“What happens now?” I asked.
“Ah, that is the question,” Clementine said. “The cases are cold. The evidence is circumstantial, however unequivocal it might be. A clever lawyer—and America teems with them—might get the charges thrown out.”
“What about Venezuela?”
“Just as chancy for quite different reasons. Another lunatic is in charge there.”
“Then nothing will happen?”
“Actually, something
is
happening,” Clementine said. “Mulligan has been soliciting funds for his research ever since Henry pulled the rug out from under him. No luck until a couple of weeks ago, when an obscure foundation in Liechtenstein offered him a modest grant. It’s not a great deal of money, only a couple of hundred thousand euros, but enough for a summer’s dig.”
“What sort of dig did Bear propose?”
“He thinks he has a line on
Gigantoraptors.
As I understand it, this was a very large, feathered, carnivorous dinosaur that resembled a bird. An adolescent specimen that stood thirty feet high and weighed three thousand pounds was discovered, but no fossil of an adult has yet been found.”
“Where does Bear propose to look for this thing?”
“China. Inner Mongolia, actually. Not so very far from Hsi-tau.”
“I thought Bear was banned from China for life.”
“Indeed he is,” Clementine said. “But he’s been in touch with General Yao, who is said to be willing to reconsider his case.”
Our eyes met. Nothing resembling a clue showed in hers. A beautiful big-eared, blue-eyed, plump Siamese cat that had been hiding behind the sofa emerged and leaped onto Clementine’s lap.
To the cat she said, “Hewwo, tommykins.”
“Meet my friend Dickens,” she said, tickling the cat’s throat. “I understand Mulligan means to fly to Beijing over the holidays,” Clementine said. “No doubt General Yao will weigh all the facts and render a fair decision.”
Dickens was sniffing Clementine. It meowed, then meowed again, louder. To the cat, Clementine said in plain English, “You want a treat, do you, you incorrigible tomcat?”
The cat meowed again.
Clementine got out a box of chocolates. The cat went crazy when it smelled it. Clementine chose a chocolate with a soft white center, and holding it above her head, out of Dickens’s reach, broke off a piece, and fed it to him. She popped the rest of the chocolate into her own mouth.
“They have a bit of catnip in them,” Clementine said. “They’re not good for him, you know. But he’s mad about chocolates as long as they’re not awful sticky caramel. Aren’t you, Dickens?”
~ * ~
2
MY
NOVEL WAS PUBLISHED. OWING
to my fifteen minutes of tabloid infamy, the mainstream media paid more attention than usual. At first, all was routine. I read in bookstores as usual and chatted with readers and made the rounds of the television and radio stations. On camera, every interviewer asked the same five questions—all of them variations on “What is Henry Peel really like?” I replied in many different ways and at various lengths that it was my understanding that Mr. Peel was a very private person. Was the novel really a roman a clef about Henry and me? I was not offended by these brainless inquiries. The interviewers were just practicing their profession. So was I. It was fun to bob and weave and change the subject and slip the title of my novel into the conversation. They held up the book for the camera and voiced the title and my name with admirable diction. From my publisher’s point of view, and mine too, this was the whole purpose of the exercise. The book sold approximately three times better in its first week than any other I had ever published.
Early one morning toward the end of the second week of this publicity whirl, I did a gig on the
Samantha Slye Show,
a morning cable program watched mostly by stay-at-home moms. Samantha, known for her off-the-wall questions, ambushed me by holding up an advance copy of one of the more brazen tabloids. Page one featured a photo of Adam and me, intertwined and kissing outside a midtown hotel—our hotel—whose sign showed clearly in the background. Superimposed on this picture was a smaller one, about the size of passport photo, showing the two of us walking toward the camera with our arms around each other. We were quite recognizable. The headline, in big comic-book type, read:
“EXCLUSIVE!! She cheated on Multi-Trillionaire!!”
Samantha Slye said, “Some girls have all the luck. Who
is
that dreamboat? “
I didn’t answer.
Samantha said, “Are you going to identify this guy or not?”
I shook my head no. The director fed Samantha another question. I could hear the crackle of his voice in her earpiece.
“Is the man you’re kissing Henry Peel?”
I shook my head no.
“Is he as yummy as he looks?”
I shook my head yes.
Samantha giggled. This was fun. She went with it. The producer kept feeding questions into her earpiece, each one a little raunchier than the one before. In response, I nodded, shook my head, or dead-panned while looking straight into the camera. The dumb show went on for many minutes.
Next day on my dressing room they hung a star. Clips from the show were all over the screen. I was offered the opportunity to appear on other shows, many of which wanted me to reprise the nod-and-shake routine. I said no to that, but they had me on anyway. The tabloids reawakened like a plague of mice smelling peanut butter. Cash prizes and new cars and trips to the Caribbean and television appearances were offered to anyone who could identify Adam. For the most part, the regular press confined itself to brief allusions in book and TV columns, but it was all grist for the mill.
“If this keeps up,” Melissa said, “this book is going make you more money than you ever dreamed.”
We had met for lunch in a way-downtown restaurant. It was a hangout for the Wall Street crowd, men and women both wearing drab suits and bright ties, so it seemed safe enough. Melissa was known here. The maitre d’ gave us a table up front, the better to showcase her looks. Media overexposure notwithstanding, no one gave me a second glance.
The babble of the lunchtime crowd was deafening. I asked Melissa a question.
Melissa said, “What did you say?”
I raised my voice. “Where did they get the picture?”
“Who?”
“The rag. Who gave it to them?”
“How would I know?” Melissa said. “Do you have any suspects in mind?”
The answer was yes, but they were all unlikely. I named them: the chaps, who probably had more pictures of me in more compromising situations than you could shake a stick at. Clementine. Adam. Adam’s other girlfriend, if he had one, and with his looks and mechanical aptitude, how could he not have one or more extras? A private detective hired by persons unknown may have been the photographer, I said.
“Any other suspects?”
“The hotel doorman. A paparazzo who got lucky.”
Melissa said, “You left out the CIA.”
I said, “Come on, Melissa, help me out. Couldn’t someone have been following the chaps while the chaps were following me? A private eye would notice that I always had the same entourage.”
“Who had a motive to put a private eye on you?” she asked.
“Who knows? Maybe I had a rival for Adam’s affections—a wife, a jealous girlfriend.”
“A gay lover?”
“Adam’s too slobby to be gay. He’s only got one blazer.”
“What does it matter?” Melissa asked. “Why should you care? Chances are you’ll never know. The paparazzo who got lucky is probably the culprit. He saw a sex scene unfolding in front of his eyes and took a picture of it, having no idea who you were or how much money he was going to make. Mere coincidence.”
“Why are you talking to me like this?” I asked.
“Because I don’t understand what you’re complaining about. That picture has made you millions. If you ever do identify the paparazzo, you should buy him or her a nice new camera.”
This conversation, remember, was being carried on in screeches. A beefy man at the next table, emphatically not a chap, was listening to every word. He watched me intently, as though reading my lips. The beefy spy’s luncheon companion, also beefy, had his back to me. I stopped talking and pointed a thumb at the eavesdroppers. Melissa paid the check.
Outside, Melissa held up a languid hand and immediately a cab pulled over with screeching tires as if the driver had been waiting all his life for a passenger like her. As we drove away, I looked out the back window and saw the eavesdroppers hailing another taxi. A greenback fluttered in the uplifted hand of the one who had had been studying me. Their rumpled suits were too small for them. They must have gotten into the restaurant the same way they hailed a cab. Apparently the chaps on watch found them dubious, too, because when at last a taxi stopped, two of them stepped in front of the beefy men, blocking them off from the cab, and two other chaps jumped into it.
When we arrived at Melissa’s building, she asked me to get out with her and come upstairs. I asked her why.
“There’s something I want to put into your mind,” she replied.
When we were inside Melissa’s office with the door closed, she put on a serious face.
“Sit down,” Melissa said. “This isn’t going to be girl talk.”
I sat. She did the same—back straight, feet on the floor, knees together like teacher’s pet. For a long moment, she looked out the window, as if gathering her thoughts. This was something new. Melissa never groped for words. Sentences and paragraphs—whole legal briefs—flowed from her lips as if accessed by the click of a mouse. Why the hesitation? If she had ever worried about giving offense by being too frank, I hadn’t been present. Something serious was afoot.
Finally I said, “Melissa, speak. What’s this all about?”
“Men,” she said.
“Is
that
all?”
“It’s not funny. Parts of this are not going to be very enjoyable.”
“Which parts?”
“This part,” Melissa said. “You never told me how you met Adam. I’d like to know.”
I filled her in: the call from my old boyfriend, the chance meeting in the gallery, the trophy bride, the dinner party at the Italian bistro, the talk about lacrosse, the convertible with the clockwork top, and—up to a point—the denouement.
“None of this seemed at all contrived to you?” Melissa asked.
“It seemed more like fate at the time,” I said.
“An old boyfriend blows into town and passes you on to his buddy, who turns out to be a sexual mechanic, and a raving paranoiac like you thinks it’s fate?”
The Melissa I knew so well was alive and well and functioning.
“Where was your old boyfriend from, if he was from out of town?” she asked.
“Washington.”
“And where had Adam lived before he allegedly moved to New York and hung out his shingle?”
“Washington.”
“And that rang no bells?”
I said. “Melissa, just tell me what you have to tell me.”
“Clementine was supposed to do this,” Melissa said, “but she thinks you don’t trust her in spite of all she’s done for you.”