Inside Moves

by Walter Danley

  Famished, Lacey took a forkful. It was delicious. Her hunger cramps relaxed as soon as she swallowed the first bite. “Stroganoff,” she said, forking another white-sauce-drenched noodle into her eager mouth.

  “Huh?”

  “This dish—it’s called beef stroganoff, and it’s very good. What kind of poison did you put in this, Murtagh?”

  “Listen up, sweet lips. If I wanted you dead, you’d already be a memory, so don’t be givin’ me a hard time ’bout feedin’ you”—he looked around the small room then back at Lacey—“and providin’ for your every comfort. Be grateful, gal! Go on, eat while it’s hot. Nothin’ worse than cold noodles.”

  Lacey ate.

  “You know what day it is? Friday. You’ve been in my care for sixty-nine days. I’ve fed you, housed you, and seen that no harm has come to you. Now it’s your turn for a favor.”

  Lacey said nothing. She didn’t look up, aware her anger at being in this creep’s presence was making her face and neck red. She continued shoveling food in her mouth. Her keen mind calculated the sixty-nine days missing. Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November. All the rest have thirty-one. She mentally recited the rhyme she’d learned in grade school. She smiled but kept eating.

  “Look, all I want is those pictures you got hid,” Murtagh said. “You don’t need ’em no more, so give ’em to me. The ones where Starr and Grandy are doin’ you down in your uncle’s basement. Once they’re in my hands, you go your way. If I get the pictures, I don’t need you, so you walk. Deal?”

  Lacey clenched her jaw and grinded her teeth in rage. “What are you talking about? Photos? We don’t got no photos!” she said, parroting a line from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. “We don’t need no stinking photos.”

  “Cute! Now soon as you tell me where they’re at, our business is done.”

  “Murtagh, I don’t expect someone like you to believe me, but I don’t have what you’re looking for. And since you don’t believe me, I doubt I’ll go home anytime soon. What will convince you that I’m telling the truth? Is there anything I can do or say that will confirm the veracity of my statement?”

  “No! There ain’t. But you keepin’ on with big words like veracity ain’t gonna change nuthin’. I know you got ’em, so just give ’em up, and you walk. A simple trade: your life for the pictures.”

  “A-ha, so if I can’t convince you there aren’t any photos, you’ll kill me? That makes perfect sense. Of course. Since you won’t have the pictures, why keep feeding and housing me? Save a few bucks every day by getting rid of the houseguest. One more murder isn’t going to hurt your résumé, so why not?”

  Murtagh waved a fat-fingered hand in the air. “Shut up. How did that husband of yours put up with a mouthy mouse like you?”

  Lacey sighed. “Marcos, tell me how all this came to be. Me taken from the wreck and hauled all over creation by you and your band of merry men. Did your people grab Garth before he died or did the crash kill him?”

  Murtagh shuffled back a step, surprised at her statement because Wainwright was far from dead. He’d been aggressive about tracking down Murtagh at the hacienda and on the Spoiled Yachten.

  “Why do you figure he’s dead?”

  Lacey was stunned. She couldn’t get her mind off the implication that her husband was alive. “One of...uh...your people said it, I think when...they...Garth is alive? Oh, my God.” She breathed a long-awaited sigh of relief.

  “Yeah, he’s alive and a huge pain in the ass. Now what’s better than bein’ with him in your cozy little condo at the beach? Jus’ give me what I want.”

  Lacey smiled, covering her mouth as she giggled. She was overjoyed Wainwright was alive. Then, as she was an astute attorney, it occurred to her that this might be a ploy on Murtagh’s part to get the photos. Although she prayed it was the truth, she couldn’t rely on the word of this creep. “At the risk of repeating myself, there are no photos. None, nada, niente, keine. How many languages would help you understand that they’re ain’t no pictures, pal?”

  Murtagh stood up. “Impressive. Fabio always liked your smarts. Poor Fabio, he tried so hard to be smart. But he just didn’t have what you and I got.”

  “Really? And what might you, in your dreariest of dark deliriums, think that singular talent might be? Oh, please, pray tell.”

  Murtagh had turned his back on Lacey and was on his way to the door. He stopped, one hand on the knob, then turned to face her.

  “Tenacity,” he said, then left the cell.

  SHE GUESSED IT MUST have been at least three days since Murtagh had brought her the beef stroganoff. Actually, it had been four. She’d eaten seven meals since then, all served by Carlos.

  Lacey had been thinking about what that fat, foulmouthed fiend had said about tenacity. Sure, I have it. I couldn’t have survived law school without it. Hell, I couldn’t have survived adolescence without it either, but what did Murtagh mean about his son? He said “Poor Fabio” or something like that. “He didn’t have what you and I have...tenacity.”

  She knew she had tenacity and had observed it in Murtagh, as well. She didn’t understand, however, how the lack of it had made for a “poor Fabio”. When she thought about Delilah’s photos on the heels of Murtagh mentioning Fabio, it hit her.

  Fabio knew about the pictures. She’d told him about them herself during the short time they had dated. Lacey no longer had felt devastated by what had happened to her in her teenage years and wanted to use the photos Delilah had found to her advantage. So she had asked Fabio for suggestions. Why did I tell that foolish boy anything? What’s that Khalil Gibran quote? “If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.” As Lacey lay down to sleep, Gibran’s wisdom was her last conscious thought.

  When she woke up sometime later, she could measure how much time had passed. She had constructed a clock from the elements available to her in the cell. The faucet leaked and seemed to drip at a constant rate. With a drinking glass under the fixture, she counted fifteen seconds. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, and so on to fifteen. She took great pains to measure the water level with a piece of paper against the glass. She pricked the fifteen-second position with a safety pin. By folding the paper four times, she knew how much water would fill the glass in one minute. Lacey marked off minutes and hours on the paper. It took four hours and twenty minutes for the glass to fill. Now she could judge, with some degree of accuracy, the passage of time. At least while she was awake and could empty the glass.

  After her careful calculations concluded, she needed a baseline to start her clock. That important element was provided by Carlos when he brought her evening meal. She simply asked him the time of day. He glanced at his wristwatch and told her. After setting the tray on her table, he was about to exit.

  “Today’s Sunday. Do you work around the clock or what?” Lacey asked him, and giggled her little-girl laugh.

  Kindly Carlos told her she was wrong—it was Tuesday—and no, he got two days off most of the time. Then he left her. Lacey set about making a calendar to complement her clock. These crude additions to her life in solitary confinement helped her keep her sanity, or so she assumed. She needed to think she was still sane, of course. The clever implementation of the clock, however, might just be proof that she was already totally psychotic. As ragtime pianist Fats Waller would say, “One never knows now, do one?”

  One more day passed before Murtagh paid another visit to Lacey’s cell. When he entered this time, he wasn’t carrying a tray of food. Instead, he’d brought handcuffs and a chain. He also had one of his thugs with him, the one he called Louis.

  Lacey was sorry it wasn’t Carlos. She had developed a friendly relationship with him. As friendly as a prisoner and jailer could be with each other anyway.

  This guy was big, larger and uglier than Murtagh, which was saying a lot. Murtagh handed the handcuffs to the ugly one, who put them in his pocket. The scowl on his face must have been c
arved with a chainsaw. The goon had a shaved head, just like his boss. It was hard to see his eyebrows under his protruding forehead, but Lacey guessed they’d been shaved as well.

  “You’ve had five days to think about what I want. Smart little lady like you shoulda come to the right decision. Call the extra time a professional courtesy.”

  Murtagh was laughing at his cleverness, laughing without smiling. Lacey thought, What kind of sense of humor is that?

  “Yes, thank you for that consideration. So kind of you.”

  “You used those photos to blackmail the DA. That’s why you kept ’em. Now it’s my turn. I want ’em, and fast. Tell me where you got ’em hid.” He crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Did you figure out how I know ’bout the pictures? You told Fabio what your uncle did to you. Fabio was as mad as I ever seen him. You got no idea how close your uncle came to dyin’ that day. It was me who got him to calm down. Poor Fabio. He really did care for you. A lot. I don’t want any harm to come to a woman my boy loved, but unpleasant stuff sometimes is necessary to reach a goal. If you gotta be hurt, so be it, Fabio or no.”

  He smacked the chain against his left palm and tried for his best form of a smile. The effect, however, was lost. A Murtagh smile looked more like a man suffering from painful hemorrhoids.

  “Louis, put the cuffs on this stubborn bitch.”

  The thug took the handcuffs from his pants pocket and rambled toward Lacey, who stood up.

  “Murtagh, tell Louis to go get me a pizza.” Turning to Louis, she added, “No anchovies, extra black olives.”

  Murtagh shook his head and tried the laugh again. It still didn’t work. “You’re some kinda ballsy broad. No wonder my kid went for you big time. Okay, so what’s in your head now?”

  “I’m hungry, and we don’t need an audience to talk.”

  Murtagh half turned toward his crony. “Beat it, Louis. And bring the lady a pie like she asked.”

  The conversation lasted less than an inch of water in Lacey’s glass. She was able to negotiate a change in venue and living conditions. In exchange for the photos, Murtagh promised her ultimate freedom. Murtagh guessed correctly about Lacey’s use of the pictures. In the law, that’s called extortion. In polite conversation, they call it blackmail. But if anyone ever had a valid rationalization for blackmail, it was Lacey Kinkaid.

  Murtagh exited the room, leaving the door unlocked and open. Instead of dashing out of the cell to embrace relative freedom, Lacey sat back on her cot and thought about what she had agreed to do. Giving Murtagh the photos, knowing he would extort the DA for criminal purposes, was an easy call. That was what she had done. But what she had extorted Grandy for was an honest job—one for which she was exceptionally qualified and prepared. A job she had performed at the highest level of professional competency. But whether you spend the money you got robbing a bank or give it to a charity, she thought, you’re still a bank robber.

  As Lacey sat on her cot, she recalled opening that first savings account all those years ago. Delilah had admonished her to put the photos away for safekeeping; they would be valuable later. Well, once again, Delilah had proved to be prophetically accurate. That realization came years later in Lacey’s last year at Harvard Law. She remembered it clearly.

  That morning, she had picked up a Boston Globe and a to-go coffee to sit in the quad and read. She had inhaled the gorgeous autumn morning. The paper was full of political ads and articles favoring one candidate or another. Lacey had little interest in an off-year election and paid the piece’s little attention. But a photo she saw sent an electric shock directly to her brain. The picture was of two men—men who were friends with Uncle Timothy and also had been two of her regular abusers. The caption identified one of them as a candidate for district attorney, Zack Grandy. The other man was his campaign manager, attorney Carson Starr. That was the name Uncle Timothy had mentioned, assuming Starr had given her cash. These evil men were among Boston’s leading citizens. She recalled the thought that occurred to her then: I won’t allow these hypocritical pedophiles to get away with what they did to me. Lacey now had the names and photographs of two of them.

  She graduated from law school and almost simultaneously passed the bar exam. She talked her way into an appointment with the newly elected Zack Grandy and was now seated in front of the DA. “Mr. Grandy, I’m a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard Law. I’ve passed the Massachusetts bar, and I’m eager to go to work. I’ve decided being an assistant district attorney in your office fits well with my career plan. I’ll start two weeks from Monday, and—”

  Grandy put his hand up. “Now hold on,” he said, looking down at the paper on his desk, “Ms. Kinkaid. Stop right there. I appreciate a positive attitude and confidence as much as anyone, but we haven’t hired you. Even if we had, we don’t allow first-year attorneys into the big leagues just like that. There’s—”

  “Sorry to interrupt you, but this isn’t a negotiation.” Lacey stood, her head held high and her back erect. “Don’t you recognize my name? I was really hoping you would, Zack, but you did know my uncle, Timothy O’Mannely.”

  She pulled a manila envelope out of her attaché case, removed several eight-by-ten photos, and laid them on his desktop.

  “Knew him quite well, as it turned out,” Lacey continued. “You were so close to ol’ Uncle Timothy that he allowed you to rape his fourteen-year-old niece.” She pointed to the photos in the center of Grandy’s desk and smiled a sardonic grin. “These are for you.”

  Grandy quickly stood up, his desk chair careening into the back wall. He stared at Lacey, jaw agape, his arms uselessly wrapping around his sides. Lacey ignored the histrionics.

  “You don’t look so hot, Zack. Are you all right?” She extracted a sheet of paper from her case and placed it on top of the pictures. “Will you be able to make all these arrangements I’ve specified?” She leaned forward, tapping the sheet of paper with a long red fingernail. “We should get all this official business taken care of while I’m still here.”

  The district attorney continued to stare at her, openmouthed, but said nothing.

  “I’d like the employment contract signed before I leave. And please, remember to include everything listed in this addendum. I wouldn’t want any silly questions asked by staff when I come to work in two weeks. Tell you what, Zack...I’ll go downstairs for a cup of coffee while you get that contract prepared. Thirty minutes? That should be plenty of time, don’t you think? I’ll be back.” Lacey closed her case and turned to leave the DA’s office, then pivoted back. “Oh, yes. Thank you for this opportunity to be of service to our community and to work under you again.”

  COLLETTE RETURNED TO her Inglewood apartment late Saturday night after her Walmart shift and sat down to listen to the most recent recorded playback; another investment in her journal. She continued to believe her Lacey journal would be her key to a lifetime of financial security. That was how she looked at the opportunity to cash in on Murtagh’s fixation with Lacey Kinkaid.

  She had paid a ton to Henry, one of Murtagh’s trusted top hands, to install the bugs at Wainwright’s condo. Besides, she was kind of fond of the guy, He treated her nicer than most of the others she’d previously dated. They never discussed it, but she and Henry were kind of going steady. It had taken all the money she had left from the sale of her aunt’s house plus several sleepovers to pay for the job.

  After dropping her purse on a chair, she grabbed her notepad from the small drawer under the tape recorder. To Collette, the machine looked like a smiling happy face with its large tape-reel eyes. She put on the headphones and listened. The first few conversations had nothing of value, so she fast-forwarded to the next call. This one was interesting. Wainwright was calling a man named William Bailey at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Collette poised her pen, prepared to transcribe the conversation.

  “It’s me. The tip you got that Murtagh has Lacey on Kings Road...we’re going in. Meet me at the condo—Sunday at eleven p.m. More then. Later, a
migo.”

  This was news to her. She didn’t know Lacey was at 3-H. Collette had been there a few nights ago. She had even chatted with Murtagh. Henry had asked her to join him for tacos and beer. She didn’t like beer, but she had nothing better to do. To be invited to Murtagh’s place was worth the effort of coming and going.

  Mr. Murtagh definitely will want to know this. The last time, I got two grand for a tip. This one should be worth much more.

  Collette’s feelings about Lacey had changed some since she’d been working for her. Lacey wasn’t the stuck-up snob she’d always assumed she was. In fact, both Wainwrights treated her real nice. More like a friend than a housekeeper.

  She advanced to the next recording. Nothing. They remembered my birthday, not with just a card, which would have been nice enough, but they gave me a present and a birthday cake. And that morning, when I showed up for work, they gave me the day off, with pay! Collette liked the present a lot. She knew Lacey had personally taken her time to shop for the beautiful purse. Sure, they treated her just fine, but ever since the bug installation, she was broke. Murtagh would fix that for her tonight.

  She fast-forwarded to the next one, then several more, until she reached the final recording. Someone, a voice she didn’t know, had called the FBI. The voice asked for a line check on Wainwright’s number. Then there was a long period of silence before a lot of background noise, something about eggs, and laughter. More background noise from several of the room bugs...then only the silence of a disconnect. They found the bugs!

  Collette decided she’d call Henry first thing in the morning and arrange a visit to 3-H to negotiate a fee with Mr. Murtagh. She was convinced that the value of her information would be greater the closer its delivery was to the forthcoming event. And that’s precisely what she did.

  Her Walmart shift didn’t start on Sunday until 10:30 a.m., which gave her time to call. No one at 3-H ever got up early. Her plan was to explain to Henry that she needed to see Mr. Murtagh that evening.