Late Rain

by Lynn Kostoff

  Corrine nodded, confused. She’d thought that LaVell was going to play some angle connected to Stanley Tedros’s murder and had been going through a panicked inventory of possible responses to the extortion demands she’d been sure LaVell was about to drop on her.

  “I was a waitress,” Corrine said, “at one of his supper clubs in Myrtle Beach.”

  “Did you fuck Gramm?”

  Corrine shook her head no.

  “He try to?”

  “Sonny never pushed it that far,” Corrine said. “He hit on a lot of the waitresses. He liked the attention more than anything else.”

  “I’m interested in acquiring some property,” LaVell said, “and I want you to broker the offer to Sonny Gramm.” He paused for a moment. “A final offer, by the way. So you’ll need to be particularly convincing.”

  “Why not Raychard Balen?” Corrine asked. “Wouldn’t it make more sense if he took the offer to Sonny Gramm?”

  “Balen has already tendered two offers as well as implemented some additional outside encouragement to take them,” Wayne LaVell said, “but none of them have turned out as we’d hoped. We thought a new tack might be in order.”

  “And what happens if I agree to help you?” Wayne LaVell had never directly mentioned Stanley Tedros’s name, Corrine thought, and then realized he didn’t have to. It was the way Wayne LaVell had always wielded his power, the unpredictable combination of blunt coercion and nuanced manipulation he brought to bear on any issue. Wayne LaVell always said and did both more and less than you’d expect. He let Corrine know he knew about Stanley Tedros’s murder by never bringing it up, and Corrine felt the weight of that knowledge loom even larger and more ominously for his having done so.

  LaVell made them more gin and tonics. “Sonny Gramm is a very truculent man and an even bigger fool,” he said. “Gramm’s overextended, heavily in debt to a number of people who’ve lost faith in his financial prowess. I stepped in and bought off Gramm’s debt to those same people. My name might not be officially on the paperwork, but Sonny Gramm owes me, and I intend to collect. Magnolia Beach affords some interesting development opportunities. I would prefer to pursue those opportunities in a discreet but energetic manner. Sonny Gramm is aware of this, but insists on casting the transaction as a reenactment of the Alamo.”

  “And what happens if I agree to help?” Corrine asked again.

  LaVell gave a short dismissive wave with his free hand. “It’ll even the bookkeeping between us.”

  “Ok, but you said you needed two things before. What else?”

  The network of tiny broken capillaries spreading across the bridge of his nose and upper cheeks bunched and gathered under Wayne LaVell’s smile. “I want you and your husband Buddy to give me a party,” he said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “After I assume ownership of Gramm’s properties,” LaVell said, “I want to establish my presence here in Magnolia Beach as a respectable businessman and good neighbor. Your husband knows a lot of the right people here. A party in my honor would go a long way to opening doors that might otherwise remain closed to me.” Wayne LaVell paused, smiling again. “You’ve done all right for yourself here. There’s no reason any of that should have to change.”

  Corrine took a swallow of her drink. She tried to remember how many Wayne LaVell had handed her. She wasn’t drunk, but it felt like the gin had burned away everything but this moment. She felt trapped in a terrible lucidity, her world reduced to a series of X-rays that Wayne LaVell held up to the light to read.

  “What if I can’t convince Sonny Gramm to sell the properties?” Corrine asked. “You said he’d already turned down your first two offers.”

  “I have faith in you, Corrine.”

  “But if I can’t. What?”

  Wayne LaVell glanced at his watch and stood up. “Well, Corrine,” he said, “then you can help me set Gramm up to be killed. One way or another, those properties are going to be mine.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  SUNRISE REALTY was on Atlantic Avenue, tucked between a Mercedes dealership and a day spa named Younger Than Yesterday. Ben Decovic parked two cars down from the entrance to the realty office. Along the roofline was a stylized logo of a pale yellow sun appearing to emerge from four thick blue parallel brushstrokes. Two V-shaped birds flew along the horizon line. The same logo was painted on the front door to the office.

  Ben Decovic had finished first shift forty minutes earlier. He’d turned in the blue and white, logged his reports for the day, and managed to avoid what he was sure would be a less than pleasant encounter with Ed Hatch and his partner Gramble from Homicide in the parking lot at the rear of the City-County Complex. By the time they noticed Ben, he was already in his car and backing out. Ed Hatch had never quite given Ben a pass for his impromptu interview with Corrine Tedros shortly after Stanley’s death. Hatch would be none too happy to hear that Ben had begun following up on some of his other hunches after the booking photos had been faxed in from Phoenix.

  Though off shift, Ben was still wearing his uniform. He’d taken his civilian clothes from his locker and transferred them to a paper bag and had tossed them on the front seat of the car. He had a couple stops to make before swinging by the Salt Box to see Anne, and he needed the uniform as a prop for each.

  Vicki—with an i—Grant was owner and manager of Sunrise Realty. She was in her early fifties, carefully made up and well-tailored, with thick highlighted hair and botoxed vestiges of the runner-up positions she’d been named to in a half-dozen or so regional beauty pageants twenty-five-plus years ago. She wore enough gold jewelry to qualify as a portable Fort Knox.

  Before she had taken over the office, she had shared duties with her second husband until he widowed her by express-lining his cholesterol numbers into massive coronary territory. On her own over the next two years, Vicki Grant had more than doubled the office’s revenue and profit margins.

  Ben Decovic had done his homework. He knew, for example, that Grant and her office never bothered to list a house or property unless it was, at minimum, deep in the six-figure range.

  Which was why it was more than an anomaly for Ben Decovic to have spotted the Sunrise Realty signs with the Sold announcement planted among the despair, abject poverty, and general chaos and mayhem of south Magnolia Beach.

  Ben did some more homework. At the Title and Deeds office, he discovered the property had been bought by a holding company named Maricopa Enterprises. It had offices in Chicago, Houston, D.C., Atlanta, and L.A. Its home office was in Phoenix.

  After the homework, Ben played a hunch. He was feeling good. He had his eye and the old ambition back. Motive and mirage weren’t synonyms anymore. For a while, at least, the world held, and Ben was starting to believe that he might yet survive the after-effects of Greg Hollinger and the private apocalypse he’d visited upon Ben when he’d taken the life of Ben’s wife as well as those of four other people.

  The décor of Vicki Grant’s office was tasteful and understated. A few plaques and awards with driftwood frames on the walls. Sand-colored carpeting. A large rectangular oak desk with a cut-crystal bowl of wrapped mints, a laptop, and two pots of African Violets. A few shots of Vicki with the last two mayors and presiding over a meeting of the Magnolia Beach Tourist Bureau, Vicki in a hardhat and holding a shovel at a groundbreaking ceremony, but no family photos anywhere.

  Vicki Grant’s smile never wavered, but the temperature in the room dropped more than a few degrees when Ben made his request.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you there, Officer Decovic,” she said. “I’m not at liberty to divulge that information.”

  Ben smiled. “You certainly have the inflections down, Ms. Grant.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Your political ambitions. Vice President of the tourist bureau for now. Two terms on the city council. A possible mayoral candidate down the road. Then, who knows?” Ben smiled again.

  “I don’t appreciate the direction this conversation is
taking.” She started to get up from behind her desk.

  “I’m betting you haven’t spent any significant time in south Magnolia Beach, Ms. Grant. That is, beyond recently closing on a few properties and getting one of your flunkies to put a Sold sign out.” Ben paused before going on. “We’re talking tooth and claw, Ms. Grant. Long-term mean streaks. People with nothing to lose.”

  Vicki Grant sat back down and waited a long moment before asking, “And what exactly are you offering, Officer Decovic?”

  Ben added a little of his own tooth and claw to the act. “The staff of life,” he said. “Protection. Your client wants to buy and develop property in south Magnolia Beach, he’ll need it. A lot of it. I’m offering a reasonable deal here.” Ben went on to add that he would subcontract the help and set up security schedules and double as paymaster. “I’ll handle all the details,” he said. “It’ll keep things nice and simple and your client’s properties safe and secure.”

  Vicki Grant tapped a pen against the desktop. “I can see where an offer like that might appeal to my client.” She pulled over a small notebook. “Give me a number where I can reach you, and I’ll put in a call and get back to you.”

  “I’m afraid not,” Ben said. “I deal directly with your client from here on in or not at all.”

  “I’m not at liberty—,” Vicki Grant began again.

  “Are you at liberty to nod your head?” Ben asked. “Let’s say I correctly guess the name of your client. You nod once, and we’ll leave it at that. Technically, you haven’t directly divulged anything. Consider the nod an involuntary tic.”

  Vicki Grant sat back in her chair.

  “Wayne LaVell,” Ben said, “with the esteemed barrister Raychard Balen as front-man.”

  Vicki Grant looked at Ben, then through him. She kept her head perfectly still.

  “Ok,” Ben said, stretching out each syllable. He unbuttoned his right shirt pocket and took out a folded piece of paper. He handed it to Grant.

  “That’s the Police Blotter for last Saturday night,” Ben said. “Take a good, close look at it and notice the number and type of crimes we typically field on that night. Then note the location of the arrests and compare that to the addresses of the properties you sold in south Magnolia Beach. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.”

  Ben took one of the mints from the bowl on Grant’s desk. He made a show of taking in all the Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club Achievement Awards and plaques on the office walls. “You’re obviously an enterprising woman, Ms. Grant,” he said. “I stopped by today out of respect for you and thought we could work together. I would hate to see Wayne LaVell take his business elsewhere because he had come to believe you weren’t looking out for his best interests.”

  Ben paused and smiled. “But since you didn’t nod when I mentioned his name, I guess that’s not going to be a problem for you, is it?” Ben slipped the mint into his mouth and left.

  He sat for a moment in his car before pulling out and taking a left on Atlantic. He was willing to bet that Vicki Grant was already on the phone to Wayne LaVell or Raychard Balen. At least he hoped so. Ben had long ago learned that sometimes you had to shake things up a little in order to shake something loose.

  Four blocks later, Ben stopped by the Wine Cellar and bought a pricey Merlot for later that evening with Anne and then hunted down a DVD at Beachfront Films that he remembered her talking about wanting to see. He’d already done the grocery shopping yesterday afternoon and was planning to make Jack’s favorite for supper tonight: Shrimp Po’ Boys with homemade coleslaw. Maybe he’d sneak Jack a little cold beer to go with his.

  The afternoon still held its light. Ben checked his watch. Anne would not be on break at the restaurant for at least another hour and change. He left all the cluttered affluence and new construction of Atlantic Avenue and headed toward south Magnolia Beach.

  He drove to Sentinel Avenue and caught another break.

  When he parked across from the ruins of Jamison Blake’s house, Ben spotted a car parked in the drive of the house next door.

  The east side of the lawn had been scorched black from the fire, the house itself a small box, its paint scabbing and the roof a checkerboard of missing shingles. The woman who answered the door was small and bone-thin. She wore a tight yellow knit top and black jeans. Her hair was permed and dyed the watery shade of greenhouse-ripened tomatoes wrapped in cellophane.

  Ben asked if she were Marilyn Keane.

  She nodded and then looked behind him. “I thought you were the babysitter. I have a date.”

  She held a compact in her small left hand and had only gotten around to applying half her eye make-up. From behind her, a baby suddenly began crying, its wails wave-like in intensity and duration.

  Ben began questioning her about Blake and Newton, but she interrupted and said, “I already talked to the police.”

  “I know,” Ben said. “Just a couple follow-up questions if you don’t mind.”

  “I’m getting ready for a date.” She didn’t invite him in. She continued standing in the doorway and tilted the compact’s mirrored lid and started working on the other eye. “My divorce was final this week,” she said. “I’m celebrating tonight.” The baby kicked up its crying a couple notches.

  Ben looked over her head. The interior of the house was painted a dingy yellow and smelled of things boiled and over-fried. A little girl in pajamas that were too small for her sat on the couch holding a juice box and watching television.

  Marilyn Keane squinted into the compact mirror and edged her right eye with charcoal-colored liner. “What’s with the questions anyway? I might have mentioned I’m getting ready for a date, and I’m getting concerned you’ll scare the babysitter off.” She adjusted the angle of the mirror. “The babysitter, she’s a little nervous around the police.”

  “It’s important,” Ben said.

  “Hey, so’s my date. I’m a free woman now.”

  “Just a couple questions, and I’ll be on my way.”

  Marilyn Keane sighed. Ben asked her if she knew the name of the man who hung out with Jamison Blake and Melissa Newton.

  “I think Clay something. Maybe, Winchell. Or Wilson. Something like that. I didn’t know the guy. Like you said, he was just around a lot.”

  “Did Jamison ever talk about him to you?”

  “Jamison,” she snorted. “The only time Jamie came over was if he was out of beer or money and thought he could charm me out of one or the other. Or both. Jamie was always running his mouth. Didn’t take me long to learn to tune him out. That kind of stuff might work on Missy, but not me.”

  “What about Missy then? She ever say anything?”

  Marilyn Keane studied herself in the compact mirror, frowned, and then shifted the liner to her left eye. “Missy was too tranked out most of the time to have anything resembling a conversation. She might have said something once or twice about she thought he was kinda cute. The Clay guy, I mean. Not Jamie.”

  “This Clay,” Ben said, “did he have gray hair?”

  “I don’t know.” She dropped her hand to her hip. “Look, what color do you want it to be? I told you the guy was short and around a lot, and I have a date. You want someone to drop this on, tell me the color of his hair, the style too, and that’s what I’ll say they were. Then you can leave before you scare the sitter off.”

  “Think for a minute,” Ben said. “What color was his hair?”

  Marilyn Keane slipped the eyeliner into the back pocket of her black jeans and then fished around in the front and pulled out a tube of lipstick. Inside the house, the baby continued crying.

  “He might have,” she said finally. “It was light-colored, I remember that. To tell you the truth, I didn’t pay that much attention. I mean, I was going through all this divorce stuff, and besides, he really wasn’t my type.” She paused and looked over at Ben. “I’m petite. That doesn’t mean I like my men to be.”

  The little girl got up from the couch and returned
a moment later with two juice boxes. She put the two boxes back to back and then twisted the plastic straws, entwining them, so that she could drink out of both cartons at the same time and went back to watching television.

  Ben tried to tune out the sound of the baby crying. “When was the last time you saw Jamison Blake?”

  Marilyn Keane twisted a nub of lipstick above the edge of the tube. The red was about two shades brighter than her hair.

  She wet her lips, then said, “I guess probably the day before the fire and him and Missy getting shot. He came over after work. Surprise, surprise, he was out of beer. His arms and neck were sunburned, and he was complaining about that and working outside and the fact Missy had forgotten to buy beer. I gave him two cans just to shut him up, and then he went back over.”

  “Any place Jamison liked to hang out?”

  “That’d be Mac’s Shack,” Marilyn Keane said without looking at him. “Corner of Third and Sentinel. If he wasn’t home, he was there. It was one of the few places around here that would still let him run a tab. He was asshole buddies with the guy that owns it.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “T. C.” She turned and pointed the lipstick tube at him. “No need to ask me. That’s all I ever heard him called.”

  “Ok,” Ben said. Something had been quietly bothering him ever since Marilyn Keane opened the door. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t place the when or where. The woman, the crying baby, the little girl with the juice boxes. They wouldn’t let go of Ben, but he didn’t know why.

  The harder he tried, the further the details retreated and the more uneasy Ben felt. It took him a moment to understand why.

  This is the way Jack Carson must feel all the time, he thought. Slippage. Everything retreating.

  “See anything you like?” Marilyn Keane asked. “You sure been taking your time checking out the merchandise.” She gave him a freshly lipsticked smile. “Not that I exactly mind you browsing.”

  Ben snapped back to the porch. In this case, he figured the truth was as good as a lie. “I keep thinking we’ve met before,” he said.