The Blackmail Club (33 page)

The mayor tilted back in his desk chair, “Sounds logical, diabolical actually.”

“Mr. Mayor, why did you want to see me?”

Molloy furrowed his brow and leaned forward. “Let me get straight to it. I’ve heard you’ve been making certain inquiries about my activities. Why?”

“May I be candid?”

“I’d prefer that.”

They waited while his secretary brought in a carafe of coffee and two cups on a tray with cream and sugar. She offered to pour. The mayor waved her out. She shut the door.

“MI never set out to look into your activities, Mr. Mayor. We were looking into the death of Dr. Christopher Andujar. Toward that end we tailed his son Donny. That led us to the hotel where Donny delivered one of his lap dancers to a room occupied by you. The pictures my staff took include you and the young lady in the hall outside the room. That lap dancer, you knew her as Jena Moves, was Phoebe Ziegler, the young woman murdered a few days ago.”

“Holy Moly.” The mayor lowered his head while he dropped two sugar cubes into his cup and added cream. “I knew of the Ziegler murder, but didn’t realize she and Jena was the same woman.”

Jack looked directly into the mayor’s eyes. “Have you been blackmailed?”

“No. I have not.” His stare stayed on Jack while he first squeezed, then stroked his chin. “What made you think I had?”

“Curator Harkin was blackmailed after being videotaped having sex with the same woman. And mayors are folks criminals would love to have the goods on. Why’d you let yourself get involved with Donny and his lap dancer?”

The mayor tucked his lips inside his mouth and released them with a slight popping sound. “Mine is a common ailment, a foolish old man with an appetite for beautiful young women. Not children. Young women.” He stood, walked around his desk, and sat on the corner closest to Jack. “Give it to me straight. Will all this come out? If the press or my opponents get it, you know I’m cooked.”

“Mr. Mayor, I happen to think you’re doing a solid job. I’m not aware of anything that indicates you participated in these murders and blackmailings. If I learn otherwise, I’ll call the press myself. Still, as you’ve acknowledged, you have not conducted your personal life in a proper manner.”

The mayor nodded slowly.

“I want to ask you a question I didn’t ask Tyson because I realized you would not want it in his taped interview. I respectfully insist you answer it now. When Tyson came over to you at my firm’s open house, you emphatically shook your head no. To what were you saying no?”

“Arthur got me in the corner and with his drunken breath started pumping me to accept one of Donny’s other girls. I’d already heard it more often than I cared to, so I cut him off. I knew why he wanted me to accept someone other than Jena. I guess I should say Phoebe. I never knew her real name. When I asked, Phoebe told me Donny was paying her to be with me. She planned to return to school in a year and needed the money. I have already put a stop to that whole thing by refusing any of Donny’s other girls. I knew it had to stop.”

The mayor looked over and, even though they were alone, lowered his voice. “Will all this go public?”

Jack gave his who-knows gesture. “You were not mentioned in our interview of Tyson. As long as I have no knowledge that you are guilty of anything other than infidelity, a personal—not societal—crime, I don’t plan to do or say anything.”

“Donny’s bribes and his fraudulent liquor license application,” the mayor said, “where he stated he owned one-hundred percent of his club will be enough to assure he’ll lose that license.”

“You can expect,” Jack said, “that Donny will try threatening you in order to hold onto his license. And it’s even more likely that Tyson will pressure you for influence with the D.A.”

Mayor Molloy sipped his coffee, his thumb through the handle with his fingers around the cup. He blinked rapidly before again revisiting his worst fear. “Should my affair with a murdered lap dancer go public, my marriage is over, along with my position as mayor. Still, having sex with consenting adults is not a crime. If anyone tries to blackmail me, I’ll tell them to go to hell.”

“Future events will confirm whether or not you keep that pledge.”

“I’ve already promised myself that.” He stood, shook Jack’s hand, and asked, “Is there anything I can do to show my appreciation?”

“Keep doing your job and keep your pants zipped.”

On his way to police headquarters on Indiana Avenue, Jack stopped to buy a new pocket knife, then at a bank to pick up some paper rolls for coins, and finally to a grocery store for some of those plastic bags that zip closed at the top. Then he called Dean Trowbridge.

“What do you want McCall?” The old man’s voice sounded like he had a mouthful of pebbles.

“Just wanted you to hear it from me, Trowbridge.”

“Hear what?” His coarse voice adding impatience.

Jack turned left and shifted his cell to his other hand. “As you probably know from the news, last night at my office Arthur Tyson surrendered himself to the Metropolitan Police Department. What the media hasn’t yet learned is that in his confession Tyson disclosed he handled some investments for you.”

“That’s a lie.” His voice quivered. “I don’t even know this Arthur Tyson.”

“Your worst nightmare has turned real. One of those investments made you a silent partner in Donny’s Gentlemen’s Club, and before that a part owner of Luke’s Place.”

The other end of the line went quiet. “There’s no way to prove that.” Jack heard him sigh, then say, “I didn’t know.”

“Yeah. Sure. A minute ago you didn’t even know Tyson. How does it feel knowing you helped put in business the people who defiled your daughter? That your greedy pursuit of more and more money helped make what happened to Allison possible.”

“I’m sure you’re enjoying this, McCall.” His voice cracked. “Did you call just to gloat?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

“Your role in all this will come out in the trials that will follow. Your daughter will learn you helped bankroll Luke Tittle’s place. The only decision you control is whether Allison hears of your involvement from you or through the media. You told me she once begged you to forgive her indiscretion. It’s now time for you to beg her to forgive your greed. Bottom line: this is about Allison, not about you. Handle it right, you blue-blooded bastard.”

Chapter 49

Jack walked into Metro P.D. headquarters a few minutes early for his appointment with Chief Mandrake. The front desk called the chief’s secretary who approved McCall coming straight back to the chief’s office.

“Hello, Jack. You’ve certainly been keeping my department busy the last couple of days.” The chief reached across his desk.

Jack shook his hand, adding his left on top of the chief’s right. “Oops, I’m sorry, Chief, I scratched you.”

“No problem.”

“We’re close to wrapping up our inquiry into the death of Chris Andujar. I wanted to bring you current.”

The chief took Jack’s coat and hung it on the coat tree in the corner, then steadied the swing of the wooden hanger that held his own coat suspended from one of the other hooks.

“First you found an art forgery,” the chief said. “Then two Federal fugitives, and now you’ve nailed Arthur Tyson for murder and blackmail. You’ve been a busy boy.”

Mandrake slipped a pink phone message memo, the only item on his desk, under the padded edge of his desk blotter. “Is all this stuff connected to Chris’s death?”

“In a way, may I?” Jack motioned toward the coffee pot on the side table.

“Of course, I should have offered.”

“Chris’s death was a loose thread. Once I pulled it everything started to unravel.”

The chief frowned. “Tyson was a bad cop, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to mixed emotions. Along with Mary Lou’s daddy, the three of us joined the force together, went through the academy together, lots of memories.”

Jack rested his cup on a coaster on the small table between the two straight back chairs that fronted the chief’s desk; he sat in one of them.

The chief got up to refill his own cup. “Arthur and I agreed long ago that we would not let our different paths be divisive among our common friends. I increasingly found that pretense a strain. To be candid, I’m relieved it’s over.” He added cream and sugar, stirred, licked the spoon, and set it to blot on a napkin next to the pot, then returned to the chair behind his desk.

“I believe,” Jack said, “the story Tyson told in my office was, for the most part, true.”

“I’ve listened to that tape. You surely don’t believe that malarkey about a blackmailer who calls himself Moriarty?” Mandrake chuckled. “That’s a bit too melodramatic for me.”

“Things just don’t add up to Tyson being the blackmailer,” Jack said, shaking his head.

“What sort of things?”

“First off, Tyson’s just not smart enough. The art forgery job is the work of a renaissance crook. That’s outside Tyson’s Neanderthal mind. Tyson’s smash-and-grab, not finesse. His story about Moriarty, he’s not capable of thinking that up ahead of time, and the man’s wholly incapable of ad-libbing it during interrogation. Tyson’s brawn not brains.”

“I have to agree with that. At the academy, Tino and I were always helping Arthur with his studies.”

“Sherlock Holmes never caught his Moriarty.” Jack grinned. “Maybe that’ll be my fate too—not catching my Moriarty.”

“Okay, for the moment,” the chief said, “let’s assume there is a Moriarty, and Tyson is not him. You got anything saying who is?”

“Some stuff, but its flimsy. I don’t want to keep you.”

“If it isn’t Tyson, this modern Moriarty is still out there.” The chief straightened the lay of his black service tie. “I told the desk to hold my calls. Maybe together we can find another thread to pull.”

“I was hoping you’d offer. I’ve been turning all this every which way but loose for so long that I’m afraid it’s become a hopeless snarl. Last week, you helped me reason out how to proceed with surrendering the federal fugitives; I hoped you might offer to do that again. A fresh mind can do wonders.”

The chief opened a desk drawer and removed a lined yellow pad. Then he leaned forward and pulled the pencil out of a writing set rooted in a purple crystal geode sitting at the front of his desk. “Shoot.”

“Well,” Jack began, “our newest client, the one Tyson admits trying to blackmail, told me the blackmailer swore and talked rough. The other marks described the blackmailer as well spoken. Moriarty would be well mannered. He would enjoy pushing emotional buttons to satisfy his feeling of intellectual superiority. Tyson is a ruffian who would enjoy scaring his victims viscerally. The way I see it, we’ve got two blackmailers, and I’ve only caught the minnow.”

“An interesting theory. Do you figure Tyson or this possible other blackmailer murdered Chris?”

“I think Suggs got that right. Moriarty blackmailed his marks only once and Chris had already paid. Chris didn’t have to commit suicide.”

“Then why did he?”

“Like the others, Chris had expected to be blackmailed again and again. Right about then he also learned his son was involved in the sexual abuse of a young woman. In the end, Chris was out of money and full of shame.”

“What else have you got which points away from Tyson?” Mandrake asked as he repeatedly slid the pink phone memo out and back under the edge of the blotter.

“Tyson said Haviland passed on to Moriarty the tape of Jena having sex with Harkin. The way that one went down, Moriarty handled it without Tyson. And Tyson says he has a solid alibi for the night Benny Haviland was killed. So it would appear Moriarty shot Haviland, or paid the biker Rockton, or somebody else to do it.”

“Something you may not know,” the chief said, “while Tyson was still with the department, his duties included keeping track of old federal warrants, so the trail on the three fugitives does lead back to him.”

Jack shook his head. “Your department didn’t get pictures of the fugitives until a year after Tyson left the force, but even if Tyson had found the fugitives without the pictures while he was one of your detectives, it would mean he waited a long time before blackmailing them. Tyson doesn’t impress me as either patient or meticulous.”

Jack couldn’t say it because of his commitment to the mayor, but Tyson also knew about the mayor’s affair with Jena Moves, and Tyson would have blackmailed the mayor immediately.

“Tyson used his own voice to call our client, Candy Robson. To the contrary, Moriarty used various means to disguise his voice when speaking to all the other marks.” Jack walked over and put his empty cup down on the tray on the side table while he continued spelling it out for the chief. “We interviewed one mark blackmailed for the repayment of IOUs given to Luke Tittle. I think there are more of those victims out there, but the one is enough to tell us that Moriarty has Tittle’s records.”

Chief Mandrake’s face showed surprise.

“You had Tittle set up to give his records to Tino Sanchez,” Jack went on, “but Tittle got gunned down. Then Sanchez was killed a few days later. Did he ever actually take possession of Tittle’s books?”

“No. Tino would have told me.” Mandrake raised his large eyebrows “Hell, Tino would have given the records to me. It had to have gone down like it says in the record.”

“After being paid, Moriarty returned some of the IOUs Tittle was holding, so Moriarty had to have them.”

The chief opened a desk drawer and got a hard candy. It stuck in its plastic wrap, so he held it to his mouth and used his tongue and lips to pull it free before saying, “Could Donny Andujar be Moriarty? If Chris learned his son was a blackmailer in addition to the sexual assault you spoke of, that would go further to explain Chris committing suicide.” The chief reached into the same drawer, and tossed a candy to Jack.

Jack caught the piece of candy unwrapped it and put it in his mouth. “I thought that for a while. Donny had worked for Tittle. But to learn about the fugitives he would have needed connections in your department after Tyson left the force. In the end, Donny lacks too much to be Moriarty.”

“What about Engels?” Mandrake asked. “He’s got all the skills.”