“Then he gets married again. Can you beat that? To a rich bitch, no less. So what am I supposed to do? Put him in jail? Then who’ll support us? Me and the kid. Tell me that, Mr. Mac. Tell me that.”
In her own befuddled way, she had a point.
“... bought us the trailer and gave me a thousand a month. A thousand. In cash. Every month. Hey, who’s complaining? Not me. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut, an’ I did. But not the kid. Oh, no, not him. When he’s old enough to know where his father is, he don’t pass a restful night until he gets what’s coming to him. What’s coming to us. Me, too. The kid says his father owes us, and the kid bugs him until we end up in this mausoleum on a lake.”
“Geoff got the boy a job with Fairhurst?”
She ran her hands through her hair and groaned. “That job. A driver for a rich guy. Little Jeff was angry, let me tell you. Angry, like he wanted to kill his old man. But big Jeff says the job is just a stepping-stone, and he talks the kid into doing it for now, because big Jeff wants the kid to see how the other half lives, like the job is a freaking finishing school. Big Jeff could talk even better than he could play tennis. But he couldn’t talk the rich bitch out of shooting him.”
“So your son decided to blackmail his employer,” I said, bringing the subject back to the original purpose of my visit. But then, how often does one get sidetracked by a tale of bigamy, booze, and betrayal in sunny Florida?
“I don’t know anything about that, Mac. I swear.” Again, she didn’t appear to be even remotely interested in what her son had on John Fairhurst to threaten him with blackmail. “An’ little Jeff ain’t got nothing to do with the crap that’s been going on around here. He got in with a bad crowd in Miami, my kid. When we moved in here they muscled in on him an’ started throwing parties almost every night, looking to cash in on the rich Palm Beach brats. My kid ain’t in on it, but he owes them, you see—so they moved in on us.”
“I’m not interested in that,” I said. “I told you I was here on behalf of John Fairhurst.” Then I asked, not on John Fairhurst’s behalf, “If little Jeff is not in on the drug scam, how do you propose to pay the rent on this house? When your husband died, you lost your benefactor.”
She started laughing—one octave below hysteria. “He left us an annuity. That’s what the kid said. You know what an annuity is, Mac? A steady income, that’s what.”
“I don’t believe Geoff Williams was in a position to leave anything. He was being supported by his wife. Or the woman who thought she was his wife.”
She screeched like a parrot as her arms began conducting an unseen orchestra. “That’s what little Jeff said. An annuity. He got himself killed, and that makes it an annuity.”
Tina Wolinsky was now listing, like a ship taking on water. It was only a matter of time before she would sink. She was completely non compos mentis, but I had to at least try to make some sense out of the connection between Geoff’s death and her annuity. “Murder isn’t an annuity,” I told her. “What are you talking about?”
She picked up her pilsner glass and put it to her lips. A moment later she realized the glass was empty. “Screw you, Mac. He got killed and that makes—”
“SHUT UP. YOU HEAR ME. SHUT UP.”
The glass shattered when it hit the floor. Little Jeff was standing in the doorway, pointing at his mother, and screaming.
29
FOR THE FIRST TIME since coming to Hillcrest I feared for my safety. The boy was in a rage and the poor woman, completely disoriented, reacted as if a chicken hawk had flown into her coop.
“Shut up,” he kept shouting. “Just shut up! Don’t you know who he is? How many times do I have to tell you to keep your mouth shut around strangers? You don’t know what you’re saying, so keep your mouth shut!”
I stood up. “Take it easy, kid. She’s not responsible for—”
“Who’s asking you?” Now his fury was transferred to me. “Who’s asking you, eh? Can’t you keep your puss out of where it’s not wanted?”
His mother began to sob, the sound both forlorn and unnerving. Little Jeff went to her and took her hand. “Okay. Okay,” he repeated, trying to quiet her. “It’s going to be okay.” His anger vanished as quickly as it had erupted, and now he spoke to his mother with the compassion of a parent reassuring a frightened child. He even made a vain effort to explain the reason for his verbal barrage. “This guy works for her. He’s sniffing around about the old man’s murder. Don’t you get it? He’s trying to pump you. He’s trying to prove a case of justifiable murder.”
He led her to the sofa and gently lowered her to a sitting position, but as soon as he let go of her arm she slumped over, her head hitting the armrest. The boy took a pillow from the back of the couch and gently raised her head and then lowered it onto the cushion.
His movements were as professional as that of a nurse. Little Jeff had probably been a caretaker from the age of ten or eleven, and the scene I had just witnessed—the explosion followed by the remorse—an everyday occurrence. I wanted to walk out of the room and out of the house. Turn my back on Hillcrest for the last time and let these people sort out their lives as best they could. She would sleep it off and little Jeff would—would what? End up where he’d been heading since the day he was born, thanks to his father. Oh, yes, Geoff Williams, or a rat by any other name, had gotten off easy.
But I had a job to do and no choice but to tell little Jeff just what that job was. “I’m not working for any her, I’m working for John Fairhurst, and I’ve been to trailer numero nine.”
I saw his shoulders slump just as his mother’s had. A family trait based, no doubt, on a lifetime of having their schemes, aspirations, and petty intrigues squashed just short of fruition. He looked at me as if he were sizing me up, trying to determine how much bull he could send my way. Then he headed for the bar. On his way there he said, “Tell him to forget it. It was a joke. I don’t give a crap about his fag grandfather. And I’m not going back to that house. Tell him that, too.”
A confession, an apology, and a resignation, all wrapped up in one neat package. A good try, but it wouldn’t work and he knew it.
“It’s too late for that, Jeff. I told you I wasn’t formally involved in your father’s murder investigation, but thanks to your second letter, I find myself in it up to my chin.”
He helped himself to a Bud from the mini fridge, but didn’t invite me to join in. “You know who I am,” he said, then nodded in the direction of the sleeping woman. “Sure you do. What else did she tell you?”
“Everything. Quite a tale.”
“Yeah, like I should go on Oprah, right? Or how about Family Feud? Hey, man, that show must have been named for us.”
The boy wasn’t stupid—and more’s the pity.
“Look,” he was saying, “it was a joke. Tell Fairhurst it was a joke. A joke that got out of hand.”
“Sorry, Jeff, but after mailing the second letter the joke was on you. It wasn’t supposed to be sent, was it? When Veronica Manning came into your life, the twenty-five grand you wanted from Fairhurst began to take on the appearance of loose change. Who mailed that second letter, Linda Adams?”
He carried his beer over to one of the chairs and sat. Pulling off the tab, he drank straight from the can. His mother started snoring, and he looked at her when he answered. “No. I left it with a guy in Miami. I forgot to tell him not to mail it.”
“I’ll bet you did. You had a lot on your mind. You want to tell me about it?”
“I don’t want to tell you dick, Mr. McNally.”
“Tut, tut, son. Let’s watch the language and listen carefully to what I have to say. I might be your only hope out of this mess.”
That got his attention. Hope! Little Jeff knew the word well. It was the story of his life summed up in the only four-letter word that wasn’t naughty.
“First, you got your father to rent this place for you and your mother.”
“Hillcrest. That’s what they call it. How d
o you like it, Mr. McNally? He took us out of a little dump and put us in a big dump.”
“Then your friends from Miami came up north and moved in with you.”
He stood up, removed his jacket and put it over his mother, touching her head gently. She snorted and mumbled in her drunken sleep. When he took his seat again, he said, “I owed them money, but I’m not involved in what they’re doing here. I’m clean on that score.”
I explained yet again that I wasn’t interested in what was going on here. Little Jeff would have to convince the cops—not me—of his innocence in the goings-on at Hillcrest.
“Then Geoff, as I know him, got you a job with Fairhurst.
“The final insult, right? Driving Fairhurst’s Rolls in a monkey suit.” Little Jeff was infuriated. “Your mother said your father promised you better things if you took the job.”
He drank from the can again, not really enjoying the brew. He pulled a pack of Camels out of his shirt pocket and lit one. “He wanted me to look and learn. You like that, eh? So I looked and learned.”
“You learned the Fairhurst secret from Arnold Turnbolt.”
“Yeah, he told me. With a guy like Turnbolt all I had to do was smile pretty to learn all the Fairhurst gossip.”
“I don’t think I want to know that, Jeff.”
“Oh, no, you don’t want to know that. Too raunchy for you, eh? You people think life is a freaking rose garden. Well, some of us have to soil our hands to make a living.”
Feeling I deserved it, I took out an English Oval and lit it. Jeff eyed the package with curiosity, but didn’t ask what they were for fear of appearing ignorant of life in a rose garden. “You wrote the blackmail letters, took them to Miami, mailed one and left the other with your pal to mail on a given date. That was your first mistake, little Jeff.”
“Mr. McNally, my first mistake was selling pictures from girly magazines to my sixth-grade classmates. I didn’t come into blackmail at an entry-level position.”
I begrudgingly admired him his sense of humor. He might have made it as a stand-up comic or a rap artist, an art form I have long thought should get a C before the R-A-P. “You spotted Veronica Manning at the Horowitz party and introduced yourself to her.”
“Why not? We’re practically kin.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Everything my mother told you,” he said, “only I was sober when I let her in on our family secret.”
“Why?” I asked. “She’s just a kid.”
“Hey, man, she could teach you a few things.”
She could and she had. “Did you intend to blackmail her or her mother?”
“It crossed my mind. But what I really wanted to do was stick it to my old man. He played with us too long. Too many promises he never kept. Putting us in this overgrown flea bag and dressing me in a chauffeur’s uniform. So, thanks to him, his son is told to stay in the kitchen with the help, while his stepdaughter is lapping up the champagne and caviar. Something snapped inside me, Mr. McNally, so I made a date with Veronica and played out my hand. It wasn’t hard. She knows a good-looking stud when she sees one.”
Modesty was clearly not the boy’s long suit, and now I knew what the row was all about in Melva’s solarium on that ill-fated night. “Your disclosure probably led to your father’s death.”
For the first time since coming in the room, he smiled as if he sincerely meant it. “I hope so.”
We were both quiet, smoking our cigarettes, the only sound coming from the congested lungs of Tina Wolinsky. I wondered if he was anticipating my next salvo. “But when Veronica came running here the night Geoff was killed and asked you to swear that she had arrived before the murder, you forgot all about blackmailing Fairhurst and started blackmailing Veronica, only this time around you called it an annuity.”
“You can’t prove a thing, Mr. McNally.”
I ignored the comment, because it was very close to the truth, and asked, “What time did Veronica get here the night Geoff was killed?”
“Nine, give or take ten minutes.” He didn’t look at me as he lied. Instead he ground his cigarette out in a glass ashtray.
“Now that’s interesting. She got here around nine and parked behind everyone who drove in after her. Did the latecomers fly over her Mercedes?”
He didn’t answer, so I filled in the blanks. “She came here after the murder and told you what had happened. She also told you the clever plot she and her mother had cooked up about Geoff being with a woman that night. The so-called Mystery Woman. Their housekeeper was in her room all day and only mother and daughter knew what took place that night. You were to swear that Veronica was here hours before the murder to authenticate Melva’s story. What went on at their house that night, Jeff?”
“Ask Veronica.”
He knew when to give and when to hold back.
“What was your fee for backing her story?”
He flashed me a look so insolent I almost knew what was coming. “Marriage,” he spat out.
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
“Believe whatever you want, but she promised to marry me. Like father, like son, as they say.”
Hence the annuity. I still didn’t believe it, but there was so much about this case I wouldn’t have believed before coming to Hillcrest this afternoon. “Wouldn’t your girlfriend, Linda Adams, have objected to the marriage?”
He shrugged and grinned sheepishly. “Linda is very flexible. Especially if the price is right.”
“When Veronica told you they had to have a Mystery Woman, you came up with Linda. And, not counting your sixth-grade porn enterprise, this was your second mistake. From the night I came here to take Veronica home, you thought I was working for Melva and had no idea someone was investigating on behalf of Fairhurst. You forgot to cancel that second letter now that you had a bigger fish on the hook, but you weren’t too worried because you were so sure no one could connect Linda to the blackmail scam.
“You were so sure that it never even occurred to you to have Linda give the police an address other than the Boynton Beach one. Error number three, little Jeff, and you’re out.”
“Am I? Can you prove Linda wasn’t with my father that night? Can you prove Veronica got here after the murder? Do you know how many silver Mercedes convertibles with blue canvas tops there are in this town, Mr. McNally? Don’t count me out. Don’t ever count me out.”
“I got you on the blackmail rap,” I reminded him.
“Fairhurst doesn’t want the family secret to go public. He won’t prosecute, and I don’t want his money.”
I wasn’t about to tell him what Fairhurst had in mind for the blackmailer. Instead, I lied. “He will prosecute. He told me he would, regardless of the consequences.”
I think little Jeff was the first to blink. I took advantage of the moment. “Twenty years,” I said. “With the Fairhurst money behind him, he’ll have you locked up for twenty years. And if Veronica does marry you, you’ll be the richest guy in the stir. If you call that a consolation, it would be your fourth very serious error in this unfortunate caper.”
He drank his beer, draining the can, and lit another Camel. “So, what’s your offer?”
“You know the police are wise to what’s going on here every night. They’ll be moving in on the action any time now. I’ll put in a good word for you, if it’s true that you’re not a part of the drug cartel.”
“You have influence with the police?” He was back to his wise-guy mode.
“How do you think I knew the address Linda Adams gave the police which led me to your neighbor, Angie, at the trailer court? And how do you think I knew who signed the lease on this place and where to find you and your mother?” Not waiting for a reply, I continued. “Second. Take your mother back to the trailer court and see that she gets the help she needs.”
“Don’t you think I haven’t tried?” he challenged me.
“Try harder. And call on me if you need help.”
“Why are you
doing this?”
“I thought you were a punk, and now maybe I’m not so sure. Please don’t prove me wrong.”
“You want Linda to go back to the police and tell the truth?”
“You got it, little Jeff.”
“It will hurt your friend Melva.”
“If she’s the murderer. Is she, Jeff?”
“All I know is what Veronica told me. Her mother killed my father and they needed my help. The rest you know.”
“Okay, but nothing could hurt the accused as much as bribing a false witness,” I said.
But it was himself he was worried about. Not Melva or his incipient bride. “If I do what you say,” he asked, “how do I know you’ll keep your word?” Given his curriculum vitae, it was a fair question.
“You don’t know,” I told him. “But neither do you have a choice. Add conspiring to produce a false witness and perjury to the blackmail rap, and you’ll spend the rest of your life in jail. Linda might get off with ten years, but then she’s flexible, right?”
“What about Fairhurst?”
“That’s my problem.”
“Yeah? I thought people like you had no problems.”
“Only the dead have no problems, little Jeff.”
He thought about that for a minute and said, “So my old man comes out the winner again.”
I rose and headed for the door. Jeff buried his handsome face in his hands and made a sound that could have been a sigh of relief or a sob. I didn’t hang around long enough to learn how he felt about our private chat.
30
I KNEW WHAT I should do. Drive straight to the McNally Building and inform the president and C.E.O. of McNally & Son of the latest developments in the case of the State of Florida vs. Melva Ashton Manning Williams. Mon père would pass it on to Melva’s lawyers who, according to Al Rogoff, already knew about the second set of prints on the gun. It would be up to them to learn the truth.
But just who was protecting whom when mother and daughter concocted the tale of the Mystery Woman? And why? Bigamy was surely a more justifiable reason for murder—if murder could ever be justified—than finding your husband in flagrante delicto with another woman. Would Melva rather be remembered as a murderer than as the second wife of a bigamist? Would the public remember Williams as a bigamist who kept his legal wife and son in near poverty while he and his supposed wife lived an existence of “opulent extravagance,” as the press would label it.
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