The Kept Woman (Will Trent 8)

by Karin Slaughter

  Angie flipped the sun visor closed. She didn’t need a mirror to apply lipstick. She’d been wearing it since she was twelve years old. Her hand knew the motion by heart. Still, she leaned up and checked herself in the rear-view mirror. She had to admit that the stuff was worth it. The color didn’t bleed. It lasted all day. Rose cashmere didn’t exactly suit her, but then again it didn’t exactly suit Sara, either.

  Angie sat back in the seat. She smoothed her lips. She thought about the other things Sara had left at Will’s house. Real Manolo Blahniks. They were too big for Angie’s feet, a size more suitable for a drag queen. Black lacy underwear, which was a waste because Will could get turned on by a paper sack. Hair clips, which Angie could use, but she had thrown them away because fuck Sara Linton. Perfume. Another waste. Will couldn’t tell the difference between Chanel No. 5 and Dial hand soap.

  Then there were the things in the bedside drawer.

  Angie’s bedside drawer.

  She reached into her bag and found a tissue. She wiped off the lipstick. She rolled down the window and threw the tissue on the ground. She could afford to buy her own Sisley now. She could afford to get her car fixed. She could buy her own Manolos, her own perfume.

  Why was it that she only ever wanted the things that she couldn’t have?

  There was a glint of white in her rear-view mirror. Dale Harding’s Kia came from around the side of the building. The car slowed to a stop four spaces away. Dale was eating a McDonald’s hamburger. The door opened. He shoved the rest of the burger into his mouth and tossed the wrapper onto the ground. His meaty hand clamped onto the roof. The car shook as he wedged himself out.

  He asked Angie, ‘Where is he?’

  Angie was offering an exaggerated shrug when Dale turned toward the street.

  Sam Vera circled his van through the parking lot in a lazy figure eight. The idiot probably thought he was doing surveillance, but he was actually drawing more attention to himself. His van was painted a dull gray with a FEEL THE BERN bumper sticker on the back. The gray was a primer coat, broken up by patches of yellowing Bondo. Which Angie only knew about because of Will.

  She got out of her car.

  Dale asked, ‘You find anything out?’

  ‘Fig is beating his wife.’

  ‘No shit.’ He obviously already knew. ‘I talked to the team fixer in Chicago. They had to make a couple of nine-one-ones go away.’

  ‘You didn’t think to share this with me?’

  ‘No big deal. He doesn’t strangle her.’

  ‘What a gentleman.’ Cops were taught that an abuser who strangled a woman was statistically more likely to kill her. Angie asked, ‘Anything else you’re hiding?’

  ‘Maybe. How about you?’

  Angie dug around in her purse so he couldn’t see her expression. Dale had obviously done a good job vetting Jo Figaroa, but her birth certificate would’ve been a dead end. Angie had given them an alias at the hospital.

  The van finally came to a stop. The brakes squealed. She could smell pot. The radio was blaring Josh Groban.

  Dale banged his fist on the side of the van. ‘Open up, dipshit.’

  There was a loud pop as Sam Vera threw back the bolt on the van door. His large round eyeglasses caught the sun. He was twenty years old, tops, with a goatee that looked like mange from a squirrel. His eyes squinted behind his glasses. ‘Hurry. I hate the sun.’

  Angie climbed into the back of the van. The air conditioning was working overtime, but the van was still a giant metal box baking in the sun. Sam’s acrid sweat mixed with the sweet odor of pot. She felt like she was in a frat house.

  Angie sat on an overturned plastic crate. She kept her purse in her lap because there was greasy-looking shit all over the floor. Dale settled into the front passenger seat, turned sideways so he could see them both. He handed Sam an envelope of cash. Sam started counting the bills.

  Angie looked around the cramped space. The van was a mobile RadioShack. Wires and metal boxes and various crap she didn’t understand spilled out of the Dewey decimal system he had going on in the back. He specialized in remote surveillance, but not the legal kind. There was a Sam Vera in every major American city. He was paranoid as hell. He had no qualms about breaking the law. He talked a tough game, but he would narc out his own mother if the cops ever leaned on him. Angie used to have her own Sam Vera, but he got picked up by the NSA for breaking into something you weren’t supposed to break into.

  ‘M’lady.’ Sam offered Angie a bright green phone with black electrical tape holding it together. ‘This is a clone of Jo Figaroa’s iPhone.’

  ‘That was fast.’

  ‘That’s what you pay me for.’ He asked Dale, ‘Did you get the bugs in place?’

  ‘Planted ’em while the wife was dropping off the kid at school.’ Dale’s breathing was labored. He looked worse than usual. ‘I also plugged in that whatever thingy you told me to put on her laptop. It was in the kitchen. I didn’t find any other computers. No iPads. Nothing. Weird, right?’

  ‘Really weird.’ Sam told Angie, ‘The program Dale put on the laptop is called a shadow tracker, like spyware, but better. I already downloaded every file from the hard drive onto this tablet.’ He reached toward a bin and pulled out a scratched-up iPad. Two old-school antennae stuck out of the back that reminded Angie of the rabbit ears on a television. ‘I loaded an app to ping the GPS tracker on her car. It’s this button here with the car on it. Works exactly like the police model. You’re familiar with it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can follow her anywhere she goes as long as it’s not underground.’ He started swiping and tapping the glass. ‘The spyware on her laptop acts in real time. Whatever she types on the computer from now on will show up on this iPad, but since I already downloaded all the data, you can also go back and do searches through her hard drive. It’s basically her laptop. Not just a copy as of a certain date.’

  Dale said, ‘You mean not like the thing you gave Polaski before.’

  Sam’s eyes bulged in his head. ‘I didn’t—’

  ‘I told him,’ Angie interrupted. Dale wouldn’t give her Sam’s contact information unless Angie told him why. Angie had been a little creative on whose laptop she was breaking into. She told Sam, ‘We’re cool. Just keep doing what you’re doing.’

  ‘All right.’ Sam tapped a few more times on the screen. He handed the iPad to Angie. ‘Just so you know, the hacker’s code is you don’t rat out your customers. I’m solid for you, yo.’

  ‘Sure, kid.’ Dale pulled a melted Snickers out of his pocket.

  Angie looked away so she didn’t have to watch him chew. She still wasn’t sure what had driven her to copy Sara’s laptop. Her patient files were on there, so Grady Hospital had installed some kind of encryption software that took a higher level of espionage than Angie was capable of. Sam had given her something called a dongle that broke Sara’s passwords and downloaded all the files. Angie knew this was crossing a line—not with Sara, but with herself. That was the moment at which she had gone from being annoyed to being obsessed to being a full-on stalker.

  Was she dangerous?

  She hadn’t figured out that part yet.

  ‘Get out of the van.’ Dale was talking to Sam. ‘I need a minute with Polaski.’

  Sam balked. ‘In the sunlight?’

  ‘You’re not going to melt, Elphaba.’

  Angie laughed. ‘How the hell do you know the Wicked Witch’s real name?’

  ‘Look.’ Sam tried to talk reason. ‘I’ve got sensitive stuff in here. For other clients. I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s top-secret stuff.’

  ‘You think either one of us knows what the fuck any of this shit is?’ Dale reached back and pushed open the door. ‘Get out.’

  Sam kept up the hurt act as he jumped out of the van. Dale slammed the door shut. Angie felt her eyes sting at the sudden changes in light.

  Dale fished a joint out of the ashtray. He used a plastic lighter to flame i
t up. He took a long drag and held it. Smoke sputtered out of his mouth when he said, ‘I took Delilah to see Wicked.’

  ‘Father of the year.’

  Dale offered her the joint.

  Angie shook her head. She already had three Vicodin on board.

  Dale took another drag. He squinted at all the electronic paraphernalia. ‘If I knew how to use half this shit, I’d be a billionaire by now.’

  Angie knew he’d be exactly where he was, and not just because of his shitty luck at the track. Men like Dale Harding only knew how to hold on to one thing: desperation.

  He said, ‘Look. I need a favor.’

  Angie was familiar with Dale’s favors. They all had one theme. ‘Did Delilah fall off the wagon?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. She’s solid.’ He gave her a hard look. ‘She’s gonna stay clean, right?’

  The guy was delusional, but she said, ‘Right.’

  ‘It’s another thing. My bookie.’

  Angie should’ve expected this. Even the threat of death couldn’t stop an addict from taking a hit. Delilah had the horse and Dale had the ponies.

  He said, ‘I’m into Iceberg Shady for fifteen K.’

  ‘I know you have the money.’ Angie knew that Dale kept bricks of cash under the spare tire in the trunk of his car. ‘Just peel some off the top.’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s all gotta go to Delilah. She’ll need some cash to live off of while the paperwork is moving through. You promised me you’d look after her.’

  Angie leaned back against the bins. Wires poked into her back, but she was feeling too claustrophobic to move away. Dale’s neediness was eating up all the air. He’d made some kind of side deal with Kip Kilpatrick, his last-ditch attempt to do right by Delilah. There was $250,000 being held in an escrow account. In two weeks, when the All-Star Complex broke ground, the money would automatically flow into a trust fund Dale had set up for Delilah. He was holding on to the promise of the trust fund as his one chance at redemption. Like a big payday could erase the thousands of times Delilah had earned Dale’s gambling money between her legs.

  Angie wasn’t interested in Dale’s redemption, and she didn’t want the job of wrangling a junkie whore. The only reason she’d said yes was because Dale was dangling the job at 110 over her head. If she had wanted to be responsible for a kid, she would’ve kept Jo.

  Dale dropped the joint back into the ashtray. ‘I got this from the lawyer, okay?’ He pulled a folded stack of papers out of his inside jacket pocket. A racing form floated to the floor of the van. ‘I just need your John Hancock.’

  Angie shook her head. ‘I’m the wrong person, Dale.’

  ‘I got you the job with Kip. I didn’t ask you any questions. You agreed to do this for me, now you’re gonna do it.’

  She tried to buy some time. ‘I need to read it before I sign it, maybe talk to a lawyer.’

  ‘No you don’t.’ He had a pen in his hand. ‘Come on. Two copies. One for you, one for the lawyer to file.’ She still didn’t take the pen. ‘You want me to start asking questions? Like maybe about your husband? Like why do you need to crack the encryption on medical software?’

  ‘That dickslap,’ Angie said. Sam had ratted her out after all. She stalled for time. ‘How would it work? The trust?’

  ‘The executor, that’s you, is authorized to pay out for basic things, like an apartment, utilities, health-care expenses. I want to make sure she always has a roof over her head.’ He added, ‘I put it in there that you get a grand a month for taking care of it.’

  Not chump change, but not enough to retire on, either. Here was the bigger problem: Angie knew Delilah Palmer. She was a selfish, spoiled brat, even without the junkie habit. The first nickel the girl got would end up melted in a spoon and shot into whatever vein she could find.

  Which is the reason Angie took the pen and signed the agreement.

  Dale laughed at her signature. ‘Angie Trent, huh?’

  ‘What about your other problem?’ She tucked her copy into her purse. ‘I’m gonna guess your bookie, Iceberg Shady, is also a pimp?’

  ‘He runs whores off Cheshire Bridge. That’s your old stomping ground, right?’

  During her detective days, Angie had worked honey traps out of the Cheshire Motor Inn. ‘That was years ago. Those girls are all dead.’

  ‘You don’t gotta know their names. You just gotta get them locked up.’

  ‘You want me to get APD to pull a sting on Cheshire Bridge?’ She was already shaking her head. She might as well tell them to round up all the sand on Daytona Beach. ‘That’ll take mountains of paperwork. The girls will be out in hours, arraigned in a week. There’s no way they’ll do it.’

  ‘Denny will do it if you ask nice.’

  Angie hated that Dale’s sticky fingerprints were all over her life.

  ‘Come on, Polaski. Give a dying man some peace. Denny would fuck a donkey if you asked him to.’

  ‘Denny would fuck a donkey just because.’ She reluctantly took out her phone. Angie only used burners, so she could control who got in touch with her. She pulled Denny’s number from the Rolodex in her head and started typing. She asked Dale, ‘I guess you want this to happen now?’

  ‘Today is good. Half of Iceberg’s bank is on Cheshire. Denny keeps him busy bailing out girls, that should buy me at least a week.’

  She studied his watery eyes. Red shot through the whites like yarn. ‘Just a week? That’s all you’ve got left?’

  ‘I got it worked out. If my kidneys don’t get me, this will do the job.’ He pulled a small baggie of white powder out of his jacket pocket. ‘One hundred percent pure.’

  ‘Every dealer on the planet says his cocaine is one hundred percent pure.’ She finished typing the text. ‘It’s probably a laxative.’

  ‘It’s real,’ Dale said, because of course he’d tested it. ‘I figure this much coke after all these years, they’ll be peeling my heart off the ceiling.’

  ‘Sounds great.’ Angie sent the text to Denny. She tucked her phone into her purse. ‘Make sure I’m not the one who finds your body.’

  ‘Hand to God,’ he swore. ‘But lookit, I want you to promise me again, Polaski. You can take your cut of the money, but you’ll make sure Delilah is comfortable, right? Not livin’ large, but in a nice place, with good neighbors—not like that Asian bitch I gotta deal with. Plenty of healthy food and organic shampoo and all that shit.’

  ‘Sure.’ Another promise Angie wasn’t certain she would keep. ‘But why are you timing it like this? You can eke out another week, make sure it all goes through.’

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t go another couple of weeks. I’m sick of this. Sick of living. I want it over.’

  She guessed that he was being honest, but the other part was that Dale knew Delilah would be furious when she learned that the money wasn’t going to be handed over in one lump sum. All she would have to do was throw a tantrum and Dale would capitulate, which meant that Angie had to be his posthumous balls. ‘Why me? You married Delilah so your ex-wives couldn’t get their hands on your windfall. Problem solved. You could hire a lawyer to keep her on a leash. Why do I have to be her banker?’

  ‘Because a lawyer would blow through half the wad before he figured out she was playing him. You don’t give a shit about nobody, especially her. She’ll beg and cry for more money, and you’ll tell her to fuck off.’

  Angie couldn’t argue with that.

  ‘And because she’ll spend it,’ he said. ‘She’s too stupid to plan for the future. She wants everything right now, as much as she can get, as fast as she can get it.’

  ‘Wonder who she gets that from?’

  Dale chose not to get her meaning. ‘Kids like her, they don’t understand the value of a dollar. She’s been struggling all her life, and that’s on me. The pills. The H. And then Virginia with all her shit . . .’ Dale took out his handkerchief. He blew his nose. His tears looked cloudy as they fell from his eyes. ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘It’s th
e thing.’ He meant the fact of his dying, that he was losing control of his faculties. WebMD listed this as a side effect. Vivid dreams. Hallucinations. Memory loss. Lack of coordination.

  Dale blew his nose again. He wiped his tears.

  Angie watched him struggle to rein in his emotions. She felt cold, even though the van was broiling. Pain could be infectious. She couldn’t afford to let it in.

  Dale said, ‘I just wanna make sure this is done right.’

  Angie had never excelled at doing things right. ‘What’s to stop me from cleaning out all the money and leaving Delilah high and dry?’

  ‘There’s oversight from the law firm. You can only write checks to landlords and the power company and places like that, but not like Macy’s or McDonald’s.’

  Angie nodded, but she could think of a thousand ways to get around the restriction. Step one: turn herself into a landlord.

  Dale said, ‘You promised me, Angie. I’ve got your word. I’m not saying that means anything, but I will tell you that I’m gonna get downstairs a lot quicker than you are, and if you fuck over my daughter, I’m gonna be waiting for you in hell.’

  She didn’t want to admit that the warning scared her. ‘You don’t think I’ve got a shot at heaven?’

  He tossed the used handkerchief onto the floor. ‘Tell me why you’re so interested in Fig’s wife.’

  ‘Because I’m being paid to be.’

  ‘Not a new interest, though.’

  Angie smiled. ‘Why didn’t you ever use that brain on the job?’

  ‘They didn’t pay me enough.’ He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Stalking can get you ten years in big-girl prison.’

  Angie wondered who he thought she was stalking. Sara, sure, but she had been following Jo, too. ‘What makes you think I’m stalking somebody?’

  ‘I’m not as stupid as I look, Polaski. You came to me begging for a job. Your husband was trying to make a case against Marcus Rippy. I did some digging.’

  Angie felt the hair on the back of her neck go up. She always kept an eye out because of Will. She hadn’t even seen Dale coming. ‘What do you think you know about me?’

  ‘That you’d fuck over the only guy in the entire world who doesn’t think that you’re a worthless, cold-blooded bitch.’