Backstab (24 page)

“This place? Never. Who cares about an attractive morgue?”

“Thought I heard an electric saw.”

“You did,” said Katie. “That's a Stryker saw. The morgue tech is buzzing a head open so I can see the brain. Make this quick. I don't have a lot of time.”

Me, either. In about two seconds, I was going to gorp. “One more question about that female impersonator autopsy,” I said. “Can you tell me anything about the clothes Michael was wearing?”

“Yeah. They're in the autopsy report. You didn't ask about them, so I didn't mention them. Let me get it.”

She was gone just long enough for me to get queasy again from the sound of the Stryker saw. “It says here the body was dressed in a woman's suit at the time of the examination. You know the weird thing about it? The suit was held together with Velcro.”

“Michael used Velcro instead of zippers?”

“No, the suit had buttons and zippers in the right places. But the seams had Velcro fastenings, so the suit could come apart. I'd never seen a suit like that. I was curious about it. Usually, the only people who use Velcro doodads on their clothes are paras and quads, because some people in wheelchairs don't have the dexterity to do buttons and snaps. But that wasn't what was going on with this Velcro. I found out it was breakapart clothes like actors and strippers use on stage. But this wasn't any stripper's costume.
There was nothing flashy about that suit. You or I could have worn it.”

“What did it look like?” I asked, although I had a pretty good idea.

“It was a navy-blue suit. Expensive designer suit, Chanel label, with a fitted jacket. But not too tight. Definitely not cheap-looking. Not what you'd think of as hooker's clothing. Had a cute little bow in the back.”

“The back?”

“Yeah, on the butt. Just above it, to be exact. I'd probably take the bow off, myself, if I wore the suit, but that's just a matter of taste.”

Maria Callous, the Ass with Class, with her little bow on her little blue suit, and Princess Di, the classy blonde with the little blue suit with the bow on the back. They were the same person. She was the woman Charlie had been seen with. The woman he'd passed on to his boss to promote his career. The woman who turned out to be a man.

The woman he had to kill before his boss found out and killed his career.

L
ong ago, I used to think Charlie was my mentor. Now I thought he was a murderer. What changed? Certainly not Charlie. Not in the fifteen years I'd known him. What changed was the way I saw him.

Charlie made no bones about what he did. He was the
Gazette
's master of revels, illegal and immoral. Only a prude would object. He sold a little pot to the staff. So what if the price was jacked above street rate? He thought it was funny when someone complained he made a profit off his friends. “I took the risk,” he said. “If I get caught, they won't go to jail for me.”

He ran the office pools, and gleefully talked about how he broke the interstate gambling laws when he called his pals at other papers around the country. So what? as Charlie would say. Most offices had a little friendly betting. But most offices didn't print sanctimonious stories and editorials denouncing the evils of legalized
gambling. The same writers who did the stories about the disgrace and disasters that befell bettors would go back and place a bet with a bookie who was a senior
CG
editor. Betting was bad for
them
, for the readers. It was okay for
us
, the
CG
staff.

Charlie bragged about cheating on his wife. Charlie had a sixth sense for which women were dissatisfied with their men or their marriages. He could see that Ms. X or Mrs. Y was feeling unloved and unappreciated. A joke or two, drinks at the Last Word, dinner if she really held out, and he'd generally have her. Often, so would his friends. He liked to say he was good at “breaking them in and passing them around.” Several of his girl friends were passed on up the ranks to higher editors. It humiliated some. It helped the careers of others. One of Charlie's girl friends became a
Gazette
editor and another got a cushy reporting job. Charlie laughed at his infidelities until you did, too. Morals were for losers. Fidelity was for saps who couldn't get a little on the side.

Charlie wasn't especially good-looking. His complexion was red. He had a beer gut like a shoplifted bowling ball and a bald spot like a burnt-out lawn. But he made good looks seem like something for less fortunate men, because they couldn't have Charlie's smarts. Before Georgia clued me in on Charlie, I didn't run with his crowd, but I thought he was amusing.

Lyle hated Charlie. He was the first person who tried to straighten me out about the guy. I
thought Lyle was being stuffy. One night, we argued about it after a
Gazette
party. I went to more of them in those days.

“Don't trust that man,” Lyle said.

“I don't have to,” I said. “I'm not married to him. What do you have against Charlie, anyway? He's kind of funny.”

“He betrays people,” said Lyle, seriously. “He cheats on his wife with that woman at work, Geraldine.”

“That's his business.”

“He's made it the office's business. He screws her in his car on the company parking lot, so the whole building knows. Then he cheats on Geraldine with those eager young journalism students who try to sell him their stories.”

“They wise up fast. If I avoided people because they played around, I'd run out of folks to talk to,” I said. “Charlie's rather lighthearted about his affairs. If his wife and Geraldine don't care, why should I?”

Lyle set his mouth in a straight line. I hated when he did that. He lectured me like the college professor he was. “With Charlie, it's not about sex, it's about betrayal,” Lyle said. “Remember what he did to Peggy at the Christmas party?”

No one could forget that party. Peggy was the pretty young wife of Charlie's ex-best friend, a reporter named Josh. Charlie hit on her several times. She refused him. Charlie got Peggy drunk at the Christmas party—she was too dumb to know that the spiked fruit punch packed a wallop. Then he talked Peggy into doing a striptease.
Took it off almost down to the buff. Josh was off talking in another part of the room. Charlie had us all clapping and cheering and yelling “Take it off.”

First Peggy kicked off her penny loafers. Then she pulled off her red cotton Gap sweater and flung away her khaki pants. The cheers and whistles grew more frantic when Peggy was down to her rose-sprigged panties and bra. She still had on more clothes than most people wear on the beach, but we didn't think she would for long. She looked pink and excited and very drunk. We weren't much better, chanting “All off! All off!”

Peggy was about to strip off her panties when Josh, attracted by the noise, came over to our side of the room. He saw his twenty-two-year-old wife standing in her underwear in front of the newsroom.

“Hi, Josh,” said Charlie, wearing a boyish grin. “We just wanted to see if Peggy is a natural blonde.” Peggy sobered instantly and burst into tears. Josh wrapped her in his coat and they left. Peggy never went to another
Gazette
party. Josh never went anywhere at the
Gazette.
He and Peggy eventually moved to the West Coast and I lost track of them.

Even after the Peggy episode, I still didn't catch on about Charlie. “You know,” I said, settling next to Lyle on the couch one night and piling up some pillows, “Charlie's star rose after that scene with Peggy.”

“Showed he was management material,” Lyle
said. He thought even less of the
Gazette
editors than I did. But I didn't want to fight about Charlie that night. I kissed Lyle and licked his cute little ear until we both forgot about anything else.

I felt sorry for poor Peggy. But I still enjoyed Charlie's accounts of his escapades. Maybe I hadn't left my parents' world after all. Maybe Charlie was some kind of father figure for me. I certainly thought Charlie was my protector at the
Gazette.
I was proud to have such a savvy mentor, and I followed his advice exactly. Besides, I liked going in to scream at Hadley. It felt good. I'd probably have screamed myself right out of a job, if Georgia T. George hadn't stopped me when I was about to commit career suicide. She was a type of editor I'd never encountered at the
CG
before: she believed in protecting and encouraging young talent, and stopping them before they did something stupid—like yell at the managing editor when they'd been set up by a false mentor. Once Georgia showed me his back-stabbing memo, things were never the same between Charlie and me. Oh, I never confronted Charlie. Georgia told me not to, and now I followed her advice. To all outward appearances I was friendly with him. Friendly, but no longer admiring. I didn't hang around his desk listening to him talk about the people he screwed, literally and figuratively. I quit going to most
Gazette
parties. It was no fun watching the same tired people preying on each other. What happened to me
was an old, old corporate story, repeated endlessly at the
CG
, and plenty of other offices.

It didn't take Charlie long to figure out I'd changed toward him. Nobody said Charlie was stupid. He quickly went from a good friend to a bitter enemy. Most of the
Gazette
staff blamed me for the break. They said I'd turned on a man who'd given my career a boost. That's certainly how Charlie played it. Others knew better. But they were members of a special club: they'd all been betrayed by Charlie. He was destructive. But so far, he'd only killed careers. Would he kill people, too?

I knew Charlie could be violent. I'd heard that he came close to killing Blow Job Betty. She's the one I told Rita the Retiree about—the one who hung around the Last Word, giving Charlie and the other guys oral sex—until the cop told them she was a he. When Betty made her next visit to the Word, she was beaten up in the parking lot. Rumor had it that Charlie was one of the people who hit her, and he would have killed her if Terry, the bartender, hadn't stopped him. Why didn't I connect Charlie and Maria earlier? I guess I just didn't believe I worked with a murderer. Also, I thought Charlie was too smart to make the same mistake twice.

What if Charlie found out he was dating another female impersonator? Would that have sent him right over the edge into murder? Charlie wasn't the type to go into therapy and ask himself why he was attracted to men who dressed as women.

But why kill Burt and Ralph?

Why did they both die in the same week? What was the connection?

I knew Ralph drank at Burt's Bar when he was rehabbing in the neighborhood. Had Ralph been in Burt's Bar the night Charlie walked in with Maria? Would he have recognized her? Ralph knew a lot of female impersonators.

Burt couldn't answer that question. But his wife, Dolores, might know. I called her and apologized for bothering her again, but she was happy to take a break from packing. “My back is killing me, Francesca. I'm getting too old for this moving business,” Dolores complained. But she sounded younger and livelier than she had since Burt's death.

“Was Ralph in the bar the night Charlie came in with the classy blonde?”

“Are you still digging around in that? Francesca, I'm warning you, be careful. The answer is yes. Ralph was in that night, and most every night that week. He was working on the Utah house and plaster dust made him thirsty.”

“Was Ralph in the bar the day Burt died?”

“Yes,” said Dolores. “Ralph was sicker than a dog that day, and came in for a bowl of soup to go. Chicken soup. Supposed to be the best thing for colds, and ours is made from scratch. I looked out of the kitchen and saw him for a minute. The lunch-hour rush had started and I was back there cooking. Burt was up front taking orders and fixing drinks. I saw Burt and Ralph
talking together, but I can't tell you what about. Probably just ordering his soup.”

That was the last piece to the puzzle. I had it all worked out now. But I needed to run my conclusions by someone. I called Uncle Bob's to see if Marlene was there. “She's working now, honey,” said Sandie, the manager. “If you stop by in an hour, at seven o'clock she can talk with you.”

I did. This time, we went into the back staff room, where Babe, the
Gazette
's gossip columnist, never went. Marlene turned on the coffeepot so we'd have plenty of fuel. She poured us two cups of fresh coffee, and we sat down at a table. I pulled out the Gender Bender program with Maria's ad. This time, I covered up everything on the page but her picture. I was taking no chances. I didn't want any distractions. “Ever see this person?” I asked.

Marlene identified Maria right away. “That's her. That's the blond woman who was with Charlie.”

“That's what I needed to hear,” I said. “I think I've got it all figured out. Let me run it by you:

“Charlie murdered Burt and Ralph, and someone else, too. You've pointed out Princess Di, the classy blond woman who came in with Charlie. Well, she was a he.”

“I'll be damned,” said Marlene. “I'd never guess. Couldn't tell by the Adam's apple or the hands and feet. I guess because she was so delicate.”

“She was so delicate she had a drag act called
Maria Callous, the Ass with Class.” I showed her the rest of the ad.

“Good thing I'm sitting down,” said Marlene. “I thought I was beyond being surprised in this business. Her bottom was a beaut. Not that I'm queer myself. Just checkin' out the competition.”

“Well, Charlie was going out with Maria—maybe only once or twice, from what I can figure out. Then he hands her over to his boss, Hadley, to advance his own career. Except right after that, he finds out Maria Callous is really a guy and kills her. Maria wasn't his first female impersonator. Charlie already had a close encounter with BJ Betty. I told you about that one. And gossip says he nearly killed Betty when he found out.”

“As much as he played around, you'd think Charlie could tell a girl from a boy. We had a few giggles over that one,” said Marlene.

“So did everyone else. They'd have some real horselaughs if they found out Charlie made the same mistake twice. And even if they didn't find out, think how Hadley would take the news.