Michael McGarrity - The big gamble

"You must be Ramona," Tully said.

"Yes, I am."

Her baby-doll voice ran through him, right down to his cock. If everything panned out, he could work this bitch every night for five, maybe eight years, and make a hell of a lot of money. He knew a Major League baseball player who'd pop fifteen or twenty grand for a week with her, easy, as soon as she started tricking. Plus, a former Colorado congressman who favored the thin, schoolgirl type with nice knockers. Put her in thigh-high stockings, lacy panties, a push-up bra, some candy-apple-red platform mules, and braid her hair, and the guy would get a hard-on just looking at her picture.

"Let's talk," Tully said, leading her to his office, where he eased back in his thousand-dollar ergonomic chair and inspected the woman more closely. Thick dark hair, small bones, comfortable with her body, five three, one-ten at the most, perfect teeth. She took his gaze without flinching. She was used to getting attention from men, wasn't put off by it. That was good.

"Tell me about yourself," Tully said.

Ramona licked her lips and ran out her cover story: Durango and her failed marriage, the need to make a change, dreams of becoming a model, looking to have some fun and excitement. Tully nodded all the way through it.

"Have you waitressed before?"

Ramona named the restaurant in Durango where she'd worked.

"Isn't that in the old downtown Victorian hotel?"

"No, it's by the railroad station. When were you in Durango?"

"Some time ago. I rode my Harley from Denver for the annual motorcycle rally."

"Every September," Ramona said with a nod. "It's a lot of fun."

"Why did you leave the restaurant?"

"My ex-husband didn't like me working nights."

"The jealous type?" Tully asked.

Ramona remembered her ex-boyfriend and made a face. "He thought every man I talked to I wanted to take to bed."

Tully laughed. "Do you smoke dope, get high, use drugs?"

Ramona paused. "Sometimes," she said in her tiniest voice. "But not a lot."

"If I hire you, you can't come to work high."

"Okay," she said seriously. Was she playing it too Goody Two-shoes?

"You see how my girls are required to dress at work. They show a lot of skin, a lot of T and A. Is that a problem for you?"

"I bet they get good tips," Ramona replied with a grin, "and I can use the money. Besides, I don't mind men looking."

"Do you like men?"

"Most of them."

"I have a girl leaving in a week," Tully said. "See Lisa. She's the hostess. She'll give you a tour and an employment application. I'll work your schedule around Cassie's classes. You'll have to take an alcohol beverage server course before you can start. Lisa will set it up."

"Thank you, Mr. Tully."

"You'll do just fine," Tully said. He watched Ramona leave, wondering how long it would take to get her strung out and in debt big-time to one of his dealers. He figured maybe two or three months, if he played it right.

Clouds had thickened outside, but not enough to promise rain. The April sun broke through the cover, casting patches of yellow light on the brick walkway that led to the old adobe house near the state capitol where Mark Shuler ran his research and polling company. Shuler was round, had probably been round all his life, but he wasn't fat, although if you only looked at his chubby cheeks you might think so. Add a foot to his solid stocky frame and he'd pass for an NFL line-backer. He pressed his lips together when Kerney mentioned Tyler Norvell.

"I understand you went to college with Norvell," Kerney added.

Shuler closed his office door on the four researchers who worked in office cubicles in a room just behind the reception area. "Why the interest in Norvell?"

"I'm told you don't like him."

"Don't trust him would be a better way to put it."

"Why is that?" Kerney asked.

"Are you going to tell me why you're investigating Norvell?"

"No," Kerney said with an apologetic smile.

"Then it's probably best for me to keep my thoughts to myself," Shuler said. "I make my living in the political world, Chief Kerney, and while it's public knowledge that I'm not a member of Senator Norvell's fan club, I keep my personal opinions to myself."

"I'll do the same with what you tell me," Kerney said. "You went to college with Norvell. What kind of person was he back then?"

Shuler found his way to his desk chair and settled in. "Are you familiar with F. Scott Fitzgerald's work?"

"I read The Great Gatsby in college."

"Norvell was like Gatsby, always full of subterfuges, superficially charming, good at keeping up appearances, but basically unscrupulous. He was quickwitted, ambitious, and smart enough to align himself with people who would help him socially. By the time he entered law school, he'd transformed himself from just another college student who was scraping along into a big man on campus."

"How did he do that?" Kerney asked, as he pushed an office chair to the front of Shuler's desk and sat.

"He joined the right clubs, hung out with the right people, especially the popular jocks, and got involved in campus politics-member of the student senate, student rep on an activities planning committee. That kind of thing."

"So, he played the angles," Kerney said. "How was he unscrupulous?"

"Drugs, women, and gambling," Shuler answered. "While the campus cops and narcs were busting the longhairs and student radicals for using, Norvell and his pals were allegedly selling drugs to frat boys, sorority girls, and students living off campus. He supplied women for bachelor parties, took bets on sporting events, even organized spring vacation gambling jaunts to Denver."

"You know all this as fact?" Kerney asked.

"I got some information from an anonymous informant while I was editor of the college newspaper, but I couldn't confirm it. I spent a lot of time trying to corroborate the story through other sources. All I got was second- and third-hand rumors and gossip."

"What stood in your way?"

"I was the longhair liberal running the college newspaper. The enemy, so to speak. Norvell's customers were the kids who saw themselves as the elite. They were well-off, clannish, spoiled brats. Socially, they kept to themselves and partied pretty much out of sight. They'd rent a suite of rooms in a nice hotel, gather at private houses away from the campus, or go out of town for their big bashes."

"How did the anonymous information come to you?" Kerney asked.

"By letter. Two of them."

"Did you happen to save them?"

"You bet I did," Shuler replied. "I kept hoping someone would come forward and give me something tangible that I could verify and print."

"Were they typed or handwritten?" Kerney asked.

"Handwritten."

"I need to see those letters," Kerney said.

"They prove nothing."

"I still need to see them."

Shuler rummaged around in a file cabinet, pulled out a folder, and handed two sheets of paper to Kerney. They were note size, no dates, with writing on one side only. The first letter read: Tyler Norvell is supplying drugs to a young friend of mine and taking advantage of her. He has parties at his house and gets her high on drugs. She tells me that she sometimes wakes up in the morning in bed at his house with a boy or a man she doesn't know, and can't remember what happened. She says there are lots of girls at his parties who have had the same experiences. I think he and his friends are drugging these girls and then raping them. My friend also tells me that Tyler and his friends take some girls to Denver on weekends once a month and the girls come back with expensive gifts. Something very bad is going on. If a student who is supposedly a campus leader is doing these kinds of things, I think it should be made public knowledge.