by Eva Shaw
Max nodded to me, but continued straight into his flimsy reasoning to be caught in the cross hairs of two women seeking revenge. “Then it all started to fall apart. We went to that club, the Glass Slipper. You remember it, Henry?”
“It’s a dive, Max, but we’re all going to meet there after the concert, if you can stand to face the place again?” Henry teased.
“Yeah sure, but back to me, man. I nearly had a heart attack as they came in after one another. Thought this’d be the end of Mayor Max White Eagle Robertson, I tell you, but the club was so crowded I ushered Gloria to one side and settled Hilda at the other. Then I prayed for the best.”
“You prayed?” Jane asked, blinking in disbelief. “Did you hear that, Gramps? Praise the Lord, this has to be a first.”
“Yes, thank you, Jane, I do pray and besides, I’m not the heathen you picture. You and your never-at-a-loss-for-the-Good-News grandfather over there along with the band have been trying to convert me to a believer for most of my life. And you can praise God because some of it has worn off. The truth is, I thought I could get away with spreading myself between them. But when one of the guys in the band asked me to jam with them, and you know I can’t refuse that, well, they both came up close to the bandstand. After the final set, the guys and I went back stage. And they followed me.”
“And you’ve been running ever since?” Henry asked.
Max jumped up and walked a wide circle around the room. “I paid a taxi driver four-hundred dollars to drive me around all night long because I was scared to come back to the hotel. But then—”
“Okay, Casanova. Think we’ve heard enough,” Henry interrupted the saga. “And stop fidgeting, man. You always make me nervous. Now listen up. I want to tell you something. Nica needs your help.”
“Nica? What’s wrong?” Suddenly all the mischief was gone and Max’s forehead was a mass of wrinkles. The boyish charm had disappeared.
I knew that was a face I could trust, especially after what Henry had previously told me all about the guys in the band. I remembered that Max was the youngest, just a few years older than me. Jane thought of him like big brother or an uncle and had said, “He’s a mayor right now with aspirations of becoming the governor, if he can settle down in his skin. And stop pretending he’s the Brad Pitt of public servants.”
Henry started the tale of Diamond Dupris with me and Jane interrupting to add more details until the story was finished.
Max tied, loosened, and then retied his shoes. “Don’t get involved in this, Nica. Sure, you’re savvy with crooks and criminals, have to be with the bureau, but I don’t like the feeling. Yes, okay, granted this comes from a man who feels like a fox forced to ground by the hounds. But Henry is right. Wait, get those hackles down. I remember Jimmy March. Henry and your grandmother, Jane, were married and happy. I was this skinny high school kid who hung around hoping that Slam Dunk would let me carry their equipment. That’s when I met Jimmy. We spent some time together. Never did understand his novels and his poetry stunk, but that’s another story. Hey, you think I’m a wild and crazy guy? No way, I’m a regular Goody Two Shoes compared to that man.”
“Henry and Jane have told me about your exploits, Max. Well, at least the exploits that happen when you’re away from El Centro. You of all people should have insight on what motivated Jimmy March and caused his possible death. I can’t turn my back on someone in need.” I didn’t realize until that second how strongly I felt, how involved I already was. While this was a far cry from the parable of the Good Samaritan, helping a Christian sister was something I knew I needed to do, if I were going to call myself a Christian. I stopped and wondered out loud, “Is Diamond Dupris a Christian?”
“Nica.” Jane took my hand. “It doesn’t matter. If you need to help, that’s it.” Then she turned to Max and tilted her head. “Max, if you do not help my cousin, I will blackmail you,” she said in the sweetest little girl voice I thought possible and thought impossible coming out of pushy, assertive Pastor Jane Angieski-Morales.
“Two can play at this game, Janey,” he said and then turned to me. “Jimmy March was bad news and digging up that time just seems like a wish for heartache for the woman who thinks she’s his long-lost daughter.”
I hoped my voice would come out calm and level, not the infuriated way it sounded since, as Jane says, I’m in touch with my softer side. “No, I will not. I cannot turn my back on her.” I expected Henry to frown and Jane to question me. But they both had a look of approval and contentment.
Max grunted, slipped down into an easy chair, and slid lower, nearly disappearing in the folds of his clothing. For a long time, he fiddled with his outlandishly large watch. Or maybe it just seemed like a long time that he was mulling whether to put Jane to test if she’d blackmail him or my staunch position on helping a stranger. He flexed the fingers, but froze when we heard a knock. I had never seen a man dash into another room so quickly.
“Room service,” came the voice from the other side of the door. We laughed and I nearly spit coffee all over my silky bathrobe.
I waited until another breakfast was placed on the table and wondered if Max was going to say more about the illusive novelist Jimmy March. Would he tell me the truth? Max was a good politician, maybe the last of the honest ones, Henry had said, but I had been around Washington D.C.’s movers and shakers and fixers, enough to know that they often preferred their own agendas over what others needed. Was Max this way? Could he lie?
Once the man returned and caught his breath, I asked, “Do you really know or have an itching feeling, or any other suspicions about what happened to Jimmy March?”
“Heard the gossip and I’ve got my theories.” Max didn’t look at me, jingling the change in his pocket before he leapt across the room, picked up the newspaper, flipped to what I could see as the stock market report, and ran a finger down the columns. His finger stopped and he smiled.
“Okay,” Henry said. “Your investments can wait until you answer Nica. Sit down, Max and tell us your theories. Spill it, Max.”
“Yeah, okay, Henry. As to Jimmy, well it all just seemed a bit too, well, fishy.” His back straightened with the words and he cocked his head toward me. “Whole mess was just too odd. But, hey,” he chuckled, “I’m the guy who reads lots of conspiracy theories. Besides, I’m suspicious by nature, and remember, two generations ago, my ancestors were living on the reservation without running water or heat, after being forced to accept the government’s perfect relocation program that was to help the Navajo. Okay, honestly? Maybe I just wished something was up. Yeah, fishy, it seemed to me.”
“Like maybe Diamond is right? Jimmy March didn’t disappear, but he was murdered? So then, what happened to his body? If he wasn’t dead, why go into hiding all this time? His last novel became an instant best seller after his ‘death,’” I said and watched for any change in the size of Max’s pupils and realized Max was watching me as I studied him. “Did the March Man stage his disappearance to gain that fame or escape the wedding altar?”
He looked away first and said, “Jimmy was doing some business with heavy hitters. I heard that he got roughed up a few times. Never really saw it myself, mind you, but I had a knack to hear gossip. Still do. But with Jimmy, I didn’t know if it was drugs or gambling or just big talk. I never found out and truly, never tried very hard. I kept a low profile, since I was barely a teenager. But Honolulu was my home turf, I grew up here, and I just ate up that rock and roll stuff, even though my church-going mother said it would lead me to hell in a hand basket. Besides, I was a footloose guy, enough money in my pockets to make me happy, a gal on each arm, and the world on a string.”
“The difference now is . . . ?” I said, shaking my head, and I’m embarrassed to say that I started to giggle, imagining what might have happened if Gloria and Hilda had found him. “Well, except those two hunting you down right now while we’re talking.”
Max scowled and then laughed at me, a kind and honest laugh. Perhaps if he were younger or I were older . . . then this train of thought crashed when I remembered that Jane told me he’d been engaged five times and nearly married twice.
“The difference, my dear, is that I now know when things are unsavory. Even though I was a kid, going through the agony of adolescence, I knew better. Jimmy never did quite catch that drift, I heard. Rumors, right after the night that he disappeared, or was kidnapped or murdered or whatever, were that it was a hit man who got him. Or else, someone with a score to settle. Jimmy cared about people, most of them anyhow, but I’ve heard he sometimes cared for the wrong people and in the wrong ways.”
Henry touched his fellow musician’s arm. “You mean Jimmy March had enemies.”
“You tell me. You seem to know as much as I do.”
“How do you know all this, Max?” I leaned forward, wondering what other chunks of the puzzle Max wasn’t revealing.
“Folks generally ignored me since was I was such a skinny, little Navy brat, whose dad was out on a submarine, surrounded by a bunch of honest-to-goodness real rockers with plenty of muscle lest I forget my lowly place in life. I was this twerp of a kid who somehow was accepted, yet they knew no one would believe any story I told about any of them. They said things in front of me. Most of the stuff was way above my head, like insider talk about managers and club owners and who was sleeping with whom.”
Henry nodded and Max continued, “I vaguely remember hearing Jimmy telling one of the dancers that she should let him know if anyone was asking for him. Then the accident happened.”
“You were there that night?” I thought I’d heard all of his stories.
“I got out quick. There was so much chaos after I heard a bang, which I assume now was the gun being fired. I figured the police would eventually show up. I’m not stupid now and wasn’t then. A stagehand sent me packing with the first dancer who would take five bucks to drive me home. Imagine what life would have been with that getting back to my mother if she’d learned I was frequenting a rock concert. A few days later, I went back to the theater and saw a few of the crew packing things up—since when Jimmy wasn’t there, they cancelled the concert.” He whistled and made his eyebrows go up and down like Groucho Marx.
“Did these guys say that Jimmy died? Or did they say they saw him running from a group of crazed women, like someone else we know? Seriously, do you know what’s happened?” I asked.
“Don’t know, but I came out of it a changed man, or boy, depending on who’s telling the story. Yep, reborn you might say. No, I guess by that frown that’s not something you’d say, Nica, but I did clean up my act and got serious about college. You might not remember, Henry, but Mom was on the losing side of her battle with heart failure. Dad was deployed. Sick or not, she was good with the guilt. You don’t know guilt until you heard how my mama could do it. Guess I should thank that manager at the club. He thought it was better to drag me out of there before the police arrived than to have to relay to my mother that I was caught up in the incident. I just never told her I was there. She went to her grave never knowing.”
“Who would know more about Jimmy and that night? Do you suppose the manager might still be alive? There’s got to be someone. It’s been a long time, but you stayed in touch with the musicians around here. Think, Max, you have to know someone,” I asked after a long moment.
“There is this guy, but Nica, it’s a long shot. Been a lot of years, you know. His name is Babes. Babes Waller. He’s still here in the Islands, according to the grapevine. Last I heard, he was locked away in an assisted care center or nursing home, one of those old folks places.” Max cringed. “He never could save a penny, the geezer. I’ve bucked those odds. Plan to be rich and old at the same time. Yep, investing in mutual funds, growing an IRA, watching the CDs increase in value. Got a good pension plan going with the city. Being mayor has its perks. And when you good people elect me as governor of our fine state, well, financial worries will be history.” He snapped up the business section of the paper, rolled it up like a horn, and punctuated his sentences with it. “Want the name of my stockbroker again, Henry? Did you ever call her when I gave you the number last summer? Now I do a lot of e-trading, but she’s good. Mighty sharp lady.”
“What’s the name of the retirement facility where Mr. Waller lives?” I asked, already tired of Max bragging.
“It’s not a Hawaiian word, or even island sounding. It’s Compton, no. Carlton Towers . . . no, Villas. Carlton Villas. Crazy how they give those places pretentious names when it’s probably some flea-infested ghetto for poor unfortunates who didn’t invest their money. When I’m sixty, with the investments I’ve made now—”
I turned to Jane and Henry. “I’m going to ask Mr. Waller a few questions and I’ll be at the concert hall in time for the practice session. My heart will be in my throat, Henry, but I’ll be there for you. And Jane?”
“What? I can’t go with you to Carlton Villas. Sorry, but I’m meeting with the ministry staff for the Church on the Beach. I need to make sure that their permits are correct. And make sure they have my grass skirt ready.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I asked, but while Jane has been known to stretch truth to get a better effect, I knew it was true since she didn’t laugh.
Max stopped telling Henry about which stock would secure his future. “Nica, if you need a man to help you make a decision on clothes for the gig, you just call me. Legs as long as yours shouldn’t be covered. Hey, they should be registered as a lethal weapon against all red-blooded males.”
I pulled down the bathrobe and headed toward the bedroom, but Henry caught up to me.
He whispered, “Nica, be careful. You don’t need to save everyone just because you’ve been saved by our Lord and Savior. Does that make sense? You need to take care of your body and your mind right now. Where will it leave you if something goes wrong?”
I started to protest something about the Good Samaritan, but Henry hushed me as I said it. “Yes, I know. I have no jurisdiction here, I’m on medical leave, but I can ask some questions.”
Henry was about the best Good Samaritan around. If that were really true, and I was being honest, why was he so concerned about me reaching out to help Diamond? No, she wasn’t left by the side of any road to die, but she was in a pickle, had just suffered the death of her only parent and in need of financial help. Could I say no to this, even if, as my friend Henry inferred, it might turn out to bite me on the backside?
Chapter 6
Picture one of those dashboard bobble heads. That was me. “This is nuts,” I said, pulling into the parking lot. I wanted to smack my GPS, but the address I’d scribbled down and then given to the device was the same. I sat there, staring at the front doors of Carlton Villas, because that was what the discrete sign did say, and then bobbling more. I asked myself, “How can this be the place?”
Max had said, “Babes is destitute.” These digs didn’t look like a home for the hard-up.
Max had told me, “Babes called me for money about three years ago. I’d just taken a wallop on my portfolio and still wanted to close on an office building that needed renovation, but when I got his note, the squiggling handwriting of someone who might have had a stroke, I sent my old pal a few thousand. Not a loan, mind you. How could he pay it back living hand-to-mouth as he does? Told him it was a gift for old time’s sake. Last I heard from him.”
Something had to be wrong, if what Max said was true. Was it true? He gave me the name and address, so why would he lie? There it was, staring itself in my face. The building was a three-story, ultra-modern affair, with a citified Hawaii-style that included flowering gardens of petunias cascading over balconies. Masses of well-trimmed, scarlet bougainvillea in king-sized pots shouted for attention as the palms swayed in the breeze and clusters of plumeria plants the size of oak
trees perfumed the trade winds. Purple orchids filled terracotta planters that lined the path to the front doors. As the winds blew that morning, the rustling of perfectly manicured palms shouted the fact that this was no flop house for seniors. Oh my goodness, no.
I set the parking brake, withdrew the key, gathered my purse, and asked a groundskeeper if I was at Carlton Villas. “Yes, ma’am, that’s what the sign says.” He smiled.
I swept my palms over the front of my coffee-colored linen slacks to smooth out the wrinkles and tried to straighten my posture as well. I knew by putting one foot in front of the other, I’d be inside soon and this mystery would be solved. I’d get the info on Jimmy March, I’d share it with Diamond, and I’d play a benefit concert with a rock band. Just an everyday deal for a FBI consultant. Not.
If Carlton Villas was the “skids” as Max implied, I could only pray that should I find myself old and alone, I’d skid into the same set of circumstances. Dear old Babes Waller seemed to have skidded quite well.
As a consultant to the agency, I’d once headed up a fraud case in Florida involving nursing homes, care facilities, and group houses that didn’t report the deaths of their residents. Rather, they buried the folks who had no family in the Everglades. Then, they’d keep reporting to Medicare that the residents needed various medical services, covered by our taxpayer dollars. It worked for about five years, until the sting in which I went undercover as a long-lost daughter busted it. Really sad. So, when I entered the grand foyer of Carlton Villas, I was thankful that there was none of that sweetly sour old-people smell. What I breathed instead matched that of a five-star hotel.
The front door opened and closed without a whisper and at once the receptionist looked up from filing her nails and balancing her cell on her shoulder. She smiled. Note: it was a genuine smile, not a sarcastic smirk. I liked her, or actually, I liked the woman whose nametag announced she was Tina. I nodded and stood discretely away from the front reception desk, waiting while Tina whispered into the telephone. I turned and pretended to be intent on the oil painting of exotic villages that decorated the reception area. I wanted to eavesdrop on the conversation, but because Tina continued to murmur I gave up. It’s the truth. Your taxpayer dollars fund programs and the bureau trains consultants to eavesdrop and there’s an art to it that I never really picked up. Instead, I thought of Babes Waller and what Jane had told me before I left the penthouse.