by Ed Gorman
She laughed. ‘A popular subject. I’m from Des Moines. I’ve only been here for two years or so, but last winter a private investigator asked me pretty much the same thing and I had to go ask the people who’d been here a long time.’
‘A private investigator?’
‘Yes. He wanted the background on the house and where he might find Vanessa La Rouche. The first thing I told him was that was her – I don’t know what you’d call it – stage name, I guess. Her real name was Sandy Bowers. She was the madam of the place. Then I had to tell him that I had no idea where she went after the state shut her down. She operated for four years here, two terms of the same mayor. He protected her. Some said she had something on him and some said it was a straight payoff. Whatever, when the mayor got voted out she didn’t last long.’
‘Has anybody ever heard from her?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘How about that private investigator? Would you happen to remember his name?’
‘No. But it’s somewhere on my computer. I’ll look it up when I get a chance. You have an e-mail address?’
I gave it to her.
‘What happened to the girls?’
‘That’s what made her place so special. That’s why she got so many important people going there. Winthrop’s economy went down the tube in 2005. Three big manufacturing plants went under and so did a bank. The feds closed it. Sandy or Vanessa was smart. She used only housewives. You know what MILFs means?’
‘Mothers I’d Like to Fuck?’
‘Exactly. Really attractive, clean, bright women whose husbands were suddenly on unemployment insurance. Very discreet. Appointments only, because not all of them could work every night. Juggling the hours was the most difficult part, I assume. They had families. Hard to know if the husbands really knew or not. But she raked it in and the people here said that the housewives made good money, too.’
‘Any scandals?’
‘None that left that house. Of course, there were always rumors.’
‘Such as?’
‘Well, seems a certain well-known lawyer from Galesburg liked to argue about the kind of money he had to pay Vanessa, so he threatened to go to the local news media. I don’t know who Vanessa called but she had an angel somewhere. Everybody figures it was the mob. They kneecapped the lawyer and then started sending him photographs of his kids just to remind him how vulnerable he was.’
‘Doesn’t sound like the kind of lawyer I’d hire. If he dumped on the house he’d be admitting he was not only a client but that the reason he was doing it was because he was too cheap to pay the going rate. He’d look pretty bad.’
‘Well, if you knew the guy you’d understand. He’s all bluster, very pompous and very loud. Really obnoxious.’
‘But even that isn’t much of a scandal. He didn’t go to the press after all.’
‘Vanessa or somebody knew what they were doing. As I said, everything stayed in the house. Hey – I need to go.’
‘Thanks. And I appreciate you sending me that investigator’s name.’
‘It’ll be a little later today. Say hello to Lucy for me. Tell her my boyfriend’s got a guy she should meet. He thinks they’ll really hit it off.’
‘Will do.’
At least I was beginning to see the schematic. Somebody hires a private investigator. Private investigator gets video. Video becomes blackmail source.
But who hired the investigator? And where did Mrs Burkhart fit in?
FOURTEEN
It was time to call Erin. Every tenth thought had been of her since Sarah had called me. Third-stage cancer. Impossible. Her face at our wedding; her face in the hospital bed the night she delivered Sarah; her face watching Sarah in a third-grade play. Beautiful, smart, funny, sad Erin. So many things. And so many times now I wished she were still my wife.
I opened a beer, parked myself at the table and then spread flat in front of me the piece of paper I’d written Erin’s number on. I placed it next to my cell phone.
I was trying to prepare myself. I wanted to sound friendly and concerned as soon as she answered. I wanted to let her know how much I still cared about her. I wanted to talk about Sarah, because after we discussed Erin’s health that would be the subject that bound us together. Mother and father of our beautiful daughter.
I just didn’t want to say the wrong thing. She was going through hell and I didn’t want to make it worse for her in any way.
I swigged some beer and set the bottle down again. I took a deep breath, the way those kids in South America must do just before they dive off the sides of mountains into the sea.
Erin’s voice had changed considerably. It said: ‘This is Dr Connelly speaking.’
I’d assumed Sarah had given me Erin’s cell phone number. Not the residential one.
For years I’d thought of him as the man who’d broken up my marriage. But after I started being honest with myself, I realized that our marriage had been over long before he came along.
‘Hello? Is this Dev?’ My name had come up on his caller ID.
‘Yes. I’m calling to see how Erin’s doing.’
‘She’s a strong woman, as you know. But naturally at a time like this she’s thinking about her entire life. She wanted to talk to you. You’re important to her, Dev. It’ll help her just to hear your voice.’
‘She’s a good woman.’
There was a pause. ‘Look, Dev, I know this is awkward for you. It’s awkward for me, too. But there’s always been something I wanted to say to you. Erin tried but she thinks you don’t believe her. A month and a half before I even met her she’d gone to her attorney and started proceedings. If that hadn’t been the case I would never have asked her to have dinner with me. I hope you believe that.’ Another pause. ‘The main thing is that she needs us both right now.’
‘I agree.’
‘By the way, Andy is what my friends call me.’
‘All right, Andy. Can she talk on the phone now?’
‘I’ll get her in a second, Dev. But there’s one more thing I need to explain. She’s going to ask you to fly out here to be with Sarah and me on the morning she has surgery. I want you to know that I’m all for that. When she’s in post-op and wakes up with the three of us standing around her, that’ll be a big boost for her, believe me.’
I wanted to hate him but he wouldn’t let me. A part of me was still nursing The Wronged Husband; his concern was for the woman he loved. His ego didn’t matter. She had invited her ex-husband to come to her bedside. He was that rarest of beings: a real adult. The sneaky bastard.
‘You don’t have to make your mind up now, Dev. But please give it serious thought.’ In his laugh I heard fatigue. ‘I’m sure Sarah’ll be working on you about it. Now I’ll get Erin.’
There was a minute’s wait and then she came on the line, a voice from a shared past of memories that still had the power to crush, of a love I knew I’d never find again, a love that I had taken for granted and wasted.
Another phone clicked off as Erin said, ‘Remember that spooky fortune teller we went to in New Orleans?’
We’d honeymooned there for a week. I was on a brief leave from the army. One night we’d been giddy on wine and each other and had stumbled along steamy summer streets into an area that seemed to have all the remnants of a deserted circus scattered along shadowy broken sidewalks. We’d gone to an elderly woman who smelled of onions and cooking oil and marijuana. Her crystal ball was cracked down the center. We’d both been laughing as we went in, as I imagined most of her customers did. But soon enough Erin was taking the woman very seriously.
This was the living room of a house that should have been condemned forty years ago. It tilted when we entered it. The wood reeked of age, a vinegary odor. Black curtains divided the room in half. The woman and her attire were strictly central casting. Gypsy fashion cut for a woman of enormous size. The Day-Glo posters of astrological figures were diminished in impact thanks to her sad old dog that kept peeing o
n the floor about a foot from my leg. He licked his chops so loudly he almost drowned out his magical owner.
The woman – Madame Celestia, as I recall – went through the usual mumbo jumbo in a droning voice. I didn’t pay much attention. I just wanted to get out of there. Erin was spellbound.
Then Madame Celestia’s phone started ringing somewhere behind the curtained area in her tiny front room. She wore so many beads and chains she clacked and jangled as she moved. So much for show business. She hefted her considerable body from the chair, farting as she did so, and then plowed through the separation in the curtains only she could see. She left with no explanation or apology. Soon enough the phone stopped ringing and she was shouting at somebody in Creole. Whoever had called had made her mightily pissed.
After slamming the phone down, she reappeared. ‘I must help someone the dark gods have captured. I am also a witch and know the magic to free him.’
Drug connection? Cops about to land on her?
Then, remembering that she hadn’t concluded Erin’s reading, she leaned forward with alien eyes and said, ‘Oh, yes, before I forget. You will lead a charmed life.’
As she disappeared again, I started laughing, which irritated Erin. On the sidewalk she snapped, ‘You heard what she said and you’re laughing? I’m going to have a charmed life.’ She was gorgeously silly and drunk.
But our argument was brief. Within twenty minutes we were walking along the river where we found a park perfect for making honeymoon love. How I had wanted that moment to freeze in time; there were nights after our divorce, and in my worst lonely drinking, when I would reach out to snatch the memory as if it were a golden bird.
‘I want my money back from Madame Celestia. Do you remember her?’
‘Vividly.’
‘The whole “charmed life” thing?’
‘I don’t blame you. I think you should get a lawyer and sue her.’
I could hear giggling. ‘God, this is the first time I’ve laughed in a few days. It feels great. Thanks.’
‘I charge for stuff like this, you know.’
‘Keep me laughing and I’ll send you whatever you want.’ Then: ‘I’m sorry the way we ended up and how strange it all got, Dev. I didn’t handle it very well. I was so angry with you, I didn’t consider your feelings. I hadn’t cheated on you but it felt like it – marrying Andy so quickly, I mean. You know how much I loved you for so long, Dev. And now that this has happened – I just wanted you to know that one of the most comforting things I have is my memories of us in the early years. You’re still with me, day in and day out. I still hear you and sometimes I think I even see you, but it just turns out to be a stranger. I just wanted you to hear me say that.’
‘I feel the same about you, Erin.’
I wanted to hold her, kiss her, make her better. And Dance Her to the End of Time, the song she’d played over and over.
‘And we have Sarah.’ She wasn’t exactly crying; my sense was she was trying not to. But her voice trembled. ‘She’s so beautiful, Dev.’
‘And so are you, Erin.’
Now the tears came gently, softly. ‘Would you fly out for my operation so we can be together, like a family?’
‘Of course I will.’
I sensed a smile through the snuffling. ‘Andy.’
‘What?’
‘He told you I’d ask you, didn’t he? Otherwise you wouldn’t have answered so quickly.’
‘Will this get him in trouble? I gave him my Boy Scout pledge.’
Another giggle. ‘You and your stupid Boy Scout pledge. You’re still using that after all these years?’
‘Yeah, it’s probably time I got some new material.’
‘I know you like Andy. You try not to and I don’t blame you in some ways. He’s just so damned nice. And it’s not put on. It’s how he really is. He cares about people and he really cares about me. Sarah tried to resist him at first but he finally won her over.’
Sarah had indeed resisted him. She’d supported her mother divorcing me but she was suspicious of Andy for the very reason Erin had fallen in love with him – he was so damned nice. Sarah hadn’t believed it and neither had I, and so we’d commiserated and speculated about when he would reveal himself to be a monster. But even Sarah had succumbed to his decency and for a bitter time I’d felt that I’d lost both wife and daughter to him.
‘I can’t wait to see you, Dev.’
‘Everything’s going to be all right, you know.’
‘That’s what Andy says. He’s very optimistic. But it is stage three. I’m scared, naturally. But with you and Sarah here – I still love you, Dev. I love Andy, too, but it’s a different kind of love with him. I still love you so much.’ Then, ‘Just a few days till the three of us are together again.’
‘I love you, Erin.’ I smiled. ‘I just wanted you to hear me say that.’
‘You’ve made me laugh again. And you used my line.’
‘I’ll see you in a few days.’
‘This has been wonderful, Dev. It really has.’
I sat there a long silent time afterward, a willing prisoner of the past.
‘How much have you paid so far?’
‘I’m trying to be pleasant about this,’ Jeff Ward said. ‘I wish I hadn’t even mentioned it the other night. I’ve handled it.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means that when my father ordered me to let you come down here he meant for you to look over the campaign. And this has nothing to do with the campaign because I’m taking care of it on the side.’
‘It has everything to do with the campaign and in other words you don’t want me to know what the blackmailer’s got on you or how much you’ve paid him or her.’
‘It’s none of your business. I was tired when I told you about it. I shouldn’t have said a word.’
‘I already know anyway.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
My hotel room. Nearly five o’clock. Raindrops shimmied down the windows. Wind lashed the trees across the street. The congressman had complained that I didn’t have the right to order him up here. I argued that this was the only safe place to talk. To that end I’d switched rooms. If anybody was planting bugs they were now one room behind.
We sat at a table overlooking the street that early dusk and rain had turned into gloom punctuated here and there with stoplights and neon. Green and red and yellow and the occasional ice blue for bars.
‘I’ve seen the blackmail DVD, Ward. I take it you have, too.’
‘Where the hell did you get hold of it?’
‘Right now I’d rather not say.’
‘You’d rather not say? You’re working for me, remember?’
‘No, I’m not. But I am trying to help you.’
He started rubbing his face with one hand and squeezing the beer bottle hard with his other. Rage and frustration rose from him like smoke from a machine that was about to explode.
‘Did you recognize the woman on the video?’ I said.
I had to let him sulk for a minute or so. ‘I didn’t actually see the video.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘I didn’t see the video. I heard it. That’s what he played for me.’
‘Who’s “he”?’
‘How the hell do I know who “he” is? He’s the ‘he’ who called me up and played the audio and said that this is from a video that they’re willing to sell me for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.’
‘And you paid him?’
‘Yes, I paid him.’
‘And you got a copy of the video?’
‘I didn’t get dick. The bastard screwed me.’
‘How long did it take for him to come back for more?’
‘Do you know how smug you sound right now? You know everything, don’t you, Conrad?’
‘I got it from TV when I was about ten, Ward. Blackmailers always come back for more. That’s rule number one. No genius involved in knowing that. So how l
ong did it take?’
He swigged beer and then brought down his bottle like a judge gaveling down after he ordered a prisoner’s death. ‘One month. He wanted another two hundred and fifty thousand.’
‘What did his voice sound like?’
‘Electronic. Robot stuff. I’m only assuming it was a man. Could’ve been a woman the way they can do these things today.’
‘The prostitute on the tape. Was she telling the truth?’
He moved around in his chair and his eyes avoided mine. He was uncomfortable now. ‘Everybody has kinks. Everybody. Don’t tell me you don’t.’
‘I probably do.’
‘And she didn’t have any problem with what we were doing when we were together those times.’
‘Maybe because you were paying her. And maybe because she needed the money.’
‘Yeah, well, whatever, she didn’t say anything about it at the time.’
‘She never said at any time that she’d rather not do those things?’ Which is what she claimed on the DVD.
‘Well, I suppose she did. But she’s a whore. They all give you that shit from time to time. It’s just a way of getting more money from you. “I’m doing this extra-special thing for you so would you do something extra-special nice for me?” And anyway, what are you, a voyeur? Why are we even discussing all this crap?’
‘Because if this ever hits the press we’ll have to refute everything she says on that tape point by point.’
He came up out of the chair as if he was going to dive at me which, at that moment, I wouldn’t have minded. I’d slam his head against the table a few times and throw him the hell out and leave him to his fate. I just had to keep telling myself, We can’t lose this seat and let somebody like Burkhart win. He was fine as long as you weren’t of color, gay, poor, or held the protections of the Constitution near and dear. And not the so-called Constitution Burkhart and his followers had twisted into confirming all their prejudices.
‘Maybe you’re in on this whole thing, too.’
The stress was starting to make him paranoid.
I grabbed him by his famous black hair, then put the palm of my hand against his nose and shoved him backward as hard as I could. He hit the captain’s chair with enough force to knock it over. He followed it down, still ranting.