The Blackmail Club (24 page)

“The last and the best.” Jack raised his glass. “Answer this one from your gut. Could the mayor be involved in blackmail and murder, or is he just another politician cutting deals that dance back and forth across the law line?”

Max used his finger to wipe mustard from his upper lip. “Don’t rightly know.” He looked at his finger. “The Patrick I knew would want no part of it, but the man may not be the boy.” He licked the mustard from his finger. “Boss, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“We got lots of folks auditioning for the role of blackmailer. I figure you’re trying Tyson, Engels, and Donny on for size, and from what you’re asking, maybe even Mayor Molloy. I mean no disrespect, but have you considered that Dr. Christopher Andujar could have been involved?” Max put up his hand. “I know the man meant a lot to you, but it’s a valid question.”

Jack picked up and nibbled the corner of the sandwich crust he had left on his plate. “Oh, it’s valid, Max. I keep asking myself that very question and I just can’t figure him being guilty.”

Max raised his eyebrows. “You got anything more than emotion working here?”

“Yeah. I think so. If Chris was guilty, why commit suicide? At the time of his death the blackmailings were working like a well-oiled machine.” Jack shrugged. “For him to be guilty he would have needed cohorts because somebody had to kill Haviland after Chris was dead.”

“So he had accomplices.”

“Damn it, there are just some people you know would not be involved in blackmail and murder. I’ve only known you a short while, but if someone asked me if Max Logan could be involved in a serious crime, I’d know you could not. Aren’t there some people you just know that about? People on whom you’d bet it all?”

Max grinned. “If you’re that sure about Dr. Andujar, boss, then I’ll stand with you. What about Agnes Fuller? She had access to Chris’s patient files and she has been in bed with Tyson. Literally. Still is, apparently. One of Chris Andujar’s patients may have told him about being blackmailed over something that patient had only told Chris. Folks tell deep, dark shit to their shrinks. Chris might’ve reasoned it had to have been his secretary and set a trap, caught her and made her tell him what was going on. The shame of it might have driven him to commit suicide—or perhaps drove Tyson to murder Chris and the others to further cover his tracks.”

Max poked a finger at Jack. “It would work pretty much the same if we substitute Donny Andujar for Ms. Fuller. The punk coulda finagled a copy of the key to his pa’s office. If Dr. Andujar found out his son was blackmailing his patients that could explain Andujar’s suicide. Now, in spite of all this, I still hold the opinion I told you the other day: Donny lacks the stones. So, I find myself coming back around to Ms. Fuller and her lover, Arthur Tyson. As for Haviland and the other two fugitives, while Tyson was with Metro, he was the Fed’s contact man on warrants. That means Tyson could have located Haviland and agreed to not arrest him in return for getting inside Chris Andujar’s office. The same thing could apply for them other shrinks.”

“You’ve been giving this a lot of thought, Max.”

“Ain’t you heard, boss, the mind’s a terrible thing to waste. ‘Sides, I need something to chew on while sitting stakeouts at Donny’s Club. I’m telling you, the how remains a guess, but Tyson’s square in the middle of this thing. I just know it.”

Chapter 36

Jack found Donny Andujar in a back booth. One of his nubile dancers sat across from him, her naked legs crossed, her translucent spiked heels revealing red painted toes.

“Hi, Donny. No, no, don’t get up. Finish your food. We can talk right here, if the lady will excuse herself.”

Donny leaned against the wall at the end of the booth and put his legs up across the bench seat as the dancer took hers down. “If I don’t eat by five,” he said, “we get too busy and I end up going hungry.” Sticking out from under his Levi’s was today’s selection of squaretoed boots: black, polished snakeskin with scuffed toes. He took off his NBA Washington Wizards’ cap, and looked at the dancer who still stood at the end of the booth. “Go powder your nose, honey. You’re up in a few minutes.”

Jack slid into the booth on the side she had vacated. The seat was still warm.

“Sorry to hear about Phoebe Ziegler buying it. The cops left here about an hour ago.”

Jack could smell Donny’s too-spicy aftershave. “I’m surprised they didn’t arrest you.”

“Shit, McCall, I had nothing to do with Phoebe getting offed. Thanks to you she would only do laps, but we would have gotten her on her back again. Once these broads round their heels for money, they never stop. Hey, it’s the American dream—earn lots of dough doing work you enjoy.”

“You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”

“Don’t preach me, McCall.” He pushed the sleeves on his tan shirt higher on his forearms. “It takes all kinds. Phoebe Ziegler was Jena Moves, not some artsy-fartsy broad. She just hadn’t quite come to grips with who she was. Now, enough about that, what brings you here?”

Donny had gotten part of it right. Preaching wasn’t Jack’s work. “Which of your girls will be the Mayor Molloy replacement for Jena Moves?”

Donny put his fork down. “You know about that?”

“Yep.”

“We’ve been encouraging His Honor to let the girls … try out. Competition’s good right? Sweet Connie, the one with me when you came in, is penciled in to be the first applicant.” Donny’s shoulders shook while he chuckled at his own sick wit. “The mayor likes the girl-next-door look and there aren’t too many of those in this business. Can I get you a beer? Something to eat?”

Jack had eaten with Max, but a shared meal aided conversation. He glanced at the menu and pointed to the all-American meal: a burger, fries, and the house cola.

When Donny held a lever on somebody, he expected them to play ball. Holding Donny’s confession meant Jack held the lever, so it was Donny’s turn to play ball.

“Phoebe Ziegler told me she first got on her back with a harmless, meek-and-mild guy. That you pushed her to do it even left her a note with a thou as payment. What made that guy so important?”

In other words, did you know about the art heist?

Donny spread his palms and grinned. “We make a bit extra when one of the girls satisfies a customer. Jena didn’t just have a bitching bod, she had the face. The innocence. So we wanted to get her started. Call it my contribution to upward mobility in America. She told me about that note; I didn’t leave it.”

They stopped talking when Sweet Connie brought Jack’s meal. The skimpy food-service outfit she wore put more in front of Jack than just the burger he had ordered.

“Do you know why we call her Sweet Connie?” Donny asked after she had left.

“Nope,” Jack replied, with contrived curiosity.

“She’s the color of semisweet chocolate. At first that’s what we called her—Semisweet Connie—over time it got shortened.”

“Phoebe gave me the note,” Jack said, bringing the conversation back to his reason for being there. “The experts tell us it and your confession, which I watched you type, were both prepared on that old IBM in your office. So, let’s try it again. Why did you push Phoebe toward the meek guy?”

Donny motioned downward with his hands and lowered his voice. “All right. All right. Keep your voice down. The other girls don’t need that kind of persuasion. But they’d love the dough. Okay. Sure. We paid her. The mayor’s always wanting to fuck Dorothy from Kansas—without her dog Toto.” He laughed again, enjoying his self-entertainment.

“Give.”

“Don’t you have any sense of humor, McCall?”

While he chewed, Jack rotated his hand for get-on-with-it.

“I didn’t have Dorothy from Kansas. The closest piece I had was Phoebe from Colorado, so we needed to get her going. We just figured meek and mild would be perfect for her first money fuck.”

Jack took a bite of his burger and watched Sweet Connie peel off her server’s uniform before stepping onto the raised stage. It was her turn to display her terpsichorean talents.

“Twice you’ve referred to ‘we.’ Did you end up with Tittle’s partners after the cops shut his joint?” Jack held up a french fry. “A warning before you answer: I got a good idea of what names you should be giving me here, so don’t try to foul this one off. Who’s the we?”

The men playing pool stopped when Connie walked over to the pole on the stage, pulled herself upside down, and held her position by wrapping a leg around the pole. Her stiletto heels were long enough to each hold four skewered marshmallows. When she began to move down the pole, a guy sitting against the stage stopped his beer pitcher in midair, and then slowly lowered it in a cadence matching her slide.

Jack cleared his throat and willed his eyes from the stage. “Donny, I’ve been keeping my end of our bargain but,” he tapped the end of his finger on the table and then raised it to point directly at Donny. “If you try shitting me now, our deal’s history.”

There’s a saying for the critical point in negotiations: The next person who speaks loses, so Jack stayed busy eating one greasy fry after another while staring at Donny. He wasn’t about to ignore the wisdom of America’s top salespeople.

“Art Tyson. He’s a partner, off the books.”

Jack stayed stoic. “Good start. Continue.” The salesperson’s creed had worked once, so Jack dragged a long fry through the puddle of catsup on his plate and waited. The bar delivered another drink before Donny spoke again.

“Troy Engels. Christ, McCall,” he contorted his face, “don’t make that an issue. I can’t stand the fag fuck, but I can’t handle heat from the Feds. Engels owned a piece of Tittle’s. He came with Tyson. They each hold fifteen percent.”

“So that’s why Engels keeps his ear to the ground for anything that might affect your club?”

“Yeah. I never blackmailed him over the pictures of him and Dad. He doesn’t even know I got ‘em. Had them. You got ‘em now.”

“You don’t know how lucky you are you didn’t try extorting Assistant Director Engels. He would have had you for lunch and spit out the seeds. Who else has a piece?”

Sweet Connie strolled to the end of the stage nearest Jack, locked her eyes on him and, to the words of the wonderful Cole Porter song,
Love for Sale
, executed a couple of bumps and grinds that would have sent any normal woman to a chiropractor. After that her hips took a well-earned rest while her hands traveled up her thighs and over her breasts.

Donny lowered his gaze and shrugged. “I don’t know the identity of the third guy. Engels says he doesn’t even know. Tyson and Engels own thirty percent, I have fifty-five. Someone else holds the other fifteen. Only Tyson knows. He distributes that investor’s cut along with the payoff money. I’m not blowing smoke here. The mayor’s a guess. I don’t know.”

Jack let Donny foul off that pitch and came back with another: “Now that you’ve told me about Tyson and Engels, I’ll give you one chance to revise your answer about who wanted Ms. Ziegler to seduce Randolph Harkin.”

“Tyson pushed it. His exact words were, ‘Jena has half your regulars pounding their puds.’” Donny used one hand in a pumping motion. “Tyson kept saying, ‘Push Jena at old-man Harkin, the guy’s a pipsqueak from some art joint, and Jena digs art. Get her on her back once and we’ve got a new cash register with legs.’ If Tyson had another reason, he never told me.”

“And she fit the mayor’s criteria,” Jack said, “the non bimbo girl next door.”

“Yeah. The mayor likes to pretend it’s something other than a bought piece of tail. Sweet Connie is pretty clean cut, but she’s an air-head next to Jena. Truth is, I miss Jena. I never even got my turn.”

“You’re a good man, Donny, sentimental and all. When’s the last time you saw your mother?”

Connie had finished her stage duties and was wiggling back into her server’s outfit when she caught a signal from Donny to bring another beer.

“I went over for dinner last night … You know that she still hasn’t cleaned out Dad’s bedroom. His clothes are still in the closet.” He rolled his eyes. “That whole scene is really weird, man.”

“Give your mother some time. She has to get used to your dad being gone before she can put him out of the house emotionally.”

“I’m telling you, McCall, my mother emasculated daddy to the point he turned fag. Did everything but cut off his balls.”

Jack frowned, but let the comment go. “Tyson was Tittle’s bag man. Now he does it for you, but he’s been off the police force for years. What good is Tyson to you now?”

“Tyson still knows the older cops and with their help he meets the younger ones.” Donny turned his palm up and rubbed his thumb across his finger tips. “He says it’s actually easier to pass the green without being on the force. And, like at Tittle’s, Tyson’s the front man for the phantom investor.”

Jack thought top sales professionals called his next move a presumptive close. “Let’s go to your office. I want to look at your payoff book.”

“No can do, Mr. M.” Donny exchanged his under and upper boots as if he were flipping one of his burgers. “Don’t have a book. Luke Tittle kept records of payoffs and IOUs. It got him killed. Tyson keeps it all in his head. I don’t even know who gets the cash. That’s our deal. It gives Tyson his power. I give the dough to Tyson and the authorities leave us alone, so he’s making it happen.”

Sweet Connie couldn’t stop doting on Donny. This time she came to clear away the dishes and offer more drinks. Jack waved her off. Donny watched as she walked over and bent down to put the dirty dishes into the tray under the end of the bar. Her hair, sprayed as hard as a football helmet, moved as one unit.

“She’s Tyson’s favorite. But his girlfriend, some wrinkled old prune, I don’t know her name, preferred Jena for their threesomes. Tyson saves Sweet Connie for when he wants to go one-on-one.”

“Donny, have you considered that Sweet Connie may be spying for Tyson? She seems very interested in what we’re saying, and their one-on-ones would provide cover when she reports to him.”

Sweet Connie put another beer down in front of Donny. He ran the back of his fingers up and down the stubble on his cheek, perhaps considering Sweet Connie in a new light.