Palm Beach Nasty (10 page)

“Tell you the truth, Avery, I like beautiful views and happy stuff.”

Nick assumed he meant bad landscapes and Norman Rockwell.

“How ’bout that one in the library . . . the big white house?”

Alcie squinted as he thought.

“You know, the one next to the samurai sword collection,” Nick said.

But Alcie couldn’t seem to place it.

“I can’t say I remember that one.”

Christ, how could he miss it? Right in the middle of the goddamn room, above the massive coquina fireplace. Nick was delighted, though. The fact that Alcie was not even slightly observant.

Nick let it go and Alcie quietly excused himself to go polish the silverware.

Nick spent the next hour going from painting to painting.

He was looking at his future and it was very, very rosy.

FOURTEEN

R
ose Clarke, the big blonde broker in the black Jag convertible, left a message for Crawford a few days after he rousted the squatter couple from Buffalo. He had no idea why she called, but he called her back and they kept missing each other. They were in the fifth inning of a game of telephone tag.

Rose was in her car showing houses to two men when her cell rang. She looked down at the number.

“Can you excuse me?” she said to the man in the passenger seat.

The man nodded.

“Finally, we connect,” she said.

“Hi, Rose, sorry ’bout that,” Crawford said.

“No prob, I know you’re a busy man. Just wanted to tell you something that might be helpful. About somebody . . . you might have an interest in.”

That was a little too murky for Crawford.

“Let’s talk now,” he said.

Rose checked her watch.

“I can’t right this minute, I’m showing houses to a couple of gentlemen. How’s one thirty?”

“Perfect. I’ll come by your office.”

Donnie, the man in the back seat of Rose’s Jag, assumed that when she said, “a couple of gentlemen,” to whoever it was she was talking to, that was code for a couple of gaybos. Tutti fruttis, Donnie called them. He noticed Palm Beach seemed to have more than its share. Toned guys with short hair, wearing stylish clothes and fancy shoes.

He listened as Rose hung up, then came back to the two questions that had been bugging him: One, why was this woman—supposedly Palm Beach’s most high-powered broker—taking customers around jammed into a space the size of a glove compartment? Not that Donnie minded convertibles. He liked the wind in his face way better than air conditioning. But he was six four. What was he supposed to do with his legs? Amputate the suckers? Of course, his partner, Fulbright—all five foot three of him, got the front seat.

On cue, Rose swiveled and looked back at Donnie.

“You okay back there?”

He nodded. Her lips were like big fluffy pillows.

“I normally take the Range Rover when I have more than one client, but I had a little car trouble.”

What did you expect? Donnie thought. It was a goddamn Range Rover. Only cars that had more problems were Jags.

“What was wrong with it?” he asked.

“Something to do with the catyliptic connector.”

Donnie’s specialties were guns, cars and hookers.

“Sure you don’t mean catalytic converter?”

“Yeah . . . I guess that’s it.”

Donnie’s second question was, why was this woman who sold $40 million pads on the ocean, schlepping around a couple of guys looking at fixer-uppers on marginal north end streets? Donnie suspected Fulbright had touched someone up for a favor. The guy liked to exploit the leverage of his profession.

Donnie—the antithesis of a Palm Beacher, if there ever was one—was wearing cargo pants and a blue jean jacket with cutoff sleeves. He was an ex-army sergeant with dirty blond hair that he wore on the slightly long—decidedly unmilitary—side. He thought he bore a striking resemblance to Michael Douglas in his
Streets of San Francisco
prime, but Fulbright told him he was deluding himself. More like Nick Nolte in
Down and Out in Beverly Hills
.

Fulbright, sitting erect in the front seat, was chatting up the broker.

He was a skinny guy, forty years old, with a leather jacket and beady eyes that darted around like rats in a cage. He had a left to right comb-over, a 150 IQ and big feet. His real name was Roy Rozzetti, but back when he and Donnie hooked up fifteen years ago, he told Donnie he was a former Fulbright scholar who had “lost his way.” Donnie had no idea what a Fulbright scholar was, but knew all about losing one’s way. He liked the name, Fulbright, and from then on that’s what he called the squirrelly little guy. The two had been a good team because—as is often the case with partnerships—one was the thinker, the other, the doer.

Donnie listened to Rose go on about how the last house they looked at had really good “bones.” To him it was a dump with low ceilings and a lousy kitchen—the whole thing would have cost about $350,000 in his Lake Worth neighborhood, instead of $1.9 million here. No way could he picture Fulbright in Palm Beach anyway, unless there was a section of town for psychotic geniuses in black jeans which ballooned out over toothpick legs. Rose was now on a street about as far north as you could go, telling them there were “better values here due to geographic challenges.”

Donnie knew that meant it was a shitty location.

Donnie figured Fulbright’s biggest challenge was going to be his bank. It was next to impossible for anybody—in this busted economy—to get a mortgage. And here was Fulbright, a shifty-eyed ferret, who couldn’t even show the Wells Fargo banker a pay stub. His only hope was seller financing, even though he probably had a sizable wad of cash stowed away in some can in his backyard. Fact was, Fulbright never spent a nickel on anything except Sudoku books and cheap leather jackets that looked like they were made out of Naugahyde.

Donnie heard Rose ask Fulbright if he was a golfer. He almost lost it. Did the guy
look
like a fucking golfer? Bony, short dude with huge pointy shoes. He made that guy Rodney whatever in
Caddyshack
look like Arnold Palmer. Fulbright resembled an aging jockey who never got out in the sun.

“I don’t play much anymore,” Fulbright said, straight-faced, to Rose, “used to shoot in the low eighties—”

Right, thought Donnie, you mean your bowling score.

Rose nodded and kept her eyes on the road.

“What is it you do, Mr. Fulbright?”

No hesitation whatsoever.

“I trade futures . . . Chicago Merc.”

Donnie loved it. If he didn’t know better, he would have bought it. The guy was pretty damn convincing.

Last time someone asked Fulbright what he did, he said he was the southern district sales manager of Dick’s Sporting Goods. Went on about the Nike and Body Armor reps always hawking him for better display locations. Guy had a real knack.

Fulbright turned to Rose.

“You trading us in, Rose . . . for some other guy?”

“Oh, no, you got me for as long as you want. Thing is the next house is kind of a dog. I predict we’re in and out in two minutes.”

Donnie leaned forward from the backseat.

“So who is the lucky guy?” he asked.

“The man who called?” she asked. “Oh, he’s a policeman, a detective actually . . . working on that murder on the south end.”

“I heard about that,” Donnie said, “a guy got
hung
?”

Rose shuddered, then nodded.

“That’s a tough way to go . . . can’t imagine one human being doing that to another one,” Donnie said.

C
RAWFORD EYED
the two guys climbing out of Rose’s convertible. That was one thing you had to love about Palm Beach. You could never tell when some bearded schlepper in sandals and bad shorts could turn out to be the owner of a couple hundred 7-Elevens. Or the opposite, when some George Hamilton-looking dude in an ascot and double-breasted blazer might be down to his last stock coupon.

But these two guys . . . like Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight in that old movie. Or two down-and-out shit bums hitching around the country. Or maybe a couple of homeless guys who wintered in Florida so they wouldn’t freeze their asses off in their refrigerator box up north.

He watched them amble off. Christ . . . it was impossible to get a handle on people in Palm Beach. Place sure kept you guessing.

Crawford walked into Rose Clarke’s real estate office. She was wearing a shiny silver skirt and a long-sleeved blue shirt and had on big sunglasses with Cs on them, more like goggles. Somehow she pulled it off, though. She took him into the conference room and closed the door. They warmed up with a few minutes of small talk, then she rocked him with her bombshell about Ward Jaynes.

FIFTEEN

E
ven with everything going on, Crawford had thought about Lil a lot. Her “bad patch.” The booze, drugs, sexual decadence . . . things she, no doubt, felt really shitty about. Like maybe a whole year where she’d like to have a complete do-over.

Then he thought about several chapters in his own life he would have liked to edit out. Things he did that he wished he’d never done.

Then he realized it wasn’t about what Lil had done at Ward Jaynes’s house at all.

No, it was simply that he didn’t love her. Never had. Never would.

If he loved her, he could have gotten past the Jaynes stuff because he honestly believed that wasn’t really her. That was just her at rock bottom.

Fact was, he was just staying in the relationship because it was easy. And, yes, because the sex was good.

But it wasn’t fair to her if the whole thing wasn’t going anywhere. With everything she had to offer, she could find a guy who would worship her.

He decided to end it.

H
E CALLED
her up and offered to buy her a drink at a place on Clematis in West Palm that night. She accepted but he could tell she knew something was up.

Their drinks came. Lil took a long gulp.

He got right to it.

“Lil, I just don’t think I’m the right guy for you.”

She took another pull.

“Okay, Charlie . . . so tell me what you
really
think.”

This was right up there with death notifications.

“I don’t know . . . we’re just so different. You should be going out with some guy who’s got more time to spend with you . . . who likes to go to parties and stuff.”

He was picturing a guy with red pants who said “iconic” a lot.

“That is just so pathetic,” she said, killing her drink, then standing and wiping her mouth with the white cloth napkin. “That you think I should be out there chasing party boys with no jobs. I mean,
really, Charlie
?
Are you fucking serious?
”

“Lil, I just mean—”

“Have a nice life, Charlie.” She stormed out of the room.

He had pictured a much longer conversation.

Good job, Charlie, he thought.

Real smooth.

SIXTEEN

“S
o come on, spill the beans . . . what’d the broker have to say?” Ott asked, across from Crawford in his office.

It was seven forty-five at night. Crawford was still kicking himself about his totally inept handling of the abrupt Lil breakup.

“You almost don’t want to know, Mort.”

“You kidding? ’Course, I do. Tell me.”

“I swear, it’s a real kick in the nuts.”

Ott looked at Crawford and smiled.

“Hey, Charlie, it’s me, a jaded fifty-one-year-old who’s fuckin’ heard it all.”

Crawford got up, closed his door and sat down opposite Ott.

“It’s about Jaynes.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

“That broker, Rose . . . she’s like wired into everything.”

“Okay, so what’d she say?”

“She told me a bunch of stuff about Jaynes, none of it real flattering. But one thing that happened like five years ago you won’t believe. Supposedly Jaynes and a buddy of his went over to Bangkok . . . Thailand.”

“Yeah, Charlie, I know where Bangkok is.”

“Long story short, they’re over there to have sex with girls . . . really young girls.”

Ott brushed his nose, like he got a whiff of something rancid.

“Fuckin’ sicko . . . but, hey, we already knew that.”

“What happens is, he adopts these girls. Four of ’em, to be exact.”