Natalie's Revenge

by Susan Fleet

  His eyes grew baleful. But when I waved the gun, fear replaced the anger in his eyes. “Tell me about BoBo,” I said. "Now, or I'll shoot you."

  “I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”

  “Tell me when you met him. And how.”

  He relaxed a bit, though his chest was still pumping up and down like a puffer fish out of water. “I met him in New Orleans, in October of 1988.”

  The words I had been waiting for. I could barely contain my excitement. Finally, after all these years, I would find out what happened to Mom.

  “Where did you meet him, Arnold? Let’s have the details.”

  “I met him at his Go-Go Bar in Central City.” Peterson’s eyes took on a furtive look as though he might be thinking about where this would lead.

  "Go on, Arnold. What happened?"

  “I was down in the dumps. My wife was giving me a hard time. I wanted her to quit working and have a baby, but she didn’t want—”

  “Arnold, I’m not interested in the history of your marital problems. Tell me about BoBo.”

  Mr. Important licked his lips. “We started talking and he cheered me up.”

  “How sweet. Tell me how he cheered you up.”

  “I told him I worked for Gillette. When I said a guy that worked in my department was giving me grief, BoBo told me . . .” Peterson’s eyes flitted to the painting on the wall next to the bed, a watercolor of the Seine with little boats bobbing along beneath a blue sky. How ironic.

  I hadn't noticed it before. I'd been too focused on my plan.

  “What did BoBo tell you?”

  “He said if anyone gave him grief he hired strong-arm guys to fix them.”

  “And then what?”

  “Nothing. I went back to my hotel.”

  Disappointment swallowed me like a shroud. After all the terrible deeds I had done to earn money, after all these years of planning, would Arnold Peterson thwart me? My hands gripped the gun and began to tremble.

  His eyes got that panicky look again. “What do you want from me?”

  I wanted him to tell me that BoBo had killed my mother, but I couldn’t come right out and say this. The tape recorder was running.

  I forced myself to be calm. “I thought you and BoBo were friends.”

  “We were. The next night I went back to the bar and BoBo was there and we got talking again.” His eyes shifted to the pretty painting of the Seine.

  I knew he was holding something back. “Talking about what?”

  “BoBo asked me if I ever played around. I said no, I'd only been married six months.”

  I made an impatient gesture with the gun. Made another click-sound with my tongue.

  “BoBo asked me if I’d ever tried a call girl. Not a hooker, he said, call girls are different. They do whatever you want. We could have a threesome.”

  Poor Mom. The cold hard iceberg invaded my gut, sent violent tremors through my very core.

  “He tried to persuade me, but I refused. I didn’t want to alienate him. I figured he might be helpful to my career, but I just . . . I didn’t want . . . I was afraid somebody might see us or find out or something.”

  His admission that BoBo used call girls was something. But that wasn’t what I'd come here for, not even close. “When you told BoBo you didn’t want to play, what did he do?”

  “He called some woman and told her to meet him at a hotel.”

  A frenzy of excitement sent my heart racing. “What hotel?”

  “The Royal Arms on Royal Street near Esplanade.”

  “How do you know where the hotel was?”

  He clamped his lips together and glowered at me. I placed the muzzle of the gun close to his testicles. “Think about what hollow point bullets will do to your jewels, Arnold.”

  Through clenched teeth, he said, “I drove him there.”

  “Very good, Arnold. Tell me what happened then. I love details.”

  And so did my tape recorder, which Arnold seemed to have forgotten.

  “It was late and he'd had a few drinks. He asked me to drive him there so I did. I wish I hadn’t. Christ, I wish I’d never come to New Orleans that day. Nobody knew I was here, not even my wife. She thought I was on a business trip. I was, but things went great in Atlanta so I decided to treat myself to a few days in New Orleans. I'd never been here and everybody talked about how great it was.”

  Now that he was talking I was reluctant to interrupt him, but I needed him to tell me about BoBo, not business trips.

  “What happened at the hotel, Arnold?”

  “Christ if I know. I went back to my hotel and watched a movie.”

  Rage hotter than volcanic lava burned holes in my stomach. I was ready to shoot this imbecile. He must have seen this on my face.

  His chest rose and fell rapidly. “An hour later BoBo called me in a panic." His voice was shaking, and pitched higher. "He said something happened to the woman and he needed a ride home right away.”

  The words I had been waiting for. I could hardly breathe.

  “So I picked him up two blocks from the hotel." He closed his eyes and scrunched up his face.

  "Keep talking, Arnold. What happened then?"

  "I drove him home. Christ, he babbled like an idiot the whole way. He wouldn’t shut up.” Peterson gave me a pleading look. A guilty look.

  I flicked the gun. Clicked my tongue.

  “He said the woman gave him a hard time and he punched her and then he hit her with a flatiron and she started to scream and . . . he strangled her.” Peterson closed his eyes.

  I wondered if he was trying to picture this. I was.

  My throat closed up. I tried to imagine what Mom was thinking. A 28-eight-year-old single mother trying to earn money to pay the rent. And then some important man asked her to do something she didn’t want to do so he beat her to a pulp and strangled her.

  BoBo the monster. Thirty-three years old.

  A rich and powerful man, using women for his pleasure.

  A red haze fuzzed my vision. I closed my eyes. Tried to focus. My breath came in short gasps. I felt like I'd just run a marathon. When I opened my eyes, Arnold was staring at me, a look of horror on his face.

  I had to grip the gun very hard to keep my hands from shaking.

  “I didn’t know he killed her! Honest. Not till after I picked him up. When we got to his house, BoBo warned me not to tell anyone. He said, ‘I owe you one, Arnold. If you ever need something, call me.’”

  “Did you?”

  “Did I tell anyone? No.”

  “Did you ever need something and call BoBo?”

  A guilty hangdog look crossed his face. “Yes. The summer of '94 everything went in the toilet at Gillette. I called BoBo and he hired me to manage his GoGo bar in New Orleans. He said I’d have one of the top jobs someday. Too bad he didn’t put it in writing. After BoBo died, Chip fired me.”

  Mr. Important was still thinking about what might have been. I wasn’t.

  “And you never told anyone that BoBo murdered that woman?”

  “No.”

  “She was my mother, Arnold. BoBo murdered my mother. And you’re just as guilty as BoBo. You helped him get away with it and so did his wife. She gave him an alibi and the cops let him go.”

  Fear blossomed in his eyes. When I shut off the tape recorder and raised the gun, the fear turned to terror.

  “Please,” he said, “Don’t shoot me. I couldn’t help it.”

  I had known this moment might come, but I hadn't allowed myself to think about it. Now the moment had arrived. The murderous moment. Arnold was at my mercy, naked, trussed to a bed.

  Could I shoot him and walk away with a clear conscience?

  I thought about Randy, teetering on the edge of the bluff, begging me not to shoot him. But that was different. Randy killed defenseless animals like Muffy and made his sister give him blowjobs. Randy deserved to die.

  Arnold wasn't the man who murdered my mother, BoBo was. But Arnold had helped him ge
t away with it, had driven BoBo home and listened to his confession. Worst of all, rather than call the police and tell them he knew who murdered the woman in the Royal Arms Hotel, Arnold had told no one.

  Because Arnold wanted to become rich and powerful like BoBo.

  I aimed the gun at his forehead and pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 27

  Sunday, 17 August

  Frank mopped sweat off his forehead and glanced at Kenyon Miller, pounding away on the CYBEX treadmill beside him, his Saints T-shirt dark with sweat. They'd been at it for 40 minutes. He hated running on machines, but it was raining like hell outside. He increased his speed, still frustrated by his fruitless conversation with Joereen Beaubien yesterday.

  Wednesday's deadline loomed like a 24-second clock running down at the end of a tie basketball game. Make the shot or lose. Find Peterson's killer or you're off the case. Three days and he had nothing.

  Where's Natalie? No clue.

  Who's her next target? No clue there either.

  Miller took a towel off his treadmill, wiped his sweaty face and looked over, breathing hard. "You training for a marathon or something?"

  "No, I'm pissed. Hank called last night. Not a peep from the nationwide BOLO Boston PD put out on Robin Adair." His cell rang and he snatched it out of the cup holder. "Renzi."

  "Hi Franco, how you doing?"

  "Hey, whaddaya know?" A familiar yearning seized him. Gina. Damn, he was glad to hear from her.

  "Got a few tidbits for you. Am I interrupting anything?"

  "Yeah, I'm in bed with Angelina Jolie, can't you hear me puffing?" He saw Miller's head swivel, his mouth open in a silent laugh.

  "That's my Franco, always wowing the women. Where's Brad?"

  "I sent him out to mow the grass." He winked at Miller. "Actually I'm on a treadmill beside my partner, Kenyon Miller." He glanced at Miller's CYBEX dashboard. "I'm three miles ahead of him."

  "Total bullshit!" Miller shouted. "Don't believe it."

  Along the line of treadmills, heads turned, men with grinning faces.

  "Sounds like your partner knows you're a smartass," Gina said.

  "True. So what's up?"

  "My Boston PD source tells me the ballistics analysis on the bullet that killed Oliver James didn't match the slugs in your murder cases down there."

  "Hold on." He hit Stop and stepped off the treadmill. Mopping his face with a towel, he walked to a vacant machine in the corner. "Okay, now I can talk. Hank called me yesterday about the ballistics report. He also said they've got nothing on Robin Adair. But enough shoptalk, tell how you're doing."

  "I got thinking about what you said. Last Friday I cooked a great dinner. No smartass remarks, Franco, I still make damn good lasagna. When Greg got home, I opened a bottle of Chianti and told him I ran into an old friend. He knew what I meant, not that I said your name or anything. Then I laid it on the line. I said maybe he wasn't interested in sex anymore, but I was." Gina chuckled, the same evil chuckle he fondly remembered. "He didn't even wait for dessert, took me to bed and fucked my brains out."

  "Good for you. I'm glad things worked out." But was he really glad or was he just saying that?

  "So there you have it. All the news that's fit to print, and some that isn't."

  "Greg needed a dope-slap and I'm glad you gave him one."

  "Yeah, but you know what? I still miss you. We had some great times."

  His throat tightened. "Yes, we did. So stay in touch and let me know how you're doing."

  "You got it, Franco. Talk to you later."

  He closed his cell. He was glad that she'd put things right with Greg. Gina was a terrific woman and she deserved to be happy. He dearly hoped the Big C didn't come back to bite her. He saw Miller heading his way, smiling. "Was that your new girlfriend?" Miller said

  "No," he said, truthfully, "an old one. But she's happily married. Let's hit the showers."

  _____

  BoBo’s Go-Go Bar in Central City had no lurid neon lights, no flashing outlines of big-bosomed babes with sexy legs. The exterior looked almost prim, the lower half tan-brick, above it white-painted clapboards. A discreet sign above entrance said: BoBo’s Go-Go Bar.

  To avoid leaving a record of her destination, she'd given the cabdriver an address two blocks away and walked to the bar. The early evening air was pleasant, cool and not too humid, but her palms were sweaty. If she played her cards right, she would soon be face-to-face with Chip Beaubien.

  She entered the foyer, a wood-paneled area lined with photographs, BoBo with various VIPs, beaming his toothy smile. Beyond a wide archway, she saw well-dressed men seated on high-backed stools at the bar. No women of course, not in a club that featured sexy babes dancing in scanty outfits. Soft jazz was playing on a sound system. Not her taste, but she assumed the music would change when the show began an hour from now at eight o’clock.

  As she entered the main room, a man intercepted her. He was big and brawny, over six feet tall, and broad shoulders filled his tuxedo. Dressed like a maitre d, acting like a bouncer, his frosty eyes boring into hers. "Help you with something?"

  "I'm here to speak to Mr. Beaubien."

  "You got an appointment?"

  She flashed a confident smile. "No, but I'm writing a magazine article about him, a flattering article. I'm sure Mr. Beaubien will be thrilled with it."

  He studied her outfit, her sleek auburn wig, her elegant beige linen jacket, her matching knee-length skirt, and her gold Caparros sandals. He gave her a hard stare. "Okay. Sit at the bar, the stool around the corner at the far end so nobody'll bother you."

  Conscious of men's eyes on her, she walked to end of the 30-foot bar. Around the corner were two vacant stools. She took the one next to the wall. To her right, maroon-velvet sofas grouped around low tables filled a spacious dark-carpeted area in front of a stage. No TV sets anywhere or pictures of sexy women. Of course not. Men came here to see live women strut their stuff.

  A beefy red-haired man in a white shirt and a maroon cummerbund set a cocktail napkin on the polished mahogany bar in front of her. Above a stylized line drawing of a martini glass, BoBo’s Go-Go Bar was emblazoned on the napkin in mauve letters. "Evening, ma'am. Would you like a cocktail? Our Southern Comfort Kamikaze is the Sunday special."

  “Sounds dangerous. What’s in it?”

  “Southern Comfort, triple sec and lime juice, over shaved ice.”

  “I’ll try one. Could I have a glass of ice water as well?”

  He smiled, his ruddy face weathered below his mop of curly red hair. “You must be really thirsty.”

  She returned his smile. Always make friends with the bartender. “I am.”

  After he left, she took a pen and steno pad out of her tote and set her tinted Vera Wang glasses against the bridge of her nose. Props for her fateful meeting. Earlier, using her well-honed makeup techniques, she had fashioned her sleek Grace Kelly look, cool and sexy but not blatantly so. She put on the sleeveless teal top she’d splurged on in Paris, clingy but not skin-tight. A boat neck exposed the skin above her breasts, but no cleavage. After donning her beige suit, she had crept downstairs, hoping to avoid Banshee. No such luck.

  “Going out on the town, are you?” squawked that horrible voice.

  “Have a good evening, Mrs. Reilly,” she'd said, and left.

  She looked at the doodles on her steno pad, two lines filled with letter B's. B for BoBo? Or Banshee? The woman was beyond annoying. She was like a cat waiting to pounce. No, cats were quick and agile. Mrs. Reilly was like a wild pig, a fat crafty creature, lying in wait for her prey.

  The bartender delivered her Kamikaze with a flourish and glanced at her notepad. “What y’all writing? A novel?”

  “Could be. Maybe I’ll put you in it.”

  “Far out!” He scooped ice into a glass, filled it with water, set it on the bar and left to serve another customer.

  She pretended to sip her Kamikaze through the straw. No alcohol to muddle her thoughts. She had
to stay alert. Should she take off her jacket? No. The room was chilly. She unbuttoned the top four buttons to expose her teal blouse. The color went well with her auburn wig.

  To ease the crick in her neck, she tilted her head back and saw a video camera mounted on the wall above her. She glanced around the room and spotted two more. If there were three, there might be more. Maybe Chip used the tapes to blackmail prominent businessmen as they watched the dancers.

  “How y’all doing, dawlin?” said a reedy voice.

  Startled, she turned. A man slipped onto the adjacent stool, gazing at her. She’d know those eyes anywhere. Chip-off-the-old-block eyes.

  But she couldn’t act like she recognized him. Although her heart was beating wildly, she dredged up a smile. Not a big smile, a hesitant one, as though she wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m doing fine,” she said in a soft voice. “How about you?”

  His eyes grew frosty, Prussian-blue eyes, poised to attack, as ruthless as a Prussian soldier. “That depends. You a working girl?”

  She knew what he meant. He thought she was a hooker. She had to play this perfectly. Dipping into her bag of acting tricks, she said with a faint smile, “Yes. But not the kind you’re thinking.”

  His face, a carbon copy of his father’s, bore a stony expression. His thick blond hair was impeccably styled, tendrils flipped forward over his forehead, but it wasn’t his looks that reminded her of BoBo, it was his attitude. A man used to getting his way in business, and with women. Supremely confident, verging on arrogant, sending a clear message: Don’t fuck with me.

  “I'm hoping to meet Chip Beaubien. I'm writing an article about him.”

  The frosty eyes thawed slightly. “What kind of article?”

  “A feature article for the New Yorker.”

  A glimmer of interest entered his eyes. “You write for the New Yorker?”

  “A few articles, yes.” Careful. This is the Internet Age. He can check.

  Feigning modesty, she said, “Actually, they were restaurant reviews. I’m writing this one on spec. I sure do hope Mr. Beaubien will help me.”

  “What’s your name?”