Hide & Seek - James Patterson [81]
“Something not available to the full membership, but only to a special few.”
“Correct.”
“Are you one of those few?”
“I was.”
“Who else is among the group?”
“Prominent people, on the whole.”
“What does the club provide for them?”
“A meeting place, mostly. There are discussions of financial issues, matters of government.”
“And after the discussions are over?”
“There’s—entertainment. Not always, but on occasion.”
“I see. Can you describe this entertainment?”
“Sexual entertainment for the most part.”
“Can you be more specific?”
“Girls, and sometimes young men, are provided.”
“Prostitutes?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call them prostitutes.”
“They’re there for the members’ ‘entertainment,’ and they get paid for their services?”
“Yes.”
“A rose by any other name … tell me, Mr. O’Malley. Do you reside in Bedford Hills?”
“No. Manhattan and the West Coast.”
“Yet you are a member of the Lake Club?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve also participated in these late-night parties?”
“Yes.”
“Why is that, Mr. O’Malley?”
“My father, Patrick O’Malley, was a big deal at the club. I was granted membership when he died.”
“Did he participate in the after-hours entertainments?”
“Yes.”
“That is, he slept with young girls.”
“Yes.”
“Did Patrick O’Malley have a relationship with Maggie Bradford?”
“For many months. Maybe it was a couple of years.”
“And do you have a half-brother?”
“Yes. They all lived together.”
“Would you say that Patrick O’Malley and Maggie Bradford were in love?”
“So my father told me.”
“Yet he did not drop his membership in the club?”
“No.”
“Nor stop sleeping with young girls?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Was Mrs. Bradford aware of these ‘entertainments’ and your father’s part in them?”
“Yes.”
“How do you know?”
“She had pictures of my father and at least two of the girls.”
“She had pictures?”
“I found them in her bedroom. Their bedroom. After my father died. I helped collect his papers.”
“They were graphic pictures?”
“Very. My father and two girls.”
“We don’t need the details. Not at this time. Mrs. Bradford had possession of the pictures?”
“Yes.”
“What did she think of them?”
“I don’t know. She never told me.”
“What did you think of them?”
“It’s always a shock when a son sees his father in flagrante.”
“Of course. But you weren’t surprised.”
“No.”
“Now tell me, Mr. O’Malley, how did your father die?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? How is that possible?”
“He died on a boat. The cause was supposedly a heart attack.”
“‘Supposedly’? He was alone on the boat?”
“No. Mrs. Bradford was with him.”
“And they were alone together.”
“Yes. The Coast Guard found the boat. Mrs. Bradford told them how he died.”
“Did they believe her?”
“Evidently.”
“Tell me, Mr. O’Malley, did you know Will Shepherd?”
“Yes.”
“Would you say you were friends?”
“Social friends.”
“You had business dealings with him?”
“Yes. Business and social.”
“Ah. Social. Was Will Shepherd a member of the Lake Club?”
“Yes.”
“Of the club within the club?”
“Yes.”
“Then he partook of the ‘entertainment’?”
“Definitely.”
“Did Maggie Bradford know?”
Peter O’Malley paused, twisted in his seat, then he looked straight at me. “Yes, she did. That’s probably why she murdered him.”
As I said, there were a hundred objections during the testimony, but that was how I remembered it, and I’m sure how the jury did as well. I was losing … everything that I had ever loved or cared about.
CHAPTER 98
NORMA BREEN CAME to visit me that night just after the dinner hour. She had become one of my favorite people to see. We were both around the same age, both from blue-collar backgrounds, and we understood each other.
“Maggie, I hate to tell you this. I don’t like your songs,” she started in that night. It was Norma’s quaint way of saying “hi.”
“Bitch,” I said, but I smiled at her. She made me laugh when nobody else could; she was my buddy.
“No, you’re the bitch. You won’t help me do my job—which is, ironically, to help you get out of this zoo.”
I was still smiling. We both were, though the subject was deadly serious. You can only be deadly