Mr. Paradise A Novel (11 page)

The table held a few magazines, a pile of catalogs, a Victoria’s Secret, a few bills, a large black envelope, ten by twelve. He turned to see her with a bright expression, eyebrows raised as she worked on an answer that should be easy, but having a tough time being Chloe.

“Whose name is it in?”

She said, “Mine,” right away this time.

“You hold the mortgage?”

Delsa waited.

She said, “It’s paid for.”

Delsa let it go. She was probably telling the truth. Chloe owned the place—not out of reach for a nine-hundred-an-hour call girl; he assumed that, too—and Kelly, who hadn’t moved from that spot since they came in the loft, shared expenses.

He said, “You get a lot of mail, don’t you?”

She said, “Mostly junk.”

He picked up the Victoria’s Secret catalog and showed her the cover. “Are you in here?”

She said, “Kelly is,” and after a moment, “page sixteen.”

Delsa found it and looked at the girl in the black bikini panties well below her hip bones, brown skin, no stomach. None.

She came over in her coat and looked at the page. She said, “Yeah,” in a quiet voice, close to him, “that’s Kelly. It was shot last summer.”

Delsa leafed through the magazine—she was playing with him again, wanting him to see her—and stopped. He said, “Here’s Kelly again. In her underwear. Wait a minute. Or is it you?” Offering her a break.

She looked at herself wearing low-rise panties and thongs. “Yeah, I forgot, that is me, right.”

“The thong,” Delsa said, “doesn’t look too comfortable.”

She said, “I can’t wait to get it off.”

Delsa told himself she was agreeing that it was uncomfortable, not making a move on him, putting anything into what she said. Otherwise he’d get out of here now and come back with Jackie Michaels, not take a chance fucking up seventeen years on the job. She was a witness. Maybe the best-looking girl he had ever seen this close, or outside of the movies, or even counting the movies, but she was still a witness.

He picked up the black envelope and looked at the label, addressed to Kelly Barr, from a photographic studio. He turned to Kelly-as-Chloe, almost as tall as he was.

“You think this will tell me something about her?”

“They’re just photos.”

He walked away, bringing the catalog and the black envelope to the counter, took a kitchen knife from a rack and slit the envelope open.

“We’ll need pictures of the complainant.”

“The what?”

“The victim.”

“They’re swimsuit shots.”

“Taken recently?”

“Last week.”

Delsa pulled out a half dozen color prints and a proof sheet and laid them on the counter: Kelly full length in bikinis, tiny ones.

S
HE CAME TO THE
counter to look at herself, leaning in on her arms to study the proof sheet.

She heard him say, “Your glasses are in your bag. You don’t need them?”

She straightened and turned to him.

“You figured it out.”

“Even without the glasses.”

“You saw her in the chair, her skirt up. You look at these shots . . .”

“And I know Chloe doesn’t model swimming suits,” Delsa said.

“Yesterday we happened to be looking at this catalog and she said, ‘If you want to know why I never wear a thong, ask Mr. Paradise.’ You know what she meant?”

“He didn’t go for the Hitler look,” Delsa said. “Just an old-fashioned guy. Are you gonna tell me who you are?”

“You already know.”

“I’d like to hear you say it.”

She shrugged in her cinnamon coat.

“Okay, I’m Kelly Barr. Now what?”

H
E TOLD HER SHE
had gone through enough for one day. He’d pick her up in the morning and take her statement at 1300, police headquarters.

She didn’t like the sound of that. Take her statement? She said did he mean, like, what she was doing when it happened?
He said, from the time she arrived at the house. Okay? He hadn’t taken his coat off, he was ready to go . . .

Later, it reminded her of the thing Peter Falk used to do playing Columbo. Gets to the door and turns with one more question.

Delsa was still at the counter fastening his toggles. He said, “The main thing we’ll get into, why you wanted us to think you’re Chloe.”

She knew it was coming and had to say something because he was looking at her, waiting. She had to give him an answer and had made up her mind to tell the truth. Up to a point.

“Montez threatened me. He said I had to do it if I wanted to stay alive.”

“What was his reason?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

“All that time you were together—you didn’t ask him why?”

“Of course I did. He still wouldn’t tell me.”

“Have you thought about it since?”

“Have I
thought
about it—all I keep thinking, I never should’ve been there in the first place.”

“Chloe asked you to come and you couldn’t say no?”

“She talked me into it. Help her out with the fucking cheerleading because the old man loved it.”

“Were Chloe and Montez friends?”

“She said they got along okay.”

“They have something going?”

“No. She would’ve told me.”

“You were close? You confide in each other?”

“We were good friends.”

“But she was a prostitute.”

“She gave it up for Mr. Paradise.”

“There was a time before that—”

“She never brought them home. She told really funny stories about weird things that guys liked. I asked if she ever beat them. She said, ‘Hon, I even pee on some.’ “ Kelly picked up her pace saying, “We met doing a runway show for Saks. I’d see her at studios—photographers loved her hands—or we’d meet for a drink. We laughed a lot and she invited me to move in.” Kelly took hold of Delsa’s dark eyes saying, “She got tired of fucking strangers, especially the regulars. Mr. Paradise made her an offer and she quit being a ho.”

This time he did smile, though she didn’t.

Smiled and let it fade and said, “How’d you happen to be upstairs with Montez?”

She told about the old man flipping the coin. “To share his ladies with Montez—his exact words—and not play favorites.”

“He thought you were a hooker. Did you tell him you weren’t?”

“I didn’t want to start anything with the old man, Chloe in the middle. I’d go upstairs with Montez, and as soon as he had his pants off, I’d run. Out of the house.”

“What about Chloe?”

“She’s okay. It’s her boyfriend’s party.”

“What’d Montez say?”

“Upstairs?”

“Before, when you got him.”

“He got
me
. Took me upstairs by the arm.”

“What’d you do then?”

“I smoked a cigarette and went to the bathroom.”

“Did you talk?”

“Nothing that I remember.”

“He take his pants off, undress?”

“I came out of the bathroom and that’s when we heard the shots. Two and then two more.”

“They all sound the same?”

“I think so.”

“What’d Montez do?”

“Ran out of the room. I put on my coat, picked up Chloe’s and started down the hall. He was at the top of the stairs, so I hung back, I didn’t want him to see me.”

“Why not?”

“I wanted to leave, not be involved.”

“You knew they were dead?”

“
No
. It was like I knew it without actually knowing it. All I wanted to do was leave, get out.”

“You said not get involved.”

“With the police, as a witness.”

“Don’t you want to help us?”

“Of course, yeah, now. But when it was happening, no. I wanted to go
home.
”

“You say Montez was at the top of the stairs. What did he do then?”

“He went down to the first floor.”

“How? I mean, was he cautious after hearing the shots? Not knowing who was in the house?”

“He ran down the stairs.”

“He call out anything, a name?”

Kelly shook her head. “I went to the railing and looked down. He wasn’t in the foyer.”

“You hear anything?”

“I might’ve heard voices, but I’m not sure. I thought about running out of the house.”

“What stopped you?”

“I didn’t have my bag, goddamn it. I forgot it.”

“Why didn’t you get it?”

“I heard voices and looked down. Two men I’d never seen before, in dark coats and baseball caps, were in the foyer.”

“White or black?”

“White. Not young, not old, both average height—it was hard to tell looking down at them. One was heavyset. He had a gun in his hand, like an automatic. The other one was holding a bottle of vodka.”

“What kind?”

“Christiania, what the old man was drinking.”

“And you and Chloe had alexanders,” Frank said. “How’re you feeling?”

“I’m worn out.”

“Starting to droop a little. What’d the two guys do?”

“They left, out the front.”

“Was the glass in the door already broken?”

It surprised her. “No, they did it when they were outside, smashed it with something. I suppose so you’d think that’s how they came in.”

“How did they?”

“I have no idea. Unless they broke in.”

“Or the door was unlocked,” Delsa said. “The two guys are in the foyer, where was Montez?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t see him with the two guys or hear them talking?”

“They left and a few minutes later he came upstairs. He could’ve been hiding—I don’t know.”

“Didn’t you say anything?”

“I asked him what happened, if he saw the two guys. But he didn’t say a word until he took me downstairs. In the living room he said, ‘You know what you’re gonna see. They’re both dead, Mr. Paradise and your friend Kelly.’ I thought he had us mixed up. I said I’m Kelly, and he said, ‘Uh-unh, you’re Chloe.’ “

“Then what?”

“He made me look at the bodies.”

“Was Chloe’s skirt raised?”

Kelly nodded. “I was about to pull it down and he stopped me.”

“He told you you were Chloe and you said okay?”

“Montez said, ‘You know what bullet holes look like.’ He said if I don’t do what I’m told, that ugly motherfucker will be waiting for me some night.”

“Who’s the ugly motherfucker?”

“Someone who’ll shoot me in the head.”

“You’re sure you saw two white guys.”

“Positive.”

He asked if there was anything unusual about them. Kelly said she thought of them as workingmen, blue-collar. He
asked about their baseball caps and she remembered the orange
D
and he said they were the caps the Tigers wore on the road. He told her to go to bed, he’d call her in the morning.

She said, “What if Montez calls during the night?”

“He won’t, I’m gonna have him picked up.” Delsa said, “Anything else you want to tell me?”

N
OT RIGHT NOW.

Kelly didn’t say that. She said, “Not that I can think of,” with a little shrug. She had decided there was more to think about here than just getting it over with. Montez would deny everything she told Frank. Her word against his. In a corner Montez might even say it was
her
idea. It was kind of cool to be in this with your eyes open, letting it happen. Maybe she should try acting, modeling with lines, hitting marks . . . Frank Delsa looked at you with those quiet eyes asking questions, and you answer, you know he’s getting more out of it than what you’re saying. She wondered when he first knew she wasn’t Chloe. Before she fumbled the keys, probably in the bedroom. He listened, he paid attention . . . For the next two days she’d hold off saying anything more and see what happened next.

She loved his eyes.

TWELVE

AUTOPSY ATTENDANTS WERE PREPARING
four bodies this morning for pathology: Tony Paradiso, Chloe Robinette, and the two guys from Orlando’s basement who’d been shot but not dismembered.

Delsa, hospital booties covering his shoes, watched the diener working on Mr. Paradise, snipping free the old man’s rib cage with a long-handle pruner. Chloe’s organs had been removed, weighed, tissue samples taken, the organs returned to her body in a plastic bag. Chloe was now being stitched back together, the section of skull refitted, her blond hair in place again. They had traced her to Montreal, to strip clubs in Windsor, a Web page on the Internet, this girl who’d made nine hundred dollars an hour lying naked on an autopsy table, a weak sun shining on her through the skylight.

She didn’t show up on LEIN; neither did Kelly. Montez and Lloyd both had sheets. They’d pick at Lloyd, see about tying
him in, but concentrate on Montez. Throw the two white guys at him. Get a copy of his 9-11 call.

He noticed a note on the board that said, handprinted, “Howard, you will be responsible for brain bucket cleanup Monday.”

Richard Harris tapped on the glass partition of the observation room, Richard on the other side where you could watch autopsies from a distance and not become too grossed out. Delsa went out to him because Richard refused to come anywhere near an autopsy. He said, “We got an I.D. on the one was cut up. His name’s Zorro, the fox, with the Cash Flow Posse.”

“How’d you get it?”

“The man’s family, his mom and daddy, they both in the business. Zorro didn’t call when he was suppose to. You understand this was a dangerous man, knows this other posse wants him out of business. If he doesn’t follow up and call by a certain time? He must be dead. They’re out in the viewing room, the family. The M.E. photo guy’s trying to shoot Zorro’s face without it looking so burnt.

“And, Mr. Tony Jr.’s in the lobby bitching. Wants to know what all the fuckin Chicanos are doing in the room, the viewing room, where they show the complainant on that monitor. Tony wants to talk to you. I mean he’s demanding to speak with you.”

“What about Tyrell?” Delsa said. “You take him down?”

“Him and two of his crew with outstanding warrants, violated their probation. Yeah, I went in and ordered breakfast—give me time to check the place out, glance in
the kitchen. Sit at the counter you can watch the activity, Tyrell in there frying eggs. I got him lined up, my phone nudges me. It’s Manny outside with Violent Crimes. ‘Is he there? What’re you doing? We going in or not?’ I told him soon as I finish my breakfast.”