Hush Money (9 page)

I put the list aside and picked up the stack of
OUTrageous
magazines again and began to read. It was not pleasant. Whatever Prentice Lamont had been, he had not been a writer. His literary style was school newspaper gossip prose. It was twenty to two and I was on my third back issue of
OUTrageous,
when I came to an interview with “scholar/activist” Amir Abdullah about the problems he encountered as an African-American man who was also gay. The article added nothing to my understanding of the situation, but it did connect Prentice Lamont, already connected to Robinson Nevins by the
Out
list, to Amir Abdullah. It might mean nothing. They were after all also connected to the same university. It didn’t mean Robinson was gay. The
Out
list had been still researching the question. And if Robinson were gay it didn’t mean that he had been intimate with Prentice Lamont, and even if he had been, it didn’t mean he had thrown Prentice out the window. Still when the same names kept turning up, it sometimes meant something. And when nothing else meant anything, it was a thing to hang on to. The interview between Prentice and Amir could have been the source of the story which Amir had passed on to the tenure committee about a connection between Robinson Nevins and Prentice Lamont. Had Prentice asked Amir about Nevins in the course of the interview? Had Amir suggested Nevins to Prentice in the course of the interview? Could Amir have suggested Nevins for reasons of university politics? Could Amir have embroidered what he learned from Prentice for reasons of university politics? I was pretty sure that worse had been done in the service of university politics. And if any of it were true how did it connect to one of the few facts I had – which was that Prentice Lamont was dead, and he’d died with a quarter of a million dollars in the bank. I thought about the quarter million, which was a relief. Sexuality was a slippery devil. Greed you could get a handle on. Any time there’s money in a case, what do you do?

“Follow the money,” I said aloud, just as if I were the first person to have thought of that approach.

Even when there’s sex in the case too?

There’s always sex, what are cases about but sex and money.

“Follow the money,” I said again.

I pulled my phone over and called Mrs. Lamont.

“Would you call Maxwell T. Morgan at Hall, Peary,” I said, “and tell him that he may discuss your and Prentice’s account with me?”

“Why?” she said.

“I’m trying to help you find out how there came to be so much money,” I said. It wasn’t exactly untrue.

“If you think I should,” she said.

“I do,” I said, and gave her the phone number and made sure she had it right and got up and went out to see Prentice Lamont’s financial advisor at Hall, Peary.

Maxwell Morgan had a smaller office than Louis Vincent, two floors lower and in the middle of the building with a view of another building. He didn’t seem to mind. He was a big round blond cheerful healthy-looking guy with pink cheeks.

“Max Morgan,” he said. “Come on in.”

I sat across his desk from him in a moderately comfortable chair with arms. He had on the uniform – shirtsleeves and suspenders, his coat jacket hung neatly on a hanger on the back of his door.

“Care to invest in American Industry?” Morgan said.

“No.”

Morgan grinned. “Okay,” he said. “You got a thingamajig that says you’re a detective?”

I showed him my license.

“So what do you need?”

“You handled Prentice Lamont’s investments.”

“Yes.”

“Lamont is dead.”

“Yes, I know, poor devil killed himself, I understand.”

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“You don’t?”

“No, but that’s not our issue. What can you tell me about the quarter of a million he has invested with you.”

“Not much,” Morgan said. “Alive or dead Mr. Lamont is entitled to confidentiality.”

“Did Mrs. Lamont call you?”

Morgan smiled and nodded. “Just wanted to be sure it was you,” he said.

“I understand,” I said. “Lawyers.”

“You better believe it, the bastards took over Wall Street about five years ago.” Morgan shook his head sadly. “This business used to be fun,” he said.

“So,” I said. “Tell me about all this money that a twenty-three-year-old graduate student suddenly began investing in a management account.”

He swiveled his chair sideways and brought the file up on his computer.

“Cash,” he said. “Always in the amount of nine thousand.”

“Cash?”

“Well, bank checks.”

“Close enough,” I said. “What bank?”

“Endicott Trust,” Morgan said. “You don’t think he was a suicide?”

“No,” I said. “I think he was murdered.”

“Jesus,” Morgan said.

“Always the same bank?”

“Yes.”

“Always nine thousand dollars?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds like he was avoiding the cash reporting laws.”

“It does,” Morgan said.

“Would he have paid cash for the bank check?”

“Probably. I can call over there for you.”

“I’d appreciate it.”

While he called, I looked out the window of his office and into the window of the office across from his. There was a guy in shirtsleeves and suspenders on the phone and another guy looking out the window at me looking out the window at him. Was there a guy in shirtsleeves and suspenders talking on the phone on the other side of the building while another guy stared out the window at a guy in shirtsleeves… I shook my head and turned back to Morgan.

“Thank you, Bricky,” he said. “I owe you lunch.”

He hung up and turned to me.

“Cash money,” Morgan said. “In hundreds, ninety of them. Several times a week. Each time he’d get a bank check made out to him.”

“How often did he deposit with you?”

Morgan looked at his screen for a few moments.

“Averaged about twice a month.”

“So what did he do with the rest?”

“Wine, women, and song?” Morgan said.

“Probably not women,” I said.

Morgan shrugged.

“Cigarettes, whiskey, and wild, wild men?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “If he was going to spend it, why did he convert it to bank checks?”

“Maybe put it in his checking account.”

“Why not just deposit the cash?” I said.

Morgan shrugged.

“Hey, I’m a simple stockbroker,” he said. “You’re the fucking sleuth.”

“Thanks for reminding me,” I said. “Sometimes it’s hard to tell.”

“We must talk,” she said.

I unlocked my door. KC preceded me into the office. As soon as the door closed behind us, KC turned and pressed herself against me and put her arms around my neck and kissed me urgently.

“Kiss me back,” she murmured.

After a while she moved her mouth away and whispered, “Hold me.”

She moved her body against mine in several different directions. I had never figured out how women did that. On the other hand I’d never actually hugged a man. Maybe they did it too and I didn’t know it.

“I’ve wanted you since I saw you,” KC whispered.

“Don’t blame you,” I muttered.

“Put your hands on me.”

“They are on you.”

“They’re on my shoulders,” KC said.

“It’s a start,” I said.

She pushed against me more insistently. I would have said more insistent was not possible, but she managed. She bent her head back and looked up at me, and her lips brushed mine as she spoke.

“Have you ever made love in this office?” she said.

“No,” I said, “I was waiting to get a couch.”

“You could take me now, here, on the floor.”

“I think we’ve gone through this,” I said.

“Come on, you want to.”

“Of course I want to,” I said. “But I’m not going to.”

“You have to,” she said. “You have to.”

“You left your husband for a guy and didn’t end up with the guy,” I said. “You’re being stalked. You’re feeling shaky. You need affirmation, and here I am, the guy who’s going to rescue you from the stalker.”

“That’s just talk,” she said. “You’re a man and I’m a woman.”

There wasn’t much room to maneuver around that, so I left it alone. I didn’t have a lot of experience fighting for my virtue.

“You ever fuck Susan here?” she said, her face almost touching mine.

“I’m impressed,” I said. “The question is intrusive, annoying, coarse, and voyeuristic, that’s quite a lot to get into a simple question.”

“Well, did you? I’ll bet you didn’t. I’ll bet she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t want to do it in a chair,” KC’s voice got very flutey, “because it wouldn’t be ladylike. And she wouldn’t want to do it on the floor because she’d be afraid she’d mess her clothes.”

“Enough,” I said.

I took a somewhat firmer grip on her shoulders and walked her backward toward one of my client chairs. She thought I was succumbing. I could feel her shoulders relax. I sat her down in my client chair and held her there. She raised her face with her eyes closed and her mouth open.

“You and I are not going to have sex,” I said. “I don’t like that much better than you do, but it’s a fact.”

She reached out and began to rub my thigh. I slapped her hand. The action was involuntary, but effective. She pulled her hand away and burst into tears. I went around my desk feeling completely idiotic and sat down, and breathed in and out as quietly as I could. She cried for a little while and rubbed her hand where I’d slapped it.

“You hit me,” she said.

“Not very hard,” I said.

“It was too hard,” she said.

“Hard is in the eye of the beholder, I guess,” I said, and wished I hadn’t said it quite that way.

KC rubbed her hand some more, and sniveled a little. It didn’t seem to me like a good time to tell her that Louis Vincent was almost certainly the guy who was stalking her. Or that she was but one of a fairly long list of women he stalked. Perhaps there was another way to approach that problem.

Then she said, “I don’t understand you, most men would jump at the chance to fuck me.”

“Of course they would.”

“Don’t you think I’m beautiful?” KC said.

“Absolutely,” I said.

“As beautiful as poopie old Susan?”

“No less,” I said.

“You’re not even married to her.”

“I know,” I said.

“I need a man to hold me.”

“Maybe you just want one and think it’s need.”

“What’s that mean?”

I shrugged.

“Just a thing to say.”

“Well, I’ve been through hell,” KC said with a breathy sorrowful catch in her voice.

I nodded.

“And I don’t need a lot of holy-than-thou crap from some guy I’ve hired.”

“I think that’s holier,” I said, “holier than thou.”

“And don’t patronize me.”

Lucky I was a liberated guy and perfectly correct in my sexual attitudes or I might have said something under my breath about women.

“KC,” I said. “I’m trying, with some difficulty, and against most of my genetic programming, to avoid sex with you in a pleasant fashion. Maybe it can’t be done. Maybe the closest I can get to it is to patronize you.”

She sat and looked at me and thought about that. She was gorgeous. I knew virtue was its own reward, but sometimes I wondered if the same might be true of vice.

“So tell me about Susan,” she said. “What is it she does to make you like this?”

“It has to do with love, I think.”

“But how does she get you to do what she wants?”

“She doesn’t,” I said. “I want to do what she wants.”

“But she must do something.”

“What she does,” I said, “is she tries not to want me to do things I don’t want to do.”

“I’m serious,” KC said.

“Me too,” I said.

KC stared at me, she crossed her bare legs and stared some more. Finally she said, “I don’t get it.”

“No,” I said. “You don’t.”

“Hello there,” I said. Spenser, the genial gumshoe.

Vincent looked up.

“Oh, hi. Come on in, or, well, you are in, aren’t you.”

“I bring you greetings,” I said, “from KC Roth, and Meredith Teitler, and a woman in Hingham whose name I do not know, but whose significant other is a large fierce man named Al who says he will remove your head if he ever encounters you.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Vincent said.

“Don’t dick around with this, Vincent. You’ve stalked a number of women in the past and you are stalking KC Roth currently.”

He got to his feet.

“You’re crazy,” he said.

I walked around the corner of his desk and put a good short left hook in under his rib cage on the right side. He gasped and staggered back, and began flailing at me with both hands. He was so inept that his fists weren’t fully closed and if he’d hit me it would have been more of a slap than anything else. But he didn’t hit me. It had been a long time since somebody who punched like he did had hit me. I hit him again, same punch, same place, and he gasped again.

Then he hollered, “Betty.”

I punched him in the solar plexus with my right hand and he sagged. He tried to yell Betty again but he had too little breath. Behind me the door opened.

A woman’s voice said, “My God.”

“Call cops,” Vincent gasped.

I stepped away. He tried to straighten up, still struggling to get air in, and I clipped him on the jaw with a good professional right cross and he sat down hard on the floor and stayed there.

“Stop it,” Betty screamed, “stop it.”

“Done,” I said.

Betty turned and ran toward her desk. Vincent was staring at me from the floor. He was about half functional.

“Can you understand me?” I said.

He nodded.

“If anything even slightly annoying, anything at all happens to KC Roth, ever again, I will come back and knock every tooth out of your head.”

He continued to stare.

“And maybe I’ll tell Al where you are.” I could see that he heard me.

“You understand that?” I said.

He nodded very slightly. He was very pale, and he kept himself rigid as if any movement would make him disintegrate.

“Feel free to explain to the cops why I punched you,” I said and turned and walked out of his office.

Betty had hung up the phone. When she saw me she pointed me out to a couple of vigorous-looking young guys who were probably good at squash.

“That’s him,” she said. “Don’t let him get away.”

I didn’t feel like instructing them in the difference between scuffling and squash, so I smiled at them courteously and opened my coat so they could see that I was wearing a gun.

“Let him get away,” I said.

Which they did.