Everyone's Dead But Us
Page 15
I said, “We’re here.”
His eyes caught mine. He gasped, “Virl was supposed to come back.”
I didn’t ask from where. He didn’t know Morgan was dead? Obviously not. It was pointless to give him that information. I couldn’t. The man was dying.
“Workout. Virl. I love you.” All his magisterial snootiness was gone. I found myself gazing at a young man who may have been realizing he was mortal. “Workout room. Don’t go. Virl. I love you.” And he breathed his last.
We took him into the chalet out of the rain and covered his body with linens from a bedroom.
Scott looked stubborn and sick. I was furious and frustrated. “I wonder why he didn’t shoot at us sooner,” Scott said. His voice was dead and leaden.
“We startled him. He couldn’t be sure of getting both of us. We are armed. He shot from a safe distance.”
“We were lucky.”
“Yes.”
Scott said, “And where the hell is Feige? If he’s some kind of agent, why the hell didn’t he manage to be here to do a little life-saving?”
Could the agent have gone back down the stairs as we went up? I had no idea. He wasn’t around now.
Scott said, “Two more dead people.” There wasn’t much to say to this. We looked at each other. Scott said, “We’re in deep shit.”
No argument there.
“How the hell are we supposed to get out of this?” he asked. No answer came to mind.
I said, “I’m scared.”
He nodded.
“We’ve got to stop at Tudor’s villa to see if there are more weapons. More ammunition. Whatever we don’t carry, we dispose of over the nearest cliff.”
“I’m afraid the killer has whatever he needs, as much as he needs.”
“Probably.”
We checked anyway. Tudor’s villa was locked but I still had the magic-plastic entry key.
All the guns and ammunition were missing.
I said, “I’m not sure we’re planning this as well as we should.”
Deplonte had mentioned the gym. It was the next best thought. No human habitation on the island was safe to hide in. Except for the cavern, there were no caves or alcoves on Korkasi out of the rain and out of sight from prying eyes. Desperately looking for clues seemed to be our only option.
As we made our way through the storm, our footsteps squished as they had been doing for most of the last day. My socks and feet were wet. It felt like my soul was sopping, or would have been if I believed in a soul. We crossed the highly polished wood floor. The weight room was empty. Battery-powered emergency lights were our only illumination. My eyes were slowly getting used to the lack of light.
We entered the pool area. We heard a splash and anguished cries. We crept around to the left. Waves lapped at the poolside. About halfway down the Olympic-size pool we heard thrashing and a loud groan. We advanced inch by inch.
Then at the far end of the pool, I saw a darker mass heaped across the tiles. I put out my hand to stop Scott.
“Who’s there?” called a voice.
“Tom Mason and Scott Carpenter,” I said.
“I am fucked,” said the voice.
We crept closer. Blake Klimpton was kneeling beside a body that was stretched out on the tiles. It was the Czech porn star. He was in a Speedo. He wasn’t breathing.
Klimpton wore jeans, running shoes, and a letterman’s jacket over a dark blue T-shirt. He and his clothes and the corpse were soaking wet and still dripping.
We knelt on the other side of the body. I saw bruises on the arm that I’d seen before and also angry welts on the front of his legs. “What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I was looking for him. He walked out of the villa.”
“Was he in his swimsuit when he left?”
“No. He took all of his stuff. It wasn’t much, just one gym bag. He wouldn’t tell me where he was going. He said all Americans were pigs.”
“Why were you looking here?”
“I thought he might be here. He liked to go swimming. Plus, I wanted to sit in the sauna. I needed to relax. I thought the water might still be warm even though it was starting to get cool in the house. I was looking for other people.”
He really expected me to believe that? “You might have gone to Apritzi House.”
“I did. The only one there was Dimitri Thasos. I think he’s in a bad way. He’s got some pretty ugly burns.”
“He was alone?”
“I didn’t see anybody. I came in here. I saw him floating. I dove in and fished him out.”
“He runs away to who-knows-where but winds up in the workout palace and decides to take a dip all the while murder and mayhem are occurring? Is this making sense to you?”
“I suppose not. I didn’t kill him. I don’t know why he did what he did. He was just a kid.”
“He was twenty-seven.”
“He was?”
“According to the staff here.”
“They’re a bunch of effeminate queens. What do they know?”
I said, “More than you, obviously.”
“How did he get all bruised?” Scott asked.
“He fell.”
I said, “That’s a lie.”
Klimpton looked pissed.
“Cut the crap,” I said. “The kid was scared of something. Of you?”
“No. I paid him well.”
“Why’d you hit him?”
“I like rough play during sex. Really rough. He knew the score before I brought him here. It was part of the price of the package.”
“Why did he leave the villa?” I asked.
Klimpton looked uncomfortable. Scott said, “We aren’t the tabloid press. We aren’t in the least bit interested in telling any kind of reporter any of this shit. Why would we? We were here for a vacation, like you. Murder has been done. We’re trying to solve it and save ourselves and anybody else who is still alive, including you.”
“It’s just so stupid.”
“What is?” Scott asked.
Klimpton rocked back so that his butt was resting on his calves. He said, “I come here after every season. Usually it’s later than this. It is totally discreet and totally private. No one knows where I am, not even my agent. Henry Tudor wouldn’t supply a companion for the week. He never would, but he had contacts who knew how to be discreet. I flew to Prague, picked up this young man, and came here.”
“Is he gay?” Scott asked.
“Why would I care? According to the man who arranged our meeting he was versatile.”
Which I knew meant that the pimp had told him the guy would screw and get screwed. “Turns out when we got here, he wanted all kinds of extras. He wanted special treatment.”
“Did he threaten to expose you?”
“No. The service I hire from doesn’t even have our names.”
“He could look in your wallet,” Scott said.
“He wouldn’t recognize the name. These guys are all nuts for soccer.” Well, there’s a nonsensical fantasy if I ever heard one. A little search on the Internet, and he’d be able to find out Klimpton’s shoe size and probably the kind of underwear he wore.
“So why did he leave?” I asked.
“He wasn’t versatile. I wanted to fuck him. He said it hurt. He kept saying no. I paid a lot for him.”
Scott asked, “How much is a high-priced porn star going for these days?”
Klimpton said, “This one was going for ten thousand dollars for a week, plus I paid for his room and board. The people who come to this island engage in some silly competitions. I’ve seen guys walk in with Olympic gold medal winners, rookie baseball players, youthful congressmen, actors, all kinds of people bought and paid for. In fact, it’s not just old guys who buy escorts. It’s also young rich guys who don’t want to be bothered or who are eager for a nonsensical competition, a silly way to waste their money to try to prove their worth to themselves.”
“But he wouldn’t put out?” I asked.
“Why use the service?” Scott asked. “You could probably get a date with anyone you wanted. There’re lots of guys willing to be discreet if they’d be able to get in bed with you.”
“Oh, sure, trust to someone’s discretion. I had a cheerleader that was my front for dating. She got paid a lot to be happy in her mansion I paid for. How was I going to find somebody?”
“I did,” Scott said.
“Well, you’re a fucking saint. I didn’t. I couldn’t. For a while I was seeing one of the other quarterbacks in the league. We’d meet on the banquet circuit or if our teams happened to be playing each other. Our meetings would look all innocent. So we could see each other about twenty days out of the year. Twenty whole days! He settled in Canada with a soccer player. I didn’t want to move from America and I didn’t want to give up sports. I don’t have to. A career in the NFL doesn’t last long. I figure I have time for love afterward.”
I pointed at the dead body. “You’d never met this guy before this week?” I asked.
“No. I’d seen a couple of his videos. He looked hot.” We all three looked down on the corpse. As a corpse he’d lost a lot of his appeal, but he was still an attractive corpse.
“Why’d he go swimming?” Scott asked.
Klimpton said, “He was down here half the time working out, swimming. He said he had to get exercise all the time. He was a stubborn son of a bitch. He wouldn’t do half the things he was supposed to. He wouldn’t kiss. He ate like three starving NFL linemen.”
I said, “He stopped us about an hour ago and said you’d disappeared.”
“I didn’t disappear. I didn’t tell him where I was going. You saw me.”
“Earlier. Before we discovered the treasure room.”
“The what?”
“You never heard about a secret stash?”
“I don’t pay attention to those stupid stories. Someone’s wishful thinking.”
“We found it. It’s real.”
“So what?”
“It’s a lot to murder for.”
“But why kill a porn star who will only make a difference to a few old guys beating off in front of their DVD players?”
“It would make a difference to you. He’s dead. You’d be the top suspect for killing him.”
“I didn’t.”
I said, “Did you explain to him that there was danger?”
“Why should he be in danger? For that matter, why should any of us?”
“I have no idea why,” I said, “but you are, and he was, and he paid the price.”
“I didn’t know him,” Klimpton said. “He wasn’t very good sex. He barely spoke English. I didn’t care that much that he was alive. I’m not sure I care that he’s dead.”
I said, “You paid for him and you were responsible for him.”
“I didn’t kill him. I dove in to try and save him. What the hell is going on?”
“Someone has killed a lot of people on the island. The owner is dead. A number of the help died in the collapse of the Atrium. That might or might not have been part of the killer’s plan. Since we talked to you last, several of the other guests have died.”
“Are they going to try to kill all of us?” Klimpton asked.
“Why would someone want to kill you?” Scott asked.
“I can’t imagine. A disappointed fan from last season seems kind of absurd, and they wouldn’t kill all those other people before they got to me, would they?”
“Why kill the Czech kid?” I asked. I was determined not to make a crack about him being a canceled Czech now that he was dead.
“I have no idea.”
“Maybe you did it,” Scott said.
“Why? I’d have no reason to.”
“We don’t know where you were at the time of the other murders,” Scott said.
“I didn’t kill anybody. Why would I want to? What would be the point? Warwick Movado said you guys were dangerous. Are you?”
“Why believe Movado?” I asked.
“Warwick Movado has been a friend to me. I know him. I don’t know you. He says you two are going to ruin everything for gay people. You’re going ruin this as a resort for gay people.”
I was not in the mood to palaver with him about the possibility of other resorts. I said, “What the hell is everybody hiding?”
“Maybe I should be afraid of you guys,” Klimpton said. “Maybe you’re doing all the killing.”
“If so, you’re a dead duck,” Scott said. “But we’re not.” He looked down at the corpse. “We can’t leave him here like this.”
I said, “There’s always towels in the changing room. We can cover him with them. How did he die?”
“He was in the pool when I came in,” Klimpton said. “I called to him, but he wasn’t moving. When he didn’t move at all, I jumped in. With only a couple emergency lights on, I barely saw him.”
I gently turned over the body. I saw ligature marks around his neck. There was a nasty dent in the side of his head. I pointed at it. “He might have slipped,” I said, “except for the marks around his neck. Somebody bashed him a pretty good one.”
“Why?” Scott asked.
I knew it was a rhetorical question.
“What am I going to do?” Klimpton asked.
“We’re going down to Apritzi House and find out what’s going on. It bothers me that Dimitri was there by himself.”
I was afraid of what I’d find when we got there. We took care of the Czech kid and then hurried down into the town. Klimpton said he was going to take his wet self back to his villa.
Just before we plunged back into the storm, Scott said, “There’s more than one killer. One person couldn’t have killed Deplonte and gotten back here in time to do this one.”
“We could have,” I reminded him. “We stopped at Tudor’s then came here. The killer could have had time. Although my guess on this one is that we happened on the aftermath of Klimpton doing it himself.”
Scott said, “I’ve never felt so sick.”
“How’s your head?”
“That’s bad, but that’s not it. All these people. So much death and destruction. I don’t get it. Why are all these people dying?”
To that I had no answer. My stomach was queasy. I was less physically hurt than he, but I was scared. I was afraid if I stopped trying to do something, I might be tempted to hole up somewhere and just wait to die.
I said, “I am desperate to find out who is doing this. Desperate to stop them. Desperate to get ourselves the hell out of here. If we get another tomorrow, I’ll think about the horror then.”
Apritzi House was a shambles. A bomb might not have exploded inside it, but it might as well have. The items in the shops were strewn wildly about. We hurried to Thasos’s room. It was late in the night of a New Year’s Eve. We found Thasos alone, unconscious, and barely breathing.
I felt even more helpless than when we’d looked down at the desperately ill investigator. There was nothing I could do, no miracle and no magic for this man I knew only slightly.
The door opened. Ed Bracken, the insider trader, hurried up to us. The villa he shared with his lover had been the first one we stopped at when we’d begun looking for people.
“It’s awful,” he said.
“What?”
“In my villa…a body. My lover is dead. Calvin Fitzgerald is dead.” He began to weep. Between the sobs I could make out the words, “What am I going to do? What’s happening? We didn’t come down here because our villa was safe. We thought it was safe.”
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“Shot. Dead.”
“Did you hear or see anything?”
“No. I was listening to rap music with my headphones. Calvin doesn’t like rap. I found some batteries for my headset. I was at one end of the villa. His body was at the front do
or. The door was open. He was half out the door. He was soaked. He was dead.” His weeping began anew. When he was under control again, he said, “I didn’t see or hear anyone. I want to get off this island. I want to get far away from here. I thought I could come here as a refuge, away from the Nazis of the world.”
I said, “When we stopped by your villa earlier, Fitzgerald was there but you weren’t. Where were you?”
“Oh…” In my mind his need to hesitate condemned him. “I was on an errand. An errand for Calvin.”
“What kind of errand?” I asked.
Bracken began to cry again. “I loved him. I loved him. What will I do without him? Nothing this awful has ever happened to me. Whatever will I do?”
Obviously, we weren’t going to get information out of him.
I said, “We need someone to stay here with Dimitri Thasos. Can you watch him? Scott and I will go to your villa and see if we can…” My voice ran down. Try and what? Find clues? Another dead body with a bullet hole. And that would tell us what? Why kill one of them but not both?
Scott said to Bracken, “Do you need anything?”
“I don’t think so. I need to get away. To get away.”
I guessed it was fairly pointless to have him watch Thasos. Probably equally as pointless to go look at the crime scene. I wasn’t prepared to sit in this room and be the next victim either.
“Have you seen anyone else?” I asked.
“No. I ran down here. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.”
Crushton came in. He hurried to the three of us.
“Where have you been?” I asked.
He said, “Martikovic said he would stay here and monitor. He’s not here?”
Not a good sign and not a good question in light of recent events.
I said, “Calvin Fitzgerald is dead.” Bracken began to cry again.
We comforted him as best we could. We left him sitting in front of the picture window. His eyes didn’t waver from staring out at the pouring rain.
We moved off.
“What’s his story?” I asked Crushton. He reminded us about Bracken’s criminal history then said, “He dabbled in drug peddling on a large scale, but his money and luck got him out just after he made a fortune in his own right, and just before he’d be sent to jail for a very long time.”