Death Benefits (23 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

Even in black silhouette, with the background darkened as well to protect her identity, you could see her lips quiver.

“Then,” she said, her voice quavering, “he opened his robe. I could hear all those people down below. They were standing all around the pyramid and they were chanting, ‘Tezca, Tezca, Tezca.' Over and over and over. And then that horrible woman told me—ordered me—to take his…to put his penis in my mouth.”

“And did you?” asked the offscreen voice.

She was motionless, rigid. And then, slowly, she nodded her head twice, stopping with her head pointed down, her shoulders slumped.

“Was that the first time they made you do that? Up on the pyramid?”

She shook her head.

“How many times?” asked the offscreen voice.

She didn't say anything, but you could see her shoulders beginning to shake. “Ten times,” she finally gasped, collapsing in tears.

The scene shifted to Ed Bradley, facing the camera, no jacket, top two buttons of his khaki shirt unbuttoned, squinting into the New Mexico sun. Visible in the background was the great pyramid of Aztlana—a four-sided pyramid, built in steep, receding blocks. There was a broad stone stairway leading from the base to the apex of the pyramid. At the top of the stairs was a large ceremonial courtyard paved with elaborate patterns of aquamarine and scarlet tiles. Beyond the courtyard was Tezca's ritual chamber, which had white adobe walls and a multicolored slate roof.

The ceremonial courtyard was where, once a month—the scene illuminated by the full moon, his chanting followers ringing the base of the pyramid—the former Arthur A. Nevins, one-time CPA with Price Waterhouse, ejaculated onto the face and neck of one of his sacrificial maidens.

“It is a town of stark contrasts,” Ed Bradley said into the camera. “Named after the mythical homeland of the ancient Aztecs, it has become the real homeland of four thousand modern Americans, most of them drop-outs from the world of investment banking, law, and accounting—a town where JD means John Deere and CPA stands for three of the town's crops, corn, potatoes, and apricots. But set against this pastoral background are tales of a complex web of offshore investments, tales of torture and beatings and homicide, tales of sexual slavery, tales of women forced to perform sodomy atop the pyramid on the man known simply as Tezca.”

The camera panned slowly along the base of the four-sided pyramid, where hundreds of smiling men, women, and little children were milling around, many shading their eyes as they look heavenward.

“It is noon in Aztlan, town of contrasts, and Tezca's followers are gathered around the pyramid to greet their leader.”

The camera panned heavenward, slowly sweeping the cloudless blue sky, freezing on the sun, which seemed on fire. You could hear the sounds of mothers talking to young children, people laughing, someone selling lemonade—sounds you might hear along Main Street before the Fourth of July parade.

“Like the ancient Aztec sun god, Tezca appears from the sky. Unlike the ancient Aztec sun god, Tezca arrives in a Lear jet.”

The distant roar of an approaching jet. Buzzing among the crowd. Mothers pointing to the sky. A dark dot emerging from among the mountains. A black jet, high above the desert floor. And then it tilts, and then it goes into a screeching dive toward the pyramid. Pulling up at the last minute, the jet spins, slowly corkscrewing, as it climbs toward the sun and disappears. The crowd cheers.

The story shifted to several scenes of pastoral life in Aztlana, intercut with sound bites from angry or frightened New Mexico citizens and national commentators on the town's growing power. The speakers included a UCLA professor of religion on the distortion of Aztec religious customs, a psychiatrist from Manhattan on why former Wall Street investment bankers are so attracted to a religious movement that attaches evangelical significance to the moment of orgasm, a Connecticut DA seeking to indict Tezca on charges of taking money under false pretenses, a teary mother and father of a cult member (”He was such a good boy”), a CPA who had worked with Tezca back at Price Waterhouse (”Arthur was just your basic quiet, conservative type”), a New Mexico highway trooper with photographs of three corpses (all dissident former members of the cult) that he believed were executed on direct orders from Tezca.

Then the story cut to a black-and-white portrait photograph from a high school yearbook circa 1968. The subject of the photograph had longish brown hair, bangs almost to his eyes, muttonchop sideburns, thick horn-rim glasses slightly askew, bad teeth. He looked like a slide-rule nerd. The black print under the photograph identified him as Arthur A. Nevins. The list of activities beneath his name read:

Esperanto Club 3, 4; Model United Nations 3, Audio-Visual Club 4.

His quote was:

“Quiet conceals great movement beneath.”

The Ed Bradley voice-over summarized his high school years in Cleveland and then his years at Ohio State, as the high school shot dissolved into his college yearbook photograph: hair now shoulder length, glasses now wire-rim but still askew, face now adorned with a chin-strap beard, white T-shirt with a red silkscreened clenched fist. Then his years at Price Waterhouse's Houston office, the college yearbook photograph dissolving into his accounting firm glossy: hair shorter now and neatly trimmed, wire-rims replaced by the old horn-rims (but now perfectly level), face clean-shaven but a little pudgy, crisp white shirt, repp tie, dark three-button suit.

The voice-over moved through his years at Price Waterhouse, the murky origins of his religion, the recruiting of accountants and lawyers at tax seminars and conferences around the nation, his following gradually growing, until the founding of the town of Aztlana.

And then the black-and-white glossy from the Price Waterhouse days slowly dissolved into a live color shot of Tezca, staring into the camera. The softness was gone, the flab burned off, the flesh pared down. A narrow, bony face. Hollow cheeks, lines around the mouth, thin lips.

From the neck up, Tezca looked like a battle-hardened marine: close-cropped hair, veins at the temples, sinewy neck, sun-darkened skin, no glasses. From the neck down he was all cult leader: He wore a long, multicolored caftan decorated with orange serpents, a red sash at the waist, and thick leather sandals.

He sat motionless as he listened to Ed Bradley's questions. He paused before each response, his nostrils flaring. His voice was low, almost without affect, the words precise. He didn't rise to the bait of Bradley's allegations of sexual misconduct and financial irregularities. But when Bradley raised the state troopers' investigation into the violent deaths of the three former members of the cult, Tezca shook his head in disgust and announced, “This interview is over.”

The report ended with a close-up freeze frame of his glowering eyes.

I popped out the videocassette and returned to my office. No leads to Montezuma's Executor, but a fascinating, almost chilling, glimpse of the man who might be out there in pursuit of the Executor, who might have had a hand in the attack on Dottie Anderson. According to Ferd Fingersh, Tezca went into hiding just around the time Remy Panzer thought that Anderson had smuggled the Executor into the country.

Putting the videocassette in the top drawer of the desk, I reached for the list of names I had put together from Anderson's calendars, correspondence, and message slips. I still had about ten names left to contact.

The few who were in that day couldn't recall anything helpful other than that Stoddard Anderson had seemed somewhat distracted some of the time. So do I. So do you. Clues don't come easy.

I was studying the photocopies of Anderson's appointment calendar when Benny returned. I looked up at the crinkling sound of the two grocery bags full of barbecue goodies. The hickory smoke followed him into the room.

“If you've got snouts in there,” I said, “you'd better eat your lunch down in the confer—” The look on his face stopped me.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I visited your man's post office box.”

“The key fit?”

He nodded, setting down the big brown bags. “I think we may have stumbled on an alternative explanation for why it had been so long since Stoddard Anderson had his knob polished at home.” He peered into one of the bags.

“Did you find love letters?”

Benny glanced over with a rueful smile. “Hardly.” He reached into the bag and pulled out two glossy magazines. “Check these out,” he said as he tossed them onto the desk. “Not exactly
U.S. News and World Report
.”

The one on top was entitled
Naughty Boys
. The cover had a gray-haired man kneeling behind a naked boy of maybe twelve years of age; the man had his tongue pressed into the crack of the boy's buttocks. I leafed through the magazine. Its clinical explicitness made
Hustler
look like
Better Homes & Gardens
—except there wasn't one female in the entire magazine. Page after page of preteen boys and older men—masturbating each other; engaging in anal intercourse; urinating on one another; performing fellatio; ejaculating onto stomachs, backs, and faces; arranged in various S & M poses; wearing masks; wielding whips; preening in leather. Dizzy, I closed the magazine, and found myself staring at a color ad for a gay phone sex outfit called Wet Daydreams. The ad featured a blond stud “named” Sean who was holding a telephone and wearing nothing but thigh-high leather boots and a pair of tiny white briefs stretched tight over an ominous bulge. Sean took Mastercard and Visa. I took a deep breath.

“It could have been put in his PO box by mistake,” I said.

Benny shook his head. “It came in this.” He pulled a brown wrapper out of the grocery bag and handed it to me. “See that?”

The mailing label had Anderson's post office box number on it.

I put the wrapper down and reached for the other publication, which turned out to be a catalog from some mail order house called The New Greek Isles. Anderson's post office box number was on this mailing label, too.

“Oh, God,” I mumbled as I opened to page one, which featured rows of dildos and leather restraining devices. There were pages of ads for hardcore gay kiddie porn videotapes, ads for sets of hardcore kiddie porn photographs, sexual devices, varieties of lubricants, a rainbow of condoms. Much of the ad copy was clearly geared toward pederasts and chickenhawks. There was even a page of kinky outfits for boys, including crotchless lederhosen.

I pushed both publications away from me and turned toward the window. Benny unpacked our lunch behind me.

Each piece of evidence clicked into place, one after another. His sexual “impotence” with his wife. The opened twelve-pack of condoms the police found in his desk drawer. The unaccounted-for activities after work. The absence of any rumors about sexual affairs.

The public Stoddard Anderson—family man, conservative Republican, member of Civic Progress, St. Louis establishment, gay basher—was a facade, carefully constructed around a private life of pick-up sex with preteen boys.

“That son of a bitch,” I muttered.

“Anderson?” Benny said, gnawing on a barbecued rib.

“No. Remy Panzer.”

Chapter Twenty-three

“Come, come, Rachel.”

“You were blackmailing him, weren't you?” The anger made my ears ring.

“Blackmail?” Remy Panzer repeated, swiveling his chair so that he was facing me. Slowly, calmly, he placed his arms flat on his desk. “Such a vulgar word.” He gave me a frigid stare. “It conjures such crude images.”

“Crude images?” I said, outraged. “From what I hear, you're the expert in crude images.” I paced over to the antique globe in the corner of his office. “You supplied him with boys, didn't you?”

His eyes were cold, dead.

“Of course you did,” I said. “Stoddard Anderson wasn't the type to cruise the streets and parks for boys.”

“I detect disdain in your voice.”

“Disgust is more like it.”

“Such a disappointment, Rachel. It suggests such a conventional—such a provincial set of values in what I had hoped was neither a conventional nor a provincial woman. Look to history. Take the grand view. What puritan America outlaws, Plato celebrated.”

“Come on, Remy. The gay part doesn't bother me.”

“You're needlessly overwrought, Rachel. Try to understand, not all of us are breeders.”

“Stoddard Anderson pretended he was until the end. He had to. And you used that. Like a noose around his neck.”

“Stoddard wore a mask. A mask of convention for a conventional world. I was honored to know the real Stoddard Anderson.”

“You were
honored
to know him? Honored to know someone who got his jollies screwing eleven-year-old boys in the butt? Don't BS me, Remy. Of the many words you could use to describe your relationship with Stoddard, honor wasn't one of them. What was the evidence you used to blackmail him? Photos? Videotapes?”

He averted his eyes momentarily when I said “videotape.” Just a fraction of a second, and then he forced himself to meet my stare. “Come, come, Rachel. This isn't an episode of
Police Woman
.”

“No wonder he agreed to help you get the Executor. If he didn't do your bidding, you could destroy him. Ruin his career, ruin his future.” I paused to catch my breath. “I just knew it had to be something besides the money.”

He gave a world-weary sigh. “Money? It hardly matters now, does it?”

I said nothing. Benny was out in the gallery, waiting for me.

“Rachel, let us assume, arguendo, this overheated hypothesis of yours. Let us assume I blackmailed him. I forced him to do my bidding. Okay? Let's assume it all. Nevertheless, how in the world could a dead Stoddard Anderson further my goals? Indeed, how could a dead Stoddard Anderson do anything other than threaten to completely vitiate my quest? And just at my moment of triumph. How, Rachel? Explain that.”

I paused. “I can't,” I admitted.

“Nor can I. Now listen to me. Somewhere in St. Louis, even as we speak, is the most remarkable treasure of the Aztec empire. It's there. I know it. You know it. Stoddard Anderson is dead. I can't change that. You can't change that. He's dead. Forever. We're still alive. But not forever. You can't simply walk away from this, Rachel. This is history. You've become one of the links reaching back in time to the Emperor Montezuma himself.”

He paused to remove a cigarette from his gold case. He tapped it on the case to pack the tobacco and then he lit it. Leaning back in his chair, he blew a stream of smoke toward the chandelier overhead. As the smoke dissipated, he turned to me.

“You don't like me, Rachel.”

“That's irrelevant,” I answered.

“Precisely my point. Like a doctor and his patients, a lawyer does not select clients based on whether the lawyer happens to like them. Liking a client, admiring a client—completely irrelevant.” He leaned forward, pointing the cigarette at me. “I'm just another client, Rachel,” he said slowly, forcefully. Then he leaned back. “Actually,” he mused, “not just another client. I happen to be a client willing to pay your client a handsome fee for the return of what belongs to me. I bought it, Rachel. It's mine. You may not like me. But surely that is not a disqualification under your professional code. Correct?”

I quelled my disgust with thoughts of Ferd Fingersh leading Remy Panzer away in handcuffs, shoving him into the back of a blue government sedan. I obviously couldn't bring down Remy Panzer alone. If there ever had been a videotape of Stoddard Anderson, it was long gone. Panzer was no fool. The police would never find evidence of blackmail, and even if they did, so what? Any decent criminal lawyer could throw enough reasonable doubt onto the blackmail scenario to get an acquittal. And meanwhile, the resulting hoopla could seriously sidetrack, or even fatally undermine, the Mexican government's quest for Montezuma's Executor. I thought of Rafe Salazar.
Play along, Rachel, play along. Stoddard Anderson's dead. You're not going to bring him back to life. Getting mad won't help. Get even
.

I softened my look and tried an abashed shrug. “Correct,” I said, trying to sound submissive.

“Good.” He smiled. “If the money is insufficient…” He let it linger out there.

I shook my head. “A deal is a deal,” I said. “The money's fine.”

“Then find it, Rachel. Bring it to me. It's more than just a quarter of a million dollars. It's your moment in history. It's the adventure of a lifetime.”

Ten minutes later, on the way to the car, I turned to Benny. “So help me God, whatever else happens, I want to make sure we nail that creep.”

From Panzer's gallery we drove west. I had four box-seat tickets to the Cardinals' game against the Mets that night. Benny and I got back to my sister's house with enough time for me to change into the red clothing that all true Cardinal fans must wear to the stadium. For me, that meant an oversized red cotton mock turtleneck with the sleeves pushed up, matching red cotton canvas espadrilles, and a pair of baggy khaki shorts with double front pleats. My niece and nephew were literally jumping with excitement about the game. On my way out the door I had time to skim the telephone message my sister had taken from Melvin Needlebaum:

Melvin Needlebum (sp?) called from airport. On his way back to Chicago. Said he found answer to question. The fathers were Jesuit priests. Father Gabriel Marest and Father Francois Pinet. Built Indian mission around 1700 at mouth of river. Indians part of Cahokia empire. Largest Indian empire since pre-Columbus (sp?) Aztecs.

“What fathers?” Benny asked when he read the message.

“It's a long story,” I said as I ushered my niece and nephew into the car.

***

At quarter after twelve that night, after the baseball game (Cards won), after the postgame Ted Drewes' custard concretes for the four of us, after tucking the kids in bed, after saying goodnight to my sister and Richie—after all that, as we sat in the kitchen, Benny had a thought.

“I have a thought,” he said. He was staring at the draft suicide note, the one headlined “Equation for ME” “The RS doesn't have to be Reed St. Germain. The real suicide note says it's safe underground. Another draft mentioned the River Styx. Maybe the RS is the River Styx. Maybe Anderson hid it near some underground river. It says RS equals ROTF. You know any underground river or cave with those initials?”

“The only river I know of that runs underground is the River Des Peres.”

“RDP. Nope.”

“Caves?” I mused. “Meramec Caverns. Onondaga Cave. There are supposed to be hundreds of little caves in south St. Louis. The Mississippi carved them out of the limestone. I guess it could be in any of them. I sure can't think of one that starts with an R.”

“If it's a cave,” Benny mused, “then RS doesn't stand for River Styx. He'd have used some other code name.”

“You're probably right. Unless there was a river in the cave.”

“River on…” Benny tried, letting it hang there. “River over…river of…River onto…”

“Melvin!” I said. “God bless him. It is the River Des Peres. Remember that crazy message from Melvin? The names of the fathers. Well, last night he told me Des Peres is French for ‘of the fathers.' River Des Peres means River of the Fathers. He had called to give me the names of the two fathers.”

“God damn, that's it. RS equals ROTF. So the River Styx is the River Des Peres.”

“And the C,” I nearly shouted, “the C has to be Charon, ferryman of the River Styx.”

“C equals MSD slash AW,” Benny read. “You think the AW is that guy on vacation. The one with the Metropolitan Sewer District.”

“Due back in the office on Monday. I hope he's back from vacation tomorrow. He's got to be our man. I've got to talk to him.”

“Maybe he's home now.”

I checked my watch. “Now?”

“You tried him before the ballgame, back around dinner. What was that? Six hours ago? Maybe he's home now. Call him now, we might catch him off guard.”

Five minutes later I was dialing Albert Weidemeir's telephone number. Benny was in the den by the extension, waiting for my signal that the call was going through.

“Okay,” I shouted softly. I heard Benny lift his receiver. “You ready?”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said.

“You've got to do the talking if his wife answers. I don't want her to think I'm some girlfriend.”

“Don't worry, Rachel.” There was the clicking noise on the line that signaled the phone was about to start ringing on the other end. “They don't call me Cool Hand Luke for nothing.”

“I've never heard
anyone
call you Cool Hand Luke.” It started to ring. “Okay,” I whispered.

A woman answered on the fourth ring. Hello? She sounded flustered.

“Howdy, Miz Weidemeir,” Benny said in a deep, friendly voice. “This here's Jenner Block down at the Sewer District. We got ourselves a little problem up at the Backwash Station. One of them Kirkland Ellis screws went out on us, ma'am. I just wanted to ask your husband a couple questions about it, seeing it's in his territory, so to speak. Be much obliged, ma'am.”

“Certainly, Mr. Block. Let me put him on.” I could hear her in the background waking him up.

“Jenner Block?” I whispered to Benny. “Backwash Station? Kirkland Ellis screws?”

“Yes'm,” Benny said, still in the role. “You have one of your Kirkland Ellis screws lock up on you and might as well bend over and kiss your sorry ass good-bye.”

There was a fumbling with the phone on the other end, and muffled voices.

“Hello?” said a male voice.

“Mr. Weidemeir,” I said, my voice level but insistent, “just listen to me and nod your head every once in a while so that your wife won't get nervous. My name is Rachel Gold. I'm investigating Stoddard Anderson's death. You had an important meeting with him that the police don't know about. Yet. I'd like to keep it that way, Mr. Weidemeir. Now, why don't you say something like—like, ‘Yep, you'll need to clear the pipeline.' It'll make your wife think you're talking to someone from the Sewer District. Go ahead.”

He cleared his throat. “Uh, yeah, you'll, uh, need to clear, uh, clear the, uh, pipeline.”

“Good,” I said. Sir Laurence Olivier he wasn't. Nervous, though, he was, and that was just fine for my purposes.

“Mr. Weidemeir,” I continued, “I'd especially like to make sure we can help you avoid legal problems with some of the activities that Mr. Anderson was involved in during the last weeks of his life. Some of those activities may have violated the law, Mr. Weidemeir. Now I don't presently believe that you did anything wrong.”

“I didn't,” he blurted out before catching himself. “Uh, right,” he stammered, “uh, you'll need to, uh, clear the pipeline.”

“As I say, I don't have any reason to think you did anything wrong, but the police might not see it that way. Neither might the FBI.”

“The FBI?”

“Exactly. Which is why you need to meet with me. Tomorrow. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“How does noon sound?”

“Okay.”

“Somewhere public. How about the Dinosaur Park behind the Science Center in Forest Park. By the triceratops. At noon?”

“Okay.”

“Very good. Now, why don't you end this call like I'm from the Sewer District. For your wife.”

There was a pause. He cleared his throat. “Okay. Uh, well, right, uh, just remember that, uh, you'll need to, uh, clear out the, uh, pipeline. So long.”

Click. Followed by Benny's click.

A moment later Benny walked into the kitchen.

“Well?” I asked.

He grinned. “I think our buddy Albert Weidemeir may be dunking his pajama bottoms in the toilet about now.”

“I wanted to make sure he'd be nervous.”

“I think you made sure of that. That boy just had himself a fiber optics enema compliments of Southwestern Bell.”