Buried Secrets (9 page)

She was on her feet, looking for her keycard and her house keys. “What the hell did we just do?” she said, not looking at me.

“What we just did—I don’t know, but—”

“I’ll let you know if I get anything back on that iPhone,” she said.

“Let me drive you back.”

Suddenly she was all business. She shook her head and said firmly, “My car’s right here.” It felt like jumping out of a sauna into four feet of snow.

20.

Next, I drove over to the foot of Beacon Hill and pulled into the circular drive in front of the Graybar Hotel, the last place I knew Alexa had been.

You’d think most people would feel uneasy about spending the night in a hotel that used to be a prison. But the developers of the Graybar had done a remarkable job of converting the old Boston House of Corrections. It was once a grim, hulking, black monstrosity, filthy and overcrowded, the riots legendary. When Roger and I were kids and Mom drove us on Storrow Drive past the prison, we used to try to catch a glimpse of the inmates in their cell windows.

Personally, I don’t believe that buildings store negative energy, but the developers wanted to be safe, so they brought in a group of Buddhist monks to burn sage and chant prayers and cleanse the place of any bad karma.

The monks seemed to have missed a spot, though. The negative energy at the front desk was so thick I felt like pointing a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol at the supercilious front-desk clerk just to get his attention. He seemed to be caught up in a conversation about
Jersey Shore
with a female desk clerk. Plus the music in the lobby was ear-splittingly loud.

Fortunately, my weapon was in my gun safe at the office.

I cleared my throat. “Can someone call Naji, please? Tell him it’s Nick Heller.” Naji was the hotel’s security director.

The guy sullenly picked up his phone and spoke softly into it. “He’ll be up soon,” he said.

He had artfully messy hair with a lot of gel in it. His hair half covered his eyes. He had groovy day-old facial stubble. He wore a black suit that was too tight and too short in the arms, with high armholes and lapels about half an inch wide, like he’d borrowed it from Pee-wee Herman.

I stood at the desk, waiting. He went back to arguing about Snooki and The Situation. He noticed me out of the corner of his eye and turned around again, saying with annoyance, “Um, it might be a while?”

So I strolled through the lobby. I saw a sign for Slammer in a brass standing frame holder in front of an ancient-looking elevator. I took the elevator to the fourth floor and looked around.

Flat-screen TVs mounted on the brick walls, all tuned to the same Fox News show. Celebrity mug shots on the walls, too—Jim Morrison, Michael Jackson, O. J. Simpson, Janis Joplin, Eminem, even Bill Gates when he was a teenager. Everyone but my father, it seemed.

Leather couches and banquettes. A very long bar. Lights in the floors. A black iron railing around an atrium three stories high. At night this place was probably impressive, but in the unforgiving light of day it was drab and disappointing, like a magician’s stage props seen up close.

There were a fair number of security cameras, mostly the standard low-profile shiny black domes mounted on the ceiling. A few were camouflaged as spotlights—you could tell because the “bulbs,” actually camera lenses, were a different color. The ones behind the bar were there to discourage employees from pilfering cash or stealing bottles. The cameras in the lounge area were more discreetly concealed, probably because the bar patrons might have gotten uncomfortable if they knew their every embarrassing move was being recorded. Though it occurred to me that closed-circuit cameras worked perfectly with the prison décor.

When I returned to the front desk, a very good-looking dark-haired guy was waiting for me. Classic Arab facial features: olive complexion, dark eyes, a prominent nose. He wore the same Pee-wee Herman suit, but he’d shaved and combed his hair.

He smiled as I approached. “Mr. Heller?”

“Thanks for meeting me, Naji,” I said.

“Mr. Marcus is a very good friend of the Graybar,” he said. “Anything I can do, please, I am at your service.” Marshall Marcus was not just a “friend” of the hotel’s but one of the original, and biggest, investors. He’d called ahead, as I’d asked.

Naji produced an oblong key fob with a BMW logo at the center: the keyless entry fob to Marcus’s four-year-old M3. This was the “junker” he’d given Alexa to drive. Attached to the keychain was a valet ticket stub.

“Her car was left in our underground parking garage. If you wish, I will take you there myself.”

“So she never claimed the car?”

“Apparently not. I made sure no one touched the vehicle, in case you needed to run prints.”

The guy was clearly experienced. “The police might,” I said. “Any idea what time she valeted the car?”

“Of course, sir,” Naji said, and he took out a valet ticket. This was a typical five-part perforated form. The bottom two sections were gone, one presumably handed to Alexa when she’d dropped the car off. Each remaining section was time-stamped 9:37. That was the time Alexa had arrived at the Graybar and given her dad’s BMW to the valet.

“I’d like to look at the surveillance video,” I said.

“In the parking garage, do you mean? Or at the valet station?”

“Everywhere,” I said.

THE GRAYBAR’S security command center was a small room in the business offices in the back. It was outfitted with twenty or so wall-mounted monitors showing views of the exterior, the lobby, the kitchen, the halls outside the restrooms. A chunky guy with a goatee was sitting there, watching the screens. Actually, he was reading the
Boston Herald
, but he hastily put it down when Naji entered.

“Leo,” Naji said, “can you pull up last night’s video feeds from cameras three through five?”

Naji and I stood behind Leo as he clicked a mouse and opened several windows on a computer screen.

“Start from around nine thirty,” I said.

There seemed to be at least three cameras positioned in the valet area in front of the hotel.

The video footage was digital and sharp. As Leo advanced the frames at double and triple speed, the cars pulled up faster and faster. Guests zipped out of their cars at a Keystone Kops pace, touching their hair, patting their jackets. At nine thirty-five a black BMW parked and Alexa got out.

The valet handed her a ticket, and Alexa joined a long line waiting to get into the lobby as the valet drove off with her car.

“Can we zoom in?” I said.

I often enjoy looking at surveillance video. It’s like being in an episode of
CSI
.

Unfortunately, in real life, when you enlarge part of a video on a computer monitor, you don’t hear any whooshing sounds or high-pitched beeping.

On TV and in the movies, all techies have an amazing ability to zoom in on a fuzzy image and magically sharpen it using some mythical digital enhancement “algorithm” so they can read the label on a prescription bottle reflected in someone’s eye or something.

Leo wasn’t that good.

He moved the mouse, clicked a few keys. I saw Alexa hugging another girl who was already in line.

Taylor Armstrong.

They began talking animatedly, touching each other’s sleeves the way girls do, occasionally glancing around, maybe scoping out some guy.

“Can we follow her into the hotel?” I asked.

“Of course. Leo, pull up nine and twelve,” Naji said.

From another angle, just inside the lobby, I could see the girls approach the elevator. The image was fairly smooth. Probably the standard thirty frames per second.

Then the elevator doors came open and the two girls got in. Abruptly, Alexa got out.

Taylor remained.

Alexa was claustrophobic. She couldn’t bear to be in enclosed spaces, especially elevators.

“Ah,” I said. “I want to see where that one’s going, the one who didn’t get in the elevator.”

From another camera, probably mounted in the ceiling of the second floor, I watched Alexa climb the stairs.

Another camera showed her arriving at the fourth-floor bar, where she met up with Taylor.

“I like to take the stairs too,” Naji said helpfully. “It’s good exercise.” We continued watching as they found some chairs. For a long stretch, nothing much happened. The bar got increasingly crowded. A waitress in a skimpy outfit, her boobs almost popping out of her low-cut bra, took their order. The girls talked.

A guy approached.

“Move in on this,” Naji said to Leo. Now he was joining the effort.

The guy had his shirttails untucked. He looked to be in his early twenties. Blond, ruddy face, an overbite. He sure didn’t look Spanish. Alexa smiled, but Taylor didn’t look at him.

After a few seconds, he left. I actually felt sorry for the kid.

The girls kept talking. They laughed, and I surmised it was about the guy with the untucked shirt.

“You can fast-forward,” I said.

Leo clicked on 3x mode, and the video sped up. Fast, jerky movements like in an old silent film. Laugh drink, laugh drink, smile. Alexa took out something and held it up. A phone, maybe? An iPhone, I realized. Taking a picture, probably.

No: She held it near her mouth. Taylor laughed. They were playing around. Taylor grabbed it, and she too put it to her mouth. They laughed again. Taylor handed it back, and Alexa put the phone into a front pocket of her leather blazer. I made a mental note of that.

Another guy approached. This one was dark-haired. Mediterranean, maybe Italian, maybe Spanish. This time the girls both smiled. Their body language was open; they looked at him, smiled. They were more receptive. This was a side to Taylor I hadn’t seen—no sullen pout.

Lively and animated.

“Is there a different angle on this?” I said.

Leo opened another window on his monitor, and then I could see the man’s face in profile. He zoomed in for a close-up.

Spanish or Portuguese. Maybe South American. In any case, a handsome guy. He appeared to be in his early to mid thirties. Well groomed, expensively dressed.

The guy pulled a chair over and sat down, apparently having been invited. He signaled for a waitress.

“This man, he comes here often,” Naji said.

I turned to him. “Oh?”

“I recognize him. The regular patrons, I get to know their faces.”

“What’s his name?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

He was withholding something.

I turned back to the monitor. The guy and the two girls were talking and laughing. The waitress came, took their drink orders. They talked and laughed some more. The girls seemed to be enjoying his company.

The man was sitting next to Taylor, but didn’t pay her much attention. He was much more interested in Alexa. He kept leaning toward her, conversing with her, barely giving Taylor a glance.

Interesting, I thought. Taylor was at least as pretty as Alexa, if sluttier-looking; Alexa seemed somehow more elegant, pure.

But Alexa’s father was a billionaire.

Yet how would he know that—unless he’d picked out his target in advance?

The drinks came, served in big martini glasses.

They drank some more, and after a while both girls got up. The man remained at the table by himself. He looked around the bar idly.

“Can we follow the girls?” I said.

Leo switched to an already open window, made it bigger. The girls were walking together, holding on to each other, both looking a little tipsy.

“Keep on them,” I said.

Leo made the window on the computer screen bigger still. I watched them enter the ladies’ room.

“No cameras inside the restrooms?” I asked.

Naji smiled. “That’s illegal, sir.”

“I know. But I had to ask.”

Then something in the other computer window caught my eye. The camera in which you could see the Latin man sitting alone.

He was doing something.

In one quick motion, he reached out a hand and slid Alexa’s half-full martini glass across the table toward himself.

“What the hell?” I said. “Enlarge this window, could you?”

Once Leo did so, we could see everything he was doing. The man slipped his right hand into his jacket. He glanced around. Then, nonchalantly, he dropped something into Alexa’s martini glass.

He took the swizzle stick from his own drink and stirred hers, apparently dissolving whatever he’d just put in. Then he pushed her cocktail back in front of Alexa’s place.

The whole process took around ten seconds, maybe fifteen.

“Oh, God,” I said.

21.

“He put something in her drink,” Naji said.

I guess someone had to speak the obvious.

“Betcha it’s Special K,” Leo said. “Or Liquid X.”

In the other window on the monitor, the girls emerged from the restroom, walked down the hall, and returned to their table.

Alexa took a drink.

More laughter, more conversation. A few minutes later, Taylor stood up, said something.

Alexa looked upset, but the guy didn’t. Taylor left.

Alexa stayed.

She drank some more, and the two of them laughed and talked.

It was only a few minutes before Alexa began to exhibit signs of serious intoxication. It wasn’t just the alcohol. She slumped back in her chair, her head lolled to one side, smiling gamely. But she looked sick.

The man signaled again for the waitress, then seemed to think better of it. Instead, he pulled out a billfold, put down some cash, then helped Alexa to her feet. She looked as if she could barely stand on her own.

“Cash,” I said, mostly to myself.

But Naji understood. “He always pays in cash.”

“That’s why you don’t know his name?”

He nodded, started to speak, but hesitated.

“You know something.”

“I can’t say for sure, but I think he may be a dealer.”

“Drugs.”

Naji nodded. He quickly added, “But he never deals here. Never. If he ever did, we would ban him.”

“Of course.”

This wasn’t good.

Now the Spanish guy turned back, took Alexa’s handbag from the floor, then walked her toward the elevator. He pushed the button. She hung on his arm. A minute later the elevator arrived and they got in.