CoverBoys & Curses

by Lala Corriere

  “You okay?” Geoff asked.

  “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

  “Just answer me!”

  “We have to walk right past Carly’s house. I think now would be a good time to really meander. Like to the far left.”

  I wanted to make a dashing beeline to Coal’s inner chamber, but I still had a mind working for me. We continued to meander.

  “I’m into those funky lotus ponds, anyway,” Geoff said, nodding toward the landscaping to the left of us.

  The flowers blossomed in fragrant grandeur. Masses of purple-coned Echinacea and rich lavender burst with color. Manicured rows of herbs rounded out the enthralling blends of sweetness and spice. I had to admit the grounds permitted an experience equal to any botanical garden. And I had to admit my dollars helped pay for the experience.

  “The coast is clear. No sign of anyone I recognize,” I whispered.

  “Which means hopefully no one recognizes you,” Geoff said. “If you ask me everyone around here looks like they’re mostly into themselves. No one’s paying us the slightest bit of attention.”

  “That’s Coal’s house over there,” I pointed.

  “Duh. It’s a subliminal standout.”

  True. The structure marked the far point of the triangle that comprised the compound. Massive, but the architecture subtracted rather than amplified the otherwise blatant capaciousness.

  I panicked. “Geoff, I think after you get us in you should come back out here and be the lookout. I know what I’m looking for in there.” At least I thought I did.

  “No way, Sweets. I’m used to standing out in a crowd, sometimes for being so damn pretty, and sometimes for my fairy black ass. They may not be looking at me now, but if I hang around out here the neon lights are bound to start flashing around me.”

  “Then let’s get the hell inside.”

  We slipped into the unlocked section of Harlan Coal’s so-called residence, opening the creaking screen door. Beyond it was his Hall of Records, but for now, the space in front of us seemed safe. Public. Pure.

  Geoff tried to lighten up the gravity heavy in the air. “You have me confused. Here you are, a girl who grew up with everything, and yet you thought that a man with a wooden kitchen table and a futon as his sole possessions could show you the light?”

  “I thought money might be the root of all evil. I thought he was a happy minimalist. And I guess I thought he’d at least appreciate a Van Gogh.”

  “More like Van Gogh’s ear.”

  Or his penis, I thought. I glanced over toward the photographs at the far corner of the room. Nothing we could use.

  “And what do we have behind door number one?” Geoff touched the massive teak door centered amidst the wall of solid rock.

  I had already snapped photographs of the outer room just in case there might be something I had overlooked, and to be certain. Certain of what? I wasn’t certain at all.

  Geoff pulled out a leather case from his deep cargo pants’ pocket and zipped it open.

  “What’s all that?”

  “Your everyday tumbler picks,” he said.

  “You know how to use them? You own them?”

  “I’ve got more talents than you’ve ever imagined, and this is one of my finest specialties. This takes a queen’s sensitivity, light fingers, plus visual acumen and an analytical mind.”

  The lock turned and the large teak door opened. We both stood back and gazed into the narrow chamber in front of us.

  “Come on. Let’s get inside and get this door shut. Just in case.”

  Sure. Just in case, we can die sealed up in a vault rather than out in plain sight.

  Geoff fumbled for the light switch and closed the door.

  “Would you look at this place,” I whispered. “Some Hall of Records.” Old video tapes, DVD’s and CD’s framed the walls of the galley shaped room from floor to ceiling. I could also see three boxes full of flash drives behind the glass doors. All locked.

  “A goddamn librarian lined these shelves. Take photos. I can’t pick those locks without busting something obvious,” Geoff said. He had already spied the second locked door.

  I took twenty or so quick photographs. The light was dim but doable.

  Geoff groaned, “This lock is a little more challenging. I need to get my gun.”

  “Gun? What the hell are you doing with a gun?”

  Geoff pursed his fingers to his lips, shushing me. “A snap gun. A fancy lock pick, that’s all. Chill out. Don’t get all freaky on me now.”

  “Right.” I used the zoom to take more photos.

  “Holy mother of shit!” Geoff wailed as the second door flew open.

  “What is it?”

  “Let’s just say your guy isn’t exactly a minimalist,” Geoff said, stepping aside.

  “Holy shit is right,” I mumbled. “Look at this place. There’s more fine art and collectibles in here than at The Louvre.”

  Geoff began pushing buttons on a remote control he found atop a stainless steel cocktail table. Music came on, lights dimmed, and skylights opened.

  “Just get some photos and let’s get out of here,” Geoff said with a new warble in his throat. “I’ll take a quick look through some of these closets and drawers.”

  Baffled by the sheer opulence in our surroundings, neither one of us heard the screen from the outer door creak open.

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Move! Fast!

  Following closely behind Geoff’s lead, I snapped photo after photo. I stopped focusing on any one thing, relying on the memory of the camera.

  “Get a load of this body vat,” Geoff said, rubbing his hand on the polished obsidian walls of an oversized jetted bathtub.

  “Okay, now I’m freaking out and you can’t stop me. I took the guy for a sitz bath in holy water or dipping into a horse trough. Anything but this.”

  “And this,” Geoff squealed with the distinct sound of delight.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. I saw a fountain filled with crushed ice.

  “This be a urinal, sweetie,” Geoff said. “There’s some restaurant around here that’s had something like it for years. Guess their male customers get a kick out of causing their own meltdowns. Even your very own Queen Geoff enjoyed pissing in it.”

  “Let’s check out the bedroom, then get the hell out of here. I don’t want to be around when the fresh ice arrives.”

  I could just imagine Armand replenishing any yellow ice as part of his daily duties. And who would do it now?

  “It makes me sick, but I guess it’s hardly criminal,” I said, taking more and more photographs.

  “Yeah, but this is,” Geoff said from across the silk leopard printed bedspread. He held up a medicine bottle from the top drawer of a nightstand.

  “What are they?”

  “Most certain they are roofies. You know. The date rape drug. And why I’m guessing no victims are coming forward. They don’t remember a damn thing.”

  “What the hell is going on here?” the voice screamed from behind me. I was so startled I dropped my camera down the plunging basin of the bathtub.

  “What are you guys doing in here?” the vituperative voice demanded.

  “Just calm down,” Geoff warned. “All we’re doing is taking a little look.”

  I felt the instant release of warm liquid streaming down my right pant leg. I will forever know the meaning of the phrase ‘it scared the piss out of me’.

  Panic rushed across my face, but not as much as the horror that painted the face of Sterling.

  “What is this place?” Sterling gasped. She held a book in her hand that had Coal’s name written across the cover.

  “This is our Doctor Coal’s private domain. Cozy, isn’t it?” I answered.

  I had climbed down into the bathtub to retrieve the camera, but now I wanted out of there, even with the embarrassment of the wet pant leg.

  “No, really. What the hell is this place?” Sterling whispered.

 
Geoff paced his words, “What Lauren is saying is true. We obtained some information that maybe everything isn’t so cool over here so we came to check it out. Dr. Coal is a fraud. More than a fraud.”

  Sterling’s eyes devoured the sights in front of her, in one swift gulp of too much information. She recognized the signs of wealth and she was standing amidst pure luxury. I didn’t know if she was dating Coal, or more than that. It didn’t matter.

  On the shiny stainless table, she spied one of her prized Faberge Eggs she had acquired from the Forbes estate. She didn’t even realize it was missing from the store.

  And that is exactly when I spied the rare elephant statue sailing on his sea of blue lapis lazuli. The one I had seen in his office. I took several photos but I didn’t dare touch it.

  How did it get there? Maybe it wasn’t one of a kind. Maybe there were thousands of them.

  “We need to leave. Now,” I said.

  It didn’t take another word of instruction. Geoff threw the bottle of pills inside his fanny pack, I tossed the camera into my bag and grabbed Sterling’s rigor mortis-like arm. She cradled the egg with her other one, unable to turn away from the affluent abyss that was Dr. Coal’s private paradisio.

  The inner door closed automatically behind us. The tampered locks showed a few scratches, but you would have to look close. Geoff closed both doors and the lock snapped shut.

  “We’ve got to move fast,” Geoff said.

  “You go home, Sterling. Forget about all of this,” I said.

  “Bullshit, girlfriend. I’m going with you. I can’t stay around here and I don’t want to go home.”

  “She’s right,” Geoff said. “Just look at her. She’ll break down the moment anyone walks up to her. We have to stick together.”

  “Okay. But once we see these photos, we need to get some help.”

  “You’re not talking about that dufous Detective Wray?” Sterling scowled.

  “He’s all we have.”

  The three of us scurried into Geoff’s car. Sterling broke down and started to whimper, clutching her treasured Faberge. “I thought he was a good man,” she said. “Daddy liked him. He never went after me like all the other guys.”

  It dawned on me she had no idea what was really going on, about the same time I became embarrassed when I remembered my urine soaked pants pressed against Geoff’s leather passenger seat.

  And then my mind’s eye flooded me with memories. The guys with the camera at the hotel. When I had first arrived. One of them had a long braid. The guys at my gala. One of them wore dark sunglasses. It was Harlan Coal!

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Thick with Blood & Money

  Detective Wray sat studying the polygraph report while biting his lower lip and thumping his heavy thumb on the final page. Harlan Coal, in spite of all his brainwave-psycho-babble garbage therapy, and from behind his perfect veneered teeth and his handsome manners, failed the polygraph. At a negative nineteen it was damning. But inadmissible.

  He called Victor Romero.

  “Any word on that flash drive our girls found out there in the desert?”

  Romero chuckled. “Hell, no. No way could our forensics team do anything with it. They sent it up to the big guys at Quantico. That means it might be months.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Just sent you an email,” Romero said.

  “Give it to me the old-fashioned way. Talk to me, buddy.”

  “I’ve done a little more homework and there’s something you should know. Your Dr. Coal has a cousin.”

  “So?”

  “So they go way back. Thick and tight. Big money going back and forth between them. The cousin was some hotshot New York real estate tycoon but somehow ended up in your fair city. Looks to me like this cousin set Coal up in that compound of his.”

  “Come on. Families run thick with blood and money. So what?”

  “If you’d done your homework with that fancy smancy department of yours you would know that this cousin is the one who reported the gun stolen. The gun that was used for the suicide—or murder—of our Tucson’s Payton Doukas.”

  “Fuck! Give me his name,” Wray said.

  “Her name is Gabriella Judd Criscione.”

  STERLING TOOK OVER the research, trying to find the artist of the elephant sculpture or any evidence that is was mass produced. Without that we knew the drill. We were stuck with rumors, libel, false accusations or whatever else they called it in a court of law.

  We all knew what was behind those locked cabinets but I wasn’t going to the police without hard evidence, in spite of the insistence from my new team of Sterling and Brock. And Queen Geoff.

  “He loves you, you know,” Sterling said.

  “Who?”

  “Brock. You’re a fool if you let him get away.”

  “He’s helped me out a lot. Who’d have figured him for the good guy?” I said.

  “You blind woman. He loves you but you just won’t let him in.”

  TWO DAYS LATER my cell rang, even after I’d gone through the hassle of changing the number in order to avoid talking to Harlan Coal.

  “You didn’t listen to me. You stayed. You snooped. You saw. Now it’s all up to you. You better watch your back or you won’t get out alive.”

  THE MORE HARLAN COAL thought about it the more his blood pressure surged.

  “That stupid bastard,” he said aloud. And his soliloquy continued.

  “We had Carly Posh in our hands. We have Sterling Falls and all of her inheritance. What the fuck?”

  He had to go to the farm. That pissed him off, but he had the only other keys to the ant cells. A long drive, and doing Armand’s job.

  Furious at a dead Armand for fueling his dick where it didn’t belong, Coal would make the best of it. While he was at the farm he might as well have a little fun.

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  The Black Sheep

  STERLING LEFT ME a voicemail. She first told me that she found nothing on the elephant sculpture. Perhaps it was an artist from a third world country or something. Nonetheless, it didn’t appear to be mass produced. Sterling pointed out that even if we did find it to be a true original we couldn’t possibly know when or how Coal acquired it. And then her voice took a blunt turn toward sadness. She reminded me that she had lost, too. Her mother had died during childbirth. Her birth. And now her father. And two of her best friends, too. More or less she was telling me once again to get over myself and leave my pity party behind.

  DETECTIVE WRAY JUST happened to be in the neighborhood. Old line that I was fond of using. No matter. I knew Brock had sent him. I knew he wanted the photographs. I had delivered him the originals of those I had found in the golf bag. I kept copies.

  “I hear you just might have some others,” Wray said. “Not saying I know how you got them. None of my business.”

  “There’s a problem with those,” I said. My camera was missing. I know I left it on my kitchen counter. I know it! “It seems I’ve lost them.”

  “You’re kidding me,” Wray said. “You fucking broke into the man’s home, took photographs, and lost them? Don’t you have a fucking photographer on your staff?”

  A whole lab, I thought. I couldn’t explain it.

  And then I remembered. I had a missing set of keys. But the locks had been changed. And I had an alarm system. No. I had simply misplaced the damn camera.

  I called Geoff into my office as Detective Wray walked out. “Do you think Sukie somehow got her hands on my camera?”

  “Like the camera we used to risk our lives and take those photographs inside The Centre?”

  “Yeah. That one.”

  Geoff slumped into the sofa in front of my desk, plopping his legs up on the cocktail table. That always meant I was in for an earful.

  “Brujeria,” he said.

  “More voodoo?”

  “It’s not just voodoo. The Catholics adapted many of our beliefs and rituals. Brujeria is a blockage. It’s negative energy
prohibiting good energy. You don’t need pendants and talisman and potions anymore, Lauren. You need to find Ohbeahman. This is balance. This is karma.

  DETECTIVE WRAY CALLED Harlan Coal in for a second polygraph and interview. Coal refused, citing his busy calendar. He was out of the city and unavailable. He also cited his previous cooperation and something called rights. Wray cited something about a missing mental health worker that just turned up slashed to death. Coal didn’t seem to know anything about that.

  I ACCEPTED THE lunch invitation. I’m not certain why. The caller said he was a friend of my family’s. He said we had met once a long time ago. And he invited me to join him at one of my favorite restaurants—Catrozzi’s. And there was something familiar about his voice.

  After almost finishing one glass of chardonnay and pissed I was stood up by some stranger, I summoned the waiter for my check, and then the old man with a cane and a fedora joined me at my table, removing his hat as he took his seat.

  “Do I know you?” I asked.

  “I imagine you’ve seen me around,” he said, after ordering another glass of wine for me, one for himself, and their famous platter of antipasto. “It was very good of you to meet me today. And very brave.”

  The voice registered with me. But when? Where? Who was this elderly man that called me brave?

  The wine arrived promptly and he gestured a toast. I acquiesced and returned the civil gesture.

  “My late wife had magnificent red hair just like yours,” he said.

  “Thank you. Now will you please tell me why I am here?”

  The man shuffled his napkin into his lap and dived into the olives and salami.

  “It’s about family. A good family you need to know about.”

  “Go on,” I said.

  He swirled his wine glass, pausing as if gathering both his breath and his words.

  “Would you agree with me that all families have a black sheep?”

  Maybe I nodded. Maybe I sat motionless.

  “We do, you know. You and me.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, but it’s time for me to go.” I reached for my purse.