The Dark of Day

by Barbara Parker

  “Billy, please.”

  “It’s a fine idea. I know what. Come with me to Antigua for the weekend. I’m leaving Saturday to check on the hotel, but we can have some time together. Fly back on Monday or whenever you like. I’ll be there a week.”

  “Some of us have eight-to-five jobs,” she said. “Billy, I need another favor, and don’t say no. Alana auditioned for a DVD, and she was trying to get her tapes back so they wouldn’t turn up on the Internet. You’ve just told me she knew Harold Vincent. Alana was renting a room from Tisha Dulaney, who works for Vincent—and sleeps with him. It’s just too cozy not to mean something.”

  Billy glanced at her, then back at the street. “And?”

  “And I’d like for you to ask Harold Vincent about Alana. If she was murdered by someone in the pornography business—”

  Billy laughed in disbelief. “I’m not going to do that.”

  “Why not?”

  They were at the light on Alton Road, waiting for traffic to clear so he could take a right onto the causeway, heading for his house on Star Island.

  Billy said, “Look. I don’t know Harold Vincent. I choose not to know him. If I go over to Harold’s place or have any contact with him, people will find out. They will wonder if I am buddies with a man who makes adult movies and runs a quasi-legal gambling operation on the Web. I am not Harold Vincent’s friend.” When C.J. started to speak, he held up a hand. “No. No. I can’t do it. By the grace of God I was admitted into the elite group of investors in The Aquarius. We are waiting for congressional approval. If the media find out that I am in any way connected to a pornographer, even by association, I’m fucked. Can I spell it out for you more clearly?”

  C.J. couldn’t see Billy’s eyes behind the dark glasses, but she didn’t like the tone of his voice. “Forget I asked.”

  A horn sounded. Billy shot the driver the bird and went ahead. “I’m sorry, baby.” He picked up her hand and brought it to his lips.

  She pulled away.

  “Do we have PMS tonight?”

  “For God’s sake, Billy. Just take me to my office. You’re right, I have too much on my mind.”

  “What is the matter with you lately? Snap out of it.”

  “Sure. Snap out of it.”

  He looked at her and shook his head. Neither of them spoke until the car finally stopped at the entrance to the Met Center.

  C.J. got out with her briefcase and shoulder bag and leaned back in. “Thanks for the rescue.”

  “Any time.” He smiled. “Hope you feel better soon.”

  As the Jaguar pulled away, C.J. realized that whether she snapped out of it or not would make no difference to Billy Medina.

  chapter TWENTY- EIGHT

  judy Mazzio lifted the bottle from the ice bucket and refilled Harold’s glass, pouring down the side to keep it from foaming. She topped hers off and touched the glass to his. The crystal made a soft ding.

  “Old times, good times,” Harold said.

  “We already drank to that,” Judy reminded him.

  “Then you say the toast.”

  “Let’s see. . . . Champagne to your real friends and real pain to your sham friends.”

  Laughing, Harold brought the glass to his lips. The bones of his wrist were like knobs. His curly hair had turned gray and retreated even farther on his high forehead. But hell, Judy thought, twenty years hadn’t been kind to either of them. Her ass had dropped, and she’d made good friends with Miss Clairol.

  They were on the balcony of Harold’s penthouse apartment in Surfside. It wrapped around the southeast corner, so you could look down the Intracoastal Waterway arrowing toward Miami, lights everywhere, or you could see the ocean, a nice view in the daytime, no doubt, but, this time of night, kind of a downer. Harold kept his chairs right in the middle, like he couldn’t decide.

  Judy sipped from her champagne flute. She had brought him a chilled bottle of Dom Perignon, his favorite. “So. You were saying. Alana wanted her tapes, but you didn’t want to give them to her.”

  “Why should I? She didn’t ask nicely. She called all hours of the day and night. She came up to me when I was having dinner at a restaurant. She threatened to go to the police. I said, go ahead. You signed a release. You’re over eighteen. There is nothing about it that isn’t legal, sweetheart, so what are you going to do besides embarrass yourself?”

  A sly smile appeared. “And you know, Judy, if she’d made it big in Hollywood—and she had a good shot, in my opinion—those tapes were worth hanging on to.”

  “For what, the money?”

  “Hell no, for the fun of it. Hey, look at this, Alana Martin back in the day.”

  “Alana’s friend said it was an underage role.”

  “Listen, it started out this way. What she wanted, Alana, was a part in a feature film I was producing. It wasn’t porn. It was straight to DVD, but legit. Guns, babes, drug dealers, cops. A solid script, shot on location in the Bahamas. She was already over there for the week, staying at the Paradise Island Hotel. We were introduced, and she says are you doing movies, and I said yes, I am, and she says, oh, I’m an actress. So I said let me pick you up at the hotel tomorrow, let’s see how you do. The minute Alana took her clothes off I could see she wasn’t right for it. She had no body, this girl. The director said okay, let’s try her out for one of the Internet-download bits. It didn’t work. You can’t fake it. You need to like what you’re doing. Her heart wasn’t in it. We shot the movie on Andros Island. My friend has a place there, lets me stay whenever I want. You ought to come over sometime. It’s right on the beach. Get away from it all. Jesus, I can’t believe you’re a private investigator.” Harold gave a raspy laugh and raised his glass. “Who would’ve thought? But I always knew you had the brains. Always knew that. Congrats, babe.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re happy? Making enough dough? Getting laid?”

  “No complaints. Hal, I’m thinking you ought to burn the tapes. You know, out of respect for the family.”

  He thought about it. “I will. I will do that. Jesus, what a terrible, terrible thing.” He tipped back his glass.

  Judy reached for the bottle. “You’re a decent guy, Hal. I always thought so.” She poured more champagne into their glasses. “You played fair with me. With all the girls. Nobody had anything bad to say about you.”

  “You were the best, Judy. I say that with all sincerity. You shouldn’t have quit.”

  “It was time.”

  “To my brown-eyed girl,” Harold said. “L’chaim.”

  They touched glasses and drank.

  Judy said, “Alana supposedly had a contact in Hollywood. Was it true? Or was it just wishful thinking?”

  “Who knows, with that kid? One thing for certain, she had her mind made up she was going to be a star.” He shook his head, and his brow furrowed. “They like them skinny these days. I don’t get it.” He shifted in his chair to put Judy in the light. “God, you’re gorgeous.”

  “I’m pushing fifty, Hal.”

  “Look at those boobs. Those legs. Gorgeous.”

  “Look at you. Successful, a good business, traveling all over. And grandkids.”

  “Yeah, they’re great. I’ll show you their pictures. My son should have turned out so well, and his wife—don’t get me started.”

  Judy said, “Back to Alana. Supposedly there was somebody here in Miami helping her get in the movies. Did she mention that?”

  “Yeah, she did.”

  “Did she say who?”

  “You might know this name. Milo Cahill.”

  “The architect,” Judy said.

  “He fancies himself a player, but you ask me, he was blowing smoke. He promised to personally introduce her to a casting director who could get her a part. Milo used to be in L.A., but come on. That’s not how it works. If he wasn’t, you know, a little on the fruity side, I’d say he was trying to get in her pants.”

  “You’ve met him?”

  “When he fir
st got to Miami, we were introduced at a club. He wanted to buy the right property and meet the right people. I offered my guidance. I drove him around, showed him what was what and who was who. I took him and a bunch of his snotty friends to dinner at Joe’s for stone crab, cost me over two grand, and you know what? He never reciprocated. Never returned a phone call. He bought a house but I never saw the inside of it. That’s some kind of gratitude, isn’t it?”

  “What a jerk,” said Judy.

  “I don’t give a damn. I don’t. This place is full of phonies, Miami, everybody on the make. Except for New York and Vegas, the rest of the country has gotten so uptight it makes you want to cry. I have very few friends here anymore, Judy. I fly up four, five times a year to play some golf, keep my stockbroker honest, and visit my grandkids. If it wasn’t for them, I’d never come back, I swear to God. You’d like my place on Aruba. Anytime you want to visit, the door is open.”

  “I might do that.” Judy held up the bottle to the light, then poured the last of it for Harold. “So, do you think Milo Cahill wanted something from Alana?”

  “Of course. Milo never gives something for nothing.” Harold finished his champagne and set the glass on the table. “How about if I put some more of this on ice? It’s not the Dom, but it’s good stuff.”

  “I’d better not, Hal. I’ll be too drunk to drive home.”

  “Drive home? No, you gotta stay a while. We have some catching up to do.”

  “I need to ask you one more thing. The night Alana disappeared, she was at a party on Star Island, hosted by Billy Medina. You know him, don’t you?”

  “I’ve met him a few times. He has a hotel and casino on Antigua, but I hear it’s not doing so well. He’s another jerk.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “A couple of weeks ago he comes down to Aruba with his partners, and they wine and dine me. They rent a boat, they buy me a new fishing reel, they take me to every club on the island. Billy invites me to their suite, I bring some girls, and we have a nice time. He says he’s interested in online gaming, so what do I do, schmuck that I am? I spend two days showing him my operation, telling him everything I know, like a father to a son almost, thinking we could work out a deal, but he’s gone the next morning, checked out of his hotel, and never so much as a thank-you. You know what? I don’t care. Life is too short.”

  “Did Billy ever get into it? Online gaming?”

  “He’s trying, but I predict he’ll fail. I don’t think he’s got the capital to make a go of it. The man’s all show. Anyway, it’s getting restricted more and more, the goddamn government trying to control everything we do, their noses up everybody’s skirt. Now you make your money in porn. That’s where the action is, till they take that away too.”

  “It’s a different world,” she agreed.

  Harold set his empty glass on the table. “You’re not gonna stay, are you?”

  “I really can’t. I’m sorry.” Judy took his hand, entwining their fingers. She gave it a squeeze. “I should be going.”

  “I’d like to call you sometime,” Harold said. “We’ll get together.”

  “That would be nice.”

  “We always had fun, didn’t we?”

  “We sure did.”

  He pushed himself from his chair, shook out his leg, straightened the waist of his trousers, and passed a hand over his head. Judy took his arm as they walked back through the living room. She could feel the bones through his skin, cool and slack. Their reflections moved in the long, mirrored wall, but she didn’t look. Twenty-five or thirty years ago she would have seen a man in a shiny silk suit passing out hundreds as tips, and a woman with long black hair, over six feet tall in her platform shoes. He’d have his friends with him, and they’d be going to a table right up front, and after the show Frank Sinatra or Flip Wilson or whoever would come over to say hello, and he’d pull his chair close and whisper in her ear, would she like to come up to his suite later? Sometimes yes, but more often, she would give him a look through her lashes and say thanks, but I’m already occupied.

  “It’s true, Hal. We did have us some fun,” she said.

  “Wait, sweetheart. I should tell you this. A reporter, a woman from Channel Eight, some Spanish chick, I forget her name, she came by here and wanted to talk to me. She started asking questions about you. She wanted to confirm that you worked for me in Nevada. I showed her the door. I didn’t tell her anything, but I thought you should know.”

  Judy sighed.

  Harold put an arm over her shoulder. “You’re so beautiful. Why don’t you stay for a while? Old times.”

  She held his face and kissed him. “Take care of yourself, Hal.”

  chapter TWENTY- NINE

  barefoot, sitting in her desk chair at home, C.J. spent the evening reading depositions on her computer. As she scrolled through, making notes, she listened with one ear to an argument on television about Jason Wright’s motive for suicide. The psychologist was sure that Jason had been unable to accept his homosexuality. The spokesman from a gay-rights group took offense. “His sexuality has nothing to do with it. He was clinically depressed. His friend was murdered, he was viciously attacked in the tabloid media, and, on top of that, he was fired from his job.”

  The host asked them to listen to a comment from a friend of Alana Martin. “We all went out, and it was like really late, so we stayed at Jason’s apartment. I slept on the sofa, but they were in the bedroom together. Yeah, I think they had a relationship.”

  The telephone rang, drowning out the rest of it. Dylan was asleep out on that end of the desk, a mound of gray fur. C.J. had to reach around him to get to the phone. She checked the caller ID before picking up. “Hi, Judy.”

  “I hope it’s not too late to call.”

  “No, no, I was working. Wait, let me turn down the background noise. I keep the TV on in case they say something I need to respond to. They’re talking about Jason at the moment. Alana’s parents were on earlier. They’ve given up on recovering her entire body. Her funeral will be on Sunday. The city expects so many people, they’re going to close off the street, and Entertainment Tonight will broadcast it live. It’s insane.” C.J. aimed the remote. “I’m going to turn this off. You called me. I should let you talk.”

  Judy said, “I just left Harold Vincent’s apartment.”

  “No.”

  “I told you I knew him. It cost me a bottle of Dom Perignon to find out that Harold has Alana’s audition tapes. He said he wouldn’t give them to her because she was rude, the way she demanded them.”

  “My God. What else did he say? Was she causing problems for him?”

  “Hal didn’t kill her. I’d bet my last dollar on that.”

  “Damn,” C.J. said. “That would have been so nice, if he had. You know what I mean. I was sure when I talked to Billy that Harold Vincent had something to do with it.”

  She had reported her conversation with Billy Medina to Judy. Most of it. She hadn’t told Judy that Billy was being a pain, because she didn’t want to hear an I-told-you-so, not even from her friend.

  Judy said, “C.J., you want to make me some coffee? I need to come over and talk to you. It really can’t wait till tomorrow.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’d rather not discuss it on the phone.”

  C.J. told her to come ahead, and after saving her notes on her computer, she went downstairs to the kitchen. The coffee was hours old, so she poured it out and started a fresh pot. Passing by the kitchen window, she saw that the lights were on in the cottage. Earlier, Edgar had run around the backyard with the hose, dribbling water from C.J.’s shower onto the plants. She could see him now through the open curtains, notebook on his lap, squinting at a photograph. He had asked when Kylie might be over again. C.J. had told him she didn’t know. She couldn’t bear to tell him the truth: Kylie wouldn’t be back at all.

  Judy had offered to find her. It would be good to know where she lived, in case . . . in case what? Fran had bee
n clear: Stay away from her. Kylie is my daughter, not yours. Since that conversation, C.J. had felt a slow burn. It was unfair. Fran had asked for help with expenses but had never sent a photo, had never put Kylie on the phone to say thank you. Fran had asked C.J. to look after Kylie in Miami, which she had done, and now she was blamed because Kylie had chosen to stay.

  Smiling, C.J. realized she was glad Kylie hadn’t caved in. She deserved to live in a place where her ambition and intelligence might be rewarded. For all her naïveté, the girl had brains. C.J. had noticed this at her own father’s funeral. Fran and C.J.’s mother had been friends, so the Willises had driven from Pensacola to Mayo to attend the services in the town’s only funeral home. Kylie was already wearing glasses. She had brought a book, the first Harry Potter. C.J. asked if she could read something so big, and Kylie had looked up at her with steady gray eyes. “Of course. I’m seven.”

  The telephone rang, breaking into the past. C.J. crossed the kitchen, hesitating only briefly before picking it up.

  Rick Slater apologized for calling her at home. He had just dropped off the Shelbys after driving them and some friends to dinner at the Ocean Reef Yacht Club. He said, “I heard about Jason Wright. They said you called nine-one-one when Jason didn’t answer the door. It must’ve been pretty grim for you.”

  “Yes. It was.”

  “Shelby told some reporters it was a tragedy for the family, et cetera, but then I hear him tell his mother and Don Finch it was the best thing that could have happened.”

  “Hypocritical bastard.”

  Rick asked, “Why were you at Jason’s apartment?”

  “He wanted me to recommend a lawyer, and I was bringing him a list of names. It’s not something I’d ordinarily do, but. . . .”

  “But what?”

  “I had mentioned to Paul Shelby that Jason had no alibi, and at the time I thought Jason was Alana’s lover. I never expected that Shelby or somebody on his staff would leak it to the media.” C.J. leaned against the counter. “My screwup of the week. I schedule them frequently enough to keep myself humble.”