The oriental screens weren’t disturbed. I had a sense of Lake in the place, but no sense that something awful happened here. The big screen of the TV was as black as my spirit. Susanna’s room was just as she’d left it, bed piled high with dolls and stuffed animals. Thank the Lord she was safe in Tennessee.
I sat in the old commander’s chair. The mail and papers on the desk were scattered. The cops had gone through them. I did, too. Nothing pertinent. Bills, invitations to club openings, tickets to the Policeman’s Ball. The Policeman’s Ball. I couldn’t stop the tears then. We always went. Lake could flat dance.
I stepped around the last screen, the one into the bedroom. I stared at the brass bed and didn’t bother wiping the tears that bathed my face. Through them, I realized something. The covers were rumpled, but Lake always made the bed neatly when he got up. The rumpled bed meant that Lake had taken a nap. He did that when he was going somewhere in the night. Automatically, I straightened the bedcover, pushing the duvet under the pillows. My hand touched high-quality papers and envelopes. I knew what they were.
Lake damnit, why didn’t you tell me Thursday night when you called me. When I find you—Lake, I’ll get you for this.
The embossed invitation read: To Mr. Barton: Thursday evening, 9:30 p.m., casual (but elegant) attire. There was a letter with the invitation, having a signature of sorts. A single ornate R.
Rossi. Our sponsor.
Rossi had written: “Detective: I’m out of jail. I’m pleading to lesser charges, thanks to my cooperation with you. Hopefully, I can get my life back to normal. Enclosed is a second invitation to the club. Good luck. I hope it can help you more than it did me. Keep your Kevlar on. R.”
* * * * *
“Meet me at The Tavern at Phipps Plaza,” I said to Whitney.
“Miss Dru, this is rather short notice.”
“It’s important.”
“You know something?”
“Yes.”
“Why can’t you tell me over the telephone?”
“I don’t want to.”
“You’re getting on my nerves, but all right, I’ll be there in an hour.”
Phipps Plaza is a ritzy mall. On Saturdays most malls are noisy, bustling places. Not Phipps. The wealth that shopped at swanky places like Saks, Armani, Versace, Gucci, and Tiffany did it with quiet dignity. I passed Williams-Sonoma and remembered the time I bought Lake a chrome paper-towel holder for his birthday. I think it was the unexpectedness that brought on his giggles. Christ, these memories.
My heels clicked more quickly across the marble floor.
The Bar Room and Grill is open-fronted. Chain railing kept the tables from slipping their borders into the mall itself. At midafternoon, the bar and restaurant had few diners and drinkers. Whitney sat at the bar. He picked up his drink, something white and fizzy, and glided toward me wearing pricey casual clothes and tight lips. He waved toward an empty booth. I slid across the leather, and he scooted in opposite me.
“You missed the excitement,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Heather Martin, the CNN cutie, just left. She had the men drooling.”
“Too bad I missed her,” I said, and then joked, “I adore putting blondes to shame.”
Why was I in a joking mood? And why had I brazenly begged a compliment?
His gray eyes squinted. “You could easily put her to shame. But on a better day. You look tired, defeated. Are you defeated?”
“No,” I said, jutting my chin.
“Want something to drink?”
“Amstel Light, tap.”
The waiter set my beer on a cocktail napkin, served another mystery drink to Whitney, and placed a basket of tavern chips between us.
Raising his glass, Whitney said, “To you and to your weary endeavor. Now, where’s my daughter?” He set the glass back on the napkin.
“In California.”
“Where in California?”
“The desert.”
“With Eileen?”
“Eileen’s dead.”
“Who’s got Kinley then?”
“I’m not going to tell you, although I believe you know.”
His eyes were cold stones. “I think we’d better have a talk with the judge.”
“We will, eventually.”
He balled his fist. “Now.”
“You don’t deserve to have your daughter.”
He looked at my throat as if he could gleefully slice it, so I spoke before he could. “Aren’t you curious about what happened to Eileen?”
“If she’s dead, where’s her body?”
“Buried in the desert.”
“Who killed her? Why?”
“Did you know Eileen hired a PI to investigate you?”
He lifted his eyebrows. “She was having me investigated?”
“She wanted to get Kinley back. Did she have a chance?”
“I told you. Eileen was an unreconstructed drug addict.”
“I’d like to talk about conflicting schemas now.” He slanted his head; the lids of his eyes lowered, giving him a guarded appearance. I sipped, put my beer down, and said, “Your name was originally Dewey Whitey.” His face became a bunker of ice. “You went triple-barrel. Gave yourself Bradley, changed Dewey to Dewart and Whitey to Whitney.” His eyes were the slits in the bunker. “Pretentious, don’t you think?”
His mouth hardly moved. “So what?”
“We talked to your teachers and neighbors in Little Rock, and people who knew your family up in the hills.”
“Again, so what?”
“After your Uncle Ted died, you asked the state juvenile court to change your name. Why?”
He traced the rim of his glass and let his mouth thaw. It seemed more time went by than really did before he said, “Dewey is a white-trash name. Whitey is a name blacks use pejoratively. Imagine a black family with the N-word as a last name.”
“You graduated high school when you were fifteen. Came to Atlanta when you were eighteen. Went to college. Worked in strip clubs.”
“So Eileen’s PI found out about my sorry background—one I’ve shed.”
“Why strip clubs?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Curiosity.”
His bunkered eyes cut across my face. He said, “I was broke. I had no one. I needed money instantly. I was going to the university. Georgia State isn’t Harvard, but it costs money. A lot—when you haven’t any.” He took a sip of his drink, and picked up a chip. Not to eat, but to flip across the table. Every gesture conveyed cold anger.
“You still strip?” I asked.
“Don’t be an ass.”
I fiddled with the damp napkin under my beer. “Stripping isn’t against the law. You needed money.”
“You think Portia Devon would take Kinley away from me over that?”
“No.”
He emptied his glass and signaled the waiter with a gesture so elegant—even though he was seething—that it was hard to believe this man was born in the backwoods.
I asked, “Where did your money come from?”
If he could have zapped me with an ice wand, he would have. “I invested my leftover lap-dance cash in the stock market.”
“Enough to buy you a house that cost millions and a car that cost more than most homes?”
“You know about my car?”
“The one that isn’t a Honda?”
“Where are you going with this?”
“What were the names of your brothers and sisters?”
“Don’t you know?” he asked, as the fresh drink was put in front of him.
“One was Harry.”
He flinched and his lips flattened. But he could recover quickly. “Yes, there was Harry. But first, there was Earl, Junior, who was called Sonny. Harry came next. Then there was Clete, then Barney, then Tami, then Frieda, then Jasper, then Eula, then me, and lastly, the baby, Angel. Angel died in our mother’s arms. Her throat had been shot out, right before the bullet pie
rced our mother’s heart.”
“You saw it?”
“From the front porch of our shack, yes.”
“What was the feud about?”
“Daddy didn’t want their hogs dirtying up our water.”
“Later, somebody burned the people’s house down, with them in it.”
“Everybody lived in drafty shacks. Many burned down.” He shrugged, and, if anything, his eyes got colder. “It happens.”
“Once you went to live with your uncle, did you keep up with your brothers and sisters?”
“As much as a kid can.”
“Where’d everybody go?”
He tapped his finger on the table. “Here and there.”
“New York? Miami? Across the state line to Missouri?” My reflexes tightened in case he sprang. “Says on your Georgia State résumé that you were born on Long Island, New York.”
His eyes slid to his tapping finger. “It was all part of reinventing myself, of doing away with Dewey Whitey—white trash from Podunk, Arkansas.”
“Which sister went to New York?”
“Tami.”
“She still alive?”
“You know the answer.”
“She’s in a mental institution. Pretty young for that, isn’t she?”
“One of those unfortunates.”
“Who went to Miami?”
“Frieda.”
“Who moved to Mountain View?”
“Ah, that was Eula, a country girl at heart.”
“Did you know that Eula and her husband are dead?”
“I heard.”
“Harry wound up in Little Rock, didn’t he?” Whitney’s eyes were showing too much white. I liked the bunkered look better. I said, “As the second oldest child, he would have been old enough to be on his own when your folks died.”
“I don’t know where Harry went. He’s dead now. Died in New Orleans.”
“The FBI wanted to talk to you about Harry and about an armored car robbery. Did you know that?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
But he did, and I could see it when his eyes slid to glance at his watch. He glanced back at me, defiance in his smirk.
I said, “I’ll enlighten you. You made the mistake a lot of smart people do. You think people around you are blanks, amoeba sucking up air without knowing why. But your Uncle Ted’s neighbor in Little Rock wasn’t a blank. He had a good memory, and he had a grudge against you for stealing his dying wife’s mattress cash.”
He gave a quick shake of his head. “I was just a kid. I took her money. I felt bad about it, but I couldn’t admit it. It was unthinkable to.”
“And Harry?”
“He was ten years older than me. But I don’t believe Harry would rob anything.” He stared at me for several seconds. “It’s obvious where you’re heading. Let me save you some verbiage. I did not kill Eileen. Her private investigator couldn’t unearth anything to take Kinley away from me, even stealing fifty-five dollars from under a mattress when I was ten years old.”
“Do you own The Cloisters?”
His locked jaw gave him away, but he wasn’t going to answer directly. “Is my name on record?”
“Manuel Strah,” I said. “Straw man.”
“Clever.”
“What’s the purpose of the club?”
He picked up his glass and sipped the clear liquid, his pinkie raised as if to shield his eyes. He placed the empty glass on the napkin. “It’s for men who need a place to call their own. I’m not against women’s company, but sometimes a man needs a place of refuge.” He signaled the waiter for the check.
“Refuge?”
‘It’s a complicated world. Can we get back to what happened to Eileen and Kinley?”
“Eileen was shot in her doorway. She’d already sent Kinley away. You’re right about one thing. She wasn’t going to send Kinley home, but she didn’t take off with her.”
“Then Arlo has Kinley. That makes him a kidnapper. He’ll go to prison.”
“Eileen was waiting for news from her PI that would change custody.”
Whitney flipped a hand. “Miss Dru, I can compel you to tell me where Kinley is. The judge might be your friend, but she’s got to abide by the law.”
“Oh, I forgot to mention. The PI Eileen hired is dead.” His eyes said so what? I said, “Shot. Murdered. In Palm Springs.”
“What was he doing in Palm Springs? I’m here. I’ve never been in Palm Springs.”
I didn’t believe that, and I let my doubt show by raising my eyebrows and leaning my head toward my left shoulder.
The waiter brought the check.
“One more thing,” I said. “I’m looking for a friend of mine. An Atlanta cop named Richard Lake.”
He shook his head. “I’m supposed to know where your fucking friends are? We’ve been all over the map—with people I barely knew.”
“You know who Richard Lake is. He was investigating The Cloisters. He followed the deed trail from here to New York, to Miami, to Mountain View.”
When you can’t get away from a fact, don’t say a word, act like you haven’t heard it. Whitney signed the credit card receipt in a cone of silence.
I said, “Two recent homicide victims have a connection to The Cloisters.”
He frowned. “And who might these unfortunates be?”
“A man named McCracken and another named Rossi. The funny thing is, they were predators themselves. McCracken killed little girls and Rossi molested boys.”
“I have no knowledge of those men or their activities.”
“You believe in coincidence?”
“I believe anything that can happen will happen and does happen. Now, Miss Dru,” he said, rising, “I must end this mystifying session. I will give you until Monday morning, eight o’clock, to tell me where I can get my daughter, or I will have my lawyer file charges of false imprisonment, abduction, restraining a minor—and whatever else he can think up.”
He followed me out into the mall and started to stride away. I seized his arm, something I’ve rarely done. He jerked to face me. I said, “If you don’t let Lake go, or tell me where he is, and right now, I’ll go to the university and lay out the story of your life. Oh, and that armored car robbery in Arkansas—it happened during the period after you left high school and before you arrived in Atlanta.”
He got puffed and venomous like a cobra whose basket had been kicked open. I was glad he didn’t have a knife up his sleeve. “I don’t have Lieutenant Lake, Miss Dru.”
“Lieutenant Lake. You know his rank. You also know where he is.”
“I don’t. I’ll prove it. Come to The Cloisters with me.”
I thought I’d never get him to say those words.
52
I followed Whitney’s Mercedes. I’d smirked at seeing it in the underground garage five cars away from my Bentley. I said, “I’ll follow your Honda.” His snake eyes didn’t shift. When he saw my Bentley, he looked like he could strike.
I’d trailed Whitney to Piedmont Road when my cell played Mozart. I got the earpiece in. “Web, what’s up?”
“Got some info on the armored car heist.”
“Go on.”
“Harry Whitey was an employee of the armored car company.”
“You didn’t bust into their computer file, did you?”
“Nope, talked to an FBI guy in Little Rock who worked the case.”
“I like conventional.”
“I had to provide bona fides. He wanted the nexus. I told him our kidnapping case led us to Harry Whitey. He apparently checked our shop out with the local feds, because he called me back and gave the load. Harry was a popular guy, gung-ho in the job, and in two years he got to be a money-packer. They do this under the eyes of armed guards. Then Harry took to drinking with the off-duties. The two guards that were killed were his good buddies, everybody said. After the job, everybody’s looking for Harry Whitey to give him the bad news. No Harry. Then it’s obvious. An
inside setup—with everybody’s pal as the killer.”
When Whitney made the turn onto Cheshire Bridge, through the darkened window I saw him holding his cell phone to his left ear.
“Then,” Webdog went on, “Harry’s body turns up in a fire in New Orleans with a few hundreds and a one-way ticket to Rio under it. The cash was banded and marked with an SCC, the name of the company.”
“But there were two gunmen.”
“That’s right. Harry had a pal named Dewey. He kept turning up at the bars, listening to the talk. The Fibbies discovered this pal was his brother and went looking. Never found him.”
“He’d changed his name at the time he enrolled in high school. After he graduated, apparently it was necessary to use Dewey again. When he came to Atlanta, he was back to Bradley Whitney.”
“I had to give that information up. Hope you’re okay with it.”
“The Atlanta FBI will be calling soon. Tell them all you know about Whitney and call Commander Haskell with this latest. Tell him I’m following Whitney. We’re going to The Cloisters. Whitney says he has something to prove.”
“I don’t like hearing that.”
“If Lake isn’t there, he’s dead.”
“I hope he’s there. Are you carrying?”
“Sure am.”
* * * * *
The same tall butler dressed in livery let us in. “Good afternoon, Mr. Whitney,” he said, ignoring me.
“Good afternoon,” Whitney said. The rotunda was gloomy due to the afternoon glance of the sun through the high windows. The winged Eros surrounded by his devotees made me want to throw up. Whitney clasped his hands behind his back like a museum guide, and said, “The Greek Eros, the Roman Cupid, rose out of the Chaos with Gaia and Tartarus. Some say Aphrodite and Ares are his parents. Not true. But he is associated with Aphrodite, and his most avid followers were duplicates of himself: the Erotes. One wonders why he never grew up.”
“One wonders,” I said as we moved into the bar. Two men sat together, drinking silently. They looked up, and their mouths froze open from the shock of seeing a woman.
The Last Temptation Page 25
