Luggage By Kroger: A True Crime Memoir (19 page)

As he turned slowly around to face
us again, she turned to me and said, "He has the money, he gives
you the money. Don't let him walk on you like that."

"Who the fuck did you say this is?"
he asked, hitching a thumb in her direction. "What happened to your
wife?"

I just stared at him and then
looked at her, thinking how they had just teamed up to chop off one
of my balls. I deemed her correct in principle, but I had to
question the tactic. I knew I had surrendered to him too easily,
but I just didn't want to fight about it. I also knew I had no
business pretending to be a landlord. Before I could say anything
more, however, Catherine accepted his challenge.

"Who am I?" she snarled. "I am his
attorney. And if you don't slap the rest of the money on the bar in
the next ten seconds your ass will be in court tomorrow answering
an eviction petition."

I started shaking my head, while he
stroked his chin. Finally, he asked, "Is she handling your divorce,
too?"

This would not be the last time I would get to
watch her transform a complete stranger into a seething, enraged
enemy. She employed more than the words. She had a true talent for
confrontation and a need to antagonize repeatedly. She had wanted
much more than for him to pay his rent. She wanted to threaten him
and see how much he would take. Her words carried an edge and her
green eyes flashed menace as she stared him into backing away.
Then, he reached into his back pocket and withdrew two more large
bills.

"Forget it," I told him before he
could put them on the counter. I figured I had to seize the upper
hand, or I'd lose my other ball before we'd even had sex. "It's all
right. You can pay it later. Ignore her."

Then I received what I would come
to recognize as her special, flashing Medusa stare—a look that
insinuated I might not really be a man. It was so ugly I figured
our date was over. I just grinned and took a swig of my beer while
he walked away. She said nothing else and took a long drink from
her bottle, too. I thought she was going to speak again when we got
up to leave, and I started to pay for those beers. But he derailed
another confrontation by saying, "Don't worry about that. They're
on me."

As soon as we walked outside toward her car,
Catherine turned to me, and I expected her to order us back to
Houston immediately or bitch me out some more for letting him stiff
me on the rent. Instead, however, I saw yet another side. As simple
as flipping a page, her fury had dissolved to atonement.

"I am so sorry," she moaned,
sounding totally sincere. "I was out of line in there. I just don't
know what happens to me, why I act like that. I just hate to see
anybody taking advantage like that. You are obviously just a really
nice guy, and he turned that inside out."

"Don't worry about it," I said,
grabbing her arms and pulling her to my chest. "You were right. I
shouldn't have let him wiggle out of the rent. But it was still my
problem and not yours. It's no big deal. I'll get it
eventually."

"I know, I know. I just can't
understand it. I'm really sorry. I wouldn't blame you if you throw
me in the gutter now and run back to your wife."

She batted her eyes and
grinned.

"But I will tell you one thing I
believe," she continued. "There are two kinds of people in this
world. Predators and prey. You need to decide which one you will
be. You either kill or get eaten."

"I'm a reporter. I
just sit on the sidelines and watch. Your world sounds too much
like
Mutual of
Omaha's Wild Kingdom
for
me."

"Nobody stays on the sidelines.
Sooner or later you'll have to decide. And the sooner you do, the
quicker you can get on with your life."

Then she grinned
and took another tack. She put her hand on my crotch and asked,
"
Wild
Kingdom
? Isn't that the show where the
animals are always thinking with this?"

Her anger had waned, and we had a
pleasant seaside meal at a little restaurant near Galveston's West
Beach, where my rent house was located. She was laughing again, and
the sexual tension increased over a bottle of wine. Beyond the
physical aspects that attracted us, I became aware of something
else in the air. I felt that indefinable element each of us
probably feels only a time or two in our lives if we are fortunate.
Maybe it's pheromones. We were clicking. Conversation was simple,
laughter automatic. We might disagree about the most effective way
to collect the rent, but nothing would keep our bodies
apart.

I suggested a walk in the dark on
the beach, and she agreed. Thanks to the state's open beaches law I
could just drive onto the beach and park her car. We hadn't walked
a hundred yards from the Cougar before we started groping each
other in a frenzy of lust. Completely uninhibited, she fell to the
sand and unzipped her jeans while I opened my trousers. Our
positioning was restricted with our pants lowered just to our
knees, but neither of us could wait. We were on the verge of
consummating this first date when, suddenly, we were bathed in
lights from a car that had stopped beside the Cougar. I raised my
head to look.

"Ahh, shit," I muttered, as I saw a
lone figure with a flashlight making his way across the sand in our
direction. From the look on Catherine's face, I realized she feared
an ambush by the Tedesco family, and I had to wonder myself. Then I
heard the intruder's voice.

"Are you two all right? I'm with
the beach patrol."

"The cops are here," I whispered
and did not know whether to feel relief or added worry. We had to
have been breaking some kind of law. I hoped they had a simple
system for ticketing copulators on the beach. I stood up and
buttoned my trousers as the uniformed intruder moved close enough
that we could see.

"Have some I.D.?" he
asked.

I pulled my wallet from my back
pants-pocket and withdrew my press card, a trick I often used to
intimidate when asked for I.D. As I presented it, I mumbled, "I'm a
reporter."

He read the card, shined a
flashlight in my face, and grinned. Then, he said, "If you're down
here to cover the sand castle contest, you're about six months too
early."

"Funny," I said. "That is
funny."

Catherine stepped into the light with her
jeans back in place and handed him her business card.

"I'm an attorney," she said. "Were
we doing something wrong?"

He grunted while reading her card.
Then he said, "Miss Mehaffey? Hmmm, a reporter and a lawyer out for
a walk on the beach. Nice night for that. But you might want to be
careful. There are some dangerous people around here."

Catherine looked at me, feigning
horror, and said, "You didn't tell me about the dangerous people
down here."

"Dangerous people?" I asked,
wondering if he knew he actually might be looking at the most
dangerous person he'd ever seen right then and there. But I kept
that thought to myself.

"I just don't want anybody getting
hurt out here on my beach," he said, handing back our
cards.

"We were just getting ready to go
back to Houston," I said. "It's been a long night, you know. I have
a beach house down here and I had to collect the rent, then we got
something to eat…"

By then, he had turned around and
headed back to his patrol vehicle. Catherine started chuckling and
mimicked in a whisper, "I'm a reporter, I'm a reporter. I have a
beach house, we got something to eat. When is the sand castle
contest? And, did you know? I AM A REPORTER!"

"I hope that didn't spoil the
evening," I said as we walked back to her car.

"We're just getting started," she
said. "Don't forget, we still have some laundry to do."

Then, she added a comment that gave
me pause: "Besides, I left my diaphragm at home."

TWENTY-SIX

October 16, 1979

"Look at this. Now that's what I'd
call a handsome couple."

Catherine was giggling as she said
it while we stood side-by-side in her bathroom, looking in the
mirror the next morning. By my calculation we had logged about two
hours of sleep after returning to her house, running some laundry,
and having sex in her bedroom for most of the night. Between humps,
we had swapped stories about mutual acquaintances at the
courthouse, and she was proving to be a gossip's goldmine. Gossip
for a beat reporter often leads to stories, and she seemed to have
the dirt on every judge and lawyer over there. Listening to her, I
felt like I had crawled under the chassis of the courthouse machine
for a real close look at its filthiest section.

Joking about her diaphragm and the
challenge of birth control, she had teased at one point asking,
"What would happen if we conceived a child, Gary? What would
Special Crimes say about that?"

"Wouldn't be allowed. Couldn't have
that."

"Why not?"

"Special Crimes would know that any
kid of ours is bound to grow up into a smart alec, and the Lord
knows we have enough of those already. So, no, it would not be
allowed."

She had cackled and said, "I like
that. You're not afraid of those special guys at all, are you?
Maybe I have found someone who can protect me for a
change."

No, I had no fear of the boys from Special
Crimes. I knew them all on a first name basis, and they needed me
to tout their cases as much as I needed them to tell me about them.
But I was starting to wonder about her preoccupation with
pregnancy, and I had begun to see hints of what might be a piece of
that secret agenda for me. I concluded there was no harm in viewing
me as a buffer that might insulate her from any unseemly
persecution by Special Crimes. Reporters were supposed to do that
anyway.

I knew we had made a lot of noise overnight,
and twice I heard her roommate-landlord rummaging around in the
hallways beyond her closed door, obviously disturbed by the loud
laughter she never tried to suppress. She identified him as Mike,
an acquaintance from her days a few years before at the University
of Houston Law School, where she had volunteered her time to
student legal services and met him before he graduated. She called
him her salvation during the last few months, providing this
sanctuary when she had nowhere to stay while pursuing her claim on
the Tedesco estate. But he would soon be getting married, she said,
and that would leave her seeking a new place to live. He had
departed the house for work before we arose, abandoning it to us
for showers and breakfast. Sated in more ways than one, we had just
applied the finishing touches to our appearances together in the
bathroom when Catherine made the declaration about our appeal as a
couple.

So, I paused to check it out. At
five-feet-three-inches, she stood about nine inches shorter than me
with the top of her head coming about to my chest. She wore her
shoulder length, naturally blonde hair with bangs in the front and
spread out on the sides in curls. She had a petite body, too,
weighing I guessed about a hundred pounds. I indeed looked the part
of a complementary companion with my dark brown hair and
beard—glasses unnecessary thanks to contact lenses I had worn since
high school. I had to agree with her observation.

Oh
yeah
, I said to myself,
we'll turn heads, all right, the first time we show up at the
courthouse together—but not because of our looks!

Before she could put on a dress, the phone
rang and I watched her answer it in bra and panties, then walk
around the room having a forceful discussion with someone on the
other end. In those primitive days before cell phones, or even
cordless devices, she had to carry the rotary dial base in one hand
while holding the receiver to her face with the other. I
eavesdropped with interest as she paced the bedroom, ordering some
unknown party around.

"So you'll be in my office by
eleven?" I heard her saying. "OK, you know where the office is? And
you know, you better bring the money along and that's cash, five
hundred dollars."

Then she laughed aloud and said,
"No, a check? Are you serious? No checks. Cash and that's five
one-hundred-dollar bills. Do that and he'll be out of jail by two.
OK, I'll be there. But don't forget. Bring cash."

I had learned that Catherine
actually made the bulk of her earnings as a bail bondsman by
abusing a loophole in the rules governing business activities by
attorneys. She had even bragged about it during our drive, claiming
she had conned some old man into placing a large sum of money under
her name as a surety. She gave him a percent of her bonding
business as his cut for covering her image as a woman with the
funds to back up her bonds. She told me the State Bar of Texas
might frown on this arrangement but insisted she only needed to use
it temporarily to generate cash. Usually she would refer bonding
clients to more experienced lawyers for representation, and then,
those lawyers would provide a referral fee, allowing her to profit
twice from services rendered on one alleged crime. But she wanted
desperately, she said, to leave this bail bonding business behind
and create a future as a top lawyer. Once again, I wondered why she
would be sharing such information with a reporter, but I realized I
couldn't do much with it. My editors had expressed no interest in
her unusual probate trial for the Tedesco estate with all its
bizarre aspects and allegations. Why would they want coverage about
her pushing the rules on bail bonds? Besides, I had to salute her
spunky ingenuity and found it intriguing.