by Tami Hoag
“It was today.”
“I can’t believe you went there without me.”
Landry gave him a look. “What are you? My new girlfriend? Are your latent homosexual tendencies emerging? Should I be watching my back, Weiss?”
“Oh, fuck you, Landry.”
“Not interested,” Landry said. Weiss snatched a breath to bark back at him. “Don’t miss the turn, sweetheart.”
“You never used to be this big an asshole,” Weiss said. “You been taking lessons from Estes?”
“Don’t try to be clever, Weiss,” Landry said. “It just magnifies your inadequacies.”
Weiss leaned out the window and jabbed the button on the intercom for the gate. The person who answered had to go see if Mr. Brody was available to receive them.
Weiss huffed, “Fat bastard’s probably watching us over closed-circuit television. This guy’s so fucking rich, he shits money. He reps Milton Marbray, NBA rookie of the year. He reps half the all-stars in baseball. Money for nothing.”
The ornate iron gates opened, inviting them in. A guy in black slacks and a white jacket greeted them as they pulled up in front of what looked like a Caribbean plantation house. The cars parked on the curved drive in front of the house looked like they had just come out of the exotic-car-dealership showroom—a Jaguar, a Ferrari, a Mercedes, a Porsche.
Landry got out of the car and introduced himself to the servant, showing his badge.
“Mr. Brody is on the rear terrace entertaining friends. Follow me, please.”
As they walked through the center of the mansion, Landry’s attention wasn’t on the dark teak floors or the white walls hung with art that was probably worth more than he made in ten years. His attention was already through the open doors to the terrace, where half a dozen men sat lounging around a table under the shade of an arbor covered in striped fabric.
He immediately recognized Paul Kenner, the ex-baseball player. Elena had told him Kenner was at the birthday party the night Irina went missing. Another guy sitting at the table did beer commercials—some Aussie tennis player from the last decade. The rest he didn’t know.
A big man with an aggressive smile and a loud shirt got up from the head of the table and came across the flagstone, sticking out his hand.
“Detective. Jim Brody,” he said. His grip was like a can crusher.
“Mr. Brody, I’m Detective Landry. This is Detective Weiss,” he said, nodding in Weiss’s general direction. “We’re looking into the death of Irina Markova, and we’re speaking with everyone who may have seen her the night she went missing.”
“Terrible tragedy,” Brody said in a booming voice. “Of course I saw it on the news yesterday. We were all just talking about it. Everyone here was at the party that night, at one point in time or another.”
“Really? Hey, one-stop shopping for us, Detective Weiss,” Landry said. “Great coincidence, huh?”
Weiss looked at Brody like he was a piece of dog crap. The tough guy. “And you were all just talking about it?” he said flatly. “Then it’s fresh in your heads.”
Landry looked around the table. A couple of them looked cool. A couple of them didn’t.
Kenner stood up with a stupid grin on his face. “Hey, I think I met you once.”
Landry gave him the cop eyes. “Yeah? Did I arrest you?”
“No.”
“My mistake.”
“Detective.” A distinguished-looking man, probably in his early fifties, grass-green Lacoste shirt, khakis with knife-sharp creases, rose from his chair and handed Weiss a business card. “I’m afraid I have to leave. I have a tee time with my father-in-law. But I’m happy to speak with you later, although I don’t have much to contribute. I didn’t see the girl. I was in and out of the party early in the evening. After that I was with my family.”
Another one pushed his chair back. Mid-forties. Dark hair, wet, slicked back. Black wraparounds. Ralph Lauren shirt: collar open, sleeves rolled up neatly to mid—muscular forearm. He slid out of his chair and stepped to the side, like he thought he might be able to slip away unnoticed.
“And you are… ?” Landry said.
He was hungover, that was what he was, Landry thought. He had that look. Landry recognized it because he’d seen it staring back at him out of the bathroom mirror that morning.
Even slouching, the guy was tall. Good-looking, like a Kennedy. He turned his head to the side, as if he didn’t realize he was being spoken to.
“Having a memory problem?” Landry prodded.
“Bennett Walker,” he said, and wiped a hand down the lower part of his face. “I’m afraid I’m not feeling well, Detective. One too many last night.”
Landry shrugged. Be a buddy. “Hey, me too. I’ve got a head like a medicine ball. If I can just ask you a couple of questions on your way out…”
Walker gave the smallest of nods and started toward the house. Landry walked beside him.
“Russian vodka,” Landry said. “From real Russians. I think they made the shit in a bathtub. Nasty.”
Walker was breathing very carefully through his mouth. “Me too,” he said. “Vodka. But I don’t know any Russians.”
“Sure you do,” Landry said as they went into the house. “You knew Irina Markova.”
Walker’s step faltered. “Not really.”
“I looked at some photographs from the party that night,” he bluffed. “You looked pretty friendly to me.”
“It was a party. I had a lot to drink.”
“Is that a habit of yours, Mr. Walker? Drinking too much?”
“No more than anyone else.”
“The party was Saturday night. Last night was Monday. I don’t know too many people who tie one on every other night of the week,” Landry said. “Do you?”
Walker stopped and held his head in his hands for a moment, a man in pain.
“It was a party,” he said again.
“And last night?”
“Drinks with a friend after a long day. Look, Detective,” he said, his patience fraying around the edges. “I appreciate your concern, but my drinking habits are none of your business.”
Landry spread his hands. “Hey, you’re right. I don’t know anything about you. Maybe you’re under a lot of stress. Maybe you’ve got problems with your finances or your wife or your girlfriend, boyfriend, whatever. What do I know? I only know what you tell me… and what other people tell me—friends, enemies, observers. Wouldn’t you rather tell me yourself?”
“There’s nothing to tell,” Walker said. “I left the party… I don’t know… maybe two-thirty. Went home. Passed out.”
“Can someone vouch for that?”
“Yes. Juan Barbaro.”
“And where can I find Mr. Barbaro?”
Walker motioned back from where they’d come. “He’s at the table. If you’d excuse me now, Detective. I would really rather go home and be sick in private. If you have other questions, I can try to answer them later.”
Landry ignored him. “Did you see Irina Markova leave the party?”
“No.”
“Did you see her with anyone in particular during the evening?”
“No. It was a party. Everyone was with everyone.”
“One big happy family.”
“There had to be a hundred people there,” Walker said, frustrated, “probably more. I didn’t have any reason to keep tabs on anyone. I can’t help you.”
“Excuse me, Detective, but I have a quick question for my friend.”
Walker looked relieved. “Detective, this is Juan Barbaro. My alibi, not that I need one.”
Barbaro held a hand out. Landry shook it. Strong, but not out to prove anything. The man looked him in the eye when he spoke, something Bennett Walker hadn’t yet managed to do. Still, he seemed too slick to trust, too good-looking, too sure of his own charm. In breeches and brown riding boots, he looked like a male model in an ad for some cologne with a sporty name—Rider, Player, Jock.
“Too mu
ch partying that night,” Barbaro said, smiling, at ease. He sat down on the arm of a fat upholstered chair. “It’s a wonder we managed to find his house.”
“You both went there and crashed,” Landry said.
“Yes.”
“Just the two of you.”
“Yes,” Barbaro said. “I am afraid we were both beyond entertaining.”
“You live together?” Landry asked.
“No, no,” Barbaro said. “Ben’s home was closer. I knew I could not drive.”
“Wise choice, then.” And convenient, Landry thought. He watched Walker, who was a very unhealthy shade of ash. Sweat began to bead across his forehead.
“I have to go,” he said, and turned again for the door. Landry didn’t try to stop him.
“Are you playing later, Ben?” Barbaro called after his friend.
Walker didn’t turn around. “No.”
“He’s not doing so well, your pal there,” Landry said as Walker hustled out the front door.
Barbaro frowned. “My friend is a complex man with a complicated life.”
“Complicated in what way?”
“In the way of women, of course. His wife, she is… difficult.”
“Was she at the party that night?”
“No, no.”
“Was she at the house when you got there?”
“Mrs. Walker lives on ‘the Island,” as they say. They have a lovely home on the ocean side. Ben and I went to his home in the Polo Club.“
“They’re separated?”
“No,” Barbaro said. “They are wealthy. The wealthy do not live like you and me, Detective. Bennett keeps a home here in Wellington, where he stays for the polo season. He is quite a good amateur player.”
“And the wife?”
“Has her charities and so forth in Palm Beach. Benefits and balls, and so on.”
“And it’s fine with her that her husband is over here partying with twenty-some-year-old girls?”
Barbaro shrugged in that European way that made Landry want to smack him upside the head. “As I said, the wealthy are not like you or me.”
“Maybe not,” Landry said. “But in my experience, women are women, and women don’t like their husbands off fucking around on the side.”
Barbaro smiled like a wise man to a moron. “You have much to learn about these people, Detective.”
“Oh, I plan to learn everything about them. What about you, Mr. Barbaro? Did you spend any time with Irina Markova that night at the party?”
“To say hello, party talk. We may have danced, I think,” he said, looking up as if he might see the image of that on the ceiling.
“How well did you know her?”
Again with the shrug. “Irina enjoyed the scene, as many pretty young women her age do. I knew her socially. It’s a terrible thing that happened to her.”
“She was a groom,” Landry said. “Doesn’t seem like a groom would be included in this crowd.”
“Did you ever meet Irina?” Barbaro asked with raised brows. “Aye yi yi! She was a beautiful, sophisticated young woman. Very self-assured, very sexy. A young woman like that is welcome everywhere she goes, is she not?”
“Did you have a relationship with her?”
“No.”
“Did Bennett Walker?”
“You would have to ask him that.”
“I’m asking you,” Landry pressed.
“Ben is a wealthy man,” Barbaro said. “Irina liked wealthy men.”
“Was he sleeping with her?”
“I don’t know. They were friendly. But she was friendly with other wealthy men as well.”
“She slept around.”
“I don’t go into the bedrooms of my acquaintances, Detective. I find it unwise to know too much,” Barbaro said. “I am a polo player, a professional athlete. I am an entertainer. I am very good at what I do, and because of this, I am desirable to know among these wealthy people. But I am not one of them. I make my living off their largesse. I am an employee.”
“I don’t see any other hired help sitting at that table out there, Mr. Barbaro,” Landry pointed out.
“Nevertheless… If I was a player of no consequence, I would not be here. Inasmuch as these gentlemen may tell you otherwise, I know better.”
Strange, Landry thought. Barbaro was setting himself apart, distancing himself from the pack. Most people went out of their way to appear to belong to an exclusive social set.
“How long have you known these people?”
“I have been coming to Palm Beach and Wellington for four years, five years,” Barbaro said. “I came here to play for Ralph Lauren when I was only a three-goal player.”
“What does that mean?”
“That is a rating system, a handicap. Players are handicapped, based on their statistics and abilities, from one goal to ten. The higher the number, the better the player,” he explained. “When I was a three-goal player, Mr. Brody saw my potential and hired me away. I have now been a ten-goal player for three years.”
“Mr. Brody has a good eye.”
“Which is how he made his fortune.”
“You’ve earned your place at that table,” Landry said.
“I have been good for Mr. Brody. Mr. Brody has been very good to me,” Barbaro said, raising his hands. “And now I must go to work, so that all of this remains the same.”
Landry took his phone number and let him leave. Weiss came into the wide hall from the back terrace, still looking pissed off.
“I hate these people.”
“Because they’re rich?” Landry asked.
“Because they’re assholes.”
“Turning on your own kind?”
“Very funny. They didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything, don’t know anything, and they all alibi one another. And,” Weiss said, “they want to know where they can send memorials. I could puke. What did yours have to say for themselves?”
“Same,” Landry said as they walked out. “Barbaro alibis Walker. Walker alibis Barbaro. They both knew the girl, but neither of them saw her leave the party. She’s screwing everybody, but nobody’s screwing her.”
“I don’t like it,” Weiss said. “I don’t like it that they’re all here. I don’t like it that they were talking about the girl.”
“It’s a fucking alibi club,” Landry said.
“So now what?”
Landry looked off toward the stables. “We find someone who isn’t a member.”
Chapter 20
I decided not to think about Alexi Kulak. It wasn’t denial. There just wasn’t anything I could do about him. I wanted to find Irina’s murderer. That was my priority. My priority happened to coincide with his. The rest I would deal with when I had to.
I wondered if Irina’s autopsy was under way. I wondered what information the medical examiner would come up with: Had she been raped? Tortured? When had she died? How much had she suffered? Had they by some miracle been able to find anything on or in the body that could yield a DNA profile of the killer?
Mother Nature is a strange old bird. I knew of cases where there should have been no hope at all of finding the perp’s skin cells under the victim’s fingernails—and yet it had happened. It could happen. The odds weren’t good, but…
I thought of the Laci Peterson case in California, where all hope of finding the woman’s body had gone overboard with her and the concrete anchor tied to her body. But that body had defied all odds, not only washing up onshore where it could be found but washing up onshore literally blocks from the state crime lab.
I knew that if there was any way Irina could have, she would have gone down fighting. I could only hope the ME had found evidence that was so.
Of course, I would not be privy to that information. When I was a cop, all the technology available had been at my disposal, provided the county wanted to pay for it. As a civilian, I felt as handicapped as Billy Quint.
I still had contacts in law enforcement, the few people who had not j
udged me as harshly as my fellow officers had judged me—or as I had judged myself—when my career went nova with the death of Hector Ramirez. I had known Mercedes Gitan when she was just made assistant chief at the ME’s office. I had stood and watched her perform more than one autopsy when I was on the other side of the badge.