Inside Moves

by Walter Danley

  “Hadn’t thought about it,” Greg said, “but I’m sure I will. Why do you ask?”

  “If I’m not mistaken, in ’69, Stacy was Lacey’s roommate. She said they had a place off campus in their second year at Harvard Law. I’m just wondering, how did Lacey/Trinity pull off running an escort service out of the apartment without Stacy knowing?”

  The phone was silent for several beats, then Greg said, so low that it was difficult for Wainwright to hear, “I’ll ask her. Good night, Garth.”

  Wainwright stared at the dead handset for a second before placing it back in the cradle. Something wasn’t right—maybe more than one thing—and it made his shoulder itch. Wainwright had a skin sensitivity in a small spot on his left shoulder. When he sensed things were off, not as they should be, that little spot itched. And when Garth Wainwright had an itch, he scratched.

  THE NEXT DAY, STACY called Wainwright from the government apartment in Westwood and asked to meet him at his condo. When Greg had asked his wife about Trinity, she recanted her earlier statements. Now she wanted to set the record straight, and facing Wainwright one on one was the way to do it.

  The Mulhollands buzzed the intercom to Wainwright’s condo building at 6:20 p.m.; they’d arrived ten minutes early. Punctuality is one of the finer personal attributes, he thought.

  Wainwright buzzed his friends in. Wilson had taken himself to dinner in Westwood then planned to go to a movie. He had a feeling these discussions might be intimate.

  Wainwright greeted Greg and Stacy when they emerged from the elevator. Handshakes and hugs in the foyer were followed by an offer of adult beverages. Greg declined since he was on call, while Stacy’s choice of poison was a double Scotch, neat. Wainwright did a duet and joined her, bringing a glass of water for Greg. When his guests were seated comfortably on the sofa, Wainwright sat in an overstuffed leather recliner and proposed a toast. “Here’s to Lacey. May we soon find her well and safe.”

  Greg and Stacy assented to the toast. “Hear, hear!”

  “Stacy,” Wainwright said, “you sounded really troubled on the phone. What’s going on?”

  She took a sip of her drink and set it on the end table next to the sofa. “Well, to be frank, Garth, I lied. Greg caught me in it, and I’m here to apologize and tell you both the truth about those days at Harvard.”

  Wainwright held up his highball glass, motioning for her to continue. “Go ahead.”

  With an audible exhalation, Stacy began. “Yeah, I knew about Trinity and her escort operations. I found out because Trinity was getting a lot of phone calls at our apartment. At first I assumed they wrong numbers, but after the third or fourth one, I asked Lacey about it. Her first story was that she was being bothered by a boy she’d met. I didn’t buy that for a New York minute, so I told her to level with me. ‘So how did he get this number?’.

  “‘From me. Who else?’ Lacey said. I thought she was looking a bit sheepish, with her eyes on the carpet, when she answered me.

  “‘Yeah, right.’ I said. ‘Who would give a guy a fake name and a real phone number? Come on, Lacey. You and I go back to Southie. You know better than to lie to me. Now what the hell is happening?’”

  Wainwright uncrossed his legs and leaned toward Stacy, eager for the truth. “Did she come clean then?”

  Stacy shook her head. “No. She didn’t say a word She just stood up, walked to her desk, and brought over a savings passbook. She held it out for me to take. Lacey had over one and a half million dollars in that account.”

  Wainwright and Greg both snapped to the vertical at that statement. “Do you remember when this conversation took place?” Greg asked.

  Stacy thought for a moment. “Well, we moved into that apartment at the end of our first year, so June or early July 1969.”

  When Stacy mentioned the year 1969, Greg stared hard at Wainwright, who acknowledged him with a small nod. This didn’t escape Stacy’s notice. “What’s that look about, boys?”

  Wainwright answered. “We have other information about things that happened with Lacey that year. The FBI report says Lacey met and recruited BJ Dreaver into her escort business in ’69.”

  “Yeah, so what about it?”

  Exasperated, Greg, said, “Have you met BJ?”

  Stacy took a sip of her Scotch then leaned her head back, staring at the ceiling. “No, I never met her,” she said, “but I knew about her. Lacey told me she offered BJ an escort job.” Stacy sat straight in the chair. “Look, instead of you two shooting questions at me, let’s do this the SEC way. I’ll tell you everything I can remember. You jot down questions, and we’ll cover those at the end if I haven’t answered them before that. Deal?”

  Wainwright took a pad and pen from the table drawer and handed them to Greg. He grabbed another set for himself.

  Greg shrugged. “Sounds right—for you, I mean. Yes, dear. Go right on ahead.”

  “Thanks. Okay, the night Lacey showed me her passbook, she said this started as a way for her to get away from her crappy home life. Now, I’d been a neighbor of Lacey’s in Southie. I thought she was talking about that. But she wasn’t. The stuff she shared with me made my hair curl.

  “I mentioned before that when her mom died she went to live with her Uncle Timothy, her mother’s brother, on Beacon Hill. A very posh neighborhood. We were both in ninth grade, although we went to different schools. Anyway, she was fourteen then. You think Lacey’s a looker now? Well, you should have seen her back then. She was a perfect combination of Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland. You can’t imagine how beautiful she was. Let me throw in an addendum in here—hey, I’m a lawyer...so from here on out, the information I’m sharing with you is hearsay from Lacey. Okay? We all good with that?”

  Wainwright and Greg nodded.

  “After Lacey had been living with her Uncle Timothy for a few months, he told her she needed to pay for her room and board. His sexual pleasure was the price for her staying. Otherwise, he said he’d call the Home for Destitute Catholic Children to come get her. Now, any of us would have advised Lacey to report this pervert to the cops. That’s what we’d do now, as adults, but Lacey was a traumatized fourteen-year-old. Her dad was gone; her mom and brother were dead; and she was alone and this bastard’s victim. She couldn’t fight him. She quickly learned she preferred compliance to beatings and being locked up in the basement for days.”

  “Jesus,” Wainwright said under his breath. “I can’t imagine it. Poor girl.” He got up and refilled his and Stacy’s Scotch glasses as she continued the story.

  “That isn’t the worst part, Garth. It gets more depraved. When Uncle Timothy wasn’t using her, he invited his pals over to take turns with her. It seems this monster got off watching others with a child. Lacey said there were three regulars, with an occasional new guy. Her uncle allowed men to bring her small gifts but never cash. I guess he was afraid if she had access to money, his plaything would soon be gone. After a few days of this abuse, she said she zoned out, as if it were all happening to someone else. Someone who wasn’t her, someone with whom she had no connection.

  “One of her uncle’s buddies insisted on calling her Delilah. Lacey didn’t know any of their names, so she didn’t know who this guy was. Eventually, in her mind, she became Delilah, her stand-in during these terrible tortures, the one who would deal with the injustice. Delilah would protect Lacey from the abuse and degradation.

  “Lacey knew she had to do everything in her power to get away from her uncle. She’d need money to do that, and Timothy had made sure she never had cash. He went so far as to set up lines of credit at school so Lacey only had to sign for books, lunch, bus fare, what have you. At Filene’s Department Store, she had a charge account to buy school clothes and incidentals.

  “At one point, Lacey sought help from the priest at her exclusive high school. The priest, Father O’Reilly, was also one of her teachers, said he could tell she was a bad girl and she’d need to repent for her sins. She confessed everything to the priest, hoping
for absolution and his help. But it didn’t work. The confession just turned on the horny priest. He dragged her from the confessional, bent Lacey over the altar, and took her right there in the sanctuary. She was hysterical, as you might imagine. A fourteen-year-old troubled girl raped by her priest inside her church.” Stacy shook her head. “This compassionate priest gave Lacey fifty dollars and admonished her never to tell anyone what happened or she’d burn in hell for all time.”

  Greg added a comment to Stacy’s litany. “Someone should have defrocked the sonuvabitch with a croquet mallet.”

  Wainwright stood and walked to the end of the room then back. His left palm was on the back of his neck, as if to cool the fever Stacy’s story had created. He looked at Greg then to Stacy. His face wore an expression of disbelief. “Yeah, Greg, or maybe just pistol-whip him to bloody hell. My God! What tortures Lacey had to endure!”

  “Eventually,” Stacy continued, “Delilah had to go beyond protecting Lacey. She needed to help Lacey escape this nightmarish environment. Timothy operated a darkroom in his basement, next to the ‘happy room’ where he took Lacey to ‘play.’ Delilah discovered Uncle Timothy’s hiding spot for his pedophile photos. According to Lacey, Delilah thought of a way to escape her abusive keeper and stay safe at the same time. She gave a bunch of the photos to Lacey, who kept them in her school locker.

  Delilah told Lacey she had to protect the photos; they could be her ticket to freedom. On Lacey’s next shopping trip, she used the priest’s money to open a savings account and a safe deposit box at a small bank she was sure Timothy didn’t use. She stashed the photos there. Delilah told her they’d need to get more cash before they could escape. Delilah had a plan.”

  Stacy lifted her glass and motioned for a refill. She clearly needed a little more liquid courage to go on. Wainwright dutifully complied.

  “Delilah had the answer to escaping Beacon Hill,” she said, as soon as Wainwright returned with her drink. “You know, that’s kind of funny. Half the folks in Southie would give anything to get into Beacon Hill, and Lacey was plotting a way out. Anyway, Delilah’s plan was straightforward. She’d visit different schools in the neighborhood to meet boys. That was a no-brainer, considering Lacey’s looks. She’d trade sex for money. She saw nothing wrong with being paid for what her uncle and his friends were taking for free. Being a prostitute was far preferable to her uncle’s physical abuse, which might have killed Lacey. Besides, it was Delilah doing the sexual soliciting, not Lacey.”

  Wainwright was feeling the pain for this young girl—and for the adult Lacey. “I can’t imagine what she went through,” he said.

  “The human mind is a powerful tool if used properly,” Greg said.

  “Listen, guys,” Stacy said. “I was there, on the spot, and I can tell you this woman paid a price none of us can even imagine. Lacey didn’t get her strength of character from a parent, for sure, and she had no role model in Southie. She’s a prime example of what we might call ‘God-given character.’”

  “Lacey told me all this while I sat there holding her savings book,” Stacy continued. “As the story grew more macabre, I’d glance down at the book to keep from looking at the pain in her eyes. I saw when she withdrew funds for the rent money—the same amounts, same time, like clockwork. But she also was making large deposits. I said, “Wait. You did tricks to escape your uncle—why are you still depositing money into this account?

  “Lacey had allowed Delilah to become Trinity Stormm. Since Delilah had been such a successful nom de plume, Lacey created the name Trinity to use in college.

  “I asked where the name came from, and you know what that girl said? Of course, you don’t. Remember, Lacey’s education was exclusively Catholic, and she was well versed in religion. As you know, the Trinity is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In Lacey’s mind, she was three people: Lacey, Delilah, and Trinity. It was a declaration of sorts. Trinity was the last, the end of the deceptions. Anyway, Trinity set up and operated an escort service. Even though Lacey had her inheritance after her uncle died, she felt she needed to bank some bucks. It was security against any future run-ins with those men from her uncle’s basement.

  “You know how smart Lacey is, right? Even with all this going on, she kept straight A’s and made the dean’s list every semester.”

  “And what did you do with this newfound knowledge?” asked Wainwright.

  “I was dumbfounded, but I didn’t need to do anything. Lacey—or rather, Trinity—had a plan that included this poor kid from Southie. She said if I was willing to keep her secret forever—I tried, but with her gone it was more important to find her than keep an old promise—and keep her books and schedules, she’d pay my share of the rent, food, and entertainment. The kicker was that she’d also cover my tuition. I agreed, and we set up Trinity’s escort business in our apartment.”

  Now it was Greg who stood up, his notepad and pen in hand, and paced the room. Staring at his wife, he said, “Hang on for one more minute, honey. Let me jot down some things. Let’s see, we have aiding and abetting a criminal enterprise, and since the escort service was crossing state lines, that throws it into federal jurisdiction, so we can add RICO to the list of charges. Of course, you’re familiar with the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. You came up with that jewel of a penalty and beat the bastards at CapVest to death with it.”

  Stacy hung her head but not in embracement. She had a crick in her neck from looking up at the two men. “Greg, do you two righteous warriors want me to finish this tale or not?’

  Greg sat down again, and Wainwright leaned back in his recliner. Although neither man spoke, they gave Stacy their rapt attention.

  “There’s something else you both need to hear,” she said. “Two or three months after that, Lacey and I were hanging out. Neither of us had classes that day. She asked me to set up books for a nonprofit she was establishing. She called it FACTS, Foundation for Abused Children’s Treatment Services. I set up everything; I dealt with the bank accounts, the IRS, state agencies, all that stuff. The first deposit for FACTS was a check she wrote for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Wow,” Wainwright said. “Was she hoping other people would make contributions?”

  “Oh, yeah. Trinity had her clients pay a reduced fee to her in cash and write a check for the same amount to FACTS. She told them the checks were tax deductible and would do a lot of good for abused kids. Her business almost doubled that year. That’s when she recruited BJ Dreaver. As you know, BJ got busted not long after she joined Trinity.”

  “It was six months, per the police files,” Greg said.

  “Okay, six months. My last contact with BJ was when she called me from jail. I took her phone call to ask Trinity to post bond. Trinity called in to retrieve her messages soon after, and I told her what had happened to BJ. She went straight to the precinct and posted a cash bond. BJ might have thanked Lacey—I have no way of knowing—but we later found out she was gone from Boston within the hour. BJ got on a bus and split for parts unknown. At least until she showed up at Bellevue and started dating a CapVest partner.” She flashed a knowing smile at Wainwright.

  Wainwright nodded. Clearing his throat, he said, “Yeah, well, we did get together in Bellevue. I’m starting to remember some of that. What happened to Lacey’s uncle?”

  “I don’t know the whole story, just dribs and drabs over time. Lacey got enough money to get out of his house; turned out she didn’t need to blackmail him with the photos. Fabio moved her to New Hampshire, where she lived with the Travis family, finished twelfth grade, and graduated. Timothy died during her senior year of high school. As you know, Lacey was his sole heir and inherited the mansion and everything else from the old goat.”

  “Is that it, everything you know about Lacey, Delilah, and Trinity?” Wainwright asked.

  “Why, Garth? Do you want this all to be over? The end of it?”

  He shook his head. “I just wondered if it was time for the Q & A yet
.”

  “No, it’s not. As far as my information goes, Trinity just ran an escort service. There wasn’t any sex involved at all—except for BJ, who broke the rules. Trinity was the star and popular with businessmen. They paid big bucks to have a beautiful, sophisticated companion on their arm at public events. And not just in Boston. Trinity had clients in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, and New York. But she’d only accept out-of-town assignments that allowed her to keep her class schedule. That’s what we called them—assignments, never dates. I’d decide when and where she’d go. If the client had access to a private jet, that became part of the negotiations. She never stayed overnight, not ever. When the event concluded, she came home on the client’s plane or via a prepaid first-class ticket presented with her fee.

  “A prostitute earns her living by pleasuring men. That wasn’t Lacey’s business. Her company made money by allowing a man to strut and show off a prized piece of pulchritude on his arm. He’d allow others to believe he was enough of a stud to have her pleasuring him. Man’s ego was the business model. Trinity’s clients understood that she was arm candy, and they paid a great deal for these ego trips. Smoke and mirrors, gentlemen! That’s all it ever was, smoke and mirrors. As far as I know—and believe me, I would know—the last time Lacey performed a sex act for money was when she was a teenager. And she had the best of all reasons in the world for doing it. That, gentlemen, was close to twenty years ago, and I still feel her anguish and pain in my heart. So, which one of you will hold the rope and hang that bitch?”

  []

  NINE

  IT WAS LATE WHEN THE Mulhollands left Wainwright’s place. Stacy’s story had taken hours to tell. The follow-up questions from Greg and Wainwright added more to the telling. Wainwright sat with a third single-malt Scotch in his living room, overwhelmed by the thoughts bouncing around his head. As he considered all he had learned about Lacey, he faced his own ugly truths. Feelings of inadequacy had plagued him, as he had no memory of this person he married. The details of Trinity Stormm had replaced those emotions with revulsion. Lacey was a stranger, after all, and he wanted nothing to do with Trinity. Wainwright’s abhorrence for the harlot life was as all-consuming as an attack of vertigo.