21 Tales Read online

  “You were blackmailing your mother’s friends?” Morton moaned.

  “How much would you take them for?” I asked.

  “Sue was expensive. Usually between ten to twenty thousand.”

  “And would this be a one-time deal or an ongoing concern?”

  “As far as I knew it was a one-time payment. Maybe Sue was going behind my back and double and triple charging them. I don’t know. Maybe that’s why she was killed.”

  “So you think one of them killed her and set you up for it?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Dover said. His lips had compressed into a harsh smile. “I’m pretty sure of it. It’s the only thing I can come up with that explains why my blood was supposedly found on Sue. These guys have the money and the political weight to fix something like this.”

  “Jesus,” Morton said. “What a goddamn mess. Even if I get you off for murder, blackmailing is still going to cost you at least ten years.”

  “Maybe. Sue always played it as if I didn’t know what was going on.”

  “You’re sure of that?” I asked. “You’re sure she never told any of your victims that you were involved?”

  “She wasn’t supposed to, but who knows?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Morton swore.

  I had a pad of paper in front of me. I gave it to Dover and asked him to write the names and addresses of the family friends they had blackmailed. He worked on it for a little bit and then handed me back the pad. There were six names on it, three that I recognized. I couldn’t keep from whistling.

  “Pretty impressive list,” Dover said.

  “Sure is,” I admitted. “You like any of these more than the others?”

  Dover thought about it and shook his head.

  “I’ve got to ask you, “ I said, “Your mom is wealthy, you’ve got a nice trust fund and all the opportunities in the world. Why have you been doing this?”

  Dover stared at me before showing a slight smile. “Why not?”

  Our interview was over. There was a knock on the door and then two guards entered. One of them nodded to me and told me how much he liked my monthly column. I thanked him and shook his hand. They then put the shackles back on Dover’s wrists and ankles and led him out of the room.

  Morton seemed preoccupied as he gathered up his papers. As we walked out of the interview room, he swore a few times under his breath.

  “Jesus Christ,” he swore a little louder. “You see the names on that list? Jesus fucking Christ.”

  “You think he’s telling the truth?” I asked.

  Morton was scowling. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I sure as hell need you to find out. I’m not going to depose any of them unless I know for sure they’ve been blackmailed. This is going to be a goddamn mess!”

  We separated in the parking lot. Morton looked upset. I didn’t blame him much. These were rich and powerful men. It wasn’t going to be much fun embarrassing them. I sure wasn’t looking forward to it either.

  If Richard were lying about the blackmail, it was a clever lie. His trial would turn into the biggest media circus Denver had ever seen. Six rich and powerful men–including one CEO and two state politicians–would have to take the stand and answer questions about whether they had illicit sex with Susan Laem and whether they paid her to keep quiet about it. At least one juror would be swayed by the whole thing. Yeah, it would be one hell of a clever lie, except I didn’t think it was a lie. There was a look on Richard’s face when I asked about the blackmail. The look told me not only did he do it, but that he’d do it again in a heartbeat. That he got off on it.

  I was going to have to look into whether some rich and powerful men had sex with Susan Laem and were later blackmailed. I knew the whole thing was going to get messy. And I knew I could end up making enemies that I just couldn’t afford to make. The smart thing would be to drop the case. That would be the smart thing. But as my poppa always said, there were fools and there were damn fools. And I guess I fell into the latter. And there was also the money. I hated turning down the type of money Margaret Dover was offering. More important than the money, though, I needed a good case for my monthly column. The last couple of months, Braggs had to reprint past columns and I knew he wasn’t too happy about it. I had a feeling that if I asked for too many more reprints I could lose my column, and then I’d be no different than any of the other private dicks working Denver.

  I got in my car and headed towards East Colfax.

  East Colfax is a street that the Denver Chamber of Commerce probably doesn’t like to brag about. You can find streets like it in most urban cities. A street littered with pawnshops, strip clubs, massage parlors, and adult bookstores. Any time of day you can find your share of hookers, drug addicts and runaways loitering along there.

  Rude was standing at the corner of Nineteenth Street smoking a cigarette, his black eyes staring distantly into some godforsaken world. Rude works as a bouncer for a strip club a few doors down from where he was standing. He did two tours of duty with an elite force in Vietnam, spending most of his time hunting Vietcong in the jungle. The way he explains it now is he can’t stay cooped up inside for too long, he needs to get out every half hour or so for some fresh air – even if all that’s available is the brownish smog we get here in Denver.

  I pulled up alongside him. He slowly moved his gaze towards me.

  “If it isn’t Denver’s poet laureate, Johnny Lane,” he said.

  “It sure is nice to be recognized,” I said. “As my poppa always said –“

  “Cut it out, Lane,” he interrupted. “What do you want?”

  “I need to find out about this girl.” I handed him one of Susan Laem’s pictures.

  Rude’s eyes narrowed to thin slits as he studied the picture. “She’s the girl who was strangled by her rich boyfriend,” Rude said slowly.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “I think she worked as a prostitute. If she did, I need to find out if she had a pimp, who she hung out with, or anything else you can find.”

  Rude didn’t say anything. I handed him two hundred dollars, which barely made a dent in the retainer Dover’s mother had paid me. Rude seemed satisfied with it. He told me he’d call if he found out something. He then shifted his gaze from me and stared back into his own private godforsaken world.

  I turned down Nineteenth Street and headed towards downtown Denver. It was already past one and my stomach was feeling empty. I parked behind my office building and walked the two blocks to the Corner Diner. Carol was working the booths and I was glad to see her. She was a cute little thing, blond, blue eyes, her body fitting nicely in a size four waitress uniform. I kidded with her a bit and in no time at all had her blushing a nice red. When she brought me my food, though, I realized I didn’t have much of an appetite. I guess the idea of tackling this blackmail business and stepping on toes that I just didn’t want to step on was bothering me. But there was the money. And there were several monthly columns I was going to get out of it. I forced down a few bites and then headed back to my office.

  Once I got behind my desk, I took out Richard’s blackmail list and looked it over. As I had mentioned before three of the names were familiar. I recognized all the addresses, though. They were all in wealthy, exclusive neighborhoods. I got on the phone and after a little while filled out the rest of the list. One of the names was that of a judge in Colorado Springs, another was big in real estate, and the third was just plain wealthy.

  Even though I operate a one-man agency I subcontract out quite a few of my cases and usually have a small mountain of paperwork that needs to be chipped away at. The last few months had been slower than usual, but I still had a good deal of paperwork to go through. I put Richard’s list down and picked up one of the case reports from my desk. I tried to concentrate on the report, but had a tough time with it. My mind just kept wandering. At times I thought about Dover, about his blood being found on the dead girl, and other times I thought about the six men he claimed he had blackmailed. Then I s
tarted thinking of the dead girl, Susan Laem, wondering what the joke was that she had had on all the rest of us.

  At four o’clock Rude called. He had a girl down at the club that he wanted me to meet. I asked if he could put her on the phone, but he insisted that I meet them there. It was four-thirty by the time I parked across the street from Rude’s strip club.

  Business was light in there. There were a few guys sitting around the stage and a few more at a couple of the tables. A thin dark haired girl wearing a cowboy hat was moving slowly around the stage to Bob Seger’s ‘Against The Wind’. She already had her top off and was teasing some with her G-String. Rude was sitting at a table in the back, about as animated as a block of granite. I joined him at his table. He shifted his eyes sideways for a moment and then moved his gaze back to the dancer on stage.

  “That’s the girl you want to talk to,” he said. “Gina. Her set’s almost done.”

  We sat and waited until she was finished. A few dollar bills were slipped into her G-String, a few more were thrown on stage. She picked up the bills and slipped on a tight fitting sleeveless shirt. Rude waved her over to us.

  Gina gave me a big ‘Hello Honey’, and sat down next to me. Rude stopped her. “This is the private dick I was telling you about,” he said to her. Then he shifted his gaze to me. “I think you’re going to want to hear what Gina has to say, Lane,” he said, “It’s going to cost you a hundred bucks.”

  “I already paid you two hundred,” I said.

  “You paid me, you didn’t pay her,” he said. He started to look annoyed – one of the few times in all the years I’d known him to show any emotion on his stone hard face. “You know, Lane,” he continued on, “it pisses me off that guys like me run around and do all your work, and you just write it up in your shitty little newspaper column and take the credit for it.”

  “Well, now. If you feel that strongly about it, Rude, I’ll make sure to include you in my next column.”

  “You will?” he asked, sort of surprised.

  “Sure will,” I said. Of course I didn’t mention how I’d include how he pimps for half the girls working at his club. I turned to Gina and paid her a hundred dollars. I knew Rude would take his cut later.

  “You want to know about Susie?” she asked.

  “That’s right, darling. Do you know if she worked as a prostitute?”

  Gina nodded. She took a deep breath. “It was kind of a shock to hear about what happened to her, but it also wasn’t. Susie was so beautiful. She could’ve been an actress or a model or really anything she wanted, but everything was a joke to her. As far as she was concerned life was nothing but one big joke. Yeah, Susie used to dance and she also used to turn tricks.”

  “Did she have a pimp?”

  “No. Susie arranged her own business.”

  “Did you know Richard Dover?”

  “No. I stopped seeing her before she met him. That was about a year ago.”

  I gave her a long look. She had a brittle smile and was nervously pulling on her fingers, but she was being sincere. I asked her whether she thought Sue Laem would be up to blackmailing her sex partners. Gina gave it some thought and told me she thought she would. “It would probably be just a big joke to Susie,” she added.

  It was what I had expected to hear. I started to thank Gina when Rude interrupted me.

  “You haven’t heard the best part, Lane,” he said.

  “No?”

  “Gina, tell Lane about the videotapes.”

  Gina took another deep breath and let it out slowly. “Me and my boyfriend were in a store and we came across some videotapes Susie had made.”

  “Lane, ask her what type of tapes they were,” Rude offered, a thin smile etched on his face.

  Gina didn’t wait for me to ask. “She was making amateur voyeur tapes,” she said.

  “What are those?”

  “You got videos where one of the partners doesn’t know they’re being taped. There’s a big market for them now. Susie had several tapes. I think the label was ‘Bedroom Eyes’.”

  I could feel my heart skip a beat. I was pretty sure who her partners were going to be. Those tapes would create havoc in the courtroom, and just about guarantee Dover’s acquittal. I wondered why he didn’t tell me about them. I wondered if he even knew about them.

  “I told you it would be worth your while,” Rude said.

  I agreed with him. I thanked Gina, and she gave me the name of an adult bookstore on East Colfax where she had found the tapes.

  Things went easy at the adult bookstore. The clerk recognized me from my newspaper column and seemed to be a fan of mine. I showed him Susan’s picture, and told him that I thought she was in some videotapes under the ‘Bedroom Eyes’ label. He helped me find them. There were three of them. He told me that he had sold a few of them lately.

  When I got home I went through the tapes as quickly as I could. There was something disquieting watching Susan Laem, knowing that she now laid dead in the morgue. She was certainly beautiful, though. You could see why these men couldn’t turn her down. There was so much passion in her, so much life in her eyes. At times, though, I could see a little smile playing on her lips.

  The action seemed to take place in a motel room. My guess it was the same one that she was murdered in. The video camera must’ve been hidden directly across from the bed. Richard made a guest appearance on one of the tapes. From his body language it was obvious that he was aware of the camera. That answered my question of whether he knew about the tapes. Her other partners were men in their fifties and sixties. It didn’t seem that any of them knew they were being recorded.

  As I went through the tapes, I wrote down the track numbers where each new partner appeared. There were actually eight different men, not six. Richard was one, but I wondered who the other unaccounted for man was.

  I phoned Margaret Dover at her home and told her that I had found some new evidence and that I needed her help. I didn’t tell her about the tapes, or that I needed her to identify the men on them. I figured that could wait. I asked if we could meet. She sounded tired, but agreed to see me. I made sure she had a VCR and we arranged to meet at her home in an hour. There was an errand that I wanted to do before that.

  The motel Susan Laem died in was off the interstate. It took about twenty minutes to drive there. The building was an eyesore; a one level concrete structure built sometime in the sixties. A sign out front advertised that adult films were available.

  The desk clerk was a thin pockmarked kid with greasy stringy hair. I asked him if I could see the room Susan Laem was murdered in. He told me that I couldn’t, that the police had the room sealed off.

  I put the videotapes on the counter. “Listen, son,” I said, “do the police know you’ve got hidden video cameras in the rooms?”

  His eyes dulled a bit, but other than that no reaction. “We don’t secretly tape anyone here. If there are video cameras in the room they’re there for our guests’ private use.”

  “Well now,” I said. “That’s awfully damn accommodating of you. I need to see her room. If I need to get the police involved, that’s fine.”

  He thought about it for a moment and then got me the key. “If there are any tapes made, they’re made by our guests,” he offered sullenly.

  I took the ‘Bedroom Eyes’ videotapes from the counter, and then walked across the parking lot to Susan Laem’s room. The video camera was hidden in some paneling opposite from the front of the bed. I checked to make sure that the camera was empty.

  I guess it was wishful thinking on my part that a tape had been left behind waiting to play back Susan’s murder to me. In a way I was glad there wasn’t; it would’ve been a tough thing to sit through. It was tough enough sitting through the tapes I had. I returned the key to the desk clerk and headed off to meet with Margaret Dover.

  # #

  The Dover home was in a historic section of Denver, just a mile or so from downtown. A big stone structure, big enough to be a
small hotel. Margaret met me at the door. She looked a little more tired, and maybe more haggard around the eyes than when I had seen her earlier.

  “Please come in, Mr. Lane.”

  She led me through a hallway and into the living room. There was a full-sized bar in it. I guess she saw me looking at it.

  “Would you like a drink?” she asked.

  “Well, now,” I said, “right now bourbon straight up would do me a world of good.”

  She went to the bar and made me a drink and also poured herself some scotch. After she handed me a glass, I gave her a quick rundown on what I’d found so far and what I needed from her. She took it all in without saying a word, almost as if she were in shock. While I played her the tapes I would just show her enough of a participant so she could identify him, then I’d turn off the picture and fast forward the tape to the position where the next participant would appear. I tried to show her as little of the tapes as I could. I skipped her son’s performance altogether. Through it all she looked ashen. The seventh man on the tape was identified as Chase Powell. He was married, wealthy, and owned a large accounting firm in Denver. He was a longtime family friend. Now all the men were accounted for on her son’s list.

  When we were done, Margaret sat quietly for a long moment. Then she asked whether I was sure that her son was involved. She wanted to know whether it was possible that that girl had arranged things without her son’s involvement.

  I shook my head. “Your son told me about the blackmail,” I said, “And I’m certain he knew about the tapes. He seemed to enjoy the whole idea of it. He did, though, try to make it look as if he wasn’t involved with any of it.”

  “And that girl wasn’t my son’s fiancée?”

  “No.”

  She didn’t say anything else for a good minute. As I looked at her it seemed as if she were aging before my eyes. Finally she asked if there were any other tapes. I told her there weren’t.