Looker

by Michael Kilian

  “She used to work for a man named Bad Biker Bobby, Bobby Darcy. He was in the joint, but he’s back.”

  The hooker said nothing.

  “You know Bad Bobby?”

  She paused. “Everybody know Bad Bobby,” she said softly.

  “You work for him? You ever work for him?”

  “Shit no. Lucky me.”

  “He cuts his girls,” Petrowicz said.

  “Cut? Sheeet, he stuck a couple.”

  “He was on the street today,” Lanham said. “Did you see him?”

  “Honey, now that you mention it, I don’t think I ever heard of the man.”

  “Cut the bullshit,” Petrowicz said. “You seen him, or what?”

  “We just want to talk to him,” said Lanham. “He may know who shot Molly Wickham.”

  “You know, sugar, you’re about the tenth cop ask me about Bobby tonight. But I ain’t seen him.”

  “We just want to talk to him, that’s all.”

  “I don’t care if you want to give him a million dollars. I ain’t seen him. Not since he went to the joint. He ain’t been around me. If he come by, I’d be someplace else real quick. And that’s no shit.”

  Lanham handed her one of his snitch cards. On it was printed only the name RAY, and his direct phone line at the division.

  “If you see him, just let me know,” he said. “Won’t bother you any further.”

  Petrowicz lifted up his hand. They were being summoned on the radio. “Ten Two.” Call in to base. On a landline.

  They were on Forty-second Street between Fifth and Madison. Petrowicz pulled abruptly to the curb.

  “Okay. Out.”

  The girl hesitated. “Come on, sugar. In this neighborhood, I could get arrested.”

  “Out,” said Lanham gently. “Suddenly we’re in a hurry.”

  They found a public telephone that worked near Grand Central. Lieutenant Taranto wanted to talk to him. Tony Gabriel had just called in with the news. He had found Bad Bobby, or at least where Bad Bobby had gone to ground. A surveillance team was in place and everyone else was coming back into the division. A late-night visit was in the offing, but it had to be planned.

  The limousine was where he said it would be, parked at the curb on Fifth Avenue just ahead of the entrance canopy of one of the grander apartment buildings facing Central Park. Camilla hesitated. She would sooner have climbed into a vat full of slugs. But she had no choice.

  She darted from the corner of the building and quickly slipped into the rear of the car. He leaned to kiss her cheek as she pulled the door closed, but she turned her head away.

  “Don’t touch me, Pierre,” she said. Scarlett O’Hara could not have shown more disdain.

  He frowned and eased back. He was dressed in a rumpled white linen suit, a certifiable affectation in New York and, nowadays, even in places like Charleston, South Carolina.

  “How many years have we greeted each other that way?” he said. He smelled, as usual, of whiskey and too much cologne.

  “Jacques is going to kill you, Pierre,” she said. She spoke as matter-of-factly as she could, but her voice was tremulous. It was the boldest thing she had to say. She had rehearsed that line over and over.

  “Not anytime soon, darlin’. I’ve seen to that. We don’t need to go over it all again. Death before dishonor, honey. My death; his dishonor.”

  It was his attempt at a poor joke. His voice broke with the last line. He was scared, and now they both knew it. She could almost smell his fear all mingled with the bourbon and cologne.

  The driver pulled away from the curb and headed south down the avenue. His name was Henry and he had the darkest skin of any black man Camilla had ever met. The glass divider was up, but she supposed it didn’t matter if Henry heard. He was intensely loyal to Pierre—and very well paid.

  “I’m not a man to threaten,” Pierre said unconvincingly.

  “I’m not threatening you, sir. I’m warning you. You saw what happened to Molly. I’m scared to death myself. He’s completely lost control. You’ve driven him to that.”

  It was unpleasantly warm in the car and the leather of the seat seemed to stick against the back of her knees and her thin cotton dress. He took off his glasses and wiped his face with a handkerchief, then unscrewed the cap from a large silver flask and drank.

  “I am truly sorry for what happened to Molly,” he said, finally. His voice was educated and Southern, a gentleman’s voice, despite his appearance. But his speech was thickened from drink. “I never meant for anything like that to happen. I loved that girl. I truly did.”

  Camilla shuddered.

  “That bothers you, doesn’t it, Camilla?” he said.

  “Not in the way you’re thinking.” She shuddered again, imagining Pierre and Molly Wickham together, seeing her once again dead, missing part of her head. “It’s because of you she’s dead.”

  He took another sip of the whiskey, then replaced the cap. The lights of the Plaza Hotel and the high-rises behind it glittered ahead. Just beyond was the floodlit spire of the Empire State Building. Elegant couples strolled along the sidewalk to their left, a few glancing at their long car as they passed.

  Another glamorous night in New York. In the dreams of her childhood, she had ridden in cars like this, on nights like this.

  She was sweating, and felt sick.

  “You introduced her to me,” he said.

  “I regret it deeply. I regret the day I ever met her. I regret the day you were born. That any of us were born.”

  He stared hard at her, but she refused to let her eyes meet his.

  “Did you bring the money?” he said, almost gently.

  She reached into her handbag and pulled out an envelope. She tossed it on the seat between them, as though it were a filthy object.

  “I want you to understand something, Pierre,” she said, as he slipped the envelope into the breast pocket of his suit coat. “I’m giving you this because you give me no choice. I’ll go on giving you what I can, what you say I have to. But I want you out of my life. I don’t ever want to look out into the audience in a show and see you again. I hate Jacques for what he did. But I hate you even more. You brought all this down upon us. I don’t know when you’re going to die, Pierre. But I will not grieve.”

  “That’s no way to talk to kin, Camilla.”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me about kin. If it weren’t for Momma …”

  “But you’ll do anything for your momma, won’t you, Camilla?” He patted the pocket where he had put the envelope. “You’ll do anything I say.”

  “I’ll pay you the money,” she said. “But I want you to get out of New York—and stay out. I don’t want you ever to come near me again.”

  “As a matter of fact, I’m going back to Washington in the morning,” he said. “When I come back is my business.”

  “You just stay away from me.”

  The driver turned the car onto Fifty-ninth Street when they reached the traffic light at the end of the park. He passed by the Plaza, not fifty feet from where Molly had been killed. She wondered if he had been given instructions to do this—a gesture of bravado, Pierre Delasante, trying to prove that nothing fazed him.

  “I think you should get out of the country, Pierre. I’m serious about Jacques. He’s got no sense or reason left. He’s all hate. He’ll kill you in as awful a way as he did Molly.”

  “You and I will live to dance on his grave, Camilla. That boy is doomed—just like Danielle. If the police don’t catch him, he’ll get himself killed some other way. It’s in his stars.”

  She covered her face with her hands. She couldn’t endure this much longer.

  “He killed the old nana, Pierre.”

  “I know. Poor old woman. But, Lord, she was older than the century.”

  “He says it was an accident. He was shaking her. He blames you. I think he’s worked it out in his mind that killing Molly was an act of retribution. It’s all twisted up in his sense of honor. That�
��s why I’m so scared he’ll do it again.”

  “It won’t do him any good. It didn’t do him any good going down to see the nana, did it? He didn’t find anything. I hear he tore the place apart and didn’t find a thing. I don’t know why he thought he would. Nothin’ there but her hoodoo. He was just wasting his time. He killed that poor old nana for nothing.”

  He spoke very forcefully, with an earnestness that made her wonder if he was telling the truth. She’d known him all her life, but she didn’t know him very well.

  Reaching a roadway at Sixth Avenue that wound back north through the park, Henry turned onto it, the long car slipping into the shadows beneath the huge, overhanging trees. The headlights picked up a white horse-drawn carriage, plodding along at the side of the road. They swept by. A young man and woman were necking furiously in the back.

  “I’m not leaving the country, Camilla. I’m going to see it through to the end. I’m going to win my court case. We have them beat on procedural grounds, not to speak of constitutional ones. The special prosecutor is just trying to make a little name for himself. He’s going to be sorry.”

  “I talked to your lawyer.”

  “You what?”

  “Cyrus Hall. Last night. I took him to Mortimer’s. He said he’s had enough money from you for now.”

  “I wish you hadn’t done that.”

  “I didn’t tell him anything. I just asked about the money. He said all his fees had been paid and that you’d given him a retainer for the future.”

  “Is that all he said? All you said?” Pierre was angry.

  “All right. I asked him about—about family papers. I asked him if he was holding family papers for you.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me anything. Said he couldn’t. Canon of ethics. What a peculiar term to have to do with you, Pierre.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you, darlin’, in case you and Jacques get the notion to go ransacking his office. He doesn’t have them. All he has is my new will. I have three special bequests, Camilla. There are three letters, all locked away nice and tidy in a safe-deposit box in the Chase Manhattan Bank. If I die, they get sent to the society editors of the Charleston and Columbia papers and Palmetto Coast magazine. It’s a generous bequest; instructions on how they can get themselves the biggest story they’ll ever have in their lives.”

  “They wouldn’t print such trash.”

  “Who knows what they’d do, honey, after they’ve seen what there is to see. Even if they didn’t print a single little old word, they can talk. My, how ladies like that do love to talk.”

  “You despicable man.”

  “Despicable? At any rate, a smart man. And very serious. You get that across to Jacques.”

  They were all alone on the parkway now. She turned to look out the rear window. No one was behind them.

  “I still need money, Camilla.”

  “Why? Are you just trying to ruin us? Is that what this is all really about? Are you just trying to drag us all down into the gutter with you, to have us begging on the corner of Meeting Street and Calhoun?”

  “I need money for another reason, Camilla.” He hesitated. A gurgle came from his throat as he swallowed nervously.

  “For what? Are you planning to pay for poor Molly’s funeral expenses?”

  He laughed, a nervous crackle, followed by what might have been a sob. “It’s real ironic.”

  Then the sobbing began in earnest. Camilla wanted to vomit. She clenched her teeth, and waited.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally, but he still hadn’t regained control over his voice.

  “What are you talking about?” she said.

  “Someone’s doing to me now what I’ve been doing to you. There’s a videotape.”

  “Videotape? Of you and Molly?”

  “Of me and Molly. And Belinda. We had a little party, and things got out of hand. We were all drinking, and someone had cocaine.”

  “My God, Pierre. You’re just a total heap of trash. You are the most indecent man who ever lived.”

  “There was someone else with us. Jimmy Woody. He’s in the tape, too. It was a real long party. Lasted half the night.”

  Jimmy Woody was a male model. He worked for Philippe Arbre and they were lovers.

  Jimmy Woody was black.

  “He’s in bed with Molly?”

  “With all of us. With me. Like I say, it got out of hand.” He coughed, and cleared his throat. He was breathing heavily. “I’m not that way, Camilla. Molly could have told you that. But they had the camera out and things were getting wild and Molly thought it would be fun.”

  “Fun.”

  “I was drunk, Camilla. You know I have a drinking problem.”

  “This was in my apartment?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now I hope he does kill you.”

  “Damn it, Camilla! You’re going to get everything back. It’s just like I told you. I’m going to make it. I’m going to be back on top again. I still have my clients. They had to drop out of their contracts because of the publicity, but restoring them is just a formality once I get clear. Hell, the Guatemalan ambassador is going to be my guest at the Ford’s Theater Gala. We’ll be sitting just a few rows from the president himself.”

  He cleared his throat, and took some more whiskey.

  “And when I sell my company, Camilla, I’ll be worth millions. You’ll get it all back, plus interest. Just like I promised you both. Word of honor.”

  “‘Honor.’”

  “It still means something to me.”

  “What about the tape? It could ruin you in Washington. Who has it?”

  “I’ll take care of the tape. Once I get my legal problems taken care of. I’m not the only one who wants it destroyed. Molly was paying. She was afraid it would ruin her career if someone in the business saw the really bad footage. She had enough to hide as it was.”

  “Who has the tape? Belinda?”

  He shook his head. His brow was covered with sweat. It glistened, even in the faint light of the street lamps.

  “Belinda’s paying, too. That boyfriend of hers would kill her in two seconds for something like that. Jimmy Woody’s also paying. Philippe Arbre’s in love with him. He’ll see to it that Woody never works again if he sees that tape.”

  “Who has it, Pierre?” She sounded like a lawyer in court.

  “I’ll take care of the tape. You just take care of me.”

  She sat motionless, her hands folded in her lap. It seemed as though they were the last people left alive in the city as they rolled on through the night.

  They pulled up at a red light, stopping pointlessly. There was no other traffic. Pierre was looking at her, much as she had looked at him at the fashion show, just before Molly’s murder.

  Camilla snapped open the door and got out. She stood a moment in the middle of the road, then hurried into the park, heading east. He called after her, but she said nothing more. She never wanted to speak to him again, to hear his voice again. She wished with all her heart that he would simply cease to exist.

  She plunged on through the brush until she could no longer hear him. Once onto an open expanse of grass, she slipped off her shoes and began to run. It was no more than a hundred or two hundred yards back to Fifth Avenue. She encountered only one person who looked like he might have any interest in doing her harm—a young black man in an athletic jacket—but she took him so much by surprise in rushing by that she was well away from him by the time he took full note of her.

  She had to clamber through brush again and jump from a fairly high wall to return to the Fifth Avenue sidewalk. She tore her stockings in the process, but it didn’t matter. An absurd feeling of liberation came over her, as though she had left all her problems behind her in the park. The feeling lasted for several blocks, until she turned the corner onto her street and saw a man waiting outside her building. It didn’t help that she knew who it was. It made it worse.

  A.C. felt ab
surd and ridiculous to be lurking on the street at the girl’s door, like a smitten schoolboy. He told himself he was merely being professional, that it was no different from the times when he and other reporters had camped out on the lawns of major figures in Washington scandals.

  But it wasn’t like that at all. His desire to see Camilla again had been with him all day. A.C. had tried her bell several times, having paused in between attempts for a drink at the nearby Stanhope Hotel. He should have left now that it was so late, but couldn’t bring himself to do so.

  He was surprised to see her coming from the direction of Central Park, instead of the livelier districts to the east. She came toward him like an ethereal vision, her extraordinary beauty rendered somewhat ghostly by the night. When she saw him, she did not slow. Rather, she increased her speed and lowered her head, as though to avoid looking at him.

  “Miss Santee,” he said, as she drew near. “I need to talk to you.”

  Her face was as impassive as a store window mannequin’s. She kept walking, without speaking, and started up the steps to the door to her building.

  “Miss Santee, please.”

  She was fumbling in her purse for her keys. “I’m sorry, Mr. James. I don’t conduct interviews on the street, in the middle of the night.”

  She found the key and turned the lock. As the door opened, he stepped forward.

  “Miss Delasante! Please. I really need to talk.”

  “What did you call me?” she asked quietly. Her hand was shaking slightly.

  “Miss Delasante. That’s your real name, isn’t it? Camilla Delasante, or C.C. Delasante? You were Molly Wickham’s landlord. And you’re related in some way to a man named Pete Delasante, from Washington.”

  She came back down the steps and stood before him, rather defiantly.

  “I don’t believe I understand what you’re talking about,” she said. Her strange accent was very strong, its Southern-ness quite evident.

  “I think you do.”

  Her blue-gray eyes held both fear and fury. They searched his.

  “I think you do, Miss Santee. Miss Delasante.”

  She looked away, glancing down the street.