1 Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun (5 page)

The end of last week I reluctantly placed an ad in the Star Ledger. Having missed the deadline for the weekend edition, the ad
appeared for the first time in this morning's issue.

"Would you like to see the apartment this evening?" I asked.

"Actually, I'd like to see it now. I'm scheduled to leave on a
seven-thirty flight tonight and won't be back for a few days. The
apartment sounds perfect. I'd hate to lose out to someone else."

I glanced at my watch and did some quick mental gymnastics,
factoring travel time back and forth and the hours of work I still
needed to put in on the wedding spread scheduled for tomorrow's
photo shoot. Three dozen peach, pink, and white satin birdseed
roses sat in a vase on the corner of my counter, but I still had to
create several pairs of bridal and bridesmaid tennies for the second
part of the article.

It was going to be tight, and I'd have to work late, but I couldn't
risk losing out on a possible tenant. Besides, if I timed things right,
he'd be gone before Lucille returned from her afternoon Kommie
Koffee Klatch. Thank God for the Daughters of the October Revolution, their weekly Lower East Side meetings, and Lucille's improved health, which enabled her to take the train into Manhattan.

"I'm at work, but I can meet you at the apartment in an hour,"
I told him.

"Great"

I gave him directions.

"Thanks. By the way, I'm Zachary Barnes"

"Anastasia Pollack."

"See you in an hour, Anastasia Pollack."

After I hung up from Zachary Barnes, I noticed the flashing
message light on my office phone. I tapped in my code to retrieve
the message.

"Given your recent widowhood, I'm cutting you a break. You
have until tomorrow. Don't make me regret my generosity. Don't
call the cops, and don't ever hang up on me again if you know
what's good for you, bitch. Capisce?"

Maybe I'd watched too many episodes of The Sopranos, but
something told me this guy meant business. Might have been his
uber-mafia-like accent. Or the repeated click-click-click of what
sounded like a gun cocking. Not that I'd ever heard a gun cock except on TV or in the movies but what else would make that scarethe-living-wits-out-of-me sound?

I capisced all right. This was no crank caller as I'd hoped. The
likelihood of a crank caller having both Karl's cell phone number
and the direct line to my office was about as likely as Miss Piggy
sprouting those wings and sailing toward the clouds.

I was now convinced that on top of everything else, Karl had
gotten himself mixed up with a loan shark. And I'd be the one
wearing the cement Manolos if I didn't pay up.

But how could I? Thanks to Karl, I didn't have an extra fifty
cents, let alone fifty thousand dollars. I sank into my desk chair and stared at my blank computer screen, willing it to offer up
some answers. It didn't comply.

"Marlys! Where are you, you goddamn fucking bitch-whore?
You can't hide from me. I'll rip your fucking heart out and shove it
down your fucking throat!" The shrieking outrage of Vittorio Versailles, the Franco-Neapolitan fashion designer whose creations
were a favorite of the celebrities on Mr. Blackwell's Worst Dressed
List, boomed from the direction of the elevator bank. A moment
later, I heard him pounding down the corridor in search of the
woman who had minced and mangled him in our latest issue.

In our business, egos often clash. Harsh words and not-so-mild
expletives were frequently hurled. Jealousies abounded. Wild histrionics regularly pierced the normal frenzy of our workplace.
Only the players changed from day to day and confrontation to
confrontation.

I poked my head out in time to see Vittorio, his face a deep
purple that clashed against his skin-tight burgundy jumpsuit,
charge down the hall toward Marlys's office. He waved a copy of
our latest issue over his head. An entourage of eight anorexic men,
all dressed head-to-toe in die-cut aqua suede, followed at his heels.

"Looks like Vittorio saw the slice-and-dice Marlys did on him,"
said Cloris, stepping out from her office directly across the hall
from mine. She gave me an odd look. "You okay?"

"Sure, why?"

"You look like you're about to cry."

I pasted a smile on my face. "I'm fine."

"Sure you are, sweetie." She broke the ears off a chocolate
bunny and handed them to me. As food editor, Cloris received samples for review on a daily basis. She ate them all and still maintained a size two figure. I hated her.

I hadn't told anyone at work about my financial situation and
wasn't about to now. And I certainly wasn't going to say anything
about the message I'd just received. I changed the subject back to
Vittorio. "I can't believe I'm about to say this, but for once I agree
with Marlys. Vittorio's designs belong in a circus."

"On the clowns," said Serena Brower, our travel editor. She and
Daphne Jervis, our shared editorial assistant, joined us. We watched
as Vittorio and his group stormed into Marlys's corner office.

"What do you have against clowns?" asked Daphne.

The three of them laughed. I joined in with a forced and halfhearted chuckle.

They were still laughing a minute later when Erica, tears
streaming down her cheeks, ran out of Marlys's office and headed
for the ladies' room.

"Uh-oh," said Cloris.

"Whose turn is it?" asked Serena.

I sighed. "Mine."

"If only she'd listen to us and file a complaint against that bitch,"
said Daphne.

Erica and Daphne had been hired the same day, and Daphne
could just as easily have been assigned to Marlys. At first Daphne
resented Erica winning out on the choicer assignment, but her resentment soon disappeared when she saw how Marlys treated
Erica. Now she thanked her lucky stars for her position as assistant
to us Bottom Feeders.

"This is harassment," said Daphne. "It's illegal. Erica should exercise her rights."

But Erica didn't have the backbone to say boo to Marlys, much
less take legal action against her. She suffered Marlys's wrath, then
dissolved into tears at least once a week. I headed for the ladies'
room, hoping I could calm her down quickly. I had bigger problems than a sniveling, spineless assistant who wouldn't stand up
for herself to worry about-like a threatening loan shark and a
prospective tenant I couldn't afford to stand up.

Entering the restroom, I found Erica locked in a stall, her gulping sobs sounding from behind the pink metal door. "Want to talk
about it?" I asked.

"She blamed me!" she wailed between snuffles. "Do you believe
that? She told him I typed up her notes wrong, and she didn't see
the mistakes until after the issue was printed because I proofed the
bluelines while she was out of town. She didn't even have the guts
to tell him to his face that she deliberately trashed him!"

"Did he believe her?"

Everyone knew Marlys was out to get Vittorio after he snubbed
her in Milan last summer. She had waltzed into the House of Versailles, demanding the kind of freebies reserved for the editors of
Vogue and WWD. We were a second-rate general women's magazine sold at supermarket check-out lines. Vittorio knew it. He had
laughed in her face and bounced her out on her liposuctioned
butt.

Erica sniffed back a mucousy sob. "I don't know. I ran out before he said anything, but he looked like he was about to strangle
both of us."

As if on cue, we heard Vittorio's booming voice passing outside
the ladies' room. "You won't get away with this, Marlys. Your days
are numbered, bitch."

It took me ten minutes to talk Erica into unlocking the stall
and another ten minutes before she had calmed down sufficiently
to wash her tear-stained, puffy face. "I hate her," she said.

I placed my hand on her trembling shoulder. "So I guess this
means we can rule you out as president of the Marlys Vandenburg
Admiration Society, huh?"

She jerked away. "Don't make fun of me!"

"I'm sorry. I was just trying to cheer you up."

"Well, you didn't." She headed back to the stall, slammed the
door and relocked it. "Go away, Anastasia. Just leave me alone."

I arrived home forty-five minutes later to find Zachary Barnes
standing in my driveway, staring up at the apartment above the
garage. He looked exactly like a guy with a voice like his should
look: like someone had dumped the genetic components of Pierce
Brosnan, George Clooney, Patrick Dempsey, and Antonio Banderas into a pan and baked up the epitome of male perfection.

I wasn't sure whether this was a good thing or a bad thing,
given my current situation. Luckily, my recent tumble into pandemonium, thanks to my own deceitful, dearly departed, drop-deadgorgeous - although -balding- and-slightly- overweight-yet- still -a -
hunk husband, had inured me to all males in general and
drop-dead-gorgeous hunks in particular. I doubted any woman
had ever had to fake an orgasm with the stud standing before me.
If I hadn't already sworn off men for the rest of my life, recently
widowed or not, I'm certain I would have been reduced to drooling and babbling like some hormone-riddled sixteen-year-old.

Instead, I assumed my most professional, forty-something demeanor, introduced myself, then led him up the flight of stairs on
the side of the garage and into the second-floor apartment.

"Perfect," he said after taking a quick peek into each of the
three rooms, bathroom, and closets. "I'll take it. I'm assuming you
want first and last month's rent plus references?" He reached inside his well-worn brown leather bomber (the hunk jacket of
choice) and produced a folded sheet of paper and a checkbook.

I stared dumbly at him, my mouth refusing to work.

"Is something wrong, Mrs. Pollack?"

I shook my head, forcing my jaw to loosen and allow words to
exit. "No, I ... I'm ... this is happening much quicker and easier
than I anticipated. That's all."

What I had really been doing was mentally calculating how
many rent checks it would take to get the Capisce thug to go away.
What proof did I have that Karl even owed Ricardo money? However, did a loan shark really need proof? Was there a Society of
Loan Sharks with a set of rules and code of ethics that had to be
followed to maintain their certification? Highly unlikely. These
guys made up their own rules. And broke legs-or worse-when
the schmucks who did business with them didn't pay up.

I may never have come up against a loan shark before, but I do
live in New Jersey, and I do read the newspapers. I was in deep shit.
Thank you very much, Karl.

Zachary Barnes was staring at me. "The apartment is for rent,
right?"

"Yes. Of course. Absolutely." I snatched the sheet of references
from his hand and gave them a cursory glance. "Freelance photo journalist?" His contacts included an editor at National Geographic
and the president of the World Wildlife Federation.

He tapped the paper with his index finger. "They'll vouch for
my integrity."

The connection suddenly clicked in my brain. Zachary Barnes.
Photo-journalist. The Zachary Barnes. "I'm sure they will," I said,
"but why would you of all people want an apartment over a garage
in a New Jersey suburb?"

This guy was on the A-list of every club in Manhattan. He
dated models and celebrities. Correction. He was a celebrity, albeit
a minor one, who'd been mentioned numerous times on Page Six
and in other gossip columns. This guy enjoyed the nightlife of
Manhattan. The only nightlife he'd find in Westfield, New Jersey,
was high school basketball, PTA meetings, and Tuesday night
Bingo at the Catholic church.

He combed a hand through his hair, the kind of hair heroes in
romance novels always have-thick and wavy and the color of bittersweet chocolate with just a hint of gray at the temples.

"Look," he said, "all I want is a quiet place to crash and work.
I'm fed up with pushy publicists forcing me to be seen every night,
not to mention interfering neighbors who think I'm running a
meth lab."

"A meth lab? Hey, I've got two teenage sons." I shoved his references back at him. "I can't have a junkie living on my property, no
matter who vouches for your character." A loan shark breathing
down my neck was enough of a crime connection for this working
mom.

"Chill, lady. I'm not running a meth lab. I don't do drugs of
any kind. Never have."

Right. I raised an eyebrow. "Never?"

He grew sheepish. "Okay, so I smoked a little pot in college.
Didn't everyone?"

"But never inhaled?"

That caused him to chuckle, which brought out a nice set of
laugh lines around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. Why is it
that guys with wrinkles look sexy, but when women get wrinkles,
they just look old?

And why on earth was I thinking of such things when my life
was turning to week-old crap? Maybe my brain decided I needed a
shot of serotonin to give me a brief respite from the more pressing
problems of newly acquired poverty and how to avoid being fitted
for cement Manolos.