Thirty-six
Jack heard gunshots before he saw the swirling lights of police vehicles. He swung Celina behind him, kept hold of one of her hands, and slid along the wall until he could peer around the corner into Chartres Street.
Someone on a bullhorn yelled unintelligible orders toward the house opposite his own. Searchlights turned the facade of that building blinding white. A crowd, held back by barricades, had gathered at either side of the house.
“Jack?”
“Hold still,” he told Celina. “It’s not our place. Appears to be something in the old ladies’ house across the street.” The house Amelia had insisted was inhabited by ghosts and goblins.
“Those were guns being fired.”
“Just do as I ask,
chère,
and stay put. I need to listen.”
Minutes passed. Jack was too far removed to see faces, but two men were brought from the building in handcuffs and shoved into a police wagon.
Next to appear in the doorway was a frail-looking figure borne in the arms of a brawny police officer. Jack assumed this to be one of the old ladies. She was placed in a waiting aid car. Another woman, this one leaning on a stick but stomping along under her own steam and exuding ire even at a distance, followed her companion into the waiting vehicle, which promptly drove away. The wagon had already left.
Instructions for the crowd to disperse came over the bullhorn.
“Time to go home,” Jack muttered, and they walked against the reluctant tide of departing thrill-seekers until they got close enough to approach a cop.
“Clear the area, please, sir,” the man said. Ridiculously young, his chest swelled with importance. “No more to see here tonight.”
“We’re returning home,” Jack said, proud of his patience. “We live there.” He pointed toward windows where there were suspicious gaps between curtains. Two pale shapes behind the dark glass in Jack’s study needed no identification.
“You go along home, then,” the police officer said. “Everything’s over now.”
“What happened?” He could hope the cop was young and green enough to enjoy expounding.
Taking off his cap and wiping a forearm across his brow, the boy—and he seemed little more than a boy—said, “Afraid I can’t say much, sir. Mob related evidently. They were using the house to observe someone they intended to take out.”
Jack affected a suitably horrified expression and nodded.
“Seems they tricked the two old ladies into letting one of them in to check out the gas or some such thing. Then they kept them prisoner in a back room for weeks. The one woman is a bit weak and wobbly, but the other’s more mad than anything, from what I hear. We’ve got the hoods though. Must be because of the Giavanelli thing. The whole family’s turned upside down, so they say. Those two got careless, and the feisty old lady took a cell phone from one of them and called us.”
Jack wondered what the officer would reveal if he could say much.
“Do you know who they were, er, staking out?” Celina said hesitantly.
“Some dude by the name of Chardonnay. Never heard of him myself. Not that it matters now.”
Jack decided he wasn’t offended. “Something happened with the Giavanellis, you said?” Keeping his tone impersonal wasn’t easy.
“The man—Win Giavanelli—he got taken out by his second in command. Then someone tried to take that guy out. Then, well, I guess there was quite a mess by the time they finished shootin’. It was in some restaurant called the Marina.”
“Could that have been La Μurena?” Jack asked, although he was on automatic pilot now.
“Yeah, yeah. Something to do with Italian fish, I know that.”
“I think I’ve heard of it,” Jack said. “Did the other guy, the second in command—did he make it?”
“The way 1 heard it, he’s in the hospital. In pretty bad shape.”
But Win was dead. So why didn’t he feel elated? Jack wondered. Why did he feel flat and as if he’d just encountered the biggest anticlimax of his life? He looked at the woman beside him. She was real. She was important. And he hadn’t tried hard enough to let her know he’d come to think of her that way.
The cop cleared his throat and put his cap on again. “Well, you go carefully now.”
“Thanks, Officer,” Jack said. “You’re a credit to the force. I guess we’ll do as you suggest and go home.”
With Celina’s hand tucked against his body, he made sure the young policeman didn’t see where they were going, and went to ring his doorbell. The door opened as if Tilly had been waiting on the other side. She stood back and tugged on Celina’s sleeve to hurry her inside, then urged Jack in and whipped the door shut again.
“It’s over, Tilly,” he said. “Win Giavanelli’s dead.”
He felt Celina’s stare, but accepted Tilly’s hug and let his own eyes close.
“Now you can let it rest,” Tilly said. “Your poor mother’s been dead a long time. With that man gone, you can let her rest at last.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Thanks, Tilly. Somehow, now that it’s over, it doesn’t seem so important.”
“That’s the way it is,” she told him, letting him go and stepping back, smoothing down her apron. “We make things important by building them up. Then, when they’re over, they don’t matter a hill of beans. We’ve had excitement around here tonight.”
“We know. We just got the scoop outside.” He followed Celina and Tilly upstairs, filling Tilly in on the details from across the street as they went.
“I told you I saw someone watching, Daddy.”
He spun around to see Amelia and Frog Prince in the hall. Amelia, her feet bare as usual, wore her favorite pink checked nightie. “You’re supposed to be in bed asleep, young lady.”
“With men firing guns, and all those lights?” she asked, all prim disbelief. “I told you I saw funny red lights over there, and someone watching out the window.”
“You said you saw ghosts over there.”
She turned up a small hand. “So I got it a bit wrong. They were just bad people who lock up old ladies and spy out of their front windows. They were spying on this house, weren’t they, Tilly?”
“Yes,” Tilly said. “A police officer came and spoke to me, too.”
“So you’ll listen to me next time, won’t you, Daddy?”
He looked at his daughter, and the rush of love he felt for her rocked him. He swept her up and hugged her until she cried, “Ouch!” and he nuzzled his face into her shoulder before setting her down.
“I’ll go to bed if you come and tuck me in and tell me some more about Phillymeana,” Amelia said.
“Philomena.” It wasn’t all over, not everything, but at least he could hope his child and the woman who would be his wife would be safe.
“If you want to, you can come too.” Her face very serious, Amelia spoke to Celina. “But you have to be quiet while Daddy tells me a story, or he stops right in the middle of everything.”
“Ι’ll be quiet,” Celina said. She still looked shocked and withdrawn. And they still had to decide how to deal with what they knew about Antoine and finding him...dead or alive.
“Okay, then.” Amelia gave Celina an appraising look. “I don’t think you’re very well yet, are you?”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“No. I don’t think so. You’re one of those brave people who doesn’t make fusses. Like me. When Daddy finishes telling my story, you’d better sleep in his room so he can make sure you’re all right.”
In the darkness, with Celina breathing softly and evenly beside him, Jack lay awake, his thoughts turning over all that had happened, and all that might yet happen.
Before they’d left Cyrus, he’d explained Sally Lamar’s desperate telling of her theories about her husband, and he’d explained what the woman wanted, and how she hoped to get it. Jack found it hard to find sympathy for Sally, but nevertheless he found her pathetic, a wounded creature who would probably never be healed.
He was convinced that the failure to find out what Antoine had wanted to say had been the biggest mistake made. But it was too late for that now. Whoever had taken him had proven the depth of their depraved determination to preserve themselves. It had rocked his confidence badly to discover that Celina had kept what Rose said to herself, but, again, he had to try to understand her reticence.
The phone by the bed rang.
He snatched up the receiver, holding his breath while he hoped Celina wouldn’t awaken. She turned toward him and curled against his side. Jack smiled and murmured, “Yes,” into the phone.
“Mr. Charbonnet?”
He hesitated. The hoarse voice wasn’t one he recognized. “Who wants to know?”
“Is that Mr. Charbonnet? I need to talk to him.”
Jack frowned and held the phone closer. “This is Jack Charbonnet. Who wants him?”
“I’m in a hospital, me. They no know who I am. Mr. Errol, he trust you. You always good to me, too.”
It couldn’t be. He couldn’t get this lucky, not just when he didn’t know what to do next. “Antoine?”
“I hear that name, me,” the man said. “I hit my head. They don’t know who I am. You understand? No one here know who I am. That mean no one who want me find me. That Antoine, him had lots of trouble. Him afraid for his people, his woman and boys. But he alive.”
“The police—”
The phone was hung up on the other end.
“Merde,”
Jack muttered. Slowly he put down his own receiver. The caller had been Antoine, who was obviously terrified and hiding out. Now all that could be hoped was that he’d call again. Next time, if there was a next time, Jack would examine every word before he spoke it.
Antoine had to make contact again.
The phone rang again. He switched on the light and was too tense to feel remorse at the sight of Celina opening sleepy eyes and blinking with confusion.
He put a finger to his lips.
She pulled herself to sit up and nodded, her face too pale, and her eyes too dark. His T-shirt—that fell off one slender shoulder—didn’t help the waiflike impression.
The phone bell went off again, and he answered this time. “This is Jack Charbonnet.”
“Is Celina Payne with you?”
He gritted his teeth. Now was not the time to lose his temper. “If you want anything out of me, friend, you’ll identify yourself.”
“I‘m calling on behalf of Mr. Wilson Lamar.”
“I don’t care if you’re calling on behalf of the President. Who the...who are you?”
“Who I am doesn’t matter. I’m Mr. Lamar’s employee. He’s too upset to make his own calls, but he thought he should try to get a message to Miss Payne. Since she and her family may be drawn into what’s going on.”
“You could be talkin’ another language. I’ll give you one more chance. Keep it simple, sweetheart, or I’m hangin’ up and unplugging this phone.”
“Because of something that happened last night, Miss Payne’s brother is bound to be taken in for questioning by the police. Her parents have already been contacted and they aren’t taking it well. Mr. Lamar asked me to let her know that. She isn’t at her Royal Street address, so I was instructed to see if you can get a message to her.”
Celina bent forward. Her head rested on her knees. Jack stroked her back and rubbed her neck. “I can do that for you.”
“Thanks. Mr. Lamar’s wife went to meet with Father Cyrus Payne this evening. Shortly afterward she was found stabbed to death beside her car.”
Thirty-seven
How much had the bitch told Cyrus Payne? Wilson wasn’t a praying man, but he decided he’d pray now that Father Cyrus would feel he had to keep whatever Sally had said to himself.
He’d unplugged the phone in his suite, but he could hear the intermittent drone of ringing elsewhere in the house. Wilson intended to use his “bereavement” to best advantage for as long as possible. After all, a man distraught over the violent killing of his wife couldn’t be expected to attend to business too soon after the event. And while he was in seclusion, he’d be thinking his way through the maze his life had become. Or he would when he
was
finally in seclusion.
Charmain came out of the bathroom nude. He watched her with a mixture of irritation and arousal. They had been sleeping together for years, but this was the first time in this house. He’d never planned for them to do so, ever, but she’d arrived around midnight, minutes after the police had delivered their bombshell about Sally and then left. Charmain had intercepted police radio messages and was, as ever, ready to offer Wilson “comfort.”
“I’d better blow,” she said, putting on her diamond watch before grinning at him. “Of course, there’s more than one way to blow, isn’t there, lover? I’m ready, willin’, and available. Might cheer you up.
“Thank you,” he said tightly. “But I think you about wore us both out for now. You’d better go out down the back stairs.” A horrifying thought struck him. “Where did you leave your car?”
She giggled and ran her hands through her short hair, still spiky and wet from the shower. “On a side street, silly. Would I park in the driveway at a time like this?”
Very slowly, too slowly to please Wilson, she stepped into a lavender-colored satin teddy and pulled it up her long, lithe body and over hard little breasts that came to sharp points. Every inch of Charmain was erogenous, and she moaned softly even at her own touch.
Wilson knew better than to hurry her. Rather he watched and offered the appreciative smile he knew she craved.
“You always did enjoy a little reverse striptease, Wilson,” she said. “You should have taught Sally more about how to turn you on. She never did get it. She was too obvious.”
His stomach turned. “Let’s leave Sally out of this.”
“Oh, my”—she pulled on black stockings with lace tops and slipped a little black dress over her head—”you’ll have to forgive me for forgetting the niceties. Respect for the dead, here I come.”
Affecting a deeply serious expression, he levered himself off the bed, where he’d been stretched out fully dressed, and went to her. He kissed her the way she liked it, hard, biting her lips, then picked up her purse and handed it to her. “Thank you, darlin’. You were a lifesaver. But then, you always have been. I’ll make sure it’s okay, then you go out down the back stairs and through the garden. It’s quiet there. Everyone’s watching the front. This is the first time I haven’t entertained any member of the press who showed.”
Charmain pushed a hand between his legs. “That’s because you were entertainin’ this member of the press, sweetie.”
Wilson removed her hand and cautiously opened the door. The balcony was empty, and he waved Charmain forward. She gave his rear a last sharp pinch and tripped away toward the back of the house with her high-heeled sandals trailing from one hand.
The instant she was out of sight, Wilson closed himself in and leaned on the door. He and Charmain went back a long way—it could be that it was too long.
When he’d been to a window that allowed him to see Charmain disappear from the property, he called for Ben Angel and started mulling over the next moves that needed to be made.
He couldn’t pretend he mourned Sally’s death, but he had to be certain there was nothing about it that could affect him negatively.
Ben came into the room carrying a tray of coffee and some sandwiches. Wilson motioned for the door to be closed. “I’m not going to be able to put the police off much longer,” he said. “Somethin’ tells me there may be a few things you’d like to talk to me about first.”
Ben slid the tray on top of the dresser and turned to his boss. He didn’t waste valuable time on innocent shock. “I didn’t have anything to do with your wife’s death, if that’s what you mean.”
“Murder,” Wilson said. “It was murder, Ben. Let’s not invent pretty words for ugly things.”
“I didn’t murder Mrs. Lamar,” Ben said, his face devoid of expression now. “I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do. That wasn’t one of them.”
“Very admirable,” Wilson told him. “And you weren’t startin’ to feel a little nervous after the pretty picture appeared in the paper—and your honest little quote about the lady of the house expectin’ sexual favors from members of the staff? You didn’t worry that she might try to defend herself and raise some questions about you, implicate you in some things that could get you into serious trouble? The big question is who gave the picture to the paper? It wasn’t supposed to be for anythin’ but scarin’ Sally, was it?”
Ben swallowed loudly. “All I did was what I was told to do. I sure did not give that photo to anyone, did I? Why would I. Never saw it till it was in print.”
“Well, somebody gave it to somebody, Ben. If it wasn’t you—and like you say, that wouldn’t make any sense—well then, I can’t think who it would be other than the photographer. I was the photographer, so I know it wasn’t me. The idea of setting up that little tableau was to scare the shit out of Sally and make it easier to get rid of her, nothin’ more. Things are plain out of hand now.”
“Where’s the film?”
For an instant Wilson’s mind went blank. Then he went into the closet and tore aside suits hanging along one bar. “Sheeit, where is my mind? Of course I should have checked the goddamn film. I should have destroyed it—only I thought it might be useful for somethin’ sometime.” Like making sure Ben Angel stayed in line. Wilson dragged out a sport bag, unzipped it, and took out a camera.
“That shoots my last hope,” Wilson said, holding the empty film compartment open. “Someone else could have been taking shots too—only they weren’t. Who the fuck would know anything about it in the first place?”
“As soon as you saw the paper you must have known the film was gone...sir. You—”
“Yeah, yeah. I wasn’t thinking straight. This has been a difficult time.” He didn’t meet Ben’s eyes. Then an ugly realization dawned. “Someone in this house. Someone else in this house knows what we’ve been doing. They’re going to hold me up for megabucks.” He narrowed his eyes at Ben. “You little bastard. It was you, wasn’t it? You think you’re going to get even more out of me.”
Ben’s dark blue eyes flashed. “Have you heard me askin’ you for money?”
“No.”
“I’m not going to, me. And I didn’t have nothing to do with what happened to your wife last night.”
“That isn’t going to be easy to convince the police of—not after you set yourself up as a suspect by talkin’ too much.”
“What about you? You think I would be silent, me. You think I stay silent about you if the police come for me?”
Wilson grew still. The kid had balls. “Maybe we’d better do some talking about the questions the police might ask, and what kind of answers they ought to get.”
“The only talkin’ we need to do is to agree that we don’t know anythin’ about takin’ photographs. The end.”
Wilson snorted. “You blew that when you gave your sob story about Sally’s unquenchable appetites.”
“There’s no proof of anythin’ else, not about me.” Ben squared his stance. “But there’s proof about you. There’s the negative for that photograph, and there’s whoever got their hands on it and knows where they found it.”
A gentle tap on the door jarred Wilson to his feet. “Who is it?”
“It’s Opi, sir.”
“Whatever it is can wait. I’m not up to talkin’ right now.” Wilson waited for sounds that the man was leaving. They didn’t come. Another tap did.
“Go away!” Panic welled within him. He stared at Ben and quaked at what he saw in the younger man’s demeanor. Ben Angel, upstart and opportunist, pitied Wilson Lamar. He took a calming breath and said, “Come in, Opi.”
The door opened slowly and Opi’s bald head appeared. He glanced at Wilson, but turned his full attention on Ben. “I don’t know what’s happenin’ around here, no, I surely don’t. You got to go down to the police, Ben Angel. Someone want to see you down there.”
Wilson stepped forward and beckoned Opi into the room. “Don’t talk loud, man. We aren’t all friends here.”
Opi looked behind him, but showed no anxiety. He did do as Wilson asked. “You got parents?” he said to Ben.
Ben’s supercilious assurance had fled. He bounced on his toes. “Most people have parents, old man.”
“They come here, right? Mr. and Mrs. Reed. They come to a party, right? And they come to see Mr. Lamar another time.”
“Will you get to the point?” Ben balled and flexed his hands, then pounded a fist into a palm.
“They your parents?”
“She’s my mother. He’s my stepfather. What of it?”
“They been taken in for questionin’ and they askin’ for you. They call for you, not a lawyer. They say you gonna take care of things for them.”
“What are you talkin’ about?” Ben yelled.
Opi backed away and reached behind him for the door handle. “They bein’ asked questions about the mistress’s death. Mrs. Lamar’s death. The police think your mama and stepdaddy killed her.