The Dirty Book Murder

by Thomas Shawver

She smiled for the first time since entering the room and sat on a corner of the bed.

  “I’m sorry for how I’ve acted.”

  “I haven’t set much of an example for you,” I said.

  I didn’t mention how proud I was of her for going after Quist. According to the police report Higgins showed me, Quist had already pushed the descent button when Anne surprised him. She shot the dart when he lunged at her, striking him in the eye. He staggered backward, tripping into the shallow of the shaft, just in time for the descending elevator carrying its load of an overweight cop and two federal marshals to finish the job.

  Her fingers curled around my hand. They felt cold.

  “Drug addiction is my problem, not yours,” she said.

  “Anything that causes you pain is my problem. Don’t worry about the money. Think of what I’ll save not having to pay for your next semester at C.U.”

  Anne straightened her back and said without anger, “I still can’t disconnect you from Mother’s death.”

  “I don’t see how you can, honey. Every night before falling asleep I ask the old ‘what if,’ but second-guessing doesn’t honor your mom’s memory. Give it a nod when it enters, then let it pass just as swiftly. After a while, it might get tired of visiting.”

  “Josie Majansik told me it was all right not to forget if one can forgive as well.”

  I smiled at the old saw used by divorce lawyers to bring a semblance of reason to emotionally fragile clients made irrational by jealousy and anger.

  “That’s nice of her to try to help.”

  “Josie’s been very kind to me. I think she’d like for you to call her when you get out of here.”

  “Is that so?” I said in a way that meant “not a chance.”

  Anne arched an eyebrow. “I heard you wouldn’t see her when she tried to visit.”

  “I wasn’t feeling like flowers.”

  “I thought you two were …”

  “Involved?”

  “If the euphemism fits, yeah.”

  “We were for about ten minutes,” I answered bluntly. “We’ve all got our issues, but Ms. Majansik, for all her good qualities, is too hard a case even for me.”

  “What on earth could she have done—aside from saving our lives, of course—to have put you off of her?”

  “Let’s just say she takes her work far too seriously.”

  I squirmed a bit, looking for the right adjectives to make the point without telling the truth about that porno tape. Discretion has always been a tricky business for me.

  “Josie is nice,” I said. “Very attractive and all the rest, but I’m just not comfortable around her.”

  “Oh, bollocks!” Anne snorted in a most British manner. “She’s exactly what you need, whether you’re comfortable with it or not.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Don’t patronize me.”

  She pulled her hand from mine and we both stared at the television. Maybe I should have turned it on. Instead, I asked how she was going to get to the clinic in Lawrence.

  “Mark Winter offered to drive me.”

  I smiled with approval, but wisely didn’t comment.

  Anne shrugged. “I’d better go see how Bob is coming along in the ICU.”

  “You still care for him, huh?”

  “Ridiculous as it may seem to you, I love him. Lots. He makes me feel worthwhile.”

  “Ouch,” I said.

  She laughed and her eyes softened.

  “I put it badly. Bob’s ready to make something of his career again. I want to be with him when he does.”

  I gave her the skeptical father look. Langston’s past, combined with the glittering hedonism of Hollywood, didn’t sound like a drug-free future to me.

  “Give him some credit,” she said, reading my thoughts. “He wasn’t the one who hooked me on drugs. I was snorting coke by my junior year of high school. Bob’s been clean as long as I’ve known him, but he couldn’t get me to quit. When he became involved with Quist, I suddenly had a free supply of heroin. Bob was furious when he found out, but he had as much control over my addiction as you would have had.”

  I sighed. It’s hard letting a child go, especially when you’re just getting to know her.

  “Tell him I’ll get over to see him when we’re both properly patched up.”

  She squeezed my hand. I grinned as best as I could.

  “Honey,” I said as she walked to the door.

  She turned. “What?”

  “Your mother and I were very much in love. You were our pride and joy. Do you recall the poem we read to you when you were three or four?

  “A Child’s Garden of Verses?”

  “Yes,” I said, closing my eyes as I recited its first lines: “ ‘For the long nights you lay awake and watched for my unworthy sake; for your most comfortable hand that led me throughout the uneven land; for all the story books you read; for all the pains you comforted …’ ”

  “You remember that?”

  “I was there, too, honey.”

  “Now that you mention it, I believe you were.”

  “I’m still here for you.”

  Anne’s hands trembled as she grasped mine. I’d like to think it wasn’t just a withdrawal symptom.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, daughter?”

  “How about a hug?”

  * * *

  A week later, I had recovered enough to visit Bob Langston. He’d been released that morning from intensive care and was parked in a room around the corner from mine.

  I wheeled in to find his chest swathed in bandages. He wore a linen cap with a flap covering the left side of his head and his tongue was decorated with a dozen or so black sutures.

  He greeted me as if we were the best of friends. I suppose we would have been if he hadn’t bedded my daughter without my permission.

  “Thass a pwetty fowtin,” he said pointing his massive hand toward the window.

  “Yeah,” I said, pushing myself up from the wheelchair to see it, then settling back down.

  “Fwanks fuh saving ma life.”

  “Hey, we saved each other. You might have been a little quicker on the rugby cue, however. I thought I was going to have to spell it out for you.”

  “Yu bastid,” he grunted, flashing me the ugliest smile this side of Topeka. “Y’ud make a gud fadder’n-law.”

  “Give that tongue a rest,” I said, eager to avoid any talk relating to matrimony and Anne. “It’s making me sick watching you try to make it work.”

  “Maaiik?”

  “Yes, Bob?”

  “Yur dotter’s a wunner … wunferl guurll … ’n so bwaave.”

  “I know. But I’m not a wonderful guy, so you’d better take good care of her.”

  His cobalt blues peeped at me from under the goofy hospital cap.

  “Dun wuury, Pop.”

  “Don’t call me that. Not ever.”

  He giggled. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  “Ah’m goin’ t’finis ’he Jethie Jame movie.”

  And ten months later, buoyed by a loan from Edward Worth and some slick editing work by Anne Bevan, he did just that.

  Chapter Thirty

  Wednesday, July 21

  Ten days after my release from St. Luke’s, I attended a memorial service on the U.M.K.C. campus for Julie Caxton, Rebecca Weitz, and Deirdre Eberly, the three girls found entombed in the walls of Quist’s chamber of horrors.

  I sat in the back of the theater listening to the tributes given by their teachers and coaches as photographs displaying their once-golden lives flashed on a large screen. The juxtaposition of those bright, cheerful images with my memory of the horrific pictures taken of their last moments soon became more than I could handle. When one of the girls’ track coaches rose to speak, I gathered my crutches and snuck out.

  In the parking lot, I encountered a man in his mid-twenties who had the well-scrubbed good looks of the young people I’d seen at Quist’s bacchanal. His shaking hands fumble
d for a cigarette as I passed him on my way to the jeep.

  “Excuse me, sir. Do you have a light?”

  “Sorry,” I said, turning to face him. “I don’t smoke.”

  “Thanks, anyway.”

  His eyes were ringed with despair, but he wanted to talk.

  “I’m Trey Eberly, Deirdre’s brother,” he said, shaking my hand. “She was a wonderful person, but very modest. She would have been embarrassed by the speeches being spouted in there. Did you know her?”

  Not having a delicate answer, I just said, “She meant a lot to everyone whose lives she touched. They all did.”

  He gave me a cold stare.

  “Yes, of course. Have a nice day, sir.”

  As I drove away, a selfish thought emerged, one I could not resist and which I refused to let weigh on my conscience. The boy had lost his sister, his parents their child, but, partly because of their terrible loss, I had regained the love of my daughter.

  It’s best to take what you can in this world. If you choose to believe in fate, I figure you might as well believe that it brings only good fortune.

  * * *

  A few hours later, I hobbled into The Peanut to meet Buford Higgins for lunch. His idea.

  Pegeen Flynn poured two pints of Boulevard Pale Ale, said she was glad to see me alive, if not well, and reminded me that I owed her gas money for the use of her Saab. I tossed her two of those dollar coins found only in stamp machines these days and she disappeared into the kitchen to prepare our order.

  It was mid-afternoon and only three other customers were in the place. A lone drinker with the face of a flat tire sat at one end of the counter. He spent a lot of time shaking the ash off his cigar into empty longneck bottles placed neatly in a row like little brown soldiers. In a booth behind him, two women locked lips. When we tired of watching them, Higgins started talking.

  “Weston Preston’s out of the hospital and in a holding cell. He seems to be fine physically, but complains of a ‘melting mind.’ ”

  “I don’t envy you trying to get a sensible affidavit out of him.”

  “He’s talking and that’s all that matters. Violet Trenche isn’t saying a word, of course. She found enough money to hire David Scarpelli, so we’ll be jumping through the usual hoops.”

  “What happens to all the photos and addresses? I’d just as soon see them burned before someone else gets hold of them.”

  “Not to worry,” the big cop said. “No minors were involved, so the FBI authorized me to personally deliver all copies of sexually incriminating material to the affected parties. A lot of randy rich folks are resting easier at their country clubs this week.”

  “What about the district attorney?”

  Higgins looked at me with those squirrel eyes.

  “Some are more deserving than others,” he said. “I’ve talked to him. If Crowell doesn’t resign by the end of the month as promised, he’ll regret it. At any rate, he won’t be running for the Senate.”

  “Maybe not this year. Moral evil may carry its own curse, but I doubt this will destroy Denny.”

  “Yeah. He’ll be back. There will always be a segment of the electorate too stupid to ignore the hypocrisy of politicians like him.”

  Pegeen brought out the triple-size BLTs and we ate in silence for a while. That’s what you do at The Peanut after those monster sandwiches get plopped in front of you. It takes total concentration and jaws opened wider than a cattle gate to devour one.

  When nothing remained on our plates but some orphaned pieces of lettuce and mayonnaise drippings, I asked Higgins if he’d heard from Josie Majansik.

  “She’s still in Columbus with no plan to return. Last I heard, she was filling out her expense reports for the General Accounting Office. What’s it to you?”

  “You know what.”

  “You weren’t exactly Sir Galahad when she tried to visit you in the hospital.”

  “She makes me uncomfortable. What’s her story, Buford? I know she had a role to play. Maybe there was no other way to gain Quist’s trust, but Jesus …”

  I hesitated because the drunk at the end of the bar took a swipe at Pegeen’s beautiful bosom while she tried to clear away the empty beer bottles.

  “Excuse me for a minute,” Higgins said.

  He walked to the end of the counter, grabbed the nape of the man’s neck as if it were a rat’s, and hustled him out the door. Upon Higgins’s return, Pegeen tossed him the Sacagawea coins in gratitude.

  “Majansik’s not whoring for Uncle Sam or anyone else,” he said, after sitting down and collecting a free beer. “Staying undercover for eighteen months is a hell of a long time for that kind of work. With Crowell feeding Quist the names of our local vice squad operatives, we had to keep her on the job, even after she showed signs of burnout.”

  “And I know why.” I stared into the bottom of my glass. “Marilyn Chambers wouldn’t allow what Josie did in that porn flick.”

  It’s a good thing Higgins had eaten his sandwich or he would have choked on it.

  “Hell’s bells,” he sputtered. “You saw that?”

  I nodded solemnly; more solemnly, in fact, than I would have normally done if Higgins hadn’t thought it so hilarious.

  “Ah, you poor bastard,” he said after catching his breath. “Is that what all this moping is about?”

  I looked at Pegeen. She whistled something from South Pacific, then set about wiping the counter free of imaginary beer rings.

  “Well, yeah,” I finally answered. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “That wasn’t Josie Majansik in the film. At least not all of her.”

  “Huh?”

  “We weren’t getting anywhere with Quist or his people. Initially, they didn’t buy her act of a lonely nymphomaniac new to town. The regional FBI lab took a confiscated film featuring a woman with her body type, made some grainy shots of Majansik’s face and a boob shot or two.” He stopped for a swig of beer. “But, mind you, no down-unders. They spliced those shots of her into the original.”

  “Well, it sure fooled me.”

  “Hell, yes. The Feds in Cleveland had recently collared a child pornographer in Lancaster, Ohio, and given the choice of forty years or helping us, the charmer agreed to make the necessary introductions for Majansik by sending the doctored film to Quist. Within a week, Rolf Kramm paid a visit to her apartment. He threatened to send the movie to her supposed boss at the Gumbo. To avoid exposure, and to avoid actually prostituting herself, she tearfully agreed to lure the wealthy and oversexed Edward Worth into Quist’s trap.”

  I smiled mirthlessly, picturing her sweet gamine face staring up at the Afrikaner, telling him she was just a poor girl from southeast Ohio who needed the money and “Please don’t tell my mother.”

  “With Worth’s cooperation, it worked beautifully,” Higgins continued, “but got complicated when Langston and your daughter, not to mention you and that damned book, got into the mix.”

  “Josie walked into my life, not vice versa.”

  The detective glared at me before getting up slowly. He laid a twenty-dollar bill on the counter.

  I started to say something else, but he squeezed my shoulder with that meat hook of a hand.

  “Hold your gob,” he snarled. “Majansik never had a chance to be ‘sweet sixteen.’ She was eleven when her father died from black lung disease working in the coal mines of southeast Ohio. Her mother sent her and a younger brother to live with an uncle who proceeded to have his way with both of them. Somehow, she survived and earned a scholarship to Ohio State. The boy wasn’t as tough. He hung himself at fifteen.”

  Higgins released his grip. Pins and needles danced on my upper arm.

  “How’d you learn all this?” I said, massaging my shoulder.

  “She needed cover in her role as a reporter. I set her up in a room down the hall from my office and I got to know her pretty well. She didn’t share any personal stuff, however, until the night before she returned to Columbus.”

>   Pegeen returned with Higgins’s change. He pocketed it and started for the door, but didn’t get far with my hand grabbing his sleeve.

  “You can’t stop there, Buford. Did she say anything about me?”

  The detective turned. “She asked me to tell you good-bye for her.”

  “I understand.”

  He spread his big paws on the counter.

  “No, you don’t, Bevan. When she tried to see you, it was to open herself up to you and explain certain things. I can guess what they were now. But there must have been something good on daytime television, because you had better things to do than give her that chance. She has pretty low self-esteem when it comes to men. Maybe that’s why she’s so good at enticing us. She’s a pro when it’s playacting, but when the emotions become real, she doesn’t know what to do.”

  “Was she just playing me along as well?”

  “In order to get close to Quist through your daughter and Langston?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. But I know Eddie Worth thinks she’s pretty special.”

  Silence fell between us. The Peanut was beginning to fill with students pouring out of class from the nearby campus. Pegeen inserted a CD in the boom box above the bar and the place exploded into life. With its torn bar stools, tattered booths, and cheap decorations hanging from every square inch of the walls stained by decades of cigarette smoke, only the music seemed to ever change in Kansas City’s oldest bar. I like places that thrive on neglect. Maybe that’s how I was with people, too.

  “Tell her I’m sorry and maybe, maybe … Oh, hell, I don’t know.”

  “I’ll think of something,” Higgins said.

  We walked into the sunshine.

  “I hear you’re being promoted to captain.”

  “The chief thought it might be a good idea after I showed him this.” He grinned like a Cheshire cat and pulled out a folded piece of yellowed paper containing a list of names under the logo of a new moon.

  “Amazing how many folks are on this thing.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Friday, August 6

  On a blistering hot morning, Higgins called to tell me that Josie was in town for depositions relating to my former employees’ indictments. Alice Winter, who had learned of Josie’s arrival from Tim, dropped by the shop at noon to tell me I’d be a damned fool not to try to make amends.