A Twist of the Knife

  “Glenfarclas 1955,” I said.

  “You remember everything,” Manny acknowledged, toasting me with the glass.

  “I bought enough of it for you.”

  “Drink?”

  “No, thanks.” I sat down in the chaise next to his and took a closer look at the bad man I hadn’t seen in at least twenty years. He was older than me by almost as much as Marcus was to Laura. He had been handsome, too, something of the Gabe Delgado look, a Mediterranean smolder that was one of the things that attracted me to Carlo.

  Letting pleasure get mixed up with your business? I understood Laura far better than she would ever know. I thought back to that night in the pool with Manny at the Delano Hotel in South Beach. But Manny hadn’t aged well. He looked like a well-preserved mummy.

  “Too bad about that wall spoiling the view,” I said.

  “You have to compromise,” Manny said.

  “I wouldn’t have thought there were that many people wanting to kill you. You weren’t that kind of crook.”

  “Probably no more than want to kill you. Why did you want to see me?”

  “You know it’s about Marcus Creighton. You know one of the people who put him away has just been murdered. You sent Glen to get me because you’re wondering if you’re next, if someone will interrupt your drinking Scotch that could support a village in Ghana for five years. Was that business about knowing something just a ruse to get me here?”

  He admitted I was right. “Do you think I’m in any real danger?”

  “Of course you are. Unless you killed Shayna Murry yourself. But if you didn’t, maybe I can help. What can you tell me that will help save your life? Did you have actual information that could have saved Creighton? Did you let him fry so you could take his business?”

  “My goodness, can you make things up. How was the woman killed?”

  If he had it done himself, he would know. If he hadn’t done it, and I told him, it might get him to talk. I broke the rules.

  “It was slow and nasty. She was shocked repeatedly with a stun gun until her heart gave out.”

  Manny picked up another glass of Scotch that Glen had supplied before he had drained the first. He picked it up this time with two hands, but even so couldn’t hide the trembling. “Brigid, it has been a long time, at least a decade, since I retired. Maybe I’ve lost my nerve. All I want to do is have a little peace. Don’t I deserve that?”

  “No. You don’t. But talk to me and maybe I can stop someone from killing you to prevent you from talking to me.”

  “Now you’re stooping to fear tactics, and that was always your last resort. I may be lonely sometimes, but I’m not afraid. No, I keep myself safe here. You. You’re the one who takes risks like not leaving history alone. I wonder which of us will die first? All my enemies are dead.”

  “Maybe all but one.” I enjoyed the setting sun glinting off the shards of broken glass on the back wall for a moment. “Why didn’t you end up testifying?”

  “Both sides questioned me before the trial. I told them Marcus Creighton had borrowed a moderate sum to tide him over until some deals came through on his import/export business.”

  “What was the sum?”

  “Moderate, I told them. And while those deals were taking more time than we both expected, Creighton was making his payments.”

  “Was it a moderate loan or were you lying? Did you extend funds you knew he couldn’t pay back so you could take his business?”

  “It was all in cash, so it was whatever I say it was, dear. The way it ended up, the prosecution didn’t want me because I said he was making his payments and wasn’t in financial ruin. The defense didn’t want me because showing that Creighton borrowed from a nonstandard lender made him look desperate for money. Nobody wanted me in the courtroom. Oh, someone might have suspected I did it, but why risk all those investigative shenanigans when they had someone they could more easily convict.”

  “If you had nothing for me, why did you go to all this trouble to send Glen after me?”

  “Do you remember that night in the pool at the Delano Hotel?”

  “No.”

  He gave a resigned sigh and said, “Maybe I wanted to warn you the way you’re warning me. Who knows what people out there can still make trouble for you and people you love. You’re retired. I’m retired. Let’s be retired. No one who’s dead is coming back.”

  “You’re stalling just to keep me here. You’re a pathetic waste of time,” I said. I got up, and made to leave, but heard Manny behind me in a final attempt to make me stay. The further away I moved, the louder his voice grew to reach me.

  “Brigid, wait.”

  I stopped, but didn’t turn around, just listened.

  “After Creighton went to prison I did take his business. He had signed it over as collateral. I didn’t have to have his wife killed. The whole thing just swung to my advantage and I took it. I sold it to someone who was looking for a money-laundering business. Huge profit.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  “That’s not enough.” I picked up my tote. I thought I heard him say, very softly, “Don’t go, Brigid.” I kept going, and Manny finally got up from his chair, caught up with me, and hooked his arm in mine. He walked me slowly across the living room and out the front door, Glen following closely, as he told a story about Marcus Creighton.

  Marcus was always a nervous man, he said, and because Manny only knew him when he was in financial trouble, this quality did not surprise him. Everyone he did business with was nervous, more or less. And coming to beg for an extension on the loan, Marcus appeared to be more on edge than usual. He had a minor asthma attack, possibly due to Manny’s secretary owning a cat, and took a hit from his inhaler after sitting in an armchair that Gutierrez offered. Recovered, he rested his left ankle on his right knee. Manny wouldn’t have been able to tell how that foot was shaking, but the tassel on the loafer gave it away, bouncing as it did. Then Marcus switched, and put his right ankle on his left knee. Then he switched back. He leaned in and leaned out, as if trying to match Manny’s own body language the way they tell you to when you want someone to be on your side. Only he was too distracted to read Manny’s body. It wasn’t that easy; Manny didn’t express himself much with his body. He just kind of sat there, staring.

  “I knew what he was going to ask before he asked it, and I already intended to give him an extension. Business was good in those days, and I could take his company whenever I wanted it if he didn’t pay the loan. But you don’t want to give in too fast. It makes people think they can take advantage. So I dicked with him a little while.”

  Manny excused himself to go to the bathroom, to let Marcus worry a little more, and when he got back Marcus was on his cell phone.

  I was suddenly interested. “What was he saying?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. He disconnected when he saw me, but it was something like let it go. Or let me know. Or let them go. You see, I hesitated telling you because it was all so vague. But I swear that’s all I know.”

  “Did he sound upset?”

  “Definitely. When he saw I was listening, he asked, ‘Do you have any children, Mr. Gutierrez?’ When I shook my head no, he said, ‘Good for you. Life is hard, and when you watch what it does to children, your heart breaks.’”

  By this time we had reached the driveway. “Manny,” I said, when I had gotten into the car. “You may not be a killer, but you’ve known your share and you’ve known people who hired them. You knew Creighton before I did, when he was a different man. Did I have it right about him?”

  “That man on that day? He was foolish, but he wasn’t bad.” Manny laughed. “I may be a bad man, but I know goodness when I see it.”

  On the drive back to my hotel I thought about what Gutierrez had told me. How a crook could characterize Marcus Creighton better than any of us. Also about how no matter how much power we wield when we’re younger, it can always come down to an old lonely man sipping
on a cocktail of Scotch and self-pity behind a wall.

  Thirty-eight

  Sometimes even if you’re convinced something isn’t going to happen, that there’s no chance of it, you still take precautions. That’s what they sell insurance for.

  After I left Gutierrez, with a phone call to make sure she was at home, would give me her address, and didn’t despise me for my connection to Laura Coleman, I headed back over to an older part of Fort Lauderdale, just east of Dixie Highway and north of Commercial Boulevard, one of the few areas that was old enough so that the houses didn’t all look the same.

  The stone driveway crunched under my wheels as I pulled up to a carport with a tarpaper-and-gravel roof that sagged a little. A battered jeep was pulled up onto the lawn down by the street because there was no room in the carport. It was filled with metal filing cabinets, pushed up against the wall it shared with the house, presumably so they wouldn’t get wet when the rains came. For extra protection the cabinets were covered with tarps.

  Alison Samuels’s job may have been saving children, but you could tell it didn’t pay well.

  She was out the front door before I had my seat belt off. She held on to my door while I gathered my tote bag and climbed out. In every other instance I’d seen her, she’d been only a spokesperson, and cold. Now she had shed the spokesperson suit and was dressed instead in jogging pants and a neon yellow T-shirt. Without Laura, or Will, without her professional persona, she was sweeter somehow, almost shy. She greeted me as if she had been the one to suggest this meeting.

  “It’s so great of you to come over,” she said, trying not to gush, as she led me into her less-than-modest concrete-block home. Larry, asleep on a round braided rug in the middle of the wooden floor, alerted when the screen door banged shut. He came to where I’d stopped just inside the front door, stepped on my foot with his own.

  “Hello, Larry,” I said, remembering him from the interview. I reached out my hand tentatively, palm up, for him to check me out. He ignored the hand, and instead gave a growl that must have started at his butt and worked its way up. I just as tentatively pulled my hand back to my side.

  “Larry, down,” Alison said, and Larry obeyed, backing off but still watching me.

  “That’s some therapy dog you got there,” I said.

  “Larry and I meet with victimized children all the time, and he’s a doll with them, but with me he’s very protective. Wine?”

  “Sounds lovely,” I said.

  Alison gestured at the couch and said, “Sit. You’ll be less of a threat.”

  I remained standing because I’d be damned if I was going to let Larry intimidate me into cowering on the couch. While he studied me, Alison went off into the kitchen after promising to bring him something, too.

  From where I stood I could see that the interior of the house had the same northern style in a petite format. Recessed bookshelves and even a little fireplace, though it had a potted plant stuck in it. The plant needed water. I heard a small curse, a cork pop, some glasses tinkling gently against each other.

  Alison had a work area off to one side, a desk that only looked like Laura’s in that it had sides and a flat top. The top was littered with papers and the gloss of photographs an inch thick. Her computer sat on a little table to the side, turned on. With a cautious glance at Larry, whose whole soul was glued to my presence, I looked.

  It was a Web site she was on. I’m not going to describe here what I saw. All I’ll say is that it appeared she was trying to match the photographs of children on her desk to the photographs on the screen.

  “Spend too long doing this and it breaks you,” Alison said behind me. “After just a few years I tell myself it’s time to get out.” She said, extending one of the glasses she held, “Sorry I took so long. Dry cork. I don’t think I got any in your glass.”

  I turned to take the wine she offered, served in a little etched glass, clear on dark red, old-fashioned. “The glass matches the rest of the house,” I said.

  “Thrift shop stuff. I didn’t ask whether you wanted red or white,” she said. “I don’t have people over much.” She handed what looked like a leg-of-lamb jerky to Larry, who pulled his lips back and took it in his teeth with exaggerated delicacy.

  “I’m so sorry we had to meet this way,” she said. She clinked her glass against mine and took a sip. “You have no idea how much respect and admiration I’ve always had for you, and you must think I’m a real bitch.”

  I’d wondered how I was going to get to that. “Laura Coleman at … the prison, you mean. That was pretty nasty.”

  Alison nodded an acknowledgment, and at the end her chin was a little lower. “I’m sorry,” she said, and without sarcasm, “Now I feel like I should punch myself in the face.”

  She again motioned me to the couch where Larry had wanted me to sit, and plopped herself down in an overstuffed armchair next to it, crossways, popped off her running shoes and socks with the opposite toes, and pointed her bare feet unapologetically in my direction. They were runner’s feet, well calloused. She sipped her wine, then held the glass on her stomach. “That’s better,” she said.

  I dipped my head in the direction of her computer. “I’m glad I interrupted your work,” I said gently. And even more gently, “Would you like to ask me what I know about the Creighton children?”

  “Were you there?”

  “When they found the bodies. I was.”

  Alison’s eyes filled and her nose went pink, but she didn’t cry. She didn’t cry. It seemed as if she was so in control she could even force her tears to run down the inside of her face.

  “I know enough,” she said. “I talked to Henry Aggrawal.” She shook her head, regretting that she could say she knew a forensic anthropologist. “I guess I know everybody in the state who looks for children whether they’re alive or dead.”

  Her phone went off, and she went over to the desk, answered it, and wandered back into what I assumed was a bedroom. When she came back out, she didn’t bother to explain who it was, but when she sat down again, this time facing out from the chair with her feet tucked up under her, she kept her hand on the phone.

  “It’s an occupational hazard,” she answered, her eyes getting hard. “You can work twenty-four hours a day and it’s never enough. Sorry. How’s Laura doing?” she asked.

  “Angry. Depressed. She’ll be all right. How are you?”

  “Angry. Depressed. But that’s kind of been me for as long as I can remember. And tired. I’m tired a lot. Why are you here?”

  I told her about Shayna Murry. I told her about the possibility that it was a revenge killing, and that there was a fear of more.

  “I had you put on the list for security,” I said. “But you know how that goes, maybe a patrol car driving by a couple of times a night if you’re lucky. I think you should watch out. Maybe no running after dark.”

  “You think I haven’t had angry parents after me? Death threats from pimps? Menacing e-mails from pedophiles?” She put her glass on the table next to her chair, then swung one foot down and rubbed Larry’s back with it. “You see how he protects me. He won’t let anyone hurt me, will you, Larry?”

  There are certain times when we, the best way I can put it, seem to be actors playing the part of ourselves. As she spoke Alison fumbled her lines and dropped her character, the one that was so well rehearsed for so many years. She swung her legs off the chair and fell down beside Larry, hugging him around the neck and burying her face in his fur.

  “Alison, why the obsession with this particular man, with a family you never knew?”

  “That’s the only one you know about,” she said, and then paused. “But that’s not the whole truth. Marcus Creighton was different from the rest. I did find the photo that looked like his son, but it was more. Of all the guys I hunted, all the ones I put away, Marcus Creighton was the only one who would talk to me. I could sit there and say things and watch him suffer. It was like he came to stand for all the men who hurt children
. And now he’s dead and my only feeling is frustration that I can’t make him suffer anymore. Marcus Creighton is gone. The children are gone. Everyone is gone. I feel like I’m hardly here. What else do you feel when the sole reason for your existence is all gone? When everyone is gone and you don’t have your meaning anymore?”

  I had thought Alison Samuels was tough like me, like Laura. I didn’t expect her to bleed this way, and to a near-stranger. She looked up at me. From that vantage point, sitting on the floor next to her dog, she looked like a little girl, as lost and alone as she had ever been.

  Then her face sorted its features back into the kind you show company. She reached up to the end table for her wineglass, drained it, and picked a bit of cork off her tongue. Alison said, “The thing I don’t get is finding you on the other side of the fence.”

  I said, “I keep hearing that. I’m not, really, more like on it. I’m on nobody’s side. I’ve seen too much corruption at worst and stupidity at best by the guys who are supposed to stand for justice. So I can see the objection to the death penalty, because unless you see the smoking gun in the killer’s hand and find a bullet that matches it in the victim, you really never know, and even then…”

  Her face clouded, and I didn’t want to take her back to Creighton again. “On the other hand, I hate the same fuckers you hate, and you could talk about chemical castration and I wouldn’t blink. But that’s the big picture. Mainly I’m trying to make sure no one else gets hurt.”

  Now for the hard part. I said, “I also wanted to advise you to steer clear of Laura Coleman for a while. She’s angry. She might want to pick a fight, and it could get ugly. Don’t agree to meet her for coffee. She doesn’t really like coffee.”

  “What about you, can’t you convince her this is all over?” Alison rubbed her fingers on both temples like a headache was starting. “Can’t it be all over?”