The Blackmail Club (30 page)

Jack parked where the young man had pointed. Over the landscape wall he saw a large swimming pool. The lotion on three young women in small bathing suits glistened in the sun. A much older man, with a deeply tanned body bisected by a tiny white Speedo, stood among the ladies. A second man silently floated in the pool, his belly bobbing above the water.

A dainty front door buzzer produced a deep gong. A moment later the door opened in the hand of a nondescript houseman wearing dark slacks with a polo shirt inscribed The House of Trowbridge. The height of the doorstep brought the houseman’s forehead to Jack’s chin. He stepped inside and found Nora adorning the end of a fainting chair in the entrance hall.

“Mr. Trowbridge wishes for you and Ms. Burke to join him in his study,” the houseman said, “this way, please.” He led them through a large arch and down a wide hallway to a set of double doors crowned with an alabaster chambranle. He knocked, opened both doors and stepped back, adding a slight bow.

The large study was rimmed with floor-to-ceiling bookcases fronted by a sliding ladder. Trowbridge looked up from behind a mahogany desk with an inset leather writing surface. The hard corners of the desk were softened by three books standing upright between two black elephant bookends studded with authentic ivory tusks. Trowbridge, his fingernails buffed to a shine, took a long draw on a cigarette, tilted his head back and blew smoke toward the ceiling.

“I’ll be with you in a minute, Mr. McCall.”

Trowbridge stubbed out his cigarette, picked up a large-bowled, pre lit pipe and, after a few masturbatory strokes along its hard shaft, put it in his mouth. Next, he poured two fingers of liquor, scotch according to the little pewter tag on the decanter, he held it up to the light, swirled it, and sipped. “Ahhhhhhhh.” His voice a rasp file scaring old wood.

He balanced his still-burning pipe in a tray and extended an open box of cigars toward Jack. “It’s okay if you smoke here, Mr. McCall. This time we’re on my turf.”

“No thank you. I don’t smoke.”

Trowbridge shrugged. “Allison has been informed of your arrival. She’ll join us soon.” He stood wearing a cream-colored v-neck sweater that creased neatly just above where it hugged his black slacks, and came around the desk as silently as a night creature on the prowl.

“This is quite a house, Mr. Trowbridge.”

“A bit extravagant I admit, but I call it home.” He turned, picked up his pipe, took a puff, and blew a redundant message: this is my house and I’ll smoke if I want to. The behavior lacked only a childish
yan, yan, yan
.

“That’s an unusual painting over your desk,” Jack said, trying to woo Trowbridge away from his fixation on his right to smoke.

“That’s an original Bosch, one of only, I believe, seven of his paintings that he signed. Not many people like his work, but I find it captivating. His work focused on the temptations of evil and the lure of lust. Notice the owls? In the Middle Ages owls were considered evil. They were looked upon as the guardians of the entrances to hell, very different from our modern depiction of owls as symbols of wisdom.”

Living alone had over time apparently turned Trowbridge’s home into a portmanteau in which he gathered and indulged his varied vices.

“You know a lot about art?”

“I know a lot about making money, Mr. McCall, but I know something about nearly everything.”

Trowbridge’s grandstanding was interrupted when a nervous young woman entered the room. Going for the look of purity, Allison had worn her blonde hair down with a slight flip, white slacks, and a white silk blouse, slightly shadowed by the outline of her bra.

“Mr. McCall, Ms. Burke,” Trowbridge said in a voice roughened by a lifetime of tobacco and hard liquor, “My daughter, Allison.”

The young woman sat alone on a white couch. Her red lips the only thing of color in the white and blonde vision.

“I have a few friends waiting,” Trowbridge said. “I’ve fully apprised Allison of our previous discussion. You may start knowing that she is up to speed.”

You jerk. This is not one of your board meetings.

Nora ignored Trowbridge’s statement and skimmed the surface of what she guessed about Allison’s horrid night upstairs at Tittle’s place. While Nora spoke, Allison’s face turned ash gray.

At one point the old man started to open his mouth, probably to challenge the need for Nora’s recap, but instead kept turning his cigar without taking it from his mouth.

“Allison,” Jack asked, “have any of your friends who also hung out in Luke’s Place been blackmailed?”

Trowbridge stopped turning his cigar.

Allison started fussing with her hands. “Only a couple of my friends hung out there. I won’t give you their names. One, a man, gambled with only cash. One of my girlfriends used IOUs as I did … She ran away. I don’t know why.”

“Can you put a date on that?”

“I don’t remember exactly, but nearly two years ago.” She clasped her hands in her lap.

“About the time you were blackmailed?” asked Nora.

Her lower lip quivered, “A little before.”

Jack leaned forward. “Have you heard from this friend since?”

“No.”

“Do you know if she’s alive?” Nora asked in her easy way.

Allison clamped her palms onto her thighs, her knuckles white. “I see her brother sometimes. He hears from her by phone. I’ve asked him if he knows where she is—not to tell me where, but just does he know. I saw him yesterday, he said, ‘Sissy keeps saying I can’t come home yet.’”

Jack looked toward Trowbridge. “Let’s step out in the hall so Nora and Allison can talk woman to woman?”

“Mr. McCall, I could not advise my daugh—”

“Daddy. I’ll be fine with Ms. Burke. Please wait with Mr. McCall.”

Jack sat outside the door in a ornate wooden chair with massive eighteenth-century rococo carvings bumpy against his back. Trowbridge, his teeth clamped tightly on the pipe he had switched back to before leaving his desk, walked down the hall and turned the corner toward the front door. Jack noticed the paintings hanging in the hallway outside Trowbridge’s study included portraits of Napoleon, Stalin, and Churchill.

“I’m glad we’re alone,” Nora said, after Jack shut the door. “Men don’t always appreciate a woman’s point of view on this kind of stuff.” She moved to the couch near, but not too near, Allison and described with more specificity what she believed Allison had endured upstairs at Tittle’s.

“That’s essentially correct, Ms. Burke,” Allison said, embellished by nervous twitches in her hands.

“Please call me Nora. Why did you say ‘essentially correct,’ instead of just saying correct?”

Allison flicked an imaginary spot from the front of her white slacks and again clasped her hands. “I knew the identity of two of the men, and I saw the face of the third, a younger man whose name I never knew.” She licked her lips and wiped her eyes. “I’m sorry. It’s just, well, not easy to talk about getting smashed and being coerced into giving head to three men.”

Nora reached over and held Allison’s hand.

The younger woman took a deep, slow breath. “Two of them were Tittle and his accountant. I knew him as Terry.”

“Terrence Leoni?”

“I think that’s right.”

“What about the younger one, the one whose face you recognized?”

“He was one of Tittle’s managers.” Furrowing her brow, she added, “I’m not even sure I’d recognize him again. When I was upstairs doing … well, I just stared at his squaretoed boots.”

“Anything else you remember?”

She closed her eyes and slowly shook her head. “I don’t want to remember. I want to forget.”

“You may never forget. Accept that you were the victim of an assault. You have no reason to feel guilty. Sex is a joy. Don’t let this mess up sex for you.” Nora squeezed her hand and they shared a dry, humorless smile. “Did you start seeing Dr. Andujar before or after the blackmailing?”

“Oh, long after.”

“What about the blackmailer?”

“Only Daddy had contact with him.”

“Did you ever talk to Dr. Andujar about that night at Tittle’s? The men you remembered?”

“Yes,” Allison nodded, “but not for a long while. Finally I told Dr. Andujar it was Tittle and the man I knew as Terry and the younger guy in the squaretoed boots.”

“When was that?”

“My last session with Dr. Andujar, the week before he died.”

Allison’s head came up suddenly and she grew more animated. “Dr. Andujar was great, just fabulous. He helped me regain my self-respect. I took his death very hard. He had been my anchor … That sounded selfish, didn’t it?” She blinked, a tear escaping her right eye. “I just meant—”

“I understand what you meant. You’ve been very brave. I promise you we will not tell your father any part of what you have told me.” Nora stood and put a hand on Allison’s shoulder. “I’m not a psychiatrist, but if you ever feel like talking, girl stuff you know, call me.”

Chapter 45

Nora’s call started Jack’s morning. “No,” she said, “Drummy’s camera has still not taken any pictures in front of my place. Now get your mind clear. Dress rehearsals are over. Today we find out who’s at the bottom of the barrel.” She hung up without waiting for him to reply.

Almost immediately, Jack’s phone rang again. This time the caller was Drummy. His cameras on the cathedral grounds were set. He had punctured one of the van’s tires and told the cathedral office his van would be out of their lot no later than two that afternoon.

Nora would wear jeans and a loose-fitting sweatshirt. And because the possibility existed that the blackmailer might know Nora as Nora, she had also planned to wear a broad-brimmed hat and sunglasses. She would carry her Candy phone, whose number only the blackmailer had. Jack and the others would have their cells on vibration. If Nora’s phone rang, they would all hear it and know the call was from the blackmailer.

The wild card remained that the blackmailer could call and order Nora to a different drop, but he had not done so with any of the known prior marks. Instead, he had carefully selected the locations for each of the payoffs. The specificity of his instructions to Nora, made it likely he would not change the location this time either.

The forecast for a crisp Sunday morning was holding. The dry, still yellowed spring grass would not show Jack’s tracks.

By eight-thirty he had gotten tolerably comfortable on a big limb of the large tree that bordered the grassy area across from the fountain. He leaned to one side to ease the pressure on his still sore ribs. The tree had a cooperating canopy that would allow him to see Nora all the way from her car to the fountain, as well as watch her all the way back to her car.

He eased a branch aside and peered down over the toes of the black running shoes he wore below his jeans and forest-green turtleneck. The gentle morning breeze busily tossed a few leaves, while others dashed across the grass with each sudden gust. At nine he stared at the spot where Max was supposed to step out briefly.

Max was carrying his Glock 17 that came standard with a 17-cartridge magazine. Jack and Nora each carried a .9mm Beretta 92FS. Jack was hoping that none of them would need their guns. He didn’t want a Sunday morning shootout on the grounds of the National Cathedral.

Max stepped out. So far, everything seemed to be running on schedule.

A moment later, an old dark Plymouth coupe swung out around Drummy’s van. By leaving the van in plain sight Jack figured it would be less threatening. He was counting on the expectation of a million-dollar payoff being enough of a lure to prevent even the most cautious of criminals from driving away, even if something didn’t look just right. The old Plymouth drove through the parking lot and out of sight.

In the distance, several tourists carrying cameras were snapping pictures of the grounds designed like an old European monastery, while others retreated into the parking lot to capture a full view of the soaring cathedral against the backdrop of the clear blue sky.

Jack’s watch pulsed against his wrist—fifteen minutes to touchdown.

Right then, an old farmer in overalls and a sweat-soiled straw hat stepped out of the gazebo in the Bishop’s Garden, a slight limp in his left leg. The man’s hat prevented Jack from seeing more than his lower cheek and chin. The low morning sun glistened off his gray unshaven stubble. The farmer wandered aimlessly until he reached the grassy area near Jack’s tree. There, he sat on a bench with a view of the fountain.

Damn
.

The interloper took his camera case from around his neck, opened it, and used the bench to install a new roll of film. Jack heard the click when the farmer twisted his wrist to seat a zoom lens. The farmer stood, turned, and snapped several pictures of the cathedral. Then he limped down one of the paths pausing here and there to take shots of some of the bushes, including the signs showing their botanical names.

Jack peeked through the branches to see Nora pull her rental car into the lot, then drive around Drummy’s disabled van. Just as the blackmailer had instructed, she parked in front of the tree with the blackish leaves. The date and time stamp on Drummy’s photos would establish her arrival.

Nora’s trunk lid popped free just before she stepped out of her car with a camera dangling from around her neck, the strap comforted between her breasts. She tugged down her view-blocking sunhat, reset her dark glasses, and moved to the back of the car where she lifted the black bag from the trunk. After climbing the five stairs to the lower grassy area, she turned and used her remote to lock her car.

Nora started down the walkway, looking nervous as Candy Robson would be. When she reached the walled fountain area, she stepped inside the relatively small enclosure and looked out to be sure no one was in a position to watch her.

Through his binoculars, Jack watched Nora step up onto the bench to her left and rise onto her toes, the line of her calf muscles flexing as she hefted the bag over the wall. She walked out of the fountain enclosure with her head down, continued for a distance and then turned down the path that would take her back on the course dictated by the blackmailer.