Dying to Call You

Chapter 13

They stole her money. They pawed her panties. They took her teddy bear.

A vengeful rage flamed up in Helen. She’d lost almost thirty-two hundred dollars, hidden in her couch pillows and her bear. She thought of all the things she could have done with that money. A few more bucks and she could have bought a decent used car. No more buses and begged rides.

A good car was an impossible luxury for someone who worked dead-end jobs. She’d been so close.

It was gone now.

So was her button-eyed bear with the jaunty purple bow.

For some reason, that made her angrier than the money. No, she knew why. The bear was one of the few good things salvaged from her old life.

Then she saw Debbie’s long hair, the silken weapon she’d used to ensnare men, twisted into a murderous rope. Helen’s mind scrabbled away from that and crept back to something safer—her lost money.

Helen thought about what she’d endured to get that thirty-two hundred dollars. She relived every insult, every indignity, every leering pep talk from Vito. She wanted to weep.

No, she would not give in to tears. Her anger had burned away soft feelings.

Revenge. She wanted hot, hateful revenge on the man who ruined her peaceful life. She wanted to strip him naked.

Take away his money, his honor, his dignity.

She knew who did this: Hank Asporth—or his hired help.

She would get him if was the last thing she did.

But it wouldn’t be easy. Hank was powerful and protected. He ordered around high-priced lawyers like pinstriped lackeys. There was no way she could get near him.

She was a minimum-wage slave. She was invisible. No, worse than invisible. She’d been branded a crazy woman.

She’d called the police about a nonexistent murder. She’d wasted the cops’ valuable time. She had no credibility.

Helen had to find the mysterious Kristi, the woman who knew about the Six Feet Unders. What was their deadly secret: Murder? Necrophilia? Snuff movies? In South Florida, anything was possible. Kristi worked in that back room with the Six Feet Unders. At least, that’s what Debbie had said, but she was now six feet under herself. The only way to find Kristi was to work topless at Steve’s next party.

Going undercover was one thing. Going naked was another.

Helen would rather work smart than topless. She knew how to get what she wanted and keep her clothes on. She called Steve, the bullying boss of the bartenders.

“Helen! I’ve been trying to reach you, but I don’t have a number for you.” Steve sounded puppy-dog friendly. Did he need topless bartenders that bad?

“You got noticed last time. A guy who saw you wanted your phone number. He’s loaded. If you’re smart, you’ll be nice to him.” Helen could hear the wink in his voice.

“It wasn’t the old guy with the shamrock—” She almost said shorts, then remembered she wasn’t supposed to have seen the second party. “Shamrock cummerbund,” she finished.

“You mean ol’ Parrish Davenport? Nah, it wasn’t him, although I’m sure he’d like you. He never met a girl he didn’t like. Joey’s nothing like old man Davenport. He’s about thirty-five and good-looking. A little rough around the edges, but connected, you know what I mean?”

“He knows all the movers and shakers?” Helen said.

“Uh, something like that. Gimme your phone number for Joey.”

“How about if I call him?”

“Here’s his cell phone. Call right away, will you? He wants to go to a party Friday night. You promise me you’ll call him?” Steve sounded oddly anxious.

“I promise,” Helen said.

“Now, about Saturday night at the Mowbrys’ house. You wanna work the second party, too? We pay nice money to ladies who are your free spirits—broad-minded, you know what I mean?”

Helen knew exactly what he meant.

“It’s a real tasteful atmosphere in your fine private home, not a strip joint or anything. You’ll stand behind the bar, no dancing. We pay two hundred for the first party, five hundred for the second. Cash. But I don’t want you if you’re not willing to work the second party.”

“I’ll do it.”

“You don’t mind showing your tits?”

“No problem.”

Because it’s not going to happen, Helen thought. She would not be taking off her clothes no matter how much Steve paid her. She would find Kristi on the first shift, slip out the service entrance and never work for Steve again. He didn’t have her number, and he didn’t know where she lived.

Helen dialed Joey’s cell phone next.

“Joey here,” a man said. Then she heard a screech of brakes and a blaring horn. Joey screamed, “Why the fuck don’t you watch where you’re going?”

He was back on the phone. “Asshole cut me off. Who are you?”

“I’m Helen Hawthorne. Steve gave me your name. I was tending bar at the Mowbrys’ party and—-”

“Oh, yeah. I remember you. You’re a little older than some of Steve’s girls. But you got something them dumb twenty-year-olds don’t.”

“Wrinkles?” Helen said.

“Class. Them other girls act like whores when they think a guy’s got money. I need someone classy to go to my friend’s house. I don’t want my date sitting around picking her nose and scratching her ass, or vicey-versey.”

“So far, I’ve never been caught doing either one in public.” Helen wondered if this creature left a slime trail.

“Yeah. I knew you’d be OK to take to Hank’s.”

“Hank?”

“Hank Asporth. You know Hank. All the girls do. Has that big house in Brideport. It’s real nice. Nothing like the Mowbrys’. That’s a mondo-mansion. Hank just has a big house.

Tomorrow night, some of the guys are hanging out at Hank’s, drinking some brewskis, talking business. The gals will sit around the pool. Bring your suit. Better yet, don’t.” Helen could hear the leer.

“That’s not classy on a first date,” Helen said. Or a last one.

“See? You’re a natural when it comes to class. I’ll pick you up at your place.”

Helen didn’t want him anywhere near the Coronado.

“It’s a little inconvenient to get to because of construction,” she said. “Suppose I wait for you in front of the Riverside Hotel?”

“More class,” Joey said. “I’ll pick you up at seven o’clock. I...” The rest of his sentence was drowned out by angry horns. Joey yelled, “Hey, watch it you dumb—”

Helen hung up before she heard the rest. She had the horrible feeling that going out with Joey would be far more embarrassing than going naked.

She sighed. Friday night with Joey the jerk. Saturday night at the Mowbrys’ orgy. Her social life couldn’t get any worse. Except the next morning, it did. She had to turn down the one date she really wanted.

Jack Lace was waiting for her outside Girdner Sales at seven fifty, digging a shoe toe in the dusty asphalt like a little boy. Only good little boys wore such polished shoes and clean shirts and had their hair combed so neatly.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “Would you like to go out Friday night?”

“Wish I could, Jack. I have a previous engagement.”

“Is there someone else?” Suddenly the little boy was gone. This was a man who wanted her.

“Not really.”

“It’s not a night out with the girls, is it? I can take you to better places than they can. How about dinner at the Delano on South Beach?”

The Delano. Possibly the most beautiful of the old Art Deco hotels. And she would be knocking back brewskis with Joey the jerk.

“I’d love to, Jack, but I can’t. How about next Saturday?”

“That’s too long to wait. Let’s do lunch Monday. Wear something nice to work and we’ll drive down to South Beach when we get off at one. We should make it back by five.”

“It sounds lovely,” Helen said.

It was only after she clocked in and sat down at her desk that Helen wondered how Jack could afford the Delano. The valet parking alone cost more than they both made in a day.

She turned to ask him, but her computer had begun making calls in Massachusetts. Helen had to start her spiel.

“How dare you wake me up, you dumb slut?” were the first words she heard. All thoughts of the Delano, and anything else pleasant, disappeared.

A red Viper with white racing stripes pulled up in front of the Riverside Hotel at seven o’clock Friday night. It looked like a Corvette on testosterone. Some cars seemed to announce, “I have major masculinity problems.” This was one of them. Helen knew it belonged to Joey before he got out of the car.

Steve had called him good-looking. That didn’t begin to describe the man.

Joey looked like Michelangelo’s David, if David wore Armani—and Helen figured he would. His muscles were sculpted. His face was chiseled perfection. The man was marble come to life. Too bad Joey was solid rock between his ears and crude as a prison tattoo.

“Hiya, babe,” he said. “Ready to boogie?”

The doorman stared at her date. First, he’d seen her get into Savannah’s belching Tank. Now this. Helen blushed as red as the car.

The car had black leather seats and a small, flat TV screen on the dash. Joey watched a boxing match as he weaved in and out of traffic. A muscular black man in baggy gold Everlasts was pounding the bloody spit out of a sweating Latino.

Helen had to shout over the announcer. “So, what do you do to earn this amazing car?”

Joey turned the volume down a notch. “I run the Yellow Pelican resort and marina.”

“Very nice,” Helen said, as the Latino man spit more blood.

“It used to be. Now I got the Feds crawling up my ass, saying I don’t hire enough melanzanos. I have plenty of them in jobs they can handle—kitchen work, car parking, janitorial—although the Spics are taking over the cleaning jobs. Spics work cheaper and harder. All you have to say is ‘green card’ and they almost look like white men.”

Joey laughed. A car honked as the Viper cut it off. Joey rolled down the window and flipped off the driver.

Helen wanted to jump out at the first red light. She wanted to tell this racist creep exactly what she thought of him. But she wanted inside Hank Asporth’s house even more. So she kept quiet, hating herself and hating him. How could someone so handsome talk so ugly?

Mercifully, they were soon in Brideport. Helen saw the Latino man being pounded into the mat as the Viper roared into the driveway. It was already bumper-to-bumper Range Rovers, Jaguars and Cadillacs. They parked in front of a long, low white house built in the seventies. Joey opened Spanish-style double doors with fake stained-glass insets.

“Go on in,” he said. “The guys are in the kitchen.”

Helen stopped dead in the hall. Hank’s decorator must have been Hugh Hefner. The walls were done in black patent leather, accented with smoked mirrors. There were black leather couches, chrome coffee tables and a flat-screen TV mounted on the wall, tuned to the boxing match. Now a Latino man was beating up a black one.

“Hank’s got a lot of money riding on that match,” Joey said.

In the patent-leather gloom, Helen saw a mahogany pool table and six colossal LeRoy Neiman paintings. The sports subjects were brightly colored as crayons.

“Look at that,” Joey said. “Real art on the walls. Hank’s got class, huh?”

“The pink flamingos are a nice touch,” Helen said. There must have been twenty of them in the room.

Joey tapped one on the head. “No plastic for Hank. These are genuine hand-painted plaster.”

Five men were in the vast kitchen, standing around a stove. An enormous pot of red sauce was simmering on a burner. Helen smelled five brutally strong colognes, overlaid with garlicky tomato. A black-haired man was alternately tasting and stirring the sauce with a wooden spoon.

“You’re wrong, Gino,” he said. “It’s perfect. It’s my mother’s recipe.”

“I don’t mean to insult your mother, Hank, but it needs more oregano,” said a paunchy man with long, rubbery ears.

“Maybe you read her recipe wrong or something.”

“I said it’s fine,” Hank said. He put down the spoon and stepped away from the steamy stove. For the first time, Helen saw his face clearly.

She studied the killer. His thick black hair was coated with something shiny. Did they still make Brylcreem? His skin was pitted by ancient acne scars, like dead volcanic craters.

His single black eyebrow crawled across the top of his nose.

He wore what Helen thought of as a mobster knit shirt. It had a collar, a zip front, and black and white panels. His black pants were well cut but shiny. Sharkskin would be the right fabric for this man.

Helen thought his hands were made for strangling. They were blunt, muscular and studded with gold rings like tumors. The wooden spoon, dripping tomato sauce, looked like a bloody weapon.

“This here’s Helen,” Joey said. The men nodded without interest. Hank didn’t even look up from his sauce.

“The girls are out by the pool,” Joey said. “We’re talking business in here. Why don’t you run along and join them?”

He slapped her on the rump like a horse.

Helen smiled and thought, I’ll get them. I’ll get them all.

She was furious at the dismissal. They didn’t even offer her a drink.

Helen looked out the sliding glass doors. Under a striped awning was a pool with a pink deck. The grass seemed striped, too. It led to a red-striped Cigarette boat. Four bikinied blondes with inflated chests were sprawled on chaise longues, sipping pink drinks. One was filing her nails.

All looked terminally bored. Helen decided they wouldn’t miss her.

“I’ll just go find a ladies room,” she said. She kept her purse with her. She wasn’t going to set it down around this crowd.

Hank gestured vaguely down the hall, but didn’t look up.

Joey was respectfully approaching a fat man with bad skin.

Helen thought he was going to kiss his ring. She ducked down the hall. This was her chance to search Hank’s house.

There was just one problem.

What was she looking for? Some trace of the Six Feet Unders? She didn’t think Hank would keep a coffin in his house.

Not unless it was black leather and chrome.

Laredo. She was looking for some trace of Laredo. She needed a sign that Laredo had actually been in Asporth’s house the night of the murder. But how would she find that incriminating evidence?

Helen searched a guest room first. It was fairly tasteful, with a white bedroom suite trimmed in gold and a puffy pink satin spread. The closet was empty, except for several suitcases and some heavy winter clothes. Hank must make trips up north.

The bathroom had new toothbrushes and disposable razors, shampoo and conditioner. There was a fresh white terry robe.

The second guest bedroom was done in flamingos. Even the tall bedside lamps were flamingos wearing slightly crooked lampshades, which made them look tipsy. Helen liked the room. That scared her. She was losing all taste and proportion, living in Florida.

The closet had accumulated odds and ends: an ironing board, two fifteen-pound weights, a briefcase, an old set of encyclopedias. The dresser drawers were stuffed with women’s underwear in small sizes. There was no way to tell if it was Laredo’s, but Helen doubted it. This was expensive lingerie.

The master bedroom across the hall was a Playboy dream.

The round bed was covered with a sable spread. The ceiling and walls were mirrored. So were the lamps.

The bathroom was deep brown, from the Jacuzzi to the commode. The commode sat in a mirrored alcove. Who would want to look at himself on the john?

She opened one side of the double medicine cabinet. It was standard stuff: shaving cream, aspirin, a metal nail file and clippers. The other side wouldn’t open. It was locked.

Helen saw a small lock on the underside. It looked a lot like the one on her sister Kathy’s diary. She reached for the nail file. Yep, it opened just like Kathy’s diary.

Inside was Hank Asporth’s dirty little secret.

She saw a prescription bottle of Viagra. Another jar of pills was called Last Man. Helen thought she’d seen it on late-night TV being peddled by a former fullback. Creams, pills and gels for “male enlargement” promised “longer pleasure for you—and her. Four inches of penis growth in three weeks or less!”

Helen giggled. Big, beefy Hank suffered from teeny-weenie syndrome.

Then she quit laughing. Footsteps. Someone was coming down the hall. Quickly, she shut the cabinet and slipped into the flamingo guest room. The footsteps were coming closer.

Helen opened the closet door and crawled in behind the ironing board.

She cracked the closet door open half an inch. She could see Hank heading for the bathroom. He didn’t bother to shut the door. Thanks to the mirrors, she could see his every move.

Please, please, don’t use the john, she prayed. He blew his nose noisily, then fished a small key from under the marble soap dish. The locked cabinet swung open when he touched it. Hank looked startled. She wondered if he’d locked it specially because he was having company.

Something definitely made him suspicious. Hank ripped back the shower curtain. He opened the master-bedroom closets and looked under the bed. Helen tried to make herself smaller behind the ironing board, in case he flung open the guest-room closet.

He came angrily out into the hall, heading right for the flamingo guest room, when his cell phone rang.

Helen jumped, and the pile of encyclopedias tilted forward. She caught them before they fell. The briefcase tobogganed down the pile, and she stopped it with her chin. She sighed with relief. She tried to settle back behind the ironing board, but a spike poked her in the back. What was that? She couldn’t look now.

“Yeah,” Hank said into his cell phone. “No. Yeah.” Hank snapped it shut and went back into the bathroom. Helen felt a lot better, except for the spike in her back.

Rattle, rattle. Hank shook a pill out of a prescription bottle. Viagra. Which one of the bored women was the lucky winner of the short trip through Hank’s tunnel of love?

Hank locked the cabinet, then walked down the hall.

Helen waited a full five minutes before she sat up and got the spike out of her back. She carefully shifted the pile of encyclopedias against the wall. They stayed in place. The briefcase did not slide off the top.

Helen slowly unfolded from behind the ironing board. Finally she could find out what that fiendish spike was.

It was a cheap red high heel. Size six. A scuff on the toe had been covered with red ink.

Laredo, Helen thought. I’ll bet anything this is Laredo’s shoe. Savannah will know for sure. She picked it up and stuffed it into her purse. She didn’t see a second shoe. She checked her watch. She’d been back here for half an hour.

She had to get out of this place fast, then get the shoe to Savannah. She straightened her clothes, combed her hair and walked down the hall.

Joey was sitting at the kitchen table with the others. He looked ridiculously handsome next to these men with their big ears, big bellies and baggy skin. But on the inside, he was as ugly as they were. The long-eared man was telling a joke.

“What’s the difference between a black man and a large pizza?”

“I dunno,” Joey said, playing the stooge.

“A pizza can feed a family of four,” Long Ears said.

The men all laughed. Especially Joey. She tried not to show her disgust. He finally noticed her, standing at the kitchen door.

“Hey, honey, why haven’t you put on your suit?” There was a touch of impatience in Joey’s voice.

“I don’t feel like swimming,” Helen said.

“What’s the matter—embarrassed?” Joey said.

She nodded. She was embarrassed to be with these swine.

“Tits too small, huh? Don’t worry. We can fix that.”

“What?” Helen said.

“You need a boob job. It will give you confidence. Don’t worry. I’ll get you one. I buy all my girls boob jobs. The doc practically gives me a group rate. I see it as investment—something we can both enjoy.” He nudged the man next to him and grinned.

Ugh. How could he think she wanted fake boobs?

Because you work for Steve, who hires topless bartenders for charity orgies, she thought.

“Besides, it will help you in your work. Bigger tips with bigger tits.”

“Call a cab, please,” Helen said. “I’m not feeling well.”

“I can drive you, if you want,” Joey said. It was a halfhearted offer.

“No, a cab is fine. I need to go home. I think I’m going to throw up.”