Hugger Mugger (15 page)

C
ORD CLEANED UP
well. When he joined us, showered, shampooed, clean-shaven, smelling of an understated cologne, and casually dressed, he looked like a successful broker on his day off. He slid into the booth beside me and smiled pleasantly.

“Sorry I sort of slopped over up there. I've been under some stress.”

The waitress came over, filled our coffee cups, and asked Cord if he wanted anything to eat.

“You have any bran flakes?” Cord said.

She shook her head.

“Lunch menu,” she said. “It's after eleven.”

“Oh. All right, could I have some toast please, and a cup of tea?”

“Tea?”

“Yes please, with lemon.”

“Sure.”

The waitress went off. Cord smiled at us brightly.

“You boys talked things out,” he said.

“Relentlessly,” I said. “Why do you think your wife suddenly ended your marriage?”

“Must we?” Cord said.

“We must.”

“Well, as you've heard Pud suggest, albeit coarsely, our marriage was in some ways a sham. I was able to . . .” He paused, thinking how to say it. “Service her, I guess. But in more nontraditional ways.”

“Okay, you were sexually mismatched,” I said. “You both must have known that for a long time.”

“Yes. I had hoped when we married that I could make a go of it, but . . .”

“But you couldn't get it up,” Pud said.

Cord looked a little embarrassed. I assumed it was the language rather than the fact.

“Well, you did make a go, after all,” I said. “How long have you been married?”

“Eight years.”

“Any good ones?”

“Sex aside, yes. Stonie and I were pretty good friends.”

“I'm not sure there is a sex aside,” I said. “But why now?”

“Why did we break up now?”

“Yes.”

The waitress returned with a cup of hot water, a tea bag, and toast with a pat of butter on each slice and a couple of little packets of grape jelly on the side. Pud said yes to more coffee. I said no.

“You got some kinda pie over there?” Pud said.

“Peach,” she said.

“I'll have a slice. No sense drinking all this coffee without no pie.”

The waitress smiled automatically and went for the pie. Cord dropped the tea bag in his hot water and jiggled it carefully.

“I've asked myself the same question,” Cord said. “And it always comes back to Penny.”

I waited. He jogged his tea bag, checking the color of the tea. The waitress came back and put a fork and a piece of pie down in front of Pud, put the check down beside it, and left. I picked up the check.

“Penny decided we should go,” Cord said.

“Why did she?”

“I have no idea,” Cord said. “You, Pud?”

“She never liked either one of us much,” Pud said.

“I don't agree,” Cord said. “She may have disapproved of you, Pud. All that boozing, and the macho business. But I thought Penny liked me.”

“Guess you were wrong,” Pud said.

“What do you guys know about Delroy?” I said.

“Pretty good guy,” Pud said.

“A fascist bully,” Cord said.

“How long has he worked for the Clive family?” I said.

“Before I showed up,” Pud said.

“Yes,” Cord said. “He was there when Stonie and I got married.”

“Always security?”

“More or less,” Cord said.

“He'd get me out of the trouble booze got me into,”

Pud said. “And he'd get Cord out of the trouble his dick got him into.”

“What kind of trouble?” I said.

Pud ate the last bite of his pie. “Me? Drunk and disorderly. Soliciting sex from an undercover cop—the bitch. DWI. That kind of stuff.”

“What did he do to fix it?”

“Hell, I don't know. I just know he'd come and get me from jail or whatever and bring me home and tell me to clean up my act. And I never heard about the charges again.”

“You?” I said to Cord.

“He's done the same sort of thing for me,” Cord said.

“Young boys?”

“Misunderstandings, really. At least one clear case of entrapment, in Augusta.”

“Don't you hate when that happens,” I said. “Delroy took care of it?”

“Yes. I assume acting on orders from Walter.”

“Bribery?” I said. “Intimidation?”

“Both, I assume.”

“And why don't you like him?”

“He was always so superior, so contemptuous. He's a classic homophobe.”

“Aw hell, lotta people don't like homos,” Pud said. “Don't make them fascists, for crissake.”

Cord nibbled on his toast.

“Any other thoughts on Delroy?” I said.

“I think he's been humping Penny,” Pud said.

I felt a little shock of anger, as if someone had said something insulting about Susan, though lower-voltage.

“Oh for God sakes, Pud, you always think everyone is humping everyone.”

Pud shrugged.

“You out of the apartment for a while?” he said to Cord.

“Yes.”

“Good. I gotta go clean up, I got a job interview.”

“Where?” Cord said.

“Package delivery service. One of us gotta work.”

“Good luck,” Cord said.

“I get a job, maybe we can move out of the fucking phone booth we're in now,” Pud said.

“I hope so,” Cord said.

“See you around,” Pud said to me. “Hope you make some progress.”

I gave him my card.

“You think of anything,” I said, “I'm at the Holiday Inn, right now, or you can call my office in Boston. I check my machine every day.”

Pud took the card, gave me a thumbs-up, and left the sandwich shop.

“Did you know he's stopped drinking?” Cord said.

“No.”

“Hasn't had a drink since this happened.”

“Amazing.”

“He's coarse and dreadfully incorrect, and not, I'm afraid, terribly bright,” Cord said. “But my God, I don't know what I'd have done without him.”

“People are often better sober,” I said. “Do you think Delroy is humping Penny?”

“Well, I hadn't really thought about that, but she's
known him so long. I mean, what was she when Delroy came upon the scene, maybe fifteen?”

I waited while Cord tried to think about Delroy and Penny. This was hard for Cord. I was pretty sure he'd spent most of his life considering himself, and very little of his life considering anything else.

“I don't know,” he said. “The idea seems sort of natural to me. I guess I'd have to say that if it proved so, I wouldn't be surprised by it.”

“How about Stonie?” I said. “Do you think she was unfaithful?”

I knew the answer to that, though “unfaithful” didn't seem to quite fully cover truck-stop fellatio. I wanted to know if Cord knew.

“I would have understood,” he said, “and I would have forgiven her, given how things were, and of course it's possible that she did things I don't know about. But no, I don't believe she was ever unfaithful.”

“Hard to imagine,” I said.

T
HE
L
AMARR TOWN
library was a two-and-a-half-block walk through the dense Georgia heat from the sandwich shop. By the time I got there my shirt was stuck to my back. The library was a white clapboard building, one story, with a long porch across the front. The porch roof was supported with some disproportionate white pillars. I went in. It was air-conditioned. I breathed for a while and then found an Atlanta phone book and looked up Security South. It had an address on Piedmont Road in Buckhead. Good neighborhood.

It took me two and a half hours to get to Atlanta and another twenty minutes to locate the Security South address on Piedmont in a small shopping center near the corner of East Paces Ferry Road. It was no cooler in Atlanta. When I got out of the car, the heat felt like it could be cut into squares and used to build a wall.

The little shopping center had a bookstore, a Thai restaurant, a hair salon, a place that sold bed linens and
bath accessories, and a storefront office with a sign on the front window that read, “Bella's Business Services.” The more I looked, the more I didn't see Security South. My best bet seemed to be Bella's, so I went in.

The room was cool and small and empty except for a switchboard, a few office machines, two file cabinets, a desk, a chair, and a woman. The woman was in the chair behind the desk. She was black, with very short hair and good shoulders.

“Bella?” I said.

“Denise,” she said. “I bought the place from Bella.”

“I'm looking for an outfit called Security South,” I said. “Which is listed at this address but does not seem to be here.”

“Right here,” Denise said.

She was wearing a maroon linen dress with no sleeves and her arms were strong-looking.

“Here?” I said.

“Yes, sir. If you'd like to leave a message, I can have Mr. Delroy call you back.”

“This is a mail drop,” I said.

“And a phone service. We also do billing.”

“Ah hah,” I said.

“Ah hah?”

“Detectives say that when we come across a clue.”

“Are you a detective?”

“I was beginning to wonder,” I said. “I don't suppose you could tell me who their clients are.”

“No, sir, I'm sorry,” Denise said. “But you can see why we'd have to remain confidential about our customers.”

“Sure,” I said.

“You really a detective?” she said.

“Yep.”

“Atlanta Police?”

“Boston. Private.”

“A private eye?” she said. There was delight in her voice. “From Bahston?”

“Hey, do I make fun of your accent?” I said.

She smiled.

“Why, honey,” she said, “we don't have no accent down here.”

“Sho' 'nuff,” I said.

I looked around the office. In the back, behind Denise's desk, was a window that opened onto a parking area. I could see the nose of what might have been a Honda Prelude parked behind the office. I smiled my aluminum-siding-salesman smile.

“While I'm here,” I said, “you want me to check your security? I can give you a nice price on a beautiful system.”

“No, thank you,” she said. “I feel perfectly safe here.”

“I meant an alarm system,” I said. “Protect the office at night.”

“From what? Somebody want to sneak in here and steal paper clips?”

“Well,” I said, “I just assumed you had an alarm system. I could update it for you for cost, just cover the expense of my trip here.”

“I don't have an alarm system,” she said.

“I could put one in,” I said. Always a plugger.

“Well, aren't you a hustler,” Denise said.

“Well, you can't blame me for trying to salvage something,” I said. “I don't find Security South, I don't get paid.”

Denise smiled. She looked great when she smiled.

“No, I don't blame you, but I don't want anything you've got to sell.”

“You're not the first woman to make that point,” I said.

“I'm sure I'm not,” Denise said. “You wish to leave a message for Mr. Delroy, I'll see that he gets it.”

“Mr. Delroy?”

“Yessir, the CEO. Do you wish to leave a message for someone else?”

“No,” I said. “No message.”

“Best I can do,” she said.

“Me too,” I said, and smiled and opened her front door and wedged my way out into the swelter and thence to my car.

T
HE POPULATION OF
Atlanta is less than Boston's, but it is the center of a large region and for that it seems bigger. I was in the Buckhead neighborhood, north of Atlanta, where the governor lives, surrounded by large lawns, expensive houses, an upwardly mobile constituency, and some very good restaurants. One of them, Pano's and Paul's, was located out past the governor's mansion, in a small strip mall on West Paces Ferry Road. It was 5:35 when I got there, and there were tables available. I asked for one, got one, ordered an Absolut martini on the rocks and a deep-fried lobster tail, and tried to look like I preferred to dine alone in a fancy restaurant.

If Jon Delroy was the CEO of a security business that operated out of a file cabinet in Bella's Business Services, then how big an operation was it, and why was its CEO out in the field all the time, guarding a horse? Why wasn't he in the Peachtree Center, in an office with a
large reception area, shmoozing clients and serving on crime advisory councils, and having lunch at the Ritz-Carlton downtown with the commander of the GBI?

I declined a second martini, ate my lobster tail, paid my tab, and went out to my car. It was twenty to seven. I headed back to Bella's Business Services and parked behind the building just after seven. Her back door would be three down from the left end of the mall. I got out of my car, got a toolbox out of the back, and went to the door. It was locked with a spring bolt on the inside, but the frame had shrunk a little since it had been installed and there was a sliver of an opening. I put on some crime scene gloves, turned the knob and held it there with duct tape. Then I got out a putty knife and tried to spring the lock tongue back with no success. I put the putty knife back and got out a flat bar. There was no one in sight. I put the bent end of the flat bar into the crack at the door edge and pried the thing open. It made some noise as the spring bolt screws inside tore out of the door, but if anyone heard it they didn't care, and no one came running. I untaped the doorknob and picked up the toolbox and went in and closed the door behind me. The spring bolt was hanging by one remaining screw. I went to the file cabinet. It was still light outside, but inside it was too dark to read the labels on the files, so I got a small flashlight out of the toolbox and held it in my cupped hand and went through the files. Denise was an orderly person. The files were alphabetized, so I found Security South quickly.

There was no way to conceal the break-in. Denise would report that someone was there earlier looking for
Security South, and she would remember that the someone had talked with her about her alarm system. They'd assume that someone to be the burglar, and they would, of course, be right. She'd probably remember that the someone had said he was a private detective, from Boston, which wouldn't help the Atlanta cops much, at least until they contacted Delroy, and even if that led them to me, and Denise ID'd me, there was no way to tie me to the crime. So there was no reason not to steal the file. And there was some reason not to sit in the burgled office and read it by flashlight.

I put the flat bar and the duct tape in my toolbox, put the folder in flat on top of the tools, and closed the box. I went out, closed the broken door behind me, put the toolbox in my car, got in and drove away. No one paid any attention to me. I went up Peachtree Road, to the Phipps Plaza Mall, and parked in their garage across from the Ritz-Carlton Buckhead, took the file folder out of the back of my car, went up to the first level, and sat on a bench to read it.

It wasn't much of a file. It contained a collection of invoices that indicated that Three Fillies Stables had paid Security South an annual amount of $250,000. The slips went back five years. Each invoice was marked paid, with a check number and date entered in a nice hand. There was a deposit slip stapled to each receipt that told me that the amount had been deposited to an account in the Central Georgia Savings and Loan branch in Buckhead. There were also some Visa credit card receipts, each neatly annotated in the same nice female hand, “Paid, PC” and a date. As far as I could tell,
Delroy had put the whole Security South operation on his credit card. Uniforms, guns, flashlights, ammunition, walkie-talkies. And as far as I could figure, somebody else had paid the bills. Penny Clive?

I found a place with a coin-operated copier and made copies of everything, put the originals back in their folder, drove back through the lively Buckhead traffic to the strip mall on East Paces Ferry, parked in back again, put on gloves again, went into Bella's Business Services again, and put the file folder back where it belonged. Then I departed. Scot-free. Again.