The Body In The Big Apple (8 page)

“Where do people say he was?”

Richard signaled the waiter for more coffee. “If Fox was everywhere I've heard he's been, he would have racked up enough frequent flyer coupons to last through the next millennium. California, the Pacific Northwest, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Maine, Florida—oh, and Cuba, to name a few. Apparently, he was all set to spend his golden years with Fidel, but Nate got kicked out when he said, ‘Thank you for not smoking' to the big guy.”

“And what about the murder weapon? According to the papers, he was shot at close range and the weapon hasn't been found.”

Richard rubbed his chin. He was in slight, very slight need of a shave.

“It would have been pretty stupid to leave the murder weapon behind as a calling card. If it was your average B and E, they'd have further use for it. If it wasn't, but, rather, someone Fox knew and let into the apartment, then all the more reason to get rid of it, say in that big Dumpster known as the East River.”

“The papers haven't said what kind of gun it was. The police would know from the bullet. Have you heard anything?”

Morgan shook his head and then looked sharply at Faith. “Why so much interest in Fox? He wasn't a well-known food connoisseur, to my knowledge. Don't tell me—your parents were in the Weather Underground and you're actually a red-diaper baby.”

“Sorry, my father never even remembers to carry an umbrella and my diapers were as snowy white as the diaper service could make them. Mother has always believed some things are best done by others. Now come on—that business with Fox in Cuba, you were making that up.”

“I kid you not.”

Faith made a face and, terrierlike, held on to the subject. “Why do you think he wasn't caught?”

“At first, probably because no one squealed on him, and it's not so easy as you might think to find someone who doesn't want to be found, even if you're the feds. Especially when he disappeared. Pre–cyber spying. Then later, they had more important things to do. Better ways to spend taxpayers' money. They probably unloaded a bunch of dusty file folders on all those Weathermen, Yippies, pinkos, et cetera, on one poor slob and he'd make a few calls every once in a while. Check the taps on their parents', siblings', old lovers' phones. Reel somebody in by chance now and again.”

“Then Fox wasn't taking much of a risk moving into the city.”

“Well, it did get him killed.”

“So you
do
think his murder is tied to his past?”

“Isn't everything?”

Almost everybody was wearing black at Nathan Fox's memorial service, which was exactly what Faith had expected. It was not from a deep sense of propriety, but because this was New York City and everybody, especially women, wore black most of the time. It wasn't timidity; it was the acknowledgment of a universal truth. You always looked good in black—and in style.

Fox was going out in style. Going out on the Upper East Side at Frank E. Campbell's, where anybody who was anybody had his or her service. Faith walked in under the marquee and quickly went into the building. There was a basket of yarmulkes at the door to the chapel. They seemed at odds with the bland, goyish entry room, complete with an Early American grandfather clock. But Fox had been, if not Jewish, a Jew, and many of the men were covering their heads.

Faith slid into a seat far enough back for a good view of the audience—the mourners, she corrected herself—but close enough to hear the lines—the eulogies, that is. It had felt like a performance from the mo
ment she'd pulled up to the entrance, her cab nosing out one limo and pulling up behind another. The service was private, the paper had said, and no time or place was given, but Emma had called Campbell's, posing as her father's cousin—“He has some,” she'd told Faith—and received the information. She'd called Campbell's because, Faith realized, it would never have occurred to Emma that there might be other possibilities. So here Faith was—waiting for the curtain to go up, or down—after getting the message from Emma the night before.

The night before. Faith had been tired, but pleasantly so. After finishing dinner at Santa Fe, Richard and she had gone to Delia's, a newish downtown club on East Third Street. The owner was Irish, and Delia's had a slightly Celtic air, enhanced by books on the “auld country” scattered about. But its main charm was in its unabashed romanticism. The interior was the color of raspberry silk sashes on little girls' party dresses. There were vases crammed with fresh roses. A vintage bar and minuscule dance floor completed the decor. Prints of elegant long-ago ladies hung on the walls.

They hadn't danced, not this time, but talked for hours more. Then Richard had taken her back to her apartment building. At the front door, he'd asked, “When can I see you again?” “When would you like to see me?” she'd answered, slightly muzzy from fatigue and a large cognac. Richard asked, “Tomorrow?” It woke her up instantly, a dash of cold water. This is going fast, she thought, half in fear, half in delight. “That's too soon. Besides, I have to work. The next day?” He kissed her, and it was a good one, not too dry, not too wet. Her purse slipped off her shoulder into the
crook of her arm. He slid it back into place. “I'll call you.”

“‘To everything there is a season…'”

Faith opened her half-closed eyes. The service had started.

It was plain by the third tribute that if she had hoped to get any clues as to Nathan Fox's true nature, it would not be here. But she had not harbored any such hopes. Funerals and memorial services are only venues for truth in fiction, where scenes of bereavement might dramatically reveal hitherto-undisclosed feelings. In reality, most people keep their private opinions private and eulogized. True, she'd been to heart-wrenching services where the naked grief of those left behind laid bare their hearts, but it was never a surprise. The same for those stoic occasions where not a single tear was shed.

There were no tears at Fox's service, but a great deal of talk. The dinosaurs—the remaining larger-than-life figures from the radical sixties—needed to weigh in and be counted. Radical lawyers, radical professors, radical clergy, radical writers, professional radicals. The chapel was packed. People were standing.

Faith began to feel fidgety in the warm room. Outside, it was cloudy, with gray skies. A light snow had begun to fall earlier in the day. It was bitterly cold. Inside, the smell of wet wool, designer perfumes, the single floral arrangement of oversized stargazer lilies, and furniture polish commingled. The temperature crept up, increased by the crowd. Faith began to feel slightly nauseated.

She took off her coat and tried to concentrate on what the speaker was saying. There was no casket, no urn. The only sign of Fox's mortal existence was a
large framed photograph next to the flowers. It was the same picture that had been in the
Times.
His smile looked less smug and mocking now, more self-deprecating, sadder. But that could just be the place getting to her. She leaned over to look directly toward the man who was sonorously droning on, and for the first time she spied Poppy, who had turned around, presumably looking for someone, or counting the house.

Poppy Morris was sitting in the middle of a row. Protective coloration? Unlike most of those Faith could see, Poppy looked genuinely stricken. There were deep circles under her eyes that even carefully applied concealer didn't mask. She turned her head back, face-forward. Noting the woman's distress, Faith seriously doubted that Emma was the only one to know that Fox had been back in town; the only Morris to have seen him in all these years.

Two more pundits spoke, and Faith did not even attempt to concentrate after hearing the beginning of the phrase “This is the end of…” It was all so impersonal. What was she going to tell Emma? There was no wailing, no gnashing of teeth, no rending of garments. Not that Emma herself would have behaved with such primitive lack of control, but Fox's daughter was bereft. She'd want to hear that others were also. That her father would be missed. That her father had been cherished.

Faith turned around, as much to stretch her neck as to see how many people were behind her. A middle-aged woman stood against the wall, her eyes locked on the speaker, hanging upon every word. Tears streamed down her cheeks. Faith would have liked to stare longer. Not only was someone besides Poppy exhibiting signs of loss, but the woman was hard to catego
rize. She was wearing a drab mustard-colored parka, which she'd unzipped, revealing a white cotton turtleneck. Her hair, light brown with as much again of gray, was parted in the middle and worn in a long braid, snaking down across her shoulder toward the waistband of whatever was completing her uninspired outfit. There was some sort of button pinned to the jacket. Faith could not read the slogan from this distance, but she was sure it expressed solidarity with someone—or something like whales or redwoods. It wasn't hard to imagine her in the sixties, fist raised, hair blowing in the wind, finding answers in Fox's diatribes—and maybe more. Emma, and Richard Morgan, had spoken of Fox's women. Faith had a hunch that the lady in brown was one.

The man who had read the lines from Ecclesiastes at the start of the service stood up again and addressed the group.

“Aside from his cousins Marsha and Irwin”—he nodded toward two elderly people sitting close together in the front row—“Nathan Fox leaves no survivors but his words. As his agent and friend, I watched his words transform a generation. Nathan was cruelly, barbarically struck down in an act we cannot comprehend, but he is not dead. Not while his words live.”

This looked to be the finale and Faith tuned back in. “No survivors.” Well, she knew that wasn't true. She looked at the back of Poppy's head. Besides the two of them, who else in the room knew that Arthur Quinn's words were false? Knew the whole story, knew enough to blackmail Emma?

“He was a skinny kid when he came to me with the first book. How could I not take him on, even when he called me a parasite?” He paused for the laugh, which
came. “Yeah, I told him, I'm a parasite, but an honorable one.” More laughter. “He liked that.” Quinn stopped again, seeing that Nate Fox in his mind's eye, or assuming that was what people would think. A sensitive parasite.

His voice grew louder as he continued his speech. “How could I not do everything to spread those words? He wrote with passion, conviction, and a monumental sense of injustice. There's been a great deal of talk these last days about Nathan Fox's life underground—a wasted life. But Nate loved being on the run. He was on the run all his life—from the establishment, and maybe from himself. Certainly”—he smiled with studied ruefulness and a twinkle in his eye—“from every woman who tried to keep up with him.” During the laugh that followed, Faith darted a glance at the woman in the rear. Her cheeks were flushed and her mouth was closed in a tight line.

“How shall we mourn Nathan Fox? Not at all. He wrote to me once that he had no regrets, and how many men can say that?”

And how many should? Faith said to herself. No regrets. They'd entered the chapel to Mozart; was “My Way” going to see them out?

“How shall we honor Nathan Fox's memory? By reading his books and making his thoughts a part of us—living his words and by our acts, he will be with us always. He has left us this gift—and there is another yet to come. The last letters I had from him spoke of ‘the big one.' A book that was to be published only after his death ‘far in the future, Artie,' he wrote, advising me not to count on the ‘shekels' for a ‘long, long time.' Inutterably sad words now. So, I watch the mail. It may come tomorrow, next week, next year. It will be
his monument, one, to quote him again, ‘That will blow the fuckin' lid off.' This, ladies and gentlemen, was Nathan Fox's purpose in life. May he rest in peace, but not too much. He'll get bored.”

The music, Mozart again after all, started immediately, and everybody rose at once, cramped or moved by Arthur Quinn's startling eulogy. It had been a performance and people immediately surrounded him, waiting to pump his hand. Faith wanted to see him, too.

When Emma had first asked her to go to the service, Faith had already realized that Arthur Quinn was someone she needed to see. The relationship between author and agent is complex—a business agreement, but of a personal nature. An agent holds an author's ego, as well as an author's advance, in his or her hands. Agents find themselves functioning as critics, confidants, shrinks, and sometimes friends. What was the bond between Quinn and Fox? Faith guessed from the interviews she read that it was strong. Quinn's words at the service confirmed the impression. Did he know about Emma? Forget about the “no survivors” rhetoric. Quinn had better hope that Fox's words survived—and stayed in print. She almost laughed out loud. Clever, clever man—essentially putting Fox's posthumous book out for bid at the man's funeral. She imagined what Richard would have to say about Fox's speech, then realized she couldn't tell him she'd been at the service.

Quinn was still mobbed by well-wishers. Faith had worked out her approach. She would pose as a graduate student contemplating a book on the radical movement as typified by Fox. Quinn, she hoped, would be interested in the book as well as the subject matter. But
she wanted to talk to him alone and could make an appointment by phone. She'd hoped to at least introduce herself today. She'd picked a nom de plume, Karen Brown—something easy for someone like Quinn to forget and far removed from Faith Sibley. It was unlikely their paths would cross, except perhaps at an event she was catering, but she was usually out of sight in the kitchen. She looked at the number of people between Quinn and her. It would take too long to wait.

No, what “Karen Brown” needed to do now was find out who the woman in the rear was—and how much she knew about Nathan Fox's life above and under ground.

It wasn't hard at all. Following at a discreet distance, Faith wormed her way out of the chapel behind the woman, who stopped only when Quinn reached out for her hand over the shoulder of someone who looked like or was Norman Mailer. “I'll call you,” he promised, and gave a sad smile. Faith couldn't see the woman's face or note her response, but her shoulders relaxed visibly and perhaps her lips, which had tightened at Quinn's throwaway reference to Fox's love life, did as well.

Passing into the front room, Faith saw the two Fox cousins standing to one side with an air of patient waiting. There must be a gathering somewhere, she realized, and someone must be taking them. A postmortem on the service. She could hear the voices, congratulatory, self-congratulatory, and the whispered asides, the sotto voce digs. She envisioned drinks gulped, some spilled, and the platters of shrimp, finger sandwiches rapidly depleted. Poppy and her crowd would be there—but it wouldn't be at the Morrises'.

“Well, of course we haven't actually seen Nathan for
many years,” his cousin Irwin was explaining to someone. “Marsha might know better than I. I'm in the dry-cleaning business and don't have much time for reading.”

What was the question?

“No,” Marsha said firmly, “Nathan Fox never wrote a novel.” She looked at Irwin. Can we get out of here? was written all over her face. Her questioner persisted and she replied edgily, “Yes, I would know. We're family.”

Faith couldn't hear the rest, but presumably Fox's cousin was continuing to reiterate her statement. And what need did cousin Nate have for made-up lives when he was so busy working on his own?

Out on the sidewalk, the crowd was thinner, scurrying into waiting cars or flagging down taxis. The woman in the mustard-colored parka, hood up now, was heading for the bus stop. Faith walked rapidly until they were side by side.

“Did you know Nathan Fox well?” Faith asked. It was the right thing to say.

“Better than anyone,” the woman answered, her face revealing the aching need she had to talk to someone—anyone—about him. It almost wasn't necessary to recite her story, but Faith did it anyway.

“My name is Karen Brown and I'm considering writing a book about his life. I've been doing some work in graduate school on the sixties and got interested in him.”

“I was a student when we met—a long, long time ago.” Suddenly, the woman seemed tired.

“Would you like some lunch?” Faith asked. “There's a coffee shop on the next block that's not too bad.”