by Ann Aptaker
Vivienne is silent as the cabbie drives his hack uptown, weaving through traffic in that terrifying way only a New York cabbie can do. Kids on roller skates, shoppers with Fifth Avenue hatboxes, and office types out to grab some lunch skitter out of this guy’s path. He’s not as smooth as Rosie.
I can’t figure Vivienne’s silence. It’s not exactly cold, but the set of her face, her beautiful aristocratic face, looking out the window as if surveying the golden city that her great-grandfather Malachi bent to his will, makes it clear that conversation is not invited.
Just as well. Vivienne’s silence gives me room to think about my lousy morning and try to figure out why the hell murder is following me all over town.
• • •
As a senior curator of European paintings, Vivienne’s office is a cushy spot with elegant gray-green walls covered in ornately framed masterpieces: from the late medieval Italian religious dramas of Giotto to the succulent French Rococo amusements of François Boucher. The furniture is just as elegantly eclectic. Two nineteenth-century French walnut armchairs upholstered in needlepoint face Vivienne’s English eighteenth-century George III mahogany desk. Its green leather top hosts an early twentieth-century abalone and brass desk set and cigarette box. A sparkling cut-crystal ashtray with plenty of heft and enough sharp edges to brain someone is next to the cigarette box. A similar ashtray hoards most of the space on the spindly Rococo table between the two needlepoint chairs. The whole place, an assemblage of delicate things and weighty things, is a subtle expression of a connoisseur’s taste and a not-so-subtle expression of the Parkhurst Trent influence. It’s that influence which was able to slide me out of Huber’s grip.
Vivienne removes her coat, hangs it on a rack in the corner, removes her hat, and hangs that on the rack, too. With the nonchalance of a woman who assumes beauty is hers by right, she runs her fingers through her dark hair, restoring its style and bounce from the grasp of her hat. Moving to the window, she angles the Venetian blinds, simultaneously cutting the glare of the late morning sun on Fifth Avenue and canceling the view of any nosy neighbors from their windows in the fancy apartment buildings and remaining Gilded Age mansions across the street. With the sashay that’s natural to her and that never fails to grab my attention, she moves to the front of her desk and leans against the edge, her slender charcoal wool skirt hugging her smooth curves while her ivory silk V-neck blouse catches light where light should be caught, to my unabashed pleasure. I’ve always had a taste for Vivienne, a taste she let me indulge one night four years ago. She was delicious, but one taste is all she gave me. I think our night of passion scared her. Maybe I scared her. Maybe she scared herself. Whatever it was, she’s retreated into the safety of male companions at the town’s better restaurants.
She’s all cool and patrician now. With a wave of her hand, Vivienne directs me to one of the needlepoint chairs. When I’m seated, my cap in my lap, she folds her arms across her chest in a quick, annoyed fashion, the gesture a strategy to hold onto her fraying patience. From her perch against her desk, she looks down at me. I think she wants me to squirm. She should know better.
Her green eyes on me as if considering whether to behead me or merely scold, she turns away briefly to take a cigarette from the box on her desk, tilting her head back to offer one to me.
“I have my own,” I say, and take out my pack of Chesterfields from my inside coat pocket.
Vivienne lights her smoke with the lighter on her desk, then bends down to light mine. If she’s aware that I’m enjoying the view, she doesn’t acknowledge it, doesn’t smile, doesn’t even tease. She just closes the lighter and leans against the desk again. Saying nothing, she continues to look down at me, cigarette smoke curling along her face, drifting around her pampered courtesan’s eyes, creating a lacy veil that can’t quite hide her displeasure with me.
I have better things to do— like digging for more of Lorraine Quinn’s story to find out who’d want her dead— than be kept hostage in Vivienne’s office, pleasant as the company, the view, and these surroundings may be. “Why did you bring me here, Vivienne?”
One of her hands remains clamped against the edge of her desk while the other slowly lowers the cigarette from her mouth, her lipstick leaving a smear of red. She’s still looking at me, but her eyes are less scolding now. Something else is creeping into those eyes, or rather creeping back: fear, that unfamiliar fear I saw in Vivienne’s eyes back at Eve Garraway’s place. It takes Vivienne a minute to be able to speak past it. “What did Lieutenant Huber mean about two dead women, Cantor? What the hell have you dragged me into?” There’s an edge to her usually silky voice, an edge of frustration, an edge of anger. “I can’t afford scandal. I could lose everything I worked so damn hard for here at the museum. I’m the only female senior curator in this institution, and I could lose it all in a minute. Why are you doing this to me, Cantor?”
“Why am I— ?”
“Yes, you. I thought I knew you. I mean, I know about the things— the things you do. The museum world is highly competitive, every curator lusting after the best works, and I’m no different. So while I’m grateful for your help in securing superior acquisitions for me at the museum, if you committed murder—”
“Do you really think I’m a murderer, Vivienne?” It’s my turn to look hard at her.
She returns it, stare for stare, her eyes probing me, but the expression on her face is someone looking for safe haven. I guess she didn’t find it because she looks away, stamps out her smoke, slowly circling the cigarette at the bottom of the crystal ashtray. She finally shakes her head, then looks at me again. “I believe you can kill.”
“And I know you can, Vivienne. But that doesn’t make you a murderer.”
She can’t escape what I just said, can’t escape our shared night of violence and the crack shot that saved my life. With a tight-lipped swallow followed by a slow breath, she says, “No, no I don’t believe you’re a murderer, Cantor. But your world is, well, criminal. I can’t be seen by the police to be associated with it.”
“Then get your masterpieces legitimately if you want to skirt around scandal, and don’t do business with the likes of me.”
I know that stung her. I see it in the slight but quickly controlled tightness around her eyes and mouth.
How many times today am I going to be a cad? I gave Lorraine the brush-off this morning, and I barked at Vivienne just now. Less than an hour ago Vivienne was at my side, and together we faced down the Law. She deserves a better Cantor Gold than the lout sitting in the fancy needlepoint chair.
I’d better smooth out my attitude. “Listen, Vivienne, you were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time, just like me. Only it’s happened to me twice today, and now Huber is out for my hide. If I don’t figure things out fast, he just might skin me. And by the way, thanks for helping me get past Huber’s handcuffs at the Garraway place. I mean it. I’m grateful.”
“You’re welcome, but you owe me, Cantor Gold. You can start by explaining the deaths of two women and why the lieutenant thinks they’re connected to you.”
“Maybe you’re better off not knowing, Vivienne. You’re better off not getting dragged into something ugly and dangerous.”
“It’s too late for that. I was in a room with a corpse with a knife in her back when the police arrived. I’m already dragged into it. And I need to be prepared in case that lieutenant decides to drag me in deeper.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it. Being in the room isn’t enough for Huber to arrest you, Vivienne.”
“I’m not worried about getting arrested,” she says, waving away the ridiculous idea of someone of her social standing seeing the inside of a jail cell. “But I bet he resents me after I rubbed his nose in the police commissioner’s name today, so I have no doubt Huber would enjoy burying me in mud. There are some gentlemen here at the museum who might even help him. They think the only job for a woman at the museum is a secretary, or better yet, one of the after-hours cleani
ng ladies. Those gentlemen would be only too happy to use a scandal to ruin my professional reputation, which would give them the excuse to show me the door. If I hope to survive this, I need to know what’s going on. So let’s hear it, Cantor.”
The fear’s creeping back in her eyes, but there’s determination, too, and the determination is winning. The iron-willed bloodline of Malachi Trent is making itself felt in Vivienne’s veins. She’s no longer grasping the edge of the desk for support. She’s leaning against it as if it’s a perch from which to command the obedience of the mere hireling seated before her.
It looks good on her. I get a charge from strong women. So okay, I’ll play along. She’s earned an explanation, anyway.
I kill my smoke in the crystal brain basher on the spindly table next to me. “I don’t know what’s going on,” I say, “but I’ll fill you in on what little I do know.”
I lay it out, tell her about Lorraine Quinn, one minute in my bed, the next minute dead on my doorstep. I tell her about bringing the little Sumerian to Eve Garraway, and Eve’s plans for her family’s legacy.
Through a cool smile with plenty of disdain behind it, Vivienne says, “Yes, she’d hoped a museum wing with the Garraway name on it would be her ticket into—”
“Your crowd?”
Her smile’s still cool, but the disdain’s gone. There’s a bit of amusement in it, accompanied by a shrug acknowledging her own snobbishness.
An idea occurs to me. “How bad did she want in, Vivienne?”
“Well, let’s just say she pressed a little harder than was seemly. She never married, but she did all she could to chummy up to the more important families in New York, especially the wives. Eve knew it’s the wives who hold the social power.”
“And you know these wives?”
“Many of them. What are you getting at, Cantor?”
“I bet those wives know a thing or two about Eve Garraway. Things I’d like to know, things that might send Huber looking in a direction other than mine.” If I could send Huber chasing in one direction about the Garraway killing, and another direction for the Quinn murder, with any luck he’ll trip over his own feet, fall flat on his face, and get out of my way. “Would you do something for me, Vivienne?”
Chapter Five
Judson’s still busy with the ledger books when I get back to my office. “We’re in good shape, Cantor. If you’ve got the Garraway money, I’ll figure it in.”
I pull the envelope of cash from my coat pocket. “Thirty grand,” I say. Blood money, I can’t help thinking as I take out four thousand— Red Drogan’s cut and walking-around money for my pocket— and hand the rest to Judson. “Take your cut and set Rosie’s aside, too. I’ll settle up with Drogan. Put the rest in the safe.”
My young genius eyes me, reads me. “What’s wrong, Cantor? Since when does handling a bundle of cash make you look like you’ve just buried your mother?”
I pull my cap off and sit at the edge of his desk. My bones feel heavy. My mind and spirit aren’t feeling any too frisky either, not with the corpses of two murdered women at my feet. My connection to either woman wasn’t particularly deep, but they were part of my life, and for better or worse I was part of theirs, even though one of them ended our night of passion by hating me and the other considered me merely for hire. “Eve Garraway’s dead, Judson. Murdered as soon as I left the house, maybe even while I was still inside, on my way to the door. Knifed, just like Lorraine Quinn. And Huber’s reaching for my neck again.”
Judson’s not one for syrupy sentiment. The gears of his brain keep all of that in check while those gears turn through all the permutations of a problem. Behind his wire-rim glasses, his eyes stay steady on me but he’s not really looking at me. His view is inward, no doubt watching all the possible scenarios go by. I hope an escape scene is one of them.
I can’t wait around for the verdict. “Anything new on Quinn?” I say, pulling Judson out of his mental gymnastics.
“Uh, oh, yeah,” he says, back with me now. “Something odd. It seems part of Quinn’s job at Hollander’s law office was to keep tabs on their clients’ wayward spouses and arrange the photo surveillance of their trysts. She even did a lot of the photo tails herself.”
That raises my eyebrows. I didn’t know much about Lorraine when we tumbled into my bed, figured maybe she was an office girl or shop girl, but I wouldn’t have pegged her as a snoop. “She must’ve seen plenty,” I say, “which made a lot of those cheating spouses pretty mad. Any one of them look angry enough to kill?”
“More than one, I’d guess. But here’s that odd thing. One of the wayward spouses was Tap Tenzi.”
My eyebrows inch up even higher. Johnny Tenzi, nicknamed Tap, shortened from Tapioca because of the bumpy tapioca-like skin on his face. The guy’s a smart aleck. A boozer. A sometime soldier for the Mob. Married to the former Alice Lamarr, if that’s her real name, which I doubt. Always did, even when we had our little fling.
But my connection to Tap Tenzi and Alice Lamarr isn’t the only thing grabbing my attention. Something in the whole setup feels off. Otis Hollander is a sharp shyster who knows better than to cross the Mob, even its lowest players. Keeping tabs on Johnny Tenzi is risky business. He wouldn’t do it without a damn good reason or a client with enough cash to make it worth the risk.
Where would Alice get that kind of money?
“Judson, see what you can dig up on Alice Lamarr.”
“The showgirl you used to run around with?”
“That’s the one. She married Tenzi a couple of years ago. Looks like she wants out. And dig around for goods on Tenzi, too, but be careful.”
He assures me with a nod, then says, “And what about the Garraway situation? Want me to work on that?”
“Sure. Vivienne Parkhurst Trent agreed to chat up her high society sisters and pass me any gossip about Eve’s attempts to crash into their circle. Together with whatever you dig up, it could lead to something to make Huber look in another direction and away from me.”
Judson pulls his pack of Lucky Strikes from the folded sleeve of his white T-shirt. He leans back in his chair as he pulls a smoke from the pack. “Parkhurst Trent, huh,” he says before he puts a cigarette between his lips and lights it, the match flame reflected in his glasses. “Been a while since we’ve seen any business from her. She involved with Garraway?”
“Vivienne showed up as I was leaving. She had an appointment with Eve about acquiring stuff from the Garraway collection. Every museum in the country wants it, and Vivienne was going to make her pitch.”
But Judson’s left the conversation. His eyes crinkle behind his wire rims, the result of a wiseacre smile. “Just don’t let her walk all over you this time.”
• • •
A phone call to Sig Loreale’s office lets me know that he’s out at his place on the ritzy North Shore of Long Island. He took possession of a spread of seaside land from a guy who owed him money and who’s never been seen or heard from since. Sig built a mansion on the land, spent plenty of cash from the profits of his various enterprises, some of them legal, most of them as dirty as soiled laundry and as bloody as a slaughterhouse. It’s how Sigismond Loreale, son of immigrants, grabbed his share of the American Dream, complete with a house in the suburbs. These days, Sig’s the biggest of New York’s big shots. From a simple muscle-and-bootleg outfit in Coney Island back in the days of Prohibition he’s built a web of murder-for-hire, contraband shipments, labor rackets, financial manipulation, and political strong-arm operations. You name it, Sig Loreale is scooping out cash with both hands and amassing the kind of power normally given to tyrant kings and murderous dictators.
He and I have history going all the way back to our roots in Coney, where a young Sig Loreale muscled his way into taking over the rackets and honky-tonks from the old-timers, and I was a kid learning the thieving trade. Over the years, he’s helped me, hindered me, trusted me, betrayed me, and hired me to acquire paintings, sculptures, and other treasures
for his New York penthouse and his new joint out here on Long Island.
So though I’d rather have a tooth pulled than deal with the guy who holds the life and death of every New Yorker in his hands, my drive along the shore road skirting Manhasset Bay with the top down in my ivory-and-black ’54 Buick Roadmaster convertible takes some of the pain off the trip. The early afternoon sun is bright, the crisp September air coming off the bay cools my face and my mood, and the Buick drives sweet and smooth as honey.
I like to be up to date with my cars. You could say they’re part of my way of claiming the American Dream. For Sig, it’s real estate; for me it’s custom-tailored silk suits and cars. I make enough money to trade in last year’s model for a new one whenever I want, pay cash right up front. New cars, new suits, the top-of-the-line furnishings in my office, are the rewards of my racket, and if I can’t reward myself for risking my life while poking my finger in the Law’s eye, what the hell is the money for? The Law hates me, so the hell with the Law.
Sig, though, has his own special brand of allegiance to the Law because he owns the Law, or at least a good chunk of it. He’s got cops and judges and politicians in his very deep pockets. They take his money, pass him inside information, protect his interests, and he makes them rich in return. None of them ever have second thoughts or a twinge of conscience; none of them ever balk. If they did, they’d be dead, along with their family and their household pets.
Turning off the shore road, I pull up to the big, shiny steel gates guarding Sig’s property. I lower the brim of my cap to shield my eyes from the glare shooting like knives off the steel, reach out to the intercom at the edge of the driveway, press the button, and announce, “Cantor Gold to see Sig.”
We’re not on the best of terms lately, Sig and I, not since he welched on a favor he owed me, a favor that might’ve ended the suffering of the woman who mattered to me more than life itself. I wanted to kill him for holding out on me. But killing the most powerful guy in town is a dead-end idea. His thugs would come after me, tear me limb from limb, and the police— especially Huber— would just laugh. And anyway, a dead Sig is a useless Sig, and I need Sig’s power and access to information. So here I am once again at the door of the guy who’s been over my shoulder since I was a milk-fed thief burying my trove of stolen trinkets under the Coney Island boardwalk. I sweat out wondering if he’ll grant me an audience.