The Collectors (25 page)
A
FTER HIS REVELATION
J
ERRY
B
agger
had summoned the manager of the hotel across the street to his office and demanded details of every guest who’d taken a room on the twenty-third floor on the side facing his building on a certain day. And in Atlantic City, when Jerry Bagger said to come, you went. As usual, some of Bagger’s men hovered in the background.
The hotel manager, a young, good-looking man who was obviously ambitious and intent on performing his duties to the best of his abilities, was not inclined to let the casino chief see anything.
“Just so you understand the situation, if you don’t give me what I want, you will die,” Bagger said.
The manager had flinched. “Are you threatening me?”
“No. A threat is when there’s a chance it won’t happen. This is what in the trade we call a sure thing.”
The manager paled but bravely said, “The information you’re requesting is confidential. I can’t possibly hand it over to you. Our guests expect their affairs to be kept private, and we have the highest standards at the—”
Bagger cut him off. “Yeah, yeah. Look, I’ll go the easy route first. How much you want for it?”
“You’re trying to bribe me?”
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“You can’t possibly be serious—”
“Hundred thou.”
“A hundred thousand dollars!”
Bagger looked at his men. “Boy, this guy’s quick, ain’t he? Maybe I should hire him to run my place. Yeah, a hundred thousand dollars slipped right into your personal account if you let me look at the records.” The man seemed to be considering the offer, but Bagger was quickly growing impatient. “And if you don’t, I tell you what, I’m not gonna kill you. Instead, I’ll break every bone in your body, mess with your brain so you can’t tell anybody what happened to you, and you can spend the rest of your life in a nursing home pissing all over yourself while some freak-offs drill you every night. Now to me there’s no real choice there, but I’m a reasonable man, so I’ll let you make the decision. You got five seconds.”
An hour later Bagger had all the information he’d requested and quickly culled down his list of potential suspects. Next he questioned hotel personnel about some of the guests in question. It didn’t take him long to hit the jackpot because of some extra services one of the guests had taken advantage of during his stay.
“Yeah, I gave him a massage,” the young woman named Cindy said. She was petite and dark-haired with a cute face, alluring curves and a streetwise manner. She popped gum and played with her hair while talking to Bagger in a private room in the hotel’s sumptuous spa area.
He eyed her closely. “You know who I am?”
Cindy nodded. “You’re Jerry Bagger. My mom, Dolores, works a craps table for you at the Pompeii.”
“Right, good old Dolores. You like this spa shit?”
“Pay sucks, but tips are great. The old guys like to feel a young lady’s hands on ’em. A few get a hard-on while I’m doing it. Pretty disgusting on an eighty-year-old, but like I said, they tip good.”
“This guy you worked on.” Bagger glanced at the name he’d written down. “This Robby Thomas, tell me about him, starting with what he looks like.”
Cindy gave him a physical description. “Good-looking guy but way too cocky. He really thought a lot of himself. I don’t like that in a man. And he was too thin and pretty, if you know what I mean. I could’ve probably taken him in arm wrestling. I like my guys big and rugged.”
“I bet. So this pretty boy, you only give him a massage? Or something extra?”
Cindy crossed her arms and stopped popping her gum. “I’m a licensed professional, Mr. Bagger.”
In response he pulled ten hundred-dollar bills from his wallet. “This enough to buy your license?”
Cindy eyed the money. “I guess what I do on my own time is my business.”
“Can’t argue with that.” He held out the money. “So tell me about it.”
But she hesitated in taking the cash. “I could maybe lose my job if—”
“Cindy, I don’t give a shit if you’re screwing dead people at this two-bit joint, okay?” He pushed the money down the inside of her shirt. “Now talk to me. And don’t lie. Lying to me is a very bad thing.”
She started speaking fast. “Okay, like he was all over me from the get-go. I was massaging him, and all of a sudden I felt his hand against my leg. And then his hand moved way past where it should’ve been.”
“Yeah, a real animal. What happened next?”
“He started coming on to me really hard. At first I blew him off. Then he started talking high-and-mighty. Said he was making a big score and I should be nice to him.”
“A big score, huh? Keep going.”
“He flashed some money, said there was a lot more where that came from. After I finished work, he was waiting for me. We had a couple drinks; I started getting a little looped. I’m not real good with holding my liquor.”
“Yeah, yeah, let’s keep it moving here, Cin,” Bagger said impatiently. “I got serious ADD.”
She went on hurriedly. “So anyway, we ended up in his room. I gave him a mouth job to get things going, but the asshole popped early. Let me tell you I was pissed. I mean, I didn’t even know the jerk. He was really upset, crying like a baby. Guy gave me a hundred bucks. A lousy hundred bucks! Then he was in the bathroom puking for about ten minutes. When he came out, he said he hadn’t had any in a long time and that was the reason he came so freaking fast. Like I gave a crap.”
“What a jerk. What happened next?”
“Well, that was pretty much it. I mean, there wasn’t any reason for me to stay after that, was there? It’s not like we were on a date or nothing.”
“He didn’t say anything else? Where he was from? Where he was going? What the big score was?” She shook her head. He studied her closely and said, “Okay, you look like an enterprising gal. Did you maybe rip off some cash from his wallet while he was puking in the john?”
She said angrily, “I’m not some kind of trash! Who do you think you are accusing me of that?”
“Let’s do a little reality check here, Cin.” He touched his chest. “I’m Jerry Bagger. You’re a lowlife who lets strangers shoot off in her mouth for chump change. So I’m going to ask you one more time: Did you rip off some cash to bump the C-note he gave you?”
“I don’t know, I might have,” she said. “But I don’t feel like talking no more.”
Bagger clamped a hand around her chin and jerked her head around so they were looking eye-to-eye. “Did your old lady ever tell you anything about me?”
A scared Cindy swallowed nervously. “She said you were real good to work for.”
“Anything else?”
“She said anybody ever tries to cross you is one dumb son of a bitch.”
“That’s right. Your mama’s smart.” He squeezed tighter on her chin, and Cindy gave a little yelp. “So if you wanna see mama again, take a real deep breath and tell me what you saw in pretty boy’s wallet.”
“Okay, okay. It was weird because he had a couple of IDs.”
“And?”
“And one was the name he gave me at the spa, Robby Thomas from Michigan. The other one was a driver’s license from California.”
“The name?” Bagger said calmly.
“Tony. Tony Wallace.”
Bagger let go of the woman’s face. “See, that wasn’t so hard. Now, why don’t you go back to rubbing the old farts’ cocks?”
She rose on trembling legs. As she turned to leave, Bagger said, “Hey, Cindy, aren’t you forgetting something?”
She slowly turned back around. “What’s that, Mr. Bagger?” she said nervously.
“I paid you a thousand bucks. Pretty boy gave you a tenth of that, and he got a blow job. You never even asked me if I wanted one. That’s not nice, Cindy. That’s something a guy like me remembers for a long time.” He waited, staring at her.
Her voice quavering, she said, “Do you want me to give you a blow job, Mr. Bagger?” She hastily added, “It’d be an honor.”
“No, I don’t.”
A
NNABELLE AND
C
ALEB WERE
walking down a hallway in the Jefferson Building. Annabelle had on a red knee-length skirt, black jacket and a beige blouse. She appeared professional, confident and inspired. Caleb looked ready to slash his wrists.
“All you have to do,” she said, “is act sad and depressed.”
“Well, that should be easy, since I
am
sad, and I
am
depressed,” he snapped.
Before they entered the security office for the library, Annabelle stopped and put on a pair of glasses attached to a chain around her neck.
“Are you sure this will work?” Caleb hissed. He was starting to wheeze a bit.
“You can never be sure a scam will work until it does.”
“Oh, that’s just great!”
A few minutes later they were sitting with the head of security in his office. Caleb sat with his head bowed and his gaze on his shoes while Annabelle talked away.
“So as I explained, Caleb has retained me as his psychologist to help him through the process.”
The chief looked puzzled. “You say he’s having trouble going into the vault?”
“Yes. As you know, he found the body of a dear friend and colleague in there. The vaults are a place that Caleb normally loves. It’s been a part of his life for many years.” She glanced over at Caleb, who, on cue, let out a deep sigh and dabbed at his eyes with a tissue.
“Now the venue that has represented so many positive memories for him has become a place of deep sadness, even horror.”
The chief looked over at Caleb. “I’m sure it was rough on you, Mr. Shaw.”
Caleb’s hands were shaking so badly that finally Annabelle grabbed hold of one of them.
“Please call him Caleb, we’re all friends here,” Annabelle said encouragingly, signaling the chief without Caleb seeing her even as she gave Caleb’s hand a crushing squeeze.
“Oh, right, yes, we are friends, sure,” the chief said awkwardly. “But what does this have to do with my department?”
“My plan is to let Caleb watch the tapes of the reading room, people coming and going from the vault, everything normal, everything as it should be, as a way to empower him to navigate this difficult period and turn the reading room and the vault back into purely a positive experience for him.”
“Well, I don’t know about letting you see the tapes,” the chief said. “It’s a highly unusual request.”
Caleb started to get up in defeat, but a scathing look from Annabelle caused him to freeze in midrise. She said, “Well, it’s an
unusual
situation. I’m sure that you would do anything within your power to see a fellow employee successfully get on with his life.”
“Well, sure, but—”
“So would now be a good time to see the tapes?” She shot a furious glance at Caleb, who was still halfway out of his chair. “I mean, you can see that he’s desperate.”
Caleb slumped in his chair, his head hanging between his knees.
Annabelle looked back at the chief and eyed his name tag. “Dale, I can call you Dale, can’t I?”
“Well, sure. Okay.”
“Dale, do you see the clothes I have on?”
Dale looked at her attractive figure and said sheepishly, “Yeah, I noticed.”
“You see that my skirt color is red. That’s an empowering, positive color, Dale. But my jacket is black, a negative vibe, and my blouse is beige, a neutral color. This represents that I’m halfway through my goal of helping this man back to a normal, healthy life. But I need your help, Dale, to finish the job. I want to be able to wear all red for Caleb. And I’m sure you want me to as well. I say let’s finish the job, Dale. Let’s just do it.” She ran an appraising eye over him. “I can tell, you’re with me, aren’t you?”
Dale looked at the miserable Caleb and said, “Well, okay, I’ll get the tapes for you.”
After he had left the room, Caleb said, “You handled yourself very professionally.”
“Thank you,” she said tersely.
When she said nothing further, Caleb added, “And I think I did reasonably well.”
She stared at him in disbelief. “Do you really?”
Hours later Annabelle and Caleb sat back after watching the comings and goings in the reading room before and after DeHaven’s murder.
“It’s just the typical flow of traffic,” Caleb said. “There’s nothing there.”
Annabelle ran a tape over again. “Who’s that?”
“Kevin Philips. He’s the acting director after Jonathan died. He came down to ask me about Jonathan’s death. And there’s Oliver dressed as a German scholar.”
“Nice,” Annabelle said admiringly. “He carries it off very well.”
They looked through some more footage. Caleb pointed at one scene. “That’s when I got the notice about becoming Jonathan’s literary executor.” He stared at the screen more closely. “Am I really that chubby?” He pressed a hand to his stomach.
“Who gave you the notice?”
“Kevin Philips.”
Annabelle watched on the tape as Caleb stumbled and broke his glasses.
He said, “I’m not usually that clumsy. I wouldn’t have been able to read the damn thing if Jewell English hadn’t lent me her glasses.”
“Yeah, but why did she do a switch on you?”
“What?”
“She switched out the glasses she was wearing with another pair in her bag.” Annabelle rewound the tape. “See? It’s a pretty first-rate move, actually. She’d make a good mechanic . . . I mean, she’s very nimble-fingered.”
Caleb watched in surprise as Jewell English palmed the glasses she was wearing and drew out another pair from her bag. It was this pair she gave to Caleb.
“I don’t know, maybe that was a special pair. The ones she gave me worked well enough. I could read the message.”
“Who is this Jewell English?”
“Just an elderly lady who’s a book fanatic and reading room regular.”
“And she has hand moves like a Vegas blackjack dealer,” Annabelle pointed out. “I wonder why that is,” she added thoughtfully.
S
TONE WAS SITTING IN HIS COT
-tage thinking about his conversation with Marilyn Behan. If she was telling the truth, and he had no reason to think that the bitter woman wasn’t, then Stone had been wrong. Cornelius Behan hadn’t killed Jonathan DeHaven or Bob Bradley. However, he’d apparently stumbled on the method used to kill the unfortunate librarian and, in doing so, had prompted others to murder him. So who else benefited from DeHaven’s death? Or Bradley’s, for that matter? He desperately needed something to connect the dots.
“Oliver?”
He glanced up. Milton was standing in the doorway.
Milton said, “I knocked but no one came.”
“I’m sorry, I guess I was preoccupied.”
Milton carried his laptop as usual and a small briefcase. He put them both down on the desk and drew out a folder. “Here’s what I could find on Bradley’s staff.”
Stone took the papers and read through them carefully. There were numerous documents highlighting Bradley’s political career, including the House Intelligence Committee that he’d chaired for years.
“Bradley was a very capable politician, and he instituted many good reforms in the intelligence fields,” Milton said.
“Which maybe got him killed,” Stone commented. “Nice reward.”
Stone started going through the backgrounds and photos of both Bradley’s congressional office staff and his underlings on the intelligence committee. As soon as he finished, Annabelle and Caleb arrived. Stone told them and Milton about his encounter with Marilyn Behan.
“Well, that certainly kills the theory about Behan’s involvement in Jonathan’s death,” Caleb said.
“Appears so,” Stone said. “What did you two find out today with the tapes?”
“Well, our initial hunch that we might see someone coming in or out of the vault that might be helpful didn’t play out. But we did find something else that might be very important.” Annabelle explained about the sleight of hand pulled by Jewell English.
“You’re sure about this?” Stone asked, looking puzzled.
“Trust me, I’ve seen that move a million times.”
And done it yourself at least as often,
Stone thought. He turned to Caleb. “What do you know about this woman?”
“Just that she’s an elderly widow, a regular patron, a lover of old books, very nice and enthusiastic and . . .” He turned red.
“And what?” Stone asked.
“And she’s always hitting on me,” he said in a low, embarrassed voice.
Annabelle had to hold back a laugh.
Stone said, “But presumably, you know all these things about her because she told them to you. They’re not verified.”
“That’s true,” Caleb conceded.
“So why the glasses switch?”
“Oliver, it could simply be that she didn’t want to give me those because they’re special to her for some reason. She lent me another pair so I wouldn’t read too much into it.”
“I wouldn’t read too much into it either, Caleb, except one wouldn’t expect elderly widows who frequent rare book reading rooms to have such exceptional sleight-of-hand skills. If she didn’t want you to wear those glasses, why not just say so and hand you the spare pair?”
Caleb started to say something and then stopped. “I don’t have an answer to that.”
“I don’t either, but I’m starting to believe that we need to find an answer if we’re going to discover what happened to Jonathan DeHaven.”
“You can’t possibly believe that sweet old Jewell English had anything to do with Jonathan’s death,” Caleb protested.
“We can’t rule that out right now. And Behan was killed because he guessed how DeHaven died. I think he discovered that the gas cylinders at the library had been deliberately mislabeled. That may be why he came to the reading room asking questions and wanting to look at the vault, Caleb. He was fishing for information as to why DeHaven might have been killed. Remember, he wanted to know if DeHaven was friendly with everyone at the library. He wasn’t looking to pin the murder on someone else, he genuinely wanted to know if DeHaven had any enemies.”
“In other words, the key isn’t Behan, but DeHaven, and maybe something at the
library
?” Annabelle said.
“Possibly,” Stone replied. “Or something in his private life.”
Caleb flinched at this remark but remained silent.
“But where does the murdered Bob Bradley figure into all this?” she asked. “You said you thought that was connected.”
“We know that Bradley was killed by a bullet from a rifle fired through a window in another building. Behan died in the exact same way. That can’t be a coincidence. Indeed, it could very well be the exact same killer. Professional assassins like to use the same method of killing because they become so proficient at it. It reduces the chances of an error in the assignment.”
“You sound like you know a lot about that sort of thing,” Annabelle said.
He smiled innocently. “As Caleb can tell you, I’m a voracious reader of thriller novels. I find them not only entertaining but informative.” He looked at Caleb. “Is there any way we can get a look at the woman’s glasses without her knowing?”
Caleb said sarcastically, “Sure, we can burglarize her home in the middle of the night and steal them.”
Stone said, “Good idea. Can you find out where she lives?”
Caleb sputtered, “Oliver, you can’t be serious.”
“I might have a better way,” Annabelle said. They all looked at her. “Does she come into the reading room on a regular basis?”
“Fairly regularly.”
“If she sticks to that schedule, when is she due next?”
Caleb thought quickly. “Actually, tomorrow.”
“Fine. I’ll go to the library with you tomorrow. You point her out to me and then let me handle it.”
“What are you going to do?” Caleb demanded.
Annabelle rose. “Give her a taste of her own medicine.”
After Annabelle had left, Caleb said, “I couldn’t talk in front of her obviously, but, Oliver, what if all this has something to do with the
Bay Psalm Book
? It’s incredibly valuable, and we can’t find out where Jonathan got it. Maybe it’s stolen and maybe someone else wants it. They could have killed Jonathan to get it.”
“But they didn’t get it, Caleb,” Stone countered. “The person who knocked out Reuben was in the house. They could have broken into the vault and taken it then. And why kill Cornelius Behan? Or Bradley? They could have no connection with the
Psalm Book.
Behan didn’t even know DeHaven had a book collection. And there’s no evidence that Bradley even knew your colleague at all.”
After a depressed and confused Caleb had left, Milton and Stone sat talking while Stone flipped through the file on Bradley’s staffers. He said, “Michael Avery went to Yale, clerked for a Supreme Court justice, did a stint at NIC before going on the intelligence committee staff. He moved with Bradley when he became Speaker.” He looked at some of the other pictures and bios. “Dennis Warren, another Yalie, was at DOJ early in his career. He was Bradley’s chief of staff and kept that position when Bradley became Speaker. Albert Trent was on Bradley’s intelligence committee staff for years; a Harvard-educated lawyer and CIA employee for a time. They’re all Ivy Leaguers, all highly experienced. It looks like Bradley had a first-rate team.”
“A congressman is only as good as his staff, isn’t that the old saying?”
Stone looked thoughtful. “You know, one thing we’ve never really looked at were the circumstances of Bradley’s murder.”
“How do we remedy that?” Milton asked.
“Our lady friend is very good at impersonation.”
“The best.”
“How would you like to do a similar run with me?”
“I’m your man.”