by Jon A. Hunt
“The owner had connections,” Delbert explained tremulously, “but had to bring it back.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“The car? Nothing! The owner just had some, uh, legal concerns.”
I bet he did. Not much reason to hold onto that supercar once your license has been revoked. I felt a professional splurge coming on.
“I brought my checkbook.”
Delbert seemed a little unsteady. “You’re—you mean to buy it?”
“Good grief, no. This has to be the most impractical car in Tennessee.”
Delbert chuckled with relief. You never know what crazy rich people might try and do. He turned on his heel to continue toward the back lot.
“How much to rent it?” I asked.
JD might phone bankers from the fairway or negotiate contracts while in the Bahamas, but old money doesn’t have to work from home. JD’s time at Hillbriar was his own. If business needed doing in Nashville he had an office for that, on the top floor of the newly remodeled Roundabout Plaza building overlooking Music Circle. The parking garage had white-shirted legions to keep out riffraff. Maybe I was riffraff, but the car compensated. I sent the Viper’s side window hissing down as one of the white shirts approached. His expression was lustful.
“I’m here to see JD.”
“I’ll call him. Is he expecting you?”
No one appreciated spontaneity anymore.
“Do you really think I’d be burning up gas exploring parking garages if he wasn’t?”
The young man grinned. “I guess not. We offer complimentary valet service…”
“I bet you do. How ‘bout just pointing me toward an open slot?”
“Second level.” Poor kid looked disappointed. I treated him and his cohorts to a raucous throttle blip and eased up the ramp.
The elevator lobby and the ride up were devoid of piped-in music. Not till I’d stepped into the ninth floor reception area did soft background tunes make themselves heard. Country, of course. A stunning blonde glanced up from behind mahogany casework with an expression that made me wonder if I’d caught her shopping from the company computer.
“Good morning,” she said, a tad abruptly. “May I help you?”
“Probably. I was told JD would be in.”
“Your name, sir?” I wasn’t famous enough to be instantly recognizable.
“Bedlam.” I handed her my card for effect. “Mrs. Donovan sent me over.”
Neatly manicured fingers accepted the card. The girl’s lashes lowered and she pressed the phone handset to her ear. I waited through her recital of my name and purpose to someone on the other end, also named Sir. The lashes fluttered. “Yes, sir. I’ll let him know.”
Her attention centered on me again, all blue eyes and apologies. “I’m sorry. Mr. Donovan has several engagements and then will be out of town for the next several days. He says you should be able to get whatever information you require directly from Mrs. Donovan.”
My impending departure seemed to sadden the girl a little. I leaned over the counter. Her blue and yellow polka-dot dress dipped as low in the front as professional decorum allowed. She didn’t draw back when I reached.
“This button?” I asked.
She smiled coyly and nodded, the receiver still poised halfway between her face and the cradle. I tapped JD’s intercom and raised my voice slightly.
“All right. Mrs. Donovan already said she didn’t know about Mr. Donovan’s outside hires, like private investigation firms. But I’m sure I can just ask around...”
An authoritative voice crackled in the handset. I couldn’t make out what was being said, though guessing wasn’t hard. The receptionist’s smile brightened, then changed to a pout. “Yes, sir. I’m so sorry, sir. I’ll be more careful about that in the future, sir. I’ll send him right in.”
She deliberately pressed down on my finger so we both deactivated the intercom together. The smile reappeared as she tipped a lovely chin up at me. “Second door on the left, Mr. Bedlam.”
I retracted my hand. She leaned forward unnecessarily to replace the handset. I mouthed a silent “thank you” and headed down the corridor carrying the pleasant memory of a delicate lace brassiere and what it incompletely concealed. Before stepping into JD’s office I took a moment to undo the smile. Nobody likes a grinning PI.
Big was what I expected on the other side of the door and big was what I found, just in a different direction. The office’s horizontal dimensions weren’t excessive. The ceiling, though, soared an extra story and the whole wall behind JD’s desk was blue-tinted glass. He could turn his chair around whenever he wanted and look down on the huge sculpted bronze nude dancers in the center of the roundabout; but he was a sensible man and sat facing the door.
“Please sit, Mr. Bedlam.”
The chairs on my side of the desk matched his. I’ve perched on hard cheap seats across from CEOs who lorded over their realms in leather-upholstered thrones. Mr. Donovan considered clientele equals, a consideration extended to the office furniture.
The man himself had a slight build and fastidiously trimmed brown hair gone white at the temples. His mouth moved less than most people’s when he spoke, and his mild gray eyes peered earnestly through rimless glasses. Instead of the stereotypical silk tie he wore a braided leather bolo with a bronze clasp, his only nod toward good old boys and cowboy boots. I suspected he’d never seen the inside of a pickup truck.
“I have twenty minutes till my next appointment,” he said.
“I’ll keep it short,” I said. “The more angles I have to look into, the better my odds of wrapping your business up quickly.”
JD slid a desk drawer open and thumbed through file folders. “Sandra mentioned a previous investigator?”
“She did. We didn’t discuss details.” Anything else might come across as accusational and I’d promised to be brief. “I’d like to have a chat with the guy and make sure—”
“—he hadn’t caught my wife sleeping with someone else?”
His attention stayed on the file drawer when he said it, casually, as if the thing was nothing to get excited about. He opened a folder on the blotter. Inside were typed reports similar to those I put together for my clients, and a stack of invoices. He plucked a pen from his breast pocket and transcribed the name and number from an invoice to a scratch pad.
“The fellow’s name was Clarence DeBreaux. I’ve never met a more abrasive person, but he was supposed to be the best and very discreet.”
“‘Was’?”
Mild gray eyes flicked my direction. “I would hope you are the best now, Mr. Bedlam.”
Whatever doubts I harbored about the man’s diplomatic abilities dissolved.
“He hasn’t been in business for a while,” JD continued. “I may have been his last customer, especially with an attitude like his. I doubt the number’s still good, but it’s a start.”
I took the paper, folded it to fit a jacket pocket. If I was still searching for a suitable response to JD’s earlier comment, he saved me the trouble.
“You’re correct, Mr. Bedlam, about being able to do your best with the most available information. And if I’m not forthright with you now you’ll most likely make my life more complicated looking everything up on your own. So let’s be perfectly candid.”
“Let’s.”
“I met a beautiful woman in Denver who was twenty-three years younger than me, a woman from what could only be a questionable environment. She’s given few explanations and I admittedly don’t ask. I’ve never had illusions of severing Sandra from what made her into who she is. Probably no one man is enough for her—I’m sure I am not. I loved her when I first laid eyes on her. I just didn’t fall hard enough to completely trust her.”
“You hired DeBreaux to catch her in the act?” The question seemed unnatural, like asking Smokey the Bear if he partied with the Marlboro Man. The Donovans were still married.
JD crossed his arms on the desk. His cuff links matched th
e bolo tie. A very direct gaze lent volume to words uttered softly. “No. I hired him to make sure Sandra wasn’t caught.”
The desk phone displayed 11:13. My allotted twenty minutes had expired. I had the name and number I’d come for, but JD had led me to dark waters and I’d waded in up to my neck.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. I kept him on the books for seven months. He followed my wife everywhere. He watched every reporter and busybody who showed the slightest interest. He photographed Sandra at Hillbriar, around town, wherever she went. Everything he found was innocent.”
“You sound disappointed. Wouldn’t nothing be exactly what you’d hope he found?”
JD turned so the phone’s clock reflected in his glasses. He had an escape if he wanted one. He reached for the intercom button, let his finger hover over it a second, then touched the button decisively. “Elsa, let Mr. Pennington know I’ll be running fifteen minutes behind.”
“Yes, sir,” answered the girl at the front desk.
JD moved both hands to his edge of the desk and pressed himself back in his chair. “Mr. Bedlam, surely you have an idea the kind of havoc scandal causes in this business?”
“Of course. People wanting to avoid scandal keep me plenty busy.”
“Then you must realize my obsession. If there was anything untoward, I needed to be the one who found it first. Hunches, a sense there was more about the woman I ought to have known before our wedding, persisted. You’ve met her. She gets under your skin, makes a man uncertain. I pressed DeBreaux to look harder, to dig into the past she’d never shared with me.”
“And?”
“He quit. Oh, the police kept him for a while when…mother was killed….he was connected with Hillbriar. But I think something else convinced him. He turned over his worthless photographs, billed me, and once paid I never heard from him again. The FBI practically ordered me not to mention Clarence in interviews. I don’t suppose this counts as an interview and I’ve kept mum long enough. Who I hire to handle my personal matters is my secret to keep or share.”
“Did DeBreaux give a reason for walking off the job?” This was important. Most PIs aren’t in my financial condition. They need the work. Usually they need the work badly.
“He said he was tired of wasting my money.”
Those were big shoes for me to fill, Mr. DeBreaux’s. How long would I be able to take JD’s money before it made my wallet uncomfortable? A lot of blackmailers get away with their crimes indefinitely.
“Mr. Donovan, this character may not even have anything worth buying.” I secretly disagreed with myself the moment I said it. So far, though, Sandra had been the only recipient of awkward mail. She’d gone to her husband with neither details nor confessions. He could imagine whatever he wanted, but JD wasn’t acting like a man who knew. They always get a little weird when they know. Maybe the best cure was to just call the blackmailer’s hand.
JD shook his head. “I can’t chance it. $85,000 I can afford. Several times over, if it comes to that. How my clients perceive me is everything. If Sandra’s dirty, so am I by association. How could anyone rely on my judgment if my own wife can fool me? All I’ve built can be undone in spite of Clarence DeBreaux’s diligence—”
“—or because of it,” I said.
The gray eyes widened, then narrowed. Nashville’s preeminent negotiator and professional judge of character hadn’t considered the possibility that his last man might have discovered something after all, and just sat on it till it was profitable.
“If that’s the case, then your task should be straightforward,” he said.
I stood. “Thanks for the talk, Mr. Donovan.”
“And thank you for keeping an eye on the time,” JD added with the faintest of smiles. He’d only be ten minutes late for that appointment. He reached up to shake my hand. “Elsa will have a package for you up front. I’ve got business in Memphis and won’t be back at Hillbriar before I go. I’d feel more comfortable if you took that with you now.”
Five
Elsa presented the package to me with both hands and a demure smile. If she had an idea what the envelope contained she didn’t seem in the least ruffled. Given JD’s clientele, maybe that kind of cash wasn’t extraordinary. I thumbed open the flap just to make sure. Ben Franklin’s baggy-eyed portrait looked back at me, eight-hundred fifty times.
“Have a wonderful day, Mr. Bedlam.”
“It’s been pretty good so far,” I said with a wink. Why not? Probably the mailman got away with that much. She blushed slightly and lowered her lashes toward a hitherto ignored stack of paperwork, which allowed me a dignified exit.
One of the Mercedes I’d wedged the Viper between had taken offense and left. A blue MX-5 roadster now claimed the opening and politely left me room to use my driver’s side door. The Mazda looked small and outclassed in a space populated by German and British mechanized snobbery. At least it was shiny and new.
Business as usual met me outside the parking garage, where the sky rained again and most drivers were rude and drove what they could afford. A familiar weather-colored sedan materialized in my rearview mirror immediately after the roundabout.
Yesterday had been bad enough. Today my stalkers found me in a rented hotrod with $85,000 of someone else’s money. It occurred to me I hadn’t signed a receipt for the cash.
I swung the Viper hard right onto the I-40 ramp and put the hammer down. Ten cylinders responded with authority. The seatback rammed into my spine and I was catapulted amid much slower freeway traffic in a storm of spray, shrieking rubber and outraged horns. It took half a mile to dissuade the car from traveling sideways, but that half mile was over in seconds.
Braking harder than necessary for the Wedgewood exit had the back end trying again to take the lead. Somehow I won the argument and made it through the intersection at the bottom of the ramp, leaving several cars pointing all the wrong directions in my wake. Anyone following me down the ramp would be there a while. I let the car idle forward till the next light and turned back toward downtown before the police had a chance to show.
Doubling back wouldn’t buy me forever. Whoever shadowed me was persistent, and my good-times rental car stood out like an Emperor penguin in a chicken coop. The sooner I disassociated myself with the stack of Franklins in the glove box, the better. I drove straight to my bank. Everyone in the lobby watched my entrance. The Viper’s throaty rumble had interrupted their soothing overhead music. I asked to visit my safe deposit box.
“Not a problem, Mr. Bedlam. Right this way.”
I keep boxes in bank branches scattered around the city. My line of work often leaves a guy holding things that could ruin a person’s sleep if taken home. After the teller left the anteroom, I opened my numbered drawer. It was empty today. I hesitated with the Donovan’s pay-off cash in hand. The drawer was longer, yet otherwise had similar proportions to a regulation Size Two post office box. Just about eight-hundred fifty US currency bills deep.
I’d be willing to bet the box in the Whites Creek post office where Sandra Donovan had been directed to place that cash was a Size Two.
The smallish demand—the Donovans could afford far more if pressed—started making more sense. There would be other payments, more opportunities to find a pattern. I was dealing with someone who did their homework, not necessarily a professional.
The safe deposit box returned to its slot empty and I went to the lobby to see about making a large cash deposit. I didn’t need those exact bills, and I didn’t want to return to the same place to fetch them, especially with that rain-colored sedan waiting outside.
Turning the Viper’s monstrous engine over drew immediate attention. An audience might prevent things from going too far south. I brought the Dodge around squarely in front of my pursuers’ vehicle. I made pointed eye contact with the men inside. Neither wore any expression. Neither looked like the sort who invited spontaneous conversation with strangers. Neither had locked the sedan’s doors. I left the V
iper idling and stepped out into the rain, strolled past the sedan’s left side and let myself into the back seat before the men up front could react.
The car’s interior smelled of nicotine and sweat. The big fellow in the front passenger seat started to turn, presumably to inform me I hadn’t been invited.
“I wouldn’t,” I cautioned him, and he froze. The beauty of dealing with professionally dangerous people is that they have a well-developed sense of when you mean business.
The driver was no smaller than the other guy. He had a diamond stud in his right ear and a voice you’d expect a thug with diamonds in his ears to have. “Get out of the car,” he growled.
“Oh come on! If you didn’t want to meet me, why follow me all over town?”
No response. The only sounds were the sodden bump of the wipers, the purring Viper outside and a lot of raspy breathing. Smokers are noisy breathers.
“Let’s start with introductions. You probably already know who I am.”
“Get out of the goddamned car!”
I set my left hand against the back of the driver’s seat and braced myself. “In a bit,” I said. “So are you going to give me your names, or do I get to make some up on my own?”
The front passenger decided he’d best play along. He had an odd accent, maybe Hispanic, which made no sense given his blond hair and pale complexion. “Mr. Bedlam, we’re nobody you want to know. We’re no concern of yours till you upset us.”
“You’ve already pissed me off,” I said and the brute in the driver’s seat lost patience.
I felt the click of the seat release against my palm, and rammed it forward before he could tip back and crush me. His face slammed into the steering wheel. The horn bawled. His comrade spun like a snapping spring—and stopped cold with an eye against the Smith & Wesson’s muzzle.
“I might still miss,” I shouted over the horn. “Your call!”
The guy honking the horn with his face struggled. I applied more pressure till he quit squirming.