Palm Beach Nasty

by Tom Turner

  Crawford watched two attractive women and a much older man walk into the restaurant and wondered what the arrangement was. Figured the man’s bank account probably had a lot to do with it.

  A few minutes later, in came Dominica, wearing a beige skirt and a white top that suggested cleavage but didn’t push it. He noticed the bounce in her walk again and the sparkle in her eyes . . . and what amazing emerald green eyes they were.

  “You look really . . . nice,” Crawford said, thinking “hot.”

  He stood up and held her chair.

  She looked at him funny. “You sure you’re a cop?”

  “Sorry, I don’t know what got into me.”

  He pushed in her chair and sat down opposite her.

  He looked around for the waitress, spotted her, and raised his hand. She came over.

  “Pinot Grigio, please,” Dominica said.

  “Thought you liked red.”

  “I switch around,” Dominica said, taking a look at the menu.

  “You realize that’s the preferred drink of the Palm Beach ladies-who-lunch bunch?”

  “Yeah, but they have like five or six.”

  He smiled and picked up the menu. He could feel her staring at him.

  “So . . . how come you got nobody yet, Charlie?”

  “Jesus, what are you, Rutledge’s echo?” he asked, and took a sip of his club soda and lime. “This place is famous for their grouper, by the way.”

  She gave him the thumbs-up.

  “Why do I get the feeling, Charlie,” she said, looking around the restaurant, “you asked me here to talk shop?”

  He shrugged and gave her a quizzical look. “You got me.”

  She was observing him as closely as she would a hair follicle at a crime scene.

  “Somehow I got the sense you had something very specific you wanted to talk about.”

  “Like what?”

  She shrugged and glanced down at her nails.

  “Not that I wouldn’t think you’d ask me out to dinner, just to be with me.”

  “But?”

  “But us girls down in CSEU talk. A lot, actually—”

  “Yeah, and . . . ?”

  “And, for whatever reason . . . the subject of Charlie Crawford comes up a lot.”

  “Is that a good thing?”

  “Yeah. But word is, according to the girls anyway,” she said, “you’re maybe more into criminals than women.”

  Crawford frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She just shrugged and smiled.

  “Okay, McCarthy, I’m going to come clean with you.”

  “I like Mac better.”

  “Okay, Mac, here goes . . . I was going to give you a chance to be a hero, but nixed it, decided it was too dangerous. You are, after all . . . a girl.”

  “Jesus, who writes your stuff?” She looked both amused and like she could slap him.

  “Ott and I had this idea. Well, actually it was my idea, maybe not one of my all-time great ones—”

  He told her about transforming her into Misty Bill’s fictitious older sister.

  Dominica listened closely as Crawford explained how he and Ott planned to step in at the last moment and save Misty and Dominica, then nail the hitters.

  “Wait a minute, ‘save us?’ What in God’s name makes you think you’d need to save us?”

  “Christ, don’t get all macho on me. Thing is, I already killed it.”

  She looked at him suspiciously.

  “I’m serious, I don’t want you to play the bait. As tough as you may think you are, something could happen. And I can just hear Rutledge now. ‘Nice goin’, Crawford, screwed the whole thing up and got the cute CSEU killed.’ ”

  “The ‘cute’ CSEU?”

  Crawford looked sheepish.

  “Yeah . . . that’s what cops call you.”

  Dominica turned matador red.

  The waitress showed up with her grouper.

  “Thank you . . . but what if, Option Two, Jaynes just pays the blackmail money?”

  “That works . . . proves he did it, plus it doesn’t put anyone in harm’s way. But it’s never gonna happen.”

  “Why not?” Dominica asked, taking a bite of her grouper.

  “ ’Cause he’s gonna figure a blackmailer can always come back for another bite of the apple. That happened to him a year or so ago. This sleazeball lawyer came back and hit him up again. I think that was a policy changer. Why he took out Darryl Bill. Killing Bill was his ‘don’t screw with me’ statement. Guy just might like killing people, too. Got a little bored with stocks and bonds.”

  Dominica was processing. She took the last bite of her grouper, finishing off her plate before Crawford was half done with his pompano.

  “Jesus, for a skinny broad, you sure got a hell of an appetite.”

  She cocked her head and smiled.

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  FIFTEEN MINUTES later, sipping an espresso, Crawford asked for the check.

  A few minutes later they were outside.

  Crawford looked up at the sky. It was one of those amazing Florida nights where the clouds formed a kind of ghost-like Grand Canyon formation. They had a majestic architectural mass to them and appeared to be dead still, not moving an inch.

  “Want to take a walk?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  They went east a half block, then down a street. They were in the heart of what West Palm city officials called “the new West Palm Beach,” and what residents called “the ghost town.” There were four or five high-rise condominium buildings that had all been built at the same time—the wrong time. A time, five or six years ago, when demographers and developers were giddy over the 20 percent increase in prices that had been going on for years.

  “Bet you could get a good buy in that building,” Crawford said, looking up at a brand new twenty-story building that looked eerily abandoned.

  Dominica pointed to the three huge retail spaces on the ground floor that were meant to be occupied by upscale home furnishing shops or restaurants.

  “Been vacant for close to three years,” she said.

  “See that building over there,” Crawford said, pointing to a new office building.

  She nodded.

  “That’s where Jaynes’s offices are. He owns the building and his office is on the penthouse floor. Gets to look down on his four-hundred-foot yacht on the Intracoastal.”

  Dominica looked up to the top of the building. “Is that the one that rotates?”

  “Yup, the Lazy Susan building, they call it, does a slow 360 every day. At some point in the day everyone gets killer ocean views.”

  They walked east over to Flagler, then south along the Intracoastal.

  After a while Dominica asked, “Want to sit down?”

  There was a bench a few feet in front of them.

  “Sure.”

  They both sat and looked across the Intracoastal at Palm Beach.

  Then Dominica turned to him.

  “I been thinking; I want to do it.”

  “What?”

  “Be your decoy, play the big sister. I don’t care whether you were trying to con me or not. It’s time you put somebody in jail. It’s not good having killers running loose on the streets of Palm Beach.”

  Crawford turned toward her and they locked eyes.

  “But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just a gut feeling I got, like Jaynes represents something to you maybe.”

  She exhaled slowly.

  “Don’t overanalyze it, Charlie, but yeah, I’ve run across men like him before,” she said staring over his shoulder. “And they’re not my favorite types.”

  “Go on.”

  She looked him straight in the eyes. “That’s it . . . that’s all you’re getting out of me.”

  It was against his nature not to poke and probe.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “So let
’s go, we gottta solve this sucker. The rate you’re going you’ll be a grandfather by the time you wrap it up.”

  “Don’t know if being a grandfather is in the cards.”

  She laughed and—out of the blue—seeing no one in sight, he put his arm around her.

  She looked up at him.

  “What’s this, Charlie?”

  “Just . . . figured you might be . . . cold.”

  “It’s eighty degrees out.”

  “Yeah, but the breeze—”

  He leaned toward her and kissed her, violating his cardinal rule about public displays of affection. He found it so tacky when other people did it, but couldn’t help it.

  He kissed her again, this time putting a lot more behind it. She suddenly responded as if he had touched a secret button. She put both her arms around him, one hand going first to the back of his neck, then up into his hair.

  Still kissing her, he put his hand on her back, moved it under her blouse. What the hell was he thinking? In a public place. He moved his hand down her back. She was breathing in short gasps.

  She pulled away. Her eyes looked unfocused.

  “Where’s your place again?” she asked.

  “Down Flagler, about a mile.”

  “Mine’s closer.”

  “So what are we waiting for?”

  DOMINICA’S LONG brown, naked body had no tan line.

  “What . . . you go to France to get a tan?” Crawford asked, running his fingers lightly across her shoulders.

  “Nobody can see me on my balcony,” she said, leaning toward him and kissing him. “You know, Charlie, I been thinking . . .”

  “Yeah?

  “The girls down at CSEU . . . they really don’t know what they’re talking about.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Nick Greenleaf was antsy. He had been holed up in the house on El Vedato for days. But he was afraid about going out, having someone point at him and say, “hey, you’re the guy on the flyer.”

  Lil was preoccupied, going full speed ahead lining up option buyers. If she wasn’t so busy, he was certain, she’d be spending all her time with him, doing the deed by now. He called her late in the afternoon and she assured him that she had buyers committed for at least five more paintings. According to her, that would translate into more than $6 million in cash.

  Nick needed a change of scenery bad. He also wanted to execute a side plan, which he had no intention of telling his new partners about. There had been some hard bargaining between them about the partnership structure. Specifically, Lil said she deserved 50 percent for coming up with the whole thing and having the buyers. Nick saying no way, none of it would have been possible if he hadn’t become a fixture in the Robertson household. And Alcie, the little weasel, had said, “Look here, you dudes already broke the law. I ain’t. You don’t cut me in for a third, an anonymous letter gonna find its way to the po-leese.”

  It ended up being a third, a third, a third.

  Nick’s side plan involved one Lucien Freud and two Francis Bacons that he had found in the front coat closet, behind a big leather golf club bag and two walking canes. He had stumbled across them one day when he was looking for an umbrella and was positive he was the only one who knew they were there. His guess was that Spencer had absent-mindedly set them down there, probably just before his brain went permanently AWOL.

  Nick set his alarm for two in the morning, when Alcie would be dead to the world. He got up, took one of the Freuds and one of the Bacons from the closet into the library and locked the door. The other Bacon was huge, probably four-by-six feet, so he left it for another day. Then he bubble-wrapped the two paintings and taped them together. His plan was to take them over to his condo at the Princess for safekeeping, knowing his partners would never be the wiser.

  He picked up the paintings and walked to the garage. Nick got a chuckle every time he walked in and saw the juxtaposition of Spencer Robertson’s vintage Rolls-Royce Cloud Three and classic Ferrari Testarossa bookending Alcie’s dented gray Corolla. That was another thing he had recently spent time studying online. His next car. He had it narrowed down to a Lamborghini Gallardo or a Tesla Roadster. But for the moment, Alcie’s Corolla, with the keys on the floor, would do just fine. It had a good-sized trunk and was unlikely to attract attention.

  He pulled onto El Vedato, keeping an eye out for police cars, and five minutes later was in front of the Palm Beach Princess. As he expected, the area was dead. No one on the sidewalks or in the Princess’s lobby. He could see from his car that Albert, the night manager, had assumed his usual position at the front desk: splayed out, his head resting on his folded arms, snoring. Nick had observed the sleeping position before and wondered how it could possibly be comfortable.

  He popped the trunk button, got out of the car and lifted out the paintings. Then he walked into the lobby and took the elevator to the eleventh floor.

  He went into the apartment and looked around for a place to hide the paintings in his cramped closet. He put them behind an old headboard that was standing vertical against the rear wall. Then he smelled something. Perfume. Very faint.

  Those weird twin sisters, he figured, snooping around again on the pretext of coming to get his rent check.

  He wasn’t ready to go back to El Vedato right away. He wanted to enjoy the change of scenery for a while, even though he had become acutely aware of the tawdry seediness of his condo. It was funny how, a couple of months ago, it seemed just fine. But now that he was under the roof of Spencer Robertson’s stately Mediterranean, as well as having had a peek at the exalted world of the Poinciana, it was time to leave the grubby condo behind. Just as he had done with his childhood split-level ranch in Mineola, Long Island.

  He got a beer from the refrigerator and sat down on the couch. He looked around at the minimal furnishings and decided never to return to the depressing hovel except to retrieve the paintings. He leaned back on the couch and smiled . . . life was good, he thought. Even though so far all he had sold were two Seagrave Albarans and the Hopper option, netting him just over $400,000, he knew big paydays loomed ahead. The days of English suits, Italian sports cars and vintage French champagne were right around the corner.

  He was sorely disappointed about one thing, though. The fact that he might never enjoy membership in his beloved Poinciana, for it seemed inevitable he’d have to leave Palm Beach behind. He did take some solace, however, in the fact that he’d leave it in style. Flying off in a shimmering G-4, he pictured it.

  Nick finished his beer, walked out of the condo and got on the elevator. Albert was still flopped over on the front desk, but it seemed that he might have woken up at one point because Nick heard Lucy and Ricky Ricardo squabbling on the small TV inside the desk’s console, which wasn’t on before. He went outside and immediately spotted a man across the street in a white Ford Crown Victoria. Nick knew right away he was a cop. Sound asleep, his mouth was open like a vast cave, eyes shut tight. The man was obviously on a stakeout. Looking for him. Nick flashed to the paintings upstairs. The stolen goods. His golden future.

  He crept back to the elevator, went upstairs, got the paintings out from behind the headboard. He decided he’d take them to his twenty-four-hour storage unit on Okeechobee instead. He’d get the big Bacon out of the front closet, too, and take it over. But not tonight.

  Then he came down the elevator, and careful not to wake up Albert, set them down against a wall in the lobby.

  He snuck outside to make sure the cop was still asleep. He could have jammed his whole foot in the cop’s gaping mouth. He went back into the building, picked up the paintings and slipped outside. He carefully placed them in the back seat of the car. He didn’t want to put them in the Corolla’s trunk for fear that closing it might wake the cop. He was ready to drive away from the Princess for the last time. He looked back at the building. It was such a dive.

  He put the key in the ignition and started to turn it. Then he had an idea. It might be a little risky. Foolhardy, ev
en. But then he thought . . . What the hell, Why not?

  FORTY

  The envelope was taped to Ward Jaynes’s Sunday New York Times, which lay next to the Financial Times, under the columned portico of his front entrance. Next to it was a heap of other newspapers, which included Barron’s, the Wall Street Journal, the Palm Beach Press and the Glossy. Jaynes liked the ritual of going out and getting his papers himself and didn’t let anyone else do it. First, he’d gut the papers, tossing the advertising circulars and the sections he had no interest in—like book review and arts and leisure—into a pile. Then he’d scour the financial pages for companies in trouble. Rarely, however, did he find anything he hadn’t known about for weeks.

  He went into his library, tore open the envelope and saw the four pictures inside a single piece of folded white bond paper. He took the pictures out and looked at them one by one.

  The first one was of him and Misty walking into his kitchen. The second was of him handing a can of Diet Coke to Misty, his eyes unmistakably trained on her ample cleavage. The third was of him and the girl going toward a back stairway. The fourth was . . . the one that would ruin him.

  Furious, Jaynes flipped it across the room. It ended up face up, leaning against the elaborate molding on the other side of the room. He could see the girl’s naked body under his, her face grimacing into the camera. The five-inch scar on his left shoulder was irrefutable evidence.

  He calmed down almost immediately, realizing it was just another situation that needed to be dealt with. In terms of severity, it didn’t even register in his top ten of the year. He read the handwritten note.

  “I’ll call at ten a.m. We’ll talk about how much the originals are going to cost.”

  Whoever had written it had absolutely no idea who they were dealing with, Jaynes thought. A pathetic attempt by some lightweight to establish himself as a take-charge, we’re-gonna-play-by-my-rules guy. That would go up in smoke in five minutes.

  It was just seven thirty which left Jaynes plenty of time to think things through and get set up to deal with the situation in his usual straight-ahead manner. Make sure the blackmailer sorely regretted he had ever heard the name Ward Jaynes.