Hush Money

CHAPTER SEVEN

I went to visit KC Roth. She was living in one unit of a brick complex of what used to be called garden apartments, on Route 28 in Reading. Across the street was a liquor store and a fish place called The Friendly Flounder. Up the street was what may have been the last drive-in movie theater in Massachusetts. Next to the garden apartments was an Exxon gas station and convenience store.

KC’s apartment was neat enough, but it had been built for the builder’s profit. The doors were hollow core. The finish work was minimal, mostly quarter round molding. The floors were plywood, covered wall to wall with inexpensive tan carpeting which didn’t wear well, but showed the dirt easily. The furniture was fresh from the warehouse at Chuck’s Rent-All, Everything for the Home.

“Well,” KC said when I introduced myself, “so that’s what you look like.”

“This is it,” I said.

“Susan spoke of you a lot, but I never knew what you looked like.”

“But from the way she talked, you were picturing Adonis,” I said.

“I guess,” she said. “Come on in.”

KC was wearing a man-tailored white shirt and blue jeans. She was amazingly good-looking. Thick black hair worn a little too long, large green eyes, wide mouth, flawless skin.

“You are so nice to come by,” she said when we were sitting in her ugly living room. “How about a nice cup of coffee, or a drink? Do private eyes drink before lunch? I have some vodka.”

“I don’t need anything,” I said. “Tell me about your problem.”

“Oh boy, all business,” she said.

She was sitting on the couch with her feet tucked up under her. I sat across in an uncomfortable barrel-shaped gray plush armchair.

“Well,” I said, “not all business.”

She smiled brilliantly. There was something about her that seemed to require flirtation. And when the requirement was filled, it pleased her.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” she said.

“So how about the harassment?” I said.

“The son of a bitch won’t give up,” she said. “Can you make him stop?”

“The son of a bitch being whom?”

“Burt, the bastard – I hope you don’t mind swearing, I can’t help it, I have a terrible mouth.”

“I’ll be all right,” I said. “Burt is your husband?”

“Ex-husband,” she said.

“And you know he’s doing this?”

“Who else.” She leaned forward and her voice became a little girl’s. “Could you beat him up for me?”

She had more affect than a Miss America contestant. Her voice went from contralto to soprano in an easy glissade. Her eyes widened and narrowed as she spoke. Everything she said, she dramatized. She went from seductress to child in an exhale. I was willing to bet she’d cry before I left. I was pretty sure she could cry at will.

“We’ll see,” I said. “Could anyone else be harassing you?”

She cast her eyes down.

“No,” she said softly. “Who else but Burt would have any reason?”

“Tell me about your boyfriend,” I said.

She kept her eyes downcast and was silent. It was a pose, but I didn’t think it was an insincere one. In fact I didn’t find her insincere at all. Rather she seemed to have been playing this role, whatever it was, for so long, that she probably didn’t have any idea when she was sincere and when she wasn’t.

“I can’t talk about him,” she said.

“Why not?” I said.

She raised her head and she was angry, or seemed to be.

“I’m not hiring you to cross-examine me.”

“You’re not hiring me at all, yet,” I said. “This is foreplay. See if we like each other.”

“You only work for people you like?”

“I only work for people I want to,” I said.

She smiled suddenly. It was quite spectacular.

“You’ll want to work for me,” she said.

“So what about the boyfriend?”

The smile went away.

“Must you?”

“‘Fraid so,” I said.

“Is it confidential?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “But it’s not privileged.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you hired me through your attorney,” I said, “under certain circumstances what you told him, and he told me, could be privileged. As it stands now, I won’t tell anyone, but it is not privileged. If it is information required by the police in the course of an investigation, or a prosecutor in the course of a trial, then if I’m asked I have to tell.”

“Police?”

“I’m just trying to be clear,” I said. “I don’t expect to tell anyone.”

“If you told anyone I’d die.”

“I’ll try to remember that.”

We were quiet. She was thinking, and, as she did everything else, she dramatized thinking. Her eyes narrowed, she got a vertical wrinkle between her eyebrows. Her lips pursed slightly. I waited. Finally she leaned back and shifted on the couch so that she could hug her knees while she talked.

“When we were together,” she said, “we could barely breathe. We couldn’t eat. We didn’t want to drink. All we wanted to do was be together and look at each other and make love.”

I nodded. I knew the feeling, though love had never made me lose my appetite.

“If only we were both free,” she said.

“You’re free,” I said.

She shook her head sadly and a little condescendingly.

“He can’t leave his wife.”

“Why?”

She shook her head again. Men were so dumb.

“He just can’t. She’s too dependent on him, and men can’t do the hard things. He’s such a baby.”

“Might have been smart to wait until he left her, before you left your husband,” I said.

“I’m not that way,” she said. “When I commit, I commit entirely. I give everything.”

“Would you have left your husband if you hadn’t thought you’d be with him?” I said.

“And what? Live in this gruesome goddamned apartment by myself? Burt and I lived in a castle.”

“Do you still see your boyfriend?” I said.

Again the downcast eyes. Her mouth pouting like a sad child, albeit a cute one, she traced a small circle on her kneecap with the forefinger of her right hand.

“No.”

“Why not?”

She began to cry. I waited, letting the question hang. She placed both her hands over her face, being careful of her makeup, and cried some more. I was pretty sure I was supposed to go and sit on the couch and put my arm around her, in which case she would turn in and bury her head on my shoulder and weep as if her heart would break. I stayed where I was. Finally after waiting as long as was decorous she stopped crying and lowered her hands, and raised her head so she could look searchingly into my eyes.

“Men are such babies,” she said.

“Maybe not all of them,” I said.

“You’re not, are you?”

“Except when I don’t get my way,” I said. “How come you and the BF are not still an item?”

“Somehow, I know this sounds… something… anyway, somehow when we were both married and sleeping with each other it was, like even. But then I was divorced and he was the only one that was cheating. He couldn’t stand it.”

It did in fact sound… something.

“Sure,” I said. “What is his name?”

“Oh, I can’t give you his name,” she said.

“You can if you wish me to work for you.”

“Aren’t you already hired, I mean, I’ve told you all this stuff.”

“KC, the surest way to prevent the stalker involves knowing who he is. Probably is your ex-husband; but it might be your ex-boyfriend, it might be somebody else. If I’m going to do what you are trying to hire me to do, I will do it better and quicker if you tell me what I ask.”

She bit her lower lip gently and, with her hands laced over her knees, rocked slightly on the couch.

Finally she said, “Louis.”

“That’s a start,” I said.

More lower-lip biting until finally she said, quite tragically, I thought, “Vincent.”

“Louis Vincent,” I said.

Her voice softened almost reverentially. “Yes.”

“And where does he live?”

“Hingham.”

“Does he have a place of business?”

“Why?”

“Doesn’t seem discreet to approach him at home,” I said.

“Oh God, you can’t approach him. He’d never forgive me.”

“He’ll never know I got it from you,” I said.

Again a long and fully acted out period of silent pondering.

“He’s a stockbroker,” she said. “Hall, Peary.”

“Fifty-three State,” I said.

She nodded. I had made her thoroughly miserable.

“Would you feel safer if I had someone outside your house until I, ah, crack the case?”

“I went down to the police department,” she said. “The sergeant was so nice, really lovely to me.”

“I’ll bet he was.”

“He says they’ll keep an eye on my apartment.”

“Have you notified the phone company?”

“No.”

She seemed startled, either that she hadn’t thought of it, or that I had.

“You should probably do that,” I said.

“He never says anything when he calls.”

“Most people don’t,” I said.

If she thought I was amusing she didn’t let on.