Kiss of Evil (36 page)

Ronnie Boudreaux had called Paris on New Year’s Day. After having been sapped in the back of the head by Christian del Blanco the night before, Ronnie proclaimed that, although he was grateful unto the Lord that Christian del Blanco had spared his life, he and Paris are finally
égal
—that all debts have officially been paid.

As far as Paris could piece together, courtesy of the thick packet of letters they had found in Christian’s apartment, Christian and Sarafina del Blanco—who signed all of her letters “Fina”—had split up after the murder of their father. Christian went first to San Diego, then into Mexico where he spent the next dozen or so years of his life. Sarafina had worked as an escort and a model, mostly trade shows, traveling the country under a variety of names. Delia White, Bianca del Gato, Sarah Weiss. Her past had turned up very little when she had stood trial. The letters from Sarafina to her brother also kept tabs on Michael Ryan, the man they blamed for letting their father get away with what they felt was murder.

When Michael Ryan moved to San Diego, it became an unexpected opportunity for Christian to sneak across from Tijuana and take a shot at him. But Michael Ryan was not that easy a target in San Diego. He had been a patrolman in a heavily armed zone car.

Carrie Ryan was a different story. A beat-up old Bonneville was seen tearing around a corner, leaving the girl’s small, ruined body behind. Descriptions of the driver were given, but the teenager was never caught.

By the time Michael had moved back to Ohio, Sarafina and Christian had reunited in Cleveland, even though Christian was still wanted for questioning in his father’s murder.

They knew that Michael needed money for his daughter’s care. And they knew that Michael had something
they
wanted.

Sarafina met Michael, gained his confidence, struck a deal. She offered him ten thousand dollars to steal the murder investigation file of Anthony del Blanco, the disappearance of which would all but eliminate any chance of Christian’s future arrest.

That night at the Renaissance Hotel they got everything they wanted.

Including Michael Ryan’s life.

When Sarafina committed suicide, Christian was distraught. He had worked as a prostitute in Mexico, and gained a reputation as a skilled lover, especially among the S & M and voyeur/exhibitionist crowd in Acapulco. He signed on with NeTrix, knowing he would meet the right woman for his “spell,” if he could draw her in with his charms. Thus, Fayette Martin’s fate had become sealed.

How Christian came to meet Mary is the mystery. In her statement, Mary had said they met in front of her building and it was after that he blackmailed her into helping him, threatening her daughter’s life, a story the prosecutor’s office seems very willing to buy.

Christian isn’t talking.

Although Michael Ryan was posthumously cleared by Internal Affairs, anyone who looks closely at the evidence would never believe anything but the obvious.

Mike Ryan died in a pair of twenty-five-dollar shoes.

The money was never for him.

At the end of the first week in January, as Paris begins to box up the Ochosi files at his desk, it occurs to him how close it had all come to him once again, how close to Beth and Melissa. The man he had seen with Beth at Shaker Square—the guy with the shoulders—really
was
a guy Beth had met on eharmony. The man’s religious leanings, however, had not yet assuaged Paris’s jealousy.

But Christian del Blanco did have his sights set on Beth. Paris has no doubt about that. Christian had found her e-mail address, had sent her the self-launching computer file of the velvet wing chair. Perhaps he meant to put her in it before it was all over. He just ran out of time.

As Paris marches the box of files to the elevator, it is that image that chills him more deeply than the winter storm raging outside.

Her hand is still in a splint. The doctors say she will, in time, regain most of its use, but the thick mound of scar tissue where the spike had penetrated will always remain.

She is being released from the hospital within the hour.

Paris stands at the foot of the bed. Mary sits, hands in her lap, a small suitcase at her feet. The only sounds are the hush of the heat register, the pellets of freezing rain on the window. Paris looks out at the confetti of ice-slicked cars in the University Hospital lot. He waits for the proper amount of silence to pass, then says: “Do you know why I’m here?”

Mary draws a deep breath. “Well, I’ve got it down to two things,” she says, her voice shaky, hesitant. “I’m leaving here in either a cab or a police car. I’ve been up all night bouncing between the two.”

“I came here to tell you that there won’t be any charges filed against you,” Paris says in a dry, emotionless monotone. He waits. Behind him, Mary begins to cry, softly. He doesn’t look. He isn’t interested in her tears.

After a few moments she says: “Thank you.”

“I had nothing to do with it. Believe me.”

“I am so sorry.”

Paris turns around, surprised at how much older she looks. “What are you sorry about again?”

“Everything. For making it personal for you. For putting you in danger.”

“I’m in danger by my second cup of coffee every day. You made a fool of me.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Look, if the prosecutor’s office didn’t consider you a victim in all this, they might think you were trying to frame me for a capital crime. Maybe they need a little prodding in that direction. A little
character
reference.” He drops a pair of black-and-white photos on the bed. Blurry photos of a woman running from the Dream-A-Dream Motel. “Maybe these would help.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand
plenty
. I understand there’s an active file in Robbery called the Kissing Bandit file. Romantic, huh? I understand how your prints led me right to a partial print in that file, a series of robberies about which no detective can ever seem to get a victim to stay on the record. It’s all about a woman who dumps a couple roofies in the Cuervo and shakes down horny middle-aged businessmen.”

Mary is silent for a moment, her heart quickening. “Everything I did, I did for my daughter. You have a little girl. Draw the line for me. What
wouldn’t
you do?”

Paris has no answer to this question.

But it is just one of many he is certain will never be answered, especially about the Ochosi murders. And he knows why. The fact that such a high-profile monster as Christian del Blanco is now behind bars, and the fact that the Comeback City can now begin to pave over the nightmare, means that a lot of the loose ends are never going to be tied up.

Paris buttons his coat, pulls on his gloves.

“Is this where you tell me to leave town?” she asks, her eyes riveted on the photos on the bed.

Paris walks to the door. He glances at the picture of the beautiful, dark-haired little girl on the nightstand. “If you were anyone else, I’d probably have to.”

“I understand.”

Paris holds her gaze, recalling the last time he had looked so deeply into her eyes. He told himself he wouldn’t, but does anyway. “Let me ask you something.”

“Anything.”

“None of it was real, right?”

Her face softens. She is young again. “
All
of it was real. We just met in hell.”

Paris doesn’t bother to respond.

Mary stands, takes a tentative step toward him, stops. “How do I prove it to you?”

Paris lingers for a moment, burnishing her silhouette deep into his memory, then turns and walks down the hall.

The packed courtroom is suffused with a jungle silence. Judge Eileen J. Corrigan presides. She finishes her decree. “You are to serve these terms consecutively, without the possibility of parole.”

In the demeaning light of a room where justice is done, Christian del Blanco looks broken, small. Although Paris had aimed dead-center at his chest, fully prepared to blast him to hell, when Christian had leapt up from the floor the bullet tore into his right hip instead. The unfortunate prognosis is that he will one day walk again.

“Is there anything you wish to say to the court at this time?” Judge Corrigan asks.

“No, your honor,” Christian says, head down, the perfect penitent.

“May God have mercy on your soul.” Judge Corrigan bangs her gavel. She pauses, briefly, then exits in a flurry of polished black cotton, an air of shunted revulsion.

Amid the melee of reporters leaving the courtroom, Jack Paris and Carla Davis wind their way to the defense table. Paris glances down at Christian del Blanco sitting in his wheelchair. He studies the man’s sharp hewn looks, thinking: He’s going to have a
great
time in prison.

Suddenly, Christian looks up, acknowledging Paris’s presence. The sheer blackness of his eyes chills Paris’s blood. Paris had looked into these eyes once before.

Except, that time, they belonged to Sarah Weiss.

Christian says: “I have to know.”

“Know?” Paris replies. “Know what?”

Paris understands what Christian is talking about, just as he realizes that something like this would eat at a person like him. Christian the trickster, the man who had recruited a woman named Celeste Conroy to do his dirty work; Celeste who looked so much like Sarah Weiss that Paris had no trouble believing it really was her that night in his apartment. The magic mushroom helped a little, of course.

“You mean my little misdirection with the computer camera?” Paris asks.

“Yes.”

Paris leans forward, close enough to see the humiliation and defeat in the man’s eyes. “Well, the blood on my forehead and the door locks were the easy parts.” Paris reaches into his pocket, drops a packet of ketchup and a paper clip on the table. “Old magician tricks.”

Christian absently touches a finger to his own forehead.

Paris opens his briefcase. “The hard part, at least for someone like me, was learning about the video lag. That I got out of a book. A hell of a good book. I think even you might get something out of it.” Paris reaches into his briefcase, drops a thin, soft cover book on the table in front of Christian.

Web Cam for Dummies
.

Paris leans close to Christian’s ear, and adds: “No
offense
.”

79

A week after Christian del Blanco’s sentencing, a January heat wave descends upon Cleveland. It is fifty degrees and portends an early spring, a lie that Clevelanders have bought into forever. It is Bobby Dietricht’s third day back on the job; Greg Ebersole’s first.

At noon, while looking out his window at the shirtsleeved men and the coatless women on the street, Paris hears Greg’s knock on his doorjamb.

“Hey, Greg.”

“Look at this. I can’t bel
ieve
it,” Greg says, entering. “I was just going through the backlog of mail and I got
this
.”

He hands Paris a letter on a Mount Sinai Hospital letterhead.

“It’s gotta be a joke, right?” Greg asks. “It’s either a joke or a mistake, right?”

Paris reads:

“Wow,” Paris says, reading it a second time, then handing the letter back. “And you didn’t know anything about this?”

“Not a thing,” Greg says.

“Amazing.”

“Do you think I’ll be allowed to keep it? I mean, jobwise?”

“I’m not sure,” Paris says. “But if it’s a foundation, I’m pretty sure you can.”

Greg reads the letter again. “Have you ever heard of The Becky’s Angel Foundation?”

Paris has to smile.

“I may have run across the name,” he says, his mind drifting to the old police report sitting on his dining room table, the one he had kept for so many years like a dirty secret, the one detailing how a then-assistant prosecutor was caught with a young girl in an alley behind the Hanna Theatre. An assistant prosecutor who now sits as a juvenile court judge.

Maybe I’ve found a use for that report after all, Paris thinks.

Greg shakes his head, smiles. “What a world, huh?”

“Yep,” Paris says, clapping his friend on the shoulder. “Crazier by the minute.”

“A fine specimen of dog,” Paris says. “Beautiful
boy
, Declan.” The Jack Russell terrier responds to Paris’s encomium, its muscular haunches propelling him from the ground up to Paris’s chest with one supple leap. “Is he a good ratter?”

“
Oh
yeah,” Mercedes replies. “He’s terrorized every squirrel for five blocks in every direction from my house. You’d think they’d have a contract out on him by now.”

They are standing under a red cedar gazebo, waiting out a drizzle that has slightly delayed this year’s Terrier Time Trials in Middlefield, a rural community near Cleveland. The time trials are a yearly event in which terriers of all types are tested in a wide variety of ways. The most popular, certainly among the dogs themselves, are the go-to-ground events, where a tunnel is buried in the ground, with a rat in a cage at the end, and the dogs are timed for how long it takes them to find and work their quarry. Dachshunds, Cairns, Westies, Dandie Dinmonts, and the undisputed king of the ratters, the Jack Russell, take part.

Manfred is a two-time champion.

Mercedes Cruz’s article for
Mondo Latino
has turned into a feature for
Vanity Fair
, where it is currently slated for August publication. She had spent twenty-four hours or so in the trunk of her car, parked on East Eighty-fifth Street, surviving on Girl Scout cookies and a frozen bottle of Evian water she had found in her gym bag. Aside from having to be restrained by no fewer than three bailiffs on the day Christian del Blanco was arraigned, she seems to be over it.