The Dirty Book Murder

by Thomas Shawver

“Yeah,” Higgins said with a sidelong glance. “She’s not afraid to use the gifts God gave her.”

  We contemplated the floor for a few seconds, then the detective showed me an invitation card Josie had provided him. The gilt lettering embossed on heavy linen paper read:

  Martin Quist and his special guest, Robert Langston, request the honor of your presence at a very intimate black-and-white masked ball …

  After citing the time and address, it ended with a postscript: Leave your inhibitions at home.

  “Rest here while I take care of some paperwork,” Higgins told me. “I need to see if Ms. Trenche has sobered up enough to request an attorney. I’ll be back to discuss our plans for Quist’s party.”

  After he left, I stretched out on the couch and picked up The Missouri Law Journal, but my concern for Anne was such that even reading the footnotes failed to put me to sleep. I was thinking what damn fools we Bevans were and that there didn’t seem much I’d ever be able to do to change that.

  It was after one in the morning when Higgins returned. He looked alert as he sat in a chair across from me.

  “You awake?”

  “Wouldn’t you be after reading that tort reform in Missouri lags behind Louisiana?”

  “I asked you a question.”

  I put the magazine down.

  “I guess you know that your daughter and Langston have been playing house at Quist’s. Majansik and Edward Worth joined them right after she left you at her apartment. Since we haven’t had a chance to communicate with Josie, she won’t know you’ll be at the party. It might get complicated.”

  I got the drift that “complicated” meant “seriously dangerous.”

  “You still want to do this?” he asked.

  “If that was your daughter in there, what would you do?”

  “I don’t have any girls; just two boys who never grew up to my satisfaction.”

  He stretched out his legs, scratched his belly, and leaned toward me.

  “I hate like hell doin’ things this way, Bevan, but we got no options. It’s imperative that Majansik complete her mission. The agents and I aren’t going to rush in and arrest Quist and his thugs until Josie finds what she’s looking for.”

  “And what exactly is that?”

  Higgins got up from his chair. He stepped over to a window and looked at the lights of the entertainment district below.

  “Quist isn’t just a blackmailer,” he said quietly. “We suspect he’s the reason those three young women went missing. I understand your concern for your daughter, but, for whatever their reasons, Anne and Langston chose to get involved with this monster. This is the first time one of our agents has been able to get close to his chamber of horrors. I can’t allow you to interfere with Majansik’s work. You go in on my terms or not at all.”

  “What would you have me do?” I was shaken by this information, but had no trouble accepting his terms. Taking on Violet Trenche was one thing, but this was a whole different matter with a lot more at stake than a book and a key and the reputations of a few horny socialites.

  “Keep it simple. Sneak in, convince your daughter to leave, and get her out as quietly as possible.”

  “She won’t listen to me. Besides, she’ll be with Langston.”

  Higgins moved from the window and squatted on his haunches in front of me. I noticed that he wore a hearing aid in his left ear and preferred Lavoris for mouthwash.

  “We don’t know how much Langston is aware of Quist’s sadism. For all we know, he may be an enthusiastic participant. We can’t take the chance of trusting that he’s on the side of the angels.”

  “My daughter is extremely headstrong. It’s going to be difficult convincing her to quietly leave without much of an explanation.”

  “You don’t have to go. In fact, the Feds would prefer that you not be involved.”

  “Sure they would, but I’ve got to try.”

  “Just worry about yourself and Anne. If you get caught, Quist has a platoon of bruisers even uglier than Kramm who’ll deal with you.”

  He stood up. “Now get some shut-eye. You’ll want to look your best for the party.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Wednesday, June 30

  The U.S. marshal who drove me to where I had parked Pegeen’s Saab wore a blazer and a six-pointed star badge, but didn’t have a mustache. Her name was Tina, she was Italian-American, and she was married to the sous-chef at a French bistro. She had three adorable nieces, one not-so-adorable nephew, and she absolutely loved NASCAR racing. I learned all this and more in the course of a ten-minute drive to Violet’s street.

  Before returning to my house, I stopped at the shop to place a note on the front window stating that Riverrun Books would be closed for a few days due to unforeseen circumstances. I figured that ought to keep the Irregulars in a fine frenzy.

  Arriving home just after two A.M., I found a photo album Carol had put together when we lived on the Navy base in Newport. I grabbed Feklar with my free hand and went into my daughter’s old bedroom. Curling up on the bed with the cat purring next to me, I stared at pictures that reflected a happier time. I dozed off at some point before daybreak and slept until noon.

  Not wishing to be seen by questioning neighbors, let alone the local police, I drove Peg’s car twenty miles outside of town to Shawnee Mission Park where I jogged along the lake, consumed two baloney sandwiches and a bag of corn chips, and communed with nature, such as it is in northeast Kansas. I spotted two deer, an owl, and a very mangy raccoon that might have been frothing at the mouth.

  On my return to civilization just after five P.M., I took a detour into Mission Hills to survey the Quist mansion. The Roman-style palazzo sat atop a high bluff overlooking the Kansas City Country Club golf course. The only thing modest about the place was the creek that flowed at the base of the hill, and even it looked like a medieval moat. Surrounded by cultivated gardens and a forest of mature spruce, maple, and oak, all that was missing was Lake Como.

  Caterers and florists were scurrying back and forth between the house and their vans when I pulled up behind a refrigeration truck parked near the front gate. A fog of icy mist streamed out of the open rear hatch where a grizzled hunchback, maybe five feet tall, not quite a hundred fifteen pounds, stood on a metal stool and used iron tongs to lug a three-hundred-pound block of ice onto a cart.

  It landed hard.

  He said, “Umphh.”

  A thought occurred. I got out of the Saab to ask him how things were going.

  “Just fuckin’ peachy,” he snarled. “The shit-for-brains ice ar-teest insisted on carving his Venus de Milo on-site with a chisel instead of in the studio with a chain saw. So I gotta haul this piece of crap up that mountain. His masterpiece is gonna be a melted adolescent by the time he finishes.”

  “Need some help?”

  “You offerin’?”

  “Yeah. No charge.”

  “Name’s Harvey.”

  “Mine’s Toby Bing. Glad to meet you.”

  Harvey’s extended hand was as overly large as his head compared to the rest of him. It was like shaking a paint mixer.

  “I’ll pull, you push,” he said.

  It took ten minutes in ninety-degree heat to get up the clunky stone path that ended at a large shed attached to the back of the house. I held onto the cart handle so it wouldn’t slip down the hill while Harvey tapped his tongs on the gnarled oak door. After a dozen more knocks, a young guy who looked like an assistant manager at Gold’s Gym let us in. He pointed toward a gleaming steel table in the center of the room. The surface was a few inches taller than the hunchback.

  “Put it on that,” the kid said. “I’ll lock up after you.”

  “That all you gonna help us with?” Harvey said.

  Gold’s Gym looked at him like he’d said something funny. He left through a door opposite the one we came in. From the aromas and clattering noises coming from there, I gathered he’d sought sanctuary in the kitchen.

  The
oak door wasn’t wide enough for the cart so Harvey used his tongs to lower the ice and drag it along the concrete through the entrance.

  I followed him inside. The only light came from the late afternoon sun rays filtering through the door and a pair of curtained windows two feet square. I could see from the cutting shears, steel rods, and shovels hanging neatly on iron hooks that somebody liked to garden; except there were no bags of fertilizer or soil. The shed seemed as clean as any hospital operating room. No paint cans. No lawn mowers. No clay pots. No dirt at all. Not even a container of Roundup. I touched the blade of a pruning knife. It was sharp as a scalpel.

  Harvey had no trouble pulling the block of ice across the smooth floor to the table. Once there, he spit on his hands, worked his giant head back and forth to loosen his neck muscles and with a grunt lifted one end of the block up so that it lay against the edge. He moved to the tail end of the block and shoved it onto the steel top.

  “Nicely done,” I said.

  “Piece of cake,” the hunchback said. “Uh, I don’t suppose you could lift me up there. I got to raise it to a vertical position. Can’t have Miss de Milo lying down.”

  By the time he had the ice standing up, the door connecting the shed to the kitchen opened and in skittered a slender man, mid-thirties, waving his hands like a fluttering French waiter. He wore a cravat with navy blue polka dots on a white background. Pinned to his white silk shirt was a round button that said “fopdoodle.”

  “My God! Where’s the rest of it?” he shrieked.

  In the fifteen minutes it had taken us to get the block from the refrigerated truck to the table, it had melted from three hundred pounds to the size of a rather large chimpanzee.

  “I’ll never complete the full torso now,” Alphonse the Ice Artist wailed. “Oh, dear Jesus. Martin’s not going to like this! We’ll need another block.”

  “Like hell,” Harvey growled, jumping off the table. He brandished his tongs toward the man’s crotch. “You’d best get to work before all you got left to sculpt is an ear.”

  Even Alphonse saw the point to that. After he skipped back to the kitchen to get his tools, I sauntered over to one of the windows and unhooked the latch. Then Harvey and I walked out the way we came in before anyone else could impugn our good names. We had the empty cart halfway down the hill when we heard Alphonse’s electric ice saw sputter into life.

  Back at the refrigeration truck, I pocketed the three dollars Harvey offered for helping him. It would have hurt his pride to decline. One never knows when one can use a friend in the ice business.

  * * *

  I drove home, washed down another baloney sandwich with a Diet Coke, took a shower and, after listening to part of a Royals game broadcast, climbed into a tuxedo I hadn’t worn for ten years. It was a little tight in the shoulders, but the trousers fit fine.

  Higgins picked me up at eight-thirty. A full moon hunkered as big and orange as a basketball over the trees to the east. We crossed State Line back into the “old money” neighborhood and cruised past Quist’s front gate. Where there had been only catering trucks three hours before, the right side of the street in front was now glutted with shining Mercedeses, Lexuses, Jaguars, and the occasional Porsche Carrera. Dozens of well-dressed guests were getting out of cars and handing their keys to sweating parking valets. Colored lanterns dangling from the oak trees lining the long circular drive lit their way to the arched entrance of the house.

  We drove on for a half mile, dodging sprinting valets and parallel-parked cars until coming to a street that showed no signs of either.

  Higgins pulled onto Sixty-third, shut off the headlights, and drove another block west before turning north onto a quiet lane that paralleled Indian Creek on one side and the Kansas City Country Club golf course on the other. He stopped the car opposite the ninth green so that Casa de Quist loomed directly above us. Eerily lit by the rising moon, it looked like the closing credits scene of Citizen Kane. Although we were a good distance from the house, we could hear music and high-pitched voices seeping into the night through its open doors and windows.

  “Best to go up from here,” Higgins said quietly when I got out of the car. “Our men cut off the alarm system this morning, but you’re on your own now, Bevan. And whatever happens, don’t screw up our bust or I’ll break whatever bones are left after Quist’s boys have a go.”

  Higgins gave me a thumbs-up, then drove slowly away, lights still off. I crawled through the slats of a country post fence and slid on the slick grass to the edge of the creek. There had been little rain the past month and the water wasn’t as high as usual, but it still looked like it would come up to my chest in mid-stream. I undressed—shorts, shoes, and all—to wade across holding the clothes over my head.

  A stone wall eight feet high surrounded the property. After shaking off what water and mud I could, I put my clothes back on and looked for something to help get me over the wall. All I could find was a piece of driftwood a foot thick. I stood on it, got my elbows over the ledge, and arm-crabbed my way up, then took a minute to rest on the top of the rough surface to scout the grounds.

  A dog barked a short distance away. I turned my head in the direction of the sound and saw a German shepherd straining on a leash held by a guard. They were moving downhill in my direction. I lay prone on the wall, not sure that I’d been spotted. Balloonlike biceps stretched the sleeves of the dark T-shirt of the man. It was the Gold’s Gym boy from the shed.

  My first inclination was to drop off the wall and crawl back to the creek—fast. But retreating, even for a few minutes, meant the end of my helping Anne escape. I felt sure Gold Body wasn’t the only guard prowling the grounds. I decided to play it out.

  He stopped thirty feet from where I lay on the wall, jerked the leash to quiet the dog, and pulled a cell phone from his pocket. He talked on it for nine minutes, long enough that I figured it had to be to a girlfriend, not his boss or another guard. After ringing off, he dropped the phone into his pocket, pulled out a joint, and lit up. He took a couple of hits on the weed and walked in my direction until he and Rin Tin Tin were directly below me.

  Strapped to his thigh was a Blackhawk tactical drop holster. Sticking out of it was what seemed to be the butt of a Glock 17 similar to those I’d been issued in the Marine Corps.

  I considered leaping on top of him. The dog would do what it had to do. Fortunately for all of us, the sweet smell of marijuana must have covered my scent. I let my heroic leaping idea pass and, after a few more leisurely drags, he and Rinty walked away.

  When I was certain he had disappeared around a corner of the wall, I dropped onto Quist’s property. The shed was on the right rear side of the mansion, partially shaded from the floodlight on the roof. I sprinted forty yards uphill to reach the window that I’d unlocked earlier. After catching my breath, I stood on my toes to peer inside.

  The room was dark except for a horizontal line of light under the door leading into the kitchen. I pushed open the window, crawled over the sill, and fell in a painful heap on the concrete floor. I crept up to the kitchen door, but not before slamming my upper thigh into the pointed edge of the steel table that had once held Harvey’s block of ice.

  I tried the handle to the door and, to my relief, found it unlocked. Clinging to the hope that no one in the kitchen would care about someone entering through the darkened shed, I opened the door a crack. Sweat momentarily clouded my vision, but I could see that the kitchen was full of people in starched white outfits hurrying about their duties. They cut meat, adjusted oven temperatures, spread sauce, and diced vegetables in a noisy, chaotic atmosphere filled with delightful aromas.

  At the far end of the large room, I noticed what looked to be an elevator cage. A squat, muscular man stood in front of it with arms crossed. Figuring he wasn’t there just to cut carrots, I waited for him to leave the kitchen before making my entrance.

  It took ten minutes for him to find something else to do. As soon as I stepped in, however, an obese ch
ef stopped shouting at his minions long enough to demand in a Marseilles accent why a tuxedoed guest had been allowed to enter his terrain.

  I answered in the typical French manner—by ignoring him. While he waited for an answer, I casually plucked a canapé of smoked salmon off a nearby tray table and whistled a Beatles tune before passing through a swinging door into party central.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Immediately outside the kitchen was a narrow set of stairs built for the servants of an earlier age. I went up, passed through an empty changing room, and exited into a lushly carpeted hallway. Four masked figures holding candles like extras in a Vincent Price horror flick glided silently past me in the opposite direction. The last in line, a woman, stopped and pointed out the trail of dirty footprints in my wake. She shook her head; I shrugged my shoulders apologetically.

  I walked farther down the hall toward the main staircase where the hum of voices and music rose from below. Another masked couple ascended the stairs. I ducked into a dark room before they could notice me. While I waited for them to pass, something on the far wall caught my eye. A faint beam illuminated the photograph of a young woman whose milk white face was partially covered by a dark hood. Her visible features appeared devoid of personality. She might have been a mannequin except for the arch in her lip indicating the slightest sense of surprise.

  As my eyes became used to the dimness, I noticed other photos. All but two were similar in that black hoods partially covered their pale faces. In each, one breast was similarly exposed as if the models had been posed for no other purpose than to be the objects of a voyeur’s derision. I studied the eyes of the models. All were heavily dilated. The girls must have been drugged when photographed. Except for the last one, who I think was dead.

  I returned to the hallway.

  The couple I had seen coming up the stairs were now humping away in a guest bedroom next door, oblivious to my or anyone else’s presence. I stepped inside, grabbing one of their masks and a long scarf that lay among other hastily discarded clothes on a chair.