The state capitol building in Charleston, West Virginia, is composed of buff Indiana limestone. Its dome rises 293 feet high and is gilded in 23.5-karat gold leaf. I was standing directly below it, in the capitol rotunda, staring at the statue of Senator Robert C. Byrd when I heard her high heels clopping across the marble floor.
Alison David.
“Call me Ally,” she said, extending her hand.
I shook her hand and introduced myself.
“So,” she said, “what do you think of our capitol building?”
Ally David had on a navy jacket with three-quarter sleeves and a matching pencil skirt. Her satin tank top featured a scoop neckline that offered the promise of superb cleavage. It took some effort not to drool while admiring the way she put her clothes together.
“Impressive,” I said. “But I’m confused about the statue.”
“How so?”
“Well, I know you can’t toss a cat in West Virginia without hitting a building that has his name on it,” I said. “But I thought you had to be dead at least fifty years before you got a statue.”
She smiled and gave me a wink. “We West Virginians have a pact with Senator Byrd. He sends us the pork, and we let him name the pigs.”
Alison David was the type of career woman who, without saying or doing anything out of the ordinary, gave the impression she was a creature of heightened sexuality. I wondered if this was a natural phenomenon or something she had purposely cultivated.
“Is it just me,” I said, “or does it appear your illustrious senator’s hand is pointing directly at my pocket?”
She forced a half smile, but I could tell I was losing her. Small talk isn’t my strong suit. “So,” I said, “where are you taking us for lunch?”
“Someplace close,” she said.
I waited for her to elaborate, but she chose not to. Unable to think of anything witty to say, I settled for, “Sounds perfect,” which caused her to arch an eyebrow and give me a strange look.
We walked a block together and entered Gyoza, a small Japanese restaurant that proved trendier than its anonymous exterior might suggest. Inside, tasteful Japanese prints hung on bright red walls. The lighting was muted but was bright enough to read the menus. In the center of the restaurant, a bronze-laminate sushi bar separated the sushi chefs from the diners, and glass-fronted coolers atop the bar displayed tidy arrangements of colorful seafood. There were a couple of empty two-top tables with white linen tablecloths. Ally picked one, and we sat down.
“Gyoza?” I said.
Ally lowered her eyes and smiled at me, and the way she did it made me wonder if gyoza meant something dirty.
“Gyoza,” she said, “is a popular dumpling in Japanese cuisine. It’s finger food, like pot stickers, but with different fillings. Most people order meat or seafood, but I like the vegetarian.”
A waitress appeared, and Ally did in fact order the vegetarian gyoza. I asked if the spider roll was authentic.
Our waitress looked confused and said, “This one very hot. Very, very hot! Yes, is spider roll."
“Spider,” I said.
“Yes, yes,” she said. “Spider. Is very hot.”
I feigned shock. “Do you mean to tell me there’s an actual spider inside?”
Ally David’s eyes skirted the room. She gave the waitress a tight smile, and the two of them exchanged a female look, as if my comment confirmed some sort of conclusion they’d already drawn about me. Ally said, “Perhaps I should translate.”
“Please do,” I said.
“The spider roll is composed of tempura soft-shell crab,” she said.
“Composed,” I said.
“That’s right.”
I may have detected a hint of annoyance in her voice.
Ally wasn’t finished with me. “Spider is the name of the roll,” she said, “and nothing more.” Then, as if she couldn’t stop herself, she added, “Why would you even think such a thing?”
I shrugged. “Eel is eel, right? And tuna is tuna, yes?”
Ally David looked at her watch. “I don’t mean to be brusque, but I’ve got a one o’clock and it’s already twelve fifteen. You wanted to talk to me about Ken Chapman?” she said.
“I did.”
I was not insensitive to the fact that our waitress continued to wait patiently for my order. “I’ll have…” I briefly looked through the menu again.
“Anytime today would be nice,” Ally said.
“I think I’ll try… the spider roll,” I said.
“For the love of God,” Ally said.
“Very, very hot,” our waitress warned. “Not recommend,” she said.
“But it’s on the menu,” I said. “So people must order it.”
“Yes, yes,” she said. She pointed to a large man sitting alone at the sushi bar. “He already order. I bring to him very soon.”
I smiled. “Then I’m sure it will be fine,” I said.
She nodded and sprinted away to place the order.
“Are you always this…”Ally searched for a word, gave up, and tried again. “Could you possibly be this obtuse?”
I shrugged and looked at her but she lowered her eyes and pretended to be intrigued by the place setting. I spoke to fill the silence. “Did you and Chapman date before his divorce became final?”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No. Ken was legally separated when we met.”
There were delicate white china cups in front of us, and black lacquer soup bowls. I picked up my cup and tilted it so I could see if it said “Made in China” on the bottom. It didn’t.
“How long did you guys date?” I asked.
Ally looked up from the place setting to stare at me. “Can you tell me again what my dating Ken has to do with national security?”
“Like I said on the phone, we’re just building a profile,” I said. “Mr. Chapman is currently engaged to a woman whose former husband was a CIA operative.”
Ally made her eyes big and lowered her voice to an exaggerated whisper. “Is that against the law?” she asked. She rolled her big eyes at me the way my daughter Kimberly does. Only instead of being exasperated, Ally was mocking me.
“Against the law? Not in and of itself,” I said, sounding pathetic even to me.
“And yet,” she said, “simply by dating me and becoming engaged to another woman, Ken has managed to become a threat to national security! Perhaps I ought to call Senator Byrd’s office to sound the alert.”
This wasn’t going the way I’d envisioned. She was trying for smug and achieving it. She was also smarter than me, and I hate when that happens. There was but one thing to do: seize the initiative. I played the trump card God provided: I stared directly into her cleavage.
“During the time you dated Ken Chapman,” I said to her boobs, “did he ever beat you?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Of course I’m sure!”
“But you’re aware of his history, yes?”
She sighed. “I’m up here, perv.”
I reluctantly lifted my focus to her face, and Ally said, “Ken told me about Kathleen’s claims of abuse shortly after we started dating.”
“And?”
“And he explained what happened.”
I waited.
“I suppose you want to hear his version,” she said.
“It’s why I traveled all the way to Charleston,” I said.
“Not the spider roll?”
I smiled and shook my head.
“Not the capitol rotunda?”
“As hard as it must be to fathom, no.”
Our waitress approached carrying a heavy tray, which she perched on a portable stand. She poured scented green tea into our cups and steaming miso soup into our soup bowls. Ally picked up a white ceramic spoon and stirred her soup. I took a sip of my tea and was instantly overcome by the horrific taste. I looked around for something in which to spit the rancid liquid but finally gave up and swallowed it. I made a face to demonstrate how I felt about the tea. Ally rolled her eyes again, reaffirming something I already knew about my charm: though highly infectious to females, it sometimes requires an incubation period.
My cell phone rang. I glanced at the number and put it back in my pocket where it continued to ring.
“You’re an annoying person,” Ally said. “Anyone ever tell you that?”
I reminded her that she was supposed to be telling me her version of the Ken Chapman saga. She rolled her eyes. She sighed. She frowned. But she finally spoke.
“Ken had been married about a year,” Ally said, “when he learned Kathleen was mentally unstable. They had an argument, a shouting match, and he spent the night in a hotel. The next day, when he came home to apologize, he found her bloody and bruised.”
“He claimed not to remember beating her up?”
“She beat herself up.”
“Excuse me?”
“It was her way of punishing herself for making him angry.”
I took some photos out of my suit pocket and spread them on the table. “This look like something a woman might do to herself?” I asked.
Ally’s eyes avoided the photos. “I’m not an expert,” she admitted. “But it seems plausible, and it wasn’t an isolated case. Time and again during the marriage, Ken came home from work to find his wife had beaten herself for various reasons. When he tried to force her into therapy, she went to the police and told them Ken had assaulted her. This became a pattern. By turning him in to the police, or threatening to, she was able to control and manipulate the relationship.”
I sat there in disbelief. My jaw dropped, and I think my mouth may have been open during her entire response.
Ally pursed her lips and tasted her soup in the sexiest manner possible, as though she were French kissing it. It was amazing what she could do with her mouth while nibbling at the liquid on her spoon. You put two women side by side, let them both taste some soup. The other woman can be twice as hot as Ally. Out of a hundred guys, Ally wins ninety times. Guaranteed.
“Are you dating anyone now?” I asked.
“Are you asking on behalf of national security?”
“This is a personal query,” I said, flashing my high-voltage smile for good measure.
“Well in that case, yes, I’m dating someone.”
She was clearly insulting me or at least pretending to. Truth was, I didn’t even like her and certainly didn’t want to date her. I really just wanted to see if I could. What can I say, maybe it’s a guy thing, but she gives great soup.
“Your dating situation,” I persisted, “would you classify it as a serious relationship?”
“Yes, I would,” she said. “But I wasn’t certain about that until just now.”
“Well congratulations,” I said dryly.
“Well thank you,” she said, matching my tone.
Suddenly, the heavy-set customer at the sushi bar yelled, “Fuck!” and jumped off his stool. He grabbed his throat and spun around in a circle as if his left foot had been nailed to the floor. “Holy Mother of God!” he screamed and spit a mouthful of something onto the floor-something I was pretty sure had to be the spider roll. He jumped up and down in a sort of death dance, coughing and shaking his hands profusely. He yelled, “I’ll sue you bastards! I’ll sue you for every cent you have!”
The waitress ran out from the kitchen, took one look at him, and said, “Is hot, yes?”
He gave her a withering look. “Yeah, it hot! It plenty, plenty hot! And I know you not recommend. But here in America, we have laws against serving battery acid. By the time I’m finished with you, you’re all going to wish you’d never left China!”
The waitress and sushi chef looked at each other. She said, “We Japanese. Not Chinese.”
The enraged customer flung his head toward the ceiling and yelled, “Fuck you!” He slapped his face twice, made a barking sound, and stomped off in a huff. Most of the customers laughed. Ally didn’t, so I stopped laughing and changed the subject.
“So the police took Kathleen’s word over Ken’s,” I said. “About the beatings.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“I would, in fact,” I said.
I tried a half-spoonful of the soup and wondered if miso might be the Japanese word for week-old sweat socks.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “But I had reasons for believing Ken’s story.”
“Such as?”
“He never laid a hand on me. He never abused me verbally.”
“That’s it?”
“I never saw him lose control throughout our relationship. And even though Kathleen continued to accuse him of abuse, Ken never left her.”
I raised my eyebrows and watched to see if her cheeks would flush. They did, just slightly. She’d basically just admitted to dating Kathleen’s husband while they were still married. We both realized it, but I was the only one smiling about it.
“Look, Mr. Creed,” she said, “whether you want to believe it or not, Ken’s a decent guy. He was always there for his wife. He did everything he could to get Kathleen to seek treatment.”
I looked at the photos. “He seems to have been very persuasive in that regard,” I said.
She started to say something, then stopped and had some more soup. She looked at me and shook her head. Ally seemed comfortable with the silence, but I was even more comfortable with it. When she finally spoke, her voice was steady. “You may think I’m stupid, Mr. Creed, or gullible. But it was Kathleen, not Ken. You’d know it if you spent any time with him.”
What I now knew, thanks to Ally, is what Ken Chapman would say to Janet if I confronted her with the photos and police reports. I couldn’t believe this scumbag had invented a back story that made him the victim! I mean, I could believe it, but I couldn’t believe it worked. But he had, and that put me in a quandary. If I couldn’t use the police reports, how could I prevent Janet from marrying this creep?
I could always kill him. But I couldn’t kill him. I mean, I’d love to kill him, but Janet would know I did it, and she’d never forgive me. No, everything in my gut told me that Janet had to be the one to find out about Chapman. She’d have to learn about him in such a way that he wouldn’t be able to con her like he conned Ally David.
The waitress brought our main courses. Ally gave a coy smile and purred, “Dig in, Spider-Man! Show ’em how tough you are!”
I looked at the concoction on my plate. Every part of it was colorful, but the colors seemed wrong for the dish in a way that reminded me of Tammy Faye Bakker’s makeup. I pushed a few items around the plate with my chopsticks and may have seen little puffs of smoke. I decided to concentrate on the soup instead.
When we left the restaurant, Ally said not to bother walking her back to the rotunda. I sat on a nearby bench and watched her walk away. About twenty steps into her departure, she lifted her arm and waved without turning her head. I wondered what gave her the confidence to assume I’d been staring at her ass that whole time.
I sat awhile and thought about my ex-wife, Janet. It was clear I’d have to come up with something novel to help her understand the enormous mistake she was about to make in marrying Ken Chapman. I had an idea playing through my mind, but before I could put it on paper, I’d need to spend some time with Ken Chapman’s ex, Kathleen Gray.
Kathleen was currently living in North Bergen, just outside New York City. Lou Kelly had run a credit check on her and learned she had recently applied for a home loan with her local bank. The loan was still pending, and Lou suggested I pose as a loan officer and use that pretense to set up a meeting with her. Of course, I could simply threaten her, Lou had said. I thanked Lou for the advice and explained that I wouldn’t need to rely on threats or a cheesy cover story. Truth, honesty, and an abundance of natural charm were my allies.
I dialed her number.
“Hello,” Kathleen Gray said.
“Kathleen, my name is Donovan Creed and I’m with Homeland Security in Bedford, Virginia. I’d like to talk to you about your ex-husband, Kenneth Chapman.”
The connection went dead.
Not a problem. I could always fly into LaGuardia tomorrow and sweet talk my way into a dinner date with her. Since I had my phone out anyway, I decided to dial my mystery caller, the persistent person who shouldn’t have had my number.
I punched up the number and watched it connect on the screen with no premonition of the effect this simple act was about to have on my life.