Femme

  Bill Pronzini

  Femme

  ***

  Femme fatale. French for “deadly woman.”

  You hear the term a lot these days, usually in connection with noir fiction and film noir. But they're not just products of literature or film, the folklore of nearly every culture. They exist in modern society, too. The gnuine femme fatales you har about now and then are every bit as evil as the fictional variety. Yet what sets them apart is that they're the failures, the ones who for one reason or another got caught. For every one of those, there must be several times as many who get away with their destructive crimes…

  In the thirty years the Nameless Detective has been a private investigator, he has never once had the misfortune to cross paths with this type of seductress… but in Femme he'll meet Cory Beckett, a deadly woman who has brought some new angles to the species. New-and terrible.

  Cemetery Dance, 2012. Hardcover, 175 pp.

  ***

  DEDICATION

  For Rich Chizmar, with thanks for inviting Nameless and me to do a little Cemetery Dance

  CHAPTER 1

  Femme fatale. French for “deadly woman.”

  You hear the term a lot these days, usually in connection with noir fiction and film noir. Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon. Cora in The Postman Always Rings Twice. Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity. Matty Walker in Body Heat. Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct. Scheming, sexually demanding women who ensnare their lovers in bonds of irresistible and destructive desire. Lethal women. Eve in the Garden, Jezebel, Salome, Cleopatra.

  But they’re not just products of literature, film, the folklore of nearly every culture. They exist in modern society, too. The genuine femmes fatale you hear about now and then are every bit as evil as the fictional variety. Yet what sets them apart is that they’re the failures, the ones who for one reason or another got caught. For every one of those, there must be several times as many who get away with their destructive crimes.

  In the dozen years I spent in law enforcement and the thirty years I’ve been a private investigator, I never once had the misfortune to cross paths with this type of seductress. Never expected to. Never thought much about the breed except when confronted with one in a film or the pages of a book or the pulp magazines I collect. Female monsters of a different variety, yes, like the pair I’d encountered not long ago who made a living murdering elderly people for their money. But a real femme fatale in the classic mode? Not even close. If you’d told me one day I would, and that her brand of evil would be like nothing I could ever have imagined, I’d have laughed and said no way.

  I’m not laughing now.

  Neither is Jake Runyon. He was in it, too, not quite from the beginning but all the way to the end. He’d never come across anyone like her, either, and it left him as shaken as it did me.

  Her name was Cory Beckett. Real name, not an alias. A deadly woman who brought a couple of new twists to the species.

  New-and terrible.

  CHAPTER 2

  I met Cory Beckett in a routine fashion, and came away from that first meeting with no real inkling of her true nature.

  She was not the sort of woman who usually sought my services. In her late twenties-twenty-eight, I found out later. Strikingly attractive, her sex appeal the low-key, smoldering variety. Sitting demurely in Abe Melikian’s private office, the first time I laid eyes on her, dressed in an expensive caramel-colored suit and a high-necked, green silk blouse. The outfit, and the filigreed gold and ruby ring on her little finger, indicated she was well fixed financially; always a plus in a prospective client.

  She had thick, wavy black hair, a model’s willowy figure, and a worried smile that even tuned down had a good deal of candlepower. But what you noticed first, and remembered most vividly, were her luminous gray-green eyes. They had a powerful magnetic quality; I could feel the pull of them, like being drawn into dark, calm water. It was only when you got to know her that you realized the calm surface was a lie-that underneath there weren’t just smoldering sexual fires but riptides and whirlpools and hungry darting things with teeth.

  It was Melikian who’d called me to set up the meeting. He was one of the more successful bail bondsmen in the city, with half a dozen employees and offices across Bryant Street from the Hall of Justice. I’d done a fair amount of work for him over the years, to our mutual satisfaction and trust. All he’d said on the phone, in his typically gruff way, was that the matter involved a possible bail forfeiture.

  Melikian hated jumpers, as he called them, even more than other bondsmen. To hear him tell it, they were all part of a vast conspiracy to ruin his business and drive him into bankruptcy. As a result he was careful to avoid posting bond for anyone who struck him as a potential flight risk, but now and then he got burned anyway. Usually when that happened, he ranted and raved and threatened dire consequences. Not this time. When I sat down with him and Cory Beckett, he was meek as a mouse.

  She was the reason. Those eyes and that sleek body of hers had worked their spell on him; he hung on her every word, and the gleam in his eye when he looked at her was anything but cynical. An even more telling measure of how she’d affected him was an unprecedented willingness to split my fee with her.

  She let him do most of the talking at first. The subject was her brother, Kenneth Beckett, who’d been arrested and arraigned six weeks ago on a grand theft charge. The bail amount was a cool $100,000, which meant she’d had to put up the usual ten percent commission in cash plus some kind of collateral for most or all of the rest. I didn’t ask what the collateral was, figuring that it was none of my concern.

  “The trial’s ten days off yet,” Melikian said, “so we got that long to save the bond and kid’s tail. But technically he’s already a jumper on account of one of the terms the judge set for his bail.”

  “Which is?”

  “Not allowed to leave the city without police permission. The court finds out he’s in violation, the judge’ll issue a warrant for his arrest.”

  “Uh-huh. And he’s already gone.”

  “Yeah. And it don’t look like he’s coming back for his trial, unless you find him and get him back here in time.”

  “Does his lawyer know he skipped?”

  “Sam Wasserman? Hell, no. And he won’t find out if we can help it.”

  That was easy enough to understand. Wasserman was a well-respected criminal attorney, but something of a straight arrow in a profession full of crooked bows. If he knew his client had skipped, he’d probably inform the court and then withdraw from the case.

  “How long has your brother been gone, Ms. Beckett?” I asked.

  “At least three days,” she said. She had one of these soft, caressing voices, maybe natural, maybe affected. Intimate even when she was playing the worried little sister. “I had some business out of town and when I got back, he was gone from the apartment we share.”

  “What did he take with him?”

  “Clothing, a few personal belongings.”

  “Cell phone?”

  “Yes, but he has it turned off. I’ve left a dozen messages.”

  “Why do you think he ran away? At this particular time, I mean.”

  “The strain must have gotten to him… I shouldn’t have left him alone. He’s not a strong person and he’s terrified of being locked up for a crime he didn’t commit.”

  With any other client, Melikian would have rolled his eyes at that. Nine out of every ten bonds he posted was for an innocent party, to hear them and whoever arranged their bail tell it.

  I said, “You have no idea where he might have gone?”

  “None. Except that it won’t be far, and there’ll be a yacht harbor or marina or some kind of boat place nearby.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Kenny hates traveling alone, any kind of travel. He won’t fly and he’s never driven more than a hundred miles in any direction by himself. And boats… they’re his entire life.”

  “Working around them, you mean?”

  “That’s what he does-deckhand, maintenance man, any job that involves boats.”

  “Has he ever been in trouble with the law before?”

  “No. Never.”

  So the travel restrictions didn’t necessarily apply. Fear of prison can prod a man to do any number of things he’d shied away from before.

  “The grand theft charge,” I said. “What’s he alleged to have stolen?”

  “A diamond necklace. But he didn’t steal it. I know he didn’t.”

  That meant nothing, either. Most people refuse to believe a close relative capable of committing a major crime, no matter how much evidence exists to the contrary.

  “How much is the necklace worth?”

  “Assessed at twenty-K,” Melikian said.

  Some piece of jewelry. I asked who the owner was.

  “Margaret Vorhees.”

  “Vorhees. Related to Andrew Vorhees?”

  “His wife,” Cory Beckett said. “His drunken, lying wife.”

  Andrew Vorhees was a big fish in the not-so-small San Francisco pond. High-powered union leader, ex-supervisor, yachtsman. A man with a reputation for high living and double-dealing, and a penchant for scandal. It was whispered around that he had kinky sexual tastes, had been a regular customer of one of the city’s high-profile madams whose extensive call-girl operation the cops had busted a couple of years back. It was also whispered that his socialite wife was a severe alcoholic. She had cause, if the rumors about Vorhees were true.

  “How does your brother know Marg
aret Vorhees?” I asked.

  “He doesn’t, not really. He works… worked for her husband.”

  “In what capacity?”

  “Caring for his yacht. At the St. Francis Yacht Harbor.”

  “Is that where the theft occurred?”

  “She claimed it was, yes… the Vorhees woman. From her purse while she was on the yacht.”

  “She carried a twenty-thousand-dollar necklace in her purse?”

  “Taking it to a jeweler to have the clasp repaired, so she said. My brother was the only person on board at the time.”

  “Where was the necklace found?”

  Cory Beckett sighed, flicked a lock of the midnight hair off her forehead. “Hidden inside Kenny’s van.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “He swears he didn’t steal it, has no idea how it got into his van. Of course, I believe him. He’s not a thief. He had no possible reason to steal that necklace.”

  “Twenty-thousand dollars is a lot of temptation.”

  “Not to Kenny. He doesn’t care about money. And he certainly wouldn’t have taken it to give to me, as Margaret Vorhees claims. No, she put the necklace in his van, or had somebody do it for her.”

  “Why would she want to frame your brother?”

  “I don’t know. Neither does he. Some imagined slight, I suppose. Rich alcoholics… well, I’m sure you know how erratic and unpredictable people like that can be.”

  “Is your brother the kind of man who makes passes at married women?”

  “Kenny? My God, no. What kind of question is that?”

  “Sorry, but it’s the kind I have to ask.”

  “He’s not like that at all. He’s a very shy person, especially around women. His only real problem… well…”

  “Yes, Ms. Beckett?”

  She ran the tip of her tongue back and forth along her lips, moistening them. The movement made Melikian squirm a little in his chair. “If I tell you,” she said, “you’ll think he’s guilty, that he stole the necklace because of it.”

  “My job is to find him, not judge him.”

  “… All right. It’s drugs.”

  “What kind of drugs?”

  “Amphetamines.”

  “How bad is his habit?”

  “It’s not a habit, really. He only uses them when he’s stressed out. But they don’t help, they just make him paranoid, even delusional sometimes.”

  “Violent?”

  “No. Oh, no. Never.”

  “Do you know who his supplier is?”

  “No idea. I don’t take drugs.”

  I hadn’t suggested she did. That kind of quick defensive response is sometimes an indication of guilt, but then it was none of my business if she snorted coke five times a day and had a Baggie of the stuff in her purse. No judgments applied to her as well as her brother. Or so I thought then.

  I said, “How much money did he take with him, do you know?”

  “It couldn’t be much more than a hundred dollars. Wherever he’s gone, he’ll try to get some kind of work connected with boats. That’s the way he is.”

  “Does he have access to any of your bank accounts?”

  “No. We keep our finances separate.”

  “Credit cards?”

  “I let him use mine sometimes, but… no, none of his own.”

  “You said he drives a van. Make, model, color?”

  “A Dodge Ram, dark blue. The right rear panel has a dent and a long scrape-a parking lot accident.”

  “Do you have the license number?”

  She did and I wrote it down.

  “Anything else you can tell me that might help me find him? Friends in the area, someone he might turn to for help?”

  “There’s no one like that. He doesn’t make friends easily.” She shifted position in the chair, re-crossed her legs the other way. Gnawed on her lip a little before she said, “Do you honestly think you can find him?”

  “Sure he can,” Melikian said. “He’s the best, him and his people.”

  She said, “I don’t care what you have to do or what it costs.”

  Abe winced at that, but he didn’t say anything.

  “No guarantees, of course,” I said. “But if you’re right that he’s still somewhere in this general area, the chances are reasonably good.”

  “The one thing I ask,” she said, “is that you let me know the minute you locate him. Don’t try to talk him into coming back, don’t talk to him at all if it can be avoided. Let me do it. I’m the only one he’ll listen to.”

  “Fair enough. You understand, though, that if he refuses to return voluntarily, there’s nothing we can do to force him.”

  Melikian said, “She understands. I explained it to her.”

  “And that we’d be bound to report his whereabouts to the authorities.”

  She nodded, and Abe said, “Do it myself in that case,” without looking at her. He wouldn’t sacrifice even a small portion of $100,000 to keep his own mother out of jail.

  I asked Cory Beckett for a photograph of her brother, and she produced a five-by-seven color snapshot from a big leather purse: Kenneth Beckett standing alone in front of a sleek ocean-going yacht. You could tell he and Cory were siblings-same black hair, though his was lank; same facial bone structure and wiry build-but where she was somebody you’d notice in a crowd, he was the polar opposite. Presentable enough, but there was nothing memorable about him. Just a kid in his early twenties, like thousands of others. The kind of individual you could spend an afternoon with, and five minutes after parting you’d have already forgotten what he looked like.

  We got the paperwork out of the way and Cory Beckett wrote me a check for her half of the retainer; we’d bill Melikian for his half. The check had her address and phone number on it. The apartment she shared with her brother was on Nob Hill, a very expensive area of the city. Melikian had told me she worked as a model. One of the more successful variety, apparently.

  We shook hands. Hers lingered in mine a little too long, I thought-and she favored me with another of her concerned little smiles while Melikian patted her shoulder and chewed on her with his eyes, and that was that. Routine interview. Routine skip-trace. Nothing special at all, except that for a change the client was a piece of eye candy.

  Just goes to show how wrong first impressions can be.

  CHAPTER 3

  Back at the agency in South Park, I put the notes I’d made in order and gave them to Tamara to transcribe into a case file. She does most of the agency’s computer work-I can operate one of the things, but not very well and not without a certain reluctance-and she’s an expert. She also runs the business-coordinates the various investigations, handles billing and financial matters. My partner, Tamara Corbin: a twenty-eight-year-old desk jockey dynamo. She’d tripled our business since the partnership arrangement, to the point where we now employed two full-time field operatives, Jake Runyon and Alex Chavez, and had to bring in temps from time to time to handle the overload.

  Tamara set to work on the preliminaries. Skip-traces are an essential part of the agency’s business, along with insurance-related investigations and employee and personal background checks, and most can be dealt with by relying on the various real-time and other search engines we subscribe to. The Beckett case didn’t seem to be one of them because of the circumstances, but you never know what might turn up on an Internet background search.

  ***

  A little while later she came into my office from hers through the open connecting door, carrying a printout in one purple-nailed hand. The purple polish didn’t go very well with her dark brown skin, or at least I didn’t think it did, but I hadn’t said anything to her about it and wouldn’t. Who was I to criticize the fashion trends of a woman young enough to be my granddaughter?

  “Nothing much on Kenneth Beckett,” she said. “No record prior to the grand theft charge, just a couple of minor moving violations and a bunch of parking tickets, most of them in the L.A. area. Worked at two yacht harbors down there, Marina del Rey and Newport Beach. Good employment records in both places, left both jobs voluntarily for unspecified reasons. Worked on Andrew Vorhees’ yacht for six months before his arrest, no problems there, either. Parents both dead, no family except the sister. No traceable contacts with anybody else down south or up here.”