by Lee Bellamy
"Everything?"
Jay's lips twitched. He squinted. "Yes, everything." He looked me squarely in the eye, then to the left and down.
Well, surprise, surprise. Our great war hero had just told a big fat lie. He wasn't going to get away with it, though. He could compliment me all he wanted to, but I wasn't a piece of fluff he could tap dance around. I slung my arm over the back of Velia's fancy satin settee, smiled sweetly, and announced, "You're lying."
Jay's expression stayed the same, almost. You had to look closely to see the wince, and to see his eyebrows rise, ever so slightly. "I'm lying?"
Better ease off. "I take that back. 'Lying' isn't the best choice of words. Let's just say you're not telling me all you know."
Jay drank deeply from his Heineken, emitted a loud "Ah" and smacked his lips. As yet, he hadn't lost his smile. "And what, my dear, haven't I told you?"
Ah, there it was—that slightly condescending attitude older men have towards women. Not their fault, they were raised that way. I hesitated. My confidence had slipped a little. It wasn't going to be easy, standing up to this hero warrior who currently could do no wrong. What if I were mistaken? What if Doris was not Crystal? Such an outrageous idea anyway. I could make a gigantic fool of myself. Not too late to back down—piddly-foot around, bat my eyelashes while murmuring, Oh, Jay, I didn't mean to imply you weren't telling everything.
On the other hand, I could have faith in myself—high self-esteem's the current buzz word—and blast him with my accusation. What could I lose? The chances of my seeing that fifty thousand were already history.
"There's a lot you haven't told me. For instance, that movie Crystal made after she disappeared, called Virgin in the Pines. It's a snuff movie, in which Crystal is stabbed to death, supposedly. But she didn't die, did she? It was all a deception, and you were involved in it, weren't you?"
I paused. I'd slung enough heavy duty trouble at him for the moment. Let him sort it through.
"Well, lordy, lordy me." In almost slow motion, with a giant sigh, Jay drained his bottle of beer, leaned to the side, and set the empty bottle extra carefully on a coaster on his Ethan Allen night stand. He scratched his temple, fiddled with his ear. Finally he asked me, "Where did you hear all this...this..."
"Shit?" I supplied.
"Shit's good."
"Here and there. It's true, isn't it?"
"How much do you know about me?"
"For openers, you were married before. You owned a yogurt shop in Torrance."
"Jesus! You uncovered the yogurt shop." His blue eyes twinkled. "I was hoping that wouldn't get out."
"I'm considering blackmail."
"Anything else?" He was still amused.
"Oh, yes. You made porn movies in Hollywood. You were a crossroader in Las Vegas using the name Jack Crisp."
His eyes stopped twinkling. "Done your homework, haven't you?" He tried to sound casual, but a waver in his voice revealed his shock. "If what you say is true, which I'm not admitting, what will you do with all this garbage you've collected?"
"Nothing."
Jay regarded me skeptically. "Nothing? Look, I'm no angel. I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of, but that was a long time ago. Since I married Velia I'm a different man."
"Didn't you hear me? I'm not telling anyone. But listen to where I'm coming from. I've spent a lot of time on this case, for which I probably won't get paid. I deserve to know."
His brow furrowed in puzzlement. "Why would you think that? This thing about some snuff movie is craziness. I told you, the reward's still good."
Give him credit for good acting, but it wouldn't work. "Quit insulting my intelligence, Jay, I've seen that movie. I know Crystal's murder was faked. She's still alive. Doris is Crystal." I paused to let my words sink in, but so far he hadn't even flinched. "Therefore," I continued easily, "why would you pay me fifty thousand dollars for something you already know?"
That tore it. I had burned my bridges—thrown the case on the tracks. Would he laugh? Yell? Throw me out?
I waited. For a while he just stared at me with a what-do-I-do-now? expression written all over his face. He was a sophisticated man, but I'd really caught him up short. Finally, he got up and started pacing. "So you want to hear about it," he said softly. I detected a sadness in his voice, laced with resignation, as if he'd known the truth would come out some day.
"Yes, I want to hear about it."
"Well, why not? Where do you want me to start? The yogurt shop?"
"Anywhere you want."
He went to the window, pulled back the drape and stared into the darkness. "God, it's hard to remember...another lifetime. I had a wife, kid, tract house, mortgage, lawn to mow...well you know, all that middle-class crappola. Then my shop started losing money—the crab grass choked out my dichondra—my marriage went sour. I hated leaving Tyler, but I had to cut out."
He walked to the bed and sank down again, clasping his hands between his knees. "I had a friend in the porn business in L.A. I got involved for a while, produced a couple of porn movies. That's where I met Rudy, by the way, and Bill Hatcher. After a couple of years I bailed out. It's a tough business. You deal with scum, you become scum, you know? The money was good, but it wasn't worth the aggravation...the degradation."
"So then what did you do?"
Jay's face lit. "Changed my name to Jack Crisp, moved to Vegas and lived the best years of my life. I've always been a gambler. There's nothing I can't do with a deck of cards."
"You were a crossroader?"
"One of the best. You need talent and you need guts to beat the casinos. I had both."
"But you got caught."
"Yeah, I did that." A wry smile twisted Jay's lips. He heaved a weary sigh. "Yeah. It had to happen sooner or later. Wish it had been later, but hey! that's the breaks."
"So where did you meet Crystal? In L.A.?"
"No. I met her over a crap table in Vegas. Just coincidentally, she'd done some porn films around Hollywood, but our paths never crossed. We hit it off right away. Bill and Rudy were part of my team by then, but I needed a pretty girl, and Crystal fit right in. I only wanted her for the team, but she fell for me. She wanted to move in with me."
"Did you want her to?"
"Lord no. Crystal was a nice kid, a real beauty. We had some good times. I didn't want to get involved with her, though, beyond a little sack time. Women weren't a big part of my life back then. Taking the casinos for a bundle—that's all I cared about.
"So what happened?"
"A nightmare happened." Jay shook his head as if he hated to dredge up a bad memory. "Ever hear of a guy named "Sereno Ghimenti?"
"He's a mobster. Lives in Las Vegas. Don't they call him the gambling kingpin?"
"You got it. Crystal was his mistress—a little item she had somehow neglected to mention. To make a long story short, we go out one night, clipping the casinos for plenty. Crystal loses track of where she's at. She doesn't know she's in one of Sereno's casinos. When she realizes, she slips up and they get wise to us." He made a bitter face, remembering. "What a fiasco. We had to run, literally, out of The Treasury Casino with the security dicks hot on our tails."
"Did they catch you?"
"No, we got away, but there was hell to pay. Sereno found out Crystal had cheated him. He also found out she'd been messing around with me. I was the poor schmuck caught in the middle. Hell, I didn't know she belonged to Sereno. But he wasn't going to care about that. All he wanted was his revenge."
"I've heard terrible stories—"
"Yeah, and they're all true. Those boys would just as soon kill you as look at you, after breaking your kneecaps first, of course. When Crystal got home that night, Sereno already had the word. She nearly got caught right then—had to scramble over a fence with Dobermans nipping at her heels. She barely managed to get away—came to my place scared for her life. What could I do? They had us made. She was working for me so I felt responsible. I'm the one decided we had to beat it
out of Vegas, and fast.
"We drove to Fresno. I planned to drop her off and be on my way. She talked me into staying for a few days. I met her family, including her sister Velia." Jay's face softened. A dreamy lover's look glimmered in his eyes. "I fell in love with her the moment we met. You've seen her, so you know what I mean. She's the most beautiful, kind, considerat, funny...oh, hell, she was everything I ever wanted in a woman and a lot more. My crossroader days were over. Time for me to go straight. In a month, Velia and I were married."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that. Money wasn't a problem. I had a bundle stashed away. I had to live some place, why not Fresno? I made some smart investments including the trailer yard that I bought for cash. Joined Rotary. Turned into a solid citizen. God help me, I even joined the reserves."
He started laughing, and I joined him, commenting, "I'll bet you're sorry now."
"Ah...well, hell. You get what you bargained for. At the risk of sounding like a jerk, I love my country. I'm proud to serve. Thank God, no one ever found out about Jack Crisp. I won't press my luck, though. Some of my friends want me to go into politics, but no way. These days the frigging, prying media would expose me in no time."
"What about Crystal? Did she mind that you married her sister?"
"Mind? Oh, Jesus. Crystal was pissed like you wouldn't believe. We got her calmed down, though. She could see Velia and I were in love. She decided to try her luck in Hollywood again. The poor girl still thought she could be a star, but between you and me, Crystal's talent was all in her...well, there was no way. Velia was horrified that her sister might get involved in porn again. Luckily, she talked Crystal out of it—got her to go back to school instead. Crystal enrolled at CSUF, changed her name back from Delphine, and moved in with her old friend, Joy. Thought she was safe."
"But what about Sereno? Did he stop looking for her?"
"No, but we didn't know that. We were so dumb we thought, 'out of sight, out of mind.' We didn't know then that Sereno had this raging hate against Crystal. Me, he didn't care about. He had me blacklisted from the casinos and that was all. But he'd sworn a vendetta against Crystal. If he had to search forever, to the ends of the earth, he meant to find her and have her killed."
"When did you find out?"
"When the son-of-a-bitch ordered shots fired into her living room, or I should say Joy's living room. He didn't want her dead yet. He wanted to tease her for a while, cat and mouse style. His hit man left a note so she'd know who it was, and that Sereno had found her hiding place and could find it again."
"She must have been awfully frightened. What did she do?"
"We could think of only one solution. Crystal had to disappear. Not only disappear, we had to make Sereno think she was dead."
Of course! A little light went on in my brain. "So that's why you made the snuff movie."
"Yep. It wasn't so tough, not with her connections, and mine. You've heard of Randy Lord, the porn star?"
"I checked him out. He's dead."
"Yeah, of AIDS, poor guy. He was an old friend of Crystal's. They 'acted' together before. He was glad to come up to Huntington Lake and help us out."
I had to ask a burning question. "How did you ever, ever make the murder look so real? I could have sworn the masked man really cut her throat."
"You met Gussie Kerkorian, didn't you? Crystal's good friend? She did the prosthetics for us. That's stage makeup, in case you didn't know. It's the same stuff they use in those cheap bloody Hollywood thrillers—like My Bloody Wedding and the like. She glued a thin latex cover over Crystal's throat, the same color as her skin. Underneath the latex, she put a fluid they call 'special blood'. You can buy it at any costume shop. The knife was just a prop. When Randy brought the blade down, it slid nearly all the way back into the handle. Only the very tip pierced the latex, enough so that the special blood came spurting out. It all went perfectly. For once in her life Crystal gave a great performance."
"She was motivated."
"Oh, yeah."
"But what about Rudy?" I asked, remembering I hadn't told Jay about Rudy's breakdown at his polygraph test. "The poor little man thought Crystal had really been killed. When I gave him the lie detector test, he went to pieces. Crystal's murder was a traumatic event for him. He'd been holding all those awful memories inside, agonizing about it for years."
"He never told me," Jay said, his voice weighted with regret. "See, we needed Rudy for a witness, so we made him a grip on the set. He knew Sereno. And more important, Sereno knew him for the small-time crook he was. He was the logical one to take the DVD to Sereno, supposedly for money, but in the process he was to describe how Crystal died. Rudy was no actor. He would never have convinced Sereno if he knew her death was faked. He absolutely had to believe she'd been murdered. Actually he was easy to fool. When we did the stabbing scene, I made sure he didn't get too close. Directly after, I sent him on an errand so Crystal could get away. Poor Rudy wasn't hump-backed from hauling his brains around. He swallowed the whole thing."
"And it haunted him."
"My fault. I should never have..." Jay pressed his palms over his eyes. Beers or no, he was still under a lot of strain. "I should have told Rudy the truth, but he never talked about it. He must have kept his feelings buried deep until that polygraph test."
"Such an incredible scheme."
"Yes, but it worked. You heard Rudy's description, didn't you? Brought chills, didn't it? Sure, Sereno bought it. Meantime, we did our own version of the government's witness protection program. Crystal disappeared from Fresno without a trace. She moved to Santa Barbara and had a bit of plastic surgery done on her nose and chin. She dyed her hair blonde, started wearing glasses, bought a new wardrobe at the Good Will. She became Doris Trusdale. Her own mother wouldn't have recognized her."
"But how could she do that to herself? Crystal was beautiful. Doris is a frump."
"Honey, you'd be frumpy too if Sereno Ghementi was after you. He's a cruel, vengeful man. We knew just plain murdering her wouldn't have been enough. Who knows what kinds of tortures he was planning? Besides, everything was reversible. Our plan was that Crystal would live away from Fresno for a while, until we could be sure Sereno wouldn't even remember her name. After that, she could come back to Fresno and get on with her life."
"But she came back too soon?"
"When this thing with Afghanistan started, Crystal was still living in Santa Barbara. She'd taken some accounting training and was running a small office there. She wasn't happy, though. She was lonely and wanted to come home. I kept saying no, wait a while longer, make sure it's safe. Then I got sent overseas. After that, there was no one to stop her. I hadn't been gone a week before she high-tailed it back to Fresno."
"Couldn't Velia?"
"Stop her, you mean? My soft-hearted wife?" With an indulgent chuckle, he went on, "Velia's always coddled her sister. Instead of sending Crystal packing like she should have, she put Doris—well, Crystal—in charge of the office at Champion Trailers."
"Is Crystal still in love with you?"
Jay frowned. "Yep. I hate to say it, but that's why she wanted to get back to Fresno—to be near me when I returned. That's also why she got all dressed up today—a big mistake. She never thought my marriage to Velia would last. She's got this little dream, see, that she's going to get me back." His frown deepened. "I haven't dealt with it yet."
"But when she got back to Fresno wasn't she afraid someone would recognize her?"
"No one was looking for Crystal anymore." An ironic smile curved his mouth. "Until you."
"I woke some sleeping dogs."
"You wanted the fifty thousand. Nothing wrong with that."
The last murky detail cleared. "I see it all now. The reward wasn't for real. It was part of your cover-up story."
Jay looked properly regretful. "Yeah, we deceived you. There was no fifty-thousand reward. We were trying to make Crystal's disappearance more believable. Sorry about that." He thought
a moment. "Matter of fact, you should get it anyway. Yeah, it's only fair—"
"No way." I might be down and out, but I wasn't a charity case. "Just pay me for the time I put in. I'll check with B & P on that and get back to you."
He was about to answer when the bedroom door swung open, and Velia poked her head in. "Oh, dear," she said, starting to pull the door shut, "I'm interrupting."
"Sweetheart, you're never interrupting, come in." Jay patted the bed beside him. "Come sit down."
Velia sat next to Jay and slipped her hand into his. Gently admonishing, she said, "Everyone's missing you, darling. They want you downstairs."
"In a minute." Solemnly Jay inclined his head toward me. "Holly knows about the snuff movie. She knows Doris is Crystal. I've been explaining—and apologizing about the reward."
"Oh, dear!" Velia clutched her pearls. "You aren't going to say anything, are you, Holly? Crystal's life hangs in the balance here. If Sereno Ghimenti—"
"Of course I won't say anything. Your secret is safe with me."
"It's been terrible for us," Velia went on. "You don't know how much I hated to lie to you, and everyone."
She appeared to be truly regretful, and I believed her. "Who knew about the movie?"
"Let's see...the movie people and Gussie, of course, and Joy Daniel."
Jay chimed in, "We made it worth their while to keep silent. Aside from Sereno, we certainly didn't want anyone to think Crystal was connected with porn movies."
"So that's why they all kept saying Crystal was a kind, thoughtful, loving girl?"
Velia flashed me her whimsical smile. "That was my doing, I'm afraid. Part of the deception. If we paid a little money to have them say that, it was worth it. Crystal was a little wild when she was younger, but that's in the past. She's different now."
"Oh, I see. Well, then..." No fifty thousand, I thought with a dejected pang. What a disappointment—their faking that reward. Well, carry on, Keene. Grin and bear it. Get another assignment from Barnicut. Maybe there was another little old lady I could cut down to size.