Palm Beach Nasty (15 page)

“You play?” the friendly one asked.

Yeah, but a fucked-up version, Nick thought.

“Oh, you know,
un peu”
Nick said, thrusting out his hand. “Avery Robertson.”

“Related to Spencer?” the man asked, shaking hands.

“Grandson.”

“I’m Bill McCullough.”

The other one looked at Nick and nodded curtly, his acknowledgment that at least Nick was related to someone of consequence.

“Ward Jaynes,” the man said, no handshake.

Nick remembered that was a name Cynthia Dexter had mentioned. One of the three richest members of the Poinciana.

He went back to watching them play. They played a way different game than the one he, Alcie and Spencer did. They seemed to ponder what they were going to do next instead of just sliding their pieces around. He watched, fascinated, as they took turns and after a while the game began to make sense. For a few minutes, no one said anything. Then after Bill McCullough hit two of Jaynes’s men with a double six, Nick leaned forward and whispered, “double him.”

Ward Jaynes heard him, looked up and scowled.

“Hey, you mind,” he said, glaring at Nick, “we don’t need any goddamn kibitzers here.”

Nick had no idea what the word meant.

“It’s okay, Ward,” Bill McCullough said with a smile, “I was going to do it anyway.”

Ward Jaynes was still fuming. A waiter brought the two men drinks.

“Sorry,” Nick said, “I’ll keep my advice to myself.”

“Goddamn right you will,” Ward Jaynes muttered into the board.

Bill McCullough smiled to Nick that it was okay.

Nick took silent satisfaction when McCullough won the game after Jaynes accepted his double. The two of them set up their pieces for the next game and Nick looked around the luxuriously appointed but low-key room. It was fine and comfortable and not the slightest bit ostentatious. He could get used to this way of life. The life of a clubman. He felt again that this was where he was meant to be. He had come a long way from the Portuguese section of Mineola.

The thought crossed his mind about needing someone to propose him for membership. Not right away, of course. Why not Bill McCullough? He could see them becoming fast friends.

He felt triumphant. His first foray into the upper reaches of Palm Beach society had been a resounding success. As for this Jaynes character . . . Nick wouldn’t be asking him to write him a letter anytime soon. He was sure there were plenty of other members he would meet who would be happy to do it.

He clapped McCullough on the back.

“Well, old sport,” he said, “nice to meet you, I’ve got a tee time in a half hour. Need to go hit some on the range.”

McCullough nodded and smiled pleasantly, then Nick walked toward the door.

Ward Jaynes caught McCullough’s eye when Nick was out of earshot.

“ ‘Old sport?’ ” Jaynes rolled his eyes. “You gotta be
kidding
me.”

TWENTY-TWO

G
reen’s, a block from the Palm Beach Princess, was a combination restaurant and general store, with everything from overpriced flip-flops to tasty hamburgers and salads. Located at the corner of Sunrise and County Road, construction guys on lunch break were dumping ketchup onto egg and onion sandwiches, right next to Tory Burch look-alikes picking at green salads lightly sprinkled with balsamic vinaigrette. It was a place where the chic rubbed shoulders with their plumber, and felt better for the experience.

Crawford held Dominica’s chair.

“Hey, Charlie,” said a waitress, “new girlfriend?”

“Christ,” Crawford said under his breath.

“Cute,” the waitress said, as if Dominica weren’t there, “except the jacket.”

“You mean ’cause it’s plastic?” Crawford said.

The waitress laughed.

“It’s not plastic,” Dominica said.

Crawford grabbed a sleeve.

“What is it then?”

“A special material bullets bounce off of,” she said, straight-faced.

“Oh, I see,” Crawford said, taking a sip of water.

The waitress, pad in hand, came over. “So what are you two gonna have?”

Crawford motioned to Dominica.

“Chicken salad sandwich on wheat toast, please, a bowl of clam chowder and a large coleslaw.”

“I see what you mean,” Crawford said.

“Told you . . . growing girl,” Dominica said. “Wait ’til the banana split for dessert.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, with a bunch of cherries and a can of Cool Whip.”

The waitress snorted a laugh. “And how ’bout you, Charlie?”

“Just a hamburger.” Then he added, “I feel like a wimp.”

The waitress smiled and walked toward the kitchen.

Crawford saw the two out of the corner of his eye as they walked in the front door.

It was Lil with a younger man in a green golf cap. He had dirty blond hair fluffed out on the sides. He was wearing a pair of funny-looking slipper shoes Crawford had seen around. Little red devils on ’em.

Cute.

Lil sat down with her back to Crawford a few tables away.

The young guy was probably a client. Lil took them out all the time, he knew. Breakfast, lunch and dinner—part of that schmoozing thing people in the art world did.

Crawford ducked down a little and put a hand up to the side of his head.

Dominica leaned forward, and whispered, “Who are you trying not to get spotted by?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Charlie, I’m not just fingerprints and DNA.”

He smiled, straightened out and stood up.

He figured it was better to say hello now than have her spot him later.

“Just gonna say hi.”

“Sure, go ahead,” Dominica said, digging into her coleslaw.

He heard Lil say something about the man’s “baby blues” as he walked up to their table.

“Hi, Lil.”

“Well, Charlie, how nice to see you,” she said, turning up the flirtatious smile. He wondered if she was even conscious she did it.

Crawford turned to the younger guy.

“Hi,” he said, “Charlie Crawford.”

“Hi,” said the guy, “nice to meet you.”

The waitress placed menus in front of them.

“So . . . how’s everything at the gallery?”

“Oh, you know, okay, but we’re still in the middle of this damn depression they insist on calling a recession.”

“Yeah, I hear you.”

He just nodded and stood there.

“Well,” he said after a few awkward seconds, “just thought I’d say ‘hi.’ ”

“Good to see you, Charlie,” she said. “Oh, hey, Charlie, my friend here . . . he’s got all kinds of time on his hands, and talk about party animals!”

The man looked at her funny. Like where’d that come from? He had no clue what she was talking about.

Lil winked at Crawford.

He returned to his table thinking, chalk one up for Lil.

“Did you miss me?” he said to Dominica, as he sat back down.

She smiled.

“Oh, yes, desperately, I thought you’d
never
come back. Who were your friends?”

“Just some guy,” he said. “And a woman I . . . used to know.”

TWENTY-THREE

C
rawford double-parked at Citiplace, an upscale urban mall that had come in five or ten years back and immediately became the retail and social focal point of West Palm. It had stolen the limelight from Clematis Street, which was always going through boom and bust cycles. The complex’s restaurants and sixteen-screen movie theater were magnets that pulled people over the bridge from Palm Beach as well as tourists and locals from miles around.

Crawford walked into Viggo’s. It was two thirty in the afternoon and the lunch crowd had come and gone. He went up to the bartender on duty.

“Hi, name’s Crawford, Palm Beach police, guy named Nick Greenleaf work here?”

“Used to,” said the guy tending bar, “up until about a week ago. Damn good bartender, he was.”

Crawford moved closer and put his hands on the brass railing.

“Know where he is now?”

“Sorry, just know he quit.”

“You know why?”

The bartender shook his head.

“Any idea where he lives?”

“The Palm Beach Princess, I think,” the bartender said, “had a room there, don’t know if he still does.”

Crawford had been to the hotel once before. Despite its grandiose name, it was a glorified flophouse, a fleabag right smack in the middle of one of the richest towns in America.

“Thanks,” Crawford said, peeling a card off the short stack in his wallet. “You see him, ask him to give me a call, will you?”

“Sure.”

Crawford figured that was probably the waste of a perfectly good card.

Ten minutes later he was at the the Palm Beach Princess. About all you could say for the place was it had good bones. That maybe fifty years ago it had been nice and cockroach-free. Since then, it had been converted into a bunch of one- and two-room condos. Still had a lot of elaborate architectural flourishes and finishes that would cost a fortune to reproduce today. But now they were covered with a layer of yellow brown film and, in the corners, thick cobwebs. Crawford walked toward the lobby desk and imagined how thirty years ago it was a prosperous, upscale hotel. Whatever it had been, it no longer was.

The guy at the desk looked like Lurch from the Addams family and wore a Salvation Army suit that looked like he might have slept in it.

Crawford flashed his ID and asked to speak to the manager.

The man pointed to an office across the lobby, next to a dimly lit shop that sold T-shirts in neon colors that said, “PB for Me” and had the largest selection of condoms Crawford had ever seen.

He stepped into the office where two identical females in their forties sat in matching faux leather chairs. The walls were bare except for a picture of the two at Disney World.

“Hi, I’m Detective Crawford,” he said. “Which of you ladies is the manager?”

“We’re comanagers,” they said in unison.

One of them pointed to an empty chair, but Crawford, eyeing its moldy patina, chose to stand.

“Thanks, but this’ll just take a minute,” he said. “Does a man named Nick Greenleaf live here?”

“Formerly known as Todd Tropez,” said one in a red top and blue skirt.

The other one in a green top and matching blue skirt laughed.

“Todd Tropez?” Crawford asked.

“As in that place in Spain,” red top said.

Crawford didn’t correct her geography.

“Ten days late on his rent,” green top explained.

“Back up, would you, please?” said Crawford, “What did you mean . . . formerly Todd Tropez?”

“Simple. Nick was Todd,” said red top.

“He changed his name,” said green top.

“ ‘All perfectly legal’—”

“So he said.”

“He signed his second-year lease last month,” red top said. “Nicholas P. Greenleaf, to be exact.”

“Showed it to us on his license,” said green top.

Crawford’s eyes were going back and forth between them like he was watching a ping pong game.

“Didn’t matter to us—”

“Coulda called himself Santa Claus for all we cared—”

“—long as his check didn’t bounce.”

“Is he here now?” Crawford asked.

The sisters looked at each other.

“No,” red top said.

“We haven’t seen him in—” green top shrugged.

“—over a week.”

They nodded in unison.

“You think he might have left town?”

“I don’t know, maybe—”

“Did Nick have any friends . . . who visited him here?”

They both looked at each other as if to say, “you field this one, sis.”

Finally, green top said: “Occasionally . . . he’d have a lady friend over.”

Crawford could see it was a sore subject.

“Come on ladies,” Crawford said, mustering up his cajoling smile. “A few details, please?”

“We had to tell him to keep it quiet a couple times,” said red top.

“Keep what quiet?”

“You know,” green top said, her face getting red.

“Having sex,” red top blurted, “it disturbed the neighbors.”

“Yeah . . . the neighbors three blocks away.”

They both howled with laughter.

Crawford decided to get a warrant as quickly as possible, then have a nice, long look at Greenleaf’s room.

“His rent’s past due,” red top said again.

“You mentioned that.”

“He used to be one we could count on”: green top.

“First of the month”: red top.

“Back when he was Todd”: green top.

They nodded in unison again.

This guy—whether he went by Todd, Nick or Santa Claus—had piqued Crawford’s interest big time. Specifically, why he went from someone with a heart around his name on the vic’s calendar to being X’ed out with the violent slash of a pen. And why he had disappeared from the Princess all of a sudden.

“I have a favor to ask you ladies,” Crawford said.

They perked up like two schoolgirls.

“Sure, Detective.”

“If I get a man over here this afternoon, to do a drawing of Greenleaf, could you describe him?”

The sisters looked at each other.

“You mean . . . a sketch artist?” red top asked.

“Exactly.”

“We could describe him to a T,” green top said, her head bobbing with excitement.

“Right down to that mole on his left cheek,” red top said.

“And that cute little cowlick. Sure, Detective, send him over—”

“—we’re very good observers—”

“—and in this place, trust me, there’s a lot to observe.”

Crawford trusted her.

He thanked them and walked out of the office.

On the sidewalk he took out his cell and called West Palm PD. He asked for a captain there he knew. Whenever he ran into the guy, he always grilled Crawford about his New York collars. Like a Denver Bronco fan getting Peyton Manning to describe his greatest touchdowns. The captain was on duty and said he’d get the sketch guy right over.

Crawford wasn’t so lucky about getting the warrant. The judge he called was “indisposed,” Crawford was told, which probably meant out playing eighteen. Crawford had heard the guy had a four handicap. The judge’s secretary urged Crawford to be patient, saying he’d get back to Crawford as soon as possible.

Patience was not a Crawford virtue.