Sex and Murder.com: A Paul Turner Mystery (24 page)

“What for?” Zengre asked.

“Blackmail,” Fenwick said.

“Is that what this is about?” Conchetta asked. “You think we tried to threaten them and get money from them?”

“Did you?” Fenwick asked.

“No.”

“What did Mr. Lenzati want you to do that night?” Fenwick asked.

“He wanted to fuck me and party. He had two other women there that night.”

“Did you know their names?”

“I think one was Bambi, the other might have been Jennifer or Candi. I don’t remember.”

“Were they prostitutes?”

“Weren’t we all?”

“You’ve got some nice things here,” Fenwick said. “Twenty thousand can buy a lot, but everything looks about five years old.”

“So we got some good stuff,” she said. “Then we saved a little.”

“Having sex with strangers didn’t put a strain on your relationship?” Fenwick asked.

“Some,” Alberto Zengre admitted. “The more I thought about it afterward, the more I didn’t like it.”

Conchetta said, “We haven’t gone into couples prostitution, if that’s what you mean. We don’t hire out at sicko parties. We did this one thing this one time for a lot of money. What’s the big deal?”

“Lenzati didn’t try to get you to do anything kinky or illegal?” Fenwick asked. “Maybe passing out a few drugs to lubricate the evening?”

“The only lubrication was KY jelly. He mostly wanted ordinary guy on top, woman on the bottom sex. It was five or six hours that were mostly boring, standing or laying around watching him with them, or putting up with him being with me.”

After going through everything again, they got no further insights into the murder from the Zengres.

In the car Fenwick asked, “No blackmail? It’s a perfect setup for it.”

“How would they prove it?” Turner asked. “Who would believe them?”

“Every sleazy reporter on the planet. Somebody
had
to have been blackmailing these guys.”

Turner said, “Even if I agreed with that, the wrong people are dead. It’s more traditional to kill the one who is blackmailing, rather than the other way around.”

“I hate it when you’re logical. I still think blackmail has got to be part of this, but I’m still back on our earlier question.”

“What’s that?” Turner asked.

“Why did these guys pay for sex? They weren’t bad looking. Why not expend the little extra effort and save themselves some cash? There’s got to be plenty of women and men who would be willing to be their friends, simply because they’re rich.”

“I’m not sure it’s ever going to make sense,” Turner responded. “Maybe it was just easier, or they were lazy. I’m okay with the concept that they did it for the thrill. Before they die, we’ll have to ask.”

“Like we do all our victims. Who’s next?”

“We’ve got some guy in Rogers Park.”

Their next person was Shawn Groshmeister. He lived on Albion, east of Sheridan Road in the last apartment house before the beach. They had to wait quite a while for their buzz at the downstairs door to be answered.

When Groshmeister opened his apartment door, he was wearing only a pair of navy blue boxer shorts. He held a towel in his left hand and his hair was damp. He smiled at them. Groshmeister had a flat stomach, broad shoulders, and well-defined muscles. The brush-cut hair on top of his head was dyed blond, and the sandy brown sides were cut short. His ears were pierced with earrings the size of nickels. Looking at the outsized jewelry, Turner thanked himself that his oldest son had yet to propose ear-piercing to this extent.

“You guys really cops?” he asked. He toweled his hair as they talked.

They showed their IDs.

“Gosh, real cops. What’s up? I don’t play the stereo loud since Mrs. Reilly complained. She’s really kind of nice, and I hate to bug her. I didn’t think she’d call the cops on me.”

“She didn’t.”

“Oh.”

He tossed the towel on the top of a dark blue horsehair sofa. “You guys want to sit down? You want something to drink?”

They declined. It was a studio apartment, and besides the couch and a recliner there were only two plastic chairs and a tiny kitchen table. There were no dirty dishes in the sink, and the floors looked like they were vacuumed regularly. Paul figured the bed was a hide-a-way. On the walls were posters from two rock groups Paul had heard of only in passing from his son Brian.

“What can I do for you guys?” Groshmeister asked. He pulled on a pair of faded jeans.

“We’re wondering if you knew Craig Lenzati or Brooks Werberg,” Turner said.

“Who?”

Turner held out the pictures.

Groshmeister gazed at them for a second. “Oh, yeah. I knew him.” He pointed to Werberg.

“How did you know him?” Turner asked.

“We had a one-night stand about six months ago.”

“Did he pay you?”

“Well—”

“You’re on a printout,” Turner said. “He kept records of who he messed around with.”

“That’s kind of creepy.”

Turner said, “The records says he paid you a hundred bucks.”

“Yeah, I didn’t give a shit. I’d have done it for free, but he mentioned money. I didn’t care. What difference did it make? I spent time with the guy, and it made him happy. He wasn’t real ugly or nothin’, so I figured what the hell?”

“Did you know who Werberg was?”

“Some guy with money?”

“He was a billionaire. You could have made lots of money.”

“Yeah?”

“How’d you happen to spend the night with him?”

“I was in a bar last summer, the Pleasure Palace, over on Sheridan Road just north of the Loyola El station. He came in and stared at me. I figured he was gay. Lots of gay guys stare at me.” He grinned. “I’m used to being hit on by guys and girls. It doesn’t bother me. I go with whoever I want. He propositioned me while I was away from my friends. I had nothing else to do that night, so I figured, why not?”

“Maybe he had some dreadful social disease,” Fenwick said.

“Yeah, ya gotta be careful, but he didn’t want to do much, really. He was kinda boring, although he did ask me if he could take a few pictures. I didn’t care. He wanted to know if I had a girlfriend, and if he could watch the two of us have sex, but I don’t know any girls who are into that.”

“But he took the pictures?”

“Sure.”

“You weren’t worried about blackmail?”

“Why should I be? I’m not some politician. I’m never going to be. I’m not too bright, but I’m kind of good looking. I wouldn’t mind posing nude for some magazine, but I’ve never connected with anybody. I guess I haven’t tried real hard either.”

“Where did you go with him?”

“I’m not sure. We got driven in a limo. I never saw the driver. We drove into a garage with a couple other cars in it. Then we went straight to a room that didn’t have any windows.”

“What happened?”

“He was into this cuddly thing. He turned the lights down low and turned the television on. I figured he was playing out some domestic bliss scene. That was okay with me. I didn’t have to do anything much. He didn’t even want me to take my clothes off. Pretty soon, he began to touch me all over and that was kind of it. He spent a lot of time on my ears. I guess my earrings fascinated him.

“The oddest thing was that he wanted to watch me piss. When I kind of hesitated, he offered me more money. I guess I could have held out for a lot more.” He shrugged. “I didn’t. Later he asked me if I’d piss in my pants and let him keep them. I told him I didn’t have an extra pair. He told me he’d give me some he kept on hand. He showed me this dresser. He had more clothes than a department store, in all kinds of sizes. He even had underwear, briefs and boxers, in sizes from twenty-six to thirty-two. Different colors, styles. He offered to let me have my pick if I pissed in mine.” He shrugged. “So I did.”

“And he never took his clothes off?”

“Nope.”

“Never mentioned Craig Lenzati?”

“Nope.”

The cops left.

In the car Fenwick said, “That has got to be the most amiable man on the planet.”

“He’s just a friendly goof without a lot of cares.”

“I guess.”

21

I like to fantasize that all those slasher movies are documentaries. That all the irresponsible, thoughtless, and promiscuous good-looking people are punished for their behavior. They shouldn’t be allowed to break the rules.

“Let’s go visit Vinnie Girote,” Turner said.

They called Molton and got him to find Girote’s home address.

“Why didn’t reporters pick up on this sexual harassment?” Fenwick asked.

“Hard to tell. It all does sound a little far-fetched. We want to believe it, and we’ve got the hard copy of their sexual history to prove it. Now, if we released that to reporters, think how popular we would be—popular and fired.”

Fenwick said, “I don’t care enough about any of these people to lose my job over them, but I do care enough to use their sexual history to find the murderer. Lenzati must have clout beyond imagining to make life such a hell for the Korleskis.”

“This is Chicago. Hard to tell what wouldn’t be possible.”

Fenwick asked, “You think the mayor was behind it?”

“Let’s start with Girote. I’m not ready to take on the mayor yet.”

Vinnie Girote lived in Lake Point Towers which stood at the entrance to the renovated Navy Pier. They parked in the garage and entered. Girote’s apartment had a view south and west toward the distant Adler Planetarium and the Loop. His wife answered the door; Girote wasn’t home. She informed them that he was at a political dinner at the British Consulate.

Turner and Fenwick looked out of place on the periphery of the party. Everyone who passed them in the entryway was in elegant evening dress. The white-gloved gentleman at the door asked if they wouldn’t mind waiting in a room off the lobby while he brought Mr. Girote to them.

Fenwick said, “Yes, I mind. We’re in the middle of a murder investigation. We need to talk to this guy. We don’t want him walking out a back door while we’re waiting out front.”

“We have diplomatic immunity,” the gentleman said.

“We aren’t after one of the diplomatic staff,” Turner said. “He’s an American. We need to talk to him.”

Another white-gloved figure was summoned, and a compromise was reached. One detective would accompany one white-gloved figure to the room where the reception was being held.

Girote proved equal to the occasion. He smiled pleasantly at the discreetly elegant usher, nodded to the companions he was talking to, and strode cheerfully toward where Turner waited unobtrusively next to a potted palm. Girote walked up to him, smiled, and held out his hand. Turner felt a bit of a fool shaking the smiling man’s hand. The two of them joined Fenwick in an office on the third floor. From the windows Turner could look down on a Burger King on the west side of Michigan Avenue.

As soon as the door closed, every ounce of affability and geniality disappeared from Girote’s countenance. “What the hell do you two think you are doing? Who the hell do you think you are, coming here? Do you know who these people are?”

Neither Turner nor Fenwick was inclined to interrupt his flow. An angry suspect was more likely to make a mistake than a calm one. The tirade lasted all of three minutes. At the end Girote was breathing hard and the parts of his face that weren’t red were tending to purple. Turner wondered if perhaps the man didn’t have problems with high blood pressure. Abruptly Girote plopped himself into a purple leather armchair.

Fenwick stood over him and said, “We understand you were behind the cover-up of a sexual scandal involving Craig Lenzati.”

Girote gasped, “Never. Nothing. No.”

Fenwick said, “You weren’t part of it, or there was no scandal, or you’re stuck on negatives and can’t get out?”

Girote concentrated on breathing for several minutes. His normally loud tone was still in evidence when he finally said, “By the time I’m done with the two of you, you’ll be giving out parking tickets in Hegewisch for the rest of your careers.”

Fenwick said, “The standard psycholegal analysis of someone who resorts to threats instead of rational discussion is that he or she is a lying sack of shit and guilty as all hell.”

Turner said, “We’ve spoken with Nancy Korleski. We’ve broken the code that Werberg and Lenzati used to keep score in their sexual exploits. We can prove their activity with names and dates. We have Nancy Korleski and her husband who are angry enough to come forward as witnesses. I bet there will be others.”

“Korleski is a crazy bitch.”

“She struck me as completely sane,” Fenwick said. “She doesn’t have big, blousy hair like some recent accusers of famous people nor does she strike me as trailer trash. When she’s in front of the cameras, I bet she will strike lots of people as very believable. We’ll follow the trail of her complaints from subordinate to subordinate. We’ll subpoena phone records. Or perhaps we’ll have to start with higher-ups and work our way down to whoever was doing their dirty work. I nominate you for that position. We know you visited her. Why would you, if you weren’t part of a cover-up or an attempt to halt an investigation?”

“What we need to know,” Turner said, “is what did you know, and when did you know it?” Turner had been looking forward to using that line on a politician for years.

“You guys are nuts,” Girote said. But the struggle had gone out of his tone. Even his volume had diminished. “Why bother to smear innocent men? They’re dead. Why drag their private peccadilloes into the open?”

“We aren’t nuts,” Fenwick said. “We don’t care if they tried to make love to a charging rhinoceros, unless it has something to do with the murders. If it does, we’ll want to talk to everyone connected to them, including the rhino if we have to. This is a murder investigation. They indulged in explicitly criminal and very possibly dangerous activities.”

Girote said, “Maybe Korleski murdered him out of spite and revenge.”

“Quite possible,” Turner said, “but we’re going to be thorough. We’re not going to take anybody’s word for anything. We want hard data, and we need as much information as we can get. We’re going to know everything about their lives that we can. I’d think you’d be eager to help us catch their killers. Unless you’re still protecting a prominent person.”