"I'm not sure I'm the best one to ask about any of this," Alex said. "Hell, I'm not even sure I should be talking to you, period."
"I know," I said, letting a little tremor work its way into my voice. "It's awful. And the thing is...I miss you, Alex. I'm afraid of what could happen to you." I let out a tiny little sob of despair. "If the FBI saw that scorecard, with Tiki's phone number on it, in your handwriting-"
"I can take care of myself," Alex said. "Look, Dempsey, maybe you should come up here for a weekend. It's hard to talk on the phone. Maybe if I saw that scorecard you're talking about, I'd have a better understanding of things."
"Oh God," I said breathlessly. "I would love to come to D.C. for a weekend. To get away from here? That would be awesome. I could see Stephanie and Lindsay and maybe get my nails done."
"I could probably clear my calendar for this weekend," Alex said. "Move some meetings around."
"Oh," I wailed. "Oh no. I can't come to D.C. I'm broke. Ruby made me give back my company AmEx card, and all my credit cards are maxed out. Alex, it wouldn't be safe for you to be seen with me up there, after all those hateful stories and photos they've run of you in the Post. Everybody in town knows what you look like."
"We wouldn't meet out in the open, for God's sake, Dempsey," Alex said impatiently. "I could just come up to your hotel room."
"Which the FBI would probably have bugged or something," I prompted. "Anyway, I just told you. I'm broke. I can't afford a plane ticket or a hotel room. I can't even afford a cab ride to the airport in Atlanta."
There was another pause, more shallow breathing. I was pretty sure the mention of the FBI bugging hotel rooms had given his blood pressure a little goose.
"This is ridiculous," he said finally. "I can't talk about this right now."
He hung up.
I stared down at the phone. Just when I'd thought I almost had him ready to swallow the bait, the slimy bastard had somehow managed to wriggle off the hook. What now? Should I call him back, beg him to meet with me?
I stood up and belly-flopped down onto the bed. I lay there, facedown, spread-eagled, waiting for inspiration to strike.
In the end, it wasn't inspiration at all. It was an ill-tempered seventy-nine-year-old with a bum hip and a dog with a tiny bladder.
"Dempsey!" Ella Kate's shrill voice echoed in the high-ceilinged downstairs hall. "Dempsey! You hear me, girl?"
I put the cell phone back in the bib of my overalls and got up and walked downstairs. The door to her new room was ajar, so I poked my head inside.
"I'm right here, Ella Kate," I said patiently. "Is there something I can get for you?"
She'd somehow managed to move the armchair I'd put at her bedside into position in front of the picture window, and she'd pulled aside the curtains to give herself a better view of the outside world. "Shorty needs to go out," she said, leaning back in the chair. The cocker spaniel pawed urgently at the door. "And that Jimmy Maynard fella is outside paintin' this here house green. I'd like to know who give him the right to paint a house bilious green without any say-so from folks who've been livin' all along in a perfectly fine pink house. Who's payin' for that foolishness, is what I want to know."
"I'll let Shorty out," I said. "And as for Jimmy, I-"
She pointed out the window with a knobby finger. "And another thing. There's a silver car settin' right out in front of this house with them two FBI agents sittin' in the front seat. Been out there for the past half hour. What do you reckon they're up to?"
52.
I crouched down in the shrubbery at the end of Birdsong's driveway and peered out around the edge of an overgrown camellia bush. For once, I was glad of a to-do that I hadn't had the time or energy to actually do. I could see the tail end of the government-issue sedan, and sure enough, the heads of agents Harrell and Allgood. For a moment, I flashed on an eighties movie I'd seen, where the good guy realizes he's being followed by the cops-and he sneaks up behind the cop car and sticks a banana in the tailpipe. I was fresh out of fruit, and anyway, I wasn't really sure what a banana in the tailpipe would accomplish, except give me a fit of the giggles, which I was already on the verge of.
Instead, I crept along the curb, keeping low, trying not to snigger, until I was right behind the sedan. I could hear them talking; they were discussing whether to get Chinese or Mexican for lunch. If they'd asked, I would have suggested they try the Corner Cafe, but they hadn't asked my opinion. And they hadn't asked my permission to snoop around outside my house either.
I couldn't keep up the creeping routine for long, my thigh muscles were screaming from the unfamiliar exertion. So I duckwalked up along the passenger side of the car, and when I was even with the front door, I popped up.
"Hey!" I said, pressing my face against the window.
"Jesus!" Agent Harrell exclaimed. He dropped the black plastic doo-hickey he'd been aiming at the house, and in the excitement, he knocked over a cup of coffee that had been sitting in the console cup holder.
"Christ!" Agent Allgood cried, mopping at the hot coffee stain spreading over her ivory wool slacks.
"Oh, sorry," I said, opening the sedan's back door and sliding onto the seat. "Did I surprise you guys?"
"Not at all," Agent Allgood said, tossing a coffee-soaked paper napkin to the floor. "Do we look surprised?"
"You kinda do," I said. "Whatya doin' out here? You should have rung the doorbell. I made egg salad sandwiches for lunch. It's my specialty, and if you don't mind my saying so, it's a lot better than that crappy chop suey over at the Canton Buffet."
"You were eavesdropping on us?" Harrell asked, his voice incredulous.
"Sure. You were eavesdropping on me, weren't you?"
"Cute," Camerin Allgood said. She opened the door and got out of the car. "Come on, Jack, these slacks are wool. I need to get this coffee stain out before it sets."
"Yeah, coffee's a bitch to get out of wool," I agreed, getting out of the backseat. "Come on inside, and I'll see if I can find some Spray 'n Wash or something."
Half an hour later, Camerin Allgood was sitting at the kitchen table, wrapped in my bathrobe, cutting the crusts off her egg salad sandwich. Jackson Harrell polished off two sandwiches, then got up to admire the island counter Bobby had made me.
"This is gorgeous," he said, running his hand over the satiny wood. "Your guy made this himself? Right here in Guthrie? You know what something like this would run up in Dunwoody, where I live? You couldn't touch this for under ten thousand. This is some craftsmanship right here."
"Jack," Agent Allgood said wearily. "Can we swap household tips a little later? I really think we need to brief Ms. Killebrew on her next move, in case Hodder calls her back."
"You don't think he'll call?" I asked nervously. The Jack Daniel's buzz had worn off, and I was growing increasingly anxious, staring at my phone, willing it to ring.
"He'll call," Harrell said, opening one of the cabinet doors to examine how it was made. "Dempsey, is it all right if I call you that? Is this an oil-based stain, or did you go acrylic?"
"Oil," I said. "And you can call me Dempsey if I can call you Jack."
Agent Allgood rolled her big blue eyes heavenward. "If you'd just let us brief you before you called him, I would have explained why it would be better to have the meet in D.C. than down here."
"I'm not going to Washington to meet Alex Hodder," I said. "He knows too many people up there. Anything could happen. If he wants to bribe me, he can just come down here and do it on my turf."
"And that's another thing," Agent Allgood said. "We never discussed blackmail. That was never on the agenda."
"Maybe not yours," I said calmly. "But I think blackmail is the only way to get Alex to play ball. He'd never agree to talk to me otherwise. You were listening in. He thinks I'm a dumb little twit. He actually thought at first that he could bullshit me into believing that golf scorecard was a figment of my imagination. Blackmail is what Alex Hodder understands. Low-life, double-dealing scumball that he is."
"What if he doesn't call back?" she asked. "What's your play then?"
"I don't have one," I admitted. "So he's gotta call."
"Just for the sake of conversation," Harrell asked. "How much were you planning on sticking him for?"
"Jack!" She got up and paced around the room, and the bathrobe, ankle length on me, hit just below her knees. She did have good legs. "This isn't good," she fretted. "Not kosher at all."
"I've been thinking I don't want to seem greedy," I told Harrell, nibbling on a potato chip. "Nothing like a million dollars."
"That's good," Allgood said, "since according to him, his business is sucking wind."
"I doubt he's in any danger of starving," I said. "Have you seen their house? In Georgetown? They've got a place on Martha's Vineyard too. He invites big clients up there in the summer, to go out on their sailboat."
"Her sailboat," Allgood said. "Everything's in the wife's name. We checked."
"And that's another reason to stay reasonable," I said. "I'm thinking two hundred thousand. If I asked for a hundred thousand, Alex wouldn't take me seriously. But two hundred thousand, he should be able to raise that, no problem. If I really were the type of person to blackmail somebody like Alex Hodder, that's what I'd ask for."
"Chump change," Harrell said dismissively. He swooped in on the potato chips and scooped up a handful. He had really big hands. "How you gonna live on a couple hundred K in D.C.? The price of gas, rent, food, another year or so, you'd be living on ramen noodles and generic peanut butter."
"I could live pretty well down here on that kind of money," I said. "Once we get the house finished, in another month or so, I could maybe hang out a shingle and practice law. I'd have to take a crash study course to pass the Georgia bar exam though, and I'll probably need a new car. They say the Catfish can be fixed, but it's such a gas hog-"
"People?" Camerin Allgood looked disgusted. "What the hell are you two talking about? We can't let her blackmail Alex Hodder. Even if he is a lowlife scumdog, it's against the law. And anyway," she said, "it's not going to happen. He hasn't called. He's not going to call." She sighed deeply. "This thing is a major career fucker. I should have listened to my dad and stuck with ballet."
My cell phone rang, vibrating merrily on the wooden kitchen tabletop.
I reached for it, but Harrell planted his big paw on top of mine. "Give it another ring. You know, play hard to get. And hey, don't undersell yourself. As long as it's all rhetorical, anyway, go for three hundred thousand. Think of it as the difference between a Honda Accord and a BMW."
The phone rang for a third time. Agent Allgood swatted Harrell's hand. "Would you please let her answer the friggin' phone?"
My hands were trembling as I flipped the phone open. My throat felt like it was closing shut. "Hello?" I croaked.
"Dempsey?"
"Alex?"
"Are you alone?" His voice was barely above a whisper.
"No," I croaked. "I've got two FBI agents sitting right here in my house, listening in on every word you say. Hang on, I'll put you on speakerphone."
Jackson Harrell's eyes nearly bugged right out of his genial face as I did just that. Agent Allgood scrambled around in her pocketbook before bringing out what looked like a miniaturized tape recorder.
"Not funny, Dempsey," Alex said. "Not the least goddamned bit funny. And not your style at all."
"I'm sorry, Alex," I said mournfully. "I'll try to be serious from now on. Okay? Are you ready to take me seriously now?"
"What do you want?"
"I want world peace, a planet in perfect harmony. I want the FBI to leave me the hell alone. I want a Porsche 911 Carrera convertible and I want to stay out of jail and not get disbarred," I said promptly. "I don't think it would be fair to ask you to foot the bill for the peace and global harmony thing, but on the other hand, I figure it'll cost me a minimum of three hundred thousand for the rest of my wish list, and since you got me into this stinking mess in the first place, I don't feel bad about asking you to pay to get me out of it."
I was shocked to see Camerin Allgood pump her arms over her head and mouth something that looked like You Go Girl!
"That's a lot of money," Alex said. "You may think I'm rich, but you are seriously deluded, Dempsey. My professional life is in the toilet, thanks to you. I've got lawyers on round-the-clock retainer, and my doctor says I have bleeding ulcers."
"I do think you're rich, Alex," I said. "As for a professional life, mine is gone. Toast. So excuse me if I seem a little, well, callous toward your well-being. I've got lawyers to pay too, you know. Although I can't afford the kind you've hired."
"This is getting us nowhere," Alex said finally.
"I agree totally," I said. "But, Alex, I want you to know that I never, ever thought I would be in a position like this." I gave a little sniff, to let him know how bad I felt about what I was going to say. "I'm backed into a corner here, Alex, and I don't know where to turn, or what else to do. The absolute only thing I have going for me is this little-bitty square of cardboard. The scorecard, from the Lyford Cay Resort golf course. With your signature on the back, along with the phone number of a known prostitute."
I heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the phone.
"This isn't like you, Dempsey," he said sadly. "I am stunned. Stunned and feeling deeply, deeply betrayed."
Harrell balled up his fists and rubbed them under his eyes, as though he were shedding real tears for Alex Hodder's sense of personal betrayal.
"Well, Alex," I said. "That's just something I'm going to have to learn to live with."
"Let's say I can meet the figure you just mentioned," Alex said. "What would I get in return?"
"The scorecard," I said promptly.
"Forgive me for asking, but why would you be willing to sell me the only thing that proves your alleged innocence in this matter?"
"It's all I've got," I said truthfully. "My lawyer down here isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he seems to think the feds aren't really interested in me, per se. Right now, if you take that scorecard out of the picture, it's a matter of he said, she said. They want to put Tony Licata in jail. My lawyer says I'm young, and fairly innocent looking."
"Innocent my ass," Alex exclaimed. "Blackmail? This just isn't like the Dempsey Killebrew I know. Is there somebody down there-some boyfriend, maybe-who's putting you up to this?"
"A boyfriend? Is that what you think? That I'm too dumb to come up with a way to squeeze money out of you all by my own stupid, bimbo self?"
"No, no," he said hastily. "That's not-"
"The price just went up, asshole," I said, steel in my voice. "Four hundred thousand. You can come down here to Guthrie to pick up your merchandise. How about I pencil you in for Monday, noon? I'll get my secretary to move some meetings around."
"Wait," Alex said. "Monday? I can't raise that kind of money by then."
"Call me from the Atlanta airport, when you get in, and I'll give you directions to the meeting place," I said. "And, Alex?"
"What else?" he said bitterly.
"Better bring cash. Your check's no good with me."
"Four hundred thousand?" Camerin Allgood said. "Are you insane?"
"A Porsche 911 Carrera convertible," Jackson said, nodding his head up and down. "Girl, I like your style."
The back door opened, and Jimmy Maynard came in, whistling. He stepped carefully out of his Top-Siders, which were still spotless, and padded over to the sink, where he soaped and washed his hands. Drying them on a paper towel, he turned and gave Camerin Allgood, still dressed in the bathrobe, a long, appraising look.
He flashed her a brilliant smile and extended his hand. "Hi there, gorgeous. I don't believe we've been introduced before. I'm Jimmy Maynard. What brings a tall drink of water like you to our fair village?"
Agent Allgood went over to her briefcase and brought out her leather badge holder, which she held up for Jimmy's inspection. "I'm Special Agent Camerin Allgood," she replied. "And I'm here on official government business."
His smile faded and he took a step backward. He gave me a reproachful look. "You coulda warned me she was a G-man."