by Kyra Davis
“We could tell them that a Darth Vader soundalike has been calling to inform me of his love of animals,” I said, “and that a woman who wears a tinfoil hat and thinks that the devil rides on a f lying pig had possession of a camera phone that belongs to a right-wing congressional hopeful who may or may not dress up like a pink, rainbow-tattooed bear while dumping the bodies of his murder victims.”
We both fell silent. I stared at the phone some more and all of a sudden it hit me. “Get us to Park Presidio and then take a right on Lake Street.”
“But your car’s right off Fillmore—”
“We’re not going to my car,” I said. “We’re going to see Mary Ann.”
24
I always choose the most open and honest people to share my darkest secrets with. I worry that they don’t have enough to be ashamed of so I try to share some of my guilt.
—C’est La Mort
Mary Ann looked like she was about ready to go to bed. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was wearing a fluffy pale blue robe. “Is everything okay?” she asked as she ushered us inside.
Anatoly sat down on one of her dining chairs but I remained standing. “What aren’t you telling us about Fitzgerald?”
Mary Ann’s eyes f licked to Anatoly, and then back to me. “I really can’t—”
“Mary Ann, I have reason to believe that Fitzgerald might have had a hand in Melanie’s death.”
“What?” Her hand fluttered to her mouth. “But that’s not possible! Fitzgerald may not be perfect, but he would never…there’s just no way!”
“What did Rick say about him, Mary Ann? I need to know this.”
Again Mary Ann looked over at Anatoly. She barely knew the man and it was unlikely that she was going to talk with him listening in.
Picking up on this he sighed and got back to his feet. “I’ll wait in the car,” he said, giving my shoulder a squeeze as he walked out. Now it was just Mary Ann and myself, in a face-off. Mary Ann looking flustered and worried and me feeling seriously pissed.
“Mary Ann, how long have we been friends?”
“Sophie, this isn’t about us. Rick confided in me, and I really like him! I can’t just tell you his secrets!”
“Not even if breaking his confidence could save lives?”
Mary Ann looked down at the floor. “I’ve met Fitzgerald a few times. He can’t be a murderer. I would know.”
“Mary Ann, I’ve had the dubious honor of becoming acquainted with a few murderers over the past few years and I’ve never suspected a thing until they waved a weapon in my face and issued me a death threat.”
Mary Ann swallowed but still didn’t look up. “Do you really think Fitzgerald is a murderer?” she asked in a small voice.
“Just tell me what you know. If the information you have doesn’t fit with the evidence I’ve gathered, then nothing you say to me will leave this room. But, Mary Ann, Melanie is dead. Eugene is dead. The time for keeping your mouth shut is over.”
Mary Ann’s eyes got a little wider and I could make out the sparkling of tears. “It just didn’t seem like that big of a deal,” she whispered.
“What didn’t?”
“Fitzgerald’s extramarital affair. It happened while he was at that political convention in Iowa. Rick walked in on him while he was having kinky sex.”
“Kinky sex?” I repeated.
“A threesome. A woman and another guy.”
“That’s all Rick told you about the encounter?”
Mary Ann shrugged. “I didn’t ask him for details. He just said it was a kinky ménage à trois. Fitzgerald promised Rick that he wouldn’t do it again, but there were…complications.”
“What kind of complications?”
“Fitzgerald contracted an STD. He was fine, but he passed it on to his wife, and now she can’t have any children.”
“What kind of STD…oh, my God.” Now it was my turn to put my hand to my mouth. “Did Fitzgerald give his wife chlamydia?”
Mary Ann looked up quickly. “How did you know?”
“So what now?” I asked. After interrogating Mary Ann for another fifteen minutes, I had determined that she didn’t have anything more of interest to share and Anatoly and I had gone back to my apartment. We were now both sitting on my bed, me cross-legged, him with his feet planted firmly on the floor, knees supporting his forearms. It was probably the first time we had been in a bedroom together without thinking about sex. Well, that wasn’t entirely accurate, we were thinking about sex, furry sex, which was kind of like thinking about your parents going at it—it shouldn’t freak you out but it absolutely does.
“We can’t go to the police yet,” Anatoly said to the floor.
“That’s usually my line.”
“Yes, and for once I’m agreeing with you.”
“Hmm, I should probably take some satisfaction in that, but the thing is, I’m waff ling.”
“Ah.”
“I just think that if we bring the police a boatload of circumstantial evidence they might actually take the time to sift through it. Right now we have an eyewitness who saw Fitzgerald engage in extramarital sex, a letter from a known furry begging Eugene, who has a history of turning on his bosses, not to use some undisclosed bit of info to ruin both political careers and personal lives. We know Peter had chlamydia, we know Fitzgerald had chlamydia. We also have Fitzgerald’s cell phone that someone found on the body of a murder victim and at least one eyewitness, possibly three, who saw a man dressed up in a furry costume dumping that body. This feels like the makings of an arrest warrant.”
“Not even close.” Anatoly straightened up before falling back onto the bed. “Rick may have confided in his new girlfriend, but we have no reason to believe that he’d agree to talk to the police about it. And even if he did, the witnessed threesome would only help us if Peter Strauss was part of that particular indiscretion. And, Sophie, lots of people have chlamydia.”
“You don’t, right?” I asked, suddenly alarmed.
“No,” Anatoly chuckled, “I’ve been lucky. Still, chlamydia is a lot more common than say, AIDS or syphilis. As for the homeless woman, she’s delusional. It doesn’t matter what she saw because nothing she says will be admissible in court. Tomorrow I’ll check to see what kind of car Fitzgerald has, but even if it’s a green Ford that doesn’t help us much because you don’t even know if the car you saw on the night of Eugene’s murder was a Ford. The only thing we know about the other two witnesses, if they actually exist, is that they’re Asian. That leaves us with Peter’s note and that’s not enough.”
I banged the back of my head against the wall. “Then I don’t know what to do.”
“We start by following Fitzgerald around town. Anne’s given us next to nothing, so I’m switching my attention to her opponent. Early tomorrow morning I’ll head to Pleasant Hill and I’ll stay on his tail for at least another twenty-four hours. When he retires for the evening I’ll nap in the car. So at least for one night you won’t have to deal with me hovering over you.”
“But the furry party is tomorrow night.”
“Sophie, this is more important, I have to—”
“Keep your promise,” I finished for him. “That’s what you have to do. You said you would put that costume on and accompany me.”
“I said I’d do that because I thought it was the best chance we had of getting a lead. I no longer think that’s true. If Fitzgerald really did leave his phone with Melanie’s body, he’s getting very sloppy. Furthermore, he’s acting like a man who wants to get caught.”
“Really?” I scoffed. “Because if that’s the case he might want to consider making it easy for somebody to catch him.”
“Maybe he has. Every one of those threats that you received made some kind of reference to furries, but until a few days ago you didn’t even know what a furry was. Why draw your attention to something that could be so damaging? Why follow you to Neiman’s and make up a story about meeting someone for lunch when he knew
that you would see him dine alone? And why the hell didn’t he cancel his service when he realized that he lost his cell phone?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” I admitted.
Anatoly ran his hand over his evening stubble. “If I was vindictive I’d say that your oversight proves that I’m a better detective than you are.”
“Yes,” I said. “Good thing you’re not vindictive. But, Anatoly, this party may be our only hope of finding a reliable witness who will testify to Fitzgerald’s furrydom.”
“If Fitzgerald’s recent actions have taught us anything, it’s that he’s not adjusting his behavior for the sake of caution. If Fitzgerald goes to these parties, he’ll go to this one, which is why I’ll be keeping my gorilla suit on hand.”
“You will?”
“Yes, if Fitzgerald goes into that party, I’m following him, no matter what the cost to my pride.”
“Oh, Anatoly,” I said, flinging my arms around his neck, “I love—I mean, um, I, I love working with you.”
Anatoly shot me a bemused look. “Since when?”
“Since right now.”
“I see.” He turned to me and stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. “I love…working with you, too.”
“Hey,” I said teasingly, “no copying. If you’re going to flirt at least say something original.”
“Words are your specialty, not mine.”
“And what is your…Anatoly, is that your hand?”
“Shh,” he whispered, “there’s something here I need to investigate.”
25
At work they teach us that there is no such thing as a problem, only an opportunity. So I’m very lucky. I have more opportunities than anyone I know!
—C’est La Vie
That night Anatoly showed me exactly what he specialized in. If we hadn’t run out of condoms by 2:00 a.m. we might not have gotten any sleep at all. The next morning I let him talk me out of going with him on his Flynn Fitzgerald surveillance mission. He went on and on about how Fitzgerald could be a murderer and he could be on to me, whereas he probably had no idea who Anatoly was et cetera, et cetera. He then insisted that the smartest thing for me to do was to stay home and wait for his call. I smiled, nodded and told him he was absolutely right and he took my agreement at face value, which just proves my theory that there is a positive correlation between sexual satiation and gullibility.
Of course Anatoly could never have guessed what my real plans were for the day. No one could have because what I did was completely out of character.
I went to the police and told them everything. It’s not that Anatoly’s arguments against confiding in them didn’t make sense to me, but we had so many little bits of incriminating circumstantial evidence and I hoped that maybe, just maybe, the police would take what I had and run with it.
But they didn’t run, they laughed…and they laughed and they laughed. And when they were done laughing they guffawed.
It was Officers Kelly and Stone whom I spoke to, and to Officer Kelly’s credit, he, unlike the steroid-using-moron he was partnered with, did try to hide his amusement. I watched as he pressed his lips together so hard they started going white. I noted the welling up of tears in his gray-blue eyes, I saw the slight shaking of his shoulders until finally I had sighed and said, “Oh, go ahead.”
And then it was all over. He buckled over, literally clutching the ends of his chair to keep from rolling on the floor in a full-throttle laughing fit.
When he did catch his breath he asked to see Fitzgerald’s cell and Peter’s note, but Anatoly had both of those with him. Kelly promised to look into my story, but I didn’t believe him. Maybe that was because he was giggling when he told me he would. In the end I did go home, but not before buying a quart of gelato and a bottle of Absolut. If anyone had a reason to drink it was me. Besides, between the excessive pacing and the sex-filled nights, I was bound to burn off the extra calories in no time.
I binged until 2:00 p.m., took a long walk and then came home and passed out in front of the TV at four. Two hours later the phone woke me up. I opened one eye and fumbled for the receiver. “Hello?”
“Sophie, it’s Rick Wilkes.”
I sat up and muted the television. Why was Rick calling me?
“Sophie? Are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here, um, how are you?”
Rick exhaled in response. “I talked to Mary Ann. She told me about your conversation last night.”
“Oh.”
“I know you think Mary Ann has been putting me in front of the friendship you two share and I want you to know that’s not the case. I unloaded on her and then I pleaded with her not to tell anyone else what I told her. She wasn’t comfortable with keeping my secrets, she’s still not. She even asked me not to tell her anything else that she couldn’t talk to you about.”
“Oh.” It wasn’t just the previously consumed vodka that was impeding my conversational abilities. I honestly didn’t know what to say and I didn’t know what Mary Ann had said to him. Unlike Rick, I hadn’t thought to tell her not to share the details of our discussion with others, and the reality was Rick worked for Fitzgerald. If he knew I was on to them that could be problematic.
“I know Fitzgerald is not exactly a good guy, but he’s not exactly a bad guy, either,” Rick continued. “He is a hypocrite, though,” he added more softly. “There’s no denying that.”
“Why did he hire Eugene, Rick? Maggie said everybody in your circles knew that it was Eugene who called in that tip about Bruni and the seventeen-year-old. If Fitzgerald had something to hide, then why risk exposure by bringing someone like that onto his team?” I was choosing my words very carefully. The key was to extract as much information from Rick as possible without letting on what I knew or suspected.
“Maggie lied.”
“She lied?” Mr. Katz raised his head and gave me a quizzical kitty stare. “So Eugene didn’t turn Bruni in?”
“No, he did, but Maggie and I were two of maybe three people who knew that it was him. We were Eugene’s confidants.”
“Who was the third person?”
“Melanie.”
I bit down hard on my lip. As devastated as I was by Melanie’s death, I couldn’t help but be a little angry at her. This was the kind of information that could have helped me, and maybe if she had shared it I could have saved her.
“Maggie liked Eugene because he reminded her of her father,” Rick went on, “but she never wanted to emulate him. When it comes down to it, she’s all about winning. Fitzgerald…he knows who you really work for, and he told Maggie and me not to talk to you. When Mary Ann dropped the bomb that you would be joining us for lunch, Maggie decided that was the time to throw you off the track. She figured that if you thought Fitzgerald was willing to hire Eugene, knowing his history, you wouldn’t suspect him of, well, you know…the threesomes and all.”
“Wait, back up. Who do I really work for?”
“Sophie, let’s not pretend, okay? I want you to know I haven’t talked about it with Mary Ann. I assume you’ve told her that you’re working for the National Review, and I haven’t told her differently. Unless, of course, you told her the truth and she just hasn’t told me. She is very good at keeping confidences.”
“Rick, stay with me here. What are we not pretending? Who do I work for?”
“Hustler, of course.”
“What!”
“We know all about the article you’re writing about conservative politicians and their bizarre sexual fetishes.”
“You think I work for Larry Flint,” I said flatly. This was the most surreal conversation I had ever had in my life. Even Dena wouldn’t work for Larry Flint.
“Look, I believe in the freedom of the press, and Hustler is part of the press—a really seedy part, but it counts. I just wanted you to know that Fitzgerald told me he’s turning over a new leaf. I wouldn’t continue to work for him if he hadn’t. “It’s not ideal—” I heard Rick inhale a shaky breath “�
��it’s anything but ideal. Like I was telling Mary Ann, politics…being a Republican and supporting my party…has been a huge part of my life. I can see that the party’s changed and I know I’ve made moral compromises that I shouldn’t have and I’m going to have to make some changes in what I do and how I do it. But, Sophie, if you come out with this information and reveal that any of it came from me, you could ruin my career. I’ll never get a job in politics again. That was a risk Eugene was willing to take, but he was stronger than I am. So I’m asking you for a huge favor. Don’t report this to Hustler. Please, for me.”
“I promise I won’t report this to Hustler,” I said without hesitation.
“Really? You mean it?” He released a relieved laugh. “Thank you, Sophie. I should have known you would be decent about all this. You are Mary Ann’s friend after all, and she is a very special woman.” He paused before adding, “She’s absolutely incredible. I’m so lucky that I have someone to talk to who really understands me and cares.”
“Rick, I gotta go.”
“Sure, I understand. Thanks again, Sophie. I trust you to keep your word.”
I hung up and stared at Mr. Katz. “Hustler?”
Mr. Katz blinked at me, the kitty version of a shrug.
I stopped drinking after that. I kept replaying my conversation with Rick in my head, trying to make sense of it. I tried calling Mary Ann, but she was working. I considered calling Anatoly, but I wanted to get a better grasp of what had been said and what it meant before I relayed it. I mean, Hustler? I’d rather write for a Furry Fandom Web site!
I spent about an hour chewing on this, and then I finally worked up the nerve to go on the Hustler Web site. I had fuzzy memories of Larry Flint exposing the extramarital affairs of politicians years ago and thought it might be a good idea to read the articles. Oddly enough I wasn’t able to find any articles on the Hustler Web site and I really did try. If Google ever turned their customers’ searches into the federal government I’d be humiliated for life.
