The Blackmail Club Read online

  Nora sat her coffee cup down, the red crescent from her lips still kissing the rim. “Let’s talk with Chris’s former receptionist and his psychiatrist buddy, Radnor.”

  Jack got up and wrote Radnor and Receptionist on the white board on the wall of their case room. Then he wrote Donny Andujar above those two.

  “What else?”

  Nora pushed a runaway strand of her strawberry-blonde hair away from her eyes. “I’ll go through Chris’s appointment book, and then attack his laptop. Maybe I can find a few more strings we can pull.”

  “I’m going to ask Sarah again if she told her son about our visit,” Jack said. “Then I’ll meet her at the bank to make certain Chris didn’t add someone else to the signature card for the box. And I’ll try to get Chris’s medical doctor to talk. We need to eliminate the possibility he had some serious health condition that made him choose suicide. I’d like you to call Suggs over at Metro to find out the status of any insurance policies on Chris’s life. We could ask Sarah, but I’d rather not. Now, how should we proceed with Donny Boy?”

  Nora swiveled the extra chair between them a half turn, kicked off her heels, and put her legs into that seat, her toes pointing toward Jack, her skirt inching up her thighs. “We need to learn more about his doings,” she said. “We could tail him, but we’ve got a problem. He knows us both by sight.”

  “We need somebody Donny doesn’t know,” Jack said. “That sounds like Max Logan, assuming Donny doesn’t know Max.”

  Nora’s calf muscles lengthened when she got up and dented her well-shaped butt against the edge of the table. “I’ll call and ask him to come by as soon as possible.”

  Chapter 8

  Max came into MI mid-afternoon, Nora buzzed Jack to alert him before sending Max back. Jack motioned him to a chair and jumped right into why they’d ask Max to come in.

  “Did Nora talk to you about the help we need?”

  “She told me you’re needin’ some tailin’ done.”

  “That’s right. You interested?”

  “Yes, sir, I can do your job and would be glad for it. Truth is, I miss havin’ me nose in the wind.”

  “We want this fella tailed round the clock.” While Jack talked, he pulled two bottles of water from the half fridge in the corner behind his desk. “The job includes you putting together a team, and keeping it going until I say stop.”

  “Can do, and I’ll be startin’ and stoppin’ when you say. We do need to talk pay a mite. I’ll have to give up being a security guard. It’s a flavorless job, but it buys me needies.”

  “We’ll pay you thirty an hour and guarantee the number of hours needed to cover what you made as a security guard. We might work you more. We’ll pay the men you pick twenty an hour, without a minimum. You okay with that?”

  Max screwed the cap off his water bottle. “A more’n fair offer, Jack. I’m aware it’s a temporary job, but I should be telling ya I take it with the intent of convincing ya to retain me permanent.”

  “That could happen, Max, but I don’t promise. At the moment we have but one case.” Jack leaned forward and handed him an information sheet.

  “Life has few promises,” Max replied. “I’ll take what I earn, no more.” He held up the page Jack had given him. “Is this the donkey you want me to pin a tail on?”

  “Yes. Donkey—Donny Andujar.”

  “I know the lad by sight, but he has no shine on me. I know his club. It’s fancier than most, but when you lift the lid, it’s no different from the rougher stripper joints.”

  “Do you need a camera with zoom and night vision?”

  “Takin’ pitchers is me hobby.” He raised his hand and clicked the button on a phantom camera. “I have one, and I can pass it along to my lads as we change shifts.” After a pause, he said, “Art Tyson, a local PI—Nora knows him—tried to hire me to be one of his camera-slingers. But to paraphrase your American West, ‘a man’s gotta decide which brand he’ll ride for.’ For me,” he shook his head, “it’ll not be Tyson’s outfit. I’m ready to start anytime.”

  “Now would be good. Thanks for riding for our brand.” Jack winked. “Welcome to MI.”

  “Good to be with you.”

  Jack took another twenty minutes to bring Max up to speed on the case; what little they knew and that at this point they had no clues or intuitions.

  After he walked Max out, he told Nora the terms under which Max would be working and that he had started immediately. In turn, Nora told Jack that Mary Lou Sanchez had come by while he was talking with Max. That she had hired Mary Lou and she would be starting tomorrow morning. Nora and Mary Lou would work out their schedules so that one of them was always at the office.

  Jack stood shrouded by the afternoon shadows, at the grave of his dead wife, Rachel. “I’m sorry I haven’t come to see you, Rach. I’ve been traveling, trying to learn if there was a connection between your death and my past work for the government. I found none. Nora caught up with me in Egypt to say that Chris Andujar was dead. The police have ruled suicide, but Sarah thinks Chris had been blackmailed and that’s why he took his life. We’ve meet with Sarah and have nothing so far that confirms either explanation of his death. But I swear to you I will find the answers.”

  After a while a breeze brought aromas that made him remember Luigi’s, Rachel’s favorite restaurant, but Luigi’s was miles away. He touched the chiseled granite, letting his fingers ride the cold grooves of each letter.

  Rachel McCall, beloved bride of Jack McCall

  The choice of bride, rather than wife, had been unusual, but after so short a time together, bride had seemed right.

  The stone showed her age to be forty-three, four years younger than Jack.

  He had survived hell many times on the world’s declared and secret battlefields. He had seen so much he could only explain through a belief in God. Had an angry God orchestrated Rachel’s death to punish him for some of his past covert activities? He could not accept that the God he believed in would do so.

  For the second time, Jack let his fingers trace the curves of his love’s name, and then he walked into the lengthening eastward shadows.

  After dinner, a long walk, and a whiskey neat, Jack poured another and called Nora at home.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “No. I got back from a jog about two hours ago, and just got out of a candlelit soaking tub. It was heavenly. Is the Andujar case playing with your mind?”

  “Yeah. Kinda. You had any more thoughts?”

  “You know we have no proof that the quarter mil was ever in the bank.”

  “I can’t see any reason Chris would lie to his wife about that?”

  “I agree. So, let’s assume for now that the money did exist,” Nora said. “But Chris could’ve spent it lots of ways other than blackmail or, maybe no cash and no blackmail. Either way, Metro may have gotten it right—your friend put himself down without outside influence.”

  “They found no suicide note,” Jack said while rinsing out his glass over the sink.

  “That’s unusual,” Nora said, “but not probative.”

  Chapter 9

  Jack’s alarm went off at six. He had suffered through another night of late drinks, old movies, and little sleep. He remembered watching Humphrey Bogart’s great portrayal of Sam Spade in the classic, The Maltese Falcon, and wished real cases were so easy and as filled with colorful characters.

  He sat on the edge of the bed dry-scrubbing his face with the palms of his hands, then went into the bathroom and brushed and flossed. That took the flannel out of his mouth, but did nothing for the pattern of red lines in his eyes that resembled something printed from an Internet mapping site.

  In the kitchen he recapped last night’s whiskey bottle, and poured a cup of black coffee. The coffee pot timer had come on before the alarm clock went off. God bless automation. For a while he sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and fooling around with the crossword puzzle in the morning paper. After a second cup he picked up the co
rdless phone and called Sarah Andujar.

  “I can meet you at the bank in an hour,” she said. “I am on the other line with Christopher’s medical doctor. I am going to try to add you in on the call. We do this sometimes in my book club. If I mess it up, I’ll call back.”

  He waited until Sarah came back on the line. “Jack, are you still there?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re on the line with Christopher’s physician. Doctor, thank you for answering my questions, I will hang up now and let you and Mr. McCall talk.”

  When Jack got off the phone, he had learned something he had expected and something he had not.

  Jack had left the bank and was turning right onto Twenty-first to get back to MI when his cell rang. It was Nora. She had arranged a meeting with Chris Andujar’s psychiatrist buddy, Dr. Radnor, and had spoken to Chris’s former receptionist, Agnes Fuller.

  “Fuller told me,” Nora said. “‘I’ve put that sadness behind me. The police declared his death a suicide, so I don’t have to talk to you, and I won’t.’ Frankly, her attitude caught me by surprise, and I didn’t handle it very well. She stonewalled me, after having told Sarah she’d help any way she could. I’m going to call that woman back and find out why she’s playing both ends against the middle.”

  “Why don’t you hold that thought until after we talk with Radnor?”

  “If you say so. How’d it go at the bank with Sarah?”

  “The signature card for the box showed only Chris and Sarah. She had signed to gain entry only once, the day after Metro declared Chris’s death a suicide.”

  “What was in the box?”

  “Empty. Where are you?”

  “In the office.”

  Five minutes later Jack pulled into MI’s underground parking and saw Nora waiting next to his parking space. She opened the passenger’s door and leaned in, her breasts and white bra showing.

  “I thought I’d meet you down here. We need to be at Dr. Radnor’s at one, and I need a favor. It’s on the way.” She got in carefully so as not to spill her coffee, then put her hand on his forearm.

  He turned, letting the car idle. “What?”

  “First, Mary Lou Sanchez started this morning, she’s up there now. Second, seeing you have a knack for rubbing Suggs the wrong way, I took him to breakfast to try a woman’s approach.”

  “What did you learn from Sergeant Charm?”

  “Don’t wear open-toed pumps the morning after it rains.”

  “Huh?”

  “I stepped into a puddle getting out of my car at the restaurant. After I left Suggs, I had to go home to change my shoes and pantyhose.” She turned her legs sideways, pushed her toes against the floorboard, and slid her camelhair skirt several inches up her thighs. “You men don’t care what we gals have to go through to keep our legs looking good.”

  Sam Spade would have said, “The dame has great gams.” But Jack said, “Suggs. Chris. Give.”

  “Okay, okay. Lower your flag, mister. Chris Andujar was killed by a thirty-eight. The gun was registered to him. The shot entered at his right temple and exited the other side. The trajectory was consistent with a self-inflicted wound. His fingerprints were smudged; forensics figured that resulted from the gun sliding down his finger as his arm collapsed.”

  Nora paused to finish her coffee. “The ME reported Chris had been dead about twelve hours when Sarah found him. Like you said about the bank, it’s all jibing with her story.”

  “Did Suggs find anything that hinted at foul play? And what about life insurance?”

  “Nada on anything suspicious.”

  “Nada?”

  “It means nothing, and sounds better than what Suggs said.”

  “Which was?” Jack asked, starting to put the car in reverse.

  She put her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t leave yet. His exact words: ‘Damn it. I told McCall there was no foul play. Tell him to go fuck himself.’ It took me ten minutes to mellow him out enough so he’d talk about the insurance.”

  “And?”

  “The Andujars had carried term life when they were younger, but the premiums kept increasing as they aged, so when Donny got older they let it expire. Now it’s your turn, what did Chris’s physician tell you?”

  “His health was fine. The shocker was that Chris had listed me as the person to be contacted if his condition ever prevented him from making decisions about his treatment. That’s what let the doc feel okay about talking with me.”

  “Not Sarah?”

  “She was listed third.”

  “Donny second?”

  “Nope. Me, then his psych buddy, Radnor, then Sarah. Donny was not listed at all.”

  After finally getting around to asking the favor, Nora got out of Jack’s car and walked over to her own. She wanted him to follow her while she dropped off her Mustang to get new brake linings.

  Ten minutes later, Jack watched Nora’s hips pivot as she walked toward the office at the brake shop. Her small waist and legs reminded him of Lauren Bacall, the actress who had married Humphrey Bogart. When she came out of the office, and walked toward him he noticed she had larger and more active breasts than Bacall—but then bra technology had come a long way since Bacall’s days as a vamp.

  Chapter 10

  Dr. Phillip Radnor’s office was in a high-rise building on NW Rhode Island Avenue between Scott Circle and Connecticut Avenue. Inside the suite a receptionist with busy eyes and a saggy body leaned against the wall behind her desk, talking on the phone. She used the hand not wrapped around the phone to point toward the lobby chairs. Jack and Nora took a seat.

  Dr. Radnor was a large man, not tall and powerful, but short and, the polite word, rotund.

  “Mr. McCall?”

  “Thank you for seeing us, Dr. Radnor. This is my partner, Nora Burke.”

  The psychiatrist nodded and led them into his office which was furnished with a desk, the anticipated couch, and two occasional chairs on an area rug near the window. Jack and Nora sat there.

  Several hunting and golfing photos hung on the side wall. In one of the golf pictures Radnor stood with Chris, Troy Engels, a CIA deputy Jack knew, and Chief Mandrake.

  Nora opened a scratch pad. She kept most of her notes in her Palm Pilot, but she had told Jack she believed people were more comfortable talking without technology.

  “Doctor, you were listed after me as the person to be contacted in the event Chris needed others to make decisions about his care. Why us? Why not his wife and son?”

  Radnor put his hands flat on his desk blotter. Then brought them together and separated his palms leaving his fingers touching like flexing tent posts. After lowering his hands, he spoke.

  “Chris thought very highly of you, Mr. McCall. To say he loved you as a man loves a son would not be a stretch. I’m sure it was no secret to you that he saw his own son Donny as a huge disappointment. As for Sarah, she was ten or twelve years older than Chris. Maybe he figured she’d die before he would need someone to make any acute-care decisions for him.”

  “What made Chris depressed and suicidal?”

  Radnor ran his hand back over his shaggy crew cut.

  “Mr. McCall, your question presumes Chris suffered from depression. Frankly, I agree. One cannot contemplate, let alone carry out suicide without being depressed. Admitting some failure on my part, I saw nothing that indicated he was suffering anything near that level of depression.”

  “Doctor, we understand the two of you had been collaborating on some research project, and that you were also treating him for his own problem. What problem was that?”

  “Chris and I had been friends since school. His death stunned me. I miss him. We were coauthoring a highly technical research paper. In laymen’s terms, our hypothesis holds that some relationship exists between kleptomania by the very wealthy and sexual dysfunction among that same group. While very few of our total patients who suffered from a sexual dysfunction also suffered from kleptomania, a high percentage of the wealthy
who suffered from kleptomania also struggled with aberrant sexual behavior.”

  Jack found it an interesting aside, but Radnor had evaded the question.

  Nora crossed her legs, letting her black high heel slip off the back of her suspended foot. “Doctor, for which of those conditions did you treat Chris Andujar?”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Burke. I told Sarah I would cooperate any way I could, but I must respect patient-doctor constraints.”

  “Doctor,” Jack pleaded with hands spread, “Chris is dead. His wife asked you to talk with us. You know I was his primary designee to be consulted for his care. Please. Work with us.”

  “Yes, Chris is dead, but my other patients may not want their treatment conditions to become public even after they die. I’m sorry, Mr. McCall, there is nothing further I can say.”

  “A court could rule otherwise upon a petition from his wife.”

  “I would then be free to tell you what you want to know—what I would be happy to tell you if I could do so without compromising my reputation. Then again, seeing the police have ruled his death a suicide, a court might see such a petition as an unnecessary fishing expedition into a doctor’s files. No, Mr. McCall, we’re into areas where I must assume if Chris had wanted you to know, he would have told you himself.”

  “He did tell me Dr. Radnor. Chris had come to the realization he was bisexual and he hoped that with your help he could get free of it.”

  Radnor moistened his lips and tilted back his chair. “Chris guarded that secret, but seeing he told you I see no reason not to answer your question. He was desperate to rid himself of his gay side. He knew it would devastate his antediluvian wife, and destroy his already fragile relationship with his son.”

  “How promiscuous was he?” Nora asked.