Icy Blue Descent jlm-4

by J. C. Simmons

  Glossman's secretary ushered me quickly into the inner office. Bill Moran stood beside Joe's desk, leaning over, conferring with him. To my left, sitting on a small sofa, were two men who, to the trained eye, had Federal Agent written all over them. They stood when I came in, arms at their sides, jackets unbuttoned.

  Glossman stood and shook my hand. I nodded at Bill. "Good, you are early. This is Agent Evans and Agent Mallory, from the FBI office in New Orleans. They are the two who did most of the leg work for us."

  The two agents extended their hands. Both had strong, firm handshakes. Dressed in dark suits, white shirts, and red ties, they seemed in top physical shape. One had black hair and hard, brown eyes, and a Jay Leno chin. The other was blond with a crew cut that I admired. His eyes were clear, blue, piercing, and almost acquisitive.

  "Mr. Leicester," Agent Mallory said. "I've read your dossier. You lead an interesting life." He looked at me, and then I noticed something about him. The sleepy appearance created by his drooping lids was deceptive, for the eyes beneath were alert and hard and calculating.

  "My dossier…?"

  Glossman spoke. "Jay, have a seat. There are some things we need to discuss before Lynn arrives."

  Sitting down in the plain, though elegant office, I lay my small, flexible briefcase on the floor beside the chair and admired, again, the Moran painting behind Glossman's desk. The office reeked with the after-shave of five men. I wanted to open a window.

  Bill Moran came and sat across from me, leaving a high-backed, leather chair between us. There was a tension in the room that had an electric quality. The cool leather on the arm of my chair felt expensive, and the deep pile of the carpet gave me a feeling of walking on air. Looking around the room, I felt financially inept and uneducated.

  Glossman pressed a button on his desk and immediately his secretary entered with a silver tray that held delicate cups and saucers and an urn filled with coffee. There was an extra cup for Lynn, who was now five minutes late.

  We finished our business and Glossman turned behind him and picked up a small white phone. He spoke softly for a moment, then replaced the instrument back on the credenza. "The airplane was delayed coming out of Jackson. Lynn left our hangar ten minutes ago, should arrive momentarily."

  Lynn was escorted into the room a few moments later. I had forgotten how truly beautiful this woman was; the blond hair, blue eyes, high, sharp, cheekbones, little makeup, long firm legs. All this, added to the perfectly proportioned six-foot frame, created a synergism that would make most men cater to her every wish. She wore the same musk oil perfume that had so overwhelmed my small office on her first visit.

  As if on command, we all stood when she entered. She looked quickly at me, then at the two other men, and at Joe Glossman and Bill Moran. There was an interval of silence, and when she sat down I heard the faint rustle of wool over nylon as she crossed her legs, the movement raising her skirt to uncover her lower thigh, its white flesh darkened by her stockings. The glimpse wasn't provocative, but struck me as something I wasn't supposed to see. I fastened my gaze on her face.

  Glossman intoned in a fatherly voice. "Lynn, before we begin our business meeting Jay will give us his final report on Rene's death. When he concludes, we will move on to the changeover of your father's company and Jay can leave us."

  "Very well." She settled comfortably, confidently into the confines of the leather chair. Crossing her legs, again, the skirt rode even higher on her thighs. Tugging self-consciously at it, she looked at me silently for a moment. It was an odd look, as if from a great distance. "Jay, I'm so glad to see that you are okay. Joe told me there was some trouble in the Bahamas. I traveled to Nassau, but could never locate you. I know you said not to come, but I just couldn't stay home."

  "I saw you at the Paradise Island casino, and on Marsh Harbor."

  There was a tense, cautious quality in the attentive way she watched me, and the faintest contraction of her mouth showed that the statement was like a blow across an open wound. "But why didn't you

  …?"

  "You were on the move, I couldn't catch up with you."

  She looked calmly, straight at me with the faintly proud look of stressing her calm, but it cracked a little, in the faintest change of her voice. "I'm sorry I missed you."

  "Maybe we better get started," Glossman said, nodding to me. "Let's have your report."

  Lynn concentrated on the nail polish of her index finger.

  Reaching for my brief case, I shuffled some papers. "Lynn came to my office two weeks ago requesting that I locate her missing sister, Rene." Monotonously I plodded through the events leading up to the identification of the body in a Miami morgue by Lynn, casually mentioning that Steve Henderson and I lifted a set of fingerprints from the body, and that Steve sent them to the FBI Identification Division in Washington, D.C.

  Watching Lynn closely for a reaction to this information, I saw that there was none. She continued to pick at the fingernail, waiting for me to continue.

  "Rene Renoir was put aboard an airplane in Bimini. She was drugged, and she was dying."

  Lynn folded her hands in her lap, drew her knees tightly together, cocked her chin ever so slightly, and struck a pose of steely self-containment.

  "Following her trail from Bimini back to Nassau resulted in my being kidnapped, transported to Abaco Island, and ordered killed by the same individual responsible for Rene's death."

  Pausing, I watched Lynn carefully. She uncrossed and crossed her legs and concentrated again on her fingernail. There was no other reaction. The Federal Agents were silent, attentive. Glossman and Moran stared at me.

  I continued. "That individual's name was Ignacio Sanchez, a smalltime scumbag running dope throughout the Bahamas. He is dead, along with a few of his operatives who were killed during a drug deal that went bad."

  There was a perceptible change in Lynn's posture. She raised her head a little and looked at me. It was only a glance. Then she looked at Glossman and spoke. "Well, I guess that finishes it. Poor Rene met the wrong people. It got her killed. She was unlucky, and it is very sad." There was coldness in her voice, and her face hardened as if in open admission of some forgotten pain.

  Maybe it was only I seeing her reactions, reading something into the situation because I knew the truth. Maybe there is no difference in voice patterns, body posture, or galvanic skin response. Maybe it is all in the imagination of the observer.

  Glossman leaned back in his chair. "Are you sure it was this Sanchez fellow who had Rene killed?"

  "Yes, Mr. Glossman, I'm positive. But there is more."

  "Proceed."

  "One of Sanchez's henchmen, a local Bahamian we knew only as Barrel-chest, made a dying confession detailing Rene's death."

  Lynn suddenly turned with a brusque, brief movement toward me. "You were there when Sanchez was killed?"

  "Yes. Dave Billingsly and I were there. We both listened to every word Barrel-chest uttered as his lifeblood drained away."

  Glossman looked at me and nodded. Lynn saw this, and for the first time outwardly showed some perplexity. Her face paled to a look of confusion, a crack in the armor. Looking at her reminded me of a scene straight from Hamlet. I had the leading role and didn't want to miss a cue or drop a line.

  "When Lynn first came to my office, she was advised that I work alone. Having an amateur involved is dangerous. She chose not to take that advice, and could have endangered all of our lives."

  "My sister was dead, I had a right to try and find out who murdered her." She spoke slowly, as if lashing me with her words, but the emotion was one of a useless effort to defend her actions.

  There was a soft tap on the door of Glossman's office. His secretary entered, walked up to my chair and handed me a folded sheet of paper. Smiling, she patted me on the shoulder, turned and walked out, closing the door. Glancing at the note, I put it under the papers in my hand pretending it was of no importance, although it was extremely helpful at the moment.

>   "Why don't you relate to us what this Barrel-chest fellow said as he was dying."

  "Yes, Mr. Glossman, but first I'd like to ask Lynn why she failed to tell us she flew to Miami on the day Rene sailed aboard the Stede Bonnet?"

  It was the first challenging question, and I saw the look of a peculiar pain growing in her eyes. Things were taking a vastly different turn from what she was prepared to deal with this morning.

  "I didn't think it important. I flew down to wish her Bon Voyage. When I got the card a couple of days later, I had no reason to think anything wrong." There was no sound of honesty in her voice, no tone of truth or falsehood, only indifference.

  Reaching over, I lay the copy of her round-trip airline ticket to Miami on Glossman's desk. Bill Moran picked it up and sat back in his chair reading it. The ticket had been paid for with Lynn's American Express credit card.

  "Barrel-chest, Jay," Glossman prodded.

  "He was the one who botched the kill on Rene. His orders were to do away with her while Sanchez spent a couple of days with a lady friend on Abaco Island. For some reason known only to him, he felt sorry for Rene, didn't want to kill her."

  The two FBI Agents shifted in their seats. Glossman leaned back in his chair. Bill Moran threw the copy of the airline ticket on the desk, turned and looked at Lynn.

  "Go on."

  "He couldn't kill her, so he pumped her full of drugs, hoping to keep her sedated, blank her memory, until she got back to the states. Out of sight, out of mind, so to speak. Only he gave her too large a dose of drugs. It killed her. When Sanchez learned Barrel-chest didn't dispose of Rene as ordered, he went into a rage and shot him."

  There was silence in the office. Every eye focused on Lynn Renoir. She drew on the rich blue-blood Southern heritage, both a gift and curse, that old rigorous restraint of emotions. I watched her grapple with her rage, then gain leverage, and subdue them, all in the space of seconds. I wanted to applaud her triumph.

  "Finish it up, Jay."

  "Barrel-chest told us Lynn ordered the kidnapping and killing of her sister, and it was she that Sanchez spent the two days with in Abaco."

  She leaped from the chair and stood directly in front of me. The fury in her cold, icy eyes was evident. She trembled all over, the same way that she had done in the bar in Miami the day she identified her sister's body. "My sister has been murdered by some drug pusher and, because of your incompetence, you accuse me of having something to do with it?" She remained standing before me as if consciously letting me see that she had nothing to hide. Her fists were clinched, feet spread slightly apart. Under different circumstances, she would have been sexy and alluring in her arrogance.

  "Sit down, Lynn," Glossman ordered. "Maybe you better get it all out, now, Jay."

  She settled into the seat, her dress rising past her knees, ignored this time. There were whispers of silk on nylon, and a teasing glimpse of her thighs, a mystery that made most men light headed.

  Standing, I looked at a sheet of paper in my hand. Pointing directly at Lynn, I said, "This woman is not Lynn Renoir, she is Rene."

  All eyes turned to her. The FBI agents sat up straight. Bill Moran leaned forward and studied her face. In the second that she grasped what I'd said, her body sprang upright in the chair with a single curve of motion, immediate and violent like a cry of rebellion. I paused, watched her fight for control. It was not a simple struggle, or a brief one. She looked at me, wordless. She was afraid, too scared to hide it. She gripped the edge of the chair with the fingers of both hands. The blood squeezed from them, leaving them white, the nails blue. The spasm of fear was stronger than her grip. Despite trying, she kept trembling.

  "The fingerprints we lifted from the body in the morgue were identified as Lynn Renoir. Once this was learned, the rest was easy." Lifting the note Glossman's secretary handed me; I read the name printed on it aloud. "The plastic surgeon is waiting outside the door to tell us what he did to your face so that it would resemble Lynn's. Would you like for him to come in?"

  With the embarrassing helplessness of words a person knows to be meaningless, Rene said, "I would like my lawyer, please."

  Glossman looked at the FBI agents. "Gentlemen, she is all yours."

  "Joe, I…" she said, pleading, as one would say to a dead friend the words one regrets having not said in life. "Please, I…"

  He held up his hand, cutting her off. He did not want to listen. Turning to the agents, he said, "Take her out of here."

  She was read her rights, handcuffed, and led out of the office. Glossman sat down heavily in his chair and stared at the ceiling. Bill Moran looked at the floor. We were silent for a long time.

  Glossman ran a hand across his face. "She was good, she fooled me, and I knew them better than anyone. Her own sister. For what? Money? God help the human race."

  Driving back to Picaroon and Kathy, the only thing I could think of to tell myself was to remember, remember it well. It is not often one can see pure evil, look at it, remember it, and some day maybe we'll find the words to name its essence.

  EPILOGUE

  We lay to a single anchor on the backside of Chandeleur Island twenty miles off the coast of Biloxi, Mississippi in the Gulf of Mexico. The sun was low in the west. It would be a good sunset if the haze over New Orleans didn't obscure the final descent. The wind was calm, now, down from the fifteen knots that had beam-reached us all the way from the Broadwater Marina.

  The sail over was delightful under clear skies and mild temperatures. We left the marina at dawn. Guy and Mildred Robins came down to see us off and brought a big thermos of coffee and fresh homemade biscuits.

  Promising to take good care of his beloved Picaroon, we quietly slipped the lines and motored out into the Mississippi Sound to a glorious day. Rounding the head of Ship Island by noon, we set a course to the west of Chandeleur so that we could come up on the lee side. Raising the north end of the half-moon shaped island by midafternoon, we sailed down its thirty mile length to North Cut, then anchored up close to the white sand beach in eight feet of crystal clear water.

  The island is narrow, a quarter mile at its widest. We could hear the soft murmur of the surf, see the seabirds feeding on the tide line. There were brown pelicans, long billed marsh wrens, terns, and gulls. A heron, tiny in the distance, stood like a figurine at the edge of the water on the backside of the island. The birds have a harder life than we do. Why did God make birds so delicate and fine? Bad weather can be cruel to the small birds. Most of the time the weather is kind and beautiful on the out islands, but she can change so suddenly with the violent thunderstorms and seasonal hurricanes and the birds are made too delicate for the harsh weather.

  We brought a bottle of champagne up into the cockpit. Man-O-War birds soared effortlessly high among the fleecy mare's-tails that foretold of coming weather. A jet contrail appeared, then dissipated as if my magic on a course toward Miami. The straw gold color of the wine glistened in the afternoon light, tiny bubbles racing to the top of the flute-shaped glasses.

  Kathy sat close, snuggled into my arms, her back to me. She was quiet, watching the sun sink lower into the haze. "Did she really kill her own sister to get control of the company?"

  "Yes."

  "Do think she had anything to do with the death of her parents in the airplane crash?"

  "We'll never know for sure, but I'll always believe Rene Renoir and Ignacio Sanchez had something to do with it."

  "Did she do something really terrible as a child that caused her father to cut her out of his Will?"

  "What the Will said, was that she had a deviant personality that was borderline psychotic. It was complicated and involved her being an unwanted child with her sister the favorite of both parents and them letting Rene know about all of it. Whether it had anything to do with the mental state of the young girl, I have no idea. By the time she was thirteen she was uncontrollable and known as a "Partygirl" and a "Playgirl." Read whore. She wanted to be a movie star. She bounced from men to men,
motel to motel. Hung around strip clubs, cheap dives, and frequented bars where she hustled drinks and dinner off strange men for the thrills. She told incredible lies. Her life was indecipherable." Kathy turned and looked at me with a frown. "Oh, I instinctively understand that life. I've seen it too many times. It was a chaotic collision with male desire. Rene Renoir wanted powerful things from men, but could not identify her needs. She reinvented herself with youthful panache and convinced herself she was something original. She miscalculated. She wasn't smart and she wasn't self-aware. She recast herself in a cookie-cutter mold that pandered to long-prescribed male fantasies. Rene Renoir was bushwhacked by the Sanchez brothers. She turned herself into a cliche that most men wanted to bed and a few wanted to kill. She wanted to get deep down cozy with men. She sent out magnetic signals. The Sanchez brothers were men with notions of deep down cozy cloaked in rage and viciousness. Her only act of complicity was a common fait accompli. She made herself over for men. Max Renoir knew all of this and was powerless to stop it."

  "Little girls are sometimes like fragile flowers, Jay. They can be hurt very easy."

  "Well, Max tried everything, the best medical help money could buy, but it didn't do any good."

  Kathy got up, walked to the stern of Picaroon, and sat with her feet hanging over the boarding ladder. "Are you defending his actions with the child?"

  "I'm telling you what happened." Maybe I was defending Max Renoir. The ruined young woman lying on the slab in the Miami morgue, the dead people aboard the Sun Dog lying at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, all the senseless violence, came flooding back. I had to defend somebody.

  Walking over, I stood behind Kathy and put my arms around her. She leaned back against me. The sun sank into the haze, turning the sky a fiery orange, and the water around the boat faded to the color of molten lead. A redfish rolled behind the stern, showing the black spot on its tail. Further out, two dolphins worked a shoal of mullet.