by Parker
CHAPTER 51
I drove out to see Betty Patton through a much-too-early snowfall. The snow was accumulating on soft surfaces and melting as it hit the roadway. The streets were therefore wet and shiny as I wound through the west of Boston boondocks, and the lawns gleamed whitely. It wouldn't last long; this kind of snowfall never did, and its transience was probably part of why it was so pretty. I had already checked with Brock Patton's office at the bank. He was there, though, of course, in a meeting where he was deciding the course of Western civilization, and could not be interrupted. I didn't mind. I just wanted to be sure I could talk to Betty Patton without him. John Otis opened the front door for me as formally as if I had never had a tuna sandwich with him on Parker Hill. He turned me over to Billie who was just as formal, and she led me down the hallway to a conservatory at the back of the house. Apparently the library, where I'd been before, was Brock's domain.
Betty Patton rose from her little writing desk when I came in and walked toward me stiffly to shake hands. Billie left us.
"Please sit down, Miss Randall," Betty said.
I did. The floor of the conservatory was stone and I could feel the heat radiating gently up from it. Outside the glass walls, the light snow fell straight down, onto the long meadow that sloped down to the river. The room was furnished with sort of fancy garden furniture as if to emphasize the connection between the room and the out-of-doors. There were a lot of plants around. Since the only thing I know about plants is a dozen yellow roses, I didn't know what kind they were, but they seemed to be flourishing.
Betty Patton returned to her writing desk and sat and half turned in her chair to face me. She sat very straight, her hands folded in her lap. Her hair was perfect. Her makeup was flawless. She wore a Polo warm-up suit, in which, I suspected, no one had ever warmed up in the history of fashion.
"You may as well know, up front, Miss Randall," she said, "that our attorneys are preparing legal action against you for the return of our daughter. You stand an excellent chance of being charged with kidnapping."
"I'm all atremble," I said.
I took the embarrassing picture of Betty Patton from my purse and leaned over and placed it on the writing desk face up. She looked at it. And looked quickly away. Her face colored slowly until it was a full blush. Good. She was human. After a moment, she turned the picture over very slowly and placed it facedown on the desk. The snow fell straight down some more outside the glass walls. The heat continued to rise gently from the stone floor. Betty Patton stared at the blank white back of the photograph. She looked out the window. She looked past me at the door I'd come in. She looked back down at the facedown picture.
"Many people allow themselves to be photographed naked," she said.
I didn't say anything.
"Admittedly this is perhaps a bit beyond simple nakedness," Betty said.
I waited.
"I have needs," she said. "Sometimes I can't help myself."
I nodded.
"If you knew what being married to him was like," she said.
"You're not married to the man in the picture," I said.
"Of course not. I was referring to Brock."
I knew that, but I didn't comment.
"The man in the picture is a plumber," I said, "named Kevin Humphries. He did some work for you once. He's dead."
She continued to stare down at the back of the photograph. Then she looked up and her gaze was pretty steady.
"What do you want?" she said.
"This picture is just a sample. There are more." She nodded.
"Tell me about him," I said.
"The plumber?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I want to know," I said.
"And you think you can threaten me with the pictures?"
"Yes."
"He came a year or so ago to put in a bathroom in my part of the house, off my bedroom."
"You and your husband had separate bedrooms."
"Yes. It had nothing to do with intimacy, it's just a matter of each of us needing more privacy."
"Sure," I said. "You were intimate."
"Of course, if it's any of your business."
"Someday I'll figure out what my business is," I said. "How did he get from plumber to lover?"
"Lover," Betty Patton said. "How quaint."
"It seemed so much more ladylike than 'fucker', " I said.
"But the latter is far more accurate," Betty Patton said, and smiled.
At least the corners of her lips moved up. I think she intended it to be a smile. It was awful.
"He was a big, strong man, attractive in a sweaty, capable way, and I could tell he was interested."
I nodded again.
"I ... as I said, I have needs."
"And the pictures?"
"I gave them to him. I wanted him to remember what we'd had."
"Did it occur to you that it might give him some leverage on you?" I said.
"I thought we mattered too much to each other. When it became apparent that we could no longer be together, I wanted him to have something that spoke to him of our intimacy."
"What made you break up?"
Betty Patton looked at me as if I were far too stupid to get in out of the rain.
"I am a married woman, if you hadn't noticed," she said.
"Did Kevin attempt to use these pictures?"
I said. "No, certainly not."
"Did you know he was dead?" I said.
"No, of course not, how would I? I told you we agreed to be apart."
"You didn't seem to have much reaction when I told you he was dead."
"I know, I... I should. We were very close for a while. But you had just thrust that picture at me.... How did he die?"
"Someone shot him in the back of his head while he was sitting in his car outside a restaurant on Route 9."
"My God."
"Would you have any thoughts on that?" I said.
"How awful."
"Any others?"
"No. You think I... because of the pictures?"
"You said he didn't use the pictures."
"He didn't. I didn't mean that. I just meant you might be suspicious."
I nodded. We were quiet. The snow was still steady, melting as it touched the warm glass walls, turning into glistening rivulets, that distorted the gray light.
"There's a thing that's been bothering me," I said. She waited.
"Many of these pictures feature you and Kevin together." She nodded.
"This one is not your standard Polaroid nudie," I said. "Intimate close-ups, longer full shots, interesting perspectives."
She nodded again. There was a deep numbness about her, as if she were slipping further and further below the surface.
"Who took them?" I said.
She stared at me as if she didn't understand the question. I waited. She took in some air and let it out, several times. She opened her mouth and closed it and opened it again.
"What do you mean?" she said.
"Mrs. Patton. You're in a pretty sizable mess," I said. "The only way we are going to get you out of it is if you will talk to me. Who took the pictures?"
She breathed some more and did the mouth-open, mouth-closed thing again. She looked down at the blank back of the photograph, and out the window at the snow, and back at me. She was blushing again.
"Brock," she said.
The name hung in the air between us. She tried to meet my stare but she couldn't hold it, and finally her gaze dropped and then she put her face in her hands.
"Your husband took these pictures of you," I said. She nodded.
"Did the plumber know?"
"Yes."
"What did he think about it?"
"He was a little embarrassed, but. .."
"But?"
"He found me desirable."
"So he didn't care if your husband was standing there with a camera?"
"Well, he still did, a little."
"
And?"
"And we. .." She cleared her throat. "We gave him money."
Jesus Christ.
Betty sat with her face in her hands. I stood up. There was no reason to stand, it was just that I couldn't bear to do nothing. I walked the length of the room, looking at the snowfall, and turned around and walked in the other direction, and stopped by the desk.
"Did you reciprocate?" I said.
She didn't move. Every aspect of her was angular and painful. "What do you mean?"
"Did you take pictures of your husband with other women?" More silence.
When she finally spoke her voice was thin and hard to hear. "Yes," she said.
"The Asian women?" I said.
"You ... Yes. Sometimes."
"What next," I said. "You rent the Fleet Center, invite everybody?"
She didn't speak.
"Here's some things I think," I said. "I think you know that Kevin Humphries was murdered, because I think you agreed to his murder."
Her shoulders hunched tighter.
"Your daughter heard the conversation," I said. "Between you and Cathal Kragan."
Her voice was a thin screech, barely audible. "Oh God," she said.
"Kragan works for Albert Antonioni, and Antonioni wants your husband to be governor. Humphries threatened to go public with the pictures, and one thing would lead to another and Antonioni's plans would blow right out of the water. He or Kragan got wind of the blackmail, probably from you, and that was the end of Kevin Humphries."
She was crying now, her face still in her hands. It was hard for her to cry; the sobs racked out of her paroxysmally.
"I have that about right, don't I." She nodded.
"Millicent?" she said.
"She was in the bathroom when you and Kragan agreed to zip Humphries. She heard it. And when Kragan came in to use the bathroom he saw her, looked right at her, and didn't say a word."
"He knew she heard?" Betty Patton said in her strangulated voice.
"He had to have known," I said. "So when he sent a couple of tough guys to get her away from me, you really think he intended to bring her home?"
"He..."
"Do you?"
Again her throat seemed to have closed entirely, and she struggled to swallow. Then she shook her head. "I don't either."
"My daughter," Betty Patton whispered. "I want my daughter back."
"So she could become the house photographer?" I said.
"You bitch," Betty Patton rasped.
"Yes, you're right. There's no need for that, I'm sorry."
"I don't want them to kill my daughter."
"Good," I said. "We've found common ground."
CHAPTER 52
Billie had brought us some tea, and Betty Patton had poured some brandy into hers, and we had moved to a couple of summerylooking armchairs in the conservatory. The snow was mostly rain now. And the late afternoon had turned dark. "If you tell me everything you know, maybe I can fix this," I said.
"All of it?"
Betty had made a trip to her room and put herself back together. Her voice was still small, but it no longer sounded as if it were being squeezed from a tube.
"My concern is Millicent," I said. "I will do what seems in her best interest."
"And what of me?"
"I don't know. One salvation at a time," I said.
"That's acceptable," she said.
"Oh good," I said. "Talk."
"I don't ... know ... where ... to begin."
"You said something about, I didn't know what it was like to be married to him. Why don't you tell me?"
"Brock ..." She shook her head sadly. "Brock is one of those people for whom too much is never enough. It accounts, I suppose, for his success. He is passionate in pursuit of everything. He always seems to want more. More success, more money, more power, more prominence, more sex, more sex partners, more sexual excitement, more, more, more, more, more, more, more."
"Excelsior," I said.
Betty Patton looked at me blankly for a moment, decided I hadn't said anything worth asking about, and continued.
"At first that excited me. I liked the challenge. I liked ..." She made a searching-for-the-right-word motion with her left hand. "I liked the sense of being the one."
"The one who was enough?" I said.
"Yes."
"But you weren't."
"No. It's not like there was someone else." She laughed without amusement. "There was everyone else."
"Equal opportunity," I said, just to be saying something.
"I assume he's made a pass at you," Betty said.
"Yes."
"A lot of women are flattered. He's powerful, rich, handsome."
"I wasn't flattered," I said.
She looked into her tea cup for a minute, holding it in both hands, then drank some, and put the cup on the tabletop. "He cheated on me from the first day, I guess."
"What did you do?"
"I got even."
"By cheating on him?"
"Yes."
"Did you enjoy that?"
"No."
"Did it bring you closer together?"
"No."
I didn't say anything.
"But it made me feel less like somebody's discarded toy," Betty said. "The worse he got, the worse I became."
"See what you made me do," I said.
She looked at me as if I'd said something puzzling.
"We seemed somehow to fuel each other, we became more perverse and more perverse. I had my plumber. He had his China dolls. I don't remember exactly when we joined forces."
"Joined forces?"
"Yes. I would watch him. He would watch me."
"And the, ah, partners, never minded?" I said.
"At first they didn't know; we had viewing ports."
"Peepholes?"
"Yes."
I was beginning to feel as if I'd spent my life in a convent and was just emerging.
"The strange thing was that it gave us a thing we did together, a, ah, project. We'd plan together who, and how many, and when, and where to meet them, and what to do with them, and that led us to think about photographing them, and then how to do that and we'd buy photography equipment, and, for obvious reasons, we learned how to develop our own pictures. It was the closest we'd been since Millicent was born."
"And no matter what you did, he didn't get jealous."
"No. He seemed to like it."
"Some revenge," I said. "Tell me about Kragan and Antonioni."
"Do you know who they are?" Betty said.
"I know a little," I said. "But go ahead, why don't you tell me whatever you know."
"And this will help Millicent?"
"She will be safe when there's no one walking around with a reason to kill her," I said.
"And you think we can accomplish that?"
"If I know what's going on," I said.
"Is she somewhere safe?"
"Yes," I said, "she's with people who will take care of her."
"Unlike her parents," Betty said.
I waited. Betty poured some more tea for us, and offered me brandy. I shook my head. She put some in her tea and took a sip, and sat back holding the teacup. There was very little light coming in through the wet glass of the conservatory. Had the sun been out it would have been barely visible above the western horizon.
"Brock has long been active in politics," Betty said. "He has been a regular contributor to Republican candidates, and a vigorous fundraiser as well. And several times he has taken a leave and served in one governmental job or another. Now he is running for governor."
"How do you feel about that?"
"I want it very much. I would like to be First Lady of the Commonwealth, and perhaps it would lead to more."
"And Antonioni was going to help him?"
"He was going to help us. I was very much a part of Brock's campaign."
"Another project," I said.
Again Betty gave me the look that suggested she did
n't quite get me. She was not alone. Then she seemed to dismiss the puzzlement and went on talking.
"Albert Antonioni is some sort of mobster from Rhode Island. There is, as you may know, a kind of vacuum in the mob situation here."
"Yes," I said. "And Antonioni wants to fill it."
"Yes. Brock knew Albert when we lived in Rhode Island. We stayed in touch when we moved here. Albert thinks that when he expands into Massachusetts, it would be useful to have a governor he could trust."
"So he has put a lot of money into Brock's campaign."
"Yes."
"And Kragan?"
"Cathal is Albert's man on the scene. Much of what Albert wants to take over is currently owned by the Irish. I think Albert feels the need to have one of their own as a point man. You know how ethnic they all are."
I wasn't sure who they all were. But it didn't seem like I needed to at the moment and I let it pass.
"Does Antonioni own your husband?" I said.
Betty drank some of her brandied tea and stared out at the dying light. She nodded slowly.
"Yes," she said.
"So when you made the mistake of giving those pictures to Kevin the plumber, and he made the mistake of trying to blackmail you with them, you went to Antonioni."
"Kragan," she said. "Albert is remote and prefers it that way."
"And that was the conversation your daughter overheard."
"Yes."
"Do you know that she has found some of the pictures you took?"
"She searched my room? She's not ever. .."
I didn't say anything. Betty heard herself and stopped. "She's seen them?"
"Yes."
Betty continued to look out at the dark rain. "Oh God," she said, "oh my dear God."
CHAPTER 53
Thirty-three King's Beach Terrace was in Swampscott, just over the line from Lynn, facing east across Lynn Shore Drive, where the Atlantic Ocean rolled ashore at King's Beach. I parked on Lynn Shore Drive. Beside me in the passenger seat, Spike, wearing Oakley wrap-around sunglasses, was drop-dead gorgeous in a blue suit, dark blue shirt, amethyst tie, blue socks with some sort of small, round clock pattern in the weave, and black brogues gleaming with polish. He wore a big showy silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. It matched his tie. "Spike," I said, "you are better-looking than Leonardo DiCaprio."
