Lady Midnight

by Timothy C. Phillips

  “Senator,” I answered noncommittally.

  “You have news.” It was a statement. To have come here, it implied, you must have news. His eyes burned holes in the box I carried.

  In lieu of a response, I placed the box of Connie’s belongings on the elegant mahogany desk. The Senator hurriedly dug into it, but did not look at any of the items that the box contained; he merely shifted them around, like a man looking for something, a certain something, and it was clear after a few moments that whatever he expected to find wasn’t there. He turned over things they he had already touched, then abruptly gave up. The strange glow faded from his eyes. His hands grew still, and finally withdrew from the box. He stepped back and frowned, momentarily at a loss for words.

  I stepped forward, reached past him, and withdrew from the album the picture of Connie, pregnant Connie, already at the three-month mark. I let Senator Patrick absorb the picture for a few seconds. He blinked away what might have been tears, and shook his head.

  “Then we’re too late.”

  I withdrew another picture, the picture of youthful Connie, with Randy, and a smiling Senator Patrick, and slid that across the desk to him, too.

  The Senator’s face became sallow and hard to read.

  “So you know about Randy, too.”

  “Senator Patrick, you knew when I took this case I would probably find out about Randy Cross. What I don’t understand is why you kept his existence a secret from me. If you lie to me, it makes it very hard for me to do my job.”

  Patrick nodded somberly. “It’s true. I apologize for not being completely honest with you, Roland. I believed that you’d probably find Connie in short order. There was no need for me to reveal any more of my private pain to you. I was young when I met Elizabeth Cross, Randy’s mother. I thought that I was in love. We had broken it off before I knew that she was pregnant with Randy. I help him, though, Roland. He had to have told you that.”

  I didn’t answer. “Senator, on the back of that picture you’re holding, Connie indicates that she was three months pregnant at the time it was taken—and it was taken a couple of weeks ago. That puts your daughter somewhere in the neighborhood of four months pregnant today. What concerns me is that when the two of you had your argument, she must have been, oh, let’s see, a month and a half, even two months pregnant. That’s another little fact that you forgot to include in our little cloak-and-dagger briefing.”

  “Roland, I assure you that I had no idea Connie was pregnant at that time. I did not know until you revealed it to me, just now.”

  I stood there and regarded him without speaking. Patrick rose from his seat and raised his hands, palm outward as if to ward off a blow. “Look, I understand your anger, your . . . confusion. But this is a very painful revelation to me. I had no idea that Connie had gotten herself pregnant . . . by Herron, but I feared as much would happen. I remember saying as much to you in our initial meeting.”

  I nodded. That was true enough.

  “There’s more. Connie may be involved in the adult film industry in some way.”

  Patrick fell back into his chair. “Good lord. What are you saying? That’s not possible.”

  I told him about Carter Britton’s party, and about Connie’s other identity as Bonny Golightly, and her friendship with the girl who called herself Nookie Uberalles.

  “Oh, my God. You’ve got to find my daughter before she gets killed. Those kind of people—”

  “—One more thing. As far as I can tell, Senator, Herron is no longer in the picture.” I flipped the picture of Senator Patrick’s fractured little family back into the box with conscious irony.

  “Herron—Oh yes. Rotten sort. Probably got her involved in all of this, then dropped her. That, at least, is hardly surprising.”

  I waited for a second, then went on. “Just where your daughter is at this moment, none of her friends have been able or willing to tell me. But I think that a solid lead has come my way today. I’ve got a couple more people to question, before I know for sure.”

  Senator Patrick nodded eagerly. “Please, keep me informed. Let me know the minute that you find Connie.”

  Patrick and I shook hands again. This time he grasped my entire hand tightly, like a drowning man might grip the saving hand that was pulling him from a watery grave.

  “No more secrets,” I told the older man, like a parent might scold an errant child.

  He bowed his head. “No more. I promise.”

  Chapter 16

  I headed back across town to Randy Cross’s apartment. I now had a feeling that Cross, like his estranged father, knew a lot more than he was telling. It was time for him to spill it. If Patrick hadn’t known about Connie’s pregnancy, Randy Cross almost certainly had, and for some reason he’d chosen not to tell me. I was very curious about his reason for staying quiet.

  I found my way back to Randy’s house with little trouble. The man met me at the door this time, and in a markedly less amicable mood.

  “What do you want now?” he asked by way of hello. He had some kind of trendy, micro-brewed beer in his hand. His eyes were a little red. I suspected he was well on his way to getting drunk.

  “You didn’t tell me your sister was pregnant.”

  Randy Cross’s face paled behind the alcohol flush, and his voice became bitter. “Nookie, that bitch. She can’t keep her mouth shut—or her legs, for that matter.”

  “Why wouldn’t you tell me? Who are you trying to protect?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Randy, I’m the guy who’s trying to find your sister, and make sure that she’s not in any danger. So far, no one I’ve met, except for Nookie, has leveled with me about anything. Now, I am left to assume that either you know where Connie is, and are helping to hide her from your father, or you’re deliberately trying to keep me from finding her for some other reason, like maybe you do know Anthony Herron, and you’re trying to keep me away from him.”

  Randy Cross threw back his head and laughed so loud and so suddenly that I was startled. Cross put up his hand at the confusion and anger that must have showed on my face.

  “I’m sorry, mister. I think you’re probably really good at what you do. I mean it. You’re moving along pretty quickly; I have to hand it to you. But you are so dead wrong about some things that I wish I could be around to see your face when you find out the truth of them.”

  My irritation came out plainly in my voice. “Mind letting me in on the joke, Randy? Your sister is mixed up with two men who’ve killed a girl before. Doesn’t that concern you?”

  Randy Cross shrugged, and his face wore a world-weary expression. “Listen, you need to wise up, detective. Nookie is in the underground porn business. She’s also a drug addict, like most of them are in that business. She used to come over here for coke. I do it, too. I admit it. Sure, Connie does it too, but I already told you about that.”

  Randy’s eyes were glazed, but they were also filled with a strange intensity. He gestured vaguely at his apartment. “I usually have some around here. Connie was staying with Nookie, and she must have told her that we shared the same habits. Not that I ever had much, mind you, but enough for personal use. But I also have money problems. I’m living on disability, and, like I told you, the Senator sends me a little cash now and again. Druggies love people on disability, or anybody with a regular income. They know exactly when we get paid, and that’s when they come around, because they know they’ll score that day.”

  Randy took a drink of beer, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Well, junkies are always broke, and Nookie’s a junkie. She also owes me money. You see, she’s got a little boy that lives with her mom in some Podunk little town where she’s from, up in Tennessee somewhere. I loaned her some money last Christmas so she could buy him some presents, you know? Anyway, she never paid me back. So I had to tell her a lie to get my money back. I called Nookie and told her, ‘Hey, it’s been too long since we hung out.’ I told her I’d get her a quarter of
coke for some money and a little date, you know? I knew that she’d come up with some money for that. So when she showed up with the money, I said, ‘Hey, bitch, you owe me that and thank you very much.’”

  I frowned and shrugged at his rambling story. “What does any of that have to do with your sister’s disappearance?”

  Randy rolled his eyes, as though he couldn’t believe my stupidity. “A lot. Connie and Nookie were probably working for the same guys. Probably for coke, or cash, or whatever. Anyway, after you left here before, Nookie called me and threatened me. She said if I didn’t give her either money or some coke she’d give you those pictures of Connie. Which she did, the little junkie bitch.” Randy smiled bitterly and shook his head, then his beer bottle. It was getting empty. His eyes wandered towards the refrigerator.

  In my mind I saw Senator Patrick’s trembling hands, fumbling for something in a box, and not finding it, the flush of victory leaving his face. What had he been looking for? Not the pictures. They had been there, had he wanted them and the truth they revealed. Something still wasn’t adding up.

  Randy Cross was in a talkative mood, so I asked him another question, as he crossed to the fridge. “Why was she saving those pictures?”

  Randy retrieved another beer, opened it and took a drink before he nodded and resumed his story, talking faster now, like he was deriving great joy from what he was revealing to me, like maybe in speaking it all aloud, he was also revealing some of it to himself for the first time.

  “Whoever Nookie and Connie were working for didn’t know who Connie was. They didn’t know she was Senator Patrick’s daughter, I mean. After Connie had stayed with her for a while, she found some other place to stay, but she asked Nookie to hold onto some of her stuff. Nookie kept it, and then in her slow, drug-addicted way, she finally figured out that if she took that stuff to the guys she worked for, she could prove to them who Connie was. They could make a lot of money based on the fact they had porn movies of a senator’s daughter. You know, they could re-release the movies that Connie had made for them with new titles. “The Senator’s Daughter Gone Wild,” or worse. You can imagine.”

  I frowned, thinking of Big Daddy and Vince, and what they were capable of. I could also imagine what Senator Patrick was willing to pay to keep that from happening. “I can imagine. So, if Nookie had those pictures, and realized what they would prove, why did she sit on them?”

  “Because she’s a dumb junkie, like I told you. In a couple of years, when she’s used up and not so pretty any more, she’ll be selling herself out on the corner of Peachtree and Pine, instead of making movies. She came to me first, and told me about her big plan. I told her that it wouldn’t work. Sure, the guys she worked for would seize on the idea. But they’d be the ones who made all the money. They’d just take over the whole thing, cut her out, and that would be it. After she got mad at me, though, she did try to go to them with it, anyway.”

  “And?”

  Randy shrugged, like he just didn’t care, but I saw that his eyes shone in the dim apartment. There were some tangled emotions at work here, and I was pretty sure which ones they were. “They said go to hell. Like they had already found out, somehow. I think that maybe Connie had told them herself by that time.”

  “But they didn’t re-release the movies that Connie had made. It seems like they passed on the chance to make a lot of money. That doesn’t make sense. What did they do once they found out?”

  Randy shrugged, and sipped his beer. “That’s when Connie dropped out of sight. That’s when I called that private eye, Bowman—the one that got himself killed. That part of my story was true. I was worried about my sister.”

  A sudden strange suspicion came my way. Considering what I had uncovered, I had begun to doubt many of the things that I’d been told by Senator Patrick. One thing in particular had left my conscious mind, but now it came back as a detail of great importance. On a sudden impulse, I said to Randy Cross, “Tell me about your grandfather, Randy.”

  “Come again?”

  “Claude Ettinger.”

  “Claude was Connie’s grandpa, not mine. You know that. He was Connie’s mother’s dad, not mine.”

  “So the old man didn’t care for you? Even when you were still welcome around the Senator’s house?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Longville. The old man died when I was just a kid. I barely remember him.”

  Chalk up another big lie for Senator Patrick, I thought to myself. So much for the recently-dead grandfather and Connie’s inheritance story.

  Suddenly Randy was tired of talking. He sighed heavily, the great rush of energy spent. “You know as much as me, mister, and that’s a fact. Now, I’ve said it all. I can’t tell you one more thing.”

  “Can’t tell me because you don’t know anything else, or won’t tell me because you’re afraid to tell me any more?”

  Randy smiled again, but it was hard and forced. He tried to drink some more of his beer but it dribbled down his chin.

  “Why don’t you go ask that junkie bitch, Nookie?” He tried to say it in a flip tone, but his voice cracked when he said her name.

  I leaned a little closer to him. “My, my, but you’re hard on her. But it doesn’t sound like you always were.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t I? Let’s see, then. According to your own stories you had her over here, lots of times, didn’t you, Randy? Shared your drugs with her and loaned her money to buy her little boy presents.”

  “So what?”

  “So, I think just maybe that you’re in love with her, and bitter because she doesn’t feel the same about you.”

  Randy was silent for a moment then his face drew taught. His knuckles gripped white around the beer bottle. “Get out of here, mister. Don’t come back, either. I’m through talking to you.”

  I ignored his edict. “I think you know that your sister is in danger, too. Have Vince and Big Daddy threatened you? Is that it? Maybe you’re afraid they’ll hurt her, hurt Nookie too? Is that why you act like you hate her? Because I don’t buy it.”

  “I said get out. I mean it. Now.”

  I looked hard at Randy Cross. It was impossible for me not to feel sympathy for the young man. He had been wasted one too many times, and wounded in one too many ways. I knew that he cared for his sister, but I realized that he was just as lost in his own way as she was. There was something else playing out behind the scenes here, that much was obvious, something very well-hidden, but by what mechanism, I still couldn’t tell.

  “Whatever you want, Randy. I guess that I’ll just have to find Connie without your help.” Randy didn’t speak again as I turned to leave. He drank from his beer furiously and turned his face away.

  As I walked out of Cross’s apartment building, the clouds that had gathered overhead on my way there let loose with a slow, cold rain. I walked through it to my car and decided to go see Nookie Uberalles again. One thing was obvious, she was much more a part of the history of the Patrick Family’s sorry situation than she was letting on. It was also obvious that she was the only one around Atlanta who liked him enough to talk to me anymore, anyway.

  Cocaine. I shook my head. That drugs were at the bottom of all Connie’s troubles didn’t surprise me. I had taken that for granted, on some level. Because maybe there was more than a little truth in the statement that one drug opened the door for another, not just in the life of a person, but out in the dirty streets, where you could hear people laugh at the old drug of choice, because there was a new drug of choice, and heroin and cocaine had long ago given way to crack and crystal methamphetamine. Even now, some scheming bastard was cooking up something ten times more deadly than either of those poisons, which would be the affliction of the next generation, in a widening gyre of destruction that yawned over the dark and bottomless pit that had already swallowed so many.

  It never ceased to amaze me that people could see the doom they were marching tow
ard, and fool themselves into thinking that it was going to be different for them, once they hit that pipe or plunged that needle in for the first time. But they did it anyway, every day, just the same—and the end surprised nobody but the user. No one was immune. It just took longer for some, but they got there, all right. I’d seen it far too many times to fool myself about that.

  Chapter 17

  Nookie wasn’t in when I buzzed at the door of her apartment building. I spotted a little coffee shop across the street, and decided to duck in there to await her return. It was starting to rain a little harder, and sitting in my car didn’t seem like such an appealing idea. It was getting late in the afternoon, and I figured she would be back before too long, to prepare herself for whatever festivities her night held in store.

  As I walked into the coffee shop, it seemed like I would have the place mostly to myself. It was a clean, trendy-looking place, with wall booths and big picture windows, like something out of that Edward Hopper painting. It wasn’t Sally’s Diner, I reflected, but it would do nicely.

  A waitress, a light-skinned young black girl just out of her teens, had just brought me a cup of coffee when a man entered and walked silently to the corner booth. He sat down, facing me, then whipped out a newspaper and peered over the top of the page at me, though he glanced immediately down at the newspaper when he saw me looking his way.

  I instantly recognized him. He was a white man, and tall, with longish graying hair. He was wearing the same blue raincoat that he had been wearing when he had shot Bowman to death, on another rainy day outside of Sally’s Diner. His blue raincoat was beaded with clear pearls of icy water.

  He was trying to act nondescript, the man in the Famous Blue Raincoat, which told me two things: one, he didn’t know that I had watched him kill Bowman; and two, that whoever had sent him didn’t know it either. Because he’d been sent, that much was obvious. I guessed that someone had given him a call on his cell phone to come over and intercept me. I wondered just what it was that I was close to learning. Whatever it was, was clearly dangerous knowledge.