Upside Down

52

Winter and Adams took Winter's Stratus, and Nicky followed driving Adams's Chevrolet. They arrived outside the River Club and parked in the lot. Nicky stopped the Chevrolet thirty feet away from them.

“Okay, Nicky,” Winter said into his radio. “Adams and I'll rattle this buzzard's cage. I'll radio if we need you inside.”

As the pair walked off, Nicky's voice came over the radio. “Ten-four.”

Inside the foyer, the smiling hostess was bantering with a group of men, one of whom Winter recognized as the previous mayor of New Orleans, the son of another mayor long dead. As the local dignitaries were being led to a table, Winter and Adams waited for the hostess to return.

“Two?” she asked cheerfully. “Smoking or nonsmoking?”

Adams opened his badge case and showed it to her. “We need to speak to Mr. Bennett,” he said.

“I'll see if he's in,” she said, a pained smile freezing on her face. “Can I tell him what this is in reference to?”

“Shouldn't you see if he's in first?” Adams replied.

She lifted the telephone on the lectern and punched three digits. “Is the boss in?” she asked. After a short pause, she said, “There are two gentlemen to see Mr. Bennett. FBI agents.”

She listened and looked back up at Adams. “Might I say what this is in reference to?”

“We'll handle that,” Adams said flatly.

The hostess said, “Just go straight to the rear near the bathrooms. The iron gate will be open. His office is at the end.”

Winter and Adams walked toward the rear, skirting the dining tables. He caught sight of two people who fit Clara Hughes's description cut across the restaurant from the office area and exit through a side door. Winter keyed the radio. “Nicky, the couple in the Lincoln are exiting the far side of the building. Follow them.”

“I see them, and I'm so there,” Nicky's voice replied. “Leather lady and Stick climbed into a big bad black Lincoln, just like the neighbor lady said. ”

“Stick on them,” Winter said. “But don't get too close.”

Now they would find out who the couple were.

“Well, that's an interesting turn,” Adams said.

“Nicky, we're going in to see the guy. Radio silence unless there's an emergency.” Winter shut off his cell phone as they passed through the ornamental iron doors.

Jerry Bennett's secretary was a plump, orange-haired woman seated at a desk, blinking owlishly. Her face was as round as a pie tin, and her red lips were surrounded by thin lines, like metal fatigue cracks. Her irises were the color of mud, and her eyelids seemed to be trembling under the weight of green eyeshadow. “Can I help you?”

Adams flashed his badge. “Special Agent John Adams. Jerry Bennett, please.”

“He's expecting you,” she said. She got up, crossed to a tall, solid oak door, and held it open for them.

Jerry Bennett's office was spacious and elegantly modern. Illumination was provided by hidden light fixtures. The club owner approached the two men and extended his hand, which, since neither man moved to shake it, remained suspended before him until he lowered it and sat down behind the desk. The thick surface of the desk was granite, the edges rough as though something with very hard teeth had chewed on it.

“May I see your credentials?” he said, focusing first on Winter and then on Adams.

Adams held his ID inches from Bennett's eyes. Winter pulled out his badge case, and Bennett read it silently. If the presence of a marshal meant anything to him he didn't show it.

“What can I do for you?” he asked.

“We're looking into something, and a name came up that seems to be connected to you.”

“Please, sit,” Bennett said.

Adams and Winter sat in the two chairs across from the club owner. Adams opened a small notebook and stared at what Winter saw was a blank page. He took out a ballpoint, snapped its tip out, and positioned it over the page.

“Amber Lee,” Adams said after a few more seconds of silence.

“I didn't know that the FBI investigates murders.”

“Did I say we were investigating murders?”

Bennett reacted by shifting in his seat and smiling sickly. “No, I guess not.”

“That would be an NOPD matter,” Adams said. “Unless it somehow wasn't being handled legitimately.”

“Poor woman,” Bennett murmured.

“Yes,” Adams agreed. “Poor woman indeed.”

“Unfortunate, what happened,” Bennett said, lowering his eyes to the desktop.

“You filed charges against her,” Adams asked, snapping the ballpoint.

“I didn't want to. We go back a long way, Amber and I. At one time, we were very close. I've known… I knew her for over twenty years.”

“And yet she stole from you,” Adams said.

“That was…”

“Unfortunate?” Adams snapped the ballpoint on, made a note, clicked it off, and looked back up at Bennett.

Bennett nodded. “Very. I've thought about it a great deal. It's very painful, as you can imagine. Maybe she needed money and was embarrassed to ask. I can't understand it, because I paid her quite well.”

“How much?”

“I'm sorry?”

“How much did she steal?”

“I believe it was fifty thousand dollars.”

“Fifty even?”

“Yes.”

“Your bookkeeper caught it?”

“No, it was in my drawer.”

“Fifty thousand dollars… in cash?”

“Yes.” Bennett nodded.

Adams scribbled. Clicked the pen closed.

Bennett cleared his throat. “Of course, I had to file charges. My insurance requires I do that if they are going to pay on my loss-by-theft policy.”

“Insurance company?” Adams clicked the pen and poised it over the pad.

“I'm sorry?”

“You filed a claim. I need the name of the company and the claims agent. So I can check it. Routine procedure.”

“Well… I haven't filed a claim yet… I will. My insurance broker is Felix Argent at Argent Consolidated. I'm not sure which company he has that handles that coverage. He uses lots of underwriting companies.”

Click. “So, Felix Argent advised you to file charges.”

“A policeman did.”

“The policeman who investigated the theft? It was investigated?”

Bennett nodded. “Look, I knew she took it. It was in my safe, she was the only other one in here who had the combination, and she left and it was gone.” He held out his open hands. “I was actually advised to file charges by a policeman, a close friend of mine, who said I would need that to collect on that kind of policy. I'm not sure Felix and I have talked about it yet. I've been extremely busy.”

Scribble. Click. “And no doubt grieving,” Adams said.

Adams's delivery was so deadpan that he could have been reading the questions out of an instruction book. Winter didn't do anything other than watch in solemn silence. It was a technique like the way Adams clicked the pen to make Bennett nervous. A mysterious U.S. marshal and an annoying FBI agent.

Silence for fifteen seconds. Click. “The name of this policeman friend?”

“Suggs. Homicide Commander Captain Harvey Suggs.”

“I see,” Adams said, not writing the name at all. “That wouldn't be the same Captain Suggs who is overseeing the Porter/Lee murder cases?”

“Is he? I suppose he would be in charge of the detectives who are. You'd have to ask him.”

“Yes, I would,” Adams agreed. “I would indeed.”

Winter studied the club owner, spotting the tells, charting the lies. Bennett wasn't a talented liar, His eyes rolled up and to the right about every time he answered one of Adams's questions. He drummed his fingers on his desk and swallowed constantly. He wasn't just nervous, he was afraid, and he had been totally blindsided by their sudden appearance. Adams was shaking his tree and the miserable creature across from them was holding on for dear life.

“Did you know Kimberly Porter?”

“Who?”

“The second homicide victim.”

“The murderer's mother?”

“Suggs tell you the child was the killer?”

“Well, I just assumed it, I guess. I haven't spoken to Harvey. Not since it happened.”

Adams wrote that down. “After your friend Amber is murdered, you didn't call to ask Suggs about it? Not even seek more of his valuable advice? So, you haven't spoken to him in… how long?”

“In two weeks. Since the theft.”

“And you didn't know Kimberly Porter.”

“No. I never met her, as far as I know. I talk to hundreds of people in the course of my businesses.”

“Well, I guess you wouldn't have. Mrs. Porter didn't hang out in clubs like yours, probably didn't eat a lot of artificially spiced fried chicken. She was a Death Row appeals specialist, and a mother.”

Something in Bennett's eyes changed. They hardened and he seemed to have gained control of his fear. He leaned back in his chair and locked his fingers across his stomach. “I may have read that she was a lawyer. I don't have much to do with people on Death Row.”

“And did Amber Lee have much to do with people on Death Row?”

“I seriously doubt it.”

“Then it must seem particularly bizarre to you that Ms. Lee would be meeting with her, doesn't it?”

“I wouldn't know what she was meeting with that attorney about.”

“Are you aware that she had approached the FBI?”

“Lawyer Porter?”

Adams looked down and made notes on the pad.

“Would you know what information Ms. Lee may have had about one of Ms. Porter's clients being innocent-of knowing who the real killer was? Of having proof of it in her hands.”

“Ms. Lee never mentioned having any knowledge of any murder case. But in the past few years, we weren't as close as we once were.”

“How close were you two, in the years when you were close?”

“ That is none of the FBI's business,” he said, standing abruptly. “Gentlemen, that's the end of this conversation. If you want to discuss anything else with me, submit your questions in writing to my attorney.”

Click. Adams closed his pad and pocketed it.

“There is just one more thing,” Winter said.

Bennett stood rigid, staring indignantly into Winter's eyes.

“What do you know about Hank Trammel?”

“Who?”

“United States Marshal Hank Trammel.”

“Never heard of him.”

Winter exhaled, disappointed. If his internal lie detector was working, Jerry Bennett was telling the truth… about that one thing.