Gator Aide

by Jessica Speart

  The tape ended, but Valerie’s image remained seared in my mind. Whoever sent it must have been Valerie’s cohort, the person who worked the camera. I thought back on everyone I had met so far, trying to figure out who it could be. I ended up drawing a blank. The tape raised more questions than it answered. If Valerie had used it as blackmail, it left me wondering if Hillard and Kroll had been her only two victims.

  I also questioned why it had been sent to me at all. While it could very well be pointing in the direction of Valerie’s killer, it might also have been meant to derail Hillard’s election. Or perhaps Valerie’s accomplice was now worried for his own life. Whoever mailed the tape knew more about me than I did about them.

  As a child of the sixties, I’d cut my teeth on news reports of Vietnam, the secret war in Cambodia, and the Watergate tapes. I had grown up with the likes of Nixon, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman, so I expected people in power to be dishonest more often than not. I felt like a fool for being surprised by any kind of corruption, whether it took place in the ranks of the New Orleans Police Department or involved a girl from the bayou.

  Going back upstairs, I walked into my apartment, where the red light on the answering machine beeped with steady precision. A message had been left by Santou. While I was pleased at hearing from him so soon after last night, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. It was a feeling I’d had ever since discovering the rosary beads inside Vaughn’s apartment. Terri put it down to my fear of yet another failed relationship, but it was more than that. The rosary was an exact match of the one Santou had given me the night I’d gone out with him. And while my heart didn’t want to believe there was any connection, my gut instinct told me the coincidence was just too great. I wanted to trust Jake. But for the moment, I couldn’t. Besides, for all I knew, Santou was also aware of the tape’s existence and anxious to get his hands on it for his own reasons.

  For the time being, I would confide in no one, and that included Charlie Hickok. He’d frozen me out of the case; I saw no reason to run to him with every bit of information I found. I wanted to work on my own for now. If and when I needed his help, I’d be sure and let him know. It was the same arrangement he had laid down to me.

  Playing the tape back, I listened to Santou’s message a second time. The good news was that he had managed to track down Global Corporation. With its base in New York and a subsidiary company in Germany, the owner was listed as one Frank Sabino, with Hillard as chief executive officer. Buddy Budwell headed up the board of directors. The list of goods they dealt in ran the gamut from alligator skins to rip-offs of designer jeans to the buying and selling of diamonds.

  The bad news was that Dolores Williams was in temporary residence at his precinct. Having been caught breaking into Valerie Vaughn’s apartment early this morning, she had been slapped with a charge of first-degree murder.

  Chaos reigned as usual as I made my way down the halls of the precinct. Detectives dressed up as pimps headed out to work, while pimps that had just been arrested tried to pass themselves off as detectives in an attempt to sneak out the door. Santou had left word to steer clear of him if I made the trip over. Up until now, Dolores’s arrest had been kept quiet, with few outside the department—or even within—aware of the fact. If the press got whiff of the news, it would blow up into a front-page scandal.

  While I wasn’t concerned about the effect on Hillard’s campaign, I didn’t need to be spotted by Kroll. By now, I had an inkling of just how dangerous the man could be. Getting on his bad side was something I’d try my best to avoid. Santou had suggested we have as little contact inside the police department walls as possible, and that suited me fine.

  I stopped to ask a clerk directions to the holding cells, and a shock of white hair in the distance caught my eye. Gunter Schuess quickly slipped into a room as the door was shut behind him. The office belonged to none other than Captain Connie Kroll. It seemed Gunter had become Hillard’s liaison in more areas than just foreign affairs. He was probably here to clean up the mess—I felt relatively sure that Kroll would be more than happy to oblige. The fact that Dolores had been arrested in the first place threw me for a loop. Besides Hillard’s apparent connection with Kroll, it was obvious that Dolores was no killer. The entire incident had the smell of a scam about it.

  Getting back into Valerie Vaughn’s apartment had been easier than trying to work my way in to see Dolores. I found myself up against a sergeant who was hot and bored, and liked making me squirm. Thirty pounds overweight, he was the Southern version of Arnold Schwartzenegger gone to seed. In a fight against reality, he had pushed himself into clothes that were far too small. The buttons on his shirt pulled one way, while the buttonholes fought to go the other. The waistband on his pants was undone and folded over a belt that was barely holding on at the last notch. The sergeant sat at a desk facing the doorway and stared blankly at an empty crossword puzzle, his jaw chomping slowly up and down on a wad of bubble gum.

  “I’m here to see Dolores Williams.”

  “No can do, sugar.”

  I pulled out my shield, hoping it might carry some weight. “I’m a federal agent with the Fish and Wildlife Service. This involves a case I’m investigating.”

  “Don’t matter none to me, darlin’.”

  “Would it be possible to at least tell Mrs. Williams I’m here?”

  “Can’t do that for ya, honey.” Chewing on his pencil, the sergeant turned his attention back to the puzzle.

  But I wasn’t willing to be that easily dismissed. I moved to the side of his desk and glanced down at the paper in front of him. The puzzle in the Sunday New York Times had been one of the things that had kept my mind functioning during my three-month stint of depression, where I had subsisted on eating Crackerjacks and sobbing at the zoo. Compared to that, this one was a breeze. Without thinking, I jumped in to help.

  “If you get the answer for six down, you’ll be able to solve four and eight across. It’ll also give you a big clue for twelve down.”

  It was enough to get the sergeant’s attention. It also came close to getting me blown out of the room as his macho pride shifted into overdrive.

  “No shit, darlin’. What are you—the puzzle queen?”

  Backtracking, I made the usual female genuflections, hoping to work my way into his good graces. “No. It’s just that I’ve seen this puzzle before. Not that I was able to figure it out myself. But I did see the answers for it.”

  His teeth chewed up along the body of the pencil until he reached the blackened stub of the eraser. Biting it off, he rolled the eraser around on his tongue before spitting it out. “So, you got a good memory, huh?”

  I moved behind him to get a better view. White horizontal lines marked the back of his neck like a road map where folds of fat overlapped, untouched by the sun.

  “Only because I worked so long on this puzzle, and just couldn’t get any of it right.”

  “But you remember some of the answers?”

  “I remember six down.”

  “Give it to me.”

  I gave him the word, and then another and another, until he finally came up with one of his own. He grinned and stretched as twelve down was filled in. Kicking out the chair across from him, he motioned for me to sit down.

  “So, what’s your interest in the lady back there?”

  “I’m working on the case involving the alligator found at Vaughn’s apartment. I haven’t had a break on it yet, and my boss is on my back. If I could at least speak to Mrs. Williams, I’d be able to report back to him on it. It might help to get me off the hook for a while.”

  The sergeant picked at a pimple on his forehead. “That wouldn’t be Charlie Hickok you have to report to now, would it?”

  “The one and only. He’s been making my life a living hell.”

  The sergeant’s stomach rumbled, and I pulled out a Milky Way bar from my bag, laying it on the desk. He stared at it for a moment before picking it up. “That’s some l
ousy bribe.”

  “I know. But it’s all I’ve got. Unless you’d like a few more clues on that crossword puzzle.”

  Ripping open the wrapper, he took a bite as he tipped back his chair and glanced around. “Hickok, huh? There was a time I thought being a wildlife agent would be a pretty sweet deal. Then I met that man. Decided to become a cop, instead. I feel for ya on that one, darlin’.”

  Finishing off the candy bar, the sergeant got up from his chair and walked across the room, filling the doorway as he stretched, glancing up and down the hall. Sauntering back to the table, he put his full concentration on the crossword puzzle in front of him. He spoke without looking up. “It’s lunch hour, so you’re safe. But five minutes. That’s all I can give ya.”

  I was willing to take anything I could get. Thanking him, I made my way down the corridor to where Dolores sat in a cell all alone. She looked like hell. I couldn’t be sure whether it was from drying out or mourning for Fifi, but she looked as if she had aged ten years overnight. The fine network of wrinkles around her eyes formed heavy pouches like so much extra baggage. Her mascara ran in black muddy rivulets, settling in polluted reservoirs on either side of her nose. Her girlish flip was gone, replaced by coarse, peroxided hair that had been pulled back sharply from her face. Looking old and haggard, she quietly sobbed as she twisted the shreds of what had been a tissue in her hands. No more the former glamour girl working hard to retain her youth, she was a shriveled old woman behind bars. She cried out upon seeing me, her mouth working back and forth like a mute trying to speak. Grabbing the bars in front of her, she shoved Fifi’s collar toward me.

  “They murdered my Fifi!”

  I held on to her hand. “What happened this morning, Dolores?”

  “They poisoned her and left her to die a horrible death.” More tears filled her eyes as her nose began to run. Wadding shreds of the tissue together, she blew her nose hard, using up all the slivers she had pieced into a round ball. I searched through my purse and handed her a pile of blue tissues that must have been stashed at the bottom of my bag for years. Her hands shook as she ripped the tissues one by one into thin strips.

  “You wouldn’t have anything to drink in there, would you? I’d feel a lot better if I had a drink.”

  It was impossible not to feel sorry for her, and angry at whoever had brought this about. “We’ll find who did this to Fifi. I promise. But you have to tell me why you went to Valerie Vaughn’s apartment this morning and broke in.”

  Dolores’s bark of a laugh burst out, and for a moment she was her old self again. “Is that what they’re saying? I wonder which of the bastards cooked that one up.”

  “You didn’t break in?”

  “Hell, no. I had a call from someone telling me to show up right away if I wanted to get my jewelry back. So I went. When I got there, the door was already open. There was a crowbar on the floor, and the place looked as though a hurricane had hit it. I didn’t even have a chance to rummage through anything before these idiots showed up and arrested me.”

  “Who was it that called you in the first place?”

  “How the hell should I know?” Dolores’s eyes welled up with tears again. “It doesn’t matter anyway, now that my baby’s dead. Christ, I need a drink.”

  She’d been set up, pure and simple. “Do you have a lawyer?”

  The tissues I’d given her lay in shreds, a storm of tiny blue raindrops at her feet. “Hillard’s getting me one.”

  Somehow, I didn’t find that very consoling. No one in their right mind could suspect this fragile old woman of having spent hours neatly slicing up Valerie Vaughn. She couldn’t even massacre a tissue efficiently.

  “I’m sure Captain Kroll will have you out of here and home in no time at all. Has he stopped by to see you yet?”

  Dolores stared transfixed in wide-eyed fright, like an animal caught in a set of bright headlights. “I’m afraid I don’t know who you’re talking about.” She began to cry once more, hiccuping on her sobs.

  If their motive had been to scare her into silence, it had worked. “Dolores, did you ever own a diamond necklace at one time?” Looking at me blankly, she continued to hiccup. “With a large pear-shaped diamond pendant?”

  Dots of red appeared in the middle of her cheeks. “Are you telling me Hillard bought that slut a diamond necklace when he wouldn’t buy one for his own wife? I’ll kill him when I get out of here!”

  I had my answer. Whatever else Dolores knew, she wasn’t about to reveal any more right now. Between Fifi’s death and her incarceration, she had been sufficiently muzzled for the moment. But I had also learned that Kroll frightened even the likes of Dolores, who stood up to both Vinnie and Gunter on a regular basis. Assuring her that she’d probably be home by the end of the day, I promised to check in with her as soon as I could.

  I walked out of the building into the thick, blistering air of midafternoon. Passing images shimmered in sultry heat waves in the street where a swanky black BMW sedan sat waiting, its engine purring quietly. Opening the door to slip in behind the wheel was the tall, slim figure of Gunter Schuess. With little to lose at this point, I ambled over as the car door closed and knocked on the glass.

  Gunter’s head turned slowly in my direction. He stared out through green-tinted sunglasses that lay streamlined against his face. Showing no sign of recognition, he looked away, his hand curling around the gearshift. I rapped harder this time and motioned for him to roll down the window. Taking his sunglasses off, he gazed at me as the glass magically lowered and a blast of cold air rushed out. I rested my elbows on the window jamb, enjoying the coolness as the hot air of the street flowed into his car.

  “Hello, Gunter. Out campaigning for Hillard with our local police?”

  He smiled slightly. “Agent Porter, I didn’t recognize you at first. You do turn up in the strangest places.”

  “When I heard the news broadcast that Mrs. Williams had been arrested, I rushed right over.”

  Gunter’s fingers tightened visibly around the steering wheel as his eyes widened in alarm.

  “Relax, Gunter. It was just a bad joke. There wasn’t any broadcast.”

  He allowed the sliver of a smile to return to his lips.

  “An interesting sense of humor you have, Agent Porter. But, as I’m sure you must realize, this is all an unfortunate mistake. It is being taken care of even as we speak. So you see, I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time. Mrs. Williams has requested there be no visitors. Besides, I thought your jurisdiction was wildlife. Aren’t you a bit out of your element?”

  “I’m still investigating the death of that alligator we found in Vaughn’s apartment. Anything that happens there affects my work. Speaking of work, I have a tip for you on a company with foreign interests that just might be willing to invest some of its business in New Orleans.”

  Gunter’s mouth twitched in amusement as he reached over and turned up the air-conditioning a notch. “Really, Agent Porter. You surprise me. Who would ever guess you have such a wide range of interests? So tell me. What company might this be?”

  “It’s called Global Corporation. Ever hear of it?” I watched for a reaction, but Gunter didn’t flinch.

  “No. I haven’t.”

  His eyes never left my face as the car window magically began to close, remaining open only a crack. Then, almost imperceptibly, they flickered to the right for the briefest moment. I turned to see what had caught his attention. Connie Kroll was hurrying out of the precinct and heading toward the car. Bounding down the steps, Kroll suddenly caught sight of me and stopped dead. Pretending to search his pockets, he quickly turned and veered off in another direction. I followed the figure as it scurried across the street.

  “Isn’t that the captain over there?”

  Gunter’s eyes remained straight ahead as Kroll ducked into a nearby coffee shop. “I wouldn’t know.”

  He shut the remaining inch of window, cutting off any further conversation. Shifting into gear, the BMW rolled o
ut into traffic and disappeared into the afternoon crush of vehicles filling the downtown street.

  Exhausted from the heat, I went home and lay down on my bed to take a short rest before picking up Terri. The wooden blades of the overhead fan clacked out a soft lullaby, and the air blew gently across my face. A whiff of salt water hung on the breeze as though the sea were outside my window, instead of the scent of mimosa and magnolias from the garden below. I knew I was dreaming as the sound of the fan turned into the putt-putt engine of a small boat guiding me through the swamp. Twilight hung heavy, and bands of phosphorescent insects flickered like Japanese lanterns flying through dead cypress trees. My hand brushed against cool, velvety green lichen and wisps of Spanish moss caressed my face. A bullfrog balancing on a lily pad added its deep bass to a choir of cicadas that had burst into song. Twilight faded into night. A lone white egret slowly flew off, its long legs trailing behind like slivers of silver ribbon. I found myself carried down a finger of still, black water as all sound began to fade. Only the beat of my heart grew louder, turning into the roar of thunder that shook sleeping birds from their nests in the trees. Long fingers of lightning cracked open the sky like a broken egg, and tiny birds rained down on my head. A final peal cleared the storm away. No longer in the boat, I found myself standing on a small spit of land. I waited, alone and entombed in the dark. A small beam of light drew near, like a firefly that had lost its way. Shimmering in a kaleidoscope of color, Valerie Vaughn was revealed in all her sliced glory, her hundreds of gashes a bright carnival of lights. Gliding toward me, her eyes locked onto mine, and each light turned into a brilliant diamond. She reached out, but was suddenly drawn down into a quicksand of swamp. Soon, only her hair lay splayed on the surface, around it a bloody halo of water. I stood perfectly still, my heart reverberating among the cypress and moss, its sound echoed up by cicada and bullfrogs, fireflies flashing on and off to its beat. I closed my eyes, the rhythm of my heart roaring through my body as I felt Valerie Vaughn clamp her hand around my ankle with the strength of a heavy chain. Wrapping herself around me, her body lifted out of the water and she whispered in my ear, drawing me close, until I was pulled off that small spit of land. Cold swamp water covered my legs, my waist, swirling up over my chest and rushing into my lungs as I clawed to reach the surface. But Valerie held me down, draping herself on top of me so that I sank beneath a weight of diamonds, as a muffled laugh roared in my ear.