“I need to talk to Mr. Shelby.” C.J. pushed past her.
He turned around, adjusting the cuffs of his jacket. “Ms. Dunn?”
“Mr. Shelby. Your mother called me to demand the unspent portion of the so-called expense deposit for Richard Slater, after you fired him with no notice and a paltry two weeks’ severance pay. I wanted to tell you personally what a shitty thing it was.”
Shelby looked past her at the two women standing near the door. “Thank you. You can go now. It’s all right. Just lock up on your way out. Ms. Dunn, would you like to come into my office?”
It was a carpeted room with a large desk, a sofa, some flags, a color photograph of the president shaking hands with the congressman, more photographs, certificates. On his desk, framed portraits of his wife and their two sons, gray eyes and neatly combed brown hair like daddy.
Paul Shelby stood squarely in the center of his office, his expression a mix of indignation and incredulity. “I am shocked. If you have a complaint, that’s fine, but to barge in here spouting profanity shows a lack of manners I’d never have expected from you. I didn’t need Mr. Slater’s services anymore. Diana’s brother is going to drive her from now on. End of story.”
C.J. put her sunglasses away, missing twice before getting them into their case. Her hands were shaking. Her chest felt like a cold wind was blowing through it.
“Are we finished, Ms. Dunn? I have a meeting to attend.”
She said, “You wanted me to tell you when my client became more of a burden than a duty to you, so you could fire him. That was against my principles and I should have called you on it right there, but I didn’t. You made your decision without consulting me. Now you want a refund on your deposit, after I have put in many, many hours of my time. That’s not just cheap, it’s rude.”
With a sigh, Shelby said, “All right. If you want to keep the money, then keep it. I’m not going to argue.”
“You know what really ticks me off? Jason Wright. Who leaked his name to the press?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You fucking do. I told you Jason had no alibi, and he was Alana’s boyfriend, and you, or maybe Noreen, ran with it, and then reporters were all over him like piranhas. Don’t you feel any responsibility for what happened? I do. I feel bad as hell.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“Do you deny that you told the media about Jason?”
“Yes, I deny it. What is the matter with you? I think you’re drunk.” Shelby held up a forefinger in warning as he picked up his telephone. “I’m going to call a taxi, and I want you to get in it and go home.”
C.J. pressed the button to disconnect. “You don’t know who I am, do you? You really have no clue.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look at me. Look at me, I said. What if I told you my name? Charlotte Jo Bryan. They called me Charlie. You said it was cute. Is it coming back to you now?”
He stared at her, squinting slightly.
“Gainesville, Florida. You were a third-year law student. I was working at the Sundowner on West Main. I didn’t wear designer suits then. I wore blue jeans and T-shirts and flip-flops because it was what I could afford. I was nineteen and weighed about twenty pounds less than I do now, and I had short brown hair. Look at me.”
Paul Shelby was slowly shaking his head.
“You gave me a thousand dollars for an abortion. You can’t have forgotten that.”
After a few seconds of silence, he said, “Charlie?”
She held out her arms, then let them fall at her sides. “Yeah. Charlie.”
Warily he said, “What do you want?”
“What do I want? I don’t know. I guess I want . . . I want some acknowledgment of what you did. Yes. That would be nice. An apology. Let’s start there.”
“An apology? For what? For getting you pregnant?”
“No. For what you did to me.” Arms crossed tightly over her chest, she paced in front of him. “I’d never been with a guy so much older, almost ten years older, a law student, a former Navy lieutenant, and I couldn’t imagine why you’d want me. We didn’t have normal dates. We never went to dinner or a movie. I never met your friends. We’d go right to your apartment. But then one of your neighbors saw us come out. He laughed and said who’s the kid?”
“For God’s sake.” Shelby turned away and put a hand to his forehead.
C.J. pulled on his sleeve and forced him to look at her. “It took me a while, but I finally got it, what I was to you. The next time you called me, I said no, but you kept calling and said you missed me. Please, Charlie, I miss you, baby. We didn’t go to your apartment. We drove out to the country—you had that new Mustang, remember? The front seat went all the way down.”
“Stop it!”
“That’s funny. I said the same thing. I said it over and over, but you wouldn’t stop. You called me your baby doll. You put your hands around my neck and squeezed. You said it would make it better for both of us. I thought I was going to die. After it was over, you threw me out of the car, and I had to walk back to town. How far was that? Five miles?”
He turned and leaned over her. She felt the spittle striking her lips. “I know who you are. You’re the little hick who wanted to go out with me because I had money and a fast car and a father who wasn’t in jail or drunk. You were all over me. Yes, we had sex. We got stoned, too, on weed that you provided, and we got drunk, but I did not . . . force you. It was consensual. You wanted it. All of it.”
“That isn’t true! To be asphyxiated? Raped? Are you crazy? I should have called the police, but I was too ashamed.”
“They wouldn’t have believed you. No one will believe you now.” Paul Shelby gripped her upper arm so tightly she groaned and dug into his fingers. He shook her. “I have a wife and children and a position in this community. If you repeat this to anyone, I will sue you for slander. You will be fired from Tischman Farmer. Believe me, Ms. Dunn, you don’t want to try it. You are sick. You need help.”
When he pushed her away, C.J. leaned with both hands on the edge of the desk. “I never said I would make it public. I would never tell your wife. I only wanted you to look at me and see who I am, so maybe I could forget it too.”
“All right. I’ve seen you. Now get out.”
chapter THIRTY-TWO
rick was standing at the gate in the side yard of C.J.’s house talking to Edgar Dunn when he heard an engine and the shriek of tires. He had parked his Audi in the driveway, and a silver BMW was swerving to miss it. The wheels went off the driveway into the grass and then corrected to the left, but not fast enough. C.J. didn’t make it into the double-wide carport. She hit the corner of the house, smashing the right front headlight.
Edgar lifted the latch on the gate and hurried through. Rick got to her first. She was gripping the top of the steering wheel, and her forehead rested on her hands. He tried the door. Rapping on the window, he said, “C.J.!” It took her some effort to find the lock. He opened the door and reached over her to turn off the ignition and the lights. There was an empty pint bottle of Absolut on the floor of the passenger side.
She was laughing. “Who moved the garage?”
“Is she hurt?” Edgar tried to see.
“No, she’s drunk.” Rick handed him her tote bag and the keys. “Let’s get her inside.” She wasn’t wearing a seat belt. He pulled her out of the car. With an arm around her waist, he half-carried her up some steps and through the side door of the house, which led to a utility room, then the kitchen. Edgar turned on the lights and Rick followed him. A couple of cats ran out of the way, scooting into a dining room whose table was cluttered with papers and files, then through a wide opening to a living room with a fireplace and high beamed ceilings. Edgar hurried to the sofa and cleared off a week’s worth of newspapers and a tray with the remains of a frozen dinner.
C.J. struggled. “Let me go. Please. Bathroom.” She staggered down a hall and a door slammed. Water ran, an
attempt to disguise the sound of C.J. Dunn being sick.
Her uncle stood by the telephone. “Should we call emergency, do you think?”
Rick walked to the door, knocked, and went in. She was curled up on the tile floor, moaning, her skirt up her thighs and vomit on her blouse. He flushed the toilet and ran some cold water over a hand towel. Edgar stood in the doorway. To give the old man something to do, Rick asked if he’d make a pot of strong coffee.
He crouched beside her and cleaned her face. “C.J. Talk to me, C.J. Who am I? Do you know who I am?”
Her eyes drifted toward his face. “Rick? What are you doing here?”
“You didn’t show for dinner, so I came looking for you.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. I forgot.” She hiccuped.
He took off her high heels and set them under the sink. “We’re going for a walk. Come on.” He lifted her to her feet. “That’s it. I’ve got you. Walk with me.” He took her to the living room, across to the foyer, then back in the other direction.
She buried her face in his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to. I’m so embarrassed.”
“It’s all right. Just keep moving.”
“Dizzy. I have to sit down.”
“Not yet. Walk it out.”
She heaved, and he took her back to the bathroom and let her spit bile into the sink. She shuddered and started to cry and put her forehead on the porcelain. He lifted her face and wiped it off again. He leaned into the hall. “Mr. Dunn? Could you bring a glass of water? No ice, room temperature.”
He closed the toilet lid and let her sit there, and when her uncle brought the water, Rick held the glass to her lips. “Not too much. Just sip it.” When she turned her head away, he said, “If you don’t drink this, you’ll be in the hospital with a saline drip in your arm.” She drank then leaned over the sink again, but nothing came up. When she had finished half the water in the glass, Rick walked her back to the living room.
Edgar said, “Last year I found her on the floor in the kitchen, passed out cold. I called nine-one-one. I had to sign papers to get her some help. I thought she was okay.”
“She’s going to fight it the rest of her life. Do you have any antacid?”
“Yup. Got some Pepto-Bismol in my bathroom. I’ll be right back.”
Rick walked her up and down the hall and around the living room, and C.J. told him how ashamed she was, and she was not a good person, she was weak and a phony, but she was glad he was there, since he knew about taking care of drunks, didn’t he, because his brother had been a drunk too, and she would give anything not to go back in the hospital, and she would never never do this again.
“Please don’t tell anyone. You won’t, will you, Rick?”
“I won’t.”
“Cross your heart and hope to die?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die.”
She grabbed the front of his shirt in both hands to keep her balance. “Rick, I want to tell you what I did. I called Sarah Finch. Left a message. Sorry. Can’t do it. Rich, Famous, and Deadly. I would’ve been so good. I would’ve. But I gave it up, Rick. I left her a message . . . and said I was sorry. Thank you for con—considering me, but I can’t.”
“Why’d you do that, honey?”
“You called me honey. Oh. You’re such a nice man. Please don’t leave.” C.J. started to cry again, getting his shirt wet. “Please don’t.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He wiped the tears off her cheeks, and they walked some more.
C.J. went to sleep on the couch with a pillow and a blanket from her bedroom. Rick had angled an armchair so he could see her if she stirred. A lamp on the end table had three settings, and he’d put it on low. He propped his head on a fist and dozed. His eyes came open. She was looking at him. He didn’t know how long she’d been awake. Two of her cats were curled up at her feet. A smaller white cat watched him from the chair near the fireplace. When Rick stretched his arms, it jumped down and hid under the chair.
C.J.’s voice came out on a whisper, like her throat was raw. “I stood you up. I’m sorry. What time is it?”
He glanced at his watch. “About four o’clock.” She looked at the dark window. “Four o’clock in the morning,” he said.
Struggling to sit up, she noticed what she was wearing—a satin nightgown with thin straps. She pulled the sheet to her chin.
Rick said, “I didn’t do that. Judy Mazzio came over. Edgar called her. She’s upstairs asleep in the guest room.”
“Judy. Yes, I remember.”
“What happened to you?” Rick asked.
“I screwed up, obviously.”
“It’s day one. New day, new start. And it’s Friday.”
“Aren’t you Mr. Sunshine?” She held her head and squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh, God.”
He went over to the coffee table and opened the bottle of aspirin. “Here. Take a couple of these and drink the whole glass of water. All of it. Come on, down the hatch. You’re going to feel like shit today. You should call in sick to work.”
She gave him the empty glass and wiped her mouth with her fingers. “We both get the day off. You don’t have a job anymore.”
“That’s right, I don’t. How’d you find out?”
“Noreen Finch called me. She wanted the balance of your deposit. I told her to go to hell.”
“Good for you.”
C.J.’s smile vanished, replaced by a slit-eyed stare that he couldn’t figure out. Her eyes were puffy, her makeup was gone, and her mouth turned down, pale and tight.
“What?”
She raised her knees, covering herself with the blanket. “Did Judy say anything to you about the boat at the Redfish Point marina?”
“No. What would she have said?”
“She got a list of owners. Guess whose name is on it? Carlos Moreno, the cameraman for Libi Rodriguez.”
They looked at each other in the dim lamplight. Rick nodded.
“My God. I knew you weren’t telling me the whole truth, but this!”
“I couldn’t tell you.”
“Oh, balls you couldn’t. You didn’t want to. What are you doing with Moreno?”
Rick came over and sat on the other end of the sofa. “Carlos is helping me with a story about Paul Shelby. I’m a freelance reporter.”
Her mouth came open and a small groan of disbelief came out.
“I might as well tell you now,” he said. When she continued to stare at him, he said, “Do you want to hear about it?”
She lifted her hands. “I can’t wait.”
“I’ve known Carlos a long time. I met him in Karachi, Pakistan. I was in the Army, and he was working for Reuters. After I left the military, I bounced around doing this and that for a while, like I told you, and Carlos and I kept in touch. His wife didn’t like his odds of survival, so he came home and started working in TV. I had written some articles when I was in the service and made some contacts among the press corps. I started working with a freelancer, a guy named Larry Everts, on a story about Blackwater. You probably never heard of him, but he’s won a Pulitzer. He sold our piece to The New Yorker. I was with Blackwater at the time, so obviously my name didn’t appear in the credits, but the right people told me that if I ever wanted to sell something, they’d look at it. The problem was, being out of the field I didn’t have much to write about, so I said, hell, why not write a novel?
“I went to Mexico and spun my wheels. One day I got a call from Carlos. He said he had a tip from a girl who wanted money for her story, as long as he kept her name out of it. He was the only journalist she knew and trusted, but he’s not a writer, so he called me.”
C.J. lifted her eyes toward the ceiling. “The girl was Alana Martin.”
“Correct. You asked why Carlos didn’t sell the pictures in her portfolio. He was working with me, and besides that, he liked Alana. There wasn’t any sex between them. He said his wife would kill him. Anyway, Carlos told Alana about me, and I came to Miami to check it out.
She said she was having sex with a U.S. congressman. He liked little girls, but he was afraid to go after the real thing. As a story, it had some spice, but it wasn’t enough. What did interest me was the fact that the sex had been arranged as a bribe for a five-hundred-million-dollar project on U.S. surplus land. That’s a bigger story than a pedophile politician cheating on his wife.
“So I called Larry Everts, and he said he’d be willing to work with me if I did the legwork in Miami. Larry had heard rumors about Shelby already. Whispers of illegal campaign donations, X corporation picking up the tab for Y product or services, and Noreen Finch using her contacts with the present administration to push her son’s career. Larry would follow that up, and I’d take care of my part of the story. We knew it would take time, and I needed to get close to Shelby.
“You’d be surprised how many contacts you make in the military. The executive VP of Atlas Security is a former Navy SEAL I’d met on joint task force exercises in Guantanamo. Shelby didn’t know he wanted a driver, but my friend at Atlas told him it would be a good idea to protect the family, so bingo, I had a job.”
C.J. wasn’t saying anything, just staring at him.
“I watched Shelby for two months,” Rick said. “I dropped him off at Milo’s place three times when the wife was out of town. Shelby said they were talking about The Aquarius, but nobody else seemed to be around. Alana said he never had any girl more than once, except for her. Shelby liked her acting ability, I’ll put it that way. Alana gave me the names of other girls who had been with Shelby. There was a pattern. Long hair, skinny, looked young, from out of town. I was able to find and talk to one of them. She says she met Milo Cahill at a party and went to his house several times before he suggested she meet his friend. He didn’t say who the friend was. She went to Milo’s house, and he took her up into the tower on the third floor. The man was already there. There was some wine, and she thinks it was spiked with something. She has very little memory of what went on. I showed her Shelby’s photo without telling her who he was. She couldn’t identify him. She wasn’t injured, and she refused to say it was rape. She had just turned eighteen. Milo gave her five hundred dollars.”
The Dark of Day Page 30