The desk was the size of Delaware. Each leg wore the head of a dour-looking carved lion. There were three chairs on either side. Rex’s was a high-backed leather CEO special that probably cost more than a Dodge Ram. The other seven were Dante chairs with hand-carved designs in the wood.
A tall thin woman sat between Rex and Pam Hayes. She had short white hair and wore a purple suit with a white shirt, no jewelry. She was about sixty with a long rectangular face and square glasses with harsh silver frames. Her jaw looked like it had been added to her face with sutures and wires as an afterthought. A leather-bound journal was open in front of her on the desk. Next to it were several official-looking documents and a voice recorder with a steady orange light. She smiled pleasantly but her eyes behind the squares looked like they were made of ice cubes.
I watched Pam Hayes’ eyes flare at the sight of Tiffany and Hayley walking in with their arms around each other.
“Titus, this is Kelly Alves,” said Rex. The tall thin woman didn’t stand up nor offer her hand.
I nodded. She nodded.
“Sit, please,” said Rex. The three of us sat.
“So you’re the unlicensed amateur detective and disgraced former police officer who spent ten months at a maximum security correctional facility,” said Kelly Alves.
“Medium security,” I said. “Not that it was pleasant. Oh, and nice to meet you, too.”
“Titus,” said Rex Hayes with the Southern good-ol’-boy knob turned up to high, “I hope you don’t mind but Kelly here is going to represent the Hayes family today.”
“Smart,” I said, giving him a thumbs-up.
“Titus,” said Kelly Alves with a cold competence, “I represent Mr. and Mrs. Hayes on behalf of my firm Kelly Alves & Associates. We are a crisis mitigation firm located in Washington, D.C. We are here today to discuss the ramifications of, as well as the immediate termination of your continued and troubling intrusion into the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Hayes, which has occasioned a considerable traumatizing effect on their personal well-being.”
Kelly Alves had the air of a prosecutor in a large courtroom requiring a heady amount of projection. Her voice sounded like two strips of sandpaper being rubbed together. Her words were meticulous and succinct, with long pauses and full glottal stops at the ends of every sentence. I bet she sees periods and commas in her head as she speaks.
“Um,” I said, scratching my head, “I think I was the one who requested this meeting.”
“As required by the law of the State of Florida,” she said, ignoring me, “I am officially informing you that this meeting is being recorded.”
“Digital or analog?” I said.
“Excuse me?” she said.
“Is the recording digital or analog? I prefer analog myself. It has a warm inviting sound, like when the record player needle makes that beautiful crackling noise right before the soft soulful piano starts to play and Sam Cooke sings ‘Bring It On Home to Me.’”
Kelly Alves removed her glasses in slow-motion, a move calculated to make lesser foes quake with fear. Her facial expression remained unchanged. She made a nodding jerk-like movement and said:
“I’ve been warned that you think you’re funny,” she said, “but you won’t be laughing soon.”
“Ms. Alves,” I said, “I represent Tiffany Connors and Hayley Shores, who sit here with me.”
She ignored both them and me and flipped one of the papers over across the desk to face me. I didn’t look at it, keeping my gaze locked on the ice cube eyes.
“This,” she said, “is a court order for you to end your offensive and brazen intrusion into the business and personal matters of Mr. and Mrs. Hayes. You are hereby and forthwith ordered to cease and desist.” She flipped another one over. “This one is a Federal restraining order requiring you to maintain a distance of at least one mile from Mr. and Mrs. Hayes pursuant to this meeting.”
“She’s a pistol,” I said to Rex with a wink.
He remained perfectly still.
“This document,” she continued a decibel louder as she flipped it over, “is an instigation of inquiry and warrant for your arrest for interfering with a Federal investigation, harassment of a United States candidate for office, and trespassing on private property. There are agents on the premises who will be taking you into custody pending further inspection and inquiry.”
“Do you see periods in your head when you speak?” I said. “Your glottal stops are amazing. Shakespearean, even. You’d be an awesome Lady Macbeth.”
She smiled, unfazed. Two FBI agents appeared at either side of me. I nodded at them. Neither nodded back.
“Okay,” I said and sat up straight, “enough. Hayley Shores, is that the woman who threatened you?”
“Uh-huh,” said Hayley, her stare fixated on Kelly Alves.
“Hayley, please say yes or no for the lovely lady’s recording device,” I said.
“Yes, that’s her. That’s the bitch who ruined our lives.”
Kelly Alves turned her attention to Hayley as if she had just beamed down from outer space.
“I’m sorry, have we met?” said Kelly Alves.
“That’s her,” said Hayley. “Are you all listening? She came to my home and said I’d be killed unless I kept my mouth shut.”
Kelly Alves shut the recorder off and closed the book in front of her.
“I believe we are done here,” she said.
“Oh, Kelly-Kelly-Kelly,” I said. “I don’t think so. In fact, we’ve just begun.”
“You’re not hosting this meeting, Titus. I am, and I declare it over.”
“This meeting isn’t over until the murderer of Allie Hayes is arrested.”
“Now you’re being ridiculous, Titus. Allie Hayes is sitting right next to you.”
“No, I’m afraid not. Allie Hayes was killed by her mother six years ago. She had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her father for years and threatened to tell.”
“Titus!” said Pam Hayes, leaping to her feet, her limbs shaking.
“It’s true, Pam,” I said, counting on this trigger-reaction. “Rex sexually abused Allie and you killed her so it wouldn’t get out. Y’all are so goddamned rich that you got Kelly Alves here to cover everything up neatly for you. Kelly Alves specializes in fixing things for her political clients.”
“That is not true, Titus. Not true at all!”
“Pam,” said Kelly Alves, tugging on Pam’s sleeve. “Sit, please. He has nothing.” Pam sat, near-foaming as she launched eye-daggers at me.
“Six years ago,” I said, “right after the murder of Allie Hayes by her mother, and while Rex was in the middle of a nasty campaign for the Senate, Kelly Alves found an almost exact lookalike to replace the dead girl. Tiffany Connors, then thirteen-years old, had run away from her home in Lakewood Ranch and was at a SoBe club trying to look twenty-one and pulling it off easily. Tiffany Connors learned early on she had to provide for herself, so she’s always been very clever. She had looked for ways to make a living and found a great one when approached to replace the murdered daughter of an up-and-coming Senator.”
“I’m leaving,” said Kelly Alves, standing up and gathering her papers and binder into a leather briefcase. “Agents, arrest him and remove his two cohorts from the premises.”
The FBI men didn’t move.
“Now!” she said, slamming the briefcase shut. But nobody moved.
“Kelly Kelly Kelly,” I said, slower this time, shaking my head.
“I’m leaving. Rex, Pam, always a pleasure. Don’t worry. He has nothing.”
She picked up the briefcase and walked around Pam toward the exit, but the two FBI agents stepped in front of her.
“What is this?” she said. Her face looked like it was going to crack. “Arrest him.”
“Not yet,” said Clark Erwin, appearing from behind the agents. He nodded to me. I nodded back. “I’d like to hear what Titus has to say.”
FORTY-THREE
“WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?”
SAID KELLY ALVES.
Clark Erwin is my age. We went to Somerville High School together in ninth and tenth grades before I moved to Cambridge. I once stole a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from him in the school cafeteria, but we became friends anyway. I hadn’t seen him since the day I punched him in the face two years ago, but he looked good. Nice FBI suit, black hair in a crew cut with only a few flecks of gray, square Irish face that always needed a shave, broad shoulders, maybe ten pounds heavier than before.
“Clark Erwin,” he said holding up his FBI ID. “Senior Special Agent, Criminal Investigative Division. Sit down please, Miss Alves.”
“I will not,” Kelly Alves said. “I’m leaving. This is ridiculous.”
One agent placed an arm up. She slapped it but he didn’t flinch.
“Sit down please, Miss Alves,” said Clark Erwin.
Pam Hayes burst into tears as Kelly Alves resumed her place at the desk. Rex remained motionless, as if he had been whittled from stone centuries before.
“Please do continue, Titus,” said Clark Erwin. “Oh, and by the way, Miss Alves, this meeting is still being recorded—just for the record.”
“I didn’t authorize another recording device,” she said. “It’s against the law.”
“Actually, by agreeing to be recorded on your device you gave your consent to be recorded by another. Not that any of that matters. We are the FBI, you know. We invented recording. Go on, Titus.”
“You did well, Kelly,” I said. “Amazingly well. It was ballsy. You cleaned everything up, found a girl who looked exactly like Allie Hayes, or close anyway—enough so the press wouldn’t ask questions. Allie Hayes was buried as Tiffany Connors in a quiet little grave in Lakewood Ranch. Tiffany was said to have died in a car crash. Rex and Pam moved the new Allie to a different school surrounded by different kids. The new Allie, who I will refer to from this point forward as Tiffany Connors, didn’t get quite the honor roll grades that the original one did and ended up in public high school, which worked because nobody there had ever seen her before. One thing they had going for the scam was that Tiffany Connors was smart. Not book-smart, but street-smart. The book-smart part can always be faked by tutors and professional test-takers and research paper writers. Just ask the Kennedys. But Tiffany knew how to con, how to play a part, and how to sucker a mark from growing up on the streets of Newark, Philadelphia, and New York City. One person wasn’t fooled, though. Allie’s grandmother, Pam’s mother, knew Allie had changed somehow—she wasn’t quite herself—which is why Rex and Pam stopped visiting the elderly lady in Connecticut. Tiffany’s unstable mother Jeannie Connors received a steady stream of payments to keep her daughter’s identity secret. Hayley Shores, Tiffany’s older half-sister, was threatened in person by Kelly Alves and promised a painful death if she ever breathed a word. Hayley, not quite as street-smart as her younger sister—,” I leaned over and patted Hayley’s hand, “—and that’s a good thing—clammed up and led her life. Enter Tom Langston, private investigator. He had been hired four years ago by Pam Hayes to find Tiffany the first time she ran out. Tiffany couldn’t keep up the façade of cocktail parties, tennis, golf, and general marble-mouthery. By this time, Tiffany was fifteen and met a boy named Jake Preston. They had similar backgrounds coming from crazy rich parents and they hit it off. They did drugs, went clubbing in South Beach, and fell in love—sort of. With the help of Tom Langston, Rex and Pam were able to locate Tiffany and convince her to return home. Everything seemed to resume its proper course to Hunky-Dory Land, disaster averted. Although not for poor Tom Langston, who two years later put the pieces together brilliantly. He almost made it. It was a piece of the puzzle that kept him awake nights. ‘Why,’ he said into his voice recorder in the form of a journal, ‘why were there large payments from a company named Foundation Investments LLC to Jeannie Connors in Lakewood Ranch?’ Tom Langston had a natural curiosity, the kind of curiosity that gets people killed. Someday, the same curiosity is going to catch up with me, but not today. Tom Langston found the answer. Foundation Investments LLC is a shelf company. You can’t find the owner no matter how hard you try, but Rexford J. Hayes had written a check to Tom Langston from Foundation Investments LLC. Tom, being Tom, looked it up. Nobody knows exactly how he pieced it together nor how he showed his hand, but Kelly Alves decided he needed to be killed—likely by a professional killer who goes by the name of Z, who does work for Miss Alves. Or used to, anyway.”
Kelly Alves laughed. “This is ridiculous,” she said. “Me? Hire a professional killer?”
“Oh, yes indeed,” I said. “You, Miss Alves, had Tom Langston killed, probably after a panicked phone call from Rex. Phone records indicate a call from Gables Estates to you three days before Tom Langston was murdered.”
“What? That’s ridiculous. How do you know this?”
Sofia walked in and placed a document on the desk in front of all of us. I felt a happy jolt to the room’s cold air like the entire brightness control of the world was just turned up a few notches.
“Miss Alves,” I said, “I’d like to introduce Detective-Sergeant Sofia DeJesus-Montero of the Miami-Dade Organized Crime Section. Detective-Sergeant DeJesus-Montero had been recently piecing the murders of Jake Preston and Eddie Corrado together. They were two, uh, Miami citizens who had recently been shot by someone with a small-caliber weapon. Based on a check written to me by Rex to bribe me to stay silent, Detective-Sergeant DeJesus-Montero reopened the investigation into Tom Langston’s death. There, buried beneath a pile of papers was Tom’s voice recorder, not unlike yours with its little orange light. On it were his detailed thoughts about the fate of Allie Hayes.”
Pam Hayes fell into another fit of tears, burying her face in her hands.
“This is bullshit, Titus,” said Rex.
“How can you say that?” said Tiffany to Rex. “You, of all people, you sick fuck! How can you fucking say that?”
“Allie,” said Rex.
“Don’t call me that! I’m Tiffany. I’m not playing your stupid fucking game anymore.”
“Then Tiffany,” I said, “ran off again just recently. She and Jake had developed a scheme to free her permanently so she could partake in, uh—activities—that she enjoys. Tiffany and Jake somehow got their hands on Tiffany’s birth certificate and some photos of her growing up, photos that included her half-sister Hayley. Tiffany and Jake used these to blackmail Rex to pay for a house where they lived together. Rex kept this a secret from his wife Pam, postponing the explanation until he figured something out. Rex is not the best communicator when it comes to anything besides writing big checks from shelf companies. When Pam got wind of Rex’s deception, she hired me to find out where Tiffany and Jake Preston were living.”
“Titus,” said Pam Hayes, “I have no idea what you are talking about. I only wanted to know that my daughter was safe.”
“Actually, no, Pam, you didn’t. You were more concerned with finding Tiffany’s location because you wanted to kill her. And Jake Preston.”
“That’s a lie!” said Rex. “I won’t have you slandering my wife like that, Titus.”
“See,” I said, “Tiffany and Jake Preston weren’t lovers in the traditional sense this time around, more like business partners. Tiffany provided Jake with the ammo to blackmail her father into paying for their house, where they lived together but each pretty much went their own separate ways. Tiffany did her, uh—performance art—while Jake spent his time penetrating every willing female orifice in South Beach. Everybody was happy, but Pam was bearing down on Tiffany—hiring thugs like me to find her so Pam could kill her. Rex got wind that Pam had hired me. He got nervous and called Kelly Alves who sent Z, the aforementioned professional killer. Meanwhile, Tiffany had her claws into Eddie Corrado, a young man who she met through Jake Preston. Eddie had—uh, saved up—some money. Tiffany saw this as her ‘Escape to L.A.’ fund. Somehow, Pam finds where they were living, goes there, and kills Jake. Tiffany comes by, finds Jake dead, gets her birth certif
icate and photographs out of his safe, stuffs them in a green duffel bag with red trim, and calls Eddie Corrado. Eddie arranges a cleanup of sorts, but not a very good one. Whoever Eddie got for cleanup did a shit job because Jake Preston’s body was found rather quickly by the Miami-Dade police department underneath the 41st Street Bridge. Tiffany goes to Eddie’s apartment, where she has been living. She convinces Eddie now is the time to run with her, get out of Miami, head to L.A. and start a new life. She was manipulating Eddie because he was supposedly a street thug and could protect her, although Eddie turned out to be not a very good street thug. Tiffany didn’t know that someone had located Eddie Corrado’s address for Pam Hayes and had told her. Tiffany and Eddie were getting ready to run, but were interrupted by Pam.”
“Titus,” said Rex. “Let me get this clear. You are accusing my wife of killing not just one—but two people?”
“Yes. Jake Preston and Eddie Corrado were both shot up close with a .22-caliber handgun. Pam Hayes knew Tiffany had a .22. That’s why she used it to kill Jake Preston to make it look like Tiffany killed both Jake and Eddie. To make this work, though, she was going to need to replace Tiffany’s gun with the one she used. She shows up at Eddie’s, but Tiffany hides. Pam Hayes shoots Eddie, who in his final moments, gives his life for the girl he loves. Pam Hayes can now frame Tiffany for the murders of both Jake and Eddie, but she really wants it to be a posthumous frame. She wants to kill Tiffany herself, knowing she can work out with Kelly Alves how to spin and sell it so that the grieving parents who ‘lost their daughter to the drug trade fueled by the opioid crisis’—or some-such media bullshit—boosts Rex Hayes’ chances at the polls. But Tiffany escapes and hides with me. She spends the night and hides her birth certificate and pictures in my apartment where I have a very secure hiding space. At the time, I still didn’t know about her true identity. She needed a new bodyguard, so she tried to convince me to move to L.A. with her, but I said no, let’s talk to the police. She gets pissed, realizing she can’t manipulate me so she calls Steve, another boy she has her claws into, probably one of many, and hides out at his place, fully intending to return to my apartment to retrieve her items. She didn’t count on my finding them, though. Or maybe deep down she wanted me to find them. Maybe that’s why she left them with me. Maybe it was a cry for help. Either way, it led me to Tiffany’s real mother Jeannie Connors, her real sister Hayley, and her real identity.”
Miami Burn (Titus Book 1) Page 26