by Phil Swann
I met Jaqueline Plato a few years back while playing a campaign fundraiser for a congressman. I would happily report the congressman’s name, but I honestly can’t remember it. At any rate, while on break, Jaqueline and I struck up a casual conversation which eventually led to the subject of music. That’s when I first learned of her affection for the great blues artist Blind Willie Johnson. Few people outside of true blues aficionados knew of the man, so I was instantly struck by the lady’s excellent taste in music. And just so there’s no mistake, Jaqueline was considerably north of sixty, so there was no untoward overtone to my fascination with her.
Jaqueline and I became fast friends, and over the ensuing years had many occasions to break bread together, share a cocktail, and discuss music, as well as other matters of the less aesthetic nature. For instance, sometime back, at Jaqueline’s request, I was able to help out one of her girls who had a desire to depart the trade and get a job as a waitress at the Sands. I don’t know if my recommendation helped or not, but the girl landed the job, and Jaqueline was eternally grateful. Now, to be clear, I don’t do favors for friends expecting a favor in return, that’s not how Trip Callaway’s built. However, in this case, I was very much hoping my attempt to help out a friend did hold some weight because I was about to ask one whopper of a favor in return.
I pulled up in front of the white, nondescript building, and parked. I was still driving Clegg’s Cadillac because…well, why not? Michelle and Jean-Claude were huddled together in the backseat.
“You guys stay here,” I said.
The Cozy Saddle was in a quiet industrial neighborhood northeast of town. It couldn’t be found on a map, in any travel brochure, nor was there a neon sign—or red light for that matter—hanging above its door. For all intents and purposes, the Cozy Saddle did not exist. That is unless you were part of a very small, very well-heeled customer base that Jaqueline Plato had vetted herself. It was for that reason I believed the Cozy Saddle would be the ideal hideout for Michelle and Jean-Claude—ideal, of course, if you put aside the fact it was a house of ill repute, and Jean-Claude was a thirteen-year-old boy.
I was reaching for the buzzer when the door suddenly swung open.
“How are you always able to do that?” I asked.
“Tradecraft, love,” Jaqueline replied, extending her arms to receive a hug.
She wore a flowing black dress, accessorized by a purple print scarf loosely draped around her neck. Her hair was a deep, black cherry red, and her eyes were so dangerously green, they should have required a weapons’ permit. Her complexion was flawless, her voluptuous figure was voluptuous in all the right places, and her smile was so perfectly suited to her face, it looked like it had been rendered there by an artist. I understood in Jaqueline’s line of work taking care of your appearance was akin to a musician practicing his scales. But still, I’d seen movie starlets in the Copa Room, half Jaqueline’s age I might add, who would have sold their souls for the lady’s eye-popping looks.
“You get in here, Trip Callaway,” she said, taking my hand and pulling me inside. “I haven’t seen you in months.”
I put my other hand on top of hers. “I need to ask that favor first, Jaqueline.”
She tilted her head. “You look properly stressed-out, Trip Callaway. Must be a big favor.”
“Yes, it is. And yes, I am.” I moved aside so she could see out to the Caddy. “My friends need a safe place to stay.”
Jaqueline squinted as she peered out the door. “Is that a boy in the car?”
“His name is Jean-Claude. That’s his mother, Michelle.”
“Are they wanted by the law?”
“No. Well, maybe. But not really.”
She looked at me and raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Give it to me straight, love.”
“The police might want to question Michelle, but the real problem is some other folks who want her for more than just a chat. If it matters, we’re pretty sure she’s been set up. No one is looking for the boy…as far as I know.”
“Who are we?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said, ‘we’re pretty sure she’s been set up.’ Who are we?”
“Me and…some friends. We’re trying to sort it out, but Michelle and Jean-Claude need to be kept somewhere safe while we do it. Jaqueline, I know it’s a big ask, but I need help. What do you say?”
Jaqueline looked at me, looked out at the car, and then looked back at me. She pursed her lips. “I’ve always been a sucker for you farm boys. Just be grateful you’re cute as the dickens, Trip Callaway.”
She moved me aside and went out to the Caddy. “You two get out of that hot car, you’ll burn up in there.”
The door opened and Jean-Claude, trumpet case in tow, hopped out.
“My name is Miss Jaqueline,” she said, extending her hand.
“Jean-Claude,” he replied, shaking it.
“Nice to meet you, Jean-Claude. And you must be Michelle.”
Michelle nodded as she stepped from the car. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Please, call me, Jaqueline. Come on in. I just made a big pitcher iced tea. Are you hungry, Jean-Claude?”
Jean-Claude nodded.
“Okay, follow me. Let’s go see what we can find in the kitchen.”
We followed Jaqueline through the door and into a dimly lit hallway where a staircase lay directly in front of us leading up to a second floor. That, as I understood it, was where business was conducted, and I swear I have never been up there. The few times I had visited the Cozy Saddle, I remained in Jaqueline’s private residence, which was through a pair of French doors off to the right as you entered.
It could have easily been my living room back in Indiana. Traditional, dark wood furniture set on braided rugs, and picture frames boasting Jaqueline’s family on every table. The only indication you were anywhere other than the home of a stately older woman, were that the pictures on the tables weren’t actual of Jaqueline’s family, but rather her girls, both past, and present, which I suppose one could make the argument was Jaqueline’s family.
Michelle and Jean-Claude took in their surroundings.
“Make yourself comfortable,” Jaqueline said. “The powder room, should you need it, dear, is just down that hall beside the guest bedroom.”
“Thank you,” Michelle said.
“Thanks, Jaqueline,” I added.
Jaqueline smiled, and then gave me a wink for good measure.
“Jean-Claude,” I said, “I need to talk to your mother alone for a moment. Why don’t you go see Miss Jaqueline’s guest bedroom?”
“I have a better idea,” Jaqueline said. “You can help me with the sandwiches and iced tea. I also have a television in the den. After we make the sandwiches, we’ll go see if there’s anything on worth watching. I think Ed Sullivan is on tonight?”
Jean-Claude looked at his mother. She smiled and nodded okay. He smiled back, and then followed Jaqueline out of the room.
“A brothel?” Michelle asked.
“I know, but it’s safe, and hopefully you won’t be here long. Look, Jaqueline is as solid as anybody I know. We can trust her to be—”
Michelle put up her hand. “My son has lived the last two years of his life in a house surrounded by mobsters. This is probably a step-up in class of people for him. We’ll be fine. Thank you, Trip.”
“Michelle,” I said, moving closer. “I need to ask you some questions.”
“I didn’t kill Charlie,” she said. “I swear, I didn’t. I can’t believe he’s—”
“That’s not what I need to ask you.”
“Then what?”
“How did you first meet Henry Wilson?”
“He approached me at a cocktail party I was attending with Charlie.”
“Do you recall how he approached you? I mean, what he said?”
“I’ll never forget it. He said, ‘Mrs. Wu, my name is Hank Wilson. I know your father.’ It was just that simple. I didn’t believe him, of course,
but I agreed to meet him later, anyway—curiosity, I guess. So, we met, he told me what he did, and that he’d run across my father while hunting along the Mekong Delta. My father told him about the family he’d abandoned in Paris. Hank said he’d been looking for me for months. Then, he showed me pictures. Trip, those pictures were like seeing a ghost, like looking at an answer to a prayer.”
I nodded.
She continued, “We began meeting every time he’d return from a trip. Before long, the idea was hatched to get my father out of Vietnam.”
“His idea, I presume.”
“No, it was mine. In fact, I had to talk him into it. All he kept saying was, it’s too dangerous, and would take a lot of money.”
“But you told him you could get the money.”
She nodded. “I didn’t know how, that came later, but yes, I told him I could get the money.” She took a long breath, looked down, and then back up at me. Her eyes were filled with tears. “Trip, have I been conned?”
It was heartbreaking. She looked like a child asking a parent if Santa Claus was real or not. I wasn’t prepared to answer the question, so I changed the subject. “When you started meeting Wilson, how did that work?”
“What do mean?”
“I mean, how did he contact you? What happened when you met?”
“We obviously had to be discrete. He’d leave a message for me with the concierge at the Stardust. I would go there and check to see if we were meeting that day.”
“And was the meeting always at that same motel out in the desert?”
Her face went flush. “How do you—you followed me?”
“Yes, I did. Was it always at that same motel?”
She lowered her head and nodded.
“And what happened in the motel?”
“Not that,” she exclaimed, looking up.
“I know,” I replied.
She put her hand to her forehead. “Every time we met, we’d talk a while, and then he’d show me new pictures he’d taken of my father.”
“And you’re sure it was your father in those pictures?”
“Yes. I mean, I think it was. I haven’t seen the man since I was twelve, but I know it was him.”
I didn’t say anything.
Then she added, “I suppose…I wanted it to be him. I still do.”
“And the money? How did that work?”
“We’d go into the office at the motel. That’s where I made the transfer of funds from one account to another. Hank knew the owner of the motel and said that he’d set up a special telephone line just for that purpose. I would call a phone number, give the person on the other end some digits, and that was it. After every meeting, Hank would promise we were one step closer to getting my father out. But then, a week or so later, he’d leave me a message at the Stardust saying there was another snag, and he needed more money. We’d meet, and go through it all again.”
“Michelle, how were you able to get the account numbers from Charlie?”
She shook her head. “I really don’t want to tell you that.”
“You have to. I need to know.”
She took a moment before answering. “James gave them to me.”
She looked at me as if she were expecting me to be surprised. I wasn’t.
“Trip, Johnny can’t ever know that. He’d kill James.”
I didn’t say it out loud, but if what was going on, was what I thought was going on, then Johnny already knew James had given Michelle those account numbers. “Why did James agree to give you the account numbers?”
“I won’t tell you that. I’m sorry, but I won’t. It has nothing to do with any of this. All I’ll say is, I knew something, and James knew I knew it. I used it to persuade James to get me the information I needed. But I swear, Trip, it has nothing to do with what’s going on.”
I didn’t push it, but Michelle couldn’t have been more wrong, I was certain it had everything to do with what was going on. It also fit nicely into a theory I’d been tossing around my noggin from nearly the minute I saw James Wu and Jack Kingston in Clyde’s a few nights earlier.
“But there is something you should know,” Michelle said. “Something I didn’t tell you or Mr. Clegg.”
“What?”
“Charlie came to me last night and said he knew what I was doing. That’s all he said. So, I confessed. I told him about my father, Hank Wilson, how I was transferring the money, I told him everything.”
Now that surprised me. “How did he take it?”
“Surprisingly well. He was upset, of course, and said I could get in a lot of trouble. He said stealing from the family was bad enough, but doing it for the purposes of smuggling someone into the country who had worked with the Communists could get me sent to jail., but in the end, he forgave me, and said he would work it out.”
“You loved him, didn’t you?” I said.
She shook her head. “He was kind to me and Jean-Claude, and I honestly believe he saved our lives. But no, I didn’t love him. What’s worse, I think he knew it. But I didn’t kill him, Trip. After we talked, I went upstairs, and the next thing I know, men were bursting in and dragging me from the house.”
I didn’t say anything, but she did.
“After how I behaved when we first met, I’ll understand if you don’t believe me.”
“Yeah, you were pretty rotten,” I said with a classic Callaway snicker.
“Properly rotten,” she responded.
“How did you get mixed up with a Triad crime boss anyway?”
She shook her head, and then looked away. “It’s a story so pathetically cliché, it’s nearly too embarrassing to tell.”
“Tell me anyway,” I said.
“The years following my husband’s death were trying. It was just me and a little boy living in Paris, barely getting by, and facing a very bleak future. Just keeping the heat on became my main mission in life, let alone food on the table. There were nights I would lie in bed and honestly think we weren’t going to make it. I met Charlie when he was on business trip to Paris. I was working as a waitress in a small café. He was charming and kind. We spent time together, and he eventually offered to fly me and Jean-Claude to San Francisco for a visit. One thing led to another, he asked me to marry him, and for the sake of my son, I agreed. He was a life preserver. I’m not proud to admit that, but that’s what he was to me.”
“Did you know what he did for a living?”
“I only learned that after we were married. Once I did, it was made clear what I could and could not do. Divorce was on the could not do list—much to Johnny and James’s disappointment.”
“I take it they don’t care much for you?”
“No, and they loath Jean-Claude. But their father is…was boss, they had to accept us. Now, I don’t know what Jean-Claude and I are going to do.”
Jaqueline came back into the room, Jean-Claude was at her side carrying a tray of sandwiches. “Look what we have,” she sang out.
I took the tray from Jean-Claude and set it on the table. “They look delicious, you guys, but I need to take a raincheck.”
“Where are you going?” Michelle asked.
“To get Clegg.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I’m working on it.” I looked at Jean-Claude. “J.C., you’re the man around here. Your job is to look after these ladies. You think you can do that?”
“You can count on me, Trip.”
“You okay?” I asked Michelle.
She smiled. “I’m fine. Be careful, Trip.”
“Always,” I replied. “Thanks again, Jaqueline. You’re one in a million.”
“Yes, love, I know. Just don’t tell the vice squad.”
I chuckled, grabbed a sandwich off the tray, and made my exit.
The Glitter Gulch was signaling it was showtime again in the desert. As I crossed over Fremont, Vegas Vic offered his cheery wave, and I, as had become my custom, waved back. But on this night, unlike most, I didn’t share V
ic’s cheery disposition. Beyond everything else, I couldn’t stop thinking about how readily Michelle had bought into Wilson’s story about her father. But then again, there was a part of me that completely understood her gullibility.
When I was eight-years-old, there was a boy who lived down the road from us named Tommy Farnsworth. I thought Tommy was cool because he was older than me—Tommy was nine. Tommy and I had a lot in common; we both loved cars, liked listening to music, and neither one of us had a mother. One day, while Tommy and I were out digging for arrowheads, he told me about a movie he saw where everybody thought a woman had died—everyone except her son. The son knew she hadn’t died because he saw her taken away by Dracula. No one believed the son, so he went looking for his mother on his own. In the end, he found her, killed Dracula, and brought his mother home. Tommy said that was what had probably happened to our mothers. That they really hadn’t died but were kidnapped by Dracula, and either nobody knew it, or they did know, and were just too afraid to go rescue them. He also said that in the movie Dracula lived in a castle on top of a mountain. That could only mean one thing. Dracula had to be living on top of Cushing’s Hill, in the old mill house, about a mile away. To make his case even stronger, Tommy said that was why both our fathers had told us to stay away from the place. And with that, I was sold.
So, the next morning—because we were smart enough to know Dracula slept during the day—we headed off to the old mill atop Cushing’s Hill, me armed with my genuine Lone Ranger six-shooter, and Tommy brandishing a finely-honed rubber tipped spear. Unfortunately, our adventure ended before it got started. While climbing the dry rotted steps leading up to the mill, Tommy split one of the boards, fell through, and got his leg stuck between two timbers. After spending two fruitless hours trying free him myself, I ultimately had to run back home, and get Pop to come and save the day.
Pop was sufficiently peeved, and Tommy’s father wasn’t exactly full of chuckles either. Later that evening, Pop asked me what in the daylights were we doing up there. I told him about the movie, about the boy’s mother who everyone thought had died but had really had been taken by Dracula, and how the boy saved her. Pop asked me if I believed in Dracula, and I admitted I didn’t. He asked me why then I believed Tommy’s story? I answered, “Because I wanted to.” Pop was silent and then asked me something I’ve never forgotten, largely because we Callaway men don’t cry and this was the closest I’d ever seen Pop come to breaking that rule. “Cecil,” he said, his voice quivering, “if your mother was still alive, do you honestly believe there’s a monster in this universe I wouldn’t fight to the death to get her back?”
