Dev Conrad - 03 - Blindside (25 page)

‘How much did that cost you?'

‘It's a pretty good one. Two hundred and fifty. I haven't been turned down yet.' Jenny should have been sounding boastful, insolent, but not tonight. And it was just then that I noticed she'd started biting her lower lip; I also noticed the quick look of apprehension now filling the eyes.

She knew why I'd asked her to come over here.

‘I miss Jim. I even called his number a couple of times today just to hear it ring. Isn't that crazy? I'm glad they haven't disconnected it yet.'

‘We all do stupid things when we're suffering. Right after my dad died I used to put on one of his sweaters and pair of shoes and walk around in them all day.'

‘That's pretty sad.'

‘I suppose, but at the time it was comforting.'

The waitress was back with our drinks. As she set Jenny's drink down, she said, ‘Honey, whatever you paid for that ID, you spent too much. But this is the only drink you're going to get from me tonight, okay?'

After she was gone, Jenny said, ‘They never hassle me about it at clubs.'

‘They may have paid off the cops and don't have to worry about it.'

‘You're always so cynical.'

‘Practical. That's how a lot of clubs operate, otherwise they'd be out of business.'

‘I thought I looked older, anyway.'

‘Not tonight you don't. You look exhausted – and scared.'

The last word jolted her. She had been about to raise her glass of merlot but then stopped. ‘I don't know what I'd be scared about.'

‘Sure you do.'

She gripped her drink hard enough to whiten her knuckles. ‘If you keep looking at me that way I probably will be scared. Are you drunk or something? The only reason I came here was because I thought you'd make me feel better.'

‘I'm trying to help you, Jenny. I called our old friend Pierce earlier and he told me something about the night before Waters died.' I'd had to promise to mail him a hundred-dollar bill in the morning.

‘You believe anything that creep has to say? You know what kind of pervert he is.'

‘Yeah, I do. I'm not saying he's a wonderful guy but I believe what he told me.'

‘Can't we talk about something else? I just want to relax. This hasn't been an easy time for me.'

‘Pierce said that the night before Waters was murdered, you and Jim had an argument so loud the other tenants called Pierce and complained. But you told me you hadn't seen Waters for two days before he died.'

‘Did you ever think maybe I forgot? I'm not exactly thinking straight these days, you know?'

The Jenny I'd first met in Waters' apartment wouldn't have whined like this. She would've insulted me and smirked. But this was a whipped nineteen-year-old who seemed to have no serious defenses.

‘Listen to me, Jenny. I know you killed him. You may not have wanted to, but there was the gun in his car and you knew about it. You'll feel better if you tell me about it.'

‘God, I can't believe you're saying this. Of course I didn't kill him. I loved him.'

‘But he loved Lucy and you knew it. And you're a woman who gets her way.'

‘Oh, I see, I'm some spoiled rich bitch who killed some comic book nerd because he was in love with somebody else. I know what this sounds like but I'm going to say it anyway. I loved him but I always felt I was doing him a favor. I'm not beautiful but I'm pretty good-looking, or at least a lot better-looking than the girls he would've been able to get. And he knew it. I scared him. He was afraid I'd dump him, that's the only reason he started seeing that Lucy. I could've had him back any time I wanted him.' The energy her bragging took impressed me. She was rallying now, the little girl lost behind her mask of arrogance. But it was over quickly enough. ‘I thought you liked me.'

‘I do. That's why I'm trying to help you.'

‘By getting me to admit that I killed Jimmy? That's a real big help.'

‘By telling the truth. Maybe one of you got that .38 from his glove compartment and then something happened that neither of you meant to happen. Maybe he was threatening you with it to leave him alone – or maybe you were threatening him with it to take you back.'

It might have been a gag in a magic act, the way she produced her cell phone. It wasn't there and then it was there. Where the hell had it come from?

‘I want to call my father.'

‘You're not going to talk to me anymore?'

‘Not when you talk crazy like this.'

‘You know I'm not talking crazy. I don't believe you killed him intentionally. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.'

‘My father will know what to do. He always knows what to do.' The father she mocked? The father she at least pretended to despise? ‘You'll be sorry.' She was nine years old again now. She thumbed a single number.

I heard the phone ringing. Once, twice, three times, four times. ‘I'm sorry it's so late. You need to help me, Daddy. This terrible man is saying terrible things about me.'

She decided to intimidate me with her master's voice. She put it on speaker phone and held it up so I could hear him.

In the background I heard a sleepy woman asking what was wrong. ‘You hear that, Jenny? Now you've woken your mother. What kind of trouble are you in this time? Jesus Christ, what time is it?'

‘Is she in trouble?' the woman said.

‘Just let me handle this,' the father snapped. ‘Are you drunk or on drugs as usual, Jenny?'

‘I just had a few drinks.'

‘A few drinks. That's what you've been telling us since you were fourteen.'

She realized now that letting me hear her old man talk hadn't been such a good idea. He had one of those boardroom voices: manly, angry, definitive, as if he was God's own representative here on earth.

As she started to cry, he said, ‘Oh, Jesus, don't start that.'

‘What's she doing?' The mother's voice was concerned.

‘She's crying. She always cries. It's part of her act when she gets into trouble and I have to take care of it for her.'

Jenny's hand had lowered, the phone with it. It seemed to grow heavier the angrier her old man sounded.

I said, ‘Your daughter's in trouble and she needs you to help her right now.'

‘Who the hell is that?' he bellered.

I took the phone from Jenny's hand. She offered no resistance. She slumped in the booth, placing both her hands over her face.

‘My name is Dev Conrad. I'm in town here for a few days working on the Ward campaign.'

‘The Ward campaign? What's my daughter got to do with that bastard?'

‘She'll tell you all about it when you come to the Royale Hotel and pick her up.'

‘I seem to remember buying her a very expensive Porsche about eight months ago.'

‘She needs a goddamned ride, all right? I seem to remember she's your daughter.'

There was pain in the pause. Maybe he wasn't as bad as he'd sounded at first. Leery now, he said: ‘What kind of trouble is she in?'

‘Nothing you want to talk about on the phone.'

‘Oh, God.'

‘What's wrong, Tommy?' the mother said, picking up on his tone.

‘Now we're going to sit here and in twenty minutes go to the lobby where we'll hope to see you in the drive-up waiting for her.'

‘Make it a half hour.'

‘Make what a half hour, Tommy?'

‘Will you shut your fucking mouth?'

I'd been wrong. I guess you couldn't take the Tommy out of old Tommy no matter how hard you tried.

I handed the phone back to Jenny.

‘I really appreciate this, Daddy.'

Her mother was sobbing in the background. She didn't even know what was going on yet.

After she closed her phone, Jenny said, ‘It really was an accident. I just hope somebody believes me.' She shuddered. This time the dark gaze was timid, fragile. ‘You see what I mean about my father?'

‘Yeah,' I said, ‘I see what you mean about your father.'

‘I shouldn't have said that about Jimmy being a comic book nerd. That's one of the reasons I loved him so much. He accepted me for what I am and I accepted him for what he was. We were really friends, too.' Then: ‘You think that waitress would give me a bourbon and water? That's what I drink when I get serious.'

The waitress was laughing about something with three people at a nearby table.

‘Probably not. But how about if I order it and you drink it?'

‘My father really isn't as bad as he sounds sometimes.'

‘I'll order you that drink now, Jenny.'

‘In other words, you don't like him much.'

‘If I say I don't like how he treats you and your mother, can we change the subject?'

‘Maybe I should get a double shot.' She tried to smile but couldn't quite pull it off. ‘It really was an accident, Dev. It really was.'

TWENTY-FIVE

A
s I pulled in behind headquarters I looked at the approximate spot where Jim Waters had been killed. Jenny had explained it to me as we waited for her father. Waters had told her how much he loved Lucy. In a rage she pulled the gun from the glove compartment, not meaning to kill him, just to frighten him. But he'd lunged for it and the gun had gone off. I wondered how many times this particular tale had been told to skeptical cops within the confines of interrogation rooms. Maybe it was true. I liked to think so because I cared about Jenny and because no matter how hard I tried I couldn't imagine her killing anyone.

I got out of my rental and walked over to the spot, the whipping wind proving a bitter foe determined to fight me. I'd seen one of those paranormal TV shows one beery night in which a female psychic claimed that she could contact a murdered person simply by standing on the place where he or she had been killed. A handy skill. If I possessed it all I'd have to do is call out Waters' name and he could clue me in about what had really happened.

The back door of headquarters opened and a voice, tattered by the wind, said, ‘I knew you'd show up here tonight.'

‘I'm trying out a paranormal trick I saw on TV. I planted that thought in your mind.'

Kathy laughed. ‘You don't really believe that stuff, do you?'

I started walking to her. ‘Not really. But you never know.'

When I got inside, she said, ‘I've got coffee on upstairs. He's in his office screaming at people on the phone.'

‘Anybody I know?'

‘First he called Lucy. Now he's yelling at his father. He blames him for sending you here. He seems to believe that everything was going fine until you showed up.'

She smelled of woman warmth, tender perfume, and faintly of bourbon. I wanted to kidnap her.

‘I may as well get it over with.'

I followed her exquisite shape up the stairs. She steered me into her office where she had one of those four-cup coffee brewers on a table near a stack of paperback novels. ‘Sometimes I just close the door and read. I need the escape. I put headphones on so I can't hear anything. If something really goes wrong they pound on my door and I hear them.' She handed me a cup of coffee. It smelled rich and good. ‘I get these beans at a boutique in Washington. I buy a three-month supply at a time.'

The first sip reminded me of why I enjoy coffee. In all the slush you get most of the time you start to forget how good it can be.

I could hear him bellering down the hall. Too far away to pick up the exact words but poor baby did not sound happy, that much was for sure.

‘You going to stick around for a while?'

A girly grin. ‘Where would I go? I have no other life. I'm in politics, remember?'

‘I'll go talk to him and then we can go have some drinks.'

‘I'd like that. But the mood he's in, I may have to take you to the ER.'

‘I'll be fine, Mom.' Then: ‘All right if I take this?'

‘Sure. Just bring the cup back. I only have four of those.'

By the time I reached Ward's office there was silence. Easy to imagine Tom just hanging up on him at this hour. Ward was probably trying to figure out who to rag on next.

I knocked with knuckles and walked in before he could say anything.

When he saw me, he didn't curse or shake his fist at me. He just smirked. ‘Well, well, the Angel of Death.'

‘Yeah, it's pretty much all my fault, all right. I made you screw all those women in Washington and then hang out in a whorehouse about seventy miles from your hometown. And let's not forget how I pushed you into screwing your best friend's wife. That was genius on my part.'

‘Yeah, and what did the son of a bitch do to me? Put me on the spot tonight in front of the whole district. If he had a problem with me, he should've been man enough to face me instead of dressing up like a bum and trying to humiliate me.'

‘I see. You're the victim, not David?'

‘Don't give me any of that Oprah bullshit. You know damn well what I'm talking about. I'm trying to get re-elected. I'm fighting the good fight, in case you've forgotten. And I was doing all right until my old man forced me to work with you. Or haven't you noticed that? You show up and everything goes to shit. You couldn't even find out who was selling our secrets to Burkhart.'

I wasn't about to hand Lucy over. ‘I admit it. I did a bad job with that part of it.'

‘You did a bad job period. Here I am working night and day while you're messing up everything my old man promised me you'd fix. I'm the only pro here; I'm the only one who knows how to run a campaign.'

Yes, sleeping with your campaign manager's wife is the mark of a true pro, all right. One thing about megalomaniacs, they rarely have a sense of humor. Or have any perspective about their actions. When I got here, he was running behind and he was being blackmailed. He'd been on a roll, no doubt about it. ‘Yeah, you were in great shape till I showed up.'