Hundred Dollar Baby (13 page)

"Woman named Norah Carter," I said. "One of the people defrauded by Farnsworth."

"I guess he didn't get it all," Corsetti said as we waited for the elevator in Norah Carter's building. "Living around here costs more than you and I could scrape up together."

The elevator door opened. We stepped in. I punched 6. The door closed.

"How do you know I'm not rich?" I said.

"I've seen how you dress," Corsetti said.

Norah Carter was maybe fifty-two, a little overweight but pulled together okay, and pretty, given an age and weight discount. Corsetti showed her his badge. She let us in, and we sat in her living room.

"My," she said. "Two formidable-looking men right here in my living room."

She offered coffee. We declined. She checked Corsetti's left hand and mine. Corsetti wore a wedding ring. Her interest shifted subtly to me.

"You were one of the people that Lionel Farnsworth swindled," I said.

She blushed a little and looked down at her lap.

"Oh, that," she said. "That thing about condos."

"Can you tell us about that?" I said.

"Oh," she said. "My. Well. . ." She raised her eyes. "I guess I have no sense about men. Larry-I knew him as Larry Farley-seemed so nice."

"How'd you meet him?" I said.

She went back to looking down. "It's embarrassing," she said. "He picked me up in a bar."

"In the neighborhood?" I said.

"Yes. A very nice bar. Very, ah, upscale. Not some kind of meat rack or anything."

"You were having a drink by yourself," I said.

"Yes, at the bar, in the late afternoon. It was always the loneliest time for me. I'd just been divorced.... I don't know if either of you has been through that?"

Neither Corsetti nor I said anything. Norah Carter raised her eyes.

"Well, it's crazy time. I was desperately unhappy. Lonely. Unsure of myself as a woman."

We nodded.

"The bar, Lily's, is on Second Avenue," she said. "A nice bar where a lot of single people can gather."

"He met you there?"

"Yes. He sat beside me at the bar. He was very polite. Excellent manners, and, well, he certainly is handsome."

I nodded. Corsetti's face was entirely blank, as if he were thinking about something else, something happening in another place.

"He walked me home and didn't even ask to come in."

She giggled.

"I was in a tsimmis about whether to invite him in," she said. "I needed to know I was desirable. But I didn't want to be some sort of first-date slut."

"Of course," I said.

"He was so kind, as if he understood," Norah Carter said. "He invited me to have dinner with him the next night."

"And you didn't ask him in."

"Not that night. That was what was so nice. He let me know he'd be back anyway."

"And you had dinner," I said.

"Yes. Le Perigord, and it was lovely."

I nodded.

"And then he came home with you."

She looked down again. I think she was trying to blush, but no color was showing.

"Yes," she said.

She raised her eyes again and looked straight at me. The wedding ring had apparently made Corsetti a nonperson. If Corsetti minded, he wasn't showing it.

"And how long after that did the subject of condos in Jersey come up?" I said.

"We saw each other once or twice a week for several months. It probably was at least a month before he suggested it. He said it was going to be a bonanza. He said he liked me enough to want me to benefit from a sure thing. It would make me financially secure for life."

"Did you get a good settlement in your divorce?" I said.

"Yes. The bastard had to give me the apartment and half of everything."

"Lionel knew that," I said.

She tipped her head.

"I guess he did," she said. "We talked about everything. Most people after they are divorced talk about the divorce for a while."

"What was the plan?" I said.

"About the condos?"

"Yes."

"He said he knew where to get some properties cheap from people who had to sell. He'd buy them for me. Condoize them for me, and I'd have income for life. He guaranteed a positive cash flow."

"So you gave him some money," I said.

"Yes."

"And?"

"After a month I got what I thought was my first rent check."

"And after another month?" I said.

"Nothing."

"When did he stop seeing you," I said.

"After the first rent check."

"Which was just a little bit of your own money."

"Yes. There were no condos. What properties there were were uninhabitable or couldn't be developed because of permit problems, or. . ."

She shrugged.

"I turned it all over to my lawyer," she said.

"Did you ever go to his place?"

"No. He said every penny he had was tied up in this realestate project and he lived in one room. He said it would be embarrassing to him if I saw it."

"So how'd he afford dinner?" Corsetti said.

She looked a little startled, as if Corsetti had suddenly rematerialized.

She dropped her head again.

"I felt sorry for him. I didn't want to embarrass him or cost him a lot."

"You paid," Corsetti said.

Neither of us said anything. She looked up again. This time her look seemed to include Corsetti.

"I know," she said. "I sound like a fool. Desperate divorcee, fifty-two years old, easy pickings. And I guess that would be true. But dammit, Lionel did a lot for me. He filled my empty days. He made me feel like I mattered. He taught me some things about sex..."

This time she actually managed a small blush.

"He taught me things about myself. He stole my money. But I'm not sure it wasn't a fair swap."

"You're an attractive woman," I said. "There are men who could have taught you those things and not stolen your money."

"Maybe," she said. "But they didn't buy me a drink at Lily's."

It had snowed, just to remind us that it was still February and we weren't in Palm Beach. I sat with Susan in the car in the parking lot at a Dunkin' Donuts on Fresh Pond Circle. The heater was going. We had a bag of cinnamon donuts, two large coffees, and each other. Life could provide little more.

"As far as I can see," I said, "Farnsworth worked the upscale bars in affluent neighborhoods in Manhattan. He specialized in reasonably attractive middle-aged women who had some money from a divorce settlement and were looking for some sort of sexual validation."

"It is a period of legendary uncertainry," Susan said.

"We had our own sort of divorce back a while," I said.

"Yes."

"I was pretty crazy, I think."

"Yes," Susan said.

"You were pretty crazy," I said.

"Yes," she said. "I was."

"And we leapt tall buildings at a single bound."

"We were probably leaping the wrong ones," Susan said, "In those days."

"Maybe," I said. "But maybe those days helped us to leap the right ones now, and more gracefully."

"You metaphoric devil," Susan said.

She put her coffee in the cup holder, took out a donut, broke it in half, put one half back in the bag, and took a small bite out of the other half, leaning forward so that the cinnamon sugar wouldn't spill onto her lap.

"He was cool," I said. "He had pretty good odds. Hang around, say, Sutton Place. See a woman alone at the bar. She's wearing good clothes. She's not unattractive. In a neighborhood like that, with a woman, say, over forty, you've got a fair chance of finding what you're after. He didn't rush things. But it worked out pretty well for him. They were paying for dinner and such, while he seduced them first for sex, and then for investment money."

Susan nibbled on her donut. I'd never seen anyone else nibble a donut. Sometimes she bought a single donut hole and nibbled on it.

"And if it turned out they didn't have money, or wouldn't give him any," Susan said, "he'd had sex for his troubles and could move on."

"Leaving no address," I said. "Or name. He had a different name with each of the women."

"Good memory," Susan said. "Keeping everything straight."

"So to speak," I said.

"An unfortunate choice of words," Susan said. "Is he attractive?"

"I think you'd find him sort of an Ivy League lounge lizard," I said.

"I'm attracted to hooligans," Susan said. "But I assume many women would find him attractive."

"Apparently," I said. "Probably why he specializes."

"Maybe," Susan said.

"Is that a shrink
maybe?"
I said.

Susan took another nibble on her half-donut. I finished my second.

"Maybe, or maybe he's attractive to women because he wants to specialize."

"Most straight men have some such impulse," I said.

"Think about it for a minute," Susan said. "In both the schemes we know about-the condo fraud and the boutique whorehouse trick-he gets women who are vulnerable and he fucks them."

"I love romantic talk like this," I said.

"Is he married?" she said.

"Not that I know," I said.

"Has he ever been married?"

"Don't know."

"Be interesting to know," Susan said.

She put the last small morsel of her first half-donut into her mouth and chewed carefully.

"Some of the women seem to have enjoyed it," I said.

"That is not to their benefit," Susan said. "But regardless, their response doesn't change his intent."

I nodded. "And you think his intent was cruelty."

"Or revenge," Susan said. "Or a need he doesn't understand himself."

"Or you might be wrong," I said.

"Or I might be wrong," Susan said.

We both drank some coffee. Across the parkway, the ice on Fresh Pond was nearly gone. People and dogs plodded or dashed along the trail that circled the lake.

"But you might want to look into his history with women," Susan said.

"Gee," I said, "I was thinking about just having another donut."

"Instead of investigating Farnsworth's psychosexual past?"

"Yeah."

"Okay," Susan said. "Then I'll eat the other half of mine."

"Maybe after we finish," I said.

It was bright sunshine, not very warm, but in the direct sun the snow was melting and water dripped past my window in a heartening way. In Florida, spring training was under way in full. And somewhere, almost certainly, the sound of the turtle was heard in the land. Belson came in with a takeout bag of coffee and donuts. He put the bag on my desk and set out the contents. I looked at the donuts.

"Whole-wheat?" I said.

"Nope."

"High-fiber?" I said.

"Nope."

"My God," I said. "You don't believe in fiber?"

"Fuck fiber," Belson said.

He pried the little triangle out of the plastic top of his coffee cup. I took a plain donut.

"Is there anything you believe in?" I said.

"My wife," Belson said.

I nodded.

"Anything else?" I said.

"Maybe Jason Varitek."

He ate a third of his donut and drank some coffee.

"That's probably enough," I said. "You got anything on Ollie DeMars?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing," Belson said.

"You first," I said.

"I got nothing," Belson said.

I ate some donut.

"Me too," I said.

"Nobody ever worked for him. Nobody ever knew him. There are maybe fifty thousand fingerprints in there. Probably including the guys who built the place."

"Any of them on file?" I said.

"Hundreds," Belson said.

"There a Mrs. DeMars?"

"Yep." Belson said. "Grieving widow. Ollie was a wonderful man, wonderful husband. He left a wonderful estate. Life goes on."

"If you find the gun, is the slug in good enough shape to get a match?"

"It banged around in there," Belson said. "But probably. ME says it was fired from about six inches."

"You talk with Tony Marcus."

"'Course. Tony was in his office at the time of the shooting, playing cards with Ty-Bop and junior and a guy named Leonard."

Belson's face was expressionless. He drank some coffee.

"Gee," I said. "That not only alibis Tony but his shooter and two other guys."

"I noticed," Belson said. "Truth be told, Tony don't feel right for it anyway. A twenty-two isn't Ty-Bop's style, and I don't see Ollie letting Ty-Bop get that close without at least a try for the piece in his desk drawer."

"Maybe he did," I said. "And somebody put it back."

"Guy still got within six inches," Belson said. "Doesn't feel right."

"No," I said. "It doesn't."

"You got anything from the whorehouse?"

"They all have good alibis," I said, "for the time of the shooting, except those who don't, and none of them will tell me who they were with."

"What's your feeling?"

"I don't think any of the working girls had anything to do with this."

"That include your friend April?" Belson said.

I drank some coffee and looked over the remaining donuts, looking for the best one.

"No, it doesn't," I said.

"You got any reason to think she's involved."

"She's involved in something," I said.

"Want to tell me about it?"

"I don't know."

"But something," Belson said.

I shrugged.

"Something."

"I can only give you so much slack over there. You're a pain in the ass, but you're not stupid."

"Gee, Frank."

"I'll take your word that there's nothing there. But sooner or later I'm going to have to haul everyone in and get names, and addresses and statements, and the whole nine fucking yards."

"I know."

"I can hold off a little longer," he said. "But Quirk likes to clear cases."

"Martin Quirk?" I said. "I'm shocked."

"Yeah. You'd think he wouldn't care."

"You do what you gotta do, Frank," I said. "This thing involves Lionel in New York, maybe Patricia Utley. . . ."

"Who?"

"Madam in New York, sort of raised April for me. . ."