Palm Beach Nasty

by Tom Turner

  “I’m very sorry for your loss,” Crawford said.

  Misty walked to her kitchen, tore a few paper towels off the roll and wiped her eyes. Crawford glanced around and noticed a shopping bag from Saks, another from Neiman Marcus, and an elliptical exercise machine, unused and unsweat upon.

  Misty came back over. She looked older than when they walked in.

  “What happened?” she asked, mopping her eyes with a paper towel.

  “He was beaten and . . .” Crawford hesitated.

  “What? Tell me.”

  “Hanged,” Crawford said.

  She screamed “no” again, this time raking her cheeks with her nails.

  “What do you mean?” she pleaded. “Who . . . who hangs a person?”

  “We are very sorry,” Crawford said again, then looked at Ott.

  “Misty,” Ott said, “any idea who coulda done this? Anybody your brother—”

  “No,” she screamed again, “this can’t be real.”

  She put her hands on her head and slammed her eyes shut.

  Crawford and Ott just sat there.

  Then she opened her eyes and reached for two shiny, pink seashells in a straw basket on the table in front of her. She played with them like they were worry beads. Tears streamed down her cheeks. After a moment, she put her head in her hands, letting the shells drop silently to the carpet.

  Crawford went and got some more paper towels.

  She took them and looked up at him.

  “I want you to leave now,” she said.

  “I understand,” Crawford said.

  She walked over to a window and looked out.

  “We need to ask you to do something very hard. We need you to come down and ID—”

  Misty burst into loud sobs, her whole body shaking.

  “It can wait ’til tomorrow morning, if you want,” Crawford said. “We could pick you up.”

  “I want to go do it now. In my own car.”

  She said she wanted to change first. Clean up.

  She wanted to look her best for her dead brother, Crawford could tell. He gave her directions, then he and Ott walked out to their car.

  “Christ,” Crawford said, opening the door, “sure as hell doesn’t get any easier.”

  “No kiddin’,” Ott said, starting the engine and turning to Crawford. “You check out those shopping bags? That TV? Guarantee you that sucker was five grand.”

  Crawford nodded. “Like she’s got herself a sugar daddy or something.”

  “Yeah, and it sure ain’t dear old Dad.”

  FIVE

  Nick Greenleaf, briefly Todd Tropez and before that, Todd Gonczik, was shaking a drink called a Bahama Blast at Viggo’s in Citiplace. It was for Cynthia Dexter who had become one of his regulars. The place was just starting to fill up. It was Happy Hour.

  Since his rutting session with Janet Schering a few nights back, Nick had come to the conclusion that marrying a rich woman—two, maybe three times his age—might indeed be possible, it just wasn’t something he had the stomach for. He’d also faced the reality that snagging a well-off, slightly used, forty-something woman was just not in the cards. Because, for the most part, their skin was still reasonably tight, their legs toned and their breasts hadn’t toppled over yet. Truth was, they had a fair amount of playing time left and had way better options than a somewhat charming bartender, capable of the occasional literary allusion. Nick grudgingly accepted his place in the hierarchy: a notch below a tanned, handsome golf pro, nip and tuck with a dashing Latin waiter.

  Three days after the one-nighter with Janet, Nick was still having painful flashbacks about that night with her. It was a screaming nightmare, still raw. The third and final sweat ’n grunt session took place in the morning when he was completely sober. It was light in her bedroom under the huge canopy bed that was straight out of a thirties B movie. It was like he was in bed with Gloria Swanson, forty years past her prime. Or maybe one of the Gish sisters—all cottage-cheese skin and mushy anatomy.

  He shuddered at the memory.

  But Cynthia Dexter, taking a healthy pull on her Bahama Blast, had possibilities. Not as a marital candidate, because clearly she was not a product of a trust fund or lucrative divorce. No, Cynthia was simply a nice, lonely forty-five-year-old woman who could educate him to the facts of Palm Beach life, thanks to her job as social secretary at the prestigious Poinciana Club. Nick had heard all about the Poinciana, famous for its exclusive membership and impressive Mizner buildings, and knew it was like one of those eating clubs at Princeton that Fitzgerald could never get into. Waspy, patrician and completely inaccessible, particularly to someone of Nick’s lowborn status.

  This was Cynthia’s third time at Viggo’s in less than a week. As a bartender, he heard a lot of biographies, way more than he wanted, but hers was one he could learn from. Listening to Cynthia was like reading an instructional manual.

  All drinkers had patterns, and Cynthia’s was to get seriously loquacious halfway through her third Blast. Nick was steering the conversation around to the Poinciana’s membership which, she had told him—perhaps indiscreetly—was about 70 percent inherited money, much of it greatly diminished in the brutal economic downturn of the last two years. The other 30 percent was self-made—new money—which, she reported, seemed to be holding its own in the “great recession” they were going through.

  Nick loved listening to Cynthia talk about rich people at the Poinciana because he had visions of one day stepping into that life. In fact, he felt it was meant to be, it was his destiny, just a question of when.

  Cynthia was complaining about a woman who had called to bitch about an eight-dollar overcharge on her Poinciana bill. Her hedge-fund husband, Cynthia said, had made $200 million two years before the crash.

  “Jesus, these people,” . . . she kept saying.

  “Wait? Two hundred million a year?” Nick said, practically crushing the wine glass he was washing in the bar sink.

  “Yes, that’s what these guys make, some even more.”

  “So who’s the richest member?” Nick asked, leaning forward eagerly, ignoring a customer trying to flag his attention.

  “Oh, probably Andres Castronuevo—or Ward Jaynes.” The last name seemed to contort her mouth into a frown. “Or maybe Spencer Robertson, but he’s close to a hundred.”

  “A hundred million?”

  Cynthia laughed.

  “No, silly . . . his age. In terms of net worth, it starts with a ‘b.’ ”

  Now we’re talking, thought Nick.

  “And this Mr. Castronuevo,” said Nick, noticing a guy who looked ready to hop over the bar and mix his own drink, “where’s his money come from?”

  “Sugar,” said Cynthia, “every time you eat something sweet, a nickel goes into his pocket.”

  Nick made a Dewar’s and soda for the guy about ready to jump the bar and another for a customer shooting daggers into his skull. Then he went back to Cynthia.

  “Can I get you another?” he asked, and gave her a smile he practiced in the mirror. “It’s on the house.”

  “Sure, thanks,” she said, all fluttery eyelashes.

  “So tell me about Mr. Jaynes,” Nick said.

  “I’d rather not,” she said, with a frown.

  “Okay . . . then Mr. Robertson or is he off-limits, too?”

  He saw her disappointment. That she wanted him to focus on her instead of some hundred-year-old man.

  “Why are you so interested?” she asked, resting her elbow on the bar.

  “Oh, no reason, just a little hobby of mine.”

  “What is?”

  “The other half . . . how they live.” Nick mopped the bar to her left with a white bar towel.

  “Half? Try like . . . one twentieth of 1 percent?”

  Nick smiled and persisted.

  “Where’s Mr. Robertson’s money come from?”

  “Plastics.”

  Nick knew it was supposed to be a joke, but the reference escaped him. />
  “Before your time,” she said. “I really have no clue . . . neither does he probably.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Guy checked into la-la land a couple years back. No clue what day of the week it is.”

  It was a classic light bulb over the head moment for Nick. Smacked him like an ocean wave you never saw coming.

  “So, ah, this Mr. Robertson . . . who takes care of him?” Nick yawned, his casual interest default.

  “Some old guy, I heard,” Cynthia shrugged. “Supposedly he goes through help like . . .”

  You go through Bahama Blasts, Nick thought.

  Another guy, three seats down, was frantically waving his empty glass.

  Nick shot over and made him a drink, then beelined back.

  He was glad Cynthia couldn’t hear his brain whirring, clanking and ca-chunking away.

  “I bet he’s got relatives lined up around the block . . . just waiting,” Nick said.

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Robertson.”

  She took another sip of miracle tongue loosener.

  “Far as I know, he only has one grandson, who he doesn’t even speak to.”

  Nick leaned closer. The woman was a gold mine.

  He flashed to an image of himself in an expensive foreign car driving up a long, crunchy driveway to a red brick Mediterranean.

  Nick looked up at Cynthia and smiled, trying to disguise the rush of excitement washing over him, an idea slowly taking shape in his mind. He imagined rubbing shoulders with the Poinciana patricians. One day breathing the same air that Andres Castronuevo, Spencer Robertson and Ward Jaynes did. He snuck a look at his watch. Two more hours. He wanted to be done for the night. He wanted to go home, be by himself to think. Outline his plan of attack on a yellow lined pad, the way he always did.

  He still had a lot more questions, but he had to go slow. Be patient, he admonished himself.

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” Cynthia asked, getting braver by the sip.

  “No.”

  He started to say he liked older women, but caught himself.

  Cynthia did something with her tongue on the rim of the glass. It reminded him of Janet Schering and was not pretty. He pretended not to notice.

  “So . . . you ever go to the movies?” he asked.

  Cynthia perked up.

  “Yes, I’m a regular at Muvico.” That was the sixteen plex at Citiplace.

  He pictured her. All alone in the middle of the movie theater jamming Milk Duds and popcorn into her mouth.

  “How ’bout we go see something? Thursday maybe?”

  “I’d love that,” Cynthia said and eagerly gave him the address of her condo.

  He knew he better lay off the Spencer Robertson questions for a while. Change his Q & A a little.

  “So let me ask you . . . how does it work, getting into the Poinciana?”

  “You plan on joining?”

  He laughed.

  “First, you need to know a lot of members,” she was slurring now.

  “Keep going,” he said, leaning forward, avoiding her aggressive cleavage.

  “Then, someone proposes you, says you’re a really swell guy, how lucky the Poinciana would be to have you, where you work, what your handicap is—”

  “You mean . . . that thing in golf?”

  “Exactly, the lower the better.”

  Nick remembered that Jordan Baker, his favorite character in Gatsby, had a really low one. Cheated, too. He loved that about her.

  “Okay, so what happens after that?”

  Cynthia straightened up and looked very earnest.

  “I really can’t tell you anything else. I get into the secret handshakes and they fire me on the spot.”

  Nick forced a laugh.

  “Hey, buddy . . . you mind?” said a voice, halfway down the bar.

  He realized he was seriously neglecting his other customers. A woman was waving and pointing at her empty glass. He saw a guy at the far end, stabbing a finger at his mouth, like in five seconds he was going to die of thirst. He was sure the patrician patrons at the Poinciana weren’t ill-mannered like these louts.

  “Be right back.”

  In a whirl of glasses, ice cubes, bottles, olives and lemons, Nick made four drinks, then returned.

  “Back to my favorite customer.”

  She gave him a cockeyed grin. The fourth Blast had kicked in.

  “Fanghu . . . Nig.”

  Christ. She better not be driving.

  He realized there was so much more he needed to get out of her. He decided to call her a cab. It would be a terrible thing if she stumbled out of Viggo’s, got into her car and plowed into a ficus tree.

  Once he got everything out of her that he needed . . . she could slam into a brick wall going a hundred, for all he cared.

  SIX

  Crawford was at the station house at six the next morning. He usually punched in at eight. But he knew that in Palm Beach you caught a case like this once in a lifetime and damn well better make the best of it.

  A half hour later, Ott walked into Crawford’s office.

  “So this guy who works in my building knew all about the crime scene, like he was there,” Crawford said, putting his lukewarm Dunkin’ Donuts down on his desk.

  Ott nodded and plunked himself down opposite Crawford.

  “I get the idea Rutledge never taught his bags to keep quiet about crime scene shit,” Ott said.

  “I hear you,” Crawford said. “Or much of anything else.”

  THE NIGHT before, Misty Bill had ID’ed her brother.

  The three had gone to the Criminal Justice Complex at Gun Club Road, and met with the forensic investigator, who had given her the option of identifying Darryl from a picture. But Misty insisted on seeing her brother. They had cleaned up Darryl as best they could, but his face was bloated, discolored and bruised on the left cheekbone, a towel covering his chest. A signboard with a case number was on top of the towel.

  Crawford saw a few tears fall onto the towel, then watched as Misty slowly bent down and kissed her brother on the cheek. A second later as she straightened out, her legs buckled and Crawford stepped forward quickly and caught her before she fell. She smiled at him, said “thank you” and walked out the door.

  Crawford and Ott started going through databases, seeing what they could dig up on Darryl Bill. Ott had logged on to one known as Autotrac and was now on another called DAVID, which stored records of everything from shoplifting and moving violations on up to misdemeanors and felonies. Crawford was surfing a site called Florida Crime Information Center. Judging by Misty’s reaction to cops showing up on her doorstep, they were pretty sure they’d find a sheet on Darryl. And just to cover their bases, Crawford decided to add Misty to their search. Something told him she might be a few merit badges shy of Girl Scout.

  Crawford was on his second Dunkin’ Donuts coffee when he heard a knock on his office door. Before he had a chance to say “come in,” Norm Rutledge did. Rutledge, who’d been chief of police for twelve years, was a relentless badger who had a reputation for riding his men twenty-four seven when they were on a big case. Crawford had no firsthand experience, since there had been no big cases since he’d been there. He’d heard, though, of a vice cop who’d gotten so incensed for constantly getting yelled at and second-guessed by Rutledge, that the guy had totally lost it and punched him out in his office. Dropped him like a sack of rocks. Rutledge, the story went, felt his face for blood, then got up slowly, while a big, toothy grin spread across his face. He had no problem taking one on the chin to get rid of a guy who didn’t play it his way.

  Rutledge walked into Crawford’s office and sat down. Crawford could see immediately it was going to be a double tic day. Rutledge’s left eye was batting away like a butterfly’s wing and his upper lip jerked up every few seconds like it had a fishhook in it. He was clutching the Palm Beach Reporter—nicknamed the Glossy because of the shiny paper it was printed on—in one hand. He was holding
it, like if he dropped it, it would detonate.

  “Hello, Norm,” Crawford said.

  “We gotta get these fucking guys.”

  “No kiddin’,” Crawford said.

  “Bet I got fifty calls between last night and this morning”—Rutledge was world-class at drama—“from every reporter in the country plus the goddamn mayor, you name it.”

  Ott came barreling through the door like a ’roid-raged linebacker. “Hey, Charlie, look what—”

  Rutledge cut him off.

  “—Ott, I want you to hear this, too. We made the national media. Not for being the playground of the rich and famous. Not for having the most expensive real estate in the country. Or our low crime rate—”

  Crawford got ready for the big windup.

  “—but ’cause some guy got strung up on a fucking banyan tree.”

  Rutledge eyed Ott.

  “You got something?”

  “Nah,” Ott said, shaking his head, “just working a couple things.”

  Crawford could tell Ott was holding out. His breathing was amped up.

  Rutledge gave a long, dramatic exhale.

  “So neither of you got squat?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Crawford said. “It’s seven forty-five the morning after. Crime scene was clean. We haven’t even heard back from the techs yet.”

  Rutledge glared at Crawford. He flung the Glossy down on his desk.

  “And what the fuck is this all about?”

  The Glossy was 10 percent local news, 50 percent color pictures of formal-clad attendees at charity ball benefits, the rest glossy real estate ads.

  Crawford looked down at the headline.

  MURDER IN PALM BEACH. MAN HANGED AT SOUTH END.

  “What’s the question?” Crawford asked.

  “Keep reading,” Rutledge said.

  Crawford looked back down at it. The headline was more like a genteel announcement, rather than something that grabbed you by the throat in one-inch bold—à la the New York Post. The typeface was exactly the same size as yesterday’s front page, which announced sweeping zoning changes in the R-4 district.

  Then Crawford saw the subhead.

  ‘PAGE SIX’ DETECTIVE INVESTIGATES