by Don Bruns
“People usually call me on the phone.”
I could understand why.
“In fact,” he now scratched his chin, “this is the first time anybody ever came to my door asking about a job.”
I thought about using the phone the next time I wanted to contact him.
“What is this job?”
I noticed he’d used water to try and smooth down the unruly hair. He hadn’t been successful. “Different than anything you’ve done before.”
“I’ve done a lot of jobs.”
“Trust me, Jim. It is Jim, right?”
Jim Jobs shook his head back and forth. “No. Name’s Albert. Albert Jobs. But you can call me Jim. Everyone does.”
I considered going somewhere else for my hire.
“Now, what is this job?”
Get it out of the way. Bust his chops and move on to someone who would be good at it. “It’s this way, Albert … Jim. I need someone for just a week who can work in security. We’re installing a system for a company, and this position would be for someone who runs information back and forth between the installation teams.” It was complicated, and I really didn’t want to get into the details.
“I used to work for two companies that do exactly that.” Jim Jobs smiled at me, two front teeth totally missing.
“Do exactly what?”
“Install security systems. And I helped set the whole thing up. Worked with the crew, told them where to install motion detectors, sound detectors—”
“You did this?”
“I did. Is that why you’re calling on me?”
I had no choice. I gave Albert the job.
“You did what?”
“Em, you have no idea what it’s like to live without any money.”
“Oh, jeez, Skip. Don’t start with that.”
“Then where do I start? This job is going to pay me more than I made all of last year, Em. It’s not like I’m sleeping with her.” Although if I had enough money—
She shook her head and bit into another bite of cornbread. We were lunching at Esther’s, on Twenty-seventh in Carol City, where they serve biscuits and gravy, sausage, baked chicken, and this fabulous peach cobbler. I’d decided to make a clean confession.
“You always play the money card.”
“Em, I love you. You know that. And I’m always amazed that you reciprocate, but there is a money issue.”
“It’s not important to me.” She pursed her lips and closed her beautiful blue eyes for several seconds.
“Because you have a lot of money and I don’t have any.” My father had abandoned the family when I was very young, and my mother, younger sister, and I lived off welfare for about as long as I can remember. Em’s father owned a huge construction company, and he’d made a boatload of money off the wealthy homeowners in the richest districts of Miami.
“Just because I work for my father—”
The argument came up once in a while. About every other day.
“So what exactly are your obligations?”
“I pretend we’re dating. Sarah and I. At the job site. And, I park my car in front of her condo three nights a week.”
“You don’t park yourself at her condo?”
“Come on, Em.”
“This lasts how long?” I could see her softening, the fire leaving her eyes, and her fist opening into a five-fingered hand.
“Until we’re done.”
“Which is when?”
We’d be done in four or five days. The Sarah thing should be done at the end of the month. “Three, four weeks tops. Em, I’m not interested in her. It just seemed so innocent, and—”
“You’re helping Sarah destroy a marriage. You’re helping her break up this Sandler Conroy and his wife. Am I right?”
“Well, I think the marriage—”
“Am I right?”
“Yes.” How could I argue that point.
“How did she ever get involved with this guy?”
I said I was making a clean confession. That isn’t exactly true. I was leaving out a certain part of the story. I figured that Em would buy most of the story. The hooker part, I wasn’t so sure about. “Dating service. Once she found out he was married, it was too late. She was hooked.”
“Skip,” she looked into my eyes, and I knew she was going to agree, “you fall into some of the strangest situations.”
“Em. Let me finally break even. I’m going to make over twenty thousand dollars. Do you realize that I’ve never had that much money at one time in my life?”
She nodded. This beautiful, sexy woman who probably made over $100,000 a year, she got it. She couldn’t argue with me. I knew it.
“So I’ve got to pretend that you’re dating someone else?”
“No. It’s a couple, three weeks, Em. That’s all. And it stays inside the company.”
We both still had a full plate of food. I thought that confiding in Em would make me feel better. Instead, a partial confession only made me feel worse. I could feel a burning in my stomach, and I couldn’t touch another bite of food.
“I’m not happy about it, Skip.”
“I didn’t expect you would be.”
“What if I told you I’d leave you because of this?”
“Would you?”
She sipped on her glass of water.
One of the servers stepped out from behind the buffet counter and headed toward the restroom. He turned to look at Em. A lot of guys do. As he turned and stared, he slid on a spot of grease and fell hard on the tile floor. Em never even noticed, and I immediately thought to myself, a lot of people had taken a fall for Emily. She just shrugged it off.
“Well, would you? Leave me?”
The server picked himself up, made a point of looking the other way, and continued toward the restroom.
“I should.”
“Don’t.”
She slid out of the booth and stood up. “I won’t.”
I let out the breath that I’d been holding.
“But this stays at Synco Systems, right?”
“It does.” My cell phone rang, “Born in the U.S.A.” blaring from the little black box.
“Hello.”
“Skip Moore?”
I couldn’t place the voice, and I didn’t recognize the phone number.
“Yes?”
“You represent the company that is installing a security system at Synco Systems?”
“I do.” I smiled. I was the point man for big jobs.
“And you’re dating Sarah Crumbly?”
I glanced up at Em, standing there, waiting for me to come out of the yellow vinyl booth and walk her to her car.
“Well—”
“I need to talk to you. As soon as possible.”
The female on the other end sounded very businesslike.
“And you are?”
She hesitated. “I’m Carol Conroy. My husband is Sandler Conroy, president of Synco Systems, and I think you need to know some things about the death of Ralph Walters.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Monte Carlo. Have you ever been there?”
I hadn’t been out of the state of Florida. Travel had been pretty much out of the question. My mother didn’t have any money and neither did I. I dreamed about traveling, and I knew where Monte Carlo was. I saw it on a Discovery Channel show one day.
Sarah looked into my eyes, and I felt a cold shiver. I looked away. I kept repeating to myself, hooker. She’s a hooker.
“I won like two thousand euros in the Casino. It was so cool. I mean, much more class than Vegas, you know?”
I had no clue.
“It’s this beautiful old building with ornate chandeliers and thick carpet. And just like in that James Bond movie, Casino Royal, guys wear suits and tuxedos and a lot of the women have formal dresses.” There was a faraway look in her eyes. “Sandy promised me we’d go back once this project is done.”
Casino Royal was filmed on Paradise Island in the Bahamas. But I didn’t
tell her that. And, as far as ever going to Monte Carlo, or the Bahamas for that matter, well, I couldn’t even imagine.
“And Cannes, Skip. Sparkling blue waters, quaint stucco buildings with orange tile roofs that descend like stair steps down to the ocean. During the film festival. Oh, my God, I met Adrian Grenier from Entourage, and we saw Angelina and Brad, and Daniel Craig. And, Skip,” her eyes got big, “we sat front row to see U2, and then went backstage. I mean—”
It was almost more than I wanted to hear. Em had never done half of those things, and she could afford them.
“I met Bono. Bono, Skip. He kissed my hand.”
Now it was getting tiresome.
“And Sandy leased a yacht that went on forever. I don’t know how big it was, but you could sunbathe totally nude on the deck and nobody batted an eye.”
What? I would bat an eye. Among other things. Who talked like this? Who experienced this kind of lifestyle?
I cleared my throat. “You did?”
She flashed me a shy smile. “Uh-huh.”
I tried to picture that.
“Honest to God, Skip, I never thought I’d do anything like that. And then he asked if I’d like to work here at Synco Systems. Well, you can imagine it would have been very hard to say no.”
Duh. We were sipping coffee in the break room. I’d taken Jim Jobs through the building, and, surprisingly, he’d understood everything. He’d even made some suggestions regarding placement of some of our hardware. He’d left in what James affectionately called the Jim Jobs mobile. Now, Sarah and I were talking. Our first “date,” and I kept thinking how happy Em would be.
“Have you ever met Carol?”
I didn’t know what to say. I had an appointment with Sandler’s wife in a couple of hours, but I didn’t feel it was a good idea to tell Sandler’s girlfriend. And I wasn’t about to tell my girlfriend. The whole thing was so sordid.
“No.”
“I have. Several times. I was invited to a cocktail party at their house just last week.”
“You visited their house?”
“She’s a bitch.”
“He told you that.”
“She’s with him for status. That’s all. And I think she keeps an eye on Sandy for her daddy.”
And Sarah was with Sandler for the money.
“Anyway, it will soon be over. Once Sandy gets the money, he’s promised me we’re out of here.”
She was a year younger than James, Em, and me. And her financial future seemed to be set. Maybe James had been right. If I’d been born a good-looking blonde girl, I might have sold my body and my soul to be in her shoes. Then again, maybe not.
“By the way, can you park your car in front of my condo tonight?”
“Sure.” James was going to pick me up and drive me back to our dingy apartment.
“Sandy seems to think his wife is suspicious of me.”
Suspicious? From what Sarah had told me, Carol Conroy could have enough evidence to kick Sandler out for good.
She slowly stood up, letting me admire her figure in a short red dress that pulled tight at her chest. “God, I hope he gets his paycheck soon.”
I hoped I got mine soon. What had started out to be a really good opportunity was fast becoming a nightmare.
“Then, I’ll see you tonight.” She paused for a moment. “Well, I’ll see your car. She gave me that soft smile. Sarah reached down and touched my hand giving it a gentle squeeze.
“One more thing.” I hesitated. I hated this part of the sale, especially when I knew the client. “The contract calls for fifty percent up front and—”
“Skip. Are you afraid you won’t get paid?” She let go of my hand and gave me a quizzical look.
“No, no. But Michael, the boss, plays by the rules.” I figured if they didn’t pay half up front Michael would still authorize the installation. There was no way he was going to lose a sale this big.
“I’ll get you the check before you start the job. Which,” she looked at her gold Rolex watch, “should be in two days. Right?”
I nodded.
“We’re anxious to get started on a new project, Skip, and I know that Sandy wants the security system functional before we go into production.”
“You never did tell me what this big project is.”
Sarah put an index finger to her lips. “I’m not supposed to tell anyone. I’m not even supposed to know.”
All kinds of secrets going on at Synco Systems.
“But it has something to do with the Department of Defense. I’m pretty sure that’s who it is. Pretty sure.”
“The federal government?” I pushed my chair back and stood up. The top of her golden head barely reached my shoulder.
“You can’t tell anyone.”
“No.”
“They’re putting in a new computer network program and we’ve come up with a system that is fool proof. Ralph,” she hesitated, a catch in her voice, “Ralph told me just yesterday, that there was no way anyone could hack this system.”
I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone that our job involved the Department of Defense. I wasn’t supposed to mention the fact that I was Sarah’s pretend boyfriend, and I certainly couldn’t tell Sarah that I knew she was a prostitute. And, oh yeah, I wasn’t going to tell anyone that Carol Conroy wanted to talk to me about Ralph Walters’s suicide. And I was this guy who wasn’t any good at keeping secrets.
CHAPTER NINE
The Red Derby was a tiny bar that was crammed into a little stucco strip of four buildings on Biscayne Bay Boulevard. The lounge sported a neon red derby hat that flashed outside the door, and I wondered how a bar like this got its name. Did the owner wear a red derby? Did anyone wear a red derby? I’d never even seen anybody wear a derby in my entire life.
I parked down a couple of spaces from the dirty white front of the building and walked up, past a small barbershop, studying the yellow stains where the cracked sidewalk met the stucco. I didn’t even want to think what those stains might be. What was Carol Conroy thinking about when she called a meeting in a place like this? The Red Derby wasn’t even a place that James and I would usually go, and we’d go just about anywhere that served cold beer.
Inside, the odor hit me fast. The smell of stale beer that had soaked into the carpet, the cigarette smoke that had permeated the heavy curtains, the curtains that hung in shreds from the window, and a sour smell that I couldn’t quite place. A lone drinker with long hair and jeans and a T-shirt sat at the bar, hunched over his shot and beer. The bartender stood behind his vinyl bar and wiped the counter with a towel. I squinted in the dim light and could make out five tables and five booths. A neon beer sign hung above one booth advertising Strohs beer, and I was pretty sure that beer wasn’t even made any more.
There was no sign of Carol Conroy.
“Skip Moore?”
I spun around and could make out the shadow of her face and figure. Tiny, about five foot, and dark brown hair freely framing her pretty face. She looked all of twenty-five years old. I hadn’t uttered a word.
“Are you Mr. Moore?”
“Um, yeah.” How lame.
“I’m Carol Conroy. I called you and—”
“I know.”
“There’s a booth over there.”
She fully expected to meet here and tell her story right here. I’d expected to go to someplace a little more upscale. We walked to the booth and sat.
“Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Miller Light.” The rotund, balding bartender looked around the room, never making eye contact, bored with the entire process.
We ordered two Bud Lights, and I waited. Mrs. Conroy played with the napkin the bartender had placed in front of her, folding it, unfolding it, and occasionally looking up at me. The bartender finally brought the beers, a smart-aleck smile on his pudgy face. I’m sure he thought we were two illicit lovers, before or after a session at a cheap hotel. This certainly wasn’t a place for business meetings.
“You’re in the security bus
iness.”
“I am.” I took a long swallow of beer. Warm and definitely past its prime.
“You’re setting up a security system for my father’s company?” She’d pulled a yellow pencil from her purse and was tapping the eraser on the table.
“We’ll be installing a complete security system for Synco Systems. State-of-the-art motion detectors, smoke detectors, door monitors, window monitors—”
“Mr. Moore—”
“Please, call me Skip.” I took another sip from the bottle. It wasn’t as bad this time. By the end of the bottle it would be just fine.
She paused for a moment, considering my request. “I can’t do that. Calling you Skip is just a little too informal. Mr. Moore, you know that my husband is president of Synco Systems.”
“Yes ma’am.” So it was Mrs. Conroy and Mr. Moore. Very businesslike.
“And Ralph Walters was vice president of operations, in line to take over the company if something should happen to my husband.”
I wanted her to get to the point. I seriously didn’t care about the hierarchy of her company. She was like Em. A rich bitch who already had hers, and probably didn’t get that I was way down the pecking order. But I quietly waited. I was in line to make over twenty grand, and if it meant dealing with these people for a couple more days, I could do it. I could do anything, almost anything, for twenty grand.
“Mr. Moore, I talked to Ralph Walters’s wife.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “His widow.” Another long pause.
“And—”
Mrs. Conroy pointed the tip of her pencil at me like the barrel of a gun. “And she is convinced that her husband’s death was not a suicide.”
It was my turn to pause. I’d been first on the scene, and when a man has a gun in his hand, and his brains are spattered over his desk, I didn’t know what else to call it but suicide.
“Did you hear me?”
I took another swallow of beer and saw she hadn’t touched hers. “Yes ma’am. Ma’am, I was there.”
“I know.”
“It certainly appeared to be a suicide.”
She paused, giving me a long look. “Mr. Moore, are you a detective?”
