Lady Midnight (8 page)

I wondered how late I’d have to hang out here to meet the errant Anthony Herron, and what mistakes I might make during that long wait. Not that I had other things to do—but I was and am a recovering alcoholic. All the alcohol I’d seen tonight had yet to exert any pull on me, which I was thankful for. I’d been dry for five years—a long time. The longer an addict was free of their drug of choice, the freer he or she was. But all the female nudity around me presented other pitfalls, mistakes that might be just as costly for me, ultimately, as taking a drink.
 

I resumed my former seat for the moment and listened as Carter Britton started telling a story. Everyone around that pool was rapt with attention, or wrapped with a tension; it was hard to tell.
 

Carter Britton took a big gulp from his complex and powerful drink and intoned:
 

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
 

A stately pleasure-dome decree:
 

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
 

Through caverns measureless to man
 

Down to a sunless sea.”
 

The little group clustered tightly around Britton, and his charisma held sway. The man held court well. He was obviously a great talker, and he kept the young people laughing, and their eyes seldom strayed from his jovial, round face.
 

I was just putting together my exit speech when a young man whom I hadn’t seen before appeared from around the corner of the house and announced, “It’s a raid! The cops are coming up the road!”
 

There was a collective gasp from the little group, and Britton stood without preamble and beckoned them all to follow him. I stood hesitantly, but Britton came around and grabbed my elbow and fixed me with a mad eye.
 

“Come, friend, you’re mincemeat if they catch you here.”
 

“Where are we going?”
 

“I’ve got an escape plan for you. This has happened before. It’s my asshole neighbors, the Harcourts. They’re an old couple with Mesozoic values and even older money, who don’t approve of my little casual dress get-togethers. When old money talks, the police do whatever their masters bid them. Now, if you wish to escape imprisonment, kindly come with me. The Metropolitan Police have been spotted coming up the hill by one of my young associates. No doubt they plan an assault on my compound.”
 

I followed him into the old house. He looked slyly over his shoulder at me, as he went to a closet in the rear of the house and pushed aside a row of overcoats that hung inside.
 

“Camouflage,” Britton said triumphantly, and winked at me. I shook my head. Behind the hanging clothes was a concealed, steep, homemade staircase.
 

“You have to be kidding me,” I said.
 

“Up here,” Britton said, his speech a little slurred. “There’s little time.”
 

I followed the writer up the stairs and we came to a narrow door which he opened. It led out onto a balcony at the rear of the big house. There was a knotted rope tied to the thick cast iron railing. Britton set his huge drink down, picked up the ladder and cast it over the side.
 

“Go now, my good man. The moon is down.” He burped loudly, and wiped his mouth with the back of a hand.
 

I really didn’t want to waste time answering questions, or maybe even getting myself bailed out of jail, but I didn’t clearly understand why Britton thought it so imperative that I slip the dragnet. Maybe he didn’t either, I suspected.
 

“Why not.” I gave a chuckle and swung my foot over the railing and started down to the ground.
 

Carter Britton took a big gulp of his drink as I started to descend, and held his glass high as if in a grand toast.
 

“The milk of paradise,” he said, and belched loudly again. I climbed down and jumped the last couple of feet onto the wet grass. Police lights were cascading up around the house. I beat a circular retreat around a small grove of trees and waited until the police had moved up, around and into the house, where I heard shouted arguments being raised by Carter Britton against the fascist methods of the police state.
 

I moved downhill to my Buick, started it up and drove away. I wondered if the girl who called herself Nookie Uberalles would deliver my message to Connie. Despite her profession and her casual dress code, I had a feeling she was honest. With any luck, then, I might be able to wrap the whole thing up tomorrow.
 

* * *

I checked into “The Mariner’s Rest” hotel, just outside the Atlanta beltway. It was a long way to the sea from here, I thought, as I lay down like a man stricken, and succumbed to a fitful sleep. My dreams were full of laughing madmen and naked girls that I could not touch. I dreamed then of the dead girl in the river, and she was beckoning to me, and somehow she was naked and she was both the dead girl and the nubile nymph named Nookie, and she came from the dead cold water of the Cahaba with her body glistening, and with a hand extended and fingers flailing like those of a sorceress. She whispered to me to come down and join her in the black depths of the river, where all memory is erased, and every fact about you that made you who you are, is forgotten.

Chapter 9

I awoke the next morning feeling none too rested, and was moving out onto the highway of a city that was already hopping with activity, when my cell phone buzzed in my pocket. I took it out and checked the incoming number. It wasn’t one that I recognized.
 

“Longville.”
 

“Yes, hello. Is this Mr. Roland Longville?”
 

“That’s right.”
 

“A friend tells me that you are trying to locate Miss Constance Patrick.”
 

“That’s correct, I am. Who is this?”
 

“Oh, I’m sorry. My name is Randy Cross.”
 

“Mr. Cross, do you know Constance Patrick’s whereabouts?”
 

Randy Cross paused for a moment. “Not exactly. Listen, Mr. Longville, I think it might be better if you came over to my home, where we could talk this whole thing over. I live out in Marietta. You know where Delk Road is?”
 

I told him that I didn’t. He gave me directions, and fifteen minutes later, I pulled into the driveway of a massive apartment complex in a neighborhood that had seen its better days. It wasn’t necessarily on a bad street, but the urban sprawl and the general crumbling of civilization would soon see to that.
 

The apartments were enlarged versions of what realtors call a ranch-style home, sanitized versions of what the lowest bidder erects in the poor parts of cities the world over. There was a feeling of dispossession, of dejection that hung over the sunny parking lot, that behind the efficiently but artlessly trimmed hedges, everyone around here was just going through the motions and waiting out their time.
 

The man who answered the door confirmed this impression. Randy was a tall, thin, soft-spoken man. He was in his late twenties, and looked a bit weathered for his age. He led me into the front room and settled down on a leather sofa. He nodded at a chair nearby, and I sat down opposite him.
 

“You wanted to talk with me?”
 

“Yeah. I hear that you’re looking for my sister.”
 

“Your sister?”
 

“Oh, I get it. You’ve probably never even heard of me.” He arose and said, “Hang on a second,” as he walked out of the room.
 

He returned with a photo album in his hands. “Take a look,” he said in his soft voice, and sat down again.
 

I opened the album. What I saw were pictures of a younger Randy with a younger Connie Patrick, and to my complete surprise, a younger Senator Keith Patrick. Or, the man before he became senator, I thought most likely.
 

“You’re saying that you are Senator Patrick’s son?”
 

“I’m his son, yeah. Not that you’ll see me in any of those pictures they show on his campaign commercials on T.V. I’m his bastard son, you see. He and my mother were never married. They saw each other before he met his late wife. I’m sort of an embarrassment to him, first because I was born out of wedlock in a time when that was still a big deal; and because I’ve had problems with drugs, been in jail, stuff like possession, you know? So he doesn’t really claim me. I did a couple of years down in Atmore. He gave me some money to go away, basically. He helped me get this place after I got out of jail. Payment for keeping my mouth shut about who my father is. But Connie and me, well, we stayed close over the years. We care about each other.”
 

“So you and the senator don’t talk?”
 

“Ah, no. Not really. If I need something, I talk to his assistant, that Baucom guy. He sends me money through Baucom around Christmas every year, more to make himself feel good than anything, I guess.”
 

“Has he contacted you to see if maybe you heard from your sister?”
 

“Like I said, I haven’t heard anything from him, and I haven’t seen Connie, lately. She usually calls me fairly often, so that’s why I became worried when I didn’t hear from her. So I asked around about what to do, and I went to see this private investigator, Bowman.”
 

I was taken aback again. “So it was you who hired Bowman to look for Connie?”
 

“That’s right. You look surprised. I didn’t tell anyone about hiring him, because I didn’t want it to get back to Senator Patrick. I figured Connie had disappeared for a reason, like maybe she had argued with the senator. That happens from time to time. But still, it isn’t like her not to call me. Whenever they got into a fight, I’m usually the first person she
would
call.”
 

“What do you know about Anthony Herron?”
 

Randy’s eyebrows raised slightly. “I’m sorry. Who?”
 

“Your father said that she’d started seeing him when the last trouble started. They argued about him. It seems your father didn’t approve of him.”
 

Randy grinned. “Well, I haven’t met the guy, but I can guess. Connie likes a certain type, you know? She was all set to marry some lawyer—”
 

“—Young Millard Brooks IV.”
 

That drew a laugh from Randy. “Right. I never met him, either, but I can tell you that she only saw him to appease the old man. The senator, I mean. Our father. She laughed about that, when we’d talk on the phone sometimes. She never had the least intention of actually marrying the guy. Whoever this Anthony—”
 

“—Herron. Anthony Herron.”
 

“Well, I’ve never met the guy, but whoever he is, you can bet he’s more the type she really likes.”
 

“What type is that?”
 

“Counterculture, alternative, a real dropout. He’s probably on the wild side, too, just like dear little Connie.”
 

“Well, I’m told he is a musician of some kind. You said that you had drug problems before. Does Connie have a drug past, too?”
 

“I don’t know about past.” Randy gave a dry smile. “Connie likes cocaine, Mr. Longville, and the senator knows about it. Believe me. He spends a lot of money keeping that hushed up. A lot more than he gives me to stay out of his life.”
 

“Senator Patrick alluded to Connie having wild habits.”
 

“Yeah. She has always liked to have a good time, and she had some scrapes in college that the senator got her out of. As for ‘wild habits,’ well, he should know. Anyway, I hired Bowman, and he agreed to find her just for retainer because he knew I didn’t have a lot of dough. I just wanted him to locate my sister and make sure she was okay. But, I mean, well, I—I heard he got shot. I heard he’s dead.”
 

“Yeah. I heard about that, too.” I thought about the dead man slumped in his out-of-place Mercedes, then pushed the image away. “Any idea why someone would want him dead?”
 

“No clue. I mean, he was over in Alabama— Birmingham, right? I can’t imagine what he was doing there. It’s all so strange. I thought he’d find Connie in a couple of days, tops, but it had been a week or more since I even heard from him.”
 

“It sounds like you two knew each other. How did you meet him?”
 

“Oh, you don’t know that either?” Randy smiled and shook his head. “I can see that my dear father is up to his old tricks. He likes to be the only one holding all the cards, no matter what the game.”
 

“What ‘game’ are you referring to?”
 

“Well, those earlier scrapes I mentioned, that Connie had gotten herself into? Sometimes she would drop out of sight, so she didn’t have to hear it from the old man. They really got into some heated arguments, so she got to where she would just stay away from him until things cooled down a bit.”