Fatal Pose

by Barna William Donovan

  “Well, you probably know this with all the athletes you work with and know so well, but we’re probably not all doing this just to be tough guys. Right?”

  Laura’s gaze probed him. There was some kind of an emotional barrier that seemed to slip off her for an instant. Almost like she was allowing it to slip and allowing him to see it.

  “And yes, I’ve forgiven you for what you said back at the gallery. But I guess I was just saying that we didn’t all go into bodybuilding because we’re the toughest guys on the block. Far from it. Or that you just chose to be the toughest rule-breaking superwoman for no reason, right?”

  The words came out of Gunnar’s mouth, but somehow he wasn’t sure why he thought this sort of probing, this sort of testing of Laura Preston, was a good idea. Through it all, he couldn’t help but think of Erika. Her road into bodybuilding shaped his words now.

  “No, we don’t,” Laura said softly, with a genuine measure of emotion. That slickness, that arrogance that had assaulted him so hard a day ago, was really gone now. “You think we’re all covering up our private….”

  Laura paused suddenly. Gunnar wasn’t sure if she was prompting him or if she was unable to be completely frank with him.

  “Maybe. Nothing that needs to be shared, I’m sure. So, you know, that’s why I guess I didn’t much get the urge to compete for a while. Maybe we do that when we don’t feel so incomplete anymore. Kind of funny, don’t you think? If anyone knew what a collection of overly-sensitive neurotics we really are.”

  “You know, Mr. Marino, what’s quite remarkable is the way a man would open up about this,” Laura said. Gunnar knew the emotion in her voice was real. “And no, I haven’t heard this a lot before. Oh, we all know it’s true. All of us. Men and women builders all. But you, Mr. Marino, strike me as a surprisingly sensitive and articulate man. I am truly so glad we got to meet.”

  “That’s Gunnar,” he said, affecting an easy smile.

  “But anyhow,” Laura said at length, “there really was something quite important I needed to talk to you about.”

  “Yes! The reason for the invitation. Which I appreciate, by the way.”

  “Because you have a case you need to sort out, and in a very big way, we have our own problems with Brad’s death we need to manage somehow. And I’ll tell you quite frankly that the more we are thinking about this, the more we are assessing the impact of this tragedy, the bigger the crisis the WBBF is facing.”

  “Sure,” Gunnar said slowly, preferring to keep quiet just now. He wanted to hear where Laura’s speech was going.

  “We, just as much as you, need to know what happened to Brad. And whatever it was, there are various implications for the WBBF.”

  “Like what?” Gunnar had to ask.

  “Look…of course, Brad’s death from anything other than dehydration in preparation for a contest would take a lot of heat off the organization—no, the sport itself—but you understand that, don’t you?”

  He nodded. “I guess I do.”

  “A death in a sport is a tragic accident, but it doesn’t reflect the same way off each sport. Boxing, for example, is said to cause brain damage in some athletes, but do you know how many high school football players are paralyzed each year? The debate about concussions and traumatic brain injuries in football has been heating up, as we all know, but no one’s called for football to be banned yet. A tragedy just reflects differently on each endeavor.

  “So what I’m getting at is, what’s wrong with bodybuilding? It’s not a contact sport. It’s the farthest thing from violence you could get.”

  Except when seven bodybuilders had died over the last five years, there was less and less positive to reflect off the sport, Gunnar didn’t say. Three of them, all in their early to mid-thirties, died of heart attacks. Their dangerously enlarged hearts couldn’t take the load of pumping blood to bodies weighing between three and four-hundred off-season pounds. Two others died when their use of insulin for its anabolic effects sent them into a hypoglycemic shock. Then another two died of kidney failure from the damage wrought by whatever cocktail of performance-enhancing drugs their retinue of drug dealers and “steroid gurus” had supplied them with for years.

  When the media would report on such cases—rarely, as in only one of these deaths made the local news, and only because the athlete had his heart attack in the frozen food aisle of a grocery store—their stories would invariably be punctuated with grim reminders of the need to toughen laws against steroid use. While reading stories like that, Gunnar’s libertarian impulses usually kicked in, wanting to yell at whoever wrote those articles that legalizing steroids once again, just as they had been before 1988, would be the most effective way to monitor their usage by doctors. A doctor-athlete relationship would keep athletes healthy and alive instead of putting them at the mercy of a shady subculture of steroid gurus.

  But, of course, Gunnar had no inclination to do any political advocacy work when it came to the steroid issue since people like Laura Preston had more at stake in what their athletes used to build their muscles. Why the WBBF continued its public stance of decrying drug use while rewarding their three-hundred-pound “mass monsters” on stage was beyond him. Plus, seeing the #OlympicBB signs all over the Federation’s headquarters almost made him chuckle.

  “It might be very far from violence,” Gunnar said coolly, “except when you have some controversial calls. There were a couple of judges at the last Mr. Empire whose shoes I wouldn’t want to fill right now.”

  Laura replied with a thin smile. “Perception. Image. And yes, if we were to find out Brad was killed by something other than his drive to win, it would take a lot of bad press away from the WBBF.” She suddenly halted and left her comment hanging in the air.

  Gunnar said, “But on the other hand….”

  “But on the other hand, we don’t want fans and athletes thinking there are killers lurking around our contests.”

  “Well, I hardly said that I think he was murdered.”

  “But an investigation like yours still has implications. Someone does not believe….” Laura seemed to catch herself. She smiled lightly, then added, “Or someone has problems with the official story. That is the fact, isn’t it, Gunnar? That’s what’s at the bottom of your investigation, right?”

  Gunnar chose his words, “Yes, uh, it’s a possibility I’m considering.”

  Laura nodded quite strongly. “And that’s what I need to tell you about. You well should consider that possibility. There are some things we…I…the WBBF had known about, and we thought you should take into consideration.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, aside from the film production company, Brad had been quite an active investor in a number of diverse financial ventures. You know about this, yes?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “I don’t know if you came across this piece of information or not, but he had also been involved in a number of construction and development projects in Arizona over the past couple of years. Did you know that?”

  “I don’t believe I’ve run across that yet, no.” In fact, Kelly hadn’t yet told him this bit of information.

  “Look into it,” Laura said, some of that self-satisfied toughness from the other day creeping back among her words. “Especially the extensive FBI investigation of a number of his business partners. It is a matter of public record. Just look closely at this information, and you’ll find that a number of his business partners were supposed to have had organized crime ties. There have been investigations in the past. Some of Brad’s friends have done time. Or, correction, some of his friends are doing time. It seems like Brad was on the periphery of a dangerous world, and he dealt with some dangerous people.”

  That, indeed, was quite compelling, Gunnar decided, nodding vigorously at Laura’s story. “I’m definitely going to have to check that out.”

  “Goo
d,” Laura said and flashed a winning smile. “Maybe you will stumble onto something quite extraordinary in this case.”

  “That’s usually what happens in most investigations. Coming onto pertinent facts indirectly.”

  “Maybe you just stumbled onto something quite big here,” Laura said, and her gaze shifted, looking more conspicuously than ever before at the poster tube he’d had in his hand since arriving at the WBBF building. “Oh, by the way, do you mind if I ask you what you’ve been carrying around since you got here?” she asked with an inquisitive smile. Once again, though, that smile seemed to hint at some subliminal degree of condescension. “It’s not a part of this case, is it?”

  Gunnar drummed his fingers on the tube. “Actually, it kind of is.”

  “Oh?”

  “You know, after what you’ve just told me about Brad’s business partners, I’m not entirely sure if it’s something that could have any serious implications to the case anymore, though.”

  “What is it?”

  Gunnar let out a brief, embarrassed-sounding chuckle. “Let me show you.” He opened the tube and removed the tightly-rolled poster from inside. He handed it to Laura. “Something that came to me yesterday.”

  “Aha,” she said at length after perusing the poster. “WBBF Fitness Beauties Caught in the Buff.”

  “Remember when I told you about a girl Brad was involved with. Someone who—”

  Laura handed him the poster back. “Oh, yes, now I remember,” she said. “The girl who claims Brad promised her a role in the video he was going to produce.”

  “That’s her on the poster.”

  Now Laura laughed. “She doesn’t quite look like a fitness contestant, does she?”

  Gunnar also laughed. “Not really.”

  “But from what I’ve heard, Brad promised many girls that, in…in return for sleeping with him.” The good humor had decidedly vanished in a flash from Laura’s face now. Her final words, in fact, were accompanied by an exaggerated inflection of strong, nearly loathsome distaste.

  “Yes, that seems to be the case,” Gunnar allowed, then added, “Except there is something different about this instance, I believe.”

  “What is that?”

  “Here,” Gunnar said and put the poster back on Laura’s desk. “Take a look at it again.”

  She cocked an eyebrow.

  “Just one more time.”

  Laura did as Gunnar asked but soon shook her head quizzically. “I don’t follow.”

  “Look at the corner of the poster.”

  “Yes?”

  Gunnar even pointed at what he wanted Laura to see and understand. “You see that tiny inscription on the bottom? That comes straight from the Golden Edge marketing department.”

  “So?”

  “He used the resources of his company to put on an elaborate ruse like this?”

  Laura let the poster curl itself up again, looking Gunnar straight in the eye but not responding. He was obviously being prompted to go ahead, explain, present his case if he had one.

  “From everything I’ve heard about Brad Holt,” Gunnar said, “from everything the WBBF’s own publications have written about him, about how popular he was…well, I hardly think Holt had to try so hard to get girls to go to bed with him. Now, this is a very expensive piece of work Holt put together. I don’t really see why he would go to all this trouble for something as simple as seducing a girl.”

  Laura kept staring at Gunnar, held his gaze for a cold moment before forming a personable smile again. “Yes,” she said, her smile widening, warming, “I think I see what you’re saying. But the fact is that he did.”

  Then she took the poster and slid it across her desk, toward Gunnar.

  “All right,” Laura then added with an amicable tone. “So this is still obviously bothering you. Why would Brad make up something this elaborate to have sex with some dime-a-dozen bikini bimbo? That’s what’s troubling you, correct? So if it’s not for just sex, then what is all this for?”

  Gunnar reclaimed his poster and dropped it back inside the tube.

  “If you have problems with the sex theory, then what exactly is a better theory? What’s his real reason for doing this?”

  “I don’t really know,” Gunnar said and thought he did more than a decent job of sounding amicable himself. There was no better theory. Well, there was no better theory that did not implicate Laura.

  She continued smiling sweetly at him. “I hope what you’re suggesting is not that I am lying to you. That’s not what you’re suggesting, is it? That we really were planning to do this film, and now I’m denying it for some bizarre reason?”

  “No! Of course not. Is that how I’ve come across?”

  “It’s not clear how you come across, to be quite truthful. I keep feeling like you’re after something, some piece of information, but you’re not willing to come out and ask me for it directly.”

  “Like I said yesterday, all I’m after is some information about Holt’s comings and goings and what he did before he died.”

  Laura nodded solemnly. “Aside from what I’ve heard about the problems with those shady business partners, I really have no idea what else Brad did before he died. I don’t know what he did or who he did it with. The extent of his dealings with the WBBF I told you yesterday.”

  “And I appreciate your help.”

  “So,” Laura said and clasped her hands on her desk, “can we consider this poster and film co-production matter cleared up?”

  “It’s definitely cleared up.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Laura thought of the record button under the table and of her boss. She had decided to test the little illegal addition to her office on the conversation with Gunnar Marino. Robert Holbrook had urged her to have the recording system installed years ago, and now she wondered how long it would be until he became fully involved with this irritant in the form of a second-rate private investigator.

  “Second rate?” Laura whispered to herself when she knew the surveillance devices had been turned off. Just what exactly is this guy? She leaned back in her chair and soundlessly wrestled with her new impressions of Marino.

  For one thing, he certainly wasn’t what she had originally pegged him as.

  Underestimated him a bit, did we?

  Gunnar Marino now certainly appeared to be smarter than what she had wanted to give him credit for upon their first encounter.

  Wanted?

  Yes, she was willing to admit that to herself. That had been the problem. What she wanted to give him credit for. Marino had caught her at a bad time in the art gallery. She had been frustrated by those college kids, and she wanted to take Marino for some posturing, macho buffoon.

  “Yeah, that might have been a mistake,” she mumbled to herself.

  But he certainly could act the part, she considered ruefully. Although she wasn’t entirely sure to what degree he was acting, he could come across as being much less than what he really was. What she needed to keep in mind from now on, Laura decided, was that it could be a very big mistake to underestimate anyone asking questions about Brad Holt, let alone someone throwing around speculations of murder.

  Let alone someone who was getting dangerously close to the truth about Brad, the WBBF Girls in the Buff project, or the very nature of the connection between her and Brad.

  But this was still no reason to panic, Laura decided. She was far from any real danger here. The important thing was that she had recognized her mistakes and knew not to repeat them.

  Gunnar Marino was not to be underestimated again. Certainly, he was no Sherlock Holmes, but she couldn’t put up with any more of his poking and prodding. It would start getting risky if he made any more correct guesses the way he had with the entire Girls in the Buff business.

  Then she thought of something else. It…what was it? Laura won
dered what exactly the nature of her feelings was. Dismay? Regret? She was still so taken by Marino’s frank analysis of bodybuilders. What were his words? “What a collection of overly-sensitive neurotics we really are”? In her daily life, surrounded by so much of this sport’s posturing, posing machismo, here was a guy with such a disarming, self-effacing humility.

  No, she decided, Marino was no fool. To the contrary, Laura thought with a great measure of dismay, not only was he no fool, but his perception, his self-awareness, was actually likable in a way. Attractive? she wanted to add.

  She had better think about that last part.

  However, what she also wanted to know now was how someone like Marino could devote himself to an investigation on behalf of a filthy swine like Brad Holt. Certainly, her exposure to Marino had been brief, but it felt long enough to let Laura form the impression that he was Brad Holt’s mirror image opposite. So what was he doing on Holt’s case? The money, perhaps? Was that it? Marino would simply do the job he had been hired for, no questions asked about Holt’s character?

  “Maybe he did,” Laura said quietly.

  But whatever the reason, she also decided that it was time to start learning more about Gunnar Marino.

  CHAPTER 29

  Being granted an audience with the World Bodybuilding Federation’s President of Operations turned out to be the highpoint of Gunnar’s day. Few other things could come along and top that.

  Perhaps if the men next door actually tried to make a move on Kelly’s client, Gunnar considered, things might have taken a more colorful turn. But then again, he had started to wonder about whether or not he would be tempted to let Copeland Whitlock, Kelly’s threatened retainer, get shot in a crossfire should something violent go down. On his way to the Lomita surveillance house, Gunnar had retrieved three separate messages from Kelly, all complaining about Whitlock’s unease with the bodyguard detail garrisoned in his house. Gunnar had thought it wise to double the security effort by matching the surveillance of the supposed New York hitmen by having Joey Reigert and Tommy Novak babysit Whitlock. Naturally, neither of Gunnar’s legmen minded the extra money. Whitlock, however, had been getting unnerved by the two bodybuilders taking over his kitchen to fix “muscle recovery food” round the clock, and just generally becoming an unpleasant disruption of his strict daily routine.