chapter thirty-one
JEANETTE RONAN WANTED to meet me at ten A.M. in the food court at the Northshore Shopping Center in Peabody. Public and anonymous. I got there early and cruised the place to make sure I wasn't walking into a setup. She might have leveled with her husband, and the good jurist, officer of the court be damned, was dangerous. Other than the dangers inherent if you actually ate there, the food court looked safe enough. I got a cup of coffee and sat at one of the small tables and looked at the mall rats.
The Northshore Shopping Center had opened for business late in 1957 with a Filene's being the first. Since then it had divided and multiplied and roofed over and become a vast enclosed warren indistinguishable from a mall in Buffalo, Boise, or San Bernardino. It was someplace to go for young mothers with unhappy children, and old people on whom the walls had begun to close. It provided an indoor place with security, food, bathrooms, and other people. If all else failed, you could buy something. I was in my business suit: running shoes, jeans, a tee shirt, leather jacket, and accessorized with a short Smith & Wesson and some iridescent Oakley shades. I could see my reflection in the plate glass window of the bookstore opposite and I was everything the haute monde gum shoe was supposed to be. Maybe more.
Jeannette Ronan arrived about 10:10, which would have been right on the button for Susan, so I hadn't begun to think she was late yet. Her blonde hair was below her shoulders and gleamed of a thousand brush strokes. She wore a dark lavender suit with a short skirt, and no stockings. Her legs were very smooth and tanned the color of caramel candy. When she sat down she gave off the gentle aura of good perfume.
"Coffee?" I said.
She shook her head. Brusque. She reached into her matching purse and took out a checkbook and a big gold fountain pen.
"How much?" she said.
"To spend the night with me?" I said. "I usually get one thousand."
"Don't be coarse," she said. "How much for the photographs."
"Oh, those are free," I said. "You want the one with my body oiled, or the all-natural one?"
She spoke as if the hinges of her jaw were sore. "I will pay you for the pictures of me," she said. "How much do you want?"
She was working her tail off to be icy. But she wasn't old enough or smart enough or tough enough. She barely managed sullen.
"Jeanette," I said. "I'm not here to sell you pictures. The Polaroid stuff was just to get you here. We need to talk."
She stared at me.
"Besides, nobody will give you back blackmail items in return for a check, for heaven's sake. Next thing you'll be asking if I accept Visa or MasterCard."
She continued to stare. She held onto the checkbook and pen as if they would fend me off. Looking like she did and having money was all the defense she would ever have, if she needed one. Smart wasn't going to be part of it.
"Do you demand cash?" she said.
"No."
"Why wouldn't you take a check?"
"If I were blackmailing you, I take the check, give you the pictures, you go home and stop payment on the check. Call the cops. I try to cash it and they've got me with proof of my extortion."
"They what?" she said.
"It's okay. I'm not going to ask you for money."
"Well, how do I get the pictures?"
"You don't."
"Then…"
"I want information. I'm going to use the pictures to force you to give me information."
"See, you are blackmailing me."
"Yes I am. You change your mind about coffee?"
"I… yes," she said and her eyes shifted. "I'll have some, black."
"Fine, and if you're not here when I come back with it I will show these pictures to your husband."
"How do I know you even have the pictures?"
"There are four of them altogether," I said. "They were in with some love letters signed `J' in a shoebox under Brad Sterling's bed."
I took one out of my jacket pocket. "Here's one of them," I said.
She looked and quickly looked away. "Put that away," she said.
Under the careful tan her face and neck flushed richly. I put the picture back in my jacket pocket.
"Large coffee?" I said.
She looked around the room. No one was paying any attention. She nodded yes to my question and I went up and got her a cup and one for me, cream, two sugars, and went back to the table with them. She had crossed her legs, which was a good thing, and was leaning back a little in her chair, being serene and ladylike in a difficult situation. I put her coffee down in front of her carefully, without spilling any, and put mine in front of me and got back in my chair. We sat. While we sat I surveyed the room. No sign of anyone intending to shoot me. Jeanette didn't touch her coffee. Susan did that too. You gave her something to eat or drink and she allowed it to sit there for a while. Maybe it was a gender thing. When presented with something ingestible, I began at once to ingest it. Jeanette met my eyes in a long look.
"Did you like what you saw in the pictures?" she said.
"Absolutely," I said. "My congratulations to your trainer."
"I'm not ashamed of my body."
"I'm not ashamed of it either."
"You said something a moment ago about spending the night," Jeanette said.
"It was an attempt at levity," I said.
"We could, you know."
"Spend the night together?" I said.
She smiled at me. It was a smile full of invitation and promise. A nice smile, very practiced.
"And all I have to do is give you the pictures?"
"It might be a night to remember," Jeanette said.
She made a small show of looking at her watch. It was gold and silver and had a big face.
"Maybe," she smiled again, "a day and night to remember."
"That a Cartier watch?" I said.
"Yes," she said, "a Panther."
"Nice," I said.
She looked at her coffee and didn't drink it.
With her eyes demurely on the coffee cup she said, "Are you interested in my offer?"
"More than the spoken word can tell," I said. "But no thank you."
She looked up and there was something like fear on her face. I knew what it was. She'd tried money and she'd tried sex. Neither had worked. There wasn't anything else.
"Well," she said, "what the fuck do you want?"
"I'd like you to tell me about the sexual harassment suit against Brad Sterling," I said.
"You'll have to talk with my husband," she said.
"Mm umm," I said.
"What do you mean, `umm hmm'?"
"I mean you want to think that through a little?"
"Why should I?" she said. "He's my husband, he's a brilliant lawyer. You'll have to talk with him."
"Does he know?" I said.
"About me and Brad?"
"Yes.
"No."
"Does he know that the lawsuit is a fraud?"
"Fraud?"
"Fraud."
"I don't know what you are talking about. I admit to a brief period of foolish sexual intimacy. But that doesn't mean he has the right to harass me."
"May I call you Jeanette?" I said.
"Of course."
She smiled when she said it. The response and the smile were automatic. Neither was appropriate to the situation.
"Jeanette," I said, "you're in a mess. And the only way out of the mess is for me to help you. But if I'm going to help you, you really have to stop trying to outwit me. I don't mean to be unkind, but you're ill equipped."
She flushed again and her eyes blurred a little as if she were going to cry.
"Here's the mess you're in," I said. "I may have a few details wrong, but I'm pretty sure about the, ah, broad outlines of it. You meet Brad Sterling while he's running Galapalooza and you're volunteering. Maybe you were interested in doing something charitable. Maybe you and your girlfriends just thought it would be fun, maybe meet some celebrities. Brad's an attractive guy, and you get involved. Then one way or another your husband gets wind of it. Maybe you love your husband, maybe you like the life he gives you, whatever, you want to save your marriage. So you say it's not what it looks like: It's a case of sexual harassment."
She was sitting very still, her coffee still undisturbed in front of her. She was trying to hold my gaze but not doing it very well. Her eyes were definitely teary.
"It's not a bad ploy. But you know who and what your husband is. And you should have guessed that he'd sue the bastard."
The tears that had blurred her eyes were beginning to spill. She picked up her napkin and blotted them, carefully, so as not to spoil the eye makeup.
"So," I said, "you got your girlfriends to help join in, make it more credible, take some of the heat off you. And your husband sues on behalf of all of you."
"He flirted with all of us," Jeanette said.
"I'm sure he did."
"So there really was some harassment," she said.
"I'm not sure flirtation's harassment," I said. "But that's not my issue."
"Well, it's an important issue," she said.
"Sure," I said. "What I don't get is why Sterling is so passive about it."
"Maybe he felt guilty," she said.
"About what?"
"Well, he was having an affair with a married woman," she said.
"Sure," I said. "That's probably it."
We were quiet. She dabbed again at her eyes. They looked fine.
"That about how it went?" I said.
She nodded.
"You wouldn't have any thoughts on where Brad might be now, would you?"
"No."
"You know he's a suspect in a murder case?" I said.
She nodded.
"See any connection between your lawsuit and the murder?" I said.
"My… good God no," she said. "What could that have to do with murder?"
I shrugged.
"Ripples in a pond," I said.
"Ripples?"
"Know anybody named Richard Gavin?"
"No."
"Know why your husband would hire a couple of sluggers to scare me off the case?"
"Sluggers?" She wrinkled her nose at the word. "My husband?" She was horrified. "My husband certainly wouldn't…"
"I'll take that as a no," I said. "Ever hear of an organization called Civil Streets?"
She said, "Certainly."
At last an answer.
"It's one of the beneficiary organizations for Galapalooza," she said proudly.
"Know what it does?"
"I believe it is a rehabilitating agency for criminals." She corrected herself. "Former criminals."
"Know how much they received from Galapalooza?"
"It was all pre-allotted," she said, "by share. How many tables everyone sold, that sort of thing."
"But you don't know how much they actually got."
"No."
"You know how much anyone got?" I said.
"I heard that the costs were so high that they weren't able to distribute as much to charity as they had hoped."
"I heard that too," I said.
We sat quietly. She had never touched her coffee. I had drunk all of mine and was thinking maybe she'd had the better idea.
"Anything else you can tell me?" I said.
"About what?"
"About Brad Sterling or Galapalooza or the guy got killed in Brad Sterling's office, guy named Cony Brown, or a woman named Carla Quagliozzi or what you plan to do about the sexual harassment suit?"
"I don't know… What do you mean about the sexual harassment suit?"
"You can't press it," I said. "I have your letters and your pictures. You take it to court and you'll lose, quite publicly."
"But I can't tell my husband," she said in a tone that suggested that I was an idiot for suggesting otherwise.
"Well, you don't have to right now. Until we find Brad, you can probably sit tight and keep your mouth shut."
"But what if you find him?"
"Well, maybe he won't come back," she said hopefully.
"Then the lawsuit becomes moot, doesn't it," I said.
She nodded slowly. "Yes. I… guess… so."
"But take a worst-case scenario, maybe I'll find him."
She shook her head and looked at the tabletop and didn't speak.
"If," I said, "anything happens that prevents him from coming back. And if you had anything to do with it, I will tell everyone everything I know," I said.
"You don't think I… My God, you must think I'm simply awful."
"Yeah," I said. "I guess I do."