Moon watched the young man a moment. “And you are?”
The young man shook his head, trying to understand. I sympathized; I still wasn’t too clear myself. “I am? Oh, I’m Calvin Bright.”
“I know you,” I blurted.
He looked at me. “You do?”
“I know your work, I mean. Your photography. You shoot for Small Town. I’ve seen your fashion stuff in Town & Country. I’m Maggie Fiori.”
Moon cleared his throat. “Well, you certainly seem to know all the players, Mrs. Fiori. And I’m sorry to interrupt the networking, but I have to get to my work now.” He surveyed us. “I’ll need to speak to you both. May I assume I can find you in…” he looked at his notes, “… Mrs. DeBurgos’ apartment?” We nodded in unison, two chastened children, and watched Moon leave.
“Well,” said Calvin, “Not quite what I expected in a homicide dick.”
“Me either.” I leaned against the wall. “What am I saying? What did I expect? I’ve never seen a homicide detective outside a whodunit or the tube. I just happen to know this one—a little bit.”
Calvin looked puzzled. “You know this guy?”
I shrugged. “He plays hockey with my husband in a seniors’ league. I mean, they’re not senior citizens, they’re just over forty.”
“Ice hockey? In California? He can’t windsurf or bungee jump or something normal?”
“That’s almost precisely what Quentin used to say.”
Calvin peered past me, into Madame’s jungle-like hallway, lined with hanging ferns and dusty potted palms. He whispered, “Where are we? Who lives here?”
“Madam DeBurgos, Quentin’s neighbor. Well, obviously she’s his neighbor; but his friend, too. Could we go sit down? I’m feeling a little dizzy.”
“Maggie, darling,” called Madame.
“Coming,” I said, and I gestured for Calvin to follow. In a few minutes, she had us settled at her kitchen table, littered with a week’s worth of newspapers, back copies of Opera News, and several sticky jars of honey. She excused herself and returned from the sofa with a “just freshened-up” glass of Pernod.
Calvin cased the table. “She into bees?” he asked, looking at the honey.
“It’s for her instrument,” I whispered. “Her voice. She’s a singer.”
“Oh.”
Silence fell. The sound of Madame’s sniffles came from the living room.
“You found him?” asked Calvin.
I nodded.
“Jesus.” Calvin shook his head. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. But it looked as if—” I took a deep breath. “It looked as if somebody smacked him from behind with a walking stick.”
“A walking stick?”
I nodded. “From the umbrella stand. Quentin always kept a couple of walking sticks in there. I think they were his father’s.”
“Hey,” Calvin said. “I just got it. You’re Maggie Fiori? You write all those wiseass food and literary pieces, right?”
“Right.”
“I know your stuff. I like it.”
“Thanks.”
Silence. We looked at each other.
“Did you do it?” he asked.
“Kill Quentin? No! Jesus, what a question!” I bridled.
He managed a grin. “Just asking. Quentin didn’t always see eye-to-eye with his writers.”
“He was my pal.” I felt myself losing control. “He was a great editor and the best person in the world to have lunch with. And, besides.…” I stopped.
Calvin began patting his pockets. “Geez, my mom always told me to carry a handkerchief for moments like this.”
I sniffled and dug in my purse. “It’s okay. I’m a mom myself. I carry my own tissues.”
“You know,” said Calvin, “we were all supposed to have lunch together.”
“We were?”
“Yep. Quentin called this morning, told me his favorite feature writer was shedding her suburban disguise and coming to town for lunch and that I should come on over. He said he had something we should work on together. He said it was a perfect job for me and ‘the JIP’. You’re the JIP, aren’t you? The one Quentin calls the Jewish Italian Princess.”
I sniffled some more. “Suburban disguise. That’s not fair.”
Calvin licked his thumb, reached over and rubbed at my cheek.
“Your mascara’s running.”
“Thanks.”
“Let’s do it.”
“What?”
“Let’s get out of this…” he dropped his voice, “beehive mausoleum and have lunch. We’ll drink to Quent.”
It was an appalling thought. I was starved, though the thought of food made me feel nauseated all over again.
“I couldn’t eat anything,” I said.
“Fine,” said Calvin. “You can watch me eat—and you look like you could use a drink.”
“Or some hot tea,” I said faintly.
Calvin gave me an exasperated look. “I’ve seen these movies before—the person who discovers the body is supposed to have a belt of something.”
“This isn’t a movie,” I said.
His shoulders sagged. “I know. I’m just wising off ’cause this is all too weird for me. I’m sorry.” He looked stricken.
“It’s awful, but I mean, he wasn’t exactly my friend or anything. Were you guys close?”
“Something like that,” I said. And just like a bad movie montage, images of Quentin in a variety of settings flickered across my mind.
Calvin touched my cheek, “Hey, maybe you just need to be by yourself.”
Time alone? Time to keep that Quentin movie playing along in my brain? Absolutely not.
“You know what?” I said, “I’d love a drink.”
I stood up. “We have to talk to the cops before we go. Let’s get it over with.”
4
Liquid Lunch
It was almost three o’clock by the time Calvin and I walked into Pier 23 and claimed a minuscule table for our own.
We’d answered the inspector’s questions while a battalion of people from the coroner’s office swarmed over Quentin’s flat. When I asked if I could go back into the flat, Inspector Moon hesitated for a moment. Then he nodded and put his hand on my elbow and walked me across a crinkly plastic runner the cops had put down in the living room. I had the unshakable feeling he was watching my every breath. I crept over to Quentin’s body and stood there a minute. It was, after all, not the awful sight of his head that bothered me. It was his right hand, those perfect manicured fingers so still and so disengaged from everything they did well. I thought of that hand and all its past intimacies and felt cold in every part of me.
When I pulled myself together, I used my cell phone to make a brief condolence call to Claire, the “official” bereaved widow. Wasn’t much of a condolence call. More of an announcement call, met with Claire’s cool, “In the flat? He got himself murdered at home? Careless bastard,” before I handed the phone over to the inspector. I also called Small Town and broke the news that Quentin wouldn’t be back that afternoon—or ever. His assistant, Gertie Davies, became hysterical, so I asked for Glen Fox, Quent’s managing editor and old friend. Glen swore into the phone and then said he’d handle things at the office. I couldn’t figure out what to do about Stuart, Quentin’s companion. There was no sign of him. Moon said he’d wait for his return, so I scribbled a note to him and left it on the kitchen counter.
Calvin and I looked in on Madame DeBurgos. She was nestled on the rose velvet loveseat in her front room—much, I imagine, as a destroyer might nestle into a slip at the Marina—her glass still cradled close to her bosom. She didn’t sit up, but she opened an eye and presented Calvin with her hand to say goodbye. When we were halfway out the door, she summoned me back. “Maggie, come here, my dear, one tiny little second.”
I stood at the foot of the loveseat. “Yes, Madame?”
She waved her Pernod at me. “What a luscious young man, darling. Does Michael know? Do you have on
e of those open, continental marriages?”
“Madame! I just met him. We were supposed to do an assignment together for Quentin. We’re just going to get something to eat.”
“Mm-hmm, how lovely. Just remember what the French say—a spot of l’amour is delectable for the instrument.”
I snapped, “Which French proverb is that? I must have missed it.” I was cranky, headachy, and, now that Calvin had introduced the idea, badly in need of a drink.
“It doesn’t translate well, my dear. Just run off and have a lovely time. Think of me, though, in the throes of passion.”
Instead, we thought of Madame in the throes of cracked Dungeness crab at Pier 23. Actually, that’s how Calvin did his thinking. I did mine over a very handsome shot of Wild Turkey. It burned going down, but didn’t come back up again, to my relief and surprise. And then, I did order a pot of English breakfast tea, strong and black, and proceeded to watch Calvin eat. I couldn’t imagine how he had an appetite, but just watching him work his way through a cracked crab made me feel better. The sheer messiness of it was a kind of sensuous re-acquaintance with the business of being hungry—and being alive.
At night, Pier 23 jumps with jazz and jazz-lovers. But during the day, there’s just food and drink and gossip, all delivered at ear-splitting decibel levels. If you go to make a phone call or use the restroom, there’s a terrific view of the bay from the back porch. By the time Calvin had reduced his crustacean to rubble and I was on my second pot of tea, the place was almost deserted. I began breaking off pieces of sourdough bread, just to put something in my stomach.
To tell the truth, the events of the day—Quentin’s body, finding out that Michael’s hockey buddy was a homicide cop, a big dose of Madame, and bourbon on an empty stomach—were conspiring to make me the tiniest bit giddy. Suddenly, I sat straight up.
“The children!”
Calvin laughed. “I wasn’t even sure we’d gotten beyond the first date. Are we already committed to reproducing ourselves?”
I glared at him. “No, I’ve already done it. Excuse me.”
I picked my way through the tables and squeezed by the Rubenesque hostess to find a quiet nook to make a call. I needed more privacy than sitting at the table to talk on the phone.
Anya was home. She’d picked up the boys and was making a desultory tour through the refrigerator to start dinner.
“Anya, I’m still in the city.” I re-described how to roast a chicken. What could go wrong with roast chicken?
“Maggie, Lily is visiting from next door and she wants the boys and the cats to come play Nintendo.”
I got a life-size picture of my little ruffians following Lily’s every command in front of the screen. Her two years of seniority over Josh, enormous vocabulary, and willingness to share her electronic paraphernalia gave her near-complete control over my boys. I didn’t mind, though; she was a benevolent despot and a great civilizing influence. “Fine, but no snacks past five. I’ll be home before seven.”
I hung up and called Michael’s office. His secretary said she hadn’t seen him since before lunch. “He has a client back here at four-thirty. He should be here any minute,” she said. I couldn’t imagine leaving any of the day’s events on his voice mail, so I simply left a message that dinner was at seven and I’d see him at home.
When I returned to the table, the waitress had cleared away the rubble and brought two china mugs of coffee. It smelled delicious. “I decided it was time for you to move on from that wimpy-ass tea,” said Calvin.
I held my cup aloft. “We haven’t done what we said we’d do. So here goes: To Quentin, wherever he may be—and whyever he’s there.”
Calvin clinked mugs with me.
“Get the kids straightened out?”
“Yes, fine. They’re playing Nintendo with the little tyrant from next door.”
“So Maggie, who did it?”
For a moment, the sight of Quentin’s crumpled body—face down on his desk, blood Rorschach-like on the desk—came back to me. The table, the restaurant, even Calvin—everything seemed hostile and dangerous. I stood, a little unsteadily, and grabbed for the edge of the table.
“I’ve got to go.” I put my hand out. “It’s nice to meet you. Thanks for lunch.”
Calvin ignored my hand. “Sit down. You’re looking a little green around the gills.”
I sat. “Yo’ mama,” I said glumly.
“What?”
“Yo’ mama. It’s an answer in the dozens. It’s the black equivalent of ‘so’s your old man.’ Only worse.” I peered at Calvin and gestured. “You know—you keep exchanging and accelerating insults. Why am I explaining this to you? I’m the honky here.”
“I know what the dozens are. I just don’t know how to do them. How do you know how to do the dozens?”
“I grew up knowing how. I was a tough kid. The wrong side of L.A.” I took a sip of coffee. Suddenly, I felt better. The image of Quentin’s body began to recede. The world—or at least the restaurant and Calvin—seemed friendlier, familiar. No bodies would pop up here between the upright piano and the screen that hid the noisy, warmly fragrant kitchen.
“So if you didn’t grow up with the dozens, how do you know what they are?”
Calvin grinned. “Black Lit. I took a course at Stanford. Learned how to be cool. Going to private schools and growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs doesn’t teach you any of that stuff.”
I laughed. “That’s a great testimonial to your alma mater. Go to Stanford. Get in touch with your roots. I bet the Senator and Mrs. Stanford had just that thing in mind for privileged black students.”
“Senator Stanford had never even heard of privileged black students. Now, Mrs. Jane, that might have been a different story. But I’m glad to hear you laugh. You looked a little panicked a few minutes ago.”
I shivered. “I remembered Quentin. What he looked like lying there.”
Calvin spoke, “So let’s talk about it. What the hell happened?”
I shook my head. “I can’t imagine. And that’s just the beginning of the questions. Why did it happen? Why Quentin? And where’s Stuart? And what about Madame? She’s supposed to be an ex-paramour.”
Calvin shuddered. “What a thought. Enough to put you off girls for life.”
“I think that might be just what it did for Quentin,” I said. “That, combined with marriage all those years to the lovely Mrs. Quentin.”
“I don’t think so. I’m not sure, but somehow I think there was still a woman in Quentin’s life.”
I rearranged the salt and pepper shakers. “Did you know?” I asked idly, “that the word ‘salt’ has origins in European, Icelandic, Greek, and Gothic roots?”
“Huh? Maggie, are you paying attention to me? I said I thought there might be some other woman in Quent’s life.”
I fixed my eyes on the salt and pepper, lining them up just so. “Why do you think that? I didn’t think you knew him that well,” I asked.
“I don’t. And it’s certainly nothing he said. Just a feeling. One day I dropped some proofs off, and we walked out of Small Town’s offices up the street to lunch. Quent couldn’t tear himself away from that antique jewelry store on Sutter. I don’t think he was looking at earrings for himself, or that guy he lives with. You know anybody?”
I took a swallow of coffee. “Not really.”
“There’s something else,” said Calvin. “Wasn’t Quentin a little mysterious about this story he wanted us to do?”
“He was. I thought he was just trying to do me a favor with this piece. I’d been bitching that I was sick of the cooks-and-books circuit I was on.”
“Cooks and books?”
“Oh, you know. Lisbet Traumer does the restaurant reviews for the magazine, but I do all the peripheral food stuff—101 places to buy capers and cornichons, and interviews with every precious little Eastern writer who comes to town.”
“Oh, yeah. The Maggie Fiori Blue-Plate specials.”
“Right. Well,
I was having an attack of ‘I want to be a real journalist when I grow up,’ and Quentin told me he had just the thing for me.”
“The Cock of the Walk story?”
“That’s what we were supposed to work on together?”
“That’s what Quentin told me.”
A shadow fell across the table. The hostess, a generously proportioned walking advertisement for the excellence of the Pier 23 cuisine, was hovering.
“Excuse me. I’m sorry to interrupt such a pleasant tête-à-tête, but we need to close to get ready for dinner.”
Out on the street, Calvin put his arm around me. “Tête-à-tête,” he mused aloud. “That I did learn in the Philly suburbs.”
“Yeah?” I said, ready to one-up him. “Here’s a twist for you. Tête-à-tête is ‘head-to-head’, of course, but how about tête-à-bêche?”
“Head to tail? Sounds like a French pornographic documentary.”
“No, no. It’s something in philately: two stamps reversed in relation to each other.”
Calvin shook his head. “My, my, you are full of information.”
I sighed. “I know. It’s my hobby, or my obsession, or something. None of it’s very useful, I’m afraid. It won’t help find out what happened to Quent.”
We lingered, not sure what to do next. It’s tough to find a body, lose a friend, meet someone new, get mildly snockered, sober up, and say goodbye in the space of four hours.
“Give me your card, Maggie,” said Calvin. “As a general rule, I know that’s not what people do after a tête-à-tête, but I think we should keep in touch.”
“Me, too.” I dug in my purse for a card, checked it for shopping lists on the back, and handed it over.
Calvin looked at the card and looked back at me.
“Margaret? Your first name is Margaret?”
“That’s generally what Maggie is short for, isn’t it?”
“Well, yeah. But Margaret seems like a weird name for a Jewish chick.”
“It is,” I said. “But I was born in a Catholic hospital, before smoking became the eighth deadly sin. The nun who took care of my mom during labor kept a pack of Old Golds in the pocket of her habit. She’d light up and let my mom have a puff or two between contractions. My mom was so grateful she named me for her. I guess I’m just lucky she didn’t name me Goldie, in honor of the smokes.”
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