CoverBoys & Curses (29 page)

Chapter
Eighty-Four

Move!
Fast!

Following
closely behind Geoff’s lead, I snapped photo after photo. I stopped focusing on
any one thing, relying on the memory of the camera.

           
“Get a load of this body vat,” Geoff
said, rubbing his hand on the polished obsidian walls of an oversized jetted
bathtub.

           
“Okay, now I’m freaking out and you
can’t stop me. I took the guy for a
sitz
bath in holy
water or dipping into a horse trough. Anything but this.”

           
“And this,” Geoff squealed with the
distinct sound of delight.

           
“I don’t get it,” I said. I saw a
fountain filled with crushed ice.

           
“This be a urinal, sweetie,” Geoff
said. “There’s some restaurant around here that’s had something like it for
years. Guess their male customers get a kick out of causing their own
meltdowns. Even your very own Queen Geoff enjoyed pissing in it.”

           
“Let’s check out the bedroom, then
get the hell out of here. I don’t want to be around when the fresh ice
arrives.”

           
I could just imagine Armand
replenishing any yellow ice as part of his daily duties. And who would do it
now?

“It
makes me sick, but I guess it’s hardly criminal,” I said, taking more and more
photographs.

“Yeah,
but this is,” Geoff said from across the silk leopard printed bedspread. He
held up a medicine bottle from the top drawer of a nightstand.

“What
are they?”

“Most
certain they are
roofies
. You know. The date rape
drug. And why I’m guessing no victims are coming forward. They don’t remember a
damn thing.”

“What
the hell is going on here?” the voice screamed from behind me. I was so
startled I dropped my camera down the plunging basin of the bathtub.

“What
are you guys doing in here?” the vituperative voice demanded.

“Just
calm down,” Geoff warned. “All we’re doing is taking a little look.”

I felt
the instant release of warm liquid streaming down my right pant leg. I will
forever know the meaning of the phrase ‘it scared the piss out of me’.

Panic
rushed across my face, but not as much as the horror that painted the face of
Sterling.

“What is
this place?” Sterling gasped. She held a book in her hand that had Coal’s name
written across the cover.

“This is
our Doctor Coal’s private domain. Cozy, isn’t it?” I answered.

I had
climbed down into the bathtub to retrieve the camera, but now I wanted out of
there, even with the embarrassment of the wet pant leg.

“No,
really. What the hell is this place?” Sterling whispered.

Geoff
paced his words, “What Lauren is saying is true. We obtained some information
that maybe everything isn’t so cool over here so we came to check it out. Dr.
Coal is a fraud. More than a fraud.”

Sterling’s
eyes devoured the sights in front of her, in one swift gulp of too much information.
She recognized the signs of wealth and she was standing amidst pure luxury. I
didn’t know if she was dating Coal, or more than that. It didn’t matter.

On the
shiny stainless table, she spied one of her prized Faberge Eggs she had
acquired from the Forbes estate. She didn’t even realize it was missing from
the store.

And that
is exactly when I spied the rare elephant statue sailing on his sea of blue
lapis lazuli. The one I had seen in his office.
 
I took several photos but I didn’t dare touch
it.

How did
it get there? Maybe it wasn’t one of a kind. Maybe there were thousands of
them.

“We need
to leave. Now,” I said.

It
didn’t take another word of instruction. Geoff threw the bottle of pills inside
his fanny pack, I tossed the camera into my bag and grabbed Sterling’s rigor
mortis-like arm. She cradled the egg with her other one, unable to turn away
from the affluent abyss that was Dr. Coal’s private
paradisio
.

The
inner door closed automatically behind us. The tampered locks showed a few
scratches, but you would have to look close. Geoff closed both doors and the
lock snapped shut.

“We’ve
got to move fast,” Geoff said.

“You go
home, Sterling. Forget about all of this,” I said.

“Bullshit,
girlfriend. I’m going with you. I can’t stay around here and I don’t want to go
home.”

“She’s
right,” Geoff said. “Just look at her. She’ll break down the moment anyone
walks up to her. We have to stick together.”

“Okay.
But once we see these photos, we need to get some help.”

“You’re
not talking about that
dufous
Detective Wray?”
Sterling scowled.

“He’s
all we have.”

The
three of us scurried into Geoff’s car. Sterling broke down and started to
whimper, clutching her treasured Faberge. “I thought he was a good man,” she
said. “Daddy liked him. He never went after me like all the other guys.”

It
dawned on me she had no idea what was really going on, about the same time I
became embarrassed when I remembered my urine soaked pants pressed against
Geoff’s leather passenger seat.

And then
my mind’s eye flooded me with memories. The guys with the camera at the hotel.
When I had first arrived. One of them had a long braid. The guys at my gala.
One of them wore dark sunglasses. It was Harlan Coal!

Chapter Eighty-Five

Thick
with Blood & Money

Detective
Wray sat studying the polygraph report while biting his lower lip and thumping
his heavy thumb on the final page. Harlan Coal, in spite of all his
brainwave-psycho-babble garbage therapy, and from behind his perfect veneered
teeth and his handsome manners, failed the polygraph. At a negative nineteen it
was damning. But inadmissible.

           
He called Victor Romero.

           
“Any word on that flash drive our
girls found out there in the desert?”

           
Romero chuckled. “Hell, no. No way could
our forensics team do anything with it. They sent it up to the big guys at
Quantico. That means it might be months.”

           
“Nothing else?”

           
“Just sent you an email,” Romero
said.

           
“Give it to me the old-fashioned
way. Talk to me, buddy.”

           
“I’ve done a little more homework
and there’s something you should know. Your Dr. Coal has a cousin.”

           
“So?”

           
“So they go way back. Thick and
tight. Big money going back and forth between them. The cousin was some hotshot
New York real estate tycoon but somehow ended up in your fair city. Looks to me
like this cousin set Coal up in that compound of his.”

           
“Come on. Families run thick with
blood and money. So what?”

           
“If you’d done your homework with
that fancy
smancy
department of yours you would know
that this cousin is the one who reported the gun stolen. The gun that was used
for the suicide—or murder—of our Tucson’s Payton Doukas.”

           
“Fuck! Give me his name,” Wray said.

           
“
Her
name is Gabriella Judd Criscione.”

STERLING
TOOK OVER the research, trying to find the artist of the elephant sculpture or
any evidence that is was mass produced. Without that we knew the drill. We were
stuck with rumors, libel, false accusations or whatever else they called it in
a court of law.

           
We all knew what was behind those
locked cabinets but I wasn’t going to the police without hard evidence, in
spite of the insistence from my new team of Sterling and Brock. And Queen
Geoff.

           
“He loves you, you know,” Sterling
said.

           
“Who?”

           
“Brock. You’re a fool if you let him
get away.”

           
“He’s helped me out a lot. Who’d
have figured him for the good guy?” I said.

           
“You blind woman. He loves you but
you just won’t let him in.”

TWO
DAYS LATER my cell rang, even after I’d gone through the hassle of changing the
number in order to avoid talking to Harlan Coal.

           
“You didn’t listen to me. You
stayed. You snooped. You saw. Now it’s all up to you. You better watch your
back or you won’t get out alive.”

THE
MORE HARLAN COAL thought about it the more his blood pressure surged.

           
“That stupid bastard,” he said aloud.
And his soliloquy continued.

           
“We had Carly Posh in our hands. We
have Sterling Falls and all of her inheritance. What the fuck?”

           
He had to go to the farm. That
pissed him off, but he had the only other keys to the ant cells. A long drive,
and doing Armand’s job.

           
Furious at a dead Armand for fueling
his dick where it didn’t belong, Coal would make the best of it. While he was
at the farm he might as well have a little fun.

Chapter Eighty-Six

The
Black Sheep

STERLING
LEFT ME a voicemail. She first told me that she found nothing on the elephant
sculpture. Perhaps it was an artist from a third world country or something.
Nonetheless, it didn’t appear to be mass produced. Sterling pointed out that
even if we did find it to be a true original we couldn’t possibly know when or
how Coal acquired it. And then her voice took a blunt turn toward sadness. She
reminded me that she had lost, too. Her mother had died during childbirth.
Her
birth. And now her father. And two
of her best friends, too. More or less she was telling me once again to get
over myself and leave my pity party behind.

DETECTIVE
WRAY JUST happened to be in the neighborhood. Old line that I was fond of using.
No matter. I knew Brock had sent him. I knew he wanted the photographs. I had delivered
him the originals of those I had found in the golf bag. I kept copies.

           
“I hear you just might have some
others,” Wray said. “Not saying I know how you got them. None of my business.”

           
“There’s a problem with those,” I
said. My camera was missing. I know I left it on my kitchen counter. I know it!
“It seems I’ve lost them.”

           
“You’re kidding me,” Wray said. “You
fucking broke into the man’s home, took photographs, and lost them? Don’t you
have a fucking photographer on your staff?”

           
A whole lab, I thought. I couldn’t
explain it.

           
And then I remembered. I had a
missing set of keys. But the locks had been changed. And I had an alarm system.
No. I had simply misplaced the damn camera.

           
I called Geoff into my office as
Detective Wray walked out. “Do you think Sukie somehow got her hands on my
camera?”

           
“Like
the camera
we used to risk our lives and take those photographs
inside The Centre?”

           
“Yeah. That one.”

           
Geoff slumped into the sofa in front
of my desk, plopping his legs up on the cocktail table. That always meant I was
in for an earful.

           
“
Brujeria
,” he said.

           
“More voodoo?”

           
“It’s not just voodoo. The Catholics
adapted many of our beliefs and rituals.
Brujeria
is a blockage. It’s
negative energy prohibiting good energy. You don’t need pendants and talisman
and potions anymore, Lauren. You need to find
Ohbeahman
. This is balance. This
is karma.

DETECTIVE
WRAY CALLED Harlan Coal in for a second polygraph and interview. Coal refused,
citing his busy calendar. He was out of the city and unavailable. He also cited
his previous cooperation and something called rights. Wray cited something
about a missing mental health worker that just turned up slashed to death. Coal
didn’t seem to know anything about that.

I
ACCEPTED THE lunch invitation. I’m not certain why. The caller said he was a
friend of my family’s. He said we had met once a long time ago. And he invited
me to join him at one of my favorite restaurants—
Catrozzi’s
.
And there was something familiar about his voice.

           
After almost finishing one glass of
chardonnay and pissed I was stood up by some stranger, I summoned the waiter
for my check, and then the old man with a cane and a fedora joined me at my
table, removing his hat as he took his seat.

           
“Do I know you?” I asked.

           
“I imagine you’ve seen me around,”
he said, after ordering another glass of wine for me, one for himself, and
their famous platter of antipasto. “It was very good of you to meet me today.
And very brave.”

           
The voice registered with me. But
when? Where? Who was this elderly man that called me brave?

           
The wine arrived promptly and he
gestured a toast. I acquiesced and returned the civil gesture.

           
“My late wife had magnificent red
hair just like yours,” he said.

           
“Thank you. Now will you please tell
me why I am here?”

           
The man shuffled his napkin into his
lap and dived into the olives and salami.

           
“It’s about family. A good family
you need to know about.”

           
“Go on,” I said.

           
He swirled his wine glass, pausing
as if gathering both his breath and his words.

           
“Would you agree with me that all
families have a black sheep?”

           
Maybe I nodded. Maybe I sat
motionless.

           
“We do, you know. You and me.”

           
“I don’t know what you mean, but
it’s time for me to go.”
 
I reached for
my purse.

           
He moved his liver-spotted hand
toward mine, but not touching.

           
“Please. Indulge an old man, just
for a short while and an even shorter story.”

           
He seemed harmless enough but his
voice haunted my soul. And he was wasting my time.

           
Recognizing my reluctance he said,
“Let me start with an admission. One of several I’ve come to deliver. I am the
person that has been warning you to stay away. Go away. And above all, to be
careful.”

           
“You’ve been threatening me?”

           
“No. Just warning you.”

           
“You call a chokehold and a rabid
wolf-dog at my door a harmless warning?”

           
“I know nothing of that. Only a
couple of notes. And a few phone calls. Oh. And the golf clubs along with its
content.”

           
 
I felt like an Etch-A-Sketch. I had just been
shaken and it left me with nothing. I had no orientation. No map to where I was
or where I was going. “You sent me that claim ticket for the golf clubs?”

           
“I didn’t know your plane was late.
I planned, somehow, to meet you and give you those photos. Had a bag of clubs
in my car and checked them. Then I went out looking for your friend’s Jaguar. I
had just spotted it when those street thugs jumped me. They smacked me around,
broke my hip, and stole my wallet.”

           
“The wallet with the receipt in it,”
I said.

           
I paused. “Did you call me just the
other day?”
           
“Only then did I realize you
are so much like my wife. She called herself piss and vinegar and she was proud
of it. I realized you have a strong heart and determined mind, not to mention
the testicles of both the matador and the bull.

           
His warbled voice and mastery of the
simile caused me to smile and ease up on the tension.

           
“I had my helpers make certain of
your welfare.”

           
Threats. My safety. Nonsensical.

           
“The geriatric doctor on your tenth
floor. He’s my very best friend.”

           
“He’s watching me?”

           
“Yes.”

           
“And who the hell are you?” I asked.

           
“Ah. My last confession. I don’t
think this will be easy for you, Lauren, but I am your grandfather. My name is
Nathaniel Judd.”

           
Nathan Judd. The bad seed. The
Visconti Curse. The very bad seed. The rapist.
Senior?

           
Nathaniel Judd paced his words
again, but they came across as bullets from a semi-automatic rifle. I fell
lifeless as I listened to his story.

           
Nathaniel Judd and his red-haired
wife bore four children. One died a hero in military battle. One died only a
few years ago, a victim of cancer and a third continued to lead a quiet and
fruitful life in Chicago. But his first born—

           
The black sheep that raped my
mother. Nathan Judd.

           
“What I’m trying to tell you is that
you come from good stock. An honorable family with honorable lineage. Those
seeds of greatness are in you.”