What's a Girl Gotta Do (29 page)

As any New Yorker can tell you, the blocks
between streets are short; between avenues, long. Very long. I
kicked off my shoes and ran in my stocking feet to make batter
time. I got to 390 Ninth just as the guard was about to lock
it.

Inside, panting, I rested against the door
and put my shoes back on. There were still a few people in line.
When I got to the front, I said, “I’d like to know if you have
anything for Robin Hudson.”

The guy went away to check and returned with
a thick brown envelope.

“ID,” he said, releasing the envelope only
after I showed him my press pass. I was about to leave when an idea
occurred to me and I turned back to the counter.

“Can you tell me if there’s an envelope here
for Larry Griff or Craig Lockmanetz?”

“I can’t give another person’s mail to you,”
he said.

“No, I know,” I said. “I don’t want it. I
just work with them and thought I’d let them know if there was any
mail for them. We all just transferred here from Kansas City.”

God, I’m such a liar. But it worked. The guy
went to check and there was an envelope for Lockmanetz, Griff’s
alias. Maybe this was where he hid his copies too.

I went back into the street. It was a bright
winter day and I had to cup my hand over my eyes to read the
postmark: December 31st, the day Susan had met Griff at the post
office. Beautiful. He’d probably mailed it just before meeting her.
If his pigeons didn’t pay up, he planned to tell me about the
letter and where to pick it up. Maybe he planned to tell me even if
they did pay up, as long as I paid up, one way or another.

I tore open the envelope as I walked down
Ninth Avenue towards Thirty-third. Ninth was pretty deserted. I
figured I had a better chance getting a cab on Eighth. I pulled the
sheaf of papers out halfway and began flipping through them at the
top, reading the names, which were not alphabetized. I hesitated at
my own report for a second, then, prioritizing, flipped past until
I got to Eric Slansky, in the middle of the pile. That one I pulled
out to read.

After scanning the boring parts, I learned
that he had smoked a considerable amount of pot in college (big
deal) and had a drunk and disorderly for which he was fined while
on spring break in Florida (big deal). On Eighth Avenue, I stuck my
arm up for a cab while I read Eric’s credit report, which wasn’t
bad. Bad guy, good credit? His academic record was pretty good too,
and for the last twelve years he’d demonstrated a “strong community
service ethic” by his work with homeless children, which he had
never mentioned to me.

Gimme a break. It meant nothing. Hitler was a
vegetarian who was able to tame baby deer at his Berchtesgaden
retreat. Sure enough, as I read further, I found what I was looking
for, and what I hoped I wouldn’t find, Eric’s big secret. Not a
what but a who. Wynn Codwell-Slansky to be specific, his ex-wife,
from whom he was divorced shortly before coming to ANN, and whom he
failed to mention to me.

According to Griff’s report, Wynn
Codwell-Slansky was now a realtor in Chicago and refused to discuss
her ex-husband.

“Ms. Codwell-Slansky wouldn’t take my calls,
and routinely hung up on me,” Griff wrote. “I was able to get a
full credit report on her, but unable to obtain any detailed
personal information about her or her marriage.” M

maybe Griff couldn’t get the information, I
thought. But maybe Wynn would talk to me, another woman. This all
made me feel kind of sick. Man, I had sex with that guy, I thought.
Worse, I had great sex with him. It was sick, sick, sick. Like
Pascal and Amy Penny said, the heart has its reasons that reason
cannot know, which was reason enough not to follow your heart if
you asked me.

A cab pulled up. As I reached for the door
handle, someone grabbed my arm and I felt a jab in my back.

“Don’t scream, Robin. This gun has a silencer
and I can shoot you and get away before anyone notices you. We’re
going to get into the cab and go to your place.”

It’s like McGravy always says, sometimes you
find the truth and sometimes the truth finds you. Who knew the
truth would look like Fawn Hall?

Chapter Seventeen

WHAT CAN SHE DO TO me here, with all these
people, I wondered. But then I remembered. This is New York. People
here don’t necessarily like to get involved with cops unless they
know you personally or there’s something in it for them. She could
fill me full of holes and still make a clean getaway, I mean, I
heard this story about a guy who was squeezed between automatic bus
doors for four blocks on a busy avenue, screaming the whole time.
It was in all the papers, but when he tried to sue later he
couldn’t find a single witness.

So I got into the cab and she slid in next to
me.

“Please . . .,” I said.

“Ssssh,” she said, nervously but sweetly,
jabbing the gun harder into that tender area between my breast and
my armpit and taking the envelope from me with her other hand.

Weird thoughts went through my head. I was in
a pre-apocalyptic daze. I wondered how this cabbie, who spoke
little English, was going to feel later, when he found out he had
driven me to my death. Or worse, how the sensitive Sikh would feel
when he found out my quest really had been a life-and-death matter.
Weird thoughts: My cat could outlive me.

I felt paralyzed and I found it hard to
breathe, like a very strong man was squeezing my lungs, My face
felt numb. The city, which I suddenly loved, whizzed by on all
sides, as if in a dream. If she killed me, I’d never eat in that
restaurant or shop in that store or walk in that park or see that
vista again. I’d never sleep with another great guy. I’d never hug
my mom again. The Sikh was right; you have to take time out to
enjoy the world. It could be gone tomorrow.

“My keys are at the office,” I whispered to
her. I couldn’t see her eyes, hidden behind oversized
sunglasses.

“I have keys,” she said. Yes, that made sense
too. Burke had a set of spare keys. Amy must have had them copied
before he brought them to me the day I misplaced mine.

“Claire is waiting for me . . .”

“Ssssh.” She said, with the hiss of a kind
librarian. This was the horror of it, that the face of death was
such an appealing, gentle face and it spoke in such dulcet tones. I
couldn’t stand it but my options were limited. Amy had a gun. I
didn’t have my umbrella, my Epilady, my staple gun, not even a can
of coffee in a plastic bag. I was completely unarmed.

Even the purse-cam was useless in its current
position, wedged under my right arm, Amy and her gun jammed against
my left. It was impossible to reach over and turn it on, and even
if I could it wouldn’t do much. Nobody was talking and the lens was
pointed at a Taxi Commission decal on the back of the driver’s
seat.

When the cab pulled up to my building, Amy
paid the driver and she and I left the cab as one unit, like
Siamese twins. She was shaking, not a good thing. Nervous, she
might accidentally pull the trigger. She gave me the keys, made me
open the door, and made me hand them back to her. We took the
stairs to avoid neighbors. Now I wondered if she had planned to
kill me the night we talked in my apartment but called it off after
we ran into one of my neighbors in the building.

But no, she had been wigless that night. She
must have wanted to see how much I knew, feel me out, find out if
Burke still had feelings for me.

How could I get that gun, I asked myself as
we climbed the dark stairs up to my floor. And, even if I did,
could I shoot her? Knowing how it would look in the tabloids made
me cautious. I was already a scumbag in their opinion, while Amy
Penny was a popular television personality, Miss Congeniality.

On top of everything else, if I killed her,
they’d find out that she was pregnant, that’s I’d killed a pregnant
woman carrying my husband’s child. Yeah, that’d make me look real
good. The wig and dark glasses? The tabs would probably say that
Amy Penny, in her quest to be taken seriously as a journalist, had
gone undercover to solve the Griff murder. But there was something
in the brown envelope worth killing three people for, and that
would be my defense, I realized. Because nothing Griff had found
out about me, no matter how humiliating, was worth killing for.

Could I wheel around and grab the gun from
her? No, she was holding it right to my head. I was trapped. And
still I couldn’t stop thinking about what the papers would say, how
bad they would make me look after I was gone. The cops would find
my murder scrapbooks and make a link. Amy intended to take not only
my life but my reputation, what was left of it. This would push my
mother off the deep end. She’d end up wandering the streets in full
coronation regalia—or a reasonable facsimile, using her high school
prom dress and various items found around the house, like she did
after my dad died.

This is what they call having nothing to
lose.

It was dark in the stairwell and quiet. I
could hear the whirr of some kind of generation deep in the lower
depths of the building. I didn’t lose my temper. I bided my time.
When we came up to the landing for my floor, I suddenly ducked,
dodged and got behind her, wrapping my6 arms around her in a kind
of Heimlich maneuver, purse-cam flopping at my side.

Unfortunately, I failed to secure her gun
arm, and she simply pointed the gun at me over her shoulder.

“You can carry me up if you want. I shouldn’t
be on my feet in my condition anyway. But we are going to go into
your apartment,” she said, in a tone I’d never heard from her
before, a cold, mean voice that made me think of nuclear winter. I
put her down and let go.

At my door, she gave me my keys and forced me
into my apartment. She shut the door with her leg and pushed me
into the living room. She put the envelope on a counter.

“Put your purse down,” she said.
“Slowly.”

I set it down on top of the television, and
as I did I nonchalantly flicked the record button on top. Louise
Bryant rubbed against my legs, trying to get me to feed her.

“They’re expecting me back at work,” I said.
“they’ll be worried--”

“Call in and tell them you’re sick and you’ve
come home to recuperate,” she said. “If they ask you anything else,
just yes and no answers and then off, you understand?”

“Sure, fine.” This was my chance. I’d call
Claire and let her know I was in jeopardy and she’d send the
cavalry. I dialed Special Reports, but nobody answered.

Finally, the switchboard picked up. "I have a
message for anyone in Special Reports from Robin Hudson," I said.
It was hard to breathe. What could I say that would tip someone off
and yet slip by Amy? "I'm at home and I'm sick. I can't meet Claire
at Old Homestead later--"

Before I could say anything else Amy's gloved
finger depressed the phone button and broke the connection.

"Why did you say that about meeting
Claire?"

"So she wouldn't go there and worry," I
said.

"What's old homestead?"

"You know, the office, the old homestead,
it's a figure of speech--" And, situated conveniently in the meat
packing district, it's one of the city's oldest steakhouses, and
one of Jerry's favorite restaurants. You'd see the pope in a
whorehouse before you'd see Claire in Old Homestead. But would
Claire get the message in time.

"Do you have a pen and paper," Amy said.

"In my writing desk, middle drawer." I found
some of my nerve. "Amy why'd you do it?" My voice founded tiny and
frightened. She ignored my questions.

"Sit down at the desk and write what I tell
you," she said. "Dear...everyone."

I wrote it.

"I can no longer go on with my--" She thought
hard. "Guilt. Which I brought on myself by killing Larry Griff and
Greg Browner. I did it to conceal my sordid affair with Browner,
which went on while I was married to another man."

Amy wasn't known for her imagination, so I
guessed this was her confession, being made through me. It was
small consolation to know my friends would realize I'd never write
a suicide note like this, that I would never go out spouting
clichés, never without a good quote, and never with a gun. I was
much more of a swan-dive-off-the-statue-of-liberty kind of person.
Also, the purse cam was rolling.

As I was writing, Louise Bryant, sensing the
balance of power had shifted in the room, began rubbing up against
Amy's legs, trying to get Amy to feed her.

"You should tell me why I'm going to die, at
least," I said. "You owe me that."

"I don't owe you a thing," she said. "Cat!
STOP IT!" Amy tried to kick Louise lightly away, and then she
pushed a little harder. Louise responded in character, faking a
retreat, then turning around to jump on Amy's legs vertically,
digging her claws into Amy's hose and calves.

"OUCH! GODAAMIT!" Amy screamed, stopping to
pull the cat off her and letting her gun hand relax, fatally, for a
moment. Long enough for me, emboldened by purse-cam, to jump up and
twist it out of her hand.

Thank God for Murphy's Law. Sometimes, it
works for you.

Chapter Eighteen

JERRY WAS FURIOUS with me because I let the
cops have the purse-camera tape without running a dub for us.

"You had the tape and you handed it to a
cop?"

"So he'd see I wasn't the killer. It's
evidence, Jerry," I said, although I couldn't be too sanctimonious,
as I'd returned to my apartment for the brown envelope before
reporting back to work.

I'd just come very close to losing my life
but, hey, the news must go on. Claire, because she knew of my
involvement more intimately than anyone, reported the story and
provided information that Amy was apparently after the same job
Claire had her eye on, doing on-air reports introducing Greg’s
celebrity guests.