meat smell of a good steak place. The smell hinted at so much: freshly cracked peppercorns, sautéed onions, mushrooms, and the scent that arises when flames meet a well marbled cut of beef.
“Oh, yes,” Cindy said, sliding her knife through her steak. “This is the girl who likes it rough.”
“I don’t know if that’s really true. But this guy she was with sure did a number on her.”
Cindy waited to speak until she finished chewing. She was beautiful in her navy blue power suit and Hannibal briefly wondered how many she owned. She wore her hair up that day, but by six o’clock a few locks always shook themselves loose from captivity. When she looked up, she seemed surprised to find him hanging on her words.
“You make her sound like a victim, and maybe she is. But trust me, my gallant knight, there are plenty of women out there just waiting for a man to come along and hand them just what you described this Rod character did. There’s a market for muy macho hombres with plenty of machismo.”
That doesn’t justify it, he thought. Aloud he said. “Weak women.”
Hannibal Jones - 04 - Damaged Goods Page 9