Authors: Richard Hawke
“And then I want you to say a prayer to whatever God you believe in.”
“I don’t believe in any of them.”
I switched ears, huddling in to the wall to fix the reception. “You might want to reconsider that stance, sweetheart. Just a heads-up.”
THE DIN WAS LIKE the amplified chewing of an army of ants, but it was only Brasserie on a Saturday night. Above the long sleek bar ran a bank of brushed chrome video monitors, ten in all, displaying in black-and-white stop-action the comings and goings of patrons, captured by a small video camera mounted just inside the glass entrance. The trip from the first monitor to the tenth and final one took about twenty seconds. It was a novelty that never failed to crane necks. Caught on hidden camera. (“There you are! That’s you!”) From Patty “Tania” Hearst to Princess Di at the Paris Ritz, no one can get enough of it.
Sometime shortly after eight-thirty, the image of Rosemary Fox pushing through the glass door began its stuttering trip along the monitors. She was accompanied by Alan and Gloria Ross. No one at the bar seemed to recognize Marshall Fox’s wife on the screen. However, diners seated at their tables turned their heads and watched as Rosemary and the Rosses were ushered to a table in the far corner of the large loud room. The Rosses took a seat on either side of Rosemary, who looked pale and angry, even behind her blue-tinted sunglasses. She also looked lovely in her $10,000 Versace “smock,” her thick hair falling nearly to her elbows. The hostess had given the invisible signal, and by the time the three were settling in, a basket of cracked poppy-seed bread was being slid onto the table, a deep blue bottle of sparkling water was landing on the linen, and a frog-faced man in a deliberately oversize silk blouse was folding his hands together and silently kissing the air in front of him as he crooned, “How might I please you with cocktails this evening?”
Rosemary answered that one. “Double vodka martini. Three olives. Tell your man he’s never built one so dry. Tell him also to wait approximately seven minutes and then build another one. No olives in that one.”
The frog-faced man practically snapped his heels. “The lady knows what she wants.”
“Yes.” Rosemary sighed. “The lady does, at that.”
Samuel Deveraux was going to declare a mistrial. This wasn’t officially official, but it was what Fred Willis had all but guaranteed when he’d phoned Rosemary earlier in the day. Something about the jury foreperson wigging out. A suicide attempt? Rosemary hadn’t paid much attention to the details. Apparently, the husband was a nut. That much was abundantly clear. There was even a rumor making the rounds that he was wanted for questioning in the murders of Zachary and the Quaker girl. As of early evening, the man was not yet in custody. Rosemary had also received a phone call from that woman detective, the one who had put Marshall under arrest in May. Real balls on that little gal, Rosemary thought, making that call herself. The detective had wanted to tell Rosemary about the juror’s husband, equivocating on whether she thought the man was really the murderer everyone was looking for, but she did feel confident that he was the one who had left the crude message on Rosemary’s phone machine. “A friendly warning, Mrs. Fox. You might want to be extra-cautious until we bring him in.”
Alan and Gloria Ross sat silently, waiting for their cue from Rosemary. Rosemary was only slightly difficult to read behind the blue sunglasses. Her left index finger was tapping rapidly on her folded napkin, and her perfect chin was dipped slightly. Ross couldn’t help but steal a glance at her breasts, pale and full, nudging the silver fabric of the dress. Familiarity with Rosemary Fox had bred no lack of astonishment on Ross’s part at how beautiful and sensual the woman was, even wound tight as a clock, as she clearly was this evening.
Gloria was giving her husband a signal: a head bob in Rosemary’s direction. Ross reached over and placed his hand over Rosemary’s fingers, snuffing out her nervous tapping.
“I know a new trial seems like just about the worst thing on earth, honey,” he said in as soothing a tone as he could muster in the noisy restaurant. “It pushes the time line way back for getting your life back to normal, I know that. But that jury was getting more and more freaked by the minute, Rose. They could have easily come in with a guilty verdict, you have to remember that. Marshall could be in the stew this very minute, but he’s not. We all live to fight another day.”
He glanced at his wife, who nodded nearly imperceptibly. Ross continued, “That’s how you have to look at it, Rose. And there’ll be no surprises the next time. We’ve all seen what they’ve got. Fred can work with that.” He patted her hand again. “You’ll see. Fred says there’s a decent argument for getting Marshall out on bail now. It ain’t gonna be cheap, honey. But think of it. Marshall free. That would be huge.”
Rosemary’s martini arrived, along with a pair of gin and tonics for the Rosses. The frog-faced man started to make nice with his customers, but Gloria caught his eye and waved him off with barely a movement.
Rosemary took up her drink. The Rosses followed suit.
“To Marshall,” Gloria said.
As they toasted—somewhat lacklusterly—Rosemary spotted two men sitting several tables away, staring at her. Good-looking men. Rosemary lowered her glass and picked out one of the olives, making just a bit more out of sucking it into her mouth than was called for.
God, she thought. I am such a cunt.
Gloria was talking now. Rosemary wasn’t tuning in fully. More about Marshall this, Marshall that, future this, future that. Rosemary trained her eyes in the direction of Gloria’s face, just to look as if she were listening. Who was this woman kidding? Future?
Future
? Okay, Rosemary had a future. She had a lot of future, for that matter, as well as a lot of ideas about how she would like to spend it. She had no intention of bungling any more of her time than she already had. Rosemary was kind of surprised to hear Gloria talking that way. Gloria was in the business, she knew how a future could be cut short like
that
. She had to know full well that there would
be
no Marshall Fox after all this, whatever the outcome and whenever this endless tedious soap opera of a trial finally ran its course. Rosemary didn’t mean to be cold about it, only realistic. Marshall Fox was dead.
Rosemary finished off her drink. The frog-faced man appeared as if by magic, bringing her second martini on a tray.
“You tell your man he is making me happy,” Rosemary said.
The frog-faced man made a flourish. A laugh traveled about the table. The beautiful woman shared a smile with her dinner guests, both of whom responded eagerly. The good-looking men at the other table were still looking at her. Rosemary picked up her drink, tipping it ever so slightly in their direction, and allowed them the tiniest of smiles. Men. She thought about what was waiting for her back at the apartment. Her best-kept secret. She had to laugh. The lucky bastard would never have it so good again, that was for sure. He was probably not the future for too much longer, though that wasn’t important right now. Right now he was still there—that was the point—willing to cater to her whims. The power of a woman can be almost frightening. Rosemary never tired of marveling at it. She knew she’d have to start putting distance between the two of them. She’d waited way too long already. But for Christ’s sake, her husband was behind
bars
. What was she supposed to do, shave her head and find a convent? Rosemary anticipated some trouble when the time came for her to lay down the law. There’d be a scene; he’d already surprised her with his ability to make scenes. She realized she’d better start devising her plan of action now, just to be on the safe side.
The menus arrived. Yet another waiter. Rosemary held the single sheet down near her cutlery and looked over the options. The waiter was reeling off a list of specials, each one more elaborate and yummy-sounding than the next. There was an appetizer special of oysters. Rosemary envisioned the ugly little things. Floating in their own milky swill. Presented in those gnarly misshapen shells. The things people chose to consider special. The emperor’s new oysters. She thought they tasted disgusting. Squishy slime. Like swallowing someone’s mucus.
“I’ll have those,” Rosemary said. “The oysters.” A giddy thought came to her mind. No. Yes. Must be the martini. She reached out both arms, graceful and swanlike, and placed her fingers on Alan’s and Gloria’s hands, eliciting a smile from each of them. She looked back up at the waiter.
“And please. Offer a serving to every table here, could you? I’d like to do that for everybody.”
I NOTED THAT the faint scar running along Jigs Dugan’s jaw was picking up the blue from the neon Canadian beer sign in the window behind him. The man who had given Jigs that scar some fifteen years back had lived just long enough to regret it. Jigs shocked not a few people by attending the man’s viewing, at Campbell’s funeral home on the Upper East Side. His face half hidden in a sloppy bandage, Jigs had pulled out his knife while bowing his head at the casket and quietly run the blade along the polished mahogany. Gave it a three-inch cut. Just like his scar. Tit for tat, if you don’t take into account what Jigs had already done to the man.
Jigs was wearing a gray Irish sweater under a herringbone jacket. His cheeks were clean-shaven, and a comb seemed to have found a way into his hair. Argyle socks and black shoes that picked up the light. He handed me a slip of paper with an address jotted down on it.
“Our boy’s name is John Michael Pratt. He’s a painter, though not of the Rembrandt school. Mainly houses and apartments. That is, when he’s not enjoying the largesse of the state.”
“Largesse of the state. This would mean prison time?”
Jigs smiled across the table at me. “Maybe one day I’ll marry you, you’re such a smart fellow. Exactly. Our John Michael likes to steal things that don’t belong to him. Sometimes people try to stop him and he knocks them down. The last time he did this, he used an iron pipe. Two darling girls have a halfwit daddy as a result of that little maneuver.”
The address was on Nineteenth Street, near the FDR Drive. Jigs and I were at a bar on Twenty-first.
“I took a quick look,” Jigs said. “Door’s got a bit of a rattle. I wouldn’t want to be stashing the Hope Diamond or anything in there, if you see what I mean.”
I folded the piece of paper and put it in my shirt pocket. “You were fast on this.”
“I was. I gave you the full-court press. Belated Christmas gift.”
“I thank you.”
Jigs gave a two-fingered salute. “As the lady said to Bogie, if there’s anything else, just whistle.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Be sure you do. You’re not up to your hundred percent, that’s clear.”
“You’re looking sporty,” I said.
“It’s Saturday night, lad. Maybe you can’t remember anymore, it’s still the night for peacocks.”
“So what are your plans for the evening?”
Jigs ran a finger along his chin. “It’s the city that never sleeps. I suppose I’ll stay up and keep it company. Don’t you worry on my account. I can always put together a dance card.”
GETTING INTO Pratt’s building was a simple matter of leaning against the vestibule door and giving it a sharp shove. A sour smell greeted me in the hallway. A buzzing fluorescent tube sent a harsh white light down from the flaky ceiling. I took the stairs in front of me to the top floor. The sour smell was less pungent here than it was downstairs. The hallway was dimly lit by a half-dozen sad wall sconces that gave off a dull buttery glow.
I pulled my gun.
Pratt’s apartment was at the end of the hallway: 5C. A television was on in one of the apartments across the way. Chatter. Laughter. More chatter. More laughter. A nontelevised male voice called out something, and a woman’s voice answered, but I couldn’t make out what was being said.
I had a plastic bag with me. I set it down and put my ear to Pratt’s door. I heard nothing. I kept my ear there a full minute, picking up vibrations from the building, a few hums, a sound like distant ice breaking. Nothing else.
I tried the doorknob. It turned partway, but the door didn’t open. After another minute, I knocked on the door and called out, “John!”
No answer. I tried the doorknob again and pumped the door. It rattled. Just like Jigs had said. “John!”
I put away my gun and picked up the bag and took from it a hard rubber mallet Jigs had been kind enough to bring along when we met at the bar. Taking aim at the dead-bolt keyhole, I swung the mallet, using all the single-pointed focus I could muster, which proved sufficient. The doorjamb splintered, and the lock went askew under the mallet. When I turned the doorknob this time, the door swung easily open.
The man’s perversity was in his bedroom. Photographs and clippings—hundreds of them, all over the walls. Asian girls and women. Hardly a bare square inch to be found. Many of the pictures had been ripped from skin magazines and featured naked and semi-naked women rising up on their knees, bent over spread-eagle, cavorting on a bed wearing high heels, arching their backs on lounge chairs, peering dead-eyed from a hammock, on and on. Just as many had been pulled from regular magazines. Fashion models. Movie actresses. Asian teens dressed in retro American schoolgirl outfits. The pictures were taped onto all four walls of the small room. Many of them had been outlined in thick red Magic Marker. On some of them, the marker had been held on the picture to bleed splotches on the breasts or the crotches of the women. There were also Magic Marker phalluses drawn all over the place, disembodied torpedoes prodding at the images.
Moving farther into the room, I felt the eyes of the hundreds of girls and women on me, tracking me as I stepped over to the bed. Stacks of ravaged magazines and Asian-language newspapers were piled next to the bed. What interested me was a cluster of pictures taped together on the closet door just to the left of the bed. They were all the same picture. I counted seventeen of them. It was a color photograph that had been cut from the pages of a glossy magazine, maybe
People
or
Us
, from the look of it. One of those types. The photograph featured two women. One of them was wearing a pair of sunglasses and walking down a sidewalk with her head lowered, in evident distress. She was clearly trying to avoid having her picture taken. Next to her was a young Asian woman in calf-high leather boots and a short pink winter coat, her hair pulled back and tied with a bright yellow scarf. I noticed a scarf identical to the one in the picture knotted around Pratt’s closet doorknob. The Asian woman’s arm was around the other woman, and she was consoling her. In all seventeen of the pictures, the Asian woman had been outlined in thick red Magic Marker. The phalluses appeared on a few of the pictures.