“‘Tonight?’ I texted.
“‘Sure,’ was the reply.
“‘Tell me when,’ I texted back, ‘and I’ll be there.’”
After I left the bar I bought a bouquet of flowers because I thought she would like a bouquet of flowers. I had the flower shop place the flowers in crystal because in her mess of an apartment I hadn’t detected anything so ordered and useful as a vase. When I rang the bell, I put on my most ingratiating smile because I assumed that was what she wanted to see.
“Okay?” said Linda Pickering. Her pretty face tightened with concern as she took the vase. Her lips pressed one against the other. “Thank you?”
“I figured I’d do something nice.”
“Well, that’s so . . . so nice of you, Phil.” She fluffed the flowers a bit. “Nice.” Her face had a forced smile on it as if instead of saying “nice” she was saying “tubercular.”
“I hope you’re hungry. I made a reservation at Del Frisco’s.”
“Isn’t it a bit late for a belly full of meat?”
“Order the fish then.”
“Phil?”
“We’ll have fun. Maybe we’ll go dancing later.”
“Dancing?”
“Who doesn’t love dancing?”
“Me.”
“You just haven’t danced with the right partner.”
“It’s a Wednesday night.”
“Are there Wednesday rules? Is it written somewhere in stone by Hammurabi? No steak, no wine, no dancing?”
“Wine’s allowed,” she said.
“Thank heaven for that. Let’s show a little spontaneity, Linda. Let’s go wild. Let’s eat meat and dance like fools.”
“I thought we were going to just, I don’t know—”
“Get drunk and fuck?”
She laughed, her rough, sexy laugh. “That sounds good.”
“Is that all you want?”
“I thought that’s all we were.”
“And you don’t want to try something a little—”
“This is sweet and all, Phil, but when I met you I didn’t take you for sweet.”
“I’m not usually.”
“But now you’re trying, and that is so nice.”
“You say it like it’s an affliction.”
“Here’s the thing. I have so much going on right now with my job and my daughter and my situation with that bastard who used to be my husband that, truth is, I don’t really have room in my life for nice.”
“You want me to be an asshole? Because I can do that, too. I can put on any mask you want. That’s what I fucking do.”
“Oh God, okay. Phil, calm down.”
“I’m calm as dirt.”
“We need to talk.”
That’s when I laughed. The whole thing was too perfectly pathetic. My failure was manifest in the way she held the flowers, the way her pretty face was suddenly suffused with pity. She thought she was going to crush my feelings, she thought she was going to cut me to the core. If only she knew.
“What’s funny?” she said.
“Me. I think I’m not doing something right. Let me see the flowers for a moment.” When she handed me the vase, I took it to the kitchen, yanked out the flowers, and tossed them into the garbage pail. Then I dumped out the water and hoisted the vase like it was a great glass stein. “Do you have anything here to drink?”
She looked at me like I had grown another head. “Vodka?”
“That will do,” I said. “Fill ’er up.”
I know what that plant needs, Phil. It needs sun, water, and food. And maybe vodka, too.
Caroline Brooks had implied that I could become someone new and better simply by giving the pieces of wood what they wanted. By pretending I cared I might actually learn to care; by being selfless I would perhaps become another self. She intended that I do it under her supervision with years of therapy, and that little boondoggle wasn’t going to happen. But why should I look to a guild professional to change me when I had the wherewithal to do it on my own. If giving someone like Linda Pickering exactly what she wanted for no reason other than the fact that she wanted it could spark my evolution, then I could surely play that game. Isn’t that what sales was all about? In my bleary rye-fueled funk, I had figured it was worth a try, though I was beginning to learn that figuring out what Linda wanted wouldn’t be as easy as I had hoped.
“Do you want a cigarette?” I said as I reached from her bed for my jacket, tossed over a chair.
“No. But go ahead. I have enough disgusting habits of my own.”
“Like what?”
“Have you ever tweezed your eyebrows?”
I laughed as I pulled a pack and my lighter from the inside pocket. This was after a too-long bout of ragged sex, made hard by some secret anger on both sides and soft by drink. It was strangely satisfying even if not quite mind-blowing. I liked that when things went off the rails, Linda Pickering offered up that laugh of hers, sexy and true. And I was surprised to find that I liked Linda Pickering, too. Was that evolutionary?
“A cigarette after sex is not a disgusting habit,” I said. “It’s a primal pleasure. The heat, the flavor, the little hit of nicotine that lifts the brain amidst the smoky perfume of burning leaves. I can imagine the first humans, huddling around the fire after making like their monkey forebears, bonding as sparks and smoke twine about them.”
“After sex the only thing I want to bond with is a pillow.”
“So I guess that means no cuddling.”
“Really, who the hell are you?”
“Just a guy trying to figure you out.”
“Trust me, it’s not worth it.”
“You sure you don’t want one? Another thing about the after-sex cigarette: it is so beautifully self-destructive that it becomes the natural exclamation point on the whole act. La petite mort and then, bam, a coffin nail.”
“All right, you convinced me. Spark one up.”
“Now you’re talking.” I did the two-cigarettes-in-the-mouth trick from the movies. It was a calculated gesture that always seemed to go over. I pulled the same trick on my wife when we just started. Linda took the one I proffered, looked at it for a long moment, and then greedily sucked at it with such assurance that I couldn’t help but laugh.
“I used to smoke incessantly,” she said. “It was a cop thing. But then I had my daughter.”
“I suppose nothing ruins a good healthy vice like a kid.”
“Do you have one?”
“A healthy vice?”
“A kid.”
“No, my wife and I ended our marriage before we made a mistake.”
“My daughter wasn’t a mistake. The marriage was, but not her. The first thing a cop is taught is to compartmentalize and I learned my lesson.”
“When you talk about her you get all sincere, but everything else about you is crust, which makes it tough to figure you out.”
“Then stop trying. I don’t want to be figured out. Is that what that whole meat-and-dance absurdity was all about?”
“I thought I’d be a little nice.”
“I’ve seen enough nice to last me. My husband was nice when I married him. Our divorce was going to be nice before the lawyer convinced my husband to take out the knives. And I’ve learned it’s always the nice neighbor who ends up hacking off the head after he’s done with the rape. Don’t be nice, Phil. Be hard, maybe a little harder than you were tonight.”
“I had a few drinks before the vodka.”
“I don’t want excuses, I want performance. But you were right about the cigarette. Now I’d like to cuddle with my pillow.”
“You’re kicking me out.”
“You catch on quick.”
“You don’t want to finish our cigarettes and talk about our days.”
“How was your day?”
“Not so good.”
“Fascinating.” She reached over and dropped her still-smoking cigarette in the dregs of one of her drinks. “Are we done now?”
>
“Yes,” I said, rising from the bed, reaching down to grab my underwear and pants before heading toward the bathroom. “We’re done.”
“Good. Tomorrow night?”
“I’m busy tomorrow night.”
“Oh, I’ve hurt your feelings. Did I hurt your feelings, Phil?”
I stopped and turned, facing her naked as a bear. “Did you want to hurt my feelings?”
“I didn’t know I could.”
“Whatever you want, that’s what I want, too. So go ahead, consider them hurt.”
“You think I’m a bitch.”
“Do you want me to think you’re a bitch?”
“What a fun night,” she said. “Wasn’t this a fun night?”
23. The Chadwick Club
There are moments deep within the murk of uncertainty when a flash of insight illuminates the darkest of mysteries. And what you discover is usually a truth so obvious as to be wearying. Such a moment struck me during the bimonthly meeting of the Chadwick Club.
Ah, the Chadwick Club, convening on the plutocratic edge of Georgetown, beyond the fine townhouses cheek by jowl on well-lit streets, houses inhabited by lobbyists and lawyers and secretaries of the state. You wove this way, you wove that way, you turned onto a dark, leafy street and glimpsed, on the other side of a row of hedges, the brick walls of a great winged thing. A black limousine pulling out of the drive signaled that you were at the right place at the right time as long as you were the right person. Fortunately, Gordon had placed a call to one of his Missouri contacts, actually the drug dealer who had directed him to Mr. Maambong in the first place, who got in touch with a congressman, who got in touch with a lobbyist, who was able, for a vote on some obscure appropriations rider, to put Dick Triplett on the list.
“This property abuts Rock Creek Park,” said Riley, as we sat in the car on the road outside the mansion, “not very far from where they found Scarlett Gould’s body.”
“Who owns the house?”
“It’s not a house, Phil. It’s a mansion. And not a McMansion but the full-out real thing. Owned by some shell corporation. It’s rented out for parties and weddings and such.”
“Not to mention wild, lascivious orgies.”
“I just said they rented it out to weddings. You don’t get out much, do you?”
“What’s Detective Booth’s role in all this?”
“He moonlights as security. Either he’ll be at the door, checking names and searching for weapons, or wandering around, making sure the girls don’t start pickpocketing wallets.”
“Whores have such loose morals.”
“That’s why we love them so. Be aware that when he moonlights, Booth wears himself a toupee.”
“Really?”
“And a bad one, too. From the dead marmoset collection.”
“Thanks for the warning. Pointing at his head and bursting out in laughter won’t help me grease his wheels. While I’m inside, crack the shell and find out who owns this place. I also want to know who’s running the Chadwick Club. Somebody’s hiring Booth to keep things under control, which means somebody’s got control of Booth. We could use an ally.”
“Will do. And just so you know, it turns out that there have been calls back and forth between the other detective and Melissa Davenport. A number of calls, as if Detective Pickering and Mrs. Davenport are almost working together.”
“I’ll take care of that.” I took another long look at the mansion on the other side of the hedges. “When I was in Miami, there was another competition going on at the house. Another bunch of wannabes looking for the high life, just like we were.”
“The hyena business must be rocking.”
“They’re building more teams, and they’re looking for more team leaders. Your name was mentioned. Are you ready to rise?”
“I’m ready to quit,” she said. “I’m not cut out for this kind of work. Stealing kidneys, squashing police investigations.”
“But you’re so good at it,” I said.
“That’s the problem.”
“Think about the money. Think about that beach of yours in Bali. You’ll be able to buy it.”
“We stole a kidney, Phil.”
“She had two. If you’re so torn up about it all, what are you still doing here?”
“I don’t know. Loyalty maybe?”
“To Maambong?”
“No, God no. To you, and Gordon, and even to Kief, believe it or not.”
“Let me tell you something true, Riley. Loyalty is for saps. My loyalty ends on the far side of my teeth.”
“You just say that.”
“I live it, and you should, too. But you should also know, it might not be so easy to leave. I get the sense you can’t just give Maambong notice and waltz away. When you decide to bolt, don’t make any big announcement, in fact don’t tell anyone, not even me. Just disappear.”
“Jesus, Phil, what have we gotten ourselves into?”
“A gravy train heading straight downtown. Don’t wait, I’ll find my own way back to the hotel.”
“Try not to have too much fun.”
“You know what I think about drugs and drink and whores,” I said as I opened the door. “Work, work, work.”
The house was a big Georgian thing from a distant century, wide and regal, sitting like a swaddled prince on a rise overlooking the federal city. A man and woman in tight black suits stood on either side of the front door. I knew their type, I was their type. Henchmen.
“Dick Triplett,” I said. For the occasion my suit was loosely tailored, something name brand and stupidly expensive that didn’t call attention to itself, something better than a corporate lawyer would wear, but that cost less than an investment banker would pay. That was the sweet spot for my play that night.
The woman smiled at me with a noted lack of interest before taking out her phone and typing in the name.
“Of course, Mr. Triplett,” she said, stepping aside after she received a return text. “Enjoy your night.”
Inside the front door, another man stood in his black suit, hands clasped together. “Good evening, Mr. Triplett,” he said, a smooth maître d’ smile plastered on his rough-hewn face. “Since this is your first time, we need to cover some business matters before you join the other guests. Will you accompany me to the office, please? Skye will take care of you.”
There was already a crowd in the large salon to the right, but I was led to the left, down a hallway to a small cloakroom, where, among mostly empty racks, a woman with the exaggerated lips and false breasts of an aging stripper sat behind a desk. “Can I have your card, please, Mr. Triplett?”
“Business card?”
“Business or personal,” said Skye. “Whichever you choose for payment is fine. Most members use a business card.”
“Got you,” I said, pulling out a Dick Triplett American Express Platinum that Maambong arranged for use in my Hyena cases.
“Excellent. Are you here with a client tonight, or are you alone?”
“I thought I’d check it out before I brought a client, but if it is as ripe as I’ve been led to believe, I’ll be back.”
“Very good. You’ll be charged a membership fee, an entrance fee, and entertainment fees depending on the amusements you choose. Drinks, as always, are complimentary. Now I will need some information. Your birth date and Social Security number, please.”
“Birth date and Social Security number?”
“Yes, along with some personal information such as your mother’s maiden name and the name of your first pet.”
“For the credit card company when they decline payment.”
“It often happens at these amounts, especially with newer members.”
I gave her the details of my false identity while she typed the answers onto her tablet. She ran the card through a little white reader sticking out the top and returned it to me, along with the tablet for me to sign. I rubbed my finger across the screen in an approximation of Dick Triplett’s signatur
e.
“This is your number,” said Skye, handing me a plastic card imprinted with a large blue 348. “Just show it to the hosts if there is anything you desire. They’ll take care of the rest. Henry will escort you to the salon. Welcome to the Chadwick Club, Mr. Triplett.”
The salon was paneled in wood and littered with too many men in dark suits. Couches were pushed against the walls and largely ignored. A man in a tuxedo tickled the ivories of a grand piano in the corner, which gave the room the charm of a Nordstrom. There were a few women in the room, older women with hair plastered and long, sheathy dresses, looking about with nervous mouths, but this was mostly a men’s club, some of the men slick, some of them doddering, some overfed with ruddy necks stuffed like blood sausages into the tight collars of their custom-made shirts. I recognized a few, a secretary of something over here, a White House staffer with a flag in his lapel over there, a slew of elected representatives scattered about like cow pies in a pasture. Others owned the unmistakable bearing of military officers, though they scrupulously were devoid of their military uniforms. I searched the faces for Booth as I headed to one of the bars.
“Would you like the Macallan or the Balblair?” said the barkeep after I had asked for a Scotch with ice.
“Have the Balblair,” said a short, thick man leaning on the bar with his back to me. “They’re serving the ’89, third release. It’s a treat.”
“The Balblair, then,” I said.
“Good choice,” said the short man. When he turned to look at me I was startled for a moment. His face was wide, his rodent eyes were small and too close together, his nose was pugged like a pig’s.
A Filthy Business [Kindle in Motion] Page 19
