Maxwell Street Blues (26 page)

55

I sat at the kitchen table writing down the details necessary to implement my plan. To nail a man like Voss required impeccable witnesses and recording devices. To a jury, his words must sound explicit, his intentions unambiguous.

The phone rang. “I did it,” Knight said. “I told Audrey Prenevost to get the hell back here and she’s coming in.”

“She got in last night.”

“What? How do you know?” Knight sounded hurt.

“I have spies, Ellis. I need you to arrange a meeting for me with her. I don’t care where. But do it as soon as possible.”

After I assured Knight of his inclusion in the meeting, he hung up. I called Kalijero and told him my idea. “So you give Voss Snook’s book and he gives you a bullshit story. What about Butch?” Kalijero asked, using his own code name in Snooky’s notebook.

“Relax, Voss won’t spot it. I have to show him the book, Jimmy. Voss has to think the book is golden.”

“You’re just going to give it to him? What if he pulls a gun and walks away?”

“That’s why you have to be watching the whole thing. If he draws down, I’ll do the same. If he shoots me, you’re a witness.”

“It must be true what they say about the Landaus. You’re all crazy. Get back to me.”

* * *

Knight called me a couple of hours later. “She’s coming over at five,” he said and gave me his address. “Try not to bum her out. I’m hoping for a big night.”

Not until I was on my way to Knight’s condo did his affluent Near North address dawn on me. Somehow, I didn’t see him fitting in with the Magnificent Mile crowd. I parked my Civic in his building’s underground garage between a Porsche SUV and a Mercedes SUV. The doorman phoned Mr. Knight, and I was on my way to the fifty-second floor.

Knight opened the door holding a cordless phone to his ear. He waved me in. The living room was large and occupied by a brown leather L-shaped couch with matching love seat, chair, and ottoman. Everything was arranged in a semicircle around an enormous television and glass coffee table that held Knight’s laptop. I sank into the couch while my host drifted around the condo in his socks repeating, “Okay, Dad,” every ten seconds. Hanging on one of the walls were black-and-white photographs of industrial parks and gutted buildings. Another wall was covered with a variety of antique maps. Just outside the kitchen, the top third of President Nixon’s head jutted from the ground in a portrait of his unmistakable hairline.

Knight ended the call in the kitchen and then joined me. “What do you call this kind of photography?” I said and pointed to the photos. He glanced at the wall and shrugged. Then I said, “I like the Nixon head.” Knight seemed confused. “That picture!” I pointed to the head. Knight shrugged again. Why did he annoy me so easily?

“That’s my dad’s stuff—okay, come here.” He motioned for me to follow him, and we walked to his bedroom, which was off the hallway about ten feet from the door. “Stay in here until she shows up. I didn’t tell her you were coming.”

I did as told and sat on the bed. Knight left the bedroom door ajar. My annoyance was unjust since she probably would not have shown up if she knew I was here. Ten minutes later the doorman called, and I heard the cylinder of the dead bolt snap open. Knight fidgeted in the doorway. A minute later he shouted, “Over here, La-La.”

Audrey Prenevost shouted back, “Wow, you live here?” When she entered the foyer she said, “Oh, my god, look at that sofa!”

From the sound of it she ran into the living room and leaped onto the couch. Then she began talking about the shop in Los Angeles and that in six months her bosses thought she would be tattooing on her own. I peeked around the corner. Audrey Prenevost was lying on her back. I walked out of the bedroom and stopped where the hallway intersected the living room.

“Hi, La-La,” I said.

She lifted her head and stared at me. Then she sat upright. “Hey! That’s not fair. What are you doing here?”

Not fair? “Don’t get all wigged out. I just want to talk.”

“He just wants to talk,” Knight said. “You don’t have to freak.”

Audrey Prenevost glanced at Knight and then back to me. In a low voice, she said, “Who’s freaking? Jeez, you guys.”

“I know Audrey’s real name is Lisa. Did Lisa tell you about the last time I visited Taudrey Tats?” I said.

She stared at me. “Why should she?”

“I thought you two shared everything.”

She turned back to Knight, who had opened his laptop. “We share what we want to share,” she said.

“Did she share why she claimed
your
father—Chancellor Tate—was
her
father?”

Knight shouted, “Say what? That chancellor dude is
your
father?” He had that look of joy one associated with lottery winners. Audrey Prenevost blinked a few times and then pulled her legs up to her chest before burrowing cross-legged into the elbow of the couch. We both stared at her.

“He wasn’t a
father
to me,” she said finally. The bitterness in her voice sounded alien, as if someone else had spoken. “I don’t even know him.”

I said, “
But you knew your best friend was your father’s girlfriend!
You also knew your best friend told me he was
her
father. Isn’t that a little strange?”

Knight typed furiously.

“Just because Lisa’s not boring like most people doesn’t mean she’s strange. You don’t even know her.”

“I know she was involved in my friend’s murder and she’s in danger. And here’s something else
you
should know. If you have any knowledge of this murder, you’re an accessory. Keep this up and you’ll be tattooing with razor blades in prison.”

Either Audrey Prenevost’s face turned whiter or her eyebrows got redder. She
stood up and said, “I’m leaving.”

I positioned myself in front of the vestibule that led to the door. “Not until you tell me how Lisa was involved in Snooky’s murder.” Knight jumped off the couch and joined us.

“Dude, chill out,” Knight said to me. “C’mon, La-La, just tell us what you do know.” He put his arm around Audrey Prenevost and led her back to her roost in the corner of the couch. Then he jumped back into typing—not missing a beat—as if transcribing a perpetual news crawl in his brain.

I said, “You knew who Snooky was, right?” Audrey Prenevost nodded. “Lisa trusted him, right?” Audrey Prenevost agreed. “Something happened between them. They started arguing. A short time later, Snooky’s dead. What were they arguing about?”

I waited. “Lisa wanted names of his clients,” Audrey Prenevost said quietly. “And she wanted to know about my father’s money. He got paid for something to do with a construction project. Snooky wouldn’t give her the information. And there were other names she wanted. But I didn’t understand it all.” Knight kept typing.

“What was she going to do with the information on your father?”

“I didn’t understand all that stuff. I wasn’t in
that
part of the plan. That stuff came later—”

“So there was a plan,” I said. “Lisa planned on meeting your father at the bar. She planned on getting into a relationship with him. That part you knew about?”

“Yes.”

From that one small word came a big feeling of vindication. “And then what was she going to do?”

“She wasn’t sure. Maybe after a while tell him she was only sixteen to freak him out and maybe threaten to tell the police or something.”

“But your father steered Snooky to his girlfriend, Lisa, because her tattoo business needed a bookkeeper.” Audrey Prenevost nodded. “Would I be correct in saying everything that occurred
after
Snooky started working for Lisa was
not
part of the original plan?”

Audrey Prenevost thought about it. “I guess so.”

“Excellent. So Lisa wanted information on Tate’s illegal financial dealings and Snooky refused. Then Snooky gets killed. Okay, Audrey, what was the plan you were a part of?”

“To ruin my father—for those disgusting things he did to me.”

I had not anticipated this loathsome suggestion to resurface. “But how did Lisa figure into it? She’s old enough to legally date Tate. You could have exposed him on
your own.”

“Well, we wanted it to look really bad because it was a long time ago, and I’m not really sure what I remember. Lisa helped me put the pieces together. So if he was dating someone as young as Lisa, we thought it would help make him look bad.”

Something wasn’t adding up. “Does your mother know what happened to you?”

“She’s in denial. She says Lisa put false memories in my head.”

“There are few accusations more horrible than what Lisa is suggesting. Please, look deep inside. In your heart of hearts, do you really think Tate touched you inappropriately?”

Audrey Prenevost again brought her knees close to her body and hugged them. She stayed that way for a full minute before saying, “No. I don’t think anything like that ever happened.”

I sat down on the couch close to her. “On Lisa’s shoulder is a moon phase sequence. It starts with a new moon black circle and progresses to an almost full moon. You have a tattoo like that, right?”

“I have the same thing on my neck,” Audrey Prenevost said. She pulled her hair back to show us.

“Well, not
exactly
the same. Yours starts with a full moon and progresses to the last stage, just a thin crescent of white before it would become totally black again.”

“Yeah, but it’s the same idea.”

“The other day I was looking at a book of tattoo symbolism. The Greeks saw the moon as a symbol for a sister. The phases of the moon symbolized the evolving relationship. But in your case, the tattoo is more than symbolism, it’s blood—or half blood. Lisa is your half sister, isn’t she?”

“Wait a second!” Knight screamed. “Tate is Lisa’s stepdad? She was bangin’ her own stepfather?”

“Calm down, Ellis. Tate didn’t know because Lisa went to live with her biological father when she was a little girl.”

“Yeah, but jeez, dude, Lisa knew who
he
was.”

I understood what Knight meant. The concept turned my stomach, too.

“She gave herself the middle name Audrey,” Audrey Prenevost said. “After our grandmother.”

“On the door to her shop,” I said. “ ‘Sole Proprietor and Mistress of Poor Taste, L. Audrey Moreau.’ ”

56

“I can’t believe it,” Knight screamed again. “Tate was banging his own stepdaughter and didn’t even know it!”

I said, “Lisa Audrey Moreau hated Tate so much she convinced you that he abused you and then she took him to bed to prove it—sort of.”

“He treated Mom like shit.”

I took a deep breath. “When Snooky arrived, the plan changed to include Tate’s finances. Did she mention the name Voss?”

Audrey Prenevost rested the side of her head on top of her knees. She said quietly, “Lisa said Voss mentioned you.”

The power of that small voice uttering “you” rattled my foundation. “Me? What’re you talking about? I didn’t know Voss.”

“We didn’t know it was
you
—until you showed up. After Snooky died.”

“Well, what did he say?”

“He said to expect a private investigator.”

“Everyone knew Snooky was considered part of my family. Voss’s motive was to get info on dirty cops and get a cut of the Maxwell Street redevelopment kickbacks. There’s no mystery here. Killing Snooky didn’t have anything to do with me.”

“Maybe Voss has a deeper grudge you don’t know about.”

I refused to acknowledge Knight and kept my attention on Audrey Prenevost. “I have one more question. Lisa knew Snooky was dead a few days before I showed up. Yet she fell apart when I told her about the murder.”

It seemed Audrey Prenevost had already given this some thought. “She said Snooky created a story full of criminals and that if he had a violent ending, that was how he had written his own story. She didn’t know anyone else who knew Snooky besides my father. Voss said to expect you. I guess when you showed up it really hit her. That he was gone.”

Before I left, I summoned Knight to the door and suggested it would be in everyone’s best interest if Audrey Prenevost hung around a few days. Knight’s cocky grin reappeared. Then he wiggled his eyebrows a few times—a reference to erotic ambitions, I guessed.

* * *

From my apartment, I phoned Kalijero. “You told me to get back to you, remember?”

“Talk.”

“I want to get a message to Voss. I want him to meet me at Maxwell and Halsted. I’ll bring the book he wants; he gives me everything on Snooky’s murder.”

“At Maxwell and Halsted? Oh, let me guess. You want to settle a score at the scene of the crime—like in the movies.”

“Let’s just say I have a
burning
desire to meet him there. And why not? Tomorrow evening, after the construction crews leave. There’s nothing there except the office buildings a block away. It’ll be quiet. Voss can choose the time. So he knows I’m serious, I’ll include a grand in cash with the message. I get the cash back when I give him the book.”

“You’re assuming a hell of a lot, aren’t you?”

“C’mon, Jimmy. Tell Hauser I’ll be the bait. Wire me up and I’ll get Voss to hang himself.”

“It’s so
easy
, huh, Landau?”

“I didn’t say it was easy, but Voss is an arrogant bastard. He has no fear—he’ll shoot off his mouth, I’m sure of it.”

Another trademark Kalijero sigh. “I’ll run it by Hauser but if he says no, that’s it. I don’t want to lose my pension this late in the game.”

I thought I was hearing things. “Since when do you give a damn about permission from Mommy and Daddy?”

“This is Voss we’re talking about! Why don’t you just call the son of a bitch yourself?”

“I want him to know the police are involved.”

“What about Lisa? You gonna tell her what you’re up to?”

“Don’t worry about her. You just try to get that permission slip from Daddy and don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

I imagined hearing the steam shooting out of Kalijero’s nostrils. “I’ll give you one hour to meet me in front of Area B with the note and cash. I’ll either take it or beat the shit out of you first and then take it.”