The Lacey Confession (35 page)

Tucker Poesy's life was an open book, to Walter anyway. He knew where she lived. Harry told him. He had her cell phone number he'd taken from her purse. She might ditch the phone, but she wasn't going to move just because Harry Levine had seen her apartment. She had the nerve to pull a gun on him in his own home, but Walter saw himself as a forgiving man, especially now in the bloom of his reinvigorated good health. If he could get over her transgression, she ought to be able to deal with being stripped naked, tied to a chair, and held as a hostage for almost a week. He smiled thinking about it. He had no regret. She must have gotten over it by now. Had she sought revenge, he would have seen her already. Patience was not one of her strong points. Walter was certain Tucker Poesy had gone home to lick her wounds. He called her in London. Fortunately, she had not changed the phone.

“Hello Tucker, it's Walter Sherman,” he said.

“You cocksucking sonofabitch! Who the fuck do you think you are? You prick! Fuck you, and the horse you rode in on, mutherfucker!”

“Got that out of your system?”

“Go fuck yourself!”

“We need to talk. You need this every bit as much as I do. You just don't know it yet.”

“Fuck off!”

“Fine, but if you really meant that you would have hung up by now.” Then the phone went dead. Oh, shit, Walter laughed. Better be careful not to push her too far. He called the number again.

“Is that you again?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Okay, what the fuck do you want?”

He told her enough to pique her interest—not all of it, but enough. Then he said they had to get together, meet face to face, talk it out, decide what they should do and how to do it.

“You want me to meet you?” she said with a purposeful note of incredulity.

“What am I going to do? Bust your jaw? Tie you up?”

“Don't fuck with me, you fucking . . . old man.”

“Ouch!”

“I said, don't . . .”

“Meet me somewhere safe,” he said, “somewhere you feel comfortable. I'll go anywhere. My intentions are pure, honestly.” Tucker Poesy agreed to meet Walter in two days. She was quite specific in her instructions. When she was done, she said, “No exceptions, no deviations. Do not fuck with me.”

“See you day after tomorrow,” said Walter.

It was an easy trip for him, a short hop from St. Thomas. It was not necessary for Walter to stay overnight and he made no reservations. In fact, he booked an evening flight home. He figured to be back by nine, ten at the latest. Maybe a late dinner at Billy's—that would be nice. She told him to be there at three, sharp. “A minute late, and I'm gone,” she said. She obviously didn't know him, he thought. If there was one thing she could count on it was his punctuality. Short of a heart attack, he was always on time. He hoped it wouldn't be too sunny. Her instructions said no hat, no sunglasses. He'd be standing unprotected, at the height of the afternoon sun. That's what she wanted. Who could blame her, he thought. Standing a few minutes in the sun was nowhere near as bad as being tied up for almost a week.

All the beaches in Puerto Rico are public. The luxurious, beachfront hotels and resorts cannot reserve the sand to themselves and their paying guests. In the fashionable Isla Verde area of San Juan, a string of upscale hotels overlooks the ocean. Among them is the El San Juan Hotel. The El San Juan has been a landmark in Puerto Rico for many years. In the old days, tawny oak and deep mahogany set off the elegant atmosphere of the hotel's lobby area. In those days, in its famed casino, men in dark suits, some wearing tuxedos, played high-stakes craps, accompanied by beautiful women in sequined gowns who stayed close by, hanging on every roll of the dice. Lately, like just about everywhere else, things were different. Renovations at the El San Juan, particularly after its purchase by the Wyndham Group, had replaced many of the older, finer touches with more modern, sleek furnishings. The crowds were also different. These days they wore shorts and golf shirts with the tails hanging loose, not even tucked in. The women looked older and fatter. Where had all the beauties gone? In winter, the hotel was filled with lobster-red New Yorkers, too many of whom brought their noisy kids with them. Walter had a preference for elegant, traditional, older hotels. He felt the same about casinos. Although gambling was not among his favorite pastimes, he enjoyed an occasional visit to a busy casino. He liked looking at the women and he always got a strange buzz around so many desperate people with so much money on the line. Not these days, however. No more big shots and beauties at the tables. The place crawled with children now—thirty-year-olds who made a quarter-mil a year. They wore Nikes and sweat pants from Hugo Boss and tossed money around like it meant nothing. Their mothers played the slots, carefully guarding their plastic pots filled with the bogus coins created for playing the machines. Not even real money anymore. Walter had no use for it. The romance was gone. He remembered when you might actually pay a hundred dollars to stay in a fancy room at a place like the El San Juan. He supposed now it would take five times that and you'd have to share a bathroom with your wife.

Tucker Poesy told him to be standing on the beach in the middle of the sand, halfway between the end of the hotel's patio and the edge of the surf directly in front of the El San Juan. Three sharp. Empty handed. He was to wear only bathing trunks. No hat, no sunglasses, no towel, nothing but his bathing suit. All that he complied with. He was standing there when she came up beside him. She too wore only a bathing suit, this time a bright yellow string bikini that covered so little of her as to almost not be there. That tiny suit, however, gave her a look far more sexy than when he saw her completely naked. Of course, then she was bound up with duct tape and had a badly swollen jaw, broken or something close to it. Her face looked fine now. No damage.

“Jesus, what the hell happened to you?” she asked, pointing to the still very red scar on his chest and the puffy, jagged one running in a crooked line halfway down his right leg from the knee past his ankle.

“Bypass,” he said. “Scary, huh?”

“Yeah, you look like Frankenstein—like shit.”

“No, I don't look like shit. Shit is brown and mushy. I'm neither. I'll give you the Frankenstein. What I look like is someone who's been sliced up pretty good.”

“You can say that again.”

“You, on the other hand, look spectacular.”

“We don't have to go into that,” she said. “What's on your mind?”

“Now that you see I'm harmless, can we go somewhere—more comfortable?”

“Sure,” she said. She had expected this. She knew if there was anything really to be said between them, they couldn't do it on the beach. What little he already told her was enough to get her here. She wanted to know more. “Let's walk over to the bar by the pool.”

“Here?” he asked. “At the El San Juan? You told me to come empty handed. I have no money or anything.”

“Don't fret it. I'm staying here. I'll sign for anything you drink, you sonofabitch.”

Seated comfortably under a brightly colored beach umbrella that rose up like a plastic tree from a hole in the middle of their table—and with Tucker Poesy's complete attention—Walter began. He took the saltshaker, moved it to the edge of the table on his left and said, “This is where we begin. This is Schiphol.” She nodded and he knew she understood. Then he reached over, took the peppershaker, moved it to the opposite side of the table. He let it stand there for a moment, perched on the edge. He looked at Tucker Poesy. Neither one of them said a word. Then, gently and with a touch of grace, using the index finger of his right hand, he toppled the peppershaker from the table to the tile patio surface. It rattled about noisily before coming to rest somewhere, where neither of them could see it. “That,” he said referring to the missing condiment, “is where we end.”

“You're telling me we don't know where that is, is that it?”

“I'm saying we have been led to believe the end was here.” He pointed to the place the peppershaker had been, for a moment, until he knocked it over. “This is where it was supposed to end for us. Someone meant it to be that way.”

“But there's more?” she said, not so much as a question but rather to finish his thought. He nodded, a trace of a smile crossing his sun-tanned, leathery face.

“I'm going to tell you what I know and some of what I believe has been going on here. When I'm done, if you think I'm a crazy old fool—well, you've bought me a drink and you made a trip to Puerto Rico for nothing. You could do worse. But, if what I say makes sense to you, if you see what I see, we have work to do. You and I need to be the ones who say where that peppershaker ends up.”

“And where is this ‘you and I,' huh?” she asked.

“There is none,” replied Walter. “Not yet, that is. But there should be. You see, we've been had, Ms. Poesy.” Tucker Poesy looked at Walter in disbelief. He could see she was starting to question why she bothered to come all the way to Puerto Rico in the first place. “We've been played,” he continued, “like a cheap piano. Someone banged the keys and stomped on the pedals. We're at each other's throats, thinking that means something. It's all bullshit—all of it! I know it now and you should know it too. When you do, then there will be a you and me.”

“Like a cheap piano, Mr. Sherman?”

“Call me Walter, will you?”

“Fine, fine. You call me Tucker if it makes you feel better. Tell me, who's playing us and, for God's sake, why?”

“From the day I got hired for this job, you were figured in. I think the plan was all there. All we did was play our roles. Walk on stage when we were told to. We did exactly as we were expected to do.”

“Well, what the fuck are we doing here, today? Looks to me like we're sitting on the beach in Puerto Rico, with each other. What's that all about?”

“That is my fault,” said Walter. “I screwed up. Instead of just coming on stage and saying my lines, I bumped into the furniture.”

“Oh, yeah. Just how did you do that?”

“I didn't kill you.” He saw the chill sweep across her eyes and he only imagined the anger fomenting in her brain. Tucker Poesy was nobody's fool. She was a stone killer, balls of steel and all that crap. Walter looked in her eyes—she hadn't said a word—but he was certain she knew he was right. The rest would be easy, he thought.

Walter had never mentioned Tucker Poesy to Isobel. But now he told Tucker everything. He related the story of Isobel's visitor, the threat to her husband and the fate of Harry Levine. The Lacey Confession was missing, once again, he told her. Whoever killed Harry took it, had it. Working backward, he told Tucker about Abby O'Malley, Sean Dooley—Fuck! she thought. She spotted Walter and Harry in that apartment in Amsterdam and then went off to her hotel thinking they would be there the next day. Dooley actually tried to do something—and also, Walter spoke of Devereaux. Walter's sense of duty and honor meant he still said nothing about Conchita Crystal. Even though he tried to return the money, she would always be his client. He owed it to her to keep her name out of this.

When his narrative ended, bringing him back to the very table at which they sat, at the bar by the pool of the El San Juan hotel, he stopped. Drawing conclusions was uncalled for. This was no time for contemplation. The information was here. She had it now. A decision was called for. Making demands was unnecessary. He remained silent. He just looked at her.

“I'm ready,” she said, without a moment's hesitation. Then Tucker Poesy bent down and picked up something from beneath the table. She stood up, reared back, and tossed a strike, flinging something that flew over the patio, past the thatched-roof poolside bar, and landed somewhere on the beach, in the sand. She noticed a slightly bewildered take from Walter. “Peppershaker,” she said.

Tucker Poesy couldn't get an appointment with Abby O'Malley. She did everything Walter told her to do. But it didn't work. She said everything he said she should. But she couldn't get past O'Malley's secretary's assistant. Leave your number, she was told, Ms. O'Malley's secretary would get back to her. Fuck! Ms. O'Malley's secretary. Not even Ms. O'Malley herself. She decided to take matters into her own hands.

“Tell Ms. O'Malley I'm calling for Walter Sherman,” she said the next time she called. “Tell her also, if she doesn't talk to me now—and I mean right now—I won't call again.”

“I'm sorry, but Ms. O'Malley . . .”

“Did you fucking understand me? You have a second job to go to when you lose this one? I'll wait twenty seconds.” In half that time, Abby O'Malley picked up the phone.

“Abby O'Malley,” she said.

“Look,” said Tucker Poesy, still pissed. “My name is Helen Valdecanas.” That was the name she and Walter decided she would use. Tucker was no stranger to phony names. She used them all the time in her line of work. She thought this one had a certain lilt to it—Helen Valdecanas. “I have a message from Walter Sherman.”

“Well, I . . .”

“Meet me at a place called the Chelsea Royal Diner. It's an old wooden building, painted white with green trim and the name all over it, on Route 9W about two miles outside Brattleboro, Vermont, going west. You can't miss it. I'll be there at four. I'll recognize you. Come alone. If you don't, you'll make the trip for nothing.”

“Miss . . .”

“Valdecanas.”

“Yes, Miss Valdecanas, please tell Mr. Sherman . . .”

“You better leave soon. It's a long drive.” With that Tucker Poesy hung up. She was sitting in her room when she made the call, a very comfortable room at that, at Toomey's Inn. As she spoke, she was eating the marvelous breakfast that had been delivered only moments before. Norman and Ethel Toomey ran a delightful place. The accommodations were a little pricey, she thought, but the best part of it was the location, just down the road not far from the Chelsea Royal Diner. Tucker planned to go back to sleep after breakfast. These must be 750-count sheets, she was happy to note. In six hours she would know exactly where the Kennedys fit in this whole thing. If Walter Sherman was right—and she was ninety-nine percent sure he was, especially after her conversation with Professor Leon yesterday, at Marlboro College only fifteen minutes farther along on Route 9W—then Walter was some kind of guy. She was beginning to get over what he did to her.

Abby O'Malley showed up right on time. She was alone. No one had driven up to the diner in a half-hour and everyone was there who had been there when Tucker Poesy arrived. When Abby walked in, Tucker stood up and signaled to her. The two women shook hands, exchanged smiles and sat across from each other at a table by the window, looking out on Route 9W.

“You're younger than I thought you would be,” said Abby. “I suppose you sound older when you're angry.”

“I couldn't get through to you. I couldn't even get to your secretary. How do you do business like that?”

“I don't do business. I guess, if you stop to think about it, I don't talk to anyone I don't already know.” Tucker Poesy frowned and shook her head as if to say, what the fuck is wrong with you, lady?

But instead she asked Abby, “Are you hungry? I've already eaten—great cheeseburgers here, with white cheddar cheese—but I suggest the macaroni and cheese—same cheese. Must be Vermont cheddar, wouldn't you think?”

“I would. But coffee will do just fine.” Tucker hailed the waitress, ordered coffee for her guest and another cup of tea for herself. When they had their coffee and tea, and the privacy they were looking for, Tucker spoke.

“How much are you prepared to pay for the document?”

“Do you speak for Walter Sherman?”

“I do.”

“Or, do you speak for Harry Levine?”

“Does it matter? Walter has an offer for you—the document for the right amount of money. What's it worth to you?”

“Miss Valdecanas, I've met Mr. Sherman. Have you?”

“What is this, some kind of joke?”

“Walter doesn't strike me as the kind of man who would sell the document, if he had it—which he most likely does not. And I am not an old lady with attention deficit disorder. I know Harry Levine is dead.”

“Then what the fuck are you doing here?” asked Tucker Poesy. “This is a long way to come if you think I'm full of shit.”

“I didn't say that. I merely asked who you represent. It can't be Walter Sherman, or the late Harry Levine, for reasons I've just made clear. I'm sure you can see that I am aware that this promises to be a costly transaction. You can't expect me to deal with—you'll pardon me—just you. If you have it to offer, you must make a good faith sign by telling me—in a way I can verify—for whom you work. At that point we can do business, as you say.”

“So,” said Tucker, in a much more relaxed tone of voice than she'd been using, “you came here, all the way from Boston, hoping to buy Lacey's document, from me.”

“For no other reason, Miss Valdecanas.”

“I don't have it,” said Tucker.

Before leaving Puerto Rico, Walter put Tucker Poesy through a short course in understanding people as you talked to them, especially people under pressure. He explained how he noticed the tiny acne mark still there, just above her lip on the right side of her face, and how he knew she would glance at it, even if just for a split second, and how he was certain he could coldcock her with a right cross when she did.

“It was that bullshit about Denise, wasn't it? You said she was behind me and I, stupidly, looked. That was it, sonofabitch!” she said.

“That didn't help you, but that wasn't it.”

“What was it?”

“Your breasts. When I told you, you had lovely breasts—you looked. Your eyelids gave you away,” he told her. She shook her head slightly, looking at him with what he took to be admiration. He thought he saw the beginnings of a smile.

They didn't have much time. Walter concentrated on changes in respiration, lines around the mouth and eyes, expansion of the pupils, sweat starting at the hairline. She was using that lesson talking to Abby O'Malley. She decided Abby was telling the truth. She decided Abby was a buyer, and therefore, not an owner and therefore, not a killer. Just as Walter said she should, Tucker moved forward.

“You knew Walter and Levine were in Amsterdam.”

“I did,” said Abby.

“Sean Dooley was your man.”

“He was. Has Walter told you everything?”

“Well,” laughed Tucker, “one never knows, does one? Walter is weird.” Abby smiled and reached out to touch Tucker's hand. It was a friendly gesture, some kind of sign they had become friends.

“Where do we go from here?” she asked.

“I'm not done yet,” said Tucker. “Did you know when Walter's plane got in to Schiphol?”

“You mean in Amsterdam? No. No, I didn't.”

“You learned he was in that apartment later?”

“Later, yes. I was told he was there, with Harry Levine and that the document was with him, or them as the case may be.”

“I knew when he arrived,” said Tucker. “I was at the airport. I followed him to the train and I got on and rode all the way to a town called Bergen op Zoom. Ever hear of it?”

“No,” Abby said. “Nice name though.”

“I followed them back to Amsterdam, all the way to the apartment. And then guess what I did?” Abby sat there transfixed. And now Tucker's session with Walter paid off, in spades. The lines around Abby O'Malley's mouth tightened. Her breathing quickened. Tucker swore she could see the flush come over the other woman's face. “Go ahead,” Tucker said. “Take a guess. What do you think I did?”

Abby O'Malley was nobody's fool, still she was stunned. She sat back, her arms and shoulders gone limp, the blood nearly drained from her face. “My God!” she said, fighting for a clean breath of fresh air. “You work for Louis, don't you?”