Winter of frozen dreams (19 page)

"You know how to jerk 'em off, though, don't you, Chuck?" Curtis smiled.

"Now, what exactly am I getting in exchange?" asked Lulling.

Curtis waved away pipe smoke and leaned forward.

"When was the last time your wife sucked your cock clean, Chuck? Whether it was last night or fifteen years ago, she ain't never sucked it like Barbie, because Barbie is the best blowjob in Madison. Her fucking mouth is a miracle, man, except when she talks. She did herself in. She fucked up with her mouth. She talked too much."

Urso scribbled notes. A year, maybe fourteen months

ago, Curtis s roommate, Larry Sawyer—whom the detectives immediately recognized as a local drug peddler and hoodlum—attended a party at Bruce Dalby's house in Nakoma. People were having a happy time, dancing, getting high on sundry drugs, and soon they were having a happy time without their clothes on. The party splintered, and after a haze of coke and carnality Sawyer found himself in a bedroom with Barbara Hoffman and a few other naked bodies. Barbara had been mixing Quaaludes and wine, a favorite combination.

When Barbara got high, she liked to talk. It was some kind of release for her, Curtis explained.

Barbara boasted that in a couple of months she would become a rich lady. Everyone else being stoned, her words were assumed to be fantasy, but Sawyer knew that Barbara was odd and brainy, so he listened. What she said began to make a rather devious sense.

While working at Jans, Barbara said, she had met a man who was incredibly naive and inexperienced and who had become entranced by her charms. She cultivated his infatuation. They dated for a few months, and she vowed to leave the massage parlor if he'd marry her, lending her stability and the prospect of a secure future. When she suggested they invest in an insurance policy to provide a financial foundation to his estate, he agreed. She insured him for close to a million bucks, with herself as the beneficiary. The setup demanded delicate maneuvering, she explained to Sawyer, but the rest of the plan was simple.

Because of her extensive background in biochemistry, she was familiar with toxic substances and knew how to culture botulinum toxin in her apartment. A laboratory was not necessary. The chemical supplies were readily available. When the botulinum toxin was prepared, she would wed her lover with the huge insurance policy, honeymoon in Mexico, and feed him her homegrown concoction. Botulinum toxin, of course, was a lethal agent in food poisoning, and a fatal case of food poisoning in Mexico, though tragic, was not uncommon. It would not

be treated with suspicion by the authorities. The body would be returned to Madison and cremated, and Barbara would tearfully collect the insurance bonanza.

No way she could miss, Barbara had insisted. Already a marriage date had been scheduled, and her fiance had received a passport for travel abroad. In a mere six or eight months, maybe less, she would be wealthy.

Sawyer was astonished. It couldn't succeed; it sounded too easy. His head was spinning, and Barbara was on a frenzied rap, and every objection he posed she dismissed with a coherent elaboration.

The next day Sawyer told Curtis of the bizarre conversation. Curtis spoke to a friend who practiced law, discussed the plot, and chose to talk with Barbara directly, partly to confirm that the crazy plan was not an invention of Sawyers drug-ravaged mind, partly because he was intrigued, partly because he was aghast that Barbara had revealed her scheme to a roomful of strangers during an orgy of sex and drugs. Was she completely out of control? Was she so silly as to believe she could pull it off?

But Barbara seemed reticent to expound on Sawyers report. It was a private matter, she said, and what did he care anyway?

He didn't care, Curtis replied; he just didn't want to see her do something dumb. Besides, he cautioned, people rarely fuck with insurance companies and win, especially when the prize is nearly a million dollars in cash.

Sawyer must have been fucked up, Barbara said. He must have been hallucinating. But as she denied the story, Curtis noticed a chalkboard posted on the refrigerator. The slate contained a list of what might have been chores, except that two items riveted his gaze—marriage license, passport—and both were checked off. Barbara spotted the direction of Curtis's stare and discreetly attempted to block his view. He left, and when he came back two days later the chalkboard had been erased.

On the second visit Curtis told her bluntly that what she planned was murder and that she wouldn't get away with it. The scheme was preposterous. If she had blurted

the tale to Sawyer, who else knew? Who else had she bragged to about her imminent riches?

The questions upset her, because she was aware that she had a tendency to forget what she had said or done when zonked out on iudes and wine.

Too many people knew, Curtis repeated, and the secret would never remain secret for long, certainly not long enough for her to collect the insurance money.

It was then that Barbara dropped the facade. She planned to murder a shipping clerk at the university for a huge insurance payoff—$750,000—and she detailed the operation, as if wanting to convince herself that it was feasible and not doomed, as Curtis had argued.

Curtis reiterated that, although she had exploited men in the past, sexual manipulation and petty blackmail were amateur games compared to murder. Barbara did not reply. He thought no more about the matter until Berge's death.

Urso had poured down two refills of coffee. Lulling had listened and sucked his pipe. Curtis stared out the window.

"That's about it," Curtis declared, then paused. "I asked her where she got the idea—you know, where did she learn so fucking much about insurance and how it pays? She said one of her regular tricks from Jan's was an insurance executive. They'd go sailing in the summer on Lake Mendota. She'd fuck him like crazy and pump him for info. Then, when she got tired of him, she threatened to tell his wife about how those late-night fishing trips weren't fishing trips, unless he cosigned a loan for her. Of course he did, and of course she defaulted, sticking him with a bill for a couple thousand dollars, and thanks for the good time. She was shrewd, Barbie was. Do we got a deal here, gentlemen?"

Lulling and Urso nodded. Curtis insisted on shaking hands. He paid for the food and the coffee, left the waitress a five-dollar tip, and roared out East Washington in his Lincoln Continental.

— 29 —

The conversation with Ken Curtis at the Embers Restaurant boosted Lullings spirits. He set about verifying what he had learned.

Unless Larry Sawyer was coaxed or coerced into making a statement to police, what Curtis had been told concerning the party and Barbara Hoffman's insurance scam was inadmissible as evidence because it was hearsay. Besides, Sawyers altered state of consciousness due to the drugs he had consumed might invalidate his word. Anything Hoffman had said directly to Curtis in the proceeding days was surely crucial and could be admitted as evidence in a court of law. Lulling worried about Curtis's veracity.

The motivation to manufacture a bogus story to sell to a DA under pressure to prosecute and convict was real and apparent. Curtis was bold enough to attempt the deception.

Lulling sent a query to the county clerks office to discover whether Barbara Hoffman or Linda Millar or Jerry Davies had applied for a marriage license anytime during 1977. Within hours the detective was handed a photostat of the application.

On April 15, 1977, an Application for Marriage License was completed by Gerald Davies and Barbara Hoffman. The documents were signed, a fee was paid, and a time was reserved for April 22nd. Judge William Buenzli would perform the civil ceremony. It was explained that two witnesses were necessary. However, the couple did not appear on the assigned date, nor did they contact the clerks office to reschedule.

Information regarding a passport was also sought. Lulling was forwarded a photocopy of an application filed by Jerry Davies on May 19, 1977, with notice it had been approved and a passport issued on May 31, 1977.

It seemed Ken Curtis might be trading with truth. Lulling pored through the materials they'd collected on Barbaras alias, Linda Millar. According to Curtis, Barbara

had confessed her plan to Sawyer and then to himself sometime in the spring—late March or early April. A study of the dates on the library card, savings passbook, post office box, and change of beneficiary forms demonstrated that Linda Millar did not come into existence until May 1977. Consequently Lulling surmised that Barbara was aware of her blunder. Since she had told Sawyer and Curtis of her plan, and since she did not want to scrap the money and time invested in her plot to murder Jerry Da-vies, Barbara decided to change names and hope she could succeed with an alias. Seven hundred fifty thousand dollars was too much to let go.

Other parts of Curtiss tale were corroborated. Through a series of legal wranglings resulting in a court order, bank records were opened and Barbaras banking transactions were scrutinized. In 1975 and 1976 Barbara had obtained a series of loans from the University of Wisconsin Credit Union and other local financial institutions for amounts varying from $500 to $3,000. The loans were cosigned, each by a different gentleman, all considered excellent credit risks. It was a simple pattern. After making the initial two or three payments, Barbara defaulted on the loan, leaving the cosigner to repay the outstanding balance.

While Curtis had hinted at a "small-time" blackmail practice, he didn't elaborate and clearly wasn't aware of the scope of Barbaras activities. Lulling had the names of Barbaras "benefactors," as he referred to them, and he set about the delicate task of interviewing. The list demonstrated Barbaras talent at identifying gentlemen with special qualities: money, a family, social status they could not afford to have rocked by scandal. They were men who would pay to keep their infidelity secret. College professors, business executives, lawyers were included, and contact with each individual was made discreetly.

Some cooperated with the investigation; some refused. Usually the promise of anonymity or the threat of a subpoena encouraged them to submit to an interview. Most of the men expressed embarrassment at having al-

lowed themselves to be maneuvered into such a compromising position. An insurance executive remarked that Barbara had pumped him for information about life insurance policies, casually lulling him into talking about business and then questioning him about different coverages, about how and when companies paid off.

A college professor who had become acquainted with Barbara at Jans and had taken her to the theater as well as to various motels around the city felt after the blackmail scheme that she had sized him up, weighed him, and decided precisely how much she could bilk him for without provoking a violent reaction or a report to the police. He had lent her money, which was never repaid, as well as cosigned a loan through the U.W. Credit Union. When at first he balked about her obvious scam, she called him at home, during the dinner hour, and threatened to continue the calls until he paid off the loan.

The tales were desperate, and the fact that no one had considered reporting this to the authorities Lulling found incredible. Barbara must have been a very busy woman during those years, he concluded, and she must have squandered a hell of a lot of money, because as carefully as he could trace she had less than $100 in the bank at the time of her arrest.

This new evidence was crucial to the prosecutions case. It confirmed Ken Curtiss story and convinced Lulling that leniency for Cerro in exchange for Curtiss testimony was not only a worthwhile trade; it was the only chance they held for gaining a conviction. None of the information would convict her by itself; however, it bolstered the reams of circumstantial materials already accumulated and added a cohesion to the case that had been lacking. The circumstances were complex and bizarre, but now Barbaras actions could be viewed and presented as elements in an avaricious scheme that included a double murder.

Doyle bitched and moaned when Lulling told him of the conversation that he and Urso had had with Curtis at the Embers Restaurant. But when the senior detective

explained what he had learned, the DA smiled. A plea bargain would have to be arranged.

— 30 —

With a modicum of fanfare and newspaper coverage Chuck Lulling retired from the MPD on April 27th, the eve of his fifty-fifth birthday.

Lulling joined the department in 1949, after a short tour in the air force. Many people viewed him as the last of the cops from the old school, cops who had survived on intimidation, cops who dispersed justice with the butt of a nightstick. The early street training and experience had influenced his entire career. Almost every young cop on the force had been thrashed for lack of thoroughness or poor police method or a deficiency of common sense by Lullings gruff tongue. He had bullied criminals and clashed with the bureaucracy. Few were sad to see him depart.

Nonetheless, Lulling had compiled a sterling record. He was the first police officer in the state to collect an audiovisual confession from a suspected murderer. Since 1960 he had solved more than twenty murders in which he had acted as the principal investigator. His reputation as tough, cocky, bellicose was justified.

Chuck Lulling was not given to maudlin sentimentality. His police career was over. On Monday he and Marian would drive to Arizona and waste a couple weeks gawking at the Grand Canyon, admiring the native Indian leather and stone craft, rubbing lotion on their sunburned shoulders. When they returned, Chuck planned to start a private investigators trade, which, ironically, would pit him with the lawyers who had tried to pry apart his work and testimony during his thirty years as a cop and which undoubtedly would earn him oodles more than his detective salary. It would be an adjustment.

But the future was three days away.

It was 6:00 p.m., and except for Russ Kurth, who

logged overtime on a drug case, the office was deserted. Gray metal desks, their edges nudged together in the cramped quarters, each with the nameplate of its absent resident, were cluttered with paperwork and telephone hookups, ashtrays stuffed with cigarette butts, calendars jammed with court dates and hearings and interviews. Lulling stared at the cards and presents on his desk, but his thoughts centered on a gullible, shy, awkward kid who had grown into a gullible, shy, awkward adult named Jerry Davies, or, rather, he ruminated on the memory of Da-vies—the nervous tics, the unruly sideburns, the jeans riding down the hips, the wan complexion, the flannel shirts from K mart, the wire-rimmed glasses that never fit right. From what Lulling had ascertained, not even Davies considered his life anything other than mundane and dull, a continuous loop of film canisters, sporting events, car rides to Spring Green, Pizza Hut pizzas. Barbara Hoffman had been the catalyst for surprise and variation. She was the mercurial element that raised his life to the extraordinary. Desperate for her charms, Davies became oblivious to her dangers. In February Lulling had knocked on Daviess apartment door and warned the shipping clerk that his life was in serious peril because of his association with Barbara Hoffman.