In the same spirit of adventure and experimentation that led them into the affair, the women soon began exploring other possibilities—some of them, Marcie intimated shyly, bordering on the kinky. Nothing too heavy. A little fun with silk scarves. A little role playing. A little photography.
I don’t know whose idea it was; Marcie didn’t say. Again, unimportant. In any event, they took turns photographing one another, and even rigged an automatic shutter release to get both of them together. The pictures were for their eyes only—in fact, Marcie allowed as how looking at them wasn’t anywhere near as thrilling as taking them, or even just the idea of taking them. Nevertheless, she kept hers in a dresser drawer, which is where Eddie Bell found them.
By the time she reached this point in the narration, Marcie had begun to aimlessly wander the room. She was nervous, she said, upset, she said, she needed a drink, she said, and floated into the kitchen. I declined when asked. I heard the fridge door, the ice-cube tray, the ice in the glass, the gurgle of liquid over the cubes. She returned to the room, cradling the drink in the palm of one hand. We listened for a while to the wind and the creaking of ice in her glass.
“He was just passing through town, the way he would from time to time,” Marcie said tonelessly. Overlaid upon the anguish in her voice was now the weariness that had been there when I told her of Eddie’s death. “I was at work; I didn’t know that he was here or even that he was coming. He must’ve been looking for money”—she sighed—“and found the pictures instead.”
She looked down at me earnestly. “You couldn’t believe before that I didn’t know about Eddie’s … photography. Well, of course I did. I knew he’d done it out in California, too. But—well, after all, he was my brother.”
That notwithstanding, no cajoling would sway Eddie from his plan once he saw his opportunity. Despite Marcie’s pleading and begging, despite her volunteering to pose for him instead, Eddie approached Adrian and gave her a choice: pose for his pictures or have the shots of her and Marcie become public. It was no choice, really.
Distraught, ashamed, humiliated, Marcie broke off the relationship. How could she face Adrian knowing what her brother—her own brother—was forcing her to do, knowing that she, in some way, was responsible?
But now that Eddie was dead …
“I thought that she at least ought to know that she didn’t have anything to fear from him anymore. And, yes, I did want to see her again—I’d wanted to go over there so many times these past few weeks, just to be with her, comfort her, tell her how sorry I was. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Until today.
“I went by there after I picked up Eddie’s things. You’re right, that didn’t take but half an hour. There was no answer at Adrian’s door, but I knew that she took pills to sleep, the same ones I take, and they make you dead to the world.” She didn’t catch the irony in her choice of clichés. “I had my own key so I let myself in and found—found her.” She bowed her head and pressed a hand against her eyes, as if pushing away a headache about to emerge.
“Well,” she said in a monotone, “I guess I kind of went into shock—I mean, first Eddie, now Adrian. I got out of there fast, got into my car and drove, just drove, for hours. I ended up in Lincoln somehow. Turned around and came back here. For no good reason; there just seemed to be no good reason not to, not anymore.”
She found her way to the rattan chair and fairly collapsed into it. “Now you know,” she said on the end of a deep sigh that was intended to clear all the old dust and memories from her body. “Now you know why I couldn’t tell you everything. …”
I nodded slowly. “What did you do when you found out that Eddie was trying to use the pictures to blackmail Senator Mallory? When you found out he was selling them to the Mob? Didn’t you try to stop him?”
She looked up sharply. “Well, of course I did. My God, I couldn’t very well sit by and watch that happen to Adrian, could I? I loved her.”
“Yeah. And what about Copel; where does he come into it?”
Her mouth tightened into a line that seemed to run all the way down her stiffened throat. “Darling, I don’t like being cross-examined,” she said brittlely.
“You’re not being cross-examined, sweetie-pie,” I said as smoothly as I could manage. “That’s for lawyers. This is interrogation. How did Morris Copel come into the drama and where did he end up with pictures of Adrian?”
“Well—like I told you, I hired Copel to look for Eddie when Eddie’d been gone for a while. I mean, he was doing some pretty awful things, but he was my brother.”
“Yes, I think we have that part pretty well established already. How did you come up with Copel?”
“As you figured,” she said reluctantly, “I wanted someone who wasn’t too likely to go to the police when he found Eddie. I knew that’d only mean trouble for Eddie, and Adrian, and everyone.”
“Uh-huh, but that still doesn’t answer the question: How did you come up with Copel? There’s no unlicensed private investigators listing in the Yellow Pages.”
Her entire face was hatred rendered in flesh, blood and bone. “A fellow at the bar where I work put me in touch with him. Okay?”
The wind seemed to have calmed itself a little, but suddenly it picked up again and rattled a window pane like a snare-drum tattoo. I was turned sideways on the couch, and looked out the picture window, into the night. A couple of long streaks of wetness sat on the glass, but nothing you could call rain yet.
I said, “Have you ever read The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett?” I’ve long since given up trying to pronounce the first name correctly; I said Dash-ul, like everyone else.
She didn’t care one way or the other, and her voice was as warm as the inside of a Frigidaire when she answered. “You have got to be the most infuriating man in the world to talk to. No, I haven’t read it. So the hell what?”
“No particular reason; I was just reminded of one of my favorite parts, a passage where Nick Charles warns someone about one of the people in the story, a woman. He says that most people get discouraged after you’ve caught them in the third or fourth straight lie, and fall back on the truth. But not this particular woman. ‘She keeps trying and you’ve got to be careful or you’ll find yourself believing her, not because she seems to be telling the truth, but simply because you’re tired of disbelieving her.’ It’s a great scene.”
“It sounds just really marvelous,” Marcie said venomously. “Does it have to do with anything, or is it just a sidelight?”
“You should never resent having your sphere of knowledge broadened a little, Marcie, especially when it applies to you.”
Her eyes and nostrils dilated. “You think I’m lying?” It was a dare.
“Like a rug. I know you are; I knew it this afternoon—but I spent the day talking myself out of it because I was falling for you. Like free fall. Without a chute.” I said it ruefully.
Her own voice was guarded, in a teasing sort of way. “What is it that makes you so suspicious?”
“I think my mother dropped me on the head while lifting a bottle cap with her teeth.” I waited for a spark of pain to escape out the side of my head, which was beginning to remind me it was still there and still sore. Then I said, “You knew too much, as they say in the detective novels. You asked me how I thought Eddie could even meet such an important man’s daughter, much less blackmail her. I didn’t know; but I was pretty sure I referred to her only as an important woman, not anyone’s daughter. Plus you pulled Manzetti’s name out of a hat—I don’t remember calling him anything but Crazy Al. Of course, maybe you follow the crime scene …”
“Maybe I do.”
“It gets better. You told me that you had a key to Adrian’s—but if so, and if Adrian was dead when you got there, you’d’ve used it to lock the dead bolt after you when you left.”
“I was upset,” she said, spitting each syllable.
Her face was hard and white, as if molded of plaster of Paris. “Isn’t that what they call circumstantial evidence?”
“It all is, pretty much. If you want the hard stuff, though, try this: I knew you were lying when you told me you loved Adrian. You didn’t. I know, because you have to be able to feel in order to love. And because I saw the look in your face and recognized it.” I brought out the photos I’d lifted that afternoon, fanned them on the cushion next to me, selected one in which Marcie’s face could be seen, and held it up like the winning card. “This look. The same look I saw in your face this afternoon when we screwed.” I couldn’t say “made love” or any other polite euphemism, not now. “The look certainly isn’t love, and it isn’t even passion or lust or good clean fun. It’s a downright businesslike look, because that’s what sex is to you. Work. A means to an end. Not an end in itself. You use it for very specific, very clinical, very precise reasons. To throw me off the trail, to blackmail girls into posing for the little porno pics you and your brother hawked around town, to set up Adrian’s old man. Goal-oriented sex. You didn’t invent it, but you’re damn good at it. I think it’s real trade paperback bestseller material, Marcie. And the best part of it is, it works.” I tapped the pictures on the couch with the one I held in my fingers. “Here’s the proof.”
She had hunched her shoulders, lowering her head in an animalistic defense gesture, but continued to regard me with hateful eyes. “You son of a bitch,” she rasped, and it gave me enough warning to be ready when she launched herself, nails-first, at me. I’d been ripped by those claws already, with no anger behind it. I wasn’t about to sit still and see how it felt when she was trying to inflict real damage. I moved to the right quickly, genuflecting in front of the couch, barking my shin on the coffee table. She landed where I’d been sitting and twisted around to scratch at me. I went to grab her wrists but I was too slow. She batted my right arm out of the way with enough force to numb it to the elbow, then took a couple runners of skin out of my throat. It hurt like holy hell, so I let her have it, hard, across the jaw.
She dropped like a bird shot from the sky. For a moment I was scared. But her eyes flickered and she moaned and reached for her jaw, and I knew I hadn’t killed her. Which I half-regretted.
I grabbed her by the shoulders and yanked her backward into a sitting position while she whined about it and tested her chin. “I think you broke my jaw,” she moaned.
“If you’re telling me about it, I didn’t,” I said unsympathetically. “And since I didn’t, we’re going to take advantage of the opportunity to do some talking—some straight talking, understand?” I squeezed her shoulders for emphasis. She moaned some more, complained I was hurting her, which I told her was nothing compared to what I’d do if I didn’t like the course of our conversation. She dropped her head in what I took as surrender.
“Fine,” I said tightly. “Now let’s take it again from the top, all right?” Her head bobbed a little, and she began to speak.
It was pretty much as I’d guessed. Marcie and Eddie were in the business together and had been all along. Marcie was the brains—I knew that had to be because Eddie’s actions, especially his last, fatal stunt, proved him to be too stupid to find his own ass with both hands. It was Marcie’s job to find the girls. This was surprisingly easy; the world, to hear her tell it, is full of young women who are “curious” (Marcie’s word) about women, eager to have just one fling with a knowledgeable one. “They’re not bi,” Marcie said. “They all have boyfriends, fiancés, even husbands. If the opportunity presents itself, they’ll try it—then go back to their men. If the opportunity never presents itself, they’ll never go looking for it and they’ll never miss it.”
Marcie was the opportunity. She would slowly, precisely, initiate then escalate the relationship, carefully orchestrate the proceedings, the introduction of the new techniques, procedures, playthings, leading up to the photography. And then something awful would happen—Marcie’s no-good brother would “find” the photographs and decide they meant easy money for him. Despite Marcie’s pleading and tearful begging, Eddie would insist the girl in question either pose for pictures, which he would sell in the downtown porn shops, or face the consequences of her parents/boyfriend/husband—whichever was appropriate—seeing the pictures and learning she was a degenerate.
Most of the women capitulated. A few took their chances, not knowing until later, much later, that they’d made the right choice: Eddie and Marcie weren’t interested in blackmail to that extent. If a girl didn’t knuckle under, it was too much work for them to take it any further. The hell with her; on to the next pigeon.
The last of which was Adrian. With her it had started like any other game, but somewhere along the line Marcie had made a discovery: Adrian was the daughter of a U.S. senator. That put a whole new complexion on things, one quite different from selling dirty pictures on the sleazy side of town.
“It was a chance to make some real money,” Marcie said bitterly. “No more of this nickel-and-dime bullshit.” I looked distastefully at her, saw the blue beginnings of a bruise alongside her jaw and felt no remorse at having put it there, but no pleasure either. “I had it all planned out. We wouldn’t let her know Eddie knew who she really was. She’d think she was just posing for the pictures for the porn shops. We wouldn’t put the squeeze on her, either, because it was her old man who really had the money. So we collected the pictures, and I had Eddie take them down to Mallory himself.”
“Who promptly threw Eddie out of his office.”
Her eyes came up. “How did you know?”
“Sleuthfulness,” I said. “What happened then?”
“Well, we were pretty surprised. I mean, of all the reactions I’d’ve expected, that was about the bottom of the list. I was sure the old man would pay up to keep those pictures out of the papers, with an election coming up and everything.”
I was pretty sure that the danger was not so much in the papers getting the pictures—no reputable paper would print them—as in the opposition having them, but I held my peace and listened. Eddie and, especially, Marcie—who was revealing herself to me as indeed the brains behind the operation—were at a loss as to what to do next. They really lacked the know-how to cause Mallory any significant grief. After all, they figured it would be an easy score and had given no thought to what they’d do to make good their threat if Mallory called their bluff. Which, perhaps, Mallory and Schell had sensed. Neither of them was stupid, and both had grown adept in Washington at sizing up threatening forces. Which left the Bells in the cold, waiting for inspiration to hit, opportunity to come rap-tapping at the door.
They didn’t have long to wait. “Two, maybe three, days later Eddie called me up. He was very excited. This fellow Manzetti’d gotten in touch with him. Manzetti said the word was on the street about Eddie and the pictures of Mallory’s kid. The problem was, Manzetti said, that Mallory knew that someone like Eddie, working alone, couldn’t possibly hurt him. He didn’t have the clout or the connections. But Manzetti, being with the Mafia …” She shrugged the end of the sentence. “Well, Eddie met with this Crazy Al, who seemed okay, you know? And by then I figured the whole thing was working out to be more trouble than it was worth—and I wasn’t too keen on us being involved in anything big enough to have the Mob interested. So I told Eddie to get the best price he could out of Manzetti and unload the pictures on him. We’d wash our hands of it then.”
“And you’d wash your hands of Eddie, too.”
“What’re you talking about?”
I grabbed her shoulders again and rattled her brains a little. “Cut it out, sister. You set Eddie up, you held back some of the negatives but left in the prints, knowing they’d check, knowing they’d kill Eddie and you wouldn’t have to split the money wit
h anybody.”
She yanked her shoulders from my grip with a couple sharp jerks of her torso. “Of course I wouldn’t, ’cause there wouldn’t be any money, just like there wasn’t any money—because they killed Eddie. Wise up, idiot, this isn’t one of your detective books. I didn’t set up Eddie. I couldn’t’ve gotten anything that way. Holding back the pictures must’ve been his big idea. He never thought we should play it straight with Manzetti. Eddie had this bright idea that since Manzetti didn’t know how many pictures we had, we could keep back a few, maybe for another buyer, maybe to make a little extra on the side.
“I told him to forget it, that that was the sort of bright idea people ended up in cement overshoes for, that we weren’t going to find any other buyer after the Mafia got their hands on the pictures—once the word was out, no one’d go near them. I thought I had Eddie convinced. I guess not. I guess he tried to hold back a few for himself; it would be just like him to carefully hold back the negatives and forget all about the prints.” She slumped forward again and covered her eyes with a hand. “Poor dumb sucker. He never had a chance, he just never really had a chance.”
We’d already done this scene once before today, but I let her alone with her thoughts. Perhaps five minutes passed before she spoke again. “What else do you want to know?”
I asked again about Copel. He was a guy, just a guy that Eddie’d met somewhere, somewhere among the sorts of places guys like Eddie meet guys like Copel. Marcie hadn’t met him, of course—Marcie didn’t meet people like that, that was Eddie’s job, that and to keep Marcie’s existence a secret. Marcie may have loved Eddie, as she insisted, but she saw to it from the start that it was Eddie, not Marcie, who would take the fall when the fall had to be taken.
But when Eddie had been missing for nearly two weeks, it became necessary for Marcie to emerge, at least partly. She continued the fiction of the maligned but still loyal sister—the bit she pulled with me—told Copel that Eddie had mentioned him to her once or twice, asked if he’d seen anything of Eddie the past week or so. Copel hadn’t, of course; Marcie hadn’t expected him to. She’d expected him to volunteer, for a fee, to look for Eddie, and Copel didn’t disappoint. He took the case, took the key to Eddie’s room and took off. Marcie never saw him again.
The Nebraska Quotient (A Nebraska Mystery Book 1) Page 17
