Big Goodbye, The (20 page)

My heart started racing as I opened it.

Lauren’s medical records and detailed notes were inside.

The first word the beam of my flashlight fell on was a dirty word, the kind that led to blackmail, ended political aspirations, and took lives. Few words were as powerful or as deadly.

It explained Lauren’s behavior, even her episode at Wakulla Springs. It explained everything.

Lauren had a disease with virtually no early sign of infection. She had a small, non-painful nodule or lesion, which she had ignored. It has gone away in just a few weeks. But untreated, her disease had progressed to the next stage.

As her lesion was going away, she got a reddish-brown rash on the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet. For a while, she had a fever, swollen glands, a sore throat, weight loss, headaches, and fatigue. Again, it was left untreated, and again, it progressed.

As her rash began to disappear, the infection was still in her body, but there were very few symptoms and no outward signs of the disease, and all the while it was damaging her brain, heart, liver, eyes, bones, and joints.

Lauren had put off going to the doctor for as long as she could—perhaps because of how busy she was with the campaign or maybe because she suspected what it was. When she couldn’t delay any longer, she trusted Ann Everett’s recommendation of Payton Rainer, who administered a blood test called the Wasserman. But instead of treating her with the arsenic preparation and sulfa-like drug known as Salvarsan 606, he began to blackmail her—not for money, but to remove her husband from the mayoral race.

And Lauren couldn’t go anywhere else for treatment.

She had syphilis. Margie had given it to me, and I had given it to her. According to the file, there was no other possible explanation. It had gone untreated, and soon her swollen aorta would rupture and she would collapse and die, which would mean I had killed her.

Chapter 44

I drove to the Lewis home in a heavy fog, sick inside, but trying not to think about what I had done. But it was no good. I had to think about it, take it in. I just couldn’t stop. If I stopped, I’d implode—from lack of sleep and fatigue, but most of all from guilt.

Everything Lauren had done, she had done out of love. I thought of all the time I had wasted on petty jealousy, wounded pride, and erroneous assumptions about an innocent woman.

Difficult as it was, I forced myself to think about all the hurtful and hateful things I had thought or said about Lauren. How could I have been so cruel? So stupid? So deceived?

She had risked her own life so that Harry could have his dream, so that she could pay him back some small part of what she felt she owed him.

Father Keller thought she was a saint, and maybe she was. I didn’t know about that stuff. What I did know about was human nature, what people were capable of. I had often seen the worst, but in Lauren I had been seeing the best—but, because my experience with it had been so limited, I didn’t recognize it when I saw it, when I held it, when it was offering the best of itself to me.

As I knocked on the door of the Lewis house, heat lightening flashed out over the bay, flickering like the filament of an old electric bulb coming to life.

Lewis was surprised to see me. “Mr. Riley. Do you have news of Lauren?”

I shook my head.

His face fell, then he turned and walked back into the house. I followed him.

I felt such guilt at what I had done to Lauren, to them both, that I found it difficult to look at him directly.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

He nodded, and I was pretty sure he thought I was offering my condolences for her being missing or apologizing because I hadn’t found her yet.

“Would you like a drink?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. I needed one.

He stepped behind a fully stocked bar and mixed up a couple of drinks without asking what I wanted. His bloodshot eyes and swollen red nose let me know he was way ahead of me. As he prepared the drinks, his hands shook, and I couldn’t be sure if it were from age, alcohol, or anxiety.

Above the fireplace, a painting of Lauren in a formal gown hung in an ornate gold frame. The artist had painted her without her scars, and she looked like a model or a movie star, a woman so beautiful that the world must take notice.

We sat on expensive and uncomfortable furniture surrounded by tables and mirrors and vases and lamps and paintings.

Harry looked even older than the last time I had seen him, his blue eyes tired, rimmed with smudges of purplish bruises, and there seemed to be even more broken veins in his pale, puffy face.

“How you holdin’ up?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Not well, I’m afraid.”

“I’m sorry. I won’t keep you long. I just wanted to see if you had thought about anywhere Lauren might’ve gone.”

He shook his head again. “I’ve thought and thought and just can’t come up with anything. I’m afraid we aren’t very close in that sense. We’ve lived separate lives. I’m sorry, but I just don’t . . .”

“No obscure friend or relative?” I asked. “No vacation spot she’s fond of?”

“None. No one.”

He then withdrew a pack of cigarettes from an end table and offered me one.

I declined.

“What have you decided about the election?”

With trembling hands, he placed a cigarette in his mouth and lit it. He then took a long pull on it like someone unraveling, hoping to inhale some steadiness.

“I’m holding a press conference tomorrow,” he said. “I’m dropping out of the race.”

Without knocking, Walt walked through the front door and into the livingroom. He was still wearing his coat and hat.

“Everything okay, Mr. Lewis?” he asked.

Lewis nodded. “Fine, Walt. Just fine.”

“How are you, Mr. Riley?”

I nodded toward him, but didn’t say anything.

“I found Mrs. Lewis’s car,” he said.

“Where?” Lewis and I asked simultaneously.

“Near St. Andrews,” he said. “Right off Eleventh Street. There’s a hospital or something nearby. We thought she might be there, but we searched it and she’s not.”

I stood. “I’ll go see what I can find out about it.”

Lewis stood with me and followed me to the door.

“I’m gonna find her,” I said. “I did it before and I’ll do it again.”

“Before?” Lewis asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

He looked as if he had no idea what I was talking about.

I glanced over at Walt. He had a wide-eyed look of concern on his face, but then he smiled and gave me an exaggerated wink.

“Right,” I said. “Well, good night.”

“I don’t understand,” Lewis was saying as I walked out.

“I’ll explain everything to you, Mr. Lewis,” Walt said.

I got in my car, cranked it up, drove off, and parked around the corner.

I could tell by his reaction, Lewis had never hired me to find his wife. Walt had. Was he working for Rainer? Had he killed Freddy, Margie, Cab, and July? When he left Lewises’ a few minutes later, I followed him to try to find out.

Chapter 45

Walt led me right to the person he was working for, but it wasn’t Rainer.

He drove across town to another large home, this one on the water near the Hathaway Bridge—which, just a few months back, had been closed for several days because a barge had crashed into its turntable. The timing had been bad, too. During the commissioning of the navy base, those involved had to cross the bay by boat.

The Spanish Colonial Revival house was white stucco with a red tile roof. Several of its windows were made of decorative turned wood and had balconies with wrought-iron railings. When the enormous, heavy carved wooden door of the house opened, Frank Howell, Harry’s opposition for mayor, was standing on the other side.

After Howell closed the door, I made sure both my weapons were still secure, jumped out of the car, and ran toward the house.

Like Walt, I rang the doorbell. I then stood to the side and waited.

When Howell opened the door again, I pressed the barrel of my revolver into his forehead. Lifting his hands, he backed into the house very slowly. I followed. Even backing up under duress, Howell still shuffled his feet lightly like a dancer.

Walt whipped a pistol out of a shoulder holster beneath his coat and pointed it at me.

“Drop it,” I said. “Or there’ll be another candidate dropping out of the race—this one permanently.”

He dropped his gun.

“Now kick it over to me.”

He did.

“Now your other one.”

He reached down into an ankle holster and withdrew a small .38 or .22.

“Careful,” I said.

He dropped it on the floor, too, and kicked it over toward me.

Except for the room we were in, the house was dark. I knew Howell was a bachelor, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have guests or a staff.

“Who else is here?”

“It’s just us,” Howell said. “I swear.”

“Get over there with him,” I said, pushing the elephantine man toward his gunsel.

While watching Walt closely, I knelt down, laid my gun on the floor and quickly picked up his guns, pocketed them, then grabbed mine again. I figured he might make a run at me while I was awkwardly attempting to do with one hand what I needed two for, but he didn’t.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“Who?” Howell asked, his voice filled with what seemed to be genuine surprise.

I shot Walt in the leg.

He let out a yelp and fell to the ground, clutching at the wound.

“In case either of you doubted the earnestness of my intentions,” I said.

Blood was oozing out of the hole in Walt’s trouser leg, and he writhed around in obvious pain, whimpering.

“Please,” Howell said. “There’s no need for—”

“Fuck, man,” Walt was saying. “You fuckin’. . . I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you. You hear me?”

“Where is Lauren?” I said.

“But y’all have her, surely,” Howell said. “We do not.”

I looked at Walt. He nodded vigorously. “I swear it.”

“Did you kill Freddy and Margie?” I asked.

He didn’t say anything, just continued to squirm and squeal.

I pointed the gun at him again and thumbed back the trigger.

“Answer him,” Howell said. “Jesus. God. Just answer him.”

“I was just looking for Mrs. Lewis’s medical records,” Walt said. His breathing was erratic and forceful, his voice cracking from the pain. “All they had to do was give them up. The tramp went through a hell of a lot for nothing. They were easy to find. Right under one of the cushions of her davenport.”

“You followed me to her house,” I said.

He nodded.

“Why kill Cab?” I asked. “Wasn’t he working for you?”

“I didn’t kill him,” he said. “I thought the nigger did.”

“Why’d you have to kill July?” I asked.

“Your secretary?” he said. “I had nothing to do with that. I swear.”

I looked over at Howell.

He nodded. “He’s telling the truth.”

I thought about that for a moment—but just a moment, then I felt the barrel of a gun pressing against the base of my skull, and then
it
was all I could think about.

“Please be so kind as to drop your weapon and raise your hand above your head,” a soft, high male voice with an accent said. It was Rainer.

I didn’t move.

“I will shoot you, sir,” he said. “I’d prefer not to, but believe me when I tell you I will.”

“He will,” Ann Everett said, as she stepped around from behind me.

Her blonde hair was still flipped out at the bottom, but she wasn’t wearing her glasses. They had probably been a prop for the part she had been playing. Without her glasses, her green eyes appeared even smaller—or maybe it was the hardness in them.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “None of this is personal. It’s just politics. I don’t like it any more than you do, but we all gotta swim in the same pond.”

“You mean cesspool,” I said.

“You’re one to talk,” she said. “Don’t forget who started all this.”

“Sir, I really must insist you drop your gun.”

I did.

“And raise your hand.”

I did.

Rainer stepped out from behind me as Ann picked up my gun. His dark eyes were flat, seemingly lifeless, his face dull and expressionless. His dark, wavy hair was more wiry than before and stood higher off his head.

Howell stood up. “Walt, can you walk?”

“Yeah, boss,” he said. “I think I can.”

“Then get these people out of here,” he said.

“Whatta you want me to do with—”

“I don’t care,” he said. “I just don’t want to be involved and I don’t want to know.”

“How are you going to force Lewis out of the campaign without any evidence?”

“We have evidence,” Ann said. “We’re not—”

“You talkin’ about Lauren’s medical records that were hidden in the clock?”

Her eyes widened.

“What’s he talking about, Ann?” Howell asked.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Were they hidden in a clock?”

She nodded, still staring at me.

“In the house on Cherry,” I said. “Yeah.”

“He’s got them,” she said.

“Do I?” I asked. “Or do the cops?”

“Where are they?” Rainer asked.

“I’ll take you to them,” I said.

Walt laughed. “That’s rich. You’ll take us to them.” He looked at Howell. “I say we shoot him now and take our chances.”

“Fine,” he said. “Just don’t do it here.”

“I’ve already talked to Harry,” I said. “He’s not dropping out. He’s got the—”

I kicked Ann into Rainer and ran out of the room, one of them firing a shot at me that missed and shattered a floor lamp next to the archway.

Ducking into the foyer, I pulled out one of Walt’s guns and fired a round back into the room. I wasn’t trying to hit anyone, just discouraging them from following me—which must have worked because they didn’t.

“Give me the goddamn gun,” Walt yelled.

“Here. Take it,” Ann said.

“You gonna limp in here and shoot me?” I yelled.

I then fired two rounds into the room where they were and ran out the front door.

As I ran toward my car, I fired a few more rounds at the front door of Howell’s mansion. With Walt wounded, I wasn’t sure anyone would come after me. It’d be hard to imagine Everett, Howell, or Rainer chasing after me.