Palm Beach Nasty

by Tom Turner

  He took his Blackberry out of his shirt pocket and thumbed seven numbers.

  Then he changed his mind and hit the off button. He wanted to play out the scenario to its logical conclusion, every detail, every nuance, before he took action.

  He thought about the girl’s lowlife brother, Darryl. How he had taken the money shot of Jaynes and his white-trash, teen-dream sister. Climbed up on the roof somehow and used his cell phone camera, Jaynes thought at first. But then he realized that wasn’t it at all. From the angle of the picture, all the kid had done was walk in the open door of the house, go up the back stairs and open the bedroom door a crack. Misty must have told him beforehand where the bedroom was. Left the door open, too.

  Jaynes walked across the room and looked at the picture again, then he smiled. He reveled in stuff like this. People trying to hold him up, extort and blackmail him. Getting back at them was almost as much fun as shorting stocks.

  He knew exactly what the deal was. The girl had probably hooked up with some bottom-feeding attorney, a guy whose ad she had seen on the back of a bus stop. Similar to what happened a year ago with the Brazilian girl at the Poinciana. Probably some lowlife with just enough of a brain to get himself in way over his head. Jaynes looked forward to the guy’s call.

  Jaynes let his mind wander to what would happen if the press got their hands on the photo. Then he imagined a trial, on the charge of sex with a minor. He pictured the lurid testimony of the girl, her cleavage splashed all over the New York Post and every other tabloid. Not to mention all the other soft porn purveyors like Nancy Grace and E!

  Jaynes didn’t relish being the subject of the sex scandal of the week. Because his story would be way bigger than the others. It would be a lot more than a flash in the pan like John Edwards, the straying ex-vice presidential candidate on whom Jaynes wasted a hefty campaign contribution. He’d be the next O.J., and have a long shelf life, since his story was not just about sex, but murder, too.

  Then Jaynes thought about what the blackmailer would try to hit him up for. A lot more than Darryl Bill had. Millions. Probably at least ten. Maybe he should just pay it? Because, fact was, it was nothing to him. But then he played it out. Having spent some time with Misty, he knew all he needed to know about her. She’d start power driving through designer clothes, drugs, hi-def TVs, boats and cars, like a basketball player after his signing bonus. And her blackmailing partner? He’d probably do the same. Jaynes imagined getting the call . . . within a year, two max. “Hello, Ward, remember us . . . we’re tapped out, need more cash.”

  He’d been there, done that, was not about to do it again.

  So, bottom line, killing Misty and getting the pictures was the only way to go. He’d need to terminate whoever showed up to do the negotiating, too. Otherwise, they, too, would be coming back to the well whenever they needed grocery money.

  He punched seven numbers on his Blackberry. He spoke to his guy, who said he’d call the subcontractor right after they hung up. Jaynes always made sure to put plenty of layers between him and a victim. The subcontractor got back to his guy and said he’d get the two “mechanics” on it right away.

  Then Jaynes flashed to the detective, Crawford, and a particularly nasty smile crept across his face. He had come up with something wonderfully, creatively cruel to take the cocky swagger out of him.

  He stood up, stretched, and walked out of his den into the living room. The big Kandinsky caught his eye. Lately he had begun to think that it was not quite in the same league with his other paintings. It did nothing to enhance his reputation as one of America’s foremost collectors. Plus, it would be totally outclassed on the wall across from the Hopper, after the old man checked out.

  He called Lil Fonseca and told her he had a few more spaces that needed Robertson canvases. She assured him that would be no problem. She had always been so good about accommodating his every desire.

  FORTY-ONE

  Crawford was on his way to Dunkin’ Donuts from his apartment at seven thirty in the morning.

  He was wondering why Jaynes, the “most powerful” man in town according to Mal Chace, hadn’t come at him with more firepower than the few wrist slaps from Rutledge and Chace. And as far as Jaynes’s lawsuit went . . . it hadn’t really seemed to have gone anywhere. Crawford got the sense that it might go away altogether if he didn’t go near Jaynes for a few days. He guessed Jaynes probably had bigger fish to fry. Or maybe he was just all talk . . . though history certainly didn’t seem to indicate that.

  His mind drifted to Dominica, just as the sun popped out from behind a cloud. The symbolism was not lost on him and he felt a flush. He was happy, a word he considered slightly unmanly. But screw it, it was how he felt.

  He had thought a lot about her. How they could have something good together.

  In the last twenty-four hours he had probably second-guessed himself at least ten times about getting her involved in his high-risk scheme to take down Jaynes. At one point he started walking down to CSEU to tell her again that he was permanently pulling the plug on the whole thing. Explain that he was killing the plan because it could . . . kill her. But he knew she’d push him hard to do it, because of how Jaynes represented some unrighted wrong in her past, and also, he could tell, the idea of an action role had a lot of appeal to her. Like maybe hair follicles and DNA just weren’t doing it for her anymore.

  Meantime, Ott had spent a lot of time with Dominica coaching her in the role of blackmailer and extortionist. He told Crawford she was a natural, she had the perfect combination of toughness and gut instincts.

  Crawford didn’t volunteer that she had a soft side, too.

  He put two quarters in the blue metal box outside of Dunkin’ Donuts and pulled out the Palm Beach Press. He saw the headline, then the byline. It was written by the same Press reporter, Barrett Seabrook, who had interviewed him right after he came down to Florida. Crawford didn’t want to do the interview, but the Community Relations guy at Palm Beach PD told him it was typical when a new guy came onboard. Reluctantly, he agreed to it.

  The reporter had written an embarrassingly sycophantic puff piece about him back then. The headline of the article, he remembered, had read: LAUDED NY DETECTIVE TO SERVE PALM BEACH.

  Today’s was far different: PALM BEACH DETECTIVE A NEW YORK THUG?

  Crawford knew he was in big trouble at the question mark. Whenever he had seen that dubious journalistic technique employed before it always meant that a reporter, battling a deadline, didn’t have all his facts checked, but had gotten the green light from his editor anyway.

  Then he flashed to what Mal Chace had told him. About Ward Jaynes’s majority ownership in the Palm Beach Press. This sure wouldn’t be the first time a media owner twisted the truth—or invented it—for his own purposes.

  He didn’t need to read past the first paragraph to know this was way more than just a twist of the truth.

  The substance of the three-column story was that although Crawford had been a very effective, dogged detective who had cracked many high-profile cases in New York, a trail of violently obtained confessions or sleazy informers, even lower on the food chain than the perp, had always been in the mix. There were a lot of references to “unnamed police sources” and “retired law enforcement officers.” There was one very specific mention of a case where Crawford, “in a blind rage repeatedly administered kicks to the head of suspect Rafael Guittierez, who ended up face-down on the sidewalk.”

  Rafael Guittierez had been a habitual wife-beater who had come at Crawford with a broken bottle of cheap tequila ten years ago. Crawford would have been justified to drop him on the spot. That would probably have been the smart thing to do. Instead Guittierez lunged at him and Crawford took him out at the knees with his left foot. That was all. But the guy screamed police brutality and there were always ten lawyers on hand, defenders of the oppressed and downtrodden, looking to knock down high-profile guys like Crawford.

  A routine investigation followed the Guit
tierez incident that didn’t amount to much more than a quick conversation with Crawford’s partner at the time.

  Crawford was seething now. He had read plenty of articles about his cases where the reporter didn’t quite get it right—a detail here, a name or date there—but this was all dubious inference and flat-out fabrication.

  He finished the first page and stopped. He slammed the paper down on the table.

  He dialed his cell phone, got the number for the Palm Beach Press and hit the seven numbers.

  He asked for Barrett Seabrook.

  “Sorry, Barry’s not in yet,” the voice said. “Would you like his voice mail?”

  “Yes, give it to me.”

  “Hi,” the recording said, “this is Barry . . . talk to me . . . later.” Beep.

  Seabrook was apparently playing a hip, hard-boiled reporter he had seen in some forties film noir.

  “Barry, you lying sack of shit,” he said at the beep. “It’s Charlie Crawford. Call me. I want to know how much Jaynes paid you.”

  Crawford took a sip of his extra dark and a bite of his blueberry donut, his concession to eating healthy. Then he picked up the Press and read the rest of the article. It got worse. It recounted another completely fictitious incident of police brutality he reportedly committed. Then he got to the last paragraph.

  He read it over three times.

  “According to a longtime partner of Detective Crawford’s, his father, a managing director of the prestigious Wall Street investment banking firm, Morgan Guaranty, was found dead inside his car in his New Canaan, Connecticut, garage. According to the partner, Crawford’s father, a highly respected and successful banker, ‘snapped’ after the public humiliation and disgrace he felt over his son’s conduct. The intense and vocal backlash over the repeated allegations was apparently too much for the father, Charles V. Crawford, to bear.”

  FORTY-TWO

  Crawford looked up, and in slow motion put the paper down on the bright orange tabletop. His head slumped forward, then he put his hands up to cover his eyes. He stayed that way until an older woman came over from another table. She put her hand on his shoulder, asked him if he was okay and handed him a few napkins.

  CRAWFORD WAITED for Barrett Seabrook for over an hour at the Palm Beach Press building. He was glad he had time to cool down. He wanted to kill the guy . . . slowly . . . with his bare hands. He sat in a lobby which Seabrook would have to pass through, and made calls on his cell, trying to take his mind off his father. But he couldn’t. The whole gut-wrenching incident had been ripped wide open again, bringing back the most searing pain of his life.

  His father had committed suicide. He was a managing director, but at J.P. Morgan not Morgan Guaranty. His father was a manic-depressive—the “Crawford family curse,” as one shrink called it—and back when he killed himself, antidepressant medications weren’t what they are today. Crawford was the one who found him. He was just sixteen, back home on vacation from boarding school. He had gone to get his lacrosse stick in the garage and pushed the garage door opener. As the door came up, a thick cloud of car exhaust poured out.

  His grandfather had killed himself, too. Depression, as well. They had a quaint name for it back then. Melancholia. There was nothing quaint, though, about the .45 service revolver he stuck in his mouth.

  Crawford called Rutledge and got his voice mail: “Norm, you either already read or heard about the Press article. It’s all bullshit.”

  Then he got the mayor’s answering machine: “Mal, it’s Charlie Crawford. There’s an article in today’s Palm Beach Press about me. It’s a complete fabrication. I’m going to force them to print a retraction.”

  He realized the damage was done, though. Ward Jaynes was a pro. He’d done to Crawford what Crawford had done to Rafael Guittierez: taken him out at the knees. Tomorrow, or the next day, there might be some microscopic retraction at the bottom of the editorial page, apologizing for an inaccuracy or two.

  Eleven people would read it.

  Ott picked up on the second ring.

  “You see that thing?” Crawford asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Guy didn’t even get the place where my old man worked right.”

  “I knew it was a crock of shit, I’m sorry, man. Anything I can do, give me the word. Why would that shitbag reporter come up with that?”

  “Jaynes owns the paper. For all I know he wrote the damn thing.”

  “Jesus, you’re kidding, where are you now?”

  “At the Press, waiting for the guy,” said Crawford. “I just spoke to some NYPD guys. They’re calling the publisher to tell him that, ’cept for the spelling of my name, it’s all bullshit. I talked to a lawyer, too. He called the paper, told them they’re defendants in a defamation of character lawsuit.”

  “Beautiful, how much you going after ’em for?”

  “A hundred million.”

  If Jaynes could, why couldn’t he?

  Ott laughed. “That’s a nice round number.”

  Crawford saw Barrett Seabrook walk through the front door.

  “Gotta go, my buddy’s here.”

  “Who?”

  “The reporter.”

  “Give him a kick in the nuts for me.”

  Seabrook saw Crawford coming toward him and almost started to run.

  “Whoa there, Barry.” He would have tackled him if he had to.

  Seabrook stopped, his eyes got huge, like he was scared Crawford might pull his gun.

  “What do you want?” Seabrook said, his voice up an octave.

  “Well, let’s see,” he said, using every bit of self-restraint he could conjure up not to go postal, “your job . . . a retraction . . . an apology . . . but I’ll settle for just one thing. You telling me Ward Jaynes put you up to this.”

  “Who?” asked Seabrook, lamely.

  Crawford had a strong urge to throw him through a wall.

  “Cut the shit, asshole. You want to end up in Yeehaw Junction doing obits and girls softball?”

  Seabrook sighed and looked around. “Can we go somewhere?”

  They walked out of the building. Crawford pointed to a bench, like Seabrook was a dog he was ordering to sit. Seabrook sat down, Crawford stayed on his feet facing him.

  Seabrook’s eyes were fixed on an areca palm twenty feet away.

  “Talk to me,” Crawford said.

  Seabrook cleared his throat.

  “He said he’d—” Seabrook’s voice trailed off.

  Crawford leaned forward and got within six inches of Seabrook’s face.

  “He said he’d what?”

  Seabrook’s eyes were jumping all over the place.

  “Get me fired.”

  “Jaynes did?”

  “No, a lawyer. Said he represented ‘one of the owners.’ ”

  “Didn’t say Jaynes?”

  “No.”

  Crawford’s face stayed in Seabrook’s.

  “What’s your home address, Barry?”

  “Why?”

  “What is it?”

  “243 Gregory Road, West Palm.”

  Crawford wrote it down on a pad, then looked back down at Seabrook.

  “Thank you, Barry, a process server will be waiting for you when you get off. He’ll drop by your office, too.”

  “What for?”

  “Serve you personally with a libel and defamation of character lawsuit. The Palm Beach Press, too. A hundred million.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said I’d settle for you telling me Ward Jaynes put you up to it. You didn’t. Said some lawyer did.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Give Ward a call. Maybe he’ll float you a loan, it’s only a hundred mill,” said Crawford, walking away. “If not, place around the corner sells lotto tickets.”

  FORTY-THREE

  Crawford was in his car, headed to the station. His cell rang.

  “How you doing, Charlie?” It was Dominica.

  “I’m okay.”

 
; “You sure?”

  “Yeah, not a word of that was true.”

  “I knew that.”

  He wished she was right there, so he could wrap his arms around her.

  “Thanks for calling.”

  “You’re welcome; sure you’re all right?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “Well, you take it easy, ’kay Charlie?”

  “I will.”

  “I’ll see you soon.”

  “You will,” Crawford said, stopping at the bridge to Palm Beach.

  He watched a massive yacht go through the drawbridge between Palm Beach and West Palm. There wasn’t much room to spare on either side. He saw a tanned, white-haired man standing erect on the rear deck, like he wanted to be seen and envied.

  HE FLASHED back to his roommate’s 330-foot Feadship. Tim Hall had asked Crawford and twelve other Dartmouth classmates to go on a cruise out of Newport. The second night, when they were having dinner at a Nantucket restaurant, Crawford felt completely out of place. All his old buddies were talking a strange language. He understood every third word. Most of them were Wall Street guys, or guys who were pretty high up at big companies. Their conversations seemed to be mostly about money. Money, fancy trips to Saint Bart’s, NetJets shares, Berlinettas—he thought that was a car but it could have been a boat.

  Crawford didn’t have much to contribute. The next morning he told Hall that he had gotten a call and had to get back down to Palm Beach. Something big had just happened.

  Hall, of course, had offered to fly him down on his private jet.

  HIS PHONE rang again.

  “Hey, just wanted to tell you something, cheer you up maybe, take your mind off that shit,” Ott said. “Turns out our guy, Nick Greenleaf, has a sense of humor.”

  “Why? What happened?” Crawford asked, crossing the middle bridge.

  “I saw Mayo at the station, asked him how his stakeout at the Princess was going.”