The Alibi Man (28 page)

chapter
51

         
JEFF CHERRY
already had his money spent. He knew a guy who worked at a salvage yard that sent a lot of “pre-owned” luxury cars to Russia. The guy had pretty much promised he could get him a sweet little Mercedes convertible for 25K, with a clean VIN.

Sure, he could have put the cash in the bank or paid back the half dozen or so people he owed, but what the hell. He worked hard for his money. Well, yeah, there was a certain right-time-right-place element to it, but on the flip side, he was providing customer service by keeping his mouth shut.
Information management,
he called it.

He had chosen a public place for the payoff because he wasn’t stupid. He watched enough TV to know better. So he had picked the parking lot at Town Square shopping center. He parked on the side closest to Sal’s Italian Ristorante because he liked their pizza, and he didn’t know if his client was going to be on time or what, so he might as well have something to eat in the meantime.

He was a man with a plan. This payment would be Installment One—to keep quiet about the Russian girl Saturday night. Then he would go for Installment Two, which was really the more crucial piece of information he held. He had kept it in his pocket for a long time—almost a year—and now he finally had found the guts to make it pay off.

With the aroma of tomato sauce and Italian sausage filling his car, and thoughts of his new ride filling his head, he settled in to wait.

chapter
52

         
BENNETT WALKER
drove around, thinking, his head spinning with questions of what he should do, questions about what had happened, what must have happened; imagining scenarios of what might happen, of where it all might fall apart. He had to stay calm. From experience, he knew he couldn’t panic. As long as he kept his wits about him, winning was always possible.

That was how he had to look at it—as winning, not as surviving. That was what Edward had told him years ago.

Easier said than done.

The pressure was on. The press was on the story. Their focus was on him. Never mind that he hadn’t been the only man seen with Irina Markova that night. He was the only man named Walker, married to a Whitaker, who had been on trial for rape and assault in the past.

His voice mailbox had been full for hours with calls from the many people in his life who were angry with and/or disappointed in him. And all of them would be asking him the same question he had been asking himself: How the hell had this happened?

He didn’t have an answer.

If Irina Markova hadn’t challenged him. If she hadn’t been the whore she was. If they hadn’t done so much X. If he hadn’t been drunk…

If Elena hadn’t found the body.

He still couldn’t believe that had happened. Of all the people in the world…No one should have been on that road. No one should have found that body. That the person who
had
was the one woman on the face of the earth who hated him most was incredible to him.

If Elena hadn’t found the body, none of this would be happening. Everyone would have just gone on with their lives. He wouldn’t have done what he had done to that stupid cunt Lisbeth. He wouldn’t have to do what he was about to do.

He wasn’t a criminal. None of this ever should have happened.

“Damage control,”
Edward had said.
“Contain and minimize the damage.”
It would all depend on what the detectives had, on what they found at the house.

The idea made him sick. It never should have come to this. They didn’t have anything on him. How had they gotten a warrant?

Stick to the plan. Damage control. Contain and minimize.

That was why Edward had gone to the house. That was why Bennett had not. Edward had drawn the attention away with him, blustering about the search warrant. Bennett had stayed, finished his dinner, had a drink, chatted with acquaintances, then left. He had driven out to Brody’s, to the stables where his own string of ponies resided, and changed out of his dinner clothes into jeans and a T-shirt, and his old Blundstone boots. He had a job to do.

He had to concentrate on the things he could do something about.

He turned right off Wellington Trace onto Forest Hill.

His stomach was churning.

His memory of Saturday night was fragmented—the early-evening images were vibrant, bright, electric; the hours after leaving Players were cloudy, dark. He could remember the sex—the smell of it, the taste of it. He could remember the heat, the rage.

He remembered his hands around her throat, the defiance in her eyes.

He remembered the feeling of dread in his gut when he saw her body floating in the pool.

He must have killed her. She was dead. He didn’t remember.

He turned off Forest Hill into the parking lot and spotted the car.

Stick to the plan. Damage control. Contain and minimize.

chapter
53

         
I WATCHED
through the foliage that divided Bennett’s property from the yard of the house next door. The house behind me was dark and vacant. People moved in and out of Bennett’s house, carrying things in, carrying things out.

My father was kept at bay outside the front door. I could tell by his body language he was angry. I could easily imagine how he had managed to insert himself into the situation. The Walkers, the Whitakers, the governor, my father. That all added up to privilege.

As I watched the people come and go from the house, I imagined Bennett’s cronies and Irina going up the sidewalk and disappearing inside on Saturday night. And all the dark scenarios of what had played out in that house swirled through my head like a toxic gas.

Not for the first time in my life, I wished I had been adopted by a couple of CPAs in Middle America and had grown up to do my four years at a state college, get a job, get a husband, have a couple of kids. People who had that life didn’t know the things I knew about the darker side of life. I envied them.

Because I needed to focus on something tangible, I moved toward the back of the property and peered through the branches to catch a glimpse of Bennett’s backyard. The interior lights of the house spilled out through French doors onto the patio and across the dark water of the pool. Deck chairs were scattered around.

I thought of the photograph of Irina and Lisbeth sitting on the chaise together, looking happy and silly. Sitting here, at this pool, in these chairs. I recognized the background and the stripes on the cushions.

Lisbeth had tried to prevent Irina from coming here that night. They had argued.
“I begged her not to go,”
Lisbeth had said.

“…he told me Irina was dead…that she was dead when he found her in his pool…”
Barbaro had said.

I wondered why he had turned his story around. Why, really. I was just too cynical to believe it was because I had somehow awakened a conscience in him.

But if it was simply to take himself out of the picture of what had really happened that night, if what he had decided to do was hang the murder on Bennett and exonerate himself, why tell a story with a component he couldn’t control?

“I saw Beth—Lisbeth—when I got to the parking lot….”

Why say that? Unless it was part of the power trip. Unless he knew he could control Lisbeth, because he had seen to it that she would be too terrified to do anything other than what he told her.

That would mean it was a game for him, that he was a monster.

I couldn’t see that, but I hadn’t seen it in Bennett Walker either.

I would have said I was well past being surprised by anything in this life, but in that moment I thought I wasn’t so sure of anything anymore. Maybe that was what came with time and bad experience—the ability to know that no matter what I’d seen, things could always get worse.

And so they would.

chapter
54

         
BENNETT WALKER
buzzed his window down halfway, looked at the kid in the car beside him, and said, “I’m not doing this here. I’m not being seen with you.”

He lifted a small duffel bag off the passenger seat. “There’s twenty-five thousand dollars in this bag, just like we agreed. If you want it, come and get it.”

The kid stared at him, his mouth hanging open. There was pizza sauce on his face. For some reason, that image would stay with him: the idiot kid with pizza sauce on his face.

He drove slowly around the end of the buildings, going behind the shopping center, and made his way toward South Shore, checking his rearview mirror.

The kid followed. Of course he did. Greedy little shit.

He took a right on South Shore and drove past Players, then took a left and another left onto the grounds of the old polo stadium, via what had been a service entrance. Abandoned now for several years, the stadium stood sagging, in a shambles from hurricane damage, waiting for progress to come along and flatten it.

Bennett pulled in at the far end of the stadium, parked his car, and got out. Creepy place, he thought. Not like it was in the old days, when the barns were full and the place was electric with the energy that surrounded high-goal international polo. The outdated security lights were lit, but they gave little in the way of light or security and did nothing to dispel the feeling of being in a ghost town.

The kid pulled in beside him, parked his car, and got out.

Neither of them noticed the third car, which killed its lights and stopped just off the road.

“Hey, man,” the kid said, his tone too familiar, like they were contemporaries, friends even. “I can understand you not wanting to do this in front of people. Believe me, I don’t want to make this difficult for you. I’m providing a service. I want my clients to feel comfortable.”

Bennett stared at him. “What the fuck are you talking about, you slimy little shit? You’re a blackmailer.”

The kid held his hands up and made a pained face. “No, no, no. That’s such an ugly word. That’s not what this is at all. You’re paying me a fee to manage some information for you. That’s all. It’s business.

“A man like yourself, you have a name to protect, yet you want to live a certain lifestyle…. Think of me like a personal assistant.”

“I don’t want to think of you at all,” Bennett said flatly. “Let’s get this over with.”

He set the duffel bag on the trunk of the kid’s car and unzipped it. “Twenty-five thousand. I’m not sticking around while you count it.”

“That’s cool, Mr. Walker,” the kid said. “I don’t want to put you out.”

Bennett turned and stared at him again. Unbelievable. What was there to say?

“Now, I’m sure you understand this only covers Saturday night,” the kid said.

“What?”

“The information specific to Saturday night,” he clarified. “There’s the other thing we haven’t discussed.”

“What other thing?”

The kid made the pained face again. “I hate to bring it up. I really do. But in light of recent events—”

Bennett advanced on him, towering over him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

The hands went up again. “Last April. End of the season. During the big Super Bowl or whatever you call it in polo.”

“The U.S. Open? What about it?”

“There was a night at Players…a girl…in your car…” the kid prompted. “She wasn’t very happy….”

Everything went cold inside Bennett. A fan, a polo groupie…She came on to him…. She wanted it…. They went outside….

“She was crying,” the kid reminded him. “You told me I didn’t see anything.”

He had paid the girl ten grand to shut up. She had been all over him in the club. No one would have believed her—without a witness to back her up.

Funny, Bennett thought, he had been agonizing over what he was going to have to do. Now he just acted. He put his hand into the duffel bag, curled his fingers around the short crowbar, pulled it out, and struck Jeff Cherry with it as hard as he could, burying the thing in his skull.

The kid’s head cracked like an egg. Blood and brain matter splattered, but not as much as Bennett had imagined. One hard overhand stroke, and that was it. He didn’t even have to bother to pull the crowbar free to give him a second whack.

Bennett stepped back and stood there as the kid dropped to his knees and fell over dead.

As simple as that.

He popped the trunk on the kid’s car, put the body inside with half a dozen mostly empty boxes from Sal’s and numerous crumpled Krispy Kreme bags. From the duffel bag he took a couple of small bags of cocaine and planted them among the rest of the trash, making certain to get a little drug residue on the kid’s fingers.

He closed the trunk. When the car and eventually the body were discovered, no one would find it hard to believe the kid had been on the wrong end of a drug deal gone bad. Everyone knew he supplied Players’ customers with recreational substances. Jeff Cherry would be considered just another fatality in the war on drugs.

Damage control.

“A pity it will not go so easily for you.”

He startled at the sound of the voice and spun around.

A square, neat man in a brown suit stood pointing a gun at him.

“You are wondering who I am,” the man said.

His accent was Russian. That realization sent chills through Bennett Walker like shards of glass.

“I am Alexi Kulak,” the man said. “I loved Irina Markova. You killed her. And I have come to kill you.”

As simple as that.