American Sextet

by Warren Adler

  Money alone was not his motivation, he assured himself, although an up-front investment was already straining his finances. He had begun to fall behind on his payments to Jane for Trey's support. Decorating the apartment had been expensive.

  As for Dorothy...

  She was the perfect weapon, an innocent with an uncanny talent. She had easily transferred her dependency from Jim to himself. It was almost too easy, Jason had thought. Yet he was comforted by the knowledge that what he was doing would benefit her as well, at least in monetary terms. Hadn't she once told him that money was also one of her goals?

  He had already calculated the split, giving her the lion's share of all proceeds. Such gestures assuaged any pangs of guilt. The tapes would be his principal documentation. Maybe he'd even take the chance on video or, at the least, photo stills. He'd have to be extremely cautious. None of his potential victims had reached these heady precincts without developing antennae for this kind of scam. He looked upon them as adversaries, an appropriately journalistic posture.

  Naturally, they would all cry entrapment. It would be their principal defense. More raw meat for the media mill. Even if they chose confession, which was the latest strategic vogue, it would only increase the after-play, making the titillation even more valuable.

  After their moment in the lurid glare of scandal, after the anguished breast-beating, the protestations and confessions, they would all land on their feet. Some would also write books themselves. Maybe sell the rights to a movie. Hell, it was a great growth industry. One or two might even take refuge in religion. Ambition, he was certain, also had its genetic base. The kind of boys he had in mind would make out anywhere. For most, it would be a good excuse to change direction, find a new track. Some would even use it to dump their wives. They would all have to be lusty boys with heavy appetites. That sort should be easy to find, he reasoned. Sexual discipline wasn't much of a virtue in today's world.

  To do it right, though, it had to be massive, not just a single isolated exposure, not just Arthur Fellows. It had to be bigger in scope, touch the untouchables, the high and mighty of government and society. By God, he wanted to bring them all to their knees. He would become the P. T. Barnum of sexual scandal, a three-ring virtuoso, touching every point on the American power compass. The White House, the Senate, the House, the Military, the Diplomatic Corps, and, if he could pull it off, the Supreme Court. An American Sextet. With Dorothy as his instrument, he'd singlehandedly send up the entire checks and balances system.

  V

  The tension in the office had the tautness of a violin string. They had brought in a suspect in the teenage murders. The man was a Marine sergeant stationed at the barracks on Sixth Street. Worse, he was white, and had been observed trying to pull a young black woman into his car.

  Picked up swiftly, he had been booked and hustled into the interrogation room under tight security. Grim-faced media people hung out in the corridors. The newspaper and television reporters were having a field day over the murders, focusing on the lurid sob stuff. A fund had been started for the illegitimate children of the victims.

  After a round-the-clock grilling, the man continued to maintain his innocence. He insisted that he'd accosted the young woman because he was certain it was she who had stolen his wallet two weeks previously.

  "The chief's chewing carpets," Lieutenant Brooks, the number two said. Known, not without affection, as one of the eggplant's stooges, Brooks was the eggplant's huge but gentle sidekick who was always happy to fob off both authority and blame on someone else. Like many policemen, he had a side trade, house painter, which he plied in his spare time. Since he was making more off the books than he could hope to draw from the public payroll, he wasn't up for rocking the boat.

  "Muvva had to be a honky," he groaned. "Set the juices going. Bad for the boss. They're really pushin' upstairs..." His manner was furtive; his eyes darted from side to side.

  "...and he's got orders to crack the bastard or it's his ass."

  Despite her own feelings about the eggplant, stories like that triggered compassion. Somebody was always about to have the man's ass.

  "He could be the wrong man," Cates stage whispered. Brooks heard him and smiled.

  "If he has to, he'll make it right."

  "What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Cates asked Fiona on the way to their car.

  "Police bravado. The myth that everybody's guilty of something. Sometimes a false confession with good circumstantial evidence can provide a good breather."

  "You mean a deliberate frame-up?"

  "Tsk. Tsk. We're being quite a boy scout this morning."

  She knew immediately she'd made a mistake. His skin cast turned slightly yellow. Was it the "boy" reference? Or had she gratuitously flaunted her knowledge of the way things worked?

  "It happens sometimes," she said. She'd noted that in him before, the taut sensitivity, the smoldering inner life.

  "I suppose I'll find out when I'm older," he said.

  "Touché!"

  Even later, as they investigated the "naturals," all of which were routine, something was still awry between them. Part of it was her own uneasiness. She hadn't told him about her conversation with Dr. Benton, a violation of the partnership code. That was police business, not secret thoughts. It nagged at her all morning. It wasn't until they were having a cup of coffee in Sherry's, a staticy radio crackling between them, that she found the courage to broach the subject.

  "I asked Dr. Benton to take a vaginal smear of the jumper," she said.

  "You did? I thought you had lost interest." Sipping his coffee, he squinted at her over the rim of his cup.

  "Whatever gave you that idea?"

  "I figured you told the eggplant and he put you down for it."

  "You think that would stop me?"

  "It had to be something. You had been so turned on."

  "I still am," she said flatly.

  "Good." He reached into his pocket and threw a metal object on the table. She looked at it, then back at him. The object was a tiny pin, less than an inch long, four silver stars on a silver bar. After inspecting it, she put it back on the table.

  "For me?" she asked facetiously.

  "For someone."

  "Are we playing games?"

  He seemed to enjoy her confusion, then wiped away his grin, and looking around him, spoke in a whisper.

  "I went to her place again. I found this pinned to a panty. In an odd place. Right at the Y." His throat caught and he cleared it. "I wasn't sure what the hell it was at first. Anyway, there it is."

  "Sly little bastard," she mocked.

  "You were making such a big deal about it."

  She fingered the object.

  "A general," he said.

  "I don't know what it means," she admitted.

  "Sure you do. She had a general for a boyfriend. Four stars."

  "That's no crime," she said, watching him. Finally, she asked, "Why did you go back?"

  "Pissed off," he said, making it sound like a genuine confession. "You were blowing hot and cold. I thought you put me down for what I'd found out ... the man in the woodpile. I thought that was pretty damn good detecting."

  It was, she supposed, fingering the pin. She hadn't found it, although she had looked in the drawers, not thinking to disturb the neat pile of panties. It told her something about male curiosity, but he had plowed fertile ground.

  She held the pin up to the light, inspecting it. Taking it as a signal to proceed further, Cates took a notebook from his pocket.

  "The lease was in her own name," he said, referring to his notes. "The rent was $575, and she paid three months in advance. Her take home from Saks was $800 a month. Figure that out. They said she was good when she worked. Sporadic attendance, but they liked her. No close friends with employees. Very close-mouthed. A little slow on the uptake, but good with the customers. One of her co-workers thought her job seemed like a hobby."

  He rattled on, his handsome, light cho
colate features infused with an excitement she found distressing. The implications, of course, were obvious. They had been obvious from the beginning. The girl had been someone's mistress, just like herself. The coffee became acidy in her stomach and she was suddenly nauseated.

  "The basic question is still foul play," she said, gulping air. "We're not the Moral Majority."

  "No," he said. "The basic question is you."

  "I don't understand."

  Was she that transparent? she wondered. Had he investigated her personal life as well? She had studiously avoided discussing with him any private references to her life. But he hadn't volunteered much about himself either, as if their lives began and ended with their work.

  "Frankly," he admitted, "I couldn't see why you were so interested at the beginning. Then I decided you must have had a theory in mind, something I'd missed. So I went to see for myself. I wasn't going to tell you. Then you told me about the smear."

  Once she had gone rafting in white waters at Harper's Ferry. She recalled the sense of powerlessness when the raft was caught in a downward surge, bobbing in the unpredictable eddies. Listening to him replicated the same sensation.

  Maybe he was trying to foreclose on it before it got out of hand. It happened sometimes. A case comes up that pushes a detective beyond logic. It becomes an obsession, crowding out all other considerations. A theory becomes faith. Like being sure beyond doubt about the existence of God.

  "She was kept by some married cat. He wanted to end the deal. She balked, threatened to blow the cover. He flung her over the bridge."

  She wanted to protest. Would Clint do that to her? She looked at Cates, surveyed his chiseled features, imagined his tall muscular lithe body. He reminded her of Harry Belafonte.

  "You think that's my theory?" she asked.

  "Or a variation thereof."

  "And what do you think?"

  "I think it was the other way around. He gave her the boot. She couldn't take it, saw all exits closed, then jumped."

  "You know that much about women in love?" she asked. It was a challenge more than a question.

  "Enough," he said, sipping his coffee.

  "Machoman," she said tartly.

  "I've made you mad."

  Agitated, she wanted to say. He had indeed stirred her up. To avoid his eyes, she again looked at the little pin, forcing her concentration.

  "Your man in the woodpile?"

  "A reporter," he said. "For the Post."

  "That makes two men in the woodpile."

  When she looked at him he was frowning, searching the dregs of his cup for a response.

  "A triangle," he said.

  "Which blows your theory about my theory." It was getting out of hand now and she hadn't the power to stop it.

  "We could find out," he said, after a long silence.

  "Why not?"

  She wondered who was goading whom.

  Jason Martin was easy to find, a dry throat at the other end of the telephone line. It was nearly noon. Apparently, her call had awakened him.

  "I'm terribly sorry," she said politely.

  "One of those late County Council meetings. They were arguing about where to put the new dog pound."

  She imagined he was expecting her to laugh, which she politely did.

  "Routine police business," she explained, waiting for a reaction, a subtle breathing ripple. There was the barest hint of hesitation.

  "A story?" he asked, emitting a distinctive yawn.

  "Could be."

  His apartment was not far from Sherry's, from where she was making the call. They were there in fifteen minutes.

  "It's a mess," he apologized.

  It was an apartment in a still unrenovated townhouse, the halls of which stank of stale pizza. For a newspaperman, he seemed to be living in penury. A glance into his bedroom told her he'd made a half-hearted attempt to make his bed, but the telltale lumps under a stained comforter belied the attempt.

  Although his brown stringy hair was still damp from the shower, his bodily cleanliness seemed negated by a torn, stained seersucker robe under which two hairy legs protruded like stilts. Cool brown eyes shifted in their almond-shaped sockets, peering over an aquiline nose with flared nostrils and thin tight lips. His chin was cleft, square and strong, investing him with an overall look of quick-tempered pugnaciousness. The caged animal image clung to him like body odor. The predatory, repressed anger was palpable, the air of casual cynicism contrived. He was a relic of the rebellious sixties, Fiona decided. It was one of her dead certain instant judgments, but she wasn't condemning the man for it; it had been her era as well.

  Clearing a battered couch, he offered them seats, taking a place opposite them on an upholstered chair that had seen better days.

  "You were a friend of Dorothy Curtis, formerly Zcarkowiz," Fiona began, watching his face.

  "Were?" he snapped, a bit too quickly. Then he corrected her pronounciation, shaking his head, and let out a long gasp of breath, more like a deep sigh. "She in trouble?"

  Fiona ignored his question. "You brought her to Washington from Hiram, Pennsylvania?"

  "Hey," he said. "I know the game plan. Just tell me what's come down."

  "We know you did. Her aunt told us," Fiona said.

  "I'm not denying that." He withdrew a long leg from across the chair's arm, showing a swath of white jockey shorts. "Do me a favor, guys. Don't go by the book. Just tell me what's happened to her."

  "Why are you assuming that anything has happened to her?" Cates interceded.

  "Amateur night," Martin muttered. "I'm also trained to interrogate."

  Surely, Fiona thought, surveying the man, Dorothy hadn't died for him.

  "We found her in the creek under the Duke Ellington Bridge."

  She watched him carefully. His lips trembled.

  "Found her..." He turned his face away.

  "She was not a pretty sight." Fiona was deliberately harsh. Sometimes shock value could be very useful.

  "Christ," he muttered, standing up. From the litter of his dresser, he found a cigarette and lit it with a Zippo lighter. For a moment, he looked at himself in the mirror and, after a deep inhale, blew smoke into his image. He seemed shaken, but was holding himself together.

  "What the hell did she do that for?" he said, turning to face them, showing a burst of anger. The veins in his neck stood out.

  "We've classified her death as undetermined," Fiona said.

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "It's just routine, Mr. Martin."

  "Routine?" he said with raised eyebrows. "I used to cover the police beat. You think someone threw her over?"

  "Have you any reason to think that?" Fiona asked. "Since you mentioned it first..."

  Puffing deeply, he paced the room. When he finally sat on the chair again he rested his elbows on his knees, still in deep thought. "She gave me a lot of happy moments."

  "And you?" Fiona asked. "What did you give her?" To cover her embarrassment, she took out her notebook.

  "When did you last see her?" Cates asked.

  "A couple of months ago, maybe." Martin shrugged. "We lived together for awhile. Apples and pears. She wasn't exactly an intellectual giant. We shared our bodies." He looked at Fiona, almost as if he were searching for understanding. You've come to the wrong pew, buddy, she told herself, thinking of Clint. This must be depersonalized, she admonished herself silently.

  Thankfully, the recall set him off and he rambled on. She wanted to get out of Pennsylvania, find a new life in the big city. Her dreams smacked of typical media myths.

  "She was an innocent, without guile. She wouldn't hurt a fly," he concluded.

  "Not even herself?" Fiona asked.

  "Who knows?" For the first time he appeared genuinely confused. "Something must have set her off. Frankly, I can't believe it."

  There was a long pause as Martin sucked the end of his cigarette down to a glowing butt, finally smashing it in an ashtray on the floor. "What m
akes you think it was something other than suicide?" he said without looking up.

  "Did you know any of her other male friends?" Fiona asked. He looked up suddenly, laughing.

  "Not in the last few months." He paused. "You saw her. That was the only thing she'd have no trouble finding."

  "She was hardly appealing when we got to her," Cates said, with what seemed like unnecessary malice.

  "You should have seen her when I did," he said, ignoring the barb. For the first time since they had arrived his expression softened. "She was wonderful."

  "Without guile," Fiona pressed. Something odd seemed embedded in the phrase and she detected a slight stiffening as he heard it thrown back at him.

  "Yeah," he mumbled. "Nobody can survive in this town without that. No one."

  "We couldn't find any names in her apartment. Nothing. Everything in its proper place." Fiona looked around his apartment. "Not like this. She was a fanatic about white and being neat."

  "Yeah."

  "How did she support it? The apartment?"

  "Don't ask me."

  "Somebody paid three month's rent up front in cash," Fiona said. "She didn't make that kind of money."

  "So?"

  "How could she have done that on a take-home salary of $800 a month?" Fiona asked, aware of her pressure. Something about the man was aggravating. Had they any business being here, wasting the taxpayer's money?

  "What are you trying to say?" His eyes moved nervously between her and Cates. Without answering, she pressed on, unable to stop herself.

  "All I want is the truth." The statement was premature, unprofessional.

  "About what?" Martin snapped. She caught Cates's glare of caution but decided to ignore it.

  "You know what."

  Martin looked at Cates.

  "She's mad as a hatter. Are you accusing me of throwing her over the bridge, murdering her?"

  The word hung in the air like an unbearable stench. She knew she was going too far.

  "You brought her to D.C. Why?"

  "That's my business," he said, on the edge of exasperation. "I don't have to take this shit. You're harassing me." He stood up, then sat down again. "I adored her. You're profaning our relationship."