Nevada Barr - Naked Came The Phoenix

"Emilio," Phyllis Talmadge said sharply, "what is going on here?"

"Why don't you take a seat, Ms. Talmadge? We'll explain when you're settled." His voice was reassuringly that of his previous incarnation, and gradually, with curiosity now overlying their exhausted apprehension, the sadly depleted band subsided into the chairs circling the fire. Caroline and Douglas sat near the fireplace; Phyllis Talmadge, a bandage still on the back of her head, sat next to Caroline; Lauren Sullivan, the only one who had picked without interest at her rich food, was joined by King David, his multicolored Medusa locks tamed into a ponytail, the lines on his face carved into gouges by the strain of the last days. Dante the masseur was there, and his colleague Marguerite, with Gustav the weight trainer, Ginger the receptionist, Jean-Claude the dietitian, and a handful of others, including Geoff the assistant pastry chef, surely the most underemployed talent on the premises. Near the door, Vince and Mike stood watch. Emilio waited for their attention to return to him, and then he began.

"Normally, in such a case as this, the police would take your statements and let you go, and you would hear nothing more until you were called upon to testify.

"Because of the glare of publicity already generated by recent events, and because some of the people involved wish to keep what has gone on here as quiet as possible, it has been decided that you should be told everything, in the hopes that you will keep your statements to the press to a minimum. And since Detective Toscana had already set up this rather literary device of the meeting in the library"-here Constanza shot a glance at the back of the room; Vince Toscana's eyebrows went up in what might have been wry apology-"I decided that we may as well make use of it. I had to draw the line at the traditional denouement of the Golden Age mystery story, namely, the unmasking of the villains and their arrest in front of the other suspects. Modern police techniques render that irresponsible, as I'm sure you understand. As for the other, I trust you will forgive the melodramatic overtones."

Here he reached into the inner breast pocket of his suit to draw out the small leather booklike object that Caroline had seen Toscana throw to the ground. He flipped it open and handed it to Douglas on his left.

"You know me as Emilio Constanza. I was hired under that name eight months ago by Claudia de Vries, who thought she was getting an herbalist from Bombay. My name is Jonathan Sassoon." ("I knew he was no paesan," Vince muttered.) "I actually was born in India, into the ancient Jewish community in Goa, although what I know about herbs I got from a book I memorized on the plane coming to take Claudia's job. My expertise," he said, "is drugs."

The leather wallet indeed identified the impressive figure before them as an agent of the United States Drug Enforcement Agency.

"The feds," murmured Douglas as he passed the article of show-and-tell on to Phyllis Talmadge, on Caroline's left. "No wonder Toscana looks pissed."

"You're also going to have to forgive a certain amount of apparently disconnected narrative as I go along," said Adonis the Fed in his plummy accent. "This case has roots that go back quite a way."

("I knew this case stank of ancient history," Vince said sotto voce to Mike. Mike did not respond; he was too awestruck by the man at the front of the room.)

"You have been the unfortunate witnesses to a series of deaths, all of them related in the sense that the deaths during an earthquake are related: They share the same underlying cause, if by different actual instruments. We have here five deaths and one assault, committed by three different individuals. I do not believe any of the other murders would have occurred had it not been for the first.

"The first to die, of course, was Claudia de Vries, and the means of death may be taken as highly symbolic-a patchwork shawl drawn tight, knotted around her neck, representing the tightening knot of her various crimes and deceptions that were pulled in around her."

He caught himself and looked mildly embarrassed. "Pardon the romance," he said. "It must be the surroundings. At any rate, Claudia de Vries was killed because she was a thief, a blackmailer, and a source of illegal drugs, and because there was a struggle for power among her fellow criminals. We will return to that aspect of the case in a minute.

"As I said, that and the other deaths have roots that go back a long time. My own involvement began approximately twelve years ago, when I arrested a very famous rock star for possession of heroin. That's right: King David himself."

The wide smile he gave the wrinkly rocker was eclipsed only by the electric return grin. The singer had, Caroline noted, surprisingly good teeth for a heroin addict.

"Fortunately for David, he had a clever lawyer, a clean record, and a malleable judge. Which would have been just another instance of justice for the rich, except for one thing: David actually wanted to rehabilitate. He'd been very close to someone, another member of the band, who'd recently died of an overdose. I see some of you remember this."

They did, even Caroline, who had been barely in her teens at the time and hadn't much cared for King David's kind of music anyway, but who had read the articles about the band's troubles with avid attention, wondering at the mix of the famous and the kinky.

"I went to see him in rehab and made him an offer: He'd pass on any information that came his way about dealers and suppliers, we'd work it into our cases, keep his name out of it, all that. It's the sort of thing we do sometimes, though generally we'll offer to reduce time. In this case, I was pushing the revenge side. Not that I had much hope-his sentence was so light we had no leverage, but a person can only ask, and besides, I thought that during our interview we had connected. Turns out I was right, though not in quite the way I'd thought." Again an exchange of knowing smiles, until the agent pulled himself together.

"Anyway, to my amazement, no sooner had I mentioned the possibility of his turning informant than he started to roar with laughter, as if I'd made an enormous joke. Turns out the director of the rehab center he was staying in had offered him a line of coke while they were filling in the admit papers. I couldn't believe it-we hadn't even suspected the place.

"The center was run by Claudia and Raoul de Vries, and although they got a lot more subtle over the years, their operation grew. And we grew with them. We knew something was coming together these last few months, and that's when I came in undercover."

(The skimpy turquoise thong he'd been wearing when she first saw him flashed through Caroline's mind. That was some disguise-nobody'd think to look for a cop underneath… She blushed again and told herself to behave.)

"Chris Lund and Howard Fondulac were two of her major distributors, Fondulac in Southern California, Lund all over, wherever Ondine had regular jobs. She, I hasten to say, had nothing to do with it." He shot another glance across the room, but this time, Caroline thought, it was aimed not at King David but at Lauren Sullivan beside him. "Howard was getting erratic and had been diagnosed with the early stages of liver cancer. He was pressing Claudia to give him more of the stuff to distribute, at the same time that he was holding back a heavy percentage of the profits-he badly wanted to underwrite one last blockbuster film and was desperate for the cash. In the end, according to her notes, he said he'd given her all he could and threatened to tell all: If he was going to die, he might as well bring the whole operation down with him. So he had to be removed, whether by Raoul de Vries or by Christopher Lund or by another remains to be seen. I imagine that one of them will take our offer of a deal and give evidence on the other. This investigation, I hardly need say, is going to keep a number of agencies busy for a long time.