Palm Beach Perfidious, page 7
“Ah, sure, that works. Where were you thinking?”
“I don’t know, there’s a place near me on Dixie Highway called, what is it? Sean Penn’s Nomad.”
She laughed. “I think you mean Sean Rush’s Nomad.”
Okay, I’m a little nervous. “Yeah, yeah, that’s it.”
“Great,” DeeDee said, like Ott wasn’t the biggest dumbass in the world. “See you at seven?”
*****
Crawford now had a lot more to question LV Wurfel about, as he knew he would. When Crawford got to the house on El Cid, Wurfel was in his garage again, this time with another scruffy biker dude. The man was pure central casting: jeans, a black T-shirt with cut-off arms revealing bulbous but un-muscled arms, a turkey neck segueing into a Fu Manchu beard/mustache combo, and a red, pockmarked face.
“Dirt,” Wurfel said, seeing Crawford approaching the garage, “say hello to my new friend, Officer Crawfish.”
Crawford let it go, remembering Wurfel’s self-described lame sense of humor.
“How ya doin’, bro?” Dirt said, flipping Crawford a thumbs-up.
Crawford nodded at him, then turned to Wurfel. “Got a few more question for you, LV.”
“Fire away, man. Dirt won’t get in the way,” Wurfel said.
“See, the thing is,” Crawford said, shaking his head, “what I want to discuss is confidential.”
Wurfel, working on something Crawford thought was the motorcycle’s carburetor, grabbed a dirty towel from the floor and rubbed his hands. “I don’t know what difference it’ll make. I’ll just tell Dirt what we talked about after.”
Crawford didn’t care that much. “Just do me a favor and step outside, will ya?”
Wurfel nodded; Dirt shrugged.
Crawford led Wurfel outside the garage to the shade of a scrawny tree on his lawn. “So,” said Crawford, “there’s a lot more to Distinguished Consorts than you told me about.”
“There is? Like what are you referring to?”
Crawford leaned just over the edge of Wurfel’s personal space. “I mean, men paying women for sex, provided by your ex-wife Antonia. It’s called prostitution.”
Wurfel looked down and pushed the right toe of his boot into a clump of grass. “That all happened after me. When I was there, we ran a clean operation. I had no interest in going back to jail.”
“Okay, so let me get this straight, Antonia charged men fifty grand to have ten dates with women—”
“Not just women, but high-class, intelligent, very, very sexy women. Tens, man, every one of ’em was a ten. I can’t tell you how hard we worked to have the best stable in the country.” Wurfel slapped Crawford’s arm. “Tell you the truth, that was my favorite part of the job.”
“Recruiting for the stable, you mean?”
“Better believe it, man.”
“Okay, so I get it from Antonia’s angle, and I get it from the men’s angle, but not the women’s. Was it just that the women had the opportunity of snagging a rich man?”
“Pretty much. We provided those women a shot at landing a whale that they never would’ve had a shot at otherwise. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah, but their dates didn’t always lead to marriage or even a long relationship. In fact, I’m guessing rarely.”
“True that. In fact, only about one in ten. No… more like one out of twenty. But at least they scored a few really nice dinners out of it. Maybe a few extra bucks over and above.”
“Okay, okay, so the 50K was the legitimate side of the business. Semi-legit at least… when you were still in it. What about the money-for-sex side hustle?”
“Okay,” Wurfel said, “so as I understand it from Waverly after a long night of bikini martinis, a bunch of the girls got sick of going out to dinner with a guy and that was as far as it went. So, a few of them started griping to Antonia, and that’s when Antonia changed the game.”
“To good, old-fashioned sex-for-money.”
“Make that a shitload of money for sex,” Wurfel said. “Don’t forget these were the cream dee la cream of broads. I mean a runner-up for Miss Universe, this hot soap-opera star, Miss Florida 2010, one of those babes on The Real Housewives of Orange County.”
“How’d she end up in Florida?”
“Beats me. Anyway, you know what I’m sayin’. Like I said, the cream dee la cream.”
“I got that,” Crawford said. “So Antonia would set it up and… get a cut?”
“More than a cut. Wave told me she’d get half.”
“So this was basically for guys who had no patience?”
Wurfel cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“Men who didn’t want to go through the song and dance of three dinners, five dates, whatever it took to have sex.”
“Yeah well, look at it this way: some of ’em—the women—never put out ’til they had something solid. You know, living together with a guy or actually a ring on their finger.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“So these women, the beauty queens and The Real Housewives—”
“By the way, Antonia put ’em up in a house up on Indian—the north end of Palm Beach.”
Crawford nodded. “Yeah, I know where Indian is. I’m a Palm Beach detective, LV, case you missed that.”
“Check.” LV nodded. “So the girls had a regular sorority house up there.”
“Gotcha,” Crawford said, thinking, that’s certainly worth a visit.
“They weren’t allowed to bring guys there. One of ’em did once and Antonia tossed her ass out onto the street.”
“Guess she ran a tight ship.”
“Sure did.”
“So, what else?”
“What else what?”
“Well, last time we talked, I thought you filled me in on everything there was to know about Distinguished Consorts. Turns out you only told me half.”
“Well, now you know everything I know.”
“You sure? You’re not holding back on anything… again? Or forgetting something?” LV shook his head vigorously.
“Okay, well then what about this? A lot of people described the business as an executive headhunter business? What’s that all about?”
“Oh, that? Well, see Antonia had a good job up in Manchester—New Hampshire, that is, where we came from—as a recruiter, so she wanted to try that down here.”
“And?”
“It didn’t fly.”
“Why not?”
“Because recruiting a bank VP in Manchester for sixty grand was what they pay a trainee down here. As smart as she was, she was smart enough to bail on that. I came up with the girl idea, she came up with the name.”
“And the rest is history,” Crawford said. “What else, LV?”
“That’s it.”
“You haven’t impersonated a police officer lately, have you?”
“Hell no.”
“Or been up to any criminal mischief?”
“Come on, man. Like I said, the last place I want to end up is sideways with the law. You checked me out. You saw my sheet. I can’t afford to add to it.”
Crawford nodded at Wurfel. “Okay, well, thanks for filling me in. Now you can go back to your pal Dirt and spill the beans on everything we talked about.”
THIRTEEN
Ott picked up DeeDee Dunwoody at her bungalow on Westminster Street, just south of the El Cid section of West Palm Beach. Ott, gentleman he was, opened the passenger door for her and she slid into the seat of his six-year-old white Infiniti. He had gotten it detailed an hour before picking her up.
“Nice car, Mort,” DeeDee said, as Ott got in the driver’s side.
“Thanks, an oldie but a goodie.” He started to add, like me, but why draw attention to their age difference? He figured she was in her early thirties; he was forty-seven.
“So where are we going again?” DeeDee asked. “Oh right, Sean Rush’s Nomad.”
“Yeah, I went there once and liked it.”
DeeDee nodded. “Cool place.”
“And just so happens, tonight is bossa nova night.”
“Is it now? Not sure I know how to do the bossa nova.”
“Well, I’m totally sure I don’t. I think it might be something in the samba family.”
“I’ll Google it,” DeeDee said, pulling her iPhone out of her purse as Ott took a left onto Dixie Highway.
“Here we go,” DeeDee said a few moments later. “So, according to Wikipedia, the bossa nova, ‘is mainly characterized by a “different beat” that altered the harmonies with the introduction of unconventional chords and an innovative syncopation of traditional samba from a single rhythmic division.’”
Ott looked over at DeeDee, his brows furrowed. “Come again?”
She laughed. “Yeah, exactly. No clue what any of that means.”
“Well, I guess we’re about to find out.”
*****
Ott and DeeDee had just stepped off the dance floor after doing their version of the bossa nova. If you took a look at a YouTube video of bossa nova dancing it would bear no resemblance to the Ott-DeeDee version, but they had fun and worked up a fierce thirst.
“You’re a really good dancer, Mort,” DeeDee said, as they sat back down at the table.
“Well, thanks, I’m not quite ready for Dancing with the Stars, but you definitely are.”
She put her hand on his arm. “Flattery will get you everywhere.”
“No, I mean it, you are really good. You got great moves.”
The waitress came over and they ordered drinks. Rosé for her, a Yuengling for him.
“So are you making any progress on Antonia’s murder?” DeeDee asked.
“That’s a very good question and, as I’m sure you can appreciate, I can’t tell you all that much. But, in general, what usually happens is we have to rule out a lot of suspects before we eventually rule someone in.”
“I understand, but I read somewhere that if you don’t catch the bad guy in the first forty-eight hours, it becomes a lot harder to ever catch him.”
“That’s the common belief, but my partner and I never seem to do it that way. I’m pretty sure we’ve only had one that we solved in the first forty-eight hours. In that case, we found a lot of good DNA samples and, boom, nailed the guy right away.”
“You ever shot anybody, Mort?”
Ott laughed. “That’s kind of a personal question,” he said. “So, yes I have. One guy in the butt, another guy who was rushing me, in the stomach. They both survived, I’m happy to say.”
“But never killed anybody, right?”
“No, not even close,” Ott said, thinking about his partner, who couldn’t say the same. “Can we talk about something other than shooting people?”
“Sure, I was just curious.”
“So, let’s talk about you… you said you’ve been looking for a job. How’s that coming along?”
She exhaled. “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve been doing a little with the real estate. I had this guy who was looking to spend up to $700,000 in the Northwood area. He said that was the only area he was interested in. We went around and looked at a bunch of different places, and I was sure he was going to make an offer on this one. So, I waited and waited and nothing. Then I called him a few days later and he told me he went and bought a FSBO in Flamingo Park.”
“A FSBO?”
“Yeah, means For Sale By Owner.”
“That’s too bad. Thought he only wanted to be in Northwood.”
“So he said. But there’s this expression, ‘buyers are liars.’”
“Well, sorry it didn’t work out.”
“Yeah, me too… sometimes I wish I had a bunch of other great-aunts dying off on me.”
Ott laughed. “So tell me about that guy Warren,” he said, immediately realizing there had to have been a better segue. But it was too late.
“Who?”
“You know, Warren the pig.”
She tapped her forehead. “Oh God, don’t remind me,” she said, her eyes narrowing. “Wait a minute, Mort, did you ask me out to talk about Antonia’s murder?”
Yup, he had totally jumped the gun, and ignored Crawford’s advice to go slow, ease into it.
“No, I asked you out because I thought we’d have a good time and you’d be a fantastic bossa nova partner.”
“Well, good, then. As for Warren, do you like to talk about your bad dates?”
“Good point. And no, I don’t. It’s just that you brought up Antonia before so I didn’t think it was off-limits.”
“Fair enough. Warren’s off-limits; Antonia isn’t. How’s that?”
“That’s fair.”
“So anything else on the job front?” Ott asked.
“I thought we were back to talking about Antonia.”
“Whatever you’d like,” Ott said.
“I’ll tell you what I’d like,” DeeDee said, standing up as a bouncy new song came on, “more bossa nova.”
Ott was down with that.
They did a few fast ones; then a slower one came on. Ott put his right hand around her back and her right hand in his left.
“I also like cheek to cheek,” DeeDee said, smiling up at him.
“Me, too,” said Ott, and he moved closer, so their cheeks grazed.
“You’re very warm,” Ott said, meaning her cheek. “I started to say, ‘you’re very hot’ but didn’t think that would sound right.”
She laughed. “I don’t mind either.”
The song ended a few minutes later. Before they broke the clench, Ott kissed her cheek.
“Why, Mort,” DeeDee said, mock surprise.
Ott put up his hands. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“Whatever it was, I liked it.”
*****
They stayed at Sean Rush’s Nomad—dancing and talking—for another half hour and never got back to Antonia von Habsburg or the case.
At 10:35, Ott drove DeeDee back to her bungalow on Westminster Street. He parked in her driveway. “This is a nice neighborhood,” he said.
“Yes, I like it. Pretty quiet, but pretty close to everything,” she said. “Where do you live?”
“Grandview Heights.”
“Oh, so just a hop, skip and a jump.”
“Yeah, but not as nice as here.”
“Okay, Mort, enough geography.” She leaned toward him. “Kiss me.”
And did he ever.
Like his dancing, it was a little rusty, but he picked it up again pretty fast.
After a few moments, DeeDee pulled back. “You’re a really good kisser, Mort.”
“You probably say that to all the boys.”
She shook her head. “I don’t kiss all the boys.”
“Good to know.”
She shook her head again. “All right, I better get out of here before this gets too intense.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
She leaned toward him, kissed him again and shrugged. “Blame it on the bossa nova.”
*****
Crawford was in Rose Clarke’s office at Sotheby’s International Realty in Royal Poinciana Plaza. Rose was a tall blond, who had just turned forty, but sometimes she forgot that fact. She was the top real estate agent in Palm Beach—by far—because she was smart, savvy and hustled her shapely ass off. She also never forgot a name or a face. She and Crawford had had their romantic moments—more than two, less than ten.
“So, Charlie, why is it I never see you except when you need something from me?” she asked with her little smile.
“That’s very cynical, Rose. What about that time I took you out to Malakor’s for dinner? All I was after was your scintillating conversation and companionship, absolutely no ulterior motive.”
“That was six, maybe eight months ago,” she said.
He shook his head. “Couldn’t a been that long ago.”
“I remember… it was right before Thanksgiving.”
“So, it was memorable though, right?”
“Anything with you is memorable, Charlie,” Rose said. “So what do you want to know? Wait, I’ve got a guess… Could it be about Antonia von Habsburg?”
“Bingo. How’d you know?”
“Because that’s the only murder in Palm Beach in the last six months, at least that I know of. And, boy, was it ever a grisly one.”
“Sure was,” Crawford said. “Hey, by the way, I have to pay you a compliment. Mort and I were talking and we decided you’re like our ‘third partner.’”
“Oh, I love that,” Rose said. “Give Mort a kiss for me, will you?”
“Um, maybe just a fist bump,” he said, raising his fist.
Rose laughed. “So Antonia von Habsburg, she’s a bit of a mystery. What a horrible way to go. I actually liked her but never felt like I had that good a read on her. Totally self-made, I heard. Seemed intelligent, attractive… but, obviously, she really pissed someone off.”
“Yeah, you can say that again.”
“I remember when she came up for membership at the Poinciana, with the most bogus résumé you could imagine. I thought to myself, ‘Well, she’s got no chance.’ But then, three months later, she was in.”
“Bogus? How do you mean bogus?”
“Well, that her grandfather or great-grandfather was some kind of duke or count in Austria, grew up in a castle, and she was descended from the Habsburgs of… well, Habsburg fame. Went back there for Habsburg reunions or some nonsense. I mean the people on the membership committee aren’t stupid. They check you out, vet the hell out of you.”
“But, as you said, somehow she got through the process and became a member.”
“There was speculation in my golf foursome that she was doing the president, but I think it had more to do with Janny Hasleiter.”
“Who’s she?” he said, remembering what Ott had heard about the president of the Poinciana.
Rose looked confounded. “Jeez Charlie, where have you been? You’ve never run across Janny Hasleiter?”
Crawford shook his head.
“Oh my God. Well, for starters she’s one of the most powerful people in Hollywood. She’s—I forget which—either a director or a producer, maybe both. She was one of the producers on, let’s see, either the Spiderman or the Jurassic Park series. Also, one of the big series on Showtime, too, that’s in like its sixth season. I forget the name of it, but it’s huge. Oh, I remember now, it’s called Yellowstone.”
