Bad Faith bkamc-24

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Sitting in a nook at the Housing Works Bookstore in Manhattan, Nonie described how Westlund, known to her at the time as the Reverend John LaFontaine, had gained her trust and wormed his way into her heart. “I was blind with fear for my son,” she recalled. “The chemo and radiation treatments were horrible, bad enough that Micah begged to die.”

  “Wait a minute,” Marlene had interrupted. “Micah was treated. You knew he was sick enough to need chemotherapy and radiation?”

  Nonie had hung her head and told her about Dr. Aronberg and the astrocytoma diagnosis and treatments before continuing. “Then when everything seemed darkest and Micah was hanging on by a thread, Westlund showed up at the door. He seemed to know so much without our telling him-that we had a sick boy in the house; that he had brain cancer; that he’d been treated with chemo, which he called ‘Satan’s poisons’; even that David and I weren’t real regular at going to church. He seemed sent from God, and when he offered to pray for Micah … well, I would have believed in anything if it saved my son, and even David, who was skeptical, came around. And it seemed to work. I mean, Micah’s health improved to the point where he seemed like a normal, healthy little boy again by the time we moved to New York. By that point, I would have done just about anything for Westlund.”

  Nonie Ellis had broken down and started to cry, and it had taken her several minutes to pull herself together. “My husband was a good man,” she said, sniffling and dabbing at her tears. “He knew that Micah needed more than prayers, but he went along with it because of me. I don’t know if you’ve been told, but David was going to plead guilty. He left me a voice mail message that I didn’t get until it was too late. He didn’t come home that night, said he’d been walking around thinking. … He thought I was having an affair with Westlund.”

  “Were you?” Marlene had asked.

  Nonie shook her head. “No,” she said. “Looking back, I know now that some of his suggestive remarks and the hugging-even offering me a place to stay at his loft after David was shot-were attempts to seduce me,” she said. “I am pretty sure though that he was having sex with Kathryn Boole.”

  Nonie stopped talking again for a moment and sighed heavily. “I know that Kathryn killed my husband and even tried to kill yours. But I just feel sorry for her, especially because it was my fault she met Westlund in the first place. She was just a lonely depressed woman who’d lost her husband and wanted to feel loved and needed again. Westlund knows how to feed on that.”

  Her last statement made Nonie laugh bitterly. “I know the feeling,” she said. “No, I wasn’t having sex with Westlund, but maybe what I let him have was worse. He couldn’t have my heart-I lost that when Micah died and was too devastated to remember I owed David my love, too. But I gave Westlund my soul; I made a deal with the devil because I thought he could save my son. David and your husband are right: we were guilty of killing Micah. Me more than my husband.”

  Nonie had handed Marlene a letter from a life insurance company. “David found this,” she said. “I think it was the final straw.”

  As Marlene quickly read the letter, Nonie explained how shortly after the family moved to New York, Westlund had appeared at their apartment door with his “church accountant,” Frank Bernsen. “He had Frank talk to us about taking out a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar whole-life policy on Micah,” she said. “Frank said that someday it would pay for Micah’s college and that he might find it difficult to get life insurance when he was an adult if his disease returned. It actually made sense. Then he asked that we consider not just taking out the policy but signing over the death benefits to Westlund and the church just in case ‘God calls Micah home as a child before the policy matures.’ Westlund called it an act of faith and said that if Micah had to die because it was God’s will, then at least some good would come of it. That’s when David balked. He didn’t say anything to Westlund, or to me really. He was probably afraid I’d defend Westlund; I was pretty hard on him about things like that. But I could tell he was disturbed by it, and he wouldn’t agree to take out a policy.”

  Nonie bit her lip. “That’s when Westlund was at his best. He didn’t get mad or stop coming over to pray for Micah. I could tell he was hurt, or I should say putting on a good act of being hurt, but he dropped the subject. Instead he talked a lot about how his ministry was suffering because there wasn’t any money and how he might have to go back to Tennessee. I was desperate to keep him here, so I asked him how I could get David to sign a policy. He said he didn’t think it was possible because David lacked faith. Then he suggested that I take out the policy and that Frank would forge David’s signature.”

  “You didn’t have a problem with that?” Marlene had asked.

  Nonie shook her head. “He said that God would understand that I did it to further His Word,” she said.

  “What about the insurance company checking on Micah’s medical records?” Marlene asked. “They wouldn’t have issued a policy if they’d known he was being treated for astrocytomas.”

  “I asked about that, too,” Nonie replied. “But he said that the Lord would blind the insurance investigator because it was for God’s work. He even convinced me that it wasn’t really lying to say that Micah didn’t have any medical problems because we did not believe in doctors or their diagnoses. And it never came up. They didn’t find Micah’s records in Memphis. They gave me the policy and Frank pretended he was David and signed it.”

  “That’s fraud,” Marlene pointed out.

  “I know, but …” Nonie hesitated and then looked up into Marlene’s eyes. “I’m sure you think I’m nuts … that I went off the deep end … and I guess I did. I just don’t know how to explain how a guy like Westlund can get inside of you. You want to believe so bad that everything he says is gospel. He said that even David would someday thank me when we could use the money for Micah’s education. So I went along with his plan.”

  Marlene held up the letter from the insurance company. “But then they sent this, saying they weren’t going to pay until after the outcome of the trial,” she said. “So Westlund needs you both to be found not guilty in order for the check to be cut.”

  “I know he was surprised that the district attorney charged us,” Nonie said. She leaned forward and grabbed Marlene’s hands. “I think he’s done this before and nothing happened to the parents.”

  “He needs to be stopped,” Marlene had replied. “You need to talk to my husband and tell him all of this.”

  Nonie withdrew her hands. “I can’t,” she said. “I’m not going to put myself through a trial. I’m afraid, Ms. Ciampi. I think he got Kathryn Boole to kill David and had Bernsen there to make sure Kathryn didn’t live to talk about it. I think he wanted me to stay with him to seduce me but also to keep an eye on me. I think he’s capable of having me killed, too.”

  No amount of persuasion could change Nonie Ellis’s mind. But before she’d escaped out the back door of the bookstore, she’d given Marlene the names and addresses of two women in Memphis. “Maybe they’ll talk to you,” she said.

  One woman she knew only as “Sister Sarah,” who was apparently one of Westlund/LaFontaine’s most ardent supporters. “We met her shortly after meeting Westlund,” Nonie had said. “She had a son named Kevin who the doctors said was going to die, but he lived.”

  The other woman, Monique LaRhonda Hale, had not been as fortunate. “Her daughter died,” Nonie confided. “Westlund later told me it was because the Hales had lost faith and had secretly gone back to the doctors.”

  Nonie had paused, then added, “When I think about it, Monique and I have a lot in common. We both lost our children, and our husbands were killed.”

  The alarm bells went off in Marlene’s head. “What do you mean both husbands were killed?”

  “It was terrible,” Nonie said. “After their daughter died, Monique’s husband was mugged. They lived in a bad neighborhood in East Memphis and somebody beat him to death with a metal bar.”

  Noni
e knew where Monique lived because she’d gone with Westlund on one of his home visits and helped pray over her daughter. It was the home that Marlene now found herself sitting in front of as a thunderstorm crashed and banged all around her.

  Looking at the property, Marlene wondered if anybody was living there now. It was early evening and the cloud cover had brought darkness, but there were no lights on in the house. An old, rusted-out Ford station wagon sat in the driveway. A child’s bicycle leaned against the sagging porch with knee-high weeds growing up through the spokes; judging by the rusted chain and flat tires, it had been a long time since it had last been used.

  When the rain let up, Marlene dashed across the muddy front lawn and up onto the porch, where she knocked on the unpainted door. In her peripheral vision, she saw someone peep from behind the curtain drawn across the living room window. But no one answered the door.

  Marlene knocked again. “Hello, Mrs. Hale? Could I please speak to you?”

  “Go away,” a woman’s voice answered from behind the door.

  “Please, it’s important,” Marlene pleaded.

  “I don’t care.”

  Marlene leaned her head toward the door. She could feel the woman’s presence on the other side of the door. “Please, Monique,” she said quietly. “This is about your daughter, and your husband.”

  “I said I don’t want to talk to you,” Monique Hale said angrily. “Y’all can carry yourself out of here or I’ll call the police.”

  “Call then,” Marlene said. “But first I want you to know that another child has died. He might have been saved but a con man named C. G. Westlund-you may know him as John LaFontaine-talked his parents into not seeking medical help.”

  “Which child?”

  “Micah Ellis.”

  “I was ’fraid of that,” the woman said. “Nonie must be taking it hard. She was tight with LaFontaine.”

  “Nonie’s missing,” Marlene said. “And David’s dead … murdered by one of LaFontaine’s followers.”

  The woman was silent for a full minute before speaking. “I’d like to help,” she said. “But I just can’t. My child is dead and my husband is dead. Ain’t nothing goin’ to change that.”

  “He needs to be stopped, Mrs. Hale,” Marlene said.

  “I’m scared. I know he killed my Charlie. Him and his thugs.”

  “I’ll see that you’re protected, Mrs. Hale,” Marlene said. “My husband is the district attorney of New York, and I know he will do everything he can to help you. … Mrs. Hale, somebody needs to speak up for Charlie, Micah, Nonie, David, and your daughter …”

  “Natalie. My daughter’s name was Natalie, after her grandmother.”

  “Someone needs to speak for Natalie, too,” Marlene said.

  At last Marlene heard the security chain sliding and the dead bolt clicking open. A small pale woman with stringy brown hair and a high forehead peered out. “Come on in,” she said, “and I’ll make us some tea.”

  Almost two hours later, Marlene left the Hale residence and called her husband to fill him in on the conversations with Aronberg and Hale.

  “Marlene, you never cease to amaze,” he said. “I think I better send Clay and Guma down to get statements. And maybe it’s time you let them finish this with that Memphis detective.”

  “You know better than that, Butch,” she replied.

  “Yeah, I do, but I thought I’d try,” he said. “Don’t suppose it would matter much to say I miss you and want you to come home. My world just isn’t the same without you in it.”

  “Now, that’s what I love to hear, even though I haven’t even been gone for a night yet,” she laughed. “And you know I have to see this debacle through to the end.”

  “So what’s next?” Butch asked.

  “I’m off to find Sister Sarah,” Marlene said.

  “Marlene, LaFontaine and his crew are thugs. They’ll use violence; be careful.”

  “I will,” Marlene said. Suddenly she missed her husband. The darkness she was stepping into was so seedy, and he had always been so resolute against such evil. “So what’s happening with you?”

  “You’ll never guess who wants to give me a statement, a full confession, tomorrow morning,” Karp replied.

  “The Mad Terrorist, Sheik Khalid Mohammed.”

  Karp laughed. “I can only wish.”

  “Who then?”

  “Nadya Malovo. Here in my office, first thing in the morning.”

  Marlene sat in silence. Alarm bells were going off again. “I don’t think I need to tell you that it’s you who needs to be careful, more than me,” she said. “That woman is the most dangerous person I’ve ever known.”

  “She’s just one crazy lady and security will be tight,” her husband replied.

  A chill ran up Marlene’s spine. “She is a very evil woman, and if she asked for this, you know she’s up to something.”

  Hanging up, Marlene entered the address Nonie had given her for Sister Sarah into the GPS. Nonie had said she’d only been there once, when Westlund apparently needed something from his devotee. “He told me to wait in the car,” she recalled. “He was in there at least a half hour. So I sat there looking at the number on her townhome, 2214, all that time, waiting for him, and the street address was easy. Park Place.”

  This time the GPS took her to a much nicer neighborhood and a row of modest townhomes. The rain had stopped, and Marlene had gotten out of the car and started to walk toward 2214 when a young man came out of the home next door.

  “You looking for Sarah?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Marlene replied, “do you know if she’s in?”

  The man brushed his long hair back with his fingers and eyed her suspiciously. “You a cop?”

  “No, just an old friend,” Marlene lied. “I was just passing through town and hoped to say hi.”

  “She’s probably at work.”

  “She’s working nights?” Marlene asked.

  “She wouldn’t make any money doing her thing by working days.”

  “I thought she was a schoolteacher,” Marlene said.

  The man laughed. “The only thing she teaches is how to take your clothes off. She’s a stripper.”

  Marlene smiled. “She went back to the old job? What about her son, Kevin, who’s watching him?”

  The man looked confused. “What son? I ain’t never seen no kid, and she’s never said nothin’ about a boy.”

  “It’s been a few years since I saw her last, but a mutual friend said she had a boy and he was real sick,” Marlene said.

  The man shook his head. “If Sarah has a kid, it’s the best-kept secret in this neighborhood.”

  The young man gave Marlene the once-over. “You a stripper, too? You got a nice little body. You was probably something back in the day.”

  Marlene fixed him with her one good eye. “Exactly what do you mean ‘back in the day’?”

  The young man smiled and held up his hands. “No offense, ma’am. I just meant that if you’re this hot now, you must have been on fire in your twenties.”

  “That’s better,” Marlene said with a smile. “Nice save. So where’s she doing the bump and grind?”

  “Gentleman’s Club on Lamar Avenue.”

  When Marlene got back in her car, she noticed she had a call from a Memphis-area-code phone. “This is Detective Wink Winkler returning your call. I’d like to talk to you, too. I’m out of town until tomorrow but will be in the office on Poplar Avenue by midafternoon. Stop by.”

  A half hour later, Marlene pulled into the parking lot of the Gentleman’s Club strip joint. It was early yet and the parking lot wasn’t very full, so it wasn’t tough to spot the new BMW with the vanity license plate that read SARAH.

  Marlene entered the establishment and when her eyes adjusted to the low light, she was soon aware that she was the only unaccompanied woman in the place except for those gyrating on the dozen stages scattered around the spacious room. A pretty, young black woman with bare brea
sts walked up to her. “Welcome to the Gentleman’s Club,” she said with a smile.

  “Uh, thank you,” Marlene replied, trying not to be overly conscious of the fact that she was talking to a woman dressed in nothing more than short shorts. “I’m looking for Sarah.”

  The woman gave Marlene a knowing smile. “I know she swings both ways,” she said. “And I like sensual women, too. Maybe we can all get together after work?”

  “Sorry, but I’m kind of a one-woman gal,” she said.

  “Too bad,” the black woman replied with a pout. “But Sarah’s about ready to go on. She’s over there on stage four.” She nodded to a stage where a strobe light had begun to flash.

  Marlene thanked her and headed for a seat near the stage. A half-dozen men were scattered in the rows closest to the stage, but undeterred, she found a seat next to the stage. To the sound of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin,” a dark-haired white woman dressed like a schoolgirl pranced out on the stage, licking a large lollipop that she tossed to the closest of her admirers.

  A man sitting to Marlene’s left got up from his table and sat down next to her. “Maybe when she’s off work we can all get together, have a little fun?”

  “Beat it, creep,” Marlene snarled. “What’s with you people and your threesomes?”

  “Just trying to be friendly,” the man said, standing up and leaving in a huff.

  Marlene shook her head. Maybe I should have just waited for her to come home, she thought.

  Near the end of her dance and wearing nothing but a G-string, the dancer spotted Marlene and smiled before turning her attention back to the men also seated in the front row holding up dollar bills.