One Dangerous Lady (26 page)

 

Chapter 30

I
t was blackmail payment time again. I traipsed down to David Millstein's office and picked up my diamonds to send them on, as usual, to that PO box in Las Vegas. This time I debated whether or not to put a note inside the envelope, asking Oliva if she indeed knew Carla Cole, since Carla was always hinting to me they were acquainted and that Oliva had told her about her dealings with me. From the little I knew of my blackmailer, I figured this was a woman who operated on the fringes of both society and the law. If Carla did know her, I thought it might be useful to know exactly
how
they had become acquainted. Perhaps such knowledge would reveal something unsavory about Carla's past, something I could use to turn the tables against her for a change. I wrote the note, but at the last minute decided not to send it, mainly because I didn't want Oliva getting in touch with me for any reason. It was just too risky. I sent the diamonds alone, in an unmarked envelope as usual.

As I walked up Fifth Avenue, I reflected that I'd acted a bit precipitously by resigning from the Muni board. However, the humiliation of the moment had simply been too much for me to bear. I knew that I'd been cleverly framed by Carla, although I doubted that even she could have predicted such a satisfactory outcome in her favor. Once again, I found myself marginalized in the world over which I had once reigned. The dazzle of Carla's wealth combined with the newness of her presence blinded people to her true nature. My only recourse now was to discredit and expose her for the scheming predator I believed her to be. For that, I turned to my great ally in this cause, Larry Locket.

With all my dearest friends out of town, I grew even closer to Larry during this period. Bonded by a common fascination with the Cole case and with Carla herself, we talked on the phone every day and saw each other at least three times a week, either for lunch or dinner. Larry sometimes read me parts of the article he was working on. It was a fascinating, meticulously researched description of the whole drama. But even though Larry and I had our suspicions that Carla had orchestrated Russell's disappearance, as well as other “accidents,” so far there was no hard evidence against her. It was all innuendo, like the lady herself.

Larry was particularly interested in Carla's relationship with Max Vermilion.

“What I can't figure out is this: is she using Max, or is Max using her?” he said to me on the phone.

“Maybe both,” I replied. “She wants social acceptance. He wants money for his house. It's a marriage made in commerce.”

“Maybe. But Max is a canny old bird, you know. He loves being fawned over, but he likes them to have a little class, don't you kid yourself. And there are plenty of rich women for him to choose from.”

“There's rich and then there's rich-rich. Not many have six billion dollars at their disposal.”

“True . . .” Larry said thoughtfully. “She's over in London now at Max's ball, you know. Have you ever been, Jo?”

“No. Have you?”

“Once. I went because I wanted to see Taunton Hall. It's not a bad evening of its type, mainly because the setting is so spectacular. But balls for furniture aren't my thing. Once was enough.”

“Max seems very fond of Carla, I must say.”

“Yes, but you know as well as I do that you can never tell what people are really up to when you only see them socially. Everyone's friendly at a party.”

“Except Carla Cole's parties,” I added grimly, thinking of my horrible experience with the earring.

“Well, that wasn't a party. That was a declaration of war. The lioness's den,” he said with a strange little laugh.

I got the feeling that Larry was frightened of Carla, although he never came right out and said so. I was a little frightened of her, too.

And then came the rat incident.

L
arry returned home from a dinner party late one night and found a cardboard box on his doorstep. Inside the box was a dead rat lying on top of a newspaper clipping. The clipping just happened to be from a recent Page Six, in which the staple We Hear section had a squib about Larry,

We hear . . . that Larry Locket is sharpening his mighty pen to write the tale of missing billionaire Russell Cole for
Vanitas
magazine, and that he won't stop until he gets to the bottom of the intriguing story, which may prove to be as deep as the Caribbean Sea . . .

Larry called me up that night, apologizing for the lateness of the hour. He told me what had just happened and tried to laugh it off.

“Who do you think put it there?” I asked him.

“Oh, Carla, definitely . . . I mean, not she herself. I'm sure she had someone plant it. But it's a warning from her.”

I offered to come over at once, but he said that wasn't necessary.

“I'm used to intimidation, Jo,” he said. “It's part of the territory. I found it rather amusing, that's all.”

His manner was light and offhand, but I could tell he was shaken, which wasn't like Larry.

“That's not the real reason I'm calling, though. Can you come over for breakfast in the morning, Jo? I have something I'd like to show you.”

Breakfasts weren't exactly my thing, but I was concerned about him, so the next morning I got up early and went over to see him.

Larry Locket lived in a secluded, little-known spot in the city located just off Lexington Avenue in the upper Sixties, called the Association. Nestled in the shadow of an old church, it was a quaint cluster of turn-of-the-century houses surrounding a communal square. Like so many of the most interesting places in New York, the little enclave was hidden from public view. Having no open access, it had remained over the years a place of great serenity and refuge, a throwback to another era when neighbors all knew each other by name and greeted one another with friendly nods as they took their daily constitutionals.

Larry had once explained to me that houses in the Association were hard to come by. They were put on the market infrequently, and when one did come up for sale, a tacit agreement between all the homeowners dictated it must first be offered privately to residents of the garden, who would quietly put the word out to family and friends. Only when those possibilities were exhausted was the precious commodity given over to a single real estate agent—one handpicked by the president of the Association. It was important to everyone that new homeowners blend into the carefully cultivated atmosphere of cooperation and trust. For as long as anyone could remember, there had never been a robbery or any violent crime within the Association. Such was the unblemished record of safety that some people occasionally forgot to lock their doors.

It was a balmy spring morning as I walked through the garden dotted with stately old shade trees and bordered with neat, well-tended flower beds. Larry's brick Victorian-style house was located halfway around the south side of the square. I had been there countless times. I rang the bell repeatedly before Larry answered. He finally appeared at the door in slippers, wearing a bathrobe over a pair of pajamas. There were dark circles under his eyes.

“Oh, Larry, I woke you up . . . I'm so sorry!” I said.

“I wish. I haven't slept a wink,” he confessed, letting me in. “Come in, come in. I apologize for not being dressed yet.”

He seemed grateful I was there and offered to make me some breakfast. I just wanted some strong coffee. He fixed us a little tray of coffee and biscuits and led me upstairs to the second floor, where his office took up nearly the entire space.

Every time I walked up those steep, highly polished wooden steps, I nearly slipped.

“Your stairs are lethal,” I said. “You ought to get a runner.”

“You always say that,” he said with a smile. “And I always say I will . . . one of these days.”

Larry had combined three rooms to make his office. The large space, decorated in beiges and browns, lined with custom-made bookcases and antique wooden file cabinets with brass handles, was where he really lived. His black computer sat catty-corner to the large English partners desk. The sweetish aroma of old pipe tobacco smoke permeated the atmosphere. The sole photograph, nestled into the bookcase nearest his desk, was a small, fading color candid shot of a pretty, dark-haired young woman sunning herself on a rock in a mountain landscape, all smiles and health. It was a picture of Larry's dead wife, taken shortly before she was murdered twenty-some years ago.

“Sorry about the mess,” he said as we walked around a little obstacle course of newspapers and books, which were stacked in neat piles on the floor. “When I'm working, it's hopeless in here.”

He set the tray directly on top of a bunch of magazines on the glass coffee table in the sitting area. He motioned me to sit down on the comfortably worn, old leather couch. He sat on one of two chairs flanking the low table. He poured me a cup of hot espresso. The strong coffee gave me a welcomed jolt.

“First of all, the rat . . .” he began. “I mean, it's not exactly like finding a horse's head in my bed, Jo, but it's a little disconcerting, I have to confess. It's usually so safe around here, I'm always forgetting to lock my door.”

“So you think it's a message from Doña Carleone,” I said facetiously.

Larry chuckled. “Well, it's a little coincidental the beastie would be wrapped in that particular article saying I was writing about her, don'tchya think? But who knows? Let's face it, Jo, Carla Cole's not my sole enemy in life.”

That was an understatement. Larry was known for taking on the rich and powerful, many of whom had publically vowed to get even with him one day. In the course of Larry's career, he'd had many threats against his life, but he never backed away from a confrontation where justice was at stake. I thought of Larry Locket as a modern-day David going up against a slew of rich Goliaths. Not many people had stood their ground as often or as successfully as Larry against such a varied array of formidable foes.

Larry rose from his chair and went over to the antique wooden file cabinet set into the far wall behind his computer. He stooped down, pulled out the bottom drawer, and pointed to a deep pile of mail strewn inside.

“Hate letters, crazy letters, macabre artwork. Hardly a day goes by when I don't get something from one nut or another. They write to the magazine and the magazine forwards them to me. The number of letters I got on Carney alone would've filled three of these drawers. I put them all in a box in storage.”

He was referring, of course, to Jackson Carney, the scandal-drenched circuit court judge who had vigorously denied any romantic involvement with one of his young law clerks after she was found drowned in the East River. Larry uncovered evidence that Carney, a self-proclaimed devoted family man with a wife and four children, was indeed having an affair with the young woman. He wrote a blistering article about the case, revealing Judge Carney to be not only a chronic womanizer, but a pathological liar to boot. The article helped wreck Carney's career. He was not re-elected to the bench.

In fact, there were many instances when Larry had used his great instincts and investigative powers to either rake up cold cases or pursue current ones that looked as if they had derailed. Like an infamous “Daddy Deer” trial in Seattle, in which Michael Posner, the twenty-four-year-old heir to a timber fortune, was accused of murdering his wealthy father on a hunting trip. Young Michael maintained he mistook his father for a deer. He also claimed his father had abused him for most of his adult life. Consequently, it was dubbed the “Daddy Deer” case by the tabloid press. The trial ended in a hung jury, so the judge declared a mistrial. Larry strongly believed that Posner was lying about the abuse and that he had shot his father on purpose in order to get his hands on the family fortune. Working with the local authorities, Larry discovered a disgruntled ex-girlfriend of Posner's who showed him letters the young man had written to her, boasting of how he was going to shoot his father one day and make it look like an accident. Posner was convicted in a second trial. He had vowed to get even with Larry from prison.

Or the infamous Deke Wilson trial in Los Angeles, which had people glued to their TV sets for months. Wilson was the rap star accused of hacking up his girlfriend and stuffing her body parts into a Styrofoam cooler, which he allegedly threw off his yacht into the Pacific Ocean. The cooler was found, along with DNA evidence connecting Wilson to the case. The trial exposed the hedonistic and violent lifestyle of a megastar in the music business, and shone a spotlight on all the toadies who catered to him, giving him drugs, women, money, whatever he wanted. The prosecutor, who seemed more interested in his television persona than he was in a conviction, stretched the case out for months with boring expert testimony, endless sidebars, and long-winded rulings. The jury acquitted the charismatic performer in less than an hour. Wilson then found God. Larry wrote a blistering denunciation of the way the trial had been conducted and ridiculed Wilson's conversion. Wilson told a tabloid that Larry Locket was the devil and some God-fearing Christian should kill him.

Larry's life was nothing if not confrontational. He shut the drawer, walked back to his chair, and sat down again, crossing his legs. Larry looked dapper even dressed in his bathrobe and pajamas, which were from Turnbull & Asser. He was wearing velvet monogrammed slippers.

“So how far along are you on your article?” I asked him. “Are you almost finished?”

“No, no. Lots more work to be done,” he said, motioning to the piles of notes, clippings, and photographs strewn across his desk. “What do you think of this for a title: ‘Cole Storage, the Tale of a Missing Billionaire.' ”

“Great,” I said.

“And what are these?” I said, picking up some photographs on the coffee table.

“Courtney gave those to me. They're some pictures she took on board
The Lady C
a couple of years ago. Apparently, Carla doesn't like to have her picture taken. And she didn't let Courtney take too many pictures of the boat, either.”