by T. E. Woods
“I want Boss Man gone, I don’t rely on crazy-assed psycho bitches.” LionEl spoke only to Mort. “I do it myself or I trust my boys.”
“Shut the fuck up, LionEl.” LBJ stepped toward Jimmy. “That’s a reaction to your partner’s provocation. He doesn’t mean what he’s saying. Hell, I don’t think he even knows what he’s saying. This is fucking crazy.”
LionEl and Mort stood three feet apart, locked in stare-down while LBJ fumed and Jimmy played bored. Finally LionEl relaxed.
“I know you, Mr. Po-lice Man.” He rubbed his diamond-studded earlobe and shook his head. “Yes, sir, I do. You wanna tell me all about your boy and how he makes his daddy proud? Try to get a rise out of old LionEl? Maybe get me to … what? Confess? Throw a punch?” LionEl stepped forward to close the gap between the two of them. “How’s about I tell you a story?”
Mort didn’t budge. LionEl pulled out Wilkerson’s chair and took a seat behind his coach’s desk.
“Starts out about a year ago.” He turned to his agent. “That about right, LBJ? I flew down to the Dominican Republic last year, right?” He shifted his focus back to Mort. “Ever been to the D.R., Mr. Po-lice Man? Expensive, but beautiful.”
“You need to stop talking, LionEl,” L.B. warned.
LionEl ignored the counsel. “It was a tough season. You’re right. Vogel rides me hard. I needed the break. Let loose. Party in a way I don’t get to during the season, if you catch what I’m throwing.”
“I catch it.” Mort let LionEl’s bravado unwind.
“Got me an invite to the fanciest penthouse at the shiniest ho-tel on the island. Get told the gentleman spending the month in that ten-grand-a-night apartment is a big fan of mine. So I go. Man, I seen a lot of shit in my life, but never nothing like that party. There was blow laid out like it was peanuts at the corner saloon. Celebrity DJ spinning like we at some NYC club. Dom and Cristal by the bucket.” LionEl smacked his lips in memory.
“And the pussy! Let me tell you about that!” He stabbed a giant finger toward Mort. “I get me some groupies, as you might imagine. Grade A, too. I’m not talking those skanks who’ll suck the equipment manager’s dick just to hop a ride on the team bus. LionEl gets prime. But I ain’t never seen tuna the quality as I seen at that little soiree. Movie-star beautiful. Diamonds dripping off ’em like they don’t care to mention. Each one lovelier than the last. My host tells me take my pick. Waves his arms around a room full of God’s female perfection and says they’re all here for me.” LionEl’s grin turned into a leer. “Except for one, of course. Says I can have any cooch in the room except for the woman holding on to his arm. Lord have mercy, she was a beauty. Dark blond hair. Body carved from pink marble. Tits that would make them professors think twice about antigravity.” He bored into Mort’s gaze. “Lips so soft and cushiony you just had to have them wrapped around your pole.”
“There a point here, LionEl?” Mort asked.
LionEl huffed. “I’m getting to it.” He settled back into his story. “So I play it subtle. I tell my host I have to see all the ladies before I make my pick. Ask if his lady might introduce me around. He says, ‘Of course.’ Kisses the top of her perfect little head and tells her be a good hostess. We walk around and I lay on the charm.” He placed a beefy hand over his chest. “She won my heart. I had to have her. My host comes back around an hour later with a bottle of Dom and asks if I’ve made my selection. So I make my move. Tell him I want his lady. He laughs and I say I’m serious. He ain’t laughing no more. So I make him a deal. I offer him a million dollars for one night.” LionEl laughed. “Just like that movie where the Sundance Kid spent a long m for one night with G.I. Jane. Host man gets angry. I tell him name his price. I’ll pay.” LionEl slapped both his knees and reared his head back in laughter. “And that was when I get my black ass thrown out of the ten-grand-a-night penthouse in the shiniest hotel in the D.R.”
Mort waited for him to stop laughing. “I’m not getting the point.”
“The point, Mr. Po-lice Man, is that Primo Pussy and I spent an hour getting to know one another. She told me what a fan she is. Says she’s from Seattle and followed me since I arrived. We talk about clubs we both been to. I ask her where she likes to shop. Tell her I want to take her on a spree. Ask her about her people.” LionEl shot Mort a knowing glance. “Pussy always likes it when you ask about their family. Shows interest in them as a person. She tells about how Mommy is a dance teacher and Daddy is a big-time detective with the Seattle PD.”
Mort’s sense of space disappeared. His vision narrowed to a pinpoint of light at the end of a dark tunnel before snapping back into focus. He leaned forward and stutter-stepped past Jimmy.
“Allie?” Mort cleared his throat and tried again. “You saw her?”
“Allison Edith Grant.” LionEl’s laugh bore no trace of good humor. “Damn, I can’t remember my own address half the time, but that bitch spun her web around old LionEl so tight I remember her middle name. I mean, she got to me. But I’m a smart man.” He pointed a giant hand toward his agent. “L.B. gets me some serious coin, don’t you, old buddy?”
The short man shook his head. “Will you just shut the fuck up?”
LionEl ignored him. “But even with all my millions, I know that snatch is out of my league. Only bankroll can support a woman like that come from giving people what they need.” His face lost all humanity. “What they willin’ to pay anything for. Suck a dick dripping with disease for. Let you fuck their babies while you make ’em watch for.”
Mort wanted to sit before he fell. Somehow he willed himself to remain upright.
“Sing your song of pride about your children now, Mr. Po-lice Man.”
Jimmy yanked the office door open and growled to Lyndon Baines Johnson, “Get him out of here. Now!”
“You heard him, LionEl.” L.B. took two steps into the hall. “This is over.”
The highest scorer in the NBA ignored the two men. “Best clean up your own store before you come shopping in mine.” He held Mort’s gaze a heartbeat longer before he kicked his chair back and pulled himself to his full height. “You want a piece of me, you look in the sports page. Man can’t keep his daughter outta candyman’s bed ought not to be trying to mess with trouble this big.” LionEl nodded his goodbye and left the room.
Jimmy slammed the door shut, placed an open palm on his partner’s back, and steered him to Wilkerson’s chair.
“Well, that went well, don’t you think?”
Mort fell back into the soft leather, glad for the support. He tried to swallow but his throat wouldn’t cooperate. He grabbed the wastebasket next to Wilkerson’s desk and spit out the venom.
“Deep breath, Mort.” Jimmy returned to his chair across the desk. “LionEl didn’t seem fazed we were asking about his involvement in Vogel’s murder. If the coroner places TOD during game time, LionEl’s probably thinking his alibi’s airtight. Millions watched him drag his team to defeat. I’ll do some digging on who his posse is. See where they were when LionEl was losing to L.A.”
Mort recognized the words his partner was saying, but they sounded dim and far away.
“I’ll get into this LBJ guy, too,” Jimmy continued. “He’s got as much to lose from Vogel’s trashing his golden goose as LionEl himself.”
Mort took a long, deep breath and felt Jimmy’s hand on his shoulder. “Let’s roll, Mort. Bruiser’s gotta be wondering what kind of trouble we’ve gotten ourselves into.”
Mort looked up when Jimmy’s phone rang. He watched his partner talking but didn’t catch a word.
Jimmy folded his phone. “Guys found Felicia Fatone. They’re bringing her to the station.” He opened the door. “I’ll take this one, partner. Whaddya say I drop you off at home?”
Mort closed his eyes. He saw Allie sitting on the back of a convertible, trying to balance a spray of red roses as she waved to the folks lining the streets for the Seafair parade. Laughing and grabbing her fake-diamond tiara when she spied Edie and him in the crowd.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, inhaled, and pulled himself out of the chair. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Mort, Jimmy, and Micki watched Felicia Fatone pace the interrogation room through the two-way mirror. She checked her watch, paused to stretch against the far wall, and resumed her path.
“Think we’ve cooled her enough?” Jimmy asked. “Guys say she was pretty mouthy on the way in.”
“They tell her what this is about?” Micki asked.
“They offered the invitation and the transport. According to them, she started yakking right away. Saying everything she’s got in her possession belongs to her. Demanding to talk to Vogel’s kid.” Jimmy turned to Mort. “You ready?”
Mort nodded a lie. His mind was glued to the picture LionEl had painted of Allie. “You stay back, Jimmy. She might feel more comfortable with a woman.” Mort stepped aside to let Micki enter first.
“Well, it’s about damned time.” Felicia tossed her red hair and glared. “I’ve been in here almost an hour.”
Micki gave her most gracious smile and pointed to a chair at the metal table in the center of the room. “I’m so sorry, Ms. Fatone. I’m Detective Petty and this is my boss, Chief of Detectives Mort Grant. Please call me Micki.” She took a seat opposite Felicia while Mort leaned against the far wall. “We appreciate you coming.”
“Like I had a choice.” Felicia traded attention between the two of them. “I go to get my mail and two cops are waiting. If somebody’s saying I took something from that apartment that didn’t belong to me, you can stop right there. Check with the movers. I got nothing that wasn’t packed up under the watchful eyes of Reinhart himself. If Ingrid’s saying anything different, she’s lying.”
Micki opened a notebook. “You have reason to believe Mrs. Vogel would challenge the ownership of your property?”
Felicia huffed. “Do the math. Miss Money couldn’t keep her husband happy at home, so he turns to me. Reinhart dies and she feels like taking revenge on the other woman. What’s she saying? I stole her jewels or something?”
Mort loved a talkative suspect. “Did you?”
“That fucking bitch. She is coming after me, isn’t she? It’s not enough I have to be hidden like some tramp. Now she needs her pound of flesh?” Felicia pulled a tube of lip balm from the pocket of her pink warm-up jacket and smeared her bottom lip. She directed her response to Micki. “Look, I know what this looks like, okay? Young beautiful woman being kept by an older guy. But it wasn’t like that with me and Reinhart.”
“Tell me what it was like.” Micki used her just-between-us-gals tone.
“We were in love. Real love.” Felicia glanced up toward Mort. “He wanted to leave Ingrid so many times, but it was complicated. Comingled enterprises and all that. But we loved each other deeply.”
“It must have been hard on you,” Micki commented. “Seeing the two of them in the society pages all the time. Smiling and happy for the cameras.”
Felicia nodded. “It killed me. But it was all a pose. I was the one he loved, not her. He was going to leave. We talked about it all the time. We were going to have a life together. Just the two of us.” She lowered her eyes. “We even talked about starting a family.”
“That why he packed you up and shipped you out?” Mort shifted his weight. “Because he was so deeply in love? Call me crazy, but if I’m interested in a woman, I invite her for a burger and a beer. I don’t call Two Men and a Truck.”
Felicia pulled herself straighter in her chair. Her left leg bounced. “We’re passionate people. Given to extreme demonstrations. That was one of the ways we kept it so hot.” She got up and sashayed toward Mort. “A lover’s quarrel. That’s all it was.” Felicia held him in a teasing stare. “I had what he needed.”
Mort stepped clear. “What can you tell us about his death, Felicia?” He took a seat next to Micki.
“All I know is what I read. He called a hooker.” She shrugged. “Reinhart isn’t the type of man who can go long without sex, and I’d been gone a few days. You can bet he wasn’t getting any from that dried-up prune sitting out on Mercer Island.” She looked aside. “Poor guy called the wrong number.”
“He was murdered, Felicia.” Micki pulled a photograph from her file and placed it on the table. “Brutally.”
Felicia glanced at the grisly image of her lover on the floor of their onetime love nest. She looked away, but returned her attention to the glossy print. Her shoulders sagged. Her face paled. She slid into her chair and pushed the picture back to Micki.
“I don’t need to see this,” she whispered.
“Why’s that?” Mort asked. “I’d think someone so deeply in love would want to know what happened.”
“I know what happened.” Felicia’s voice was regaining its strength. “That Trixie creature killed him.”
Micki pulled the crime scene photo close and examined it. “Pretty gruesome stuff.” She leaned forward and pointed. “See here? His head was so smashed his brain oozed out. Can you imagine what might drive a person to do that?”
Felicia swatted the picture away.
Micki shrugged. “I mean, talk about your crime of passion.” She looked over to Mort. “Some might call it an ‘extreme demonstration,’ don’t you think?”
Mort nodded. “You could make a case.”
Felicia glared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“A young woman—excuse me, I believe your term was ‘beautiful young woman’—set up in a castle in the sky, getting used to a certain way of life. Next thing you know, she’s out on the street and the guy paying the bills ends up dead. Who you think is going to be the target of any fingers that get pointed?”
Felicia shoved herself away from the table, jumped up, and clamored to the far wall. “Is that what this is about? You’re trying to pin Reinhart’s murder on me?” She spun around toward Micki. “Is that Ingrid’s revenge? Frame me for what was your serial killer’s doing?” She sounded terrified. “This is fucking bullshit, okay? I mean, you’ve got Trixie in custody. Ask her yourself.” Her pleas bounced between the two investigators sitting silently at the table. “Are you insane?” Felicia released a long wail. She inched her way to the corner, never pausing for breath. She slid to the floor, curled into a pink velour ball, and sobbed.
Mort and Micki glanced to the two-way. Jimmy was getting an eyeful.
Nine long minutes later Felicia began to wear out. She sniffled, wiped her hands over her tear-streaked face, and turned wet eyes toward them. “You can’t possibly believe this.” Her voice was weak. “I’m just a girl. I got caught up in Reinhart’s world. He’s a powerful man. I was vulnerable. I trusted him when he said he loved me.” She crawled across the floor to Mort, stopped at his feet, and pressed her cheek against his leg. “You’ve got to help me.”
Mort pushed away and resumed his spot against the wall. Felicia pulled herself into his chair and reached out to Micki. “Please. Can’t you see what she’s doing? Ingrid’s got the power. She’s trying to punish me. I got nothing to do with Trixie. Ask her yourself.”
Micki reached for her file. “We’re just following leads, Ms. Fatone. We were wondering if you had any ideas how Trixie might have gotten into Mr. Vogel’s apartment.”
Felicia blinked five times in rapid succession. She breathed through her mouth and blinked again. She looked over her shoulder to Mort and back to Micki. “You think I set this up?” She crossed back to her original seat. “That I got Trixie in so she could kill Reinhart?”
“We’re not jumping to any conclusions here.” Micki slid the photograph back into the folder. “I mean, might you have seen Trixie hanging around the lobby? Maybe in a coffee shop Mr. Vogel might have frequented? Really, anything you might know would help.”
Felicia was quiet for several moments as she steadied herself. She stood, smoothed a hand over her workout gear, and brushed the hair out of her face before pointing a finger first at Micki, “You,” then at Mort, “and you.” She
turned to the two-way and pointed. “And however many yous are back there.” Felicia slipped her bag over her shoulder. “You can all go fuck yourselves. The answer is I’ve never seen Trixie before I saw her mug shot on the front page of yesterday’s paper.” She pointed to the file of crime scene photos. “You have no right traumatizing me. Leading me to think Ingrid was out for revenge. No right at all.” She threw her head back in a defiant move Mort was confident she rehearsed often in front of her bedroom mirror. “You have any questions for me, speak to my attorney.”
She crossed the room, threw open the door, and stormed out.
When the echoes of her footsteps disappeared, Jimmy entered. “Now, that, my friends, is what I call entertainment.” He tossed four thick envelopes on the table.
“Not one for subtlety, is she?” Micki turned to Mort. “I’ll follow up. See if she has an alibi for the time Vogel was killed. We meeting at your place for the game?”
Mort nodded. “I don’t see why not. Trixie’s not going anywhere and whoever killed Vogel’s not apt to go on a spree. Swing by around six-thirty. Bring beer.”
After she left, Jimmy sat on the edge of the table and gave his friend a long appraisal. “You sure you’re up for entertaining tonight?”
Mort pointed to the envelopes. “What do you have there?”
“What you wanted for your meet with Trixie. Took the team most of the day to gather this stuff.” Jimmy shoved the stack aside. “I’m on this, Mort. Like you said, the bad guys are either locked up or laying low. Go home. I’ll get with Mick and we’ll catch the game at the Crystal.”
Mort hadn’t been able to shake the feeling he was teetering on the side of a very steep cliff. His only daughter. Living with a drug lord. Sharing intimate details of her life with a thug like LionEl King. He wondered if Allie missed Robbie’s little girls. If she knew her mother was dead. If she had any idea how desperate he was to tell her to just come home.
He reached for the top envelope and scanned the first few items. “My house. Six-thirty. You bring the pizzas. I’m calling Larry, so make sure one’s that chicken and potato thing he likes.” He knew he could count on Jimmy not to push the topic further. “I’ll swing by the jail, have a chat with Trixie.”
