Palm Beach Nasty (6 page)

“So who was it then, Misty?” Crawford asked. “Who do you think killed Darryl? I know you got a theory.”

She shook her head.

“Misty, let’s cut to the chase. Darryl lived here with you,” Ott said. “You knew who his enemies were. He into the drug scene?”

“Never touched ’em, swear.”

“No Oxy . . . crystal meth?”

“No.”

Ott got up and drilled her with a withering stare. Cops had a name for it. Eye fucking.

“So some guys hung him ’cause . . . what? They didn’t like his mullet?”

She glared at him.

“You son-of-a-bitch ass-
hole
.”

Crawford caught Ott’s attention and flicked his head. He walked out the front door onto the porch, Ott right behind him.

Crawford turned sharply and Ott almost bumped into him.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Crawford jabbed him in the chest with a finger. “Girl’s sixteen years old, for Chrissakes. Don’t be such a hard-ass.”

“I was just trying to—”

“Well, don’t,” Crawford said, staring him down. “Girl’s not some skagged-out hooker from the crack side of Cleveland.”

“Come on, Charlie, I—”

“Just cool it.”

Crawford turned and went back inside. Ott followed him.

Misty looked scared. Like she didn’t like being left alone.

“I’ll say it again, Misty,” Crawford said. “Our job is to protect you, make sure nothing happens to you. For all we know, some guys could show up tonight.”

That knocked a little color out of her face.

“We need you to work with us.”

She started to say something, then stopped.

“What?” Crawford asked.

“Nothing,” Misty said.

Crawford knew now was the time to walk out, when her doubts were stacking high.

“Okay,” he said, heading toward the door, “we’ll be in touch. You need us . . . you call.”

They walked out the front door and got into the car.

Ott stuck the key in the ignition but didn’t turn it.

“Tough little cookie.”

Crawford nodded. “Yeah, who’s got a million secrets.”

Crawford grabbed the car door, opened it up, got out and went back inside. He told Misty he was taking her down to the station.

When she protested, he said he didn’t want to hear it.

EIGHT

F
or one thing, Crawford wanted to get her out of the comfort zone of her house. For another, he had a genuine fear for her safety. Not that he could keep her at the station, but at least, if she was in jeopardy, she’d be safe for a while.

She followed them in her car and they took her straight into the soft room. It was minimal on interior decoration: a black Naugahyde easy chair, a sofa with foam cushions and plastic flowers. Marginally better than the hard room next door with its stiff wooden chairs, industrial tile floor and forty-watt light. That was where they interrogated the hard-core guys.

Misty sat down in the chair, Crawford and Ott stood. They wanted to have height on her.

“I’m gonna say it again,” Crawford said, “whatever you tell us is confidential.”

“But you hold back and all bets are off,” Ott said.

She eyed him coldly.

“We’re going to record this, too,” Ott said.

She nodded.

Ott flipped the switch.

“Okay, Misty, we’re all ears.”

Misty fumbled for a cigarette.

“Can’t smoke in here,” Ott said.

Crawford overruled him.

“Just one’s okay.” He handed her an empty Coke can to use as an ashtray.

Her hands were shaking. It took three matches to get her cigarette lit.

“So tell us all about you, Darryl and Ward Jaynes,” Crawford said.

She took a drag on her cigarette down to her toes.

“Darryl kept saying Ward was our pot of gold. How we’d never have to work another day in our lives. Corvettes and caviar, he kept saying. Like he had a clue what caviar was.”

“So Darryl tried to blackmail him?” Ott asked.

Misty didn’t react.

“Is that what happened?” Ott turned up the volume.

She nodded.

“I want the answer in words.”

“Yes.”

Darryl against Jaynes, Crawford thought, like David versus Goliath, minus the slingshot. He remembered a few more things he’d read about Jaynes, back when he and Jaynes were in the city at the same time. The guy was one of those very visible New York guys you read about. Self-obsessed lords of the teetering Wall Street cosmos—before anyone knew the underpinnings were rusted out and collapsing, back when everyone thought it was balls to the wall . . . up, up, and away.

“How much was Darryl after?” Crawford asked.

“A million dollars.”

“I figured,” Ott said, eyeing Crawford. “Chump change.”

“Misty,” Crawford said, “did Darryl have Jaynes on tape? Pictures? Or what?”

She didn’t move.

“Tell us,” Crawford said.

She squirmed.

“Yes, photos,” she said.

Crawford cocked his head and looked over at Ott.

“Of what exactly?” Ott asked.

She sighed.

“I never saw them,” she said. “Darryl just said they were enough to put Ward away for a long time.”

Crawford moved a step closer to Misty.

“What went on there . . . at his house?”

Misty flicked her hair back and slumped into the chair.

“Well . . . first, it was just me, then my girlfriend came along—”

“So . . . had yourselves a nice little ménage a . . . whatever?” Ott asked.

Crawford gave Ott his “back off” look.

“And where exactly did this take place?” Crawford asked.

“Started out in his indoor pool, sometimes the hot tub, ended up in a bedroom.”

“The master?”

“No, on this huge water bed upstairs.”

“Didn’t know they were still around,” Ott said.

“So it was the three of you?” Crawford asked.

Misty coughed nervously.

“Until one of those friends of Ward’s showed up,” she said.

“Guys, you mean?” Crawford asked.

“No, two women.”

“Who were they?” Ott asked.

“I don’t know . . . well-dressed, expensive jewelry, older.”

“How old?” Ott asked.

“One maybe twenty-five, the other . . . thirty, I guess.”

“They come together?” Ott asked, walking behind her.

“I don’t think so.”

“So, they got there . . . then what?” Ott had his hand on the back of her chair.

“We had some champagne, blew a few lines . . . then you know . . .”

“What?”

“Took our clothes off.”

She said it like it was the same as brushing her teeth.

“These two women,” Crawford asked, “what’d they look like?”

“Their bodies?”

Ott laughed.

“Faces,” Crawford said, “eyes, hair color, distinguishing features . . . you know?”

“Well, first one had kind of reddish hair. Lot of rings. Really pretty.”

She lit another cigarette. Crawford rolled his eyes, but let it go.

“The other one . . . even more.”

“Even more what?”

“Pretty . . . a blonde, awesome blue eyes, a few freckles here,” Misty said, touching below her eye.

“How long ago was this?” Crawford asked.

“Um, eight or nine months about.”

“Remember their names, Misty?” Crawford asked.

She bit the fingernail on her right index finger.

“Red-haired one was Nicole.”

“Any last name?” Crawford asked.

“No,” she said, looking at the tape recorder.

“And the other one?”

“She was only there twice, maybe three times.” Misty’s eyes scrunched up, “Kind of a funny name.”

“Think real hard,” Crawford said.

She put her hand on her forehead and closed her eyes.

“I remember now,” she said, smiling. “He called her Liliana. That was it, Liliana.”

NINE

N
ick wished he had watered down the Bahama Blasts because Cynthia was getting less and less intelligible. She had just slurred her way through an explanation of how Spencer Robertson’s only living relative was a bad seed grandson named Avery Robertson, who she described as a kind of pudgy, shorter version of Nick. Then she started going on about how handsome Nick was. The Blasts clearly affected her vision. “Sexy” hair and “nice bone structure,” she was saying now. Not that he minded hearing it, but he wanted her to stick to the dysfunctional Robertson family. This was business after all.

Then she started blathering on about some incident that took place years before, when fifteen-year-old Avery Robertson showed up out of the blue at the Poinciana. Kid was on spring vacation from boarding school. He and three friends went there to play golf—and unbeknownst to his grandfather—went straight to the Poinciana pro shop and charged up four sets of top-of-the-line golf clubs, along with shirts, hats, sweaters, balls, the works. All totaled the tab was more than $5,000 including guest fees and a $250 lunch.

The shit hit the fan when Spencer Robertson’s conservator at J.P. Morgan, Paul Broberg, got the bill and in a rage called the club manager. The manager was no dope and deftly handed the ball off to Cynthia. She listened to a ten-minute harangue as the irate Broberg demanded to know why a fifteen-year-old kid was allowed to just walk into the Poinciana and charge up any damn thing he wanted. It was a very good question. Cynthia said how Broberg told Spencer Robertson all about it, and that Robertson was so furious he basically told the kid to stay away.

“When was this?” Nick asked her.

“What?”

He was ready to mainline espresso into her.

“The grandson incident, at the Poinciana?”

She yawned. “Umm, ten . . . twelve years ago.”

Avery Robertson would be about Nick’s age. The light bulb clicked on again.

Cynthia kept jabbering about how Paul Broberg got all wound up and launched into another tirade about “entitled brat” this and “little bastard” that. Cynthia said she felt like she was not only being blamed for the kid’s self-indulgent spending spree, but also his whole reckless, misspent youth. In the course of his diatribe, Broberg mentioned that Avery was an orphan. Something horrible had happened to his parents, Broberg intimated. Cynthia didn’t dare ask what.

Nick was hanging on to her every drunken word.

Cynthia’s story about Avery Robertson catapulted Nick back to his childhood in Mineola, New York, a downwardly mobile Long Island suburb of New York City. His childhood was a cliché in many ways. His father was an abusive bully who used to work for Grumman, then when it closed down, had a series of dead-end jobs. The one constant in Sid Gonczik’s life was his daily twelve-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon. It brought out the cruel tormentor in him, which was bad news for everyone in the immediate vicinity. That usually meant Nick and his mother. When Nick turned seventeen and got up to 185 pounds, he decided not to take it anymore. One day his father came at him and Nick beat him unconscious with a brass fire poker. He had to be restrained by his mother or he might have killed him.

Nick had no remorse. After that, his father kept his distance and never laid a hand on him or his mother either. Then later that year, October of Nick’s senior year in high school, Sid Gonczik went off to the hardware store one morning and never came back. Neither Nick nor his mother was heartbroken. In fact, they never even mentioned him again.

T
HE MORNING
after Cynthia got close to setting the record for Bahama Blast consumption, Nick called her up. He pictured her with an ice bag on her head, sucking down glass after glass of Tropicana. He asked her what movie she wanted to see. Some really lame chick flick, of course.

He had spent several hours after he went home from Viggo’s that night, working on a plan about how to mine the Spencer Robertson mother lode. He rejected several ideas and finally came up with one that he thought had merit, though it was still a long way from being fully developed. At its most basic, it was simply to gain entry into Robertson’s house. Not to clean out the silverware or make off with a couple flat screens, but just to get the lay of the land. See if he could somehow figure out a way to separate a few million from the second richest man in Palm Beach. He knew there had to be a way, some angle to work, especially since the man was way down the Alzheimer’s highway. Surely, once he got inside, Nick could figure out how to divert a sizable chunk of Robertson cash into his pathetically anemic bank account. What made him practically salivate was the fact that, according to Cynthia, aside from some older guy who took care of Robertson and maybe a cook, nobody was minding the store.

Nick knew he’d have to keep an eye out for Paul Broberg, the old man’s executor, but except for him it seemed like the place would be easy pickings.

He had already forgotten what movie Cynthia said she wanted to see, and steered the conversation back to where he wanted it.

“You know, I got thinking last night,” Nick said. “I didn’t put it together, but Avery Robertson . . . he’d be about my age, right?”

Cynthia thought for a second.

“Yes, probably, around twenty-six, twenty-seven. Why?”

Nick laughed. “Because I knew a guy by that name up in New York. A real hell raiser, guy drank more than a whole goddamn fraternity.”