Inside Moves

by Walter Danley

  “I get off work at six thirty,” she said, “and can be at 3-H by seven thirty. Tell Mr. Murtagh it’s crucial, and he’ll be wantin’ this tip right away.”

  “Yeah, well, if this is so important, jus’ tell me an’ I’ll tell him for you.”

  “Henry, come on. Use your noggin. This is worth bucks; I need to do it in person. So set it up for me, baby, okay?”

  Henry let out a sigh. “Yeah, okay. I’ll make you a deal, though. When you come up tonight, bring your toothbrush to stay over. I’ve got duty tonight, and it’s gonna be lonely, and ’sides, I like you an’ all, so you plan to stay, right?”

  Collette felt a knife of fear stab through her plan. Fear for Henry. “Are you the only one who’ll be there?”

  “Oh, no. The crew’ll be in an’ out, but they won’t be on duty like me.”

  Collette was concerned about Henry defending 3-H by himself from Wainwright and his two pals. She had no way of knowing about the self-invited others who would invade the mansion. After she set a deal with Murtagh, he’d be prepared, with the crew on high alert. But she herself didn’t need to stay for the war. Okay, I’ll give Henry a tumble then leave him smiling and snoring. “Sure, Henry. I’ll bring an overnight bag an’ stay witcha.”

  She grabbed her purse and dashed out the door to get to work on time. She didn’t want to be late again. If she didn’t cut a deal with Murtagh, she’d still need her crappy job.

  LACEY NO LONGER OCCUPIED the basement cell. Her deal with Murtagh had allowed her to move to the second-floor guestroom, a well-appointed space down a short hall from Murtagh’s master suite. The moon shone brightly through the window—the locked, reinforced-glass window.

  She had made the move upstairs this past Wednesday—her seventy-fourth day as a hostage. She had told Murtagh the photos would be his as soon as he took her to her bank. As eager as Murtagh was to possess those magic pictures, he had other business that had taken him away from LA until Saturday. They would visit Lacey’s bank tomorrow, Monday, June twenty-eighth.

  The guestroom was decorated in various shades of blue, with an azure padded wall covering. Lacey recognized that the throw pillows on the duvet were baby blue and bleu de France. The many other shades in the pillows, lampshades, and painted woodwork were a beautiful blue mystery to her. The knock on the door jolted her back to the reality that she was still Murtagh’s prisoner.

  “Yes?”

  The door eased open. Black painted fingernails gripped the door edge. Thank God it’s not Murtagh. Maybe a maid? The door was a quarter open now. The side of a lovely face with one overly made-up eye appeared.

  “May I come in?”

  “It looks like you already are in most of the way. Yes, come in...Collette? What on earth are you doing here? Is Murtagh one of your housekeeping clients?”

  “Hi, Lacey. No, I don’t clean his house.” She lowered herself into a cornflower-blue Marlow Gabrielle chair. “I’m visitin’ a friend. Henry tol’ me you were here, so I popped up to see how you’re doin’.”

  “Collette, do you know Murtagh is holding me hostage?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess so. Henry said you can’t leave the house.”

  Lacey sensed Collette was more in Murtagh’s camp than hers, so she didn’t pursue that line of questioning.

  “How long have you been here?” she asked.

  Collette shrugged. “Not long. I came up after my shift at Walmart.” She looked at her wristwatch. “’Bout an hour or so, I guess.”

  “What time do you have?”

  “It’s a quarter to eight. Don’t you wear a watch?”

  “No. Not for the past seventy-something days, I haven’t. So tell me about your friend Henry. I haven’t met him.”

  “Listen, Lacey, I wanna do the right thing here, but I can’t. There’s ’bout a dozen of Murtagh’s men downstairs. But someone told me that your husband and others are comin’ to fetch you.”

  “How do you know that, Collette?”

  “I can’t say, but it’s the truth. After midnight tonight. Be ready for ’em.”

  “Collette, can you get me a weapon?”

  She shook her head. “No, miss, I can’t. I was supposed to meet Mr. Murtagh tonight, but Henry forgot to make that arrangement. I was supposed to get money from him, but now I can’t.”

  “Money from Murtagh? In exchange for...?”

  Collette let out a long sigh. “For tellin’ him that your husband and some others are comin’ for you. I changed my mind anyway. Oh, Lacey. I’ve been wrong about you for so long. You’ve been good to me, a real friend. I just couldn’t do it, tell on Mr. Wainwright, so no one downstairs knows. I came to tell you so you can be ready. That’s all. I gotta go. Henry probably suspects I’m up to no good. Good luck, Lacey.”

  Collette was out the door while Lacey absorbed the news that Wainwright really was alive and was coming. The idea brought the first smile to her face in a long time. Garth’s alive for sure, and he’s coming to get me.

  Lacey knew Collette as part of the old Lacey. The Lacey from Southie. The blackmailer and murderer Lacey. If it’s true that your whole life flashes through your mind when you fall from a high place, mine just flashed. I’m thirty-six years old, and during that time, I evolved from an innocent child to a young girl with hopes and dreams. I was deserted, became an orphan, a hostage, a victim of abuse, a prostitute of necessity, a top student, a blackmailer, a murderer, a winning prosecutor, a partner and senior attorney, a wife, a friend, and now a hostage again. If Garth wrote my character in one of his novels, no one would believe it. When he comes, I’ve got to tell him about my past, even if he stops loving me. He has a right to know who I am.

  []

  THIRTEEN

  THE PHONE ON THE ENTRANCE table rang a second time as BJ and Amiti entered their bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Amiti reached for it. “Yes?”

  “Bailey, it’s Sean Quinn. Calling to invite you and Bea out to my place for dinner and to get you out of the Pink Palace for an evening. Are you both free on Sunday? Say around six thirty, if that works? You remember how to get here, don’t you?”

  “Thank you, Sean. Dinner on Sunday would be lovely. We look forward to seeing you again. Both of us do. Good-bye.”

  Amiti turned to BJ, who was reclining on the sofa with a copy of Cosmopolitan. “We’ve been invited to dine at Quinn’s home on Sunday. I, of course, accepted. But something tells me the invitation from our new friend is about more than a grilled cheese sandwich.”

  “What’s his agenda?” BJ asked. “The Fuentes offer?”

  “No, I don’t think so. He’s stalling on the don’s offer until Lacey returns to do the legal work. Mr. Quinn is unaware I’ve financed two attempts to get to Murtagh and to rescue Lacey—both failures. Murtagh is one jump ahead of us, getting information about what we’re doing from someone. There’s no doubt this is an inside move. Someone close to all sides is distributing information about our plans so Murtagh can counter them—someone inside our camp. Besides the Vasquez boys in Mexico—who had details only on the yacht attack, and that was just hours prior to it happening—there’s only you, Garth, and Wilson. Garth just wants his wife back. Wilson? Why would he do it? I can’t see a motive for him to be the mole. He wants Murtagh in prison, and if he can make that happen, getting Lacey is a freebie. No, I can’t see him doing it.”

  BJ attentively listened to her lover, saying nothing as she laid the magazine down.

  “Then there’s the FBI guy, Mulholland. But he hasn’t been privy to my plan to attack the hacienda or the yacht. It can’t be him or his wife, who also was in the dark about those events.”

  BJ finally spoke. “Did you talk to Fuentes? Maybe one of his people overheard you.”

  “No. Fuentes didn’t know about the assaults either.”

  BJ shrugged. “Knowing Garth as I do—well, did—I’d guess he didn’t have a plan. His style is to make it up as he goes along. He’s more a seat-of-your-pants performer than a scripted act
or.”

  “Well, my dear BJ, we’ve eliminated all the possible sources of leaks in the organizations. That just leaves you.”

  He stretched his arms to grab her shoulders and forcefully pinned her down on the sofa. Instinctively, BJ smiled at Amiti’s joke, but the look on his face told her this was no laughing matter; the Assassin had turned deadly serious. BJ understood that when he was like that, someone got dead.

  “Ariel, please stop it. You’re hurting me, and I’m afraid. Please—”

  “I can’t have anyone close to me who would even consider betrayal. And you’ve gone much further than consideration, haven’t you?”

  She shook her head. “No, I’m innocent. You know me better than that. I know you’re angry, Ariel, but there’s another explanation. There has to be, because I didn’t betray you—not now, not ever. Please, sweetheart, let me get up.”

  Ariel thought for a moment, analyzing the variables chronologically, still holding BJ’s shoulders. Finally, he relented, dropping his arms to his side. “Yes, you have no reason to be disloyal.”

  Letting out a sigh of relief, BJ sat up. “I wouldn’t be disloyal to you or your work. My one interest in this whole thing is for you to complete your contract for the don. I wouldn’t allow anything to interfere with that. Please believe me, please.”

  Ariel sat next to her and put his head in his hands. “Yes, I see it now. I’m so sorry, BJ. Forgive my foolish thoughts and actions. Blame my unacceptable behavior on the stress of Murtagh trumping our every move. Sweet one, I’m so sorry. But there is a traitor, and we must find and silence him or her before we make another attempt against Murtagh.”

  “You haven’t said what you’re planning. Are you going to keep it from me?”

  Amiti smiled at the thinly disguised effort for reassurance. He put an arm around BJ’s shoulders. With a hug and a kiss on the neck, he provided what she needed from him. “One of my informants tells me Lacey is in Murtagh’s West Hollywood home, not far from here. I gave that news to our friend Wainwright on my way back from WeHo city hall this morning.”

  “Why were you at city hall?”

  “The building department located the original construction blueprints for Murtagh’s mansion.” Amiti explained that he had asked for a list of building permits issued for that property. “They confirmed no permits were issued before Murtagh pulled one recently for foundation work. The layout should be pretty much what the plans show. I’m having blown-up copies made now. Wainwright has put the ball in motion for a rescue late Sunday. I haven’t gotten the details yet, but I’m sure it’ll be a late entrance, so there’ll be no need to change our dinner plans with Quinn.”

  BJ moved closer to Amiti and put an arm around his waist. “Do you think it’ll be dangerous?”

  Amiti shrugged. “Who knows what assets Murtagh will have on duty? That’s an important variable, of course, but I’ll go over Wainwright’s plans with him this evening. He and Wilson are competent and experienced—I’m betting their plan is adequate. Wainwright said Wilson briefed Starr on the rescue plan. He wants to join the party, along with DA Grandy. Wilson’s boss is in LA, visiting family for a few days. Frankly, this little rescue is getting to be a very crowded operation. Too many people know about it. The more people, the more talk. I’ll know more when I meet with Wainwright.”

  WAINWRIGHT SAT IN HIS living room, reading the third installment in the LA Times on Lacey’s abduction. Wilson was upstairs in the kitchen. The Mulhollands were due any time now to join them for brunch. Wainwright knew the topic of conversation would be Lacey, as trumpeted by the Times. He had to semi-yell upstairs to be heard over the kitchen’s exhaust fan. “Renato, there’s another article about Lacey in the Times this morning. It says she’s been held for seventy-eight-days now, and it goes into her background as a captive with her uncle and his pals. The Times is calling Lacey the ‘Captive Queen.’ Is that classy journalism or what?”

  Wilson came to the railing that separated the dining area from the lower-level living room. “Where’s this stuff coming from? Who knows about those early horrors? You didn’t until Stacy...no, Stacy isn’t giving up anything to the reporter. She wouldn’t do that.”

  “No, she wouldn’t, but someone close to Lacey is. Other than her becoming the poster girl for the abuse of minors, I can’t see that the story hurts our efforts. In fact, we might get some useful tips from all this publicity.”

  Wilson heard the front-door intercom. “Want me to buzz them in?”

  “Sure, be my guest, but of course, you are my guest, aren’t you?”

  Wilson was still smiling as he greeted Greg and Stacy in the foyer and exchanged hugs and handshakes.

  “Yeah, we read it,” Stacy said, shaking her head. “Where’s that stuff coming from?”

  “Who’s up for a Bloody Mary?” Wilson called out from the kitchen.

  All hands went up in unison. Greg went to help Wilson with brunch preparations. He told him, cop to cop, that he expected the phone lines to go berserk after the Times piece. “In cases like this, we usually spend countless man hours chasing called-in tips that go nowhere. I wish the newspaper had been a bit more responsible in their choice of what to publish.”

  “Yeah, when I was a young cop, fresh from the academy,” Wilson said, pouring a shot of Stoli into each glass, “everyone in Boston was afraid of the Boston Strangler. I was out chasing so many dumb leads that I didn’t have time for my normal Back Bay patrols. That’s where Albert DeSalvo did his first kill. Over the next few months, he came back to Back Bay for more victims, but I wasn’t there, as I should have been. Phone tips from the public are the last thing we need right now.”

  A deep baritone from below interrupted the cop talk. “Hey, we have people in dire need of liquid refreshments down here!”

  Stacy and Wainwright sat in the living room, chatting like old friends do. Stacy commented on how clean the condominium was. Dusted and vacuumed to perfection and smelling of lemon oil.

  “Garth, how do you manage to keep your house so tidy and organized? With everything that’s happened over the past couple of months, I’m surprised you find time or energy to do any cleaning.”

  “No, it’s not me. In fact, with Renato staying here, we’ve put an added burden on Collette. She’s still coming in once a week to keep the place from falling into ruin around us.”

  “Did you say, Collette? Is Collette Haggerty still doing your housework?”

  “That’s right. Lacey hired her shortly after she moved to LA.”

  “What do you know about her relationship with Lacey?” Stacey asked. “Did Lacey tell you anything about Collette when she hired her?”

  “Only that she was new to LA and was from the old neighborhood...Hey, so are you. Do you know Collette too?”

  “Yes, I do, and I think a polecat is inside the henhouse, to mix a couple of metaphors.”

  Greg descended the stairs with a tray of drinks in hand. “What’s all this talk I’ve missed out on? Someone bring me up to speed.”

  Stacy did.

  “Renato, come on down and join the rest of the crowd,” Greg called out. “Stacy just had an epiphany.”

  “I will. The eggs are hard boiled, the English muffins are toasted, and the bacon is crisp and dry. All I have to do now is the white sauce, which will take my full attention. Now’s the perfect time for a booze break.”

  “Exactly what flavor polecat are you thinking, Stacy?” Wainwright asked.

  “The Collette kind. She’s been your housekeeper for a while. When Collette said she was moving to LA, I gave her Lacey’s number so she’d have a pal here. In our neighborhood, Collette got tagged as ‘Hot Heels Haggerty’—behind her back of course. She was balling a bunch of boys, some of whom were from Murtagh’s mob.”

  Wainwright’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Yeah, she hung out with some of those mugs. I heard a story that after Mrs. Haggerty died, Collette threw a big party at her aunt’s house for Murtagh’s guys.” She shook
her head. “Not the best recommendation from a friend, is it?”

  Wilson had come downstairs to join the Bloody Mary brigade. “Everything will be ready as soon as I finish the sauce and slice the eggs into it. We’ve got some time to chat.”

  Greg handed Wilson a Bloody Mary. “Hey, what is this marvelous, magic menu you’ve got going up there? Garth says it’s well worth waiting for.”

  Wilson grinned. “It’s just my special brunch concoction. You’ll have to have some; then you can judge it for yourself.”

  When Wilson was seated, Stacy continued. “Collette could have gone through your notes, Garth, for the Mexico trip—your plane reservations, any documents lying around. She could have tipped off a boyfriend or Murtagh. Your movements were compromised, and I vote Collette as being the mole of the month.”

  Greg took a sip of his Bloody Mary. “You think Garth’s maid is a spy for Murtagh?” he asked Stacy.

  “It’s possible, but there’s another connection here. Collette’s aunt was the longtime housekeeper for Lacey’s uncle, Timothy, and Lacey knew her well. To hire Collette to keep house for you two was as natural as rain in April—well, except in LA.

  “Look at it this way. Timothy dies and leaves everything to Lacey, who sells the mansion. That puts Collette’s aunt out of work. Lacey moves to LA and Collette soon follows. Next thing you know, Collette is dumping the Wainwrights’ trash. I dunno, maybe it’s nothing, but all these coincidences bother me.”

  “No, I think you’re on to something,” Wainwright said. “Sure makes sense and might explain how Murtagh knew we were coming to Monterrey. But it doesn’t explain how he got off the yacht before our covert arrival.” He sighed. “No, I can’t buy that Collette is the leak. When Wilson and I left LA, the hacienda was our only objective. Nobody could have known that Amiti would save us or that he had plans in the works for the yacht attack, or that he would recruit us to join him in his plan.”