by Jan Burke
“Where did you fish?”
“All over. I’m no sailor. I can’t even tell you where we were.”
He fell silent.
“What happened next?”
He looked up, glanced over at me, but then kept his eyes straight ahead. When he spoke again, his voice was strained.
“We’re out fishing, like I said. At one point, that sick bastard Selman takes her below. Ben Watterson looks like he’s going to faint. Roland tells him to relax. Just like that. Cold. ‘Relax, Ben.’”
He shook himself.
“So Andre went below with Nadine,” I coaxed.
“Yeah. Then I realize they’re down there getting it on. They come back up, all smiles. Then a little later, this call comes in over the radio from Booter. He calls to say, ‘All clear.’”
“The meeting with Lucas? The one when Lucas waited for Nadine to show up and clear his name?”
“Yes. It’s like Selman wanted to be screwing her right when he knows this meeting is going on. She doesn’t even see what’s coming. No, that call comes in, she figures he’s sealed the deal, and she gives Andre this big face-sucking kiss. He really gets into it. I figure, this time, he’s going to take her on the deck, right here in front of God and everybody. So I’m a little relieved when Allan says, ‘Ben, take the boat in.’”
“And then?”
He was silent.
“There’s more to this, isn’t there, Keene?”
“I don’t know!”
“Allan tells Ben to head back to the marina. Did he?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Ben takes the boat in. I’m feeling a little relieved. I don’t even know why. But then, all of a sudden, Roland says, ‘Andre and Nadine and I have some business to discuss. We’re going out again.’”
“Everyone?”
“No, just the three of them. Ben protests, but Roland just says, ‘If anything happens to the boat, I’ll buy you a new one, Ben.’” He shook his head. “Can you believe that? Ben said, ‘It’s not the boat I’m worried about.’ Roland gave him this look — I don’t know how to describe it. It just made us all shut up and get off the boat.”
“Nadine stayed aboard?”
“Yeah. With Selman and Roland.”
“What happened next?”
“Allan tells us to go home, but Ben wasn’t as afraid of Allan. He keeps trying to watch where they’re taking the boat. Allan said, ‘Ben, don’t you realize what Roland is trying to do for you? Go home.’ Ben started looking green. He got sick, really sick, right there at the dock. Corbin and I started to worry about him. But after a minute, he said he just wanted to get out of there. We all walked to our cars and drove home.”
“When was this?”
“August 8, 1977.”
“You remember the date that clearly?”
“For a lot of reasons.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “God knows I’d love to forget that day.”
I waited.
Long minutes passed before he went on. “You asked me how I remembered that date? Everything changed that day. Everything. I stopped drinking. Ben sold the boat to Selman. I don’t think you can get Corbin Tyler to step on a dock. Corbin and I stopped speaking to Selman; made Roland handle everything with the studies. Didn’t matter. We all kept working together, speaking or not.”
“You haven’t told me why everything changed.”
“I don’t know! It just did.”
“Bullshit, Keene.”
He didn’t answer.
“Okay, I’ll ask the obvious question. Did you ever see Nadine Preston after that day?”
“No.”
“The canvas bag and chain?”
“I never went back to the boat. Maybe it was there, maybe not.”
“Nadine never went back to school after that semester.”
“No.”
“No parents?”
“Her parents were dead. I heard… I heard that a brother was looking for her, but she had been gone a long time by then.”
“Where do you think she is?”
“I don’t know! We didn’t see what happened to her or the bag.” He paused. “Roland picked us out to be his business associates because we were the kind of people who didn’t have to be told things,” he added bitterly. “To Roland, this was business.”
“You didn’t see anything, but you were there.”
“It was a lesson. He taught us what happens to spoilsports.”
“What happens to spoilsports?”
His voice was no more than a dry whisper. “They don’t make it back to shore.”
“They killed her.”
“Yes, I think they did.”
“You think?”
When he didn’t answer, I reached into my purse and found the cocktail napkin he had left behind at the Terrace. “The night of Moffett’s dinner, you wrote the letter N on a cocktail napkin. Nadine, right?”
He nodded.
“She’s haunting you, Keene. Admit it. You only ‘think’ they killed her?”
He shook his head. “No, that’s not true. I know they did.”
I had figured that Nadine Preston was living in high style somewhere far from Las Piernas. What had happened to her shouldn’t have been surprising. She was a schemer and a blackmailer. A foolish one, out of her league. There was nothing to admire in her, but I couldn’t help but feel outraged on her behalf. And truthfully, I was no less angry that Andre had fondled her, had made a spectacle of his pretended passion for her, knowing all the while that he would take part in her death. As I thought about Keene’s story, I found myself concentrating on details, trying to prevent myself from becoming as nauseated as Ben had been that day.
“You’ve known these men for years. Who do you think actually killed her?”
“I’ve thought about that a lot. You want my best guess? Selman.”
“Why?”
“Roland would never let Selman have that kind of power over him. Selman benefitted, but he didn’t control. Roland controlled us all. After that, he never had to worry again that anyone would break ranks. He had us all by the balls and he knew it. He kept up his side of the deal. We made our profits. But it had changed.”
“I don’t understand how it’s possible that all of you stayed silent all this time.”
“What you think someone might have done, and what you know they’ve done — those are two different things.”
“Suspicion of murder, Keene, not anything less. If one of you had stood up and said you suspected murder, maybe her brother wouldn’t still be wondering where she is.”
“And maybe six other people would have said she was alive and well two days after you said she was dead. Or they might have said you were the last one anyone saw her with. Or maybe everyone would have shrugged and said, ‘We don’t know what happened to her,’ but you wouldn’t be doing business in Las Piernas.”
“How did Roland know he could count on you?”
“I’ve thought about that myself. I’ve had to. The easiest answer I can give you is that Roland knew who he was dealing with — from the beginning. You dated Selman at one time, right?”
“Yes.”
“All those women — some guys look at him and say, ‘He’s got to have some kind of touch.’ Do you think Selman had some magic power over people? I mean, actual voodoo or something?”
“No, but I think I see where you’re headed with this. He picks his victims.”
“Right. He doesn’t get there without the woman’s cooperation. He knows her better than she knows herself — that’s the key. Makes a woman feel mad at herself afterward, maybe, but the truth is, you probably didn’t stand a chance.”
“Played with fire and got burned,” I said. “That’s all.”
“But the first time you see fire — especially if you’ve been in the cold and dark up until then — it’s damned inviting, isn’t it? We wouldn’t even have that saying if there weren’t lots of people walking around with their fingers singed.”
“So you’re saying Roland knew that you’d all keep your mouths shut.”
“Roland knew that, and we each knew Roland wouldn’t have invited a man into his inner circle unless that were true. If you didn’t have the makings of a good conspirator, you weren’t going to be asked to the dance. You had to have a real talent for whatever it was you did, but you also had to be someone who wouldn’t get too big for his britches, who’d keep his mouth shut, who was climbing, maybe needed something — and you had to be greedy. But above all? You had to be someone who wanted to feel like he was an important man around town.”
He paused, then said, “Weaknesses and strengths. Roland is like Selman in that way. He knew more about us than we knew about ourselves. But he’s smarter than Andre, and even Andre knows it. Andre takes all he can get; Roland knows what he can take and who he can take it from, but he doesn’t take too much.”
“Murder was not too much?”
“Apparently not, right? You know what I think? I think that was Selman’s idea, start to finish. But it would have been Roland who said who should stay on shore. Being a party to it would be hardest on me and Corbin and Ben. Selman, Moffett, they don’t give a shit about anybody.”
“What about Booter?”
“Booter? What a joke — he’s the monkey they make those ‘See No Evil’ statues from.”
“I’d think you’d be the biggest risk.”
“Maybe. But then, maybe not. Corbin and Ben, they were probably doing the same thing I was doing. Probably at least once a day, they’d look in the mirror and say, ‘Maybe I’ll have the balls to do it today. I’ll tell Roland to shove it up his ass. I’ll come clean.’ And you know what that mirror answers back? ‘Who are you trying to kid, you big phony?’”
He sighed. “The best design I ever saw Corbin Tyler come up with was right after that trip. He wasn’t sleeping. Stayed up all night, night after night, working on it. It was magnificent. The Haimler Building — you know it?”
I nodded.
“I admired that set of plans,” Keene said. “I told him so. You know what he said? ‘I had to do something I’d be proud of.’ I knew exactly what he meant. Exactly. So I put my heart and soul into building it.”
I considered what he had said. “You’re talking to me now. Maybe your reflection was wrong.”
He smiled a little. “I wouldn’t bet on it. I’m doing this in a pretty chickenshit fashion.”
We were quiet again.
“I think Lucas was murdered,” I said.
“Oh yeah?” He shifted a little.
“You do, too, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said after a moment. “I don’t know how they did it — I didn’t even like to think it could be murder at first — but it was just too convenient, you know? And after the lady at the shelter got hurt, I said to myself, ‘Keene, someone is shutting people up.’”
“It’s why you’re talking to me.”
“Yes. Maybe whoever did this to Lucas and the shelter lady will come after me and Corbin. Ben killed himself, but Corbin and I, we aren’t the type for that. Not so obliging. Still, no one’s been arrested yet, so I’m not feeling so safe.”
I had no argument to give him. “What is it you think I can do for you?”
“If something happens to me,” he said, “I don’t want them to get away with it. I don’t want my kids to find out what I’ve done, but I’d rather have that than just go quietly, if you know what I mean. I go, this whole thing is blown wide open.”
I looked at him sharply. “You’re planning to use me as your triggering device.”
He nodded.
“And you plan to let them know that?”
“Not unless absolutely necessary. Not unless they try something with me.”
“Christ, Keene, do you think they’d have any more trouble getting rid of me than they would you?”
“None, and I’m sorry if it’s put you in danger.”
“Sorry!”
“Yes, sorry! But I couldn’t think of any other way to work it.”
“You’re putting me in the line of fire!”
“You were in it anyway. All those phone calls you’ve been making? You’ve stirred up the hornets’ nest all on your own. Do you believe for one moment that your car window was broken by a thief?”
I was silent.
“No, missy, you’ve got something that worries somebody.” He slanted a sly look toward my hands. “I’ll bet it’s in one of those envelopes.”
I clutched them tighter.
“I’m not your thief,” he said. “You’ve figured that out by now.”
“Why don’t you get a lawyer and go to the cops? Try to get immunity.”
“Immunity means I still have to open up a can of worms. A lot of people would be hurt — and not just my kids. Corbin would be hurt. His kid would be hurt. So would investors, officials, my workers, lots of people.”
“You have a big goddamned ego, you know that?”
He smiled. “I do.”
I looked up at the cherubs, smiling down at us. The last of the innocents, in a twilight sky.
If I wanted to stay healthy, I had to find a way to open up that can of worms he worried over — without breaking my promise to keep what he told me off the record. The “cleanup man” — as I was beginning to think of whoever had killed Lucas — only had something at stake if his reputation was protected. If the redevelopment scam could be exposed, then there was no reputation to protect.
I could think of only two ways of exposing it. One would be to find the original data, have a statistics expert look at it, and hope the expert could find the holes in Selman’s study.
The other would be faster — which appealed to my desire to live. I could find Lucas’s hidden papers and pray that they would be enough to get Selman and his buddies in trouble. Maybe the hidden papers would indicate which figures were changed. That in turn might show which numbers to question in the study on file with the Redevelopment Agency. I might still need a statistics expert, but it would take less time.
Time. I looked at the long windows across from the staircase. There were still a few hours of light left.
“I have a request,” I said.
He looked over to me.
“I want to look around in the Angelus for a while.”
“By yourself?”
No, not by myself. But I didn’t want him with me while I looked for Lucas’s papers. “I guess so,” I said.
He was about to answer when my pager went off, startling both of us.
“Sorry,” I said, “I thought it was set to just vibrate.” Lydia’s number was on the display. “Could I use your cell phone?”
“Sure, let’s go out to the car.”
I locked up behind us, not knowing if the phone call would mean I’d have to leave. If not, I’d ask Frank to pick me up at the Angelus. If I had to go back to the office, it was probably because Wrigley had figured out who passed out his pager number.
“Lydia? It’s Irene. I need to make it quick. I’m on someone else’s cellular phone.”
“I’ll transfer you down to Geoff then. Your friend Lisa is here.”
“Lisa Selman?”
“We told her you weren’t in, but she seems pretty upset, so I thought I’d call you, let you talk to her.”
“Okay, transfer me.”
Keene had heard me say Lisa’s name. “Don’t tell her I’m with you!” he said, panicked, looking around. “I need to get out of here.”
Geoff came on the line, handed me over to Lisa.
“Irene?” She sounded as if she were on the verge of tears.
“What’s wrong?”
“I have to talk to you. About Roberta. I was sorting through some boxes in my old attic room at my father’s house. I found some papers. I — I think they have something to do with Lucas and Roberta. I thought — this is such a mess! I think Andre’s — I can’t even say it. I need your help. I borrowed Jerry’s car. Can I meet you somewhere?”
> “I can be back at the paper in a few minutes,” I said.
“I don’t want her to see my car!” Keene was whispering furiously. “She might tell her father!”
At the same time, Lisa was saying, “No, no. We can’t talk here. Not in front of other people.”
I sighed. Keene and Lisa waited.
“Do you know where the Angelus Hotel is?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“I need to look around there. I just got a set of keys from Keene Dage’s kids.” The lies started coming easier. “I told them I was doing a story about the restoration of historical buildings. Give me about twenty minutes to get there,” I said, and hoped she didn’t hear Keene’s sigh of relief.
35
I BORROWED KEENE’S PHONE to make one more call, and left a message for Frank saying I’d get a ride home from Lisa.
Keene started to get into his car, but went back to the trunk. He pulled out a big flashlight. “Take this. We don’t have the power on in there yet, and once you’re off the first floor, it gets dark… but I guess you know that.”
“Thanks, Keene.”
“You sure you’ll be okay waiting here?”
I nodded. “I’ll lock myself inside the gate.”
He stood there, looking at his own keys. “Anything else you need?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Yeah. Well, thanks.” He gave a little smile. “I mean, confession really is good for the soul. I don’t feel like mine is spick-and-span or anything, but it’s a weight off, you know? I’ve never told anyone about it before.”
“Thanks for trusting me.”
He glanced up at the hotel. “I’ll ask my sad angels to watch over you, Irene.”
“Hope they do a better job for me than they did for you.”
“Me, too.” His face became serious. “I really wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Don’t get an attack of conscience over it or anything, Keene.”
He laughed. “Piss and vinegar. That’s what I like about you.”
He waved and drove off.
I LOCKED THE GATE and walked across the grounds to the front steps. While I waited, I went back to Ben’s calendar. The depression, or whatever it was that kept him from making entries, lasted a little over three weeks. There was nothing written from August 9 until then. I looked again at the note from Jeff McCutchen. Six numbers. What did they mean?