Chapter 7

Walker: “Women like silent men.”

Pilar: “They think they’re listening.”

Bear’s frustration was growing. Understandably so. The love of his life, Barry Hopkins, was not only being blackmailed, his life had been threatened. Everyone -- Daddy, Hank Morristown, Bear -- believed that the laser beam centered on Barry’s chest was an absolute threat. Menacing.

Bear pulled me aside, “Five minutes, Winter. Five minutes.”

Time alone with Mr. Laser.

“If I can. Promise.”

Illegal to turn Bear loose on someone under federal, state and local investigation? Of course. Stupid? Probably.

I’ll do it if I can.

Ricky Lazaro and Rocco Medillo, fresh from a government vacation in the Southern Illinois Correctional Center, moved from East St. Louis, across the Mississippi River, across the state of Missouri, to Kansas City.

Easier pickings.

Except they picked BEAR on Broadway to extort.

When I was in high school, my junior and senior years, Stolichnaya hired me to be one of a couple of dozen Stoli Girls. My ID was fake, but my boobs weren’t. The regional manager out of Chicago had certain designs on me -- and on most of the girls -- so he overlooked one thing to concentrate on the other. Others.

He sent us in teams of various sizes to different bars on Friday and Saturday nights. We wore Stoli tees with shorts or skinny jeans and gave out plenty of the shirts. Free shots were part of the package. As was an occasional feel.

Back then, the jukeboxes were busy with Faith Hill, Maria Carey, Destiny’s Child, Celine Dione. Of course the country bars had different talents on tap. But I still remember “Breathe” and “Say My Name” and “Higher”.

Because I’ve always maintained excruciatingly strict personal standards, I didn’t let Mr. Regional hustle me out of my Stoli uniform until after he had hired me.

What do you think I am, some casting couch bimbo? He had to put out before I would.

My parents knew about my illegal job. Daddy was his usual stoic self; he liked Autumn and me to find our own paths. And to learn from that trailblazing. My mother tsk-tsked a bit, but I think she was secretly pleased. My sex appeal was, in her mind, a positive reflection on her. Maybe it was.

In any case, it was an enlightening experience. I learned a little about the alcohol business. Some about bars. More about human nature. It was no shock that guys wanted to score pussy, I’d known that for eons. But it was interesting the degree of desperation as the night went on. As the drinks went down.

Maybe the girls do get prettier at closing time.

The women, though, were even more absorbing. Their Stoli scrutiny was furtive, open, envious, pitiable. Whatever form the inspection took, it was pure evaluation. How did they measure up to girls chosen 90% on looks? How were the guys reacting to us? Were we a threat?

The confident ones were friendly, engaging. Not worrying about a boyfriend or a husband straying.

The others, the less self-assured ones? Their strategy ranged from ignoring us to frank hostility.

A good life-lesson for a 16-year old girl.

Suddenly it escalated. Everything changed.

Barry Hopkins’ Graduate Clinician, Bob Murrow, was savagely killed. Mutilated first. His nude body was dumped at the front entrance to Oasis. A large wooden dowel had been jammed up his ass. The initials DTQ -- Death to Queers -- had been carved on his chest. The debasements were not postmortem.

Bob, who performed most of the hearing tests for Barry, left behind a wife and a two-year old daughter.

The FBI moved Barry’s receptionist / secretary, 47-year old Betsy Irvington to a safe house in North Kansas City. Over Bear’s objections, Barry was moved to another safe house, this one across the state in St. Louis.

I turned the blackmail file, the one hand-delivered to Barry, over to the FBI. It was a long-shot that they’d be able to find a meaningful print, but at this stage we had to explore every conceivable possibility.

Their first pass had turned up one unidentified print on a corner of the Loose Park instructions. There were plenty of prints on the delivery envelope, and those would be traced as well. But the interior print had first priority.

Hank hesitated, then agreed to let me watch the process. The lab technician, a redheaded boy approximately 11 years old, seemed indifferent to who was in the room. He was as focused as a middle-schooler with his first solo time with porn.

No one introduced him to me, so I named him, creatively, Red. Red went from using a huge swivel-mounted magnifying glass with an adjustable light to scanning whorls and lines and swirls into his computer. This process was necessary to create a clean enough of a print, with clear enough ridges, to run through the Automated Fingerprint Index System.

Even if there were a match, it might not be unique, just one of several similar ones. There were over 70 million prints in the AFIS databank. The science had advanced, but was far from perfect.

But even an imprecise indicator could point in a useful direction. As, I guess, my Powerball ticket could pay off. Which would also be useful, financially speaking.

Pilar didn’t tell Vanessa and me, but her mother did. Lina said, “Pilar is getting picked on. Typical mean girl stuff.”

Middle school is the new high school. In terms of bullying. And no one knows how to mean-it-up better than an adolescent girl. The scorn, unspoken, can just reek off them.

We sat down with Pilar. Who didn’t try to hide anything. She was annoyed at the clique, true enough. And had some low-level fantasies that involved physical confrontation.

But she also had perspective. “Look, after what Mama and I went through to get here ... well this is nothing.” She looked from Vanessa to me, “But don’t tell Walker. Please. You know how upset he’ll get.”

Pilar, little Pilar. Probably the toughest -- mentally, emotionally -- girl in her school. And wanting to protect her older boyfriend. Shield him from something that would eat at him. Maybe cause him to do something well-intentioned, but ill-advised.

Vanessa said, “What are you going to do about it, luv?”

Pilar said, “Ignore it. Try to anyway.”

Vanessa glanced at me. When Lina and Pilar had been kidnapped by two pimps on the American side of the Rio Grande, Pilar slid a knife to her mother and watched as Lina gouged a hole in one of their throats. A fatal wound.

What would Pilar do if she snapped at school?

The smart thing would be for Lina, Vanessa and me to talk with someone. Principal, guidance counselor, teacher. Someone. Maybe bring an attorney with us. Implied threat.

But Pilar, probably like most kids, wouldn’t want that. It wouldn’t mortify her, not much would. But she liked her independence and the idea of that independence.

So I went backdoor. I didn’t know anyone at that Brookside school, but I do know a lot of people in town. I guess it was like a Six Degrees of Separation kind of thing, but it took me only three calls. To find someone who knew someone.

But first I wrote down the names of the three primary tormentors. Passed them along to the analytical arm -- Sullivan & Sullivan Research -- of my almost-national detective agency.

“Give me a snapshot of the parents. Three snapshots.”

A decent investigator can find some under-the-rock something on anyone. Even Mother Theresa. Well, maybe not her. I wouldn’t use it, not unless everything else failed. Or if the bullying got worse. But if, say, a husband, or a wife, is having an affair ... well Damocles and all that. Better to have a sword and not need it. Or whatever the moral anecdote is.

There was one affair, a sort of languid one. One Brookside mother had been boffing a downtown accountant off and on for four years. But better than that, Team Sullivan uncovered embezzlement. One of the fathers had sticky fingers -- small amounts under $100 usually. But steady corporate transfers into a checking account in a bank his wife didn’t know about.

So, ammo. Probably not needed, but ammo.

I met with Mr. Lawrence Kincaid, a Brookside assistant principal. A post he’d held for almost 18 years. Which told me he was probably a plodder, complacent in his assignment, riding out the years. I would have preferred someone more dynamic, but this is where the Kevin Bacon Game led me. Maybe I should have tried more degrees of separation.

‘Call me Larry’ was in his late 40s, dressed dully, but nicely enough. Balding, stooped, shy. I bet anything he was a pipe smoker. Real pipes, I mean. Although that certainly didn’t preclude him from sucking a lot of cocks. His biz, not mine.

Larry had agreed to meet me after school and off campus. Panera, a place I don’t patronize for snobbish reasons, but would do fine for a meeting. I wanted to get his attention without alerting the faculty.

I decided not to fuck around and brought out my major artillery right from the jump. Daddy.

Daddy in full uniform, complete with service stripes, captain’s bars, epaulets, braided cap and medals which he never wore. Impressive. Especially with his rigid parade ground posture and The Look.

The Look that had intimidated hardened felons. Back in the day, back when Daddy was still authorized to give the impression he was on the Job. Because he was.

I explained the situation to Larry without mentioning Pilar by name. But I did name the three spiteful girls. Daddy didn’t say a word after the introductions, just sat across from Larry, grim-mouthed, looking at him steadily.

Larry got the word. A hummingbird would have.

We’ll see.

Oasis made two strategic moves once Hank Morristown met with DJ Winston. And Bob Murrow’s body had been dumped on their doorstep.

The Helsinki tech team installed new privacy protocols, some of which were still in the beta stage. The system was as secure as they could make it.

Physical security was increased dramatically. Armed, and uniformed, guards were an immediately visible force. No one other than Barry Hopkins had been threatened, but once Bob had been murdered, the FBI had to tell Oasis about the blackmail.

Ever since he came to Kansas City, DJ Winston had received vague threats and been told to take his Commie medicine back to Russia. So he already had a bodyguard. Helsinki added two more.

Oasis wasn’t in a lockdown mode, but there was a low level thrum, an air of tenseness.

Pilar invited her mother and new husband, Matt Whitney, to dinner. Walker invited my parents. The kids would cook. They decided on seafood. Partly Daddy’s healthy diet, partly because it was delicious. And partly to show off. Fish is more difficult to get right than steak.

The four guests rode up together. Before I could take coats, offer drinks, my mother said, “Winter, there was a naked man in the elevator!” Daddy seemed bemused. Lina was grinning, Matt didn’t express an opinion.

Pilar said, “Oh, it’s just Mr. Boy. Sometimes he ... doesn’t get dressed.”

I knew Flora Jennings wasn’t upset. Not after being a cop’s wife for 30 years. But she liked the attention. And maybe she felt some vaguely protective urge for Pilar and Walker.

“Don’t the guests complain?”

Walker said, “Not yet. Plus the Austins are pretty laid back.”

I handed Mom a bourbon on the rocks and the crisis passed.

Pilar took Daddy up to the roof deck to show off Hobo’s Frisbee skills. The Border had just completed his second course of agility training and he is - okay, I’m bragging - amazing. Instantly obedient to Pilar’s directives and in full command of his own physicality.

Hobo can catch up to every disc toss, track it, wait until Pilar calls out, “Now!” launch himself from a seeming unreachable distance. And make that midair course correction as a rooftop wind gust pushes the Frisbee in this direction or that one.

Back in our loft, Daddy told Pilar, “Hobo would make an excellent cop.”

Pilar beamed.

Walker had taken Lina back to his bedroom to show her a video of Hobo herding sheep. Vanessa and I kept a straight face; we knew what he really wanted to show her.

My mother and Matt chatted easily.

That’s the way I like parties to go -- little groups forming and reforming, doing their own thing.

I shouldn’t have been surprised to see that Columbo accompanied Harold to my office. I just hadn’t thought about it, but it makes sense to take your bodyguard when you’re entering uncharted territory.

Harold had dressed up for his high finance meeting with Gertie Oppenheimer. Ironed jeans, dress shirt tucked in, skinny black knit tie. Leather shoes with laces.

Columbo went with his usual thug-tough.

Harold nodded appreciatively at my steel security door. He looked around my office at the modern furniture, the deco travel prints, the private bathroom, and nodded again, “Nice.”

I took them down a couple of floors and made the introductions. Gertie noted the bulge under Columbo’s sweatshirt, but didn’t comment.

I left them to it and continued down to the lobby. I was on my way to check in at Sister Mary’s shelter. I try to visit Gloria VanLandingham once a month or so. Mainly just to check in. Although I pass along casual updates to Phillip Montgomery who set up the Sister Mary Packer foundation. Back before she was killed.

On the way, curious but not nosy, I stopped at Harold’s. Just to see how the kids were doing without adult supervision. They weren’t. Without supervision, that is. Pantone, a fellow Northeast pimp was on the front porch.

I didn’t see a knife, but I gather that’s the way he operates. You don’t see it until he’s slicing and dicing. We nodded, we’ve known each other over the years. Pantone isn’t a bestie like Harold, but we get along.