The Butcher's Granddaughter (21 page)

Parenti
appeared thinner in the charcoal three-piece than he had in the photo with Josephine, but was still a stocky fellow who looked like he could shake off a good punch. The lack of gray in his thinning hair didn’t have the sheen of a dye job, and the tan shaved five years off his looks, putting him somewhere in his mid-forties, looking thirty-eight. His face was fleshy, with thick lips and jowls, bushy eyebrows and small, sad eyes. Take away the tan, the suit, and the gold on his digits, and you’d have a middle-aged garbage man in the Bronx.

He pushed his thick fingers into the glass edge of his desk and said, “Now, who do I make you go tell that Ben Parenti throws the little ones back?”

I dusted the comment off and said, “I know someone you know. And I have something you want.”

He smiled like he’d been here before. “Give it your best shot.”

I reached into my shirt and pulled out a business envelope. “Never make the mistake of buying someone and thinking they’ll stay bought, Mr. Parenti. I live with those people. They stay bought until the market price goes up.” I slapped the envelope in front of him. “As a lawyer, I thought you would know that.”

He stared at it without touching it.

“Go ahead. Open it.”

He slowly pulled out the print of himself on the yacht and held it in front of his face. Then he grunted and made a funny motion under the desk blotter. When he lowered the photo he had gone ashen under his tan and was pointing a small .22 automatic at my face. The hand he held it with shook a little.

“A gun,” I said matter-of-factly. I leaned forward and reached behind me. “Look, I’ve got one, too. Which one do you think’ll make a bigger hole?” I held the .45 loosely, not pointed in any specific direction.

His eyes shifted back and forth between the two pieces. I helped him make up his mind.

“Guns are nasty things. I don’t like to use them myself, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know how. Which way do you want to settle it?”

He sighed heavily, put the little shooter back in some drawer I couldn’t see, and put his face in his hands over the photo. “Where did you get this?” he mumbled through his fingers.

“Again, unimportant. Suffice to say, it wasn’t cheap. Suffice also to say, that I have the only negative copy, so don’t worry about that right now. Worry about telling me about Josephine.”

“Josephine who?”

“King. Josephine King. Your fucking girlfriend.”

“I’ve never heard that name before. And my fiancée’s name is Ione.”

I flashed on the initials, “I.J.,” that Gene had said were inscribed on the ring she wore next to the engagement piece. For some reason, I chose the direct approach. “Mr. Parenti, I’ve had two goons from somebody’s heavy squad following me for two days, maybe more. Last night they wanted to kill me and almost did. I want to know why everybody’s after the one guy who doesn’t know what’s going on.”

“I’m not after you,” he said uselessly. It was an odd thing to say.

“No, but the circumstances that brought us together mean that you’re involved. Maybe, like me, you don’t exactly know how. Or why.” There was a pause, during which I noticed the wet bar again. “You need a drink? I do.”

He waved a hand. I got up and poured us both scotches, put water in mine, left his straight. He shot it down.

“The way I see it is this,” I said, getting comfortable again. The scotch was very old and very good. “We can help each other and we can hurt each other. What I’m after I’ll get somewhere else if not here. It’s kind of up to you. But don’t take that photograph as anything other than a threat. That’s exactly what it is. All I want is information. If I get it, I’m gone. If not, that picture goes to some major and embarrassingly thorough newspapers.” His eyes flicked around the room as if someone was going to jump out from behind a book and kill me. “You can start from the beginning.”

He sighed again, deciding to give me a little line. “Alright. I started seeing Cynthia’s girls about three years ago. Eventually I worked my way through most of the girls, and then one day last year I met Ione. I honestly didn’t know that wasn’t her name. She told me it was Ione Jinn. I know the girls don’t use their real names, but I didn’t care.” He paused meaningfully. “I think I was in love as soon as I saw her.”

He looked up like that should have had some effect on me. It didn’t. He hadn’t seen her in the morgue.

“You were in love,” I said without emotion. “You buy her the rock she’s got on her finger?”

“Yes. And asked her to marry me.” His eyes suddenly cleared. “Are you from that fucking skunk McMeyers!? That cheap bastard! Whatever he’s paying you, I’ll double it.”

I sat silently for a minute as if I were considering his offer. It took me a minute, but I got it. “He must be your wife’s divorce attorney. You still married, Mr. Parenti?”

He squared up the corners of the photo with the edge of his desk. It seemed to be bothering him less and less. “Yes. For twelve years.”

“Planning on a life of bigamy?”

He tapped the photo. “This only buys you so much disrespect, you little scrap of shit. Don’t push it. The divorce is in the works. It’s only a matter of time. She’s a socialite and doesn’t give a damn about anything as long as she gets a comfortable settlement, which I’m more than happy to bestow in exchange for having her out of my life.”

“A shrew for a hooker. Doesn’t seem like a good trade to me. How come you bounced so hard for the redhead?”

He shrugged, frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe she gave me what I needed. What my ‘shrew,’ as you so aptly put it, couldn’t.”

“Or wouldn’t.”

“Call me a pedophile. She’s a nice girl. She didn’t belong with that whore Cynthia.”

It suddenly occurred to me that his secretary hadn’t told him that Josephine was dead. I didn’t quite know what to do with that. I stabbed. “Did she ever mention anyone whose last name was Nguyen?”

He shook his head. “No.”

I was tired of threatening him with the photo, so I pursed my lips and tried to think of something I hadn’t asked him.

“I want you to know,” he started, filling space, “that if it was your purpose to come here and frighten me, you’ve done a stupendous job. However, I was wondering if you’d gotten enough information to turn those pictures over to me. As I said, I’m more than happy to give my wife a healthy settlement, but neither do I want to give her any more ammunition than she already has.”

“Not yet. What did Ione say when you asked her to marry you?”

“She said yes. But she said there was something she had to take care of first. There’s no easy way off that ship. I assumed it was some underhanded way to sneak away in the middle of the night.”

“How long ago was this?”

“It would have been a week today. She told me to meet her here, tomorrow, and we’d be off. To get married, I mean.” He looked longingly at the scotch. I got up and poured him another sock. He took this one in two, slowing down.

A week ago. Wednesday. The same night I spent saving the life of a little lost prostitute. “She would have had to buy her way off,” I said. “Any idea how she would do that? She must have been making money, but not enough to buy off future value from Cynthia Ming. Unless you were maybe helping her.”

If he knew anything, he hid it well. He shook his head and then we sat in silence. I thought up questions while noticing that he had taken an interest in the clock. “Did she have any friends that you knew of?”

He stared at the empty highball glass like it was a crystal ball. “Girlfriends, I assume. None of her johns were close to her...not like I was. I never saw her around anyone else, but I never saw her except on the
Azure Mosaic
.”

“Did she keep company with any girl more than the others? You know, seem to prefer hanging out with one or two?”

“No...wait, yes. Come to think of it, there was a blond. Tall girl, very pretty—I mean, they all were—I can’t remember her name. The name she used, that is.”

I nodded toward his desk. “She in the photo?”

He studied it. “No. Not obviously. There’s a lot of girls facing away from the camera.”

He sat there fingering the photograph while I stared at him. He’d tripped over his own tongue, but I’d be damned if I could see where. Maybe he was, after all, just a john caught in a bad place. There was only one thing left to do, so I played my hole card. “Mr. Parenti, I have some bad news for you. Josephine King, the girl you know as Ione, is dead. She has been since the day after she agreed to marry you.”

There were several possible reactions to that, but I didn’t think panic was one of them. The blood drained out his face and he clawed open the drawer for the little .22. I was over the desk with my piece out and a hand on his throat before he could even touch it. “Close it, fucker, close it!” I almost yelled, pushing the .45’s barrel against his forehead. He was shaking and almost crying. “Now back off.”

I relaxed my grip on his throat as he pushed himself backward away from the desk. With my free hand I opened the drawer and took out the little gun and tossed it behind me. Lorena’s voice suddenly came over the intercom. “Mr. Parenti, is everything alright? Should I call the police?”

I hit the reply button and said, “Only if you want a bigger mess than you’ve already got.”

Parenti
said, with haunting clarity, “Everything is fine, Ms. Vaccotti.” The empty click of the intercom echoed through the office.

His eyes seemed to clear a little as I backed off from the desk. He was suddenly very interested in the picture again. He rolled back up to the desk and leaned over and peered at the upper left corner. There was something almost eerie in his demeanor, like he’d suffered a personality shift. “That blonde?” he suggested, still looking at the photo.

“The one that Josephine hung out with?”

He nodded. “Right here. Coming out of the cabin. It’s a little blurry, but I’m sure that’s her.” He pushed the photo across the desk at me, his finger on the surface where I was supposed to look.

The girl was in motion, her blonde hair a gold haze as it whipped around her head, the white cotton sundress framed in the darkness of a cabin doorway. She was bringing a blurred hand up to her face, probably to sweep her hair away. If the picture had been taken a split-second later, her hand would have killed any chance of identifying her. But there was no mistaking the face.

Coming out onto the deck of the
Azure Mosaic
, in perfect three-quarter profile, was Denise Waterston.

This time he got to watch the blood drain from my face. I managed, “But how did—”

And then the fire alarm went off.

Chapter 14

I stood up casually and said, “Fire escape?”

He paused. I pointed the .45 at his mouth.

“Panel door right of the elevator,” he said quickly.

I made a couple of steps toward the door, picked up the little pistol on the carpet and emptied it, dropping the piece and keeping the shells. Then I spun back, pulling the envelope containing the negatives out of my coat, along with my Zippo. “Almost forgot. Never let it be said I welsh on a deal.” I touched the flame to a corner of the manila and dropped it in front of him, leaving him behind his desk trying to find something to smother the fire with.

The concrete and steel fire stairs were a Spartan contrast to the Sterling Plaza’s lush interior. I crept slowly down two flights to the fifth floor and froze on the landing as the alarm suddenly died in mid-shriek. A tiny squeak echoed up the stairwell. Another brief wait brought the clatter of stiff-soled shoes making their way up the stairs, pausing now and then, punctuated by the sound of locks being tested and doors opening and closing. They tap-danced up the metal stairs, checking the building floor-by-floor. I waited for the next door-squeak and matched it, popping through the fifth-floor fire door and into a hallway full of unoccupied suites that smelled of fresh paint and new carpet. Shiny new doors with brass levers for handles lined the wall opposite a bank of elevators. I eased the fire door shut and listened to my breath echo quietly through the hallway.

Another door was tested, and I could feel the vibrations of feet one floor below.

I trained the .45’s frontsight at chest level and backed down the hall, testing doors. They were all unlocked, all closed. I left them that way. When I got to the elevator bank, I pressed the brushed brass call button, then leaned across and pushed the heavy oak door to the empty suite directly opposite. It floated open silently on my left. On my right, a chime went off and the elevator doors yawned at me. I quickly reached inside and pressed the button for the lobby, blocking the elevator doors with a foot. I took a deep breath and held it.

The fire door became crystal clear as my concentration razored in over the pistol’s sights. The first thing anybody who opened that fire exit would see was a man holding a gun at their chest, about to get into that elevator at all costs.

My patience wasn’t tested. No sooner had the elevator door started to fight against my foot than the stairwell suddenly gaped open. No one was standing there. A split-second later an Asian head the size of a beachball and with as much hair, peeked around the jamb. I put three slugs through the doorway and one into the wall where I estimated the beachball would be, and tumbled to my left into the empty suite.

I spun around prone on the ground and brushed the door shut with my gun hand as a volley of bullets and Vietnamese tore through the hallway. Then suddenly it was quiet.

I lay prone in the dim afternoon light of the office, pistol trained up at the middle of the door, and waited. Across the hall, the bell chimed and the elevator slid shut. That was the cue.

Two whispering voices crept down the hall. Through the crack beneath the door I watched two pairs of expensive wingtips stop with their heels toward me, watching to see which way the elevator went. They grunted to each other and scrambled away. I dropped the barrel to the carpet and let out the breath.