Maggody In Manhattan

Chapter Sixteen

"The grand winner of the Krazy KoKo-nut Kontest is…" Geri patted down her hair and smiled at us, her shoulders squared with power and padding, "Before I make the announcement, I want to thank all of you for coming, and I'm sure Kyle Simmons, as the company's representative, will want to apologize at length for all this dreadful business with shootings and bodies and policemen disrupting my schedule. I think it's obvious to all of us that the contest should have been held as originally planned, in which case I could have arranged adequate publicity before and after. As it is, I'll have to write up the press releases and fax them from the Cape, and I doubt we'll get half the coverage I could have provided."

Ruby Bee rumbled like a truck changing gears. "I'm sure it'll be just fine. The winner?"

"It should have been Catherine!" Frannie said, slamming her fist on the table hard enough to send the crumbs bouncing into the air like frightened fleas. "I need the money to finance the pageants and take trips to broaden her experiences. The best colleges require that these days. If that awful Jerome hadn't encouraged her to start drinking again, none of this would have happened! He deserved to die for what he did to my daughter."

"He ain't the only one," Estelle added, pointedly staring at Rick. "And it's a darn shame, her being sixteen and from a little town. I think the police ought to arrest that fellow sitting right there, instead of letting him be a judge."

Rick shot a paralytic look at Cambria. "Hey, I don't know what she's talking about. I didn't do anything to that girl."

"We shall discuss it later," Cambria said, his lips barely moving.

Gaylene stood up unsteadily. "I think we'd better discuss it right now, if you don't mind. What's this about Rick and this girl? Are you saying that before the contest he got her drunk and screwed her?"

"In what I would guess is 319, on account of it being above mine," Estelle said.

"It could have been 317, on account of-" Ruby Bee stopped when she realized we were not intrigued by details.

Gaylene marched across the room to tower over Rick. "Is this true, you son of a bitch? How could you do such a thing? Here we've been seeing each other for two years, and you go and screw the first girl that walks by? Do you realize I could have gone on a Caribbean cruise last summer and ended up with a really good tan? But no, I tell Mr. Gabardi that I have a steady boyfriend and I'm not the sort of girl to party behind his back with other men. And I had to miss three nights of work to be a contestant-as a special favor to you! When I get back from delivering that suitcase to Vegas, I won't even have a job because the club's closed! Unless my dancing career takes off, I'll have to go back on the street again."

Rick and Cambria sat like lawn statuary, neither reacting to Gaylene's sputtery outburst. One had a white face, and the other's was growing darker by the minute.

Lieutenant Henbit, in contrast, was blinking at her as if she'd accused Rick of murder and put the weapon on the table. "So you know Gabardi, do you?"

"Of course I do, and he's a swell guy. I wish I'd taken him up on his offer. One of the girls at the club went, and she came back with a diamond bracelet that almost blinded me." She curled her fingers as if to rip into Rick, then lost her resolve and returned to her table, saying to Frannie as she went, "I'm real sorry about what he did to your daughter, honey. It's sickening, and if you want to have his face rearranged or something like that, you let me know and I'll pass it along to some friends of mine."

"I think you ought to do just that," said Ruby Bee, possibly unaware of the implications of her remark-but I wasn't sure.

"She asked for it," Rick muttered, jabbing his thumb at the sleeping girl. "She came up to my room, her blouse unbuttoned to her waist, and grabbed my crotch before I knew what the hell was happening. She had my zipper open and was on her knees before I could get out a word. I've met her kind before, and lemme tell you, she's not a little virgin with ribbons in her hair. I tried to get rid of her, Gaylene honey, but she was all over me like hot tar."

"Hot tar," Cambria echoed with an approving nod. "I can't remember when we last used it." From Rick's expression, it seemed likely that he did.

During this, Geri had picked up her clipboard and was frantically scanning the top page, all the while mewing like a stray kitten. "I don't think we need to discuss this further," she said in a high voice. "Catherine's propensities do not concern the results of the contest. It's unfortunate that we had to listen to what should have been a private conversation, but it's really none of our business…" She looked at Gaylene. "Please don't mention the product if you do go back to your former profession, and forget you were ever in this totally ridiculous contest. Forget the name of my firm, and forget me completely. Pretend I never existed."

Gaylene put a piece of gum in her mouth. "Suit yourself."

"We're down to three," Ruby Bee whispered to Estelle.

"Be quiet!" Geri snapped at her. "We're going to put this unpleasantness behind us and be done with this mess. I am going to announce the winner and head straight out the door. My car is parked in the lot across the street, and my luggage is in the trunk. I'm going to say one name, and then I am history. History! Do you people understand?" No one had the nerve to so much as nod. "All right, then," she continued grimly, "the winner is…No, wait a minute, she's been arrested for murder. Wouldn't the media have a goddamn field day with that? Interviews from a jail cell! A press conference with handcuffs! I'll have to redo the figures. Give me a minute and I'll have the result." She sat down and began to scribble on her clipboard, talking to herself in a shrill and distracted voice.

"I can't believe it!" Ruby Bee said in a voice remarkably similar. "Are you saying that those bars are better-tastin' than my chocolate chip bundt cake? That's flat-out impossible, missy."

"Someone has to win," Geri snarled without lifting her head.

Ruby Bee stalked over to the table where the entries were placed and, with the solemn sincerity of a funeral home director, said, "I have been making this exact recipe for twenty-five years, and you can just ask Arly if it's not the best dadburned cake she's ever had."

I smiled benignly. "I guess it doesn't come out as well with the fake coconut. What a shame."

"But it ain't got that nasty stuff in it," Ruby Bee blurted out, then realized what she'd done and clutched her chest as if experiencing the onset of a heart attack.

"Actually, I gave it low marks for its rubbery texture," Kyle contributed helpfully. "Rubbery texture?" Ruby Bee snatched up a fork, took a bite and chewed it vigorously. After she'd swallowed, she gave him a bewildered look. "It is on the rubbery side, I have to admit. But how can that be? I made it the same way, and even though some of the ingredients are from these parts, I sure know how to fix this particular cake and it always comes out the exact same."

I decided to butt in, now that the stage was set. "You bought a bag of real coconut and one of the Krazy flakes the evening you arrived. Yesterday afternoon in your room you switched the contents. Last night you went down to the kitchen, discovered the door was unlocked, and went in to make the exchange. Despite the necessity of having to step over a corpse, you completed your mission and stole away like a common thief-which you are, by the way-with what you thought was a bag of Krazy KoKo-Nut. Am I right?"

"I still don't understand how come there wasn't real coconut in my box tonight," she said, not willing to acknowledge any guilt.

"Because whoever cleaned up the blood in the kitchen took all the bags out of the boxes and replaced them with real Krazy KoKo-Nut," I explained. "We're going to have one unhappy drug dealer somewhere down the road."

Lieutenant Henbit came across the room. "Mrs. Hanks, what did you do with the bag you took from your box? You didn't flush its contents down the toilet, did you?"

"I was afraid it would stop it up, and I'd hate to rely on that stupid plumber to fix it. I just tossed it in the trash can with what I bought the other night."

Henbit ordered McRowan to take Ruby Bee's key and examine the contents of the trash can in 219. He then approached Rick and Cambria, saying, "If we find cocaine in her room, I'm going to find a way to link it to at least one of you."

"What if their fingerprints are on the bags that were used tonight?" I said. "Neither of them had any business fooling with the ingredients for the contest. Kyle's the one who placed the bags in each contestant's box."

Cambria opened his mouth, then closed it and sighed. Rick gasped for air as if he were drowning in the aura of disapproval radiating from his companion…who happened to be second-in-command of the Gabardi family.

"Okay," Geri said abruptly, having ignored this idle chatter while she realigned her notes. "The winner is Durmond Pilverman. It's been fun working with you, but I need to run along now."

"No, I cannot accept," Durmond said, who'd been oddly quiet during the fireworks. "I'm a federal agent, here under false pretenses. I arranged to be included among the contestants in order to monitor the drug deal we knew was about to take place. The recipe was provided by another agent, and I've only prepared it once before to make sure I could."

"Then you!" Geri pointed at Ruby Bee. "You're the damn winner! You get the grand prize, okay? Your entry had the product in it, and that's all that matters. No one could make anything remotely edible with it, anyway." She burst into tears halfway through the door, but Kyle hurried over to offer his handkerchief and murmur soothingly. At Henbit's bidding, the officer at the door allowed them to sit on the sofa in the lobby.

"I won!" Ruby Bee shrieked, hanging on to Estelle's shoulder. "I won ten thousand dollars! I can't believe it."

"Well, sit down before you make a fool of yourself," Estelle replied tartly. She was going to continue, but suddenly screamed like a banshee that'd been goosed. "There he is! Oh my gawd, do something!"

From behind the window, the whiskery psycho watched us, his tongue darting across his lips and saliva bubbling in the corners of his mouth. He gave us a jaunty little wave, then sauntered out of our sight, a suitcase rather than an axe in his hand.

"He takes his roles too seriously," Durmond said apologetically. "I hardly ever let him go undercover anymore."

McRowan came back into the dining room. "Yeah, there's cocaine in the trash can, mixed up with some flakes. I did a quick search of the room to make sure I'd found it all, and came across a dozen of these."

Henbit took a small pink plastic object from him, studied it for a moment, and said, "This is interesting, although we may not need to confiscate it for evidence." He twisted a button, then set it down on the table and smiled as it began to hop around with a clicky sound. "It's the infamous Popper Penis," he added for those of us ignorant of Manhattan porn shop novelties. We all watched it with mindless fascination as it hopped its way to the edge of the table. At the last second, Estelle grabbed it and buried it in her lap, her face almost as red as her hair.

"Goodness gracious, Estelle," murmured the grand winner of the Krazy KoKo-Nut cookoff.

Henbit told McRowan to place Cambria and Rick under arrest for possession and homicide.

"One minute," Cambria said. "You may have evidence of drugs in this hotel, and it is possible that this young man and I came across a body in the kitchen and felt it would be more appropriate to place it elsewhere. You may discover fingerprints on the bags used tonight, and I may need to discuss this with my lawyer before I explain why I may have handled them at some point. What you do not have is any evidence that this young man and I shot the deceased. He was, in fact, a valued employee. Only today did we learn he planned to leave the country with certain items that did not belong to him."

"That's right!" Rick said. "He was the only one who could deal with the bookkeeping. I myself cannot make heads or tails of-" Cambria's glower was as effective as a garrote.

Neither spoke as McRowan escorted them out the door. Henbit ordered the rest of us back to our rooms, but like Manhattan in the middle of the night, the lobby remained lively. Geri was sobbing while Kyle tried to calm her down, Ruby Bee was raving about money, Estelle was doing her best to explain to anyone who would listen (no one would) that her purchase was nothing but a gag gift, and Frannie and Gaylene were unsuccessfully trying to rouse a comatose ex-contestant.

Therefore, only Durmond and I rode the elevator to the second floor, although it felt more like a decompression chamber than the wheezy product of Mr. Otis's imagination. He (Durmond, not Mr. Otis) invited me into his room, but I wasn't yet ready to see the steamy sheets and insisted we go in mine.

I went to the window and watched the cars crawling below. "I didn't think it made any sense for the two mobsters to have killed Jerome Appleton in the first place. I was surprised when you suggested it to the lieutenant."

"It's a good solution," he said, "and it's possible the weapons used on both Jerome Appleton and Craig Lisbon will turn up in Rick's room on the third floor. When the registration is checked, the police will discover it belongs to Rick, or Ricco, as his Floridian friends call him. He'll refuse to talk, of course, and deny it all the way to the pen. In the meantime, Cambria will be occupied with the drug problem. If I were in the mood for wild guesses, I'd say another bag of Krazy KoKo-Nut cocaine might show up in his penthouse on the very top of the hotel. I'd like to think the police will search the back shelf of the closet."

"How very wild, indeed." I turned away from the window and sat down. Durmond gave me a wry smile while I muddled over the remaining bugaboos that had been haunting me for several days. He looked as if he were encouraging me to come up with answers, which perhaps he was. "How did you know I saw Brenda at the Xanadu?" I asked him levelly.

"I was at the table when you told Lieutenant Henbit."

"You already knew it, blue dress and all, and if you didn't hear it from me, you must have heard it from someone else-or saw her there yourself."

"Through the same window you did, maybe," he said. I considered it, then shook my head. "Ruby Bee followed Gaylene, and you and your pal followed them, although they had a healthy headstart-and they didn't go all the way to the Xanadu. They staked out a spot in a stationery store around the corner. If you did go there, you did it of your own accord, not because you were following meddlesome broads."

"The problem with Craig Lisbon was that it always took him time to decide how to deal with situations that might disrupt his business dealings. He was the sort who might think for a day or two, then realize that Brenda Appleton posed a threat of enormous dimensions. She knew names and faces, dates and addresses, and she might decide to file for a divorce and name everyone, including Gabardi, as a co-respondent. Scorned women have been known to do such things."

"Wait a minute!" I said, aware I sounded as shrill as Geri. "Are you telling me that you went to the Xanadu and killed Lisbon? I really don't want to hear this." Especially, I added to myself, from a man with whom I'd had sex not six hours ago and no more than ten feet away (did I mention the size of the rooms?). "I'm not telling you anything," he said with a sigh that we both knew meant he was telling me everything-and reading my mind along the way.

"I heard the elevator last night," I said, "and I thought it was Ruby Bee returning from the kitchen. But she had come up an hour before she and Estelle cooked up an alibi and came to my room. How high's the penthouse?"

"Very high, and I'm still feeling the effects of the bullet wound. Don't ever get shot, Arly. It hurts like hell, and the scar never goes away."

"Why Appleton?" I asked, refusing to allow his words to get to me. I already knew more than enough about scar tissue.

"I was in the kitchen when he and Catherine appeared."

"So he was the one who had a copy of the key?"

"I would be more inclined to search Rick's pockets. Appleton didn't need one. The door was not locked when they tried it." He took a pick from his pocket. "I was a bit curious who might come prowling."

"Such as everybody in the hotel?"

"There was a lot of traffic," he agreed, "beginning with Jerome and Catherine. Although I'm not a parent, I could certainly see that what he was about to do would totally destroy the child's life. Three months and he would have abandoned her in Rio, possibly addicted to cocaine. She has some problems, including a violent mother, but I could not, in good conscience, allow him to take her with him. I sent her upstairs, and Jerome and I had a talk. He refused to listen to reason, I'm afraid."

"Why did Rick and Cambria come?"

"That was not my doing. I was hoping our Miss Gebhearn might actually produce reporters for the contest, and they would be present at the opening ceremony in the kitchen. In some situations, the media can be useful."

"Brenda was distraught about Jerome leaving her and also terribly chummy with members of Gabardi's big, happy family. She might have called Cambria to stop him."

"You're apt to be right, Arly. They came so quickly that I was barely able to duck into the office. Once they'd taken the four cases upstairs to switch the contents, I came out of the office and nearly encountered Lady Macbeth of Maggody in a flannel gown. Back into the office I ducked until I heard her running down the corridor to the elevator. I hoped she would call the police immediately, but she did not, giving Rick and Cambria time to clean up the blood and move the body outside. I was surprised she didn't, but I underestimated her determination to win the contest." He made me a drink and sat down on the other bed, carefully positioning himself so that our knees did not touch. "All in all, a busy night for everyone concerned."

"Yeah, the elevators really hummed." I assessed the distance between us. It wasn't quite two thousand miles, but it was damn close. "Sonny had a suitcase tonight."

"Cambria and Rick weren't aware that Jerome brought down three suitcases from his room, two with personal effects and one with an impressive quantity of cash. I felt it expedient to relocate the third one before they arrived on the scene to move the body and remaining suitcases to the alley. We did not feel Cambria would donate the money to a worthwhile charity. Besides, we're always mindful of overhead."

"So let me get this straight. Sonny's playing the psycho, and you seem to have decided on the role of white knight. You shot Jerome to save Catherine, and Lisbon to save Brenda. I sure hope you don't decide Ruby Bee's about to drive me crazy."

"I never shoot women," he said with a small frown. "None of us do. We do occasionally find ourselves frustrated in our inability to indict people who've murdered our agents."

"What am I supposed to do with this, Durmond? Try to convince Henbit that you and Sonny are responsible for the two homicides? That you're framing Cambria and Rick? That a government agency pays its utility bills with drug money?"

"I don't know what to tell you, Arly. You've got an old-fashioned sense of morality, which is not a criticism, but we're engaged in an outright war. It would be lovely if everyone played by the rules and the system worked. However, the courts are more determined to protect the rights of drug barons than those of the kids in the schoolyards. Most of us have been forced to succumb to the philosophy that the end justifies the means."

"And all's fair in love and war?" I murmured.

"I didn't want you to get involved and I sure as hell didn't want to get involved with you. If you forget this conversation, twenty four hours from now you can be home in that little town of yours. I'll stay around here to tidy up the loose ends, and then I have no idea where I'll be sent on my next assignment-which could well be my last. " He lifted his hand as if to touch me, then thought better of it and shrugged. "Sometimes I need to reassure myself that I'm not still in the boat in the middle of the lake, surrounded by nothing but flat brown water."

I returned to the window. Lights were on in the apartments across the street, very few with curtains or shades drawn. In one apartment, children sat staring at a television set; in another, a woman slumped on the sofa with a beer in her hand. On the floor above, an elderly man and woman were engaged in a hostile exchange. It was, I thought sadly, the ultimate gesture of defiance required for survival in a city: No matter what we do and where we choose to do it, you can't see me and I can't see you.

I looked at Durmond with the blind stare of an urbanite. "But you took the gun from Rick's room the first night you were in the hotel, didn't you? The scene in the kitchen wasn't all that spontaneous, not if you'd gone to the trouble to steal the gun to frame Rick. You had to shoot someone."

"So many crooks, so little time."

"I feel ridiculous," Mrs. Jim Bob said from the farthest corner of the cave.

Brother Verber thought she looked mighty fine, but he knew she didn't want to hear it and would fail to appreciate how he was merely admiring God's handiwork, dressed as it was in a scarlet nightie and cute lil' panties. The outline of the peekaboo bra was visible under the flimsy fabric, and one black strap had strayed along her shoulder.

He made all these observations from a crate on which he was perched. He'd selected an apricot nightgown, but the panties had torn when he tried to wiggle into them, so he was feeling a chill in his privates. "Don't be embarrassed, Sister Barbara," he said sonorously. "The Good Lord doesn't mind us doing this so we won't freeze to death. This rain'll have to let up before too long, and we'll just change back into our regular clothes and look for the car."

"Keep your head turned, Brother Verber. I don't care how many times you keep trying to act like we're dressed for prayer meeting, we aren't. I cannot believe what's happened, and all because of you."

"Of me?"

She wasn't about to explain, so she sniffed irritably and tugged at the lacy hem that kept easing over her knees.

"I hope I haven't done anything to cause you all this grief and uncomfortableness, Sister Barbara. You know how much I respect you from that halo I can see all the way down to your trim ankles."

"Don't talk about my ankles!"

"It was just a figure of speech. Being a preacher, I get in the habit of using them to emphasize my message. At least take heart in knowing that no one will ever know about this. No one in the entire world. If we have to say anything, we'll just explain we got caught in the rain and waited in a cave. We don't have to say one word about changing into dry clothes. Let us offer praise to the Almighty for allowing us to keep this secret-"

"I won't be more'n a minute, Marjorie," said a voice from the darkness outside the cave. "Change the radio station if ye be a mind to."

"Who's that?" Mrs. Jim Bob hissed, clutching the collar of her scarlet nightie.

Brother Verber's privates turned icy. "I reckon we're hearing things on account of being cold and hungry. Why, there's no way anybody would be wandering around this godforsaken place in weather like this."

He was going to add more, or at least repeat his words with increased assurance, when a flashlight beam hit him square in the face. The beam moved down slowly, illuminating the lace of the nightgown and his quivery knees, then darted across the cave to linger on Mrs. Jim Bob's stricken expression.

"Well, what does we got here?" The figure silhouetted in the mouth of the cave cackled and spat. "Marjorie, git over here and have yerself a look at the preacher man and his floozy. You ain't gonna believe your eyes!"

Marjorie was most amazed.

"Fishing?" Larry Joe Lambertino said, studying the note with a bewildered frown. "Joyce hates fishing. This doesn't make a lick of sense. Are you sure she didn't say anything before she left?"

Saralee had her head in the refrigerator, rooting for food, so her voice was a little muffled. "Not a word, Uncle Larry Joe. All she did was make us go out to the treehouse in the backyard and have a tea party. Now my stomach aches awful, Uncle Larry Joe. I think I'm gonna throw up."

She was right.

"You know," Simmons (senior) said, balancing his drink on his belly while he paddled the raft toward the edge of the pool, "this place has class. Costs a goddamn fortune, but at least you get your value for your money."

Fleecum sat in a deck chair, a cap on his head and a damp towel draped around his neck. The lights around the pool glittered gently, as did the moonlight on the beach and the stars reflected in the water. "Value's a big seller these days. We stress value in all the major projects, even when the product's like that crap you make. Consumers like to be told they're getting good value, just like you said a minute ago." He gestured at a waiter. "Want to see about an early tee time tomorrow?"

"Whatever," Simmons said, handing his empty glass to the waiter and paddling back out to the middle of the water, where he could admire the moon hiding behind the palm fronds.

"I knew you were stupid the minute I laid eyes on you," Dahlia said from under the stool where she'd been tied so tightly her fingers were numb.

Her remark was aimed at Clark Rhodes, who was tied to the next stool and dressed only in his underwear. His sock had slipped down around his ankle like snakeskin, but he'd tried once to catch it with his teeth and bitten himself. "He had a gun, and I didn't have a whole heck of a lot of options. How was I supposed to know he was going to pull this kind of stunt? I'm a statistician. I do numbers in a nice, clean office in Quantico, and then I drive home to my suburban home and have a martini on the deck and read the newspaper with my wife. Did I mention that she's pregnant?"

"Stupider than dog doo-doo," Dahlia said, not touched by this poignant scene of domestic bliss. Kevin was still over in the corner somewheres, but it was pitch-black with the blinds closed, and she didn't care anyway. "Stupider than Kevin," she added for good measure, "and that's as stupid as it gits."

"Beloved," Kevin called from wherever it was he'd most recently gotten stuck. "I'm on my way to gnaw clean through your ropes and set you free."

"Wire, Kevin, and unless you got tools in your pocket like Ira Pickerel, all you'll do is chip a tooth."

Rhodes was beginning to realize how grim his situation was. Marvel had promised to tell the police that he had persuaded the terrorist to come out at sunrise and surrender, which meant they might get suspicious by noon or so. Rhodes had hoped the police would notice the switched identity, but they hadn't. One brother looked just like the next one, especially in the dark. The real problem, he thought with a sigh, was that he was going to spend up to twelve hours being told how stupid he was, how stupid Kevin was, and how smart Ira Pickerel was. Rhodes already hated Ira Pickerel.

Marvel didn't hate Ira Pickerel anymore, now that he was tooling down the road in Kevin's car, having cited agency policy when he confiscated it for evidence. He was munching cookies out of the picnic basket, fiddling with the radio every now and then to get away from the redneck wails, and on his way to Niagara Falls, via Cleveland. The jacket was spread out neatly in the backseat, along with the dark red tie. Special Agent Clark "Marvel" Rhodes didn't know when next he might need to flash his badge, but when he did, he wanted to look slick.

"I don't want to file a report," Geri howled, standing beside her Mercedes. "Whoever did this is welcome to my luggage and the spare tire. Just let us go!"

Kyle winced at the harsh marks on the trunk. "Come on, Officer, it's not as though you're going to catch the guy, so why don't you allow Miss Gebhearn to come by the precinct when we return to the city. In the meantime, she'll send you a copy of the insurance and registration papers, and you can start the report with them."

"No, sir, that's impossible," the police officer said. "You have to come down now and fill out the paper work. Otherwise, your insurance company won't pay up and you'll be amazed at how much this kind of damage costs."

"I feel as though I'm being taken hostage," Geri said, glaring at the officer and wishing Mother had instilled some tips about this sort of degradation.

"Sorry, ma'am."

Kyle took her arm and eased her into the passenger's side. "We'll be out of the city in no time. How long can paperwork take, after all?"

"Would you like some more peanuts?" the stewardess asked so eagerly that I wondered if she were on commission.

I took a package, but Ruby Bee stonily stared at the back of the seat, her hands grasped tightly on the armrests and her mouth clamped shut. Estelle also accepted another package, but she wasn't any chattier than her cohort in crime.

"So it wasn't cash," I said for the millionth time.

"And what am I supposed to do with a lifetime supply of Krazy KoKo-Nut? I don't care what they say about its value, it's nasty and gawdawful and I wouldn't even use it for compost. Just thinking about it arriving year after year's enough to push me in an early grave." Fresh out of suggestions, I looked down at the clouds, then smiled as I realized I was longing to get back to Maggody, where nothing ever happened.