The Innocent (24 page)

LOREN MUSE'S CELL PHONE RANG. It was Max Darrow's widow calling back.

"I found something," she said.

"What?"

"It looks like an autopsy file on Candace Potter," Gertie Darrow said. "I mean, it is an autopsy. It's signed by the old medical examiner. I remember him. He was a very nice man."

"What does it say?"

"It says a lot of things. Height, weight. You want me to read it all to you?"

"How about a cause of death?"

"It says something here about strangulation. It also says something about a severe beating and trauma to the head."

That fit in with what they already had. So what had Max Darrow noticed after all these years? What had sent him to Newark, to Emma Lemay as Sister Mary Rose? "Mrs. Darrow, do you have a fax machine?"

"There's one in Max's office."

"Could you fax me the file?"

"Of course."

Loren gave her the fax number.

"Investigator Muse?"

"Yes."

"Are you married?"

Loren held back a sigh. First Yates, now Mrs. Darrow. "No, I'm not."

"Ever been?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"I believed the other investigator. Mr. Wine, is it?"

"That's right."

"What he said about Max being in the car with, well, a woman of questionable morals, as we used to say."

"Right."

"I just wanted to let you know."

"Know what, Mrs. Darrow?"

"See, Max, well, he wasn't always a good husband, you know what I mean?"

"I think so," Loren said.

"What I'm trying to say is Max had done that in the past. In a car like that. More than once. That's why I was so quick to believe. I thought you should know. Just in case this doesn't pan out."

"Thank you, Mrs. Darrow."

"I'll fax it over now."

She hung up without saying anything more. Loren stood and waited by the fax machine.

Adam Yates came back with two Cokes. He offered her one, but she shook him off. "Uh, what I said before, about not having kids-"

"Forget it," Loren said. "I know what you were trying to get at."

"Still stupid of me to put it that way."

"Yeah. Yeah, it was."

"What's going on here?"

"Max Darrow was looking into Candace Potter's autopsy."

Yates frowned. "What does that have to do with this?"

"Not a clue, but I doubt it's a coincidence."

The phone rang and the fax machines began their mating screech. The first sheet churned out slowly. There was no cover letter. That was good. Loren hated the waste of paper. She grabbed the sheet and started searching for the conclusion. In truth she read very little else in autopsy reports. Weights of livers and hearts might interest some people, but she was only interested in what they meant to her case.

Adam Yates read over her shoulder. It all seemed pretty normal.

"You see anything?" she asked.

"No."

"Me neither."

"This could be a dead end."

"Probably is."

Another sheet came in. They both started reading it.

Yates pointed midway down the right-hand column. "What's this over here?"

There was check mark in the middle of the body description.

Loren read it out loud: "No ovaries, testes hidden, probable AIS."

"AIS?"

"It stands for Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome," Loren said. "I had a friend in college who had it."

"What's the relevance of that?" Yates asked.

"I'm not sure. AIS women look and feel like typical females and for all practical purposes, they're considered female. They can legally marry and adopt." She stopped, tried to think it through.

"But?"

"But in short it means that Candace Potter was genetically male. She had testes and XY chromosomes."

He made a face. "You mean she was, what, a transsexual?"

"No."

"Then, what, she was a guy?"

"Genetically, yes. But probably not in any other way. Oftentimes an AIS woman doesn't know she's any different until she reaches puberty and doesn't menstruate. It's not that uncommon. There was a Miss Teen USA a few years back who was AIS. Many believe Queen Elizabeth I and Joan of Arc and a slew of supermodels and actresses have it, but that's really nothing more than speculation. Either way you can lead a perfectly normal life. In fact, if Candace Potter was a prostitute, perverse as this sounds, it may even have benefited her."

"Benefited her how?"

Loren looked up at him. "Women with AIS can't get pregnant."

MATT DROVE AWAY. Sonya McGrath headed back inside. Their relationship, if there had ever been one, was over. It felt odd and yet, despite the honesty and raw emotion, anything built on such misery was bound to cave. It was all too fragile. They were simply two people needing something that neither could ever get.

He wondered if Sonya would call the police. He wondered if it mattered.

God, he'd been stupid to come here.

He was hurting badly. He needed to rest. But there was no time. He'd have to push through. He checked the gas gauge. It was near empty. He stopped at a nearby Shell station and used the rest of his money to fill the tank.

During his ride, he thought about the bombshell Olivia had just dropped on him. At the end of the day, as weird or naïve as this might sound, he wondered what it really changed. He still loved Olivia. He loved the way she frowned when she checked herself in the mirror, that little smile she made when she was thinking of something funny, the way she rolled her eyes when he made a clumsy double entendre, the way she tucked her feet under when she read, the way she took deep, almost cartoon breaths when she was irritated, the way her eyes welled up with tears when they made love, the way his heart pumped a little faster when she laughed, the way he'd catch her studying him when she thought he wouldn't notice, the soft way her eyes closed when she listened to a favorite song on the radio, the way her hand would just take his at any time without hesitation or embarrassment, the way her skin felt, the charge at her touch, the way she'd drape a leg over him on the lazy mornings, the way her chest felt pressed against his back when they slept, the way when she slipped out of bed in the early morning she'd kiss his cheek and make sure the blankets still covered him.

What about any of that was different now?

The truth was not always freeing. Your past was your past. He had not, for example, told her about his stint in prison to illuminate the "real Matt" or "take their relationship to the next level"- he told her because she would undoubtedly find out anyway. It didn't mean a thing. If he hadn't told her, wouldn't their relationship be equally strong?

Or was this all a giant rationalization?

He stopped at an ATM near Sonya's house. He had no choice now. He needed money. If she called the police, well, they'd know he'd been in this area anyway. If they traced it down, he'd be long gone by the time they arrived. He didn't want to use the credit card at a gas station. They might get his license plate number that way. As it was, if he could get the money and put distance between himself and this ATM, he figured that he'd be all right.

The ATM had a max of a thousand dollars. He took it.

Then he started thinking of a way to get to Reno.

Loren drove. Adam Yates sat in the passenger seat.

"Explain this to me again," he said.

"I have a source. A man named Len Friedman. A year ago we found two dead women in a hooker alley, both young, both black, both had their hands cut off so that we couldn't get an ID off fingerprints. But one of the girls had a strange tattoo, a logo from Princeton University, on her inner thigh."

"Princeton?"

"Yes."

He shook his head.

"Anyway, we put that in the papers. The only person who came forward was this Len Friedman. He asked if she also had a rose petal tattoo on her right foot. That hadn't been released. So our interest, to put it mildly, was piqued."

"You figured he was the perp."

"Sure, why not? But it turns out that both women were strippers- or as Friedman calls them, erotic dancers- at a dump called the Honey Bunny in Newark. Friedman is an expert on all things stripper. It's his hobby. He collects posters, bios, personal information, real names, tattoos, birthmarks, scars, I mean everything. A full database. And not just on the local trade. I assume you've walked the Vegas Strip?"

"Sure."

"You know how they pass out cards advertising strippers and prostitutes and whatever."

"Hey, I live there, remember?"

She nodded. "Well, Len Friedman collects them. Like baseball cards. He gathers information on them. He travels for weeks at a time visiting these places. He writes what some consider academic essays on the subject. He also collects historical material. He has a brassiere belonging to Gypsy Rose Lee. He has stuff that dates back more than a century."

Yates made a face. "He must be a lot of fun at parties."

Loren smiled. "You have no idea."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You'll see."

They fell into silence.

Yates said, "I'm really sorry again. About what I said before."

She waved him off. "How many kids do you have anyway?"

"Three."

"Boys, girls?"

"Two girls, one boy."

"Ages?"

"My daughters are seventeen and sixteen. Sam is fourteen."

"Seventeen- and sixteen-year-old girls," Loren said. "Yikes."

Yates smiled. "You have no idea."

"You have pictures?"

"I never carry pictures."

"Oh?"

Yates shifted in his seat. Loren glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. His posture was suddenly rigid. "About six years ago," he began, "I had my wallet stolen. I know, I'm head of an FBI field office and I'm dumb enough to get pickpocketed. Sue me. Anyway, I went nuts. Not because of the money or the credit cards. But all I kept thinking about was, some slimeball has pictures of my kids. My kids. He probably just took the cash and dumped the wallet in the garbage. But suppose he didn't. Suppose he kept the pictures. You know, for his own amusement. Maybe he, I don't know, stared at the pictures longingly. Maybe he even put his fingers on their faces, caressed them."

Loren frowned. "Talk about being a lot of fun at parties."

Yates chuckled without humor. "Anyway, that's why I never carry pictures."

They turned off of Northfield Avenue in West Orange. It was a nicely aging town. Most of the newer burbs had landscapes that looked somehow phony, like a recent hair transplant. West Orange had lush lawns and ivy on the walls. The trees were tall and thick. The houses were not cookie-cutter- there were Tudors, next to capes, next to Mediterranean style. They were all a little past due, not in prime condition, but it all seemed to work.

There was a tricycle in the driveway. Loren pulled up behind it. They both got out. Someone had set up one of those baseball net-retrievers in the front yard. Two mitts sat in the fetal position on the grass.

Yates said, "Your source lives here?"

"Like I said, you have no idea."

Yates shrugged.

A woman straight out of the Suzy Homemaker handbook answered the door. She wore a checkered apron and a smile Loren usually associated with religious fervor. "Len's in the workroom downstairs," she said.

"Thank you."

"Would you like some coffee?"

"No, that's okay."

"Mom!"

A boy of maybe ten ran into the room. "Kevin, we have guests."

Kevin smiled like his mother. "I'm Kevin Friedman." He stuck out his hand and met Loren's eye. The shake was firm. He turned to Yates, who seemed startled. He shook too and introduced himself.

"Very nice to meet you," Kevin said. "Mom and I are making some banana bread. Would you care for a slice?"

"Maybe later," Loren said. "We, uh…"

"He's down that way," Suzy Homemaker said.

"Right, thanks."

They opened the basement door. Yates muttered, "What did they do to that boy? I can't even get my kids to say hello to me, forget strangers."

Loren muffled a laugh. "Mr. Friedman?" she called out.

He stepped into view. Friedman's hair had gone a shade grayer since the last time she'd seen him. He wore a light blue button-down sweater and khakis. "Nice to see you again, Investigator Muse."

"Same here."

"And your friend?"

"This is Special Agent in Charge Adam Yates from Las Vegas."

Friedman's eyes lit up when he heard the location. "Vegas! Welcome then. Come, let's sit and see if I can help you out."

He opened a door with a key. Inside was everything stripper. There were photographs on the wall. Documents of one kind or another. Framed panties and bras. Feathered boas and fans. There were old posters, one advertising Lili St. Cyr, and her "Bubble Bath Dance," another for Dixie Evans, "The Marilyn Monroe of Burlesque," who was appearing at the Minsky-Adams Theater in Newark. For a moment Loren and Yates just looked around and gaped.

"Do you know what that is?" Friedman gestured toward a big feathered fan he kept in a museum-style glass cube.

"A fan?" Loren said.

He laughed. "Not just a fan. Calling this a fan would be like"- Friedman thought about it-"like calling the Declaration of Independence a piece of parchment. No, this very fan was used by the great Sally Rand at the Paramount Club in 1932."

Friedman waited for a reaction, didn't get one.

"Sally Rand invented the fan dance. She actually performed it in the 1934 movie
Bolero
. The fan is made from real ostrich feathers. Can you believe that? And that whip over there? It was used by Bettie Page. She was called the Queen of Bondage."

"By her mother?" Loren couldn't resist.

Friedman frowned, clearly disappointed. Loren held up an apologetic hand. Friedman sighed and moved toward his computer.

"So I assume this involves an erotic dancer from the Vegas area?"

"It might," Loren said.

He sat at his computer and typed something in. "Do you have a name?"

"Candace Potter."

He stopped. "The murder victim?"

"Yes."

"But she's been dead for ten years."

"Yes, we know."

"Most people believe she was killed by a man named Clyde Rangor," Friedman began. "He and his girlfriend Emma Lemay had a wonderful eye for talent. They comanaged some of the best low-rent but talent-loaded gentlemen's clubs anywhere."

Loren sneaked a glance at Yates. Yates was shaking his head in either amazement or repulsion. It was hard to tell which. Friedman saw it too.

"Hey, some guys get into NASCAR," Friedman said with a shrug.

"Yeah, what a waste," Loren said. "What else?"

"There were bad rumors about Clyde Rangor and Emma Lemay."

"They abused the girls?"

"Sure, I mean, they were mob connected. This isn't unusual in the business, unfortunately. It really taints the overall aesthetic, you know what I mean?"

Loren said, "Uh huh."

"But even among thieves there is a certain code. They purportedly broke it."

"In what way?"

"Have you seen the new commercials for Las Vegas?" Friedman asked.

"I don't think so."

"The ones that say, 'What goes on in Vegas stays in Vegas'?"

"Oh, wait," Loren said. "I've seen them."

"Well, gentlemen's clubs take that motto to a fanatical extreme. You never, ever tell."

"And Rangor and Lemay told?"

Friedman's face went dark. "Worse. I-"

"Enough," Yates said, cutting him off.

Loren turned toward Yates. She gave him a what-gives shrug.

"Look," Yates continued, checking his watch, "this is all interesting, but we're a little pressed for time here. What can you tell us about Candace Potter specifically?"

"May I ask a question?" Friedman said.

"Shoot."

"She's been dead a long time. Has there been a new development in the case?"

"There might have been," Loren said.

Friedman folded his hands and waited. Loren took the chance.

"Did you know that Candace Potter may have been"- she decided to go with a more popular though inaccurate term-"a hermaphrodite?"

That got him. "Wow."

"Yes."

"You're sure?"

"I've seen the autopsy."

"Wait!" Friedman shouted it in the same way an editor in an old movie would shout, "Hold the presses!" "You have the actual autopsy?"

"Yes."

He licked his lips, tried not to look too anxious. "Is there any way I can get a copy?"

"It can probably be arranged," Loren said. "What else can you tell us about her?"

Friedman started typing on the computer. "The information on Candace Potter is sketchy. For the most part she went by the stage name Candi Cane, which, let's face it, is a horrible name for an exotic dancer. It's too much, you know? Too cute. You know what a good name is? Jenna Jameson, for example. You've probably heard of her. Well, Jenna started as a dancer, you know, before she got into porn. She got the name Jameson from a bottle of Irish whiskey. See? It's classier. It has more oomph, you know what I mean."

"Right," Loren said, just to say something.

"And Candi's solo act was not the most original either. She dressed like a hospital candy striper and carried a big lollipop. Get it? Candi Cane? I mean, talk about clichéd." He shook his head in the manner of a teacher let down by a prized pupil. "Professionally she'll be better remembered for a dual act where she was known as Brianna Piccolo."

"Brianna Piccolo?"

"Yes. She worked with another dancer, a statuesque African American named Kimmy Dale. Kimmy, in the act, went by the name Gayle Sayers."

Loren saw it. So did Yates.

"Piccolo and Sayers? Please tell me you're kidding."

"Nope. Brianna and Gayle did a sort of exotic dance rendition of the movie
Brian's Song
. Gayle would tearfully say, 'I love Brianna Piccolo,' you know, like Billy Dee did on the dais in the movie. Then Brianna would be lying sick in a bed. They'd help each other undress. No sex. Nothing like that. Just an exotic artistic experience. It had great appeal to those with an interracial fetish, which, frankly, is nearly everyone. I think it was one of the finest political statements made in exotic dance, an early display of racial sensitivity. I never saw the act in person, but my understanding was that it was a moving portrayal of socioeconomic-"

"Yeah, moving, I get it," Loren interrupted. "Anything else?"

"Sure, of course, what do you want to know? The Sayers-Piccolo number was usually the opening act for Countess Allison Beth Weiss IV, better known as Jewish Royalty. Her act- get this- was called 'Tell Mom It's Kosher.' You've probably heard of it."