The Lacey Confession

by Richard Greener

  She was expecting him. He called her the day before. She was impressed that he could get right to her, past all the interference put in place to make that very thing impossible. He explained briefly who he was and that he needed to see her immediately. He did not give her any details. Then he went to the airport and flew to New Orleans. When she answered the knock on the door of her cottage, Devereaux introduced himself and said, “Let’s talk in the courtyard. You never know how much privacy you have in a room.”

  “It’s beautiful there, Mr. Devereaux, but it’s—”

  “Cold. I know. Put on a jacket or a coat. If you don’t have one we’ll get you one. But we’ll talk outside.”

  Of course she had a coat. He knew she would. She got it and they walked to the courtyard and sat at a small table near the center. It was beautiful and it was cold. It was late in the morning, too late for breakfast, and they were the only ones there.

  “On a nice day this place would be crowded,” he said.

  “I’m sure.”

  “I’m surprised you’re staying here,” said Devereaux. “I would have thought—”

  “My people are at the Hilton,” she smiled. “We all have people, don’t we?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “But you probably don’t have to make hotel reservations for yours, do you? I like this hotel. I’ll show you around when we’re done.”

  “Thanks. I’d like that. I’ve always been partial to the Vieux Carre. You know, Ms. Crystal, some say the Maison de Ville and its cottages are the oldest structures in New Orleans. This courtyard, for instance, was first built after the terrible fire of 1786. Tell me, if you don’t mind, why are you staying in a two-bedroom cottage instead of a suite?”

  “I like the room,” she said. “You’re a fountain of information about this hotel, aren’t you? What else can you tell me? You’ve stayed here before, haven’t you?”

  “No, I haven’t. But I can tell you that Tennessee Williams did. He used to stay here all the time. He wrote Streetcar over there in room number nine.”

  She looked at him, waiting for the other shoe. “And?” she said.

  “And, when I’m in New Orleans, which is not as often as I’d like, I stay at home.” He smiled at her. It was a way of showing he was a friend. “You haven’t answered my question—the cottage, not the suite?” This time it was Chita who smiled. “And?” prompted Devereaux.

  “And, who knows,” she replied. “You never know when you’ll need the room. I might have a friend stay over.”

  “In the other bedroom?”

  “Sure,” said the mega-star Chita Crystal. “I’m a married woman, if you didn’t know.”

  “Separated, I believe. Divorce papers ready to file any day.”

  “You know a lot. That’s not public and hasn’t been leaked either.”

  “Yes, I do Ms. Crystal. I know things other people don’t. That’s why I’m here.”

  She took it well. No histrionics. No melodrama. Devereaux laid it out for her. A group of radical Muslims, headquartered out of Yemen, had plans to kidnap certain celebrities. Currently they had a short list, one name—hers. It was also a small group, a group with no record of activity in the past, but the information was first-rate and the concern heightened by the fact that they had been unable to take out these people in an operation staged three days earlier. Devereaux told her he was seriously concerned she might be a target right now. “I believe you are in immediate jeopardy,” he said.

  “What do they want with me?”

  “They want to behead you.” That got Devereaux a reaction, just the reaction he wanted if she was going to cooperate. She stopped breathing and the color in her face—her beautiful, brown-skinned face—went to white. It was really the first time Devereaux allowed himself to think about how lovely Chita Crystal was. “They want to attack the symbols of Western culture. No one fits that description better than you.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “You’ll have to cancel your concert. Say you’re ill. We have the medical records to prove it if necessary. We would like to put you up someplace until we get this thing under control.”

  “Where?”

  “Delaware. The house belongs to us. It’s clear for fifty acres. Absolutely safe. We’ve used it before. And the facilities are magnificent. You will not be unhappy there.”

  “Who will be there with me?”

  “Staff.”

  “What staff?”

  “My staff.”

  “How long will I be there?”

  “I don’t know. Not long. A few days. A week, maybe two. Not long.”

  That was how they met. Chita stayed in Delaware for eleven days. Devereaux came to see her every day. They talked, sometimes for hours. He didn’t have to be there and she soon realized that. He wanted to be near her, with her. Many men had the same desire. She was used to dealing with that. Since she was fifteen, men offered to take care of Chita Crystal. She’d made some mistakes along the way. Her second marriage was about to go bust and she was not yet thirty years old. An army of men waited for her. Louis Devereaux was different. His protection was real, as real as the threat. And on the eleventh day, he came to tell her the people who wanted to cut her head off were all dead themselves. She was safe to go. Louis Devereaux had killed for her. That was a powerful, intoxicating aphrodisiac. It was Chita who first reached out to hold him, to bring him close to her. Louis Devereaux was as ready as any man would be. Their affair began that afternoon.

  Few people knew it, but kick-ass rock ’n’ roll was Devereaux’s favorite. Allman Brothers, Bob Seger—he was especially fond of The Band, a little softer sound, but nothing he ever heard compared to “The Weight,” done live. Because The Band was so closely connected to Bob Dylan, a lot of people thought “The Weight” had religious overtones. Devereaux, however, knew it was only about a trip to Nazareth, Pennsylvania, home of the world-famous Martin guitar company. Many times, over many years, he sang along with that recording. The opening chords repeating and repeating in his head were often impossible to silence, sometimes even while he was in the midst of the most important meetings. After awhile, he no longer fought it.

  Pulled into Nazareth/was feeling ’bout half-past dead

  Now, all these years later, he was singing a familiar duet with Robbie Robertson, as he fixed a small plate of cheese and crackers.

  AND, AND, AND—put the load right on me

  The two glasses of ice-cold Chardonnay sat next to him on the counter, ready to go. A minute later he put his tray down next to the bed.

  “You think of everything, Louis.”

  “For you, my dear, everything is hardly enough. I’d give you the Earth and the stars, if I could. You’d take it too.”

  “You can’t?”

  They both laughed, neither sure of the answer.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he said, watching her reach over to pick up a glass of wine. The bed sheet, which was the only thing left on the bed, caught a gust of air as Chita sat up, and floated away, dropping to the floor. She looked at Devereaux and saw in his eyes what she had never seen in the eyes of any other man. No matter what happened to her, nothing muted Louis’ self-confidence. It wasn’t that her own accomplishments were less. How could anyone question her success? It was just that his were more. She was a figment of popular culture, marketing, advertising, promotion. He was a man of substance, a man who knew not only how the world turned, but a man who guided its spin. He was a man who killed for her. Who else had done that? Who else could have?

  She recalled the story of Marilyn Monroe, when she was Mrs. Joe DiMaggio. Marilyn had returned from a USO tour, visiting the troops in far-off Korea. Her head was still buzzing from the fantastic reception she received. “Joe!” she cried, all excited. “There were twenty-five thousand men, all screaming and cheering for me. Can you imagine what that’s like?” No wonder DiMaggio beat her. Chita would never make that mistake with Louis Devereaux. It could never ha
ppen. Whatever the façade of her celebrity, he wore power—real power—and it fit him like a comfortable bathrobe after a clean shave and a hot shower.

  “Come over here,” she said, without speaking a word. As he leaned toward her, she reached up holding his face in both hands. “Think you can—do it again?” she asked with a little laugh. “Or does a man like you need a few minutes more?” Louis Devereaux gently placed his wine glass on the end table next to the bed, lay down and rolled over grabbing and twisting her until she sat on top of him. Nothing pleased him as much as looking up at her, this way, her breasts only inches away from his mouth, her smile his only blanket.

  “I love you. You know that, don’t you?” he said.

  “Will we find the gold? Is it really there?” she asked.

  “It’s there. Worry not, my sweet.”

  The Mercure de Draak, in Bergen op Zoom, overlooks the Grote Market square. It is the oldest hotel in the Netherlands. The first guest slept there—in which of the three fourteenth-century buildings was long forgotten—in 1397. By the time Harry Levine arrived, more than 600 years later, the place had been renovated. They kept the original façades, but the ancient houses, once only attached to each other, had been combined, their interiors long ago joined together. The entire hotel, in its newest transformation, was furnished in a seventeenth-century motif. Antiques, stylized wallpapers, luxuriously displayed flower arrangements, all highlighted by meticulously selected period furniture, decorated the rooms as well as the common areas. It was still a small hotel, with only 50 rooms, a cozy bar and a small restaurant. The traditional Dutch breakfast of coffee, cheese, ham and breads was served downstairs each morning. Somewhere along the way—no one could say in exactly which century—hard-boiled eggs and orange juice joined the menu.

  Bergen op Zoom had not only a wonderful name, one that rolled off the tongue like Dutch chocolate melting in your mouth, it had something else for Harry Levine. It was Roswell, Georgia’s sister city. The alliance between the two small towns, a continent and an ocean apart, had been but a curiosity to him before. Sister city associations were purely symbolic. The suburb of Atlanta had nothing meaningful in common with its Dutch sister. But after escaping Tucker Poesy, Harry needed to go somewhere. He wanted nothing as much as he wanted to go home, to Roswell. That was, of course, out of the question. The flight was too long. He was certain to be discovered before he landed. He needed to go straight to the airport and fly somewhere, quickly. So he did the first thing he could think of. He flew to Amsterdam, took a train about an hour and a half south, beyond Rotterdam, to Bergen op Zoom. He checked into a hotel, and following a good seven-hour sleep and a hot shower, he called his aunt.

  “Tia Chita, estoy tan alegre hablar con usted.”

  “¿Donde está usted?” she said. “Soy así que preocupado. ¿Está usted bien?” Conchita Crystal looked around the suite. Harry had called her cell phone and she was not alone. After a night with Devereaux, she traveled on to New York. One of her agents, the one she used to negotiate advertising endorsements, was in the living room of her Plaza Hotel accommodations. He brought three of his assistants with him. She had a week of meetings scheduled with a series of different people and since she hated going out, dodging crowds and press, especially in New York, she had taken a large suite and told everyone to come to her. She had the living room, where she could handle her business affairs quite comfortably, a formal dining room that could easily host dinner for twelve, a full kitchen and two bedrooms, across from each other, down a hall. One was for her and the other was left empty. She was told, when she made the reservation herself, using the name Linda Morales, if she wanted the big suite overlooking Central Park, she had to take one with two bedrooms. The one-bedroom suites were simply too small. When Harry called, she excused herself, walked down the hallway and into her bedroom closing two sets of doors behind her.

  “Are you there, Harry?” she said, this time in English.

  “I’m still here,” he said.

  “Where?” she asked.

  “I shouldn’t tell you. It may be dangerous for you to know.”

  “Let me worry about that. Where are you?”

  “It’s better you don’t know,” said Harry.

  “Are you still in London, Harry?”

  “No, I’m not. I just wanted you to know I’m all right. Tell aunt Sadie. She worries, you know.”

  “I’ll let her know,” said his Aunt Chita. “Wherever you are, are you safe there?”

  “I think so. I hope so. This whole thing is crazy. Even people who are supposed to help me seem like they’re not. I can’t figure out why this is happening.”

  “You have something,” she said, “something important. Something a lot of people don’t want revealed.”

  “Yes, I know,” he said. “I’ve been reading it. I can’t tell you . . . it’s not safe for you to know anything. People have been murdered, Tia Chita. Is it worth killing for?”

  “Apparently so, Harry. Don’t worry about me. My concern is your safety. I want you to listen to me carefully. Do you understand? ¿Comprende?”

  “Sí.”

  “Bueno.” His aunt told Harry she had contacted somebody who would help him, someone who would take him to a place where he would be absolutely safe. “Su nombre es Walter Sherman. Confielo en. ¡Confielo en solamente!”

  “Chita, don’t try to help me. Not now. I’ll be just fine. I know what I’m doing.” Harry’s aunt didn’t know he was under orders from the President of the United States. He thought better about telling her that. “Don’t send someone after me. He won’t find me.”

  “Yes he will,” she answered, sounding very much like his mother. “And when he does, trust in him. Trust only in him. Do you hear me, Harry?”

  “I will,” said Harry. “I will trust him and only him. I promise.” Then he added, with a tremble in his voice that brought tears of joy to his aunt’s eyes, “I love you, Aunt Chita.”

  “El dios esté con usted, mi Harry querido.”

  When the gentle winds come rolling in off the sea, early in the morning, a sweet breeze blows through Billy’s. Helen brought Walter the usual, a plate of scrambled eggs and toast. Of course, he drank a Diet Coke. The New York Times was waiting for him. When the paper arrived on St. John, brought over on the early ferry from St. Thomas, the first place they took it was across the square to Billy’s. It’s a small island. Everyone knows everyone else and everyone knows Walter Sherman liked to read The New York Times with his breakfast.

  Helen was playing with the CDs. Billy needed to hear music. He was the kind of man who turns on a radio when he enters a bathroom, and when he walks into the kitchen first thing in the morning. He hadn’t been in a car without music playing since he was a teenager. He had the place wired for sound. In the back, in a small office behind the kitchen, he had a whole bookcase stacked with CDs. Usually, he brought a dozen or so out to the bar. He’d play them, one after another, until he went through them all. Then he would get a new batch. Neither Walter nor Ike ever intruded on Billy’s selection. His taste covered all kinds of music and they rather liked the element of surprise. Who knew what Billy would play next? Van Morrison, Rosemary Clooney, Monk or Miles Davis. These days Helen shared this part of Billy’s life as well. It was just as likely what you heard was her choice as his. Walter watched her tinker with the machinery. When she finished and walked away, the plaintive cry of James Brown, The Godfather of Soul, The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, called out to him, demanding and receiving Walter’s complete and willing agreement. Isn’t that the truth, he thought.

  “It’s a man’s world. It’s a man’s world.

  But it wouldn’t be nothing. Nothing

  Without a woman or a girl.”

  “You ever drink coffee?” Helen asked him.

  “I used to,” Walter said. “Sometimes I still do, as a sort of dessert with dinner. But hardly ever in the morning. Not anymore.” She shook her head and made her way back to the kitchen. B
illy was already back there, busy checking the fresh fish—red snapper, grouper, tuna—that had come in less than fifteen minutes before.

  No one was at the bar. Ike had yet to show up. Walter’s cell phone rang. He reached into his shirt pocket, flipped it open and said, “Yes.”

  “He called me, Walter. I just spoke to him. I gave him your name, but he wouldn’t tell me where he is. He’s not in London anymore. He said that. But where he is, I don’t know. Go, find him, please! Where can he be?”

  “Chita, calm down now. I think I know where he may be. Don’t worry. I’ll find him.” Walter found it very strange and unsettling saying this to a client, even Conchita Crystal. Reassurance was not part of the deal. Sympathy and concern were not included with his services. Personal involvement was the worst of all sins. Caring for either the target or the client frightened Walter. Detachment was essential to his success, or so he believed for forty years. Nevertheless, he said, “I’m going to go get him. It’ll be all right. I promise you.”

  “When will you leave?” she asked.

  “Soon,” he said. “Soon as possible. I have to start earning my twenty-five dollars a day, don’t I?” He thought he heard a small sob on the other end of the phone.

  “What twenty-five . . . ?” she said, clearing her throat and sniffling. She was crying, thought Walter.

  “I rented it. We can do that, even here, in the middle of . . .”

  “Nowhere?”

  “Middle of nowhere, that’s right. The Big Sleep. I’m taller than Bogart, you know. Have a better tan too. And you don’t look a thing like Lauren Bacall.”

  “Oh, now you hurt my feelings, Walter.” He knew it couldn’t be done, but he was thrilled to hear her say so.

  “You’re more beautiful than she was,” he blurted out, instantly feeling a flush on the back of his neck, a heat rash that ran at breakneck speed all across his face. Was I out of line? he worried.

  “Muchos gracias, señor.”