“Did he give you a hint?”
“No. He was in a hurry.”
“Of course he was.” Kovitz never ceases to let me down.
“But,” Charlie repeats, “he’s going to tell me more tomorrow.”
“Let’s just hope that he doesn’t change his mind,” I say.
“Don’t worry. I know how to get anything out of Phil Kovitz,” Charlie assures me.
“How are you getting this stuff out of him?”
“Kovitz is partial to Jack and soda, and he thinks he can hold his alcohol better than he can. And so, after three of them I told him that I was a big fan of Humphrey Dawson movies and that I had always had a little thing for Polly.”
Oh, that’s a point of vulnerability for me, but I must press forward.
“And then what did he say?”
“He said that I wasn’t the only one and then suddenly he started opening up to me, telling me that Polly slept around quite a bit and that she did it right on the movie set.”
I think back to when I followed Polly at Silvercup Studios. I saw the hair flipping, the lip biting, and the flirting, but really nothing else. I guess I’m not the detective I thought I was.
“Apparently she was caught the day before her murder with one of the stars, Ian Leighton, in the hull of the boat used for the film.”
My first thought: That sounds so unappetizing. The movie is about a lobster-fishing family.
So she did have a thing with Ian Leighton. And I missed it. But Ian does work fast. Everybody at Mona Hawkins Casting knew it. First, there was a story floating around that Ian had actually slept with Mona. I couldn’t believe it until I had a conversation with Julia Wechsler, one of Mona’s nineteen-year-old interns, who had slept with Ian a few times. He dumped her without warning; she couldn’t understand his behavior.
“The man is a sex addict,” she told me after she’d been in therapy for three months and was completely over him. “Attractiveness doesn’t make a difference. Mona was there and she was probably touching him. It was inappropriate for Ian to sleep with the casting director, which fueled his need to have sex with her.”
“Gross,” the Janus-faced Jed Rausch had said.
I had met several girls who had been Ian’s victims. He made them feel incredibly special for short periods of time and then moved on. I always wondered why Ian never made a move on me. He hit on practically everyone else in our office. I secretly wondered if I was so undesirable that a sex addict wouldn’t hit on me.
“You have nothing to do with it.” Julia, who had become something of an expert on the topic, had read my mind. “It’s about him. It’s about the danger and the inappropriateness of it. You and Ian are roughly the same age. That makes it less exciting for him.” Julia explained that the fact that Ian was in a “committed” relationship with someone else increased his need for sex.
Now that Ian is single, he’s probably more drawn to married women. And with Polly, married—to his director no less—and flirting, one thing led to another.
But on a movie set?
“I wonder what kind of perversity leads someone to be so cruel as to flaunt their infidelity.”
“Maybe she wanted attention,” Charlie says.
“Or maybe she was just really selfish,” I say, speaking ill of the dead. I realize that I still dislike Polly. She’s the one who got me into trouble in the first place.
I get back to Kovitz.
“Did he tell you if he knows when Polly last saw Ian Leighton?” I ask.
“According to Leighton, the night before she was murdered.”
“So, Polly was cheating on her lover.”
“The guy from the Chinese restaurant?” Charlie asks.
“The very one. And I know Ian Leighton. He is nothing like the young buck from downtown.”
“But maybe Mr. Leighton could have angered your young buck,” Charlie says.
“He is so not my young buck. And Ian would not have been looking to steal Polly for any extended period of time. That’s not his MO,” I tell him. “But the young buck would not know that. Ian, if you don’t know his backstory, is hot and successful. The young guy could have felt threatened. Very threatened. Suspect Number Three is looking good.”
I remember to follow up on Jean’s lead.
“Did you ask him if Humphrey was faithful?”
“I did, and he told me that to the best of his knowledge, Humphrey was. He hadn’t heard anything to the contrary.”
Anything to the contrary? Helllllooo? “What about the tip from Preston Hayes that Humphrey had a girlfriend?” I knew I was a better investigator than Phil Kovitz.
“I couldn’t tell him that I knew about the tip because he’d get suspicious, but he said that he definitely heard nothing about Humphrey being unfaithful. In fact, he heard quite the opposite. Humphrey was very devoted.”
I’ve got to press Jean on this. She seemed fairly certain that Preston said that he had given the cops a tip. Maybe he said that he was going to give them a tip some time in the future. But I don’t want to dwell on this.
“So?” I change the subject. “When are you meeting?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Around what time?” I ask, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.
“Why are you so curious?” I think he is a little suspicious.
“Why am I so curious?” I buy a little time so I can figure out why I’m so curious. “Because my future is at stake.”
“Noon.”
“Noon it is,” I say under my breath.
Charlie and I are getting dressed. Not together, unfortunately. But we could be twins. I’m wearing his jeans, his down jacket, his flannel shirt, his hat, his gloves, and even his sneakers. Charlie gave me a pair of his old blue Nikes, and I stuffed the tips with toilet paper. I’m sure I’m doing permanent orthopedic damage.
“What are your plans, exactly?” Charlie asks.
We head out his front door. It’s snowing and his tree-lined street is blanketed in white. In other circumstances, we could be a Christmas card, Charlie and I. But Christmas is over, and I’m on the run.
To stay with you until I’m exonerated, and then get married.
I explain to Charlie, as we muddle through the flakes, that I’m off to follow a new lead. And although my outfit provides some camouflage, I’m worried that she’s going to think she’s being stalked by a boy.
“I don’t know, Alice. If you look really hard you can see the contours of a woman’s body.”
Is Charlie suggesting that he is looking hard at my contours? I blush.
“Stop making me so self-conscious. My lack of self-consciousness is why no one has ever caught me.”
“I caught you,” Charlie says quickly.
“Maybe I’m too self-conscious in your presence.” I decide to withhold any explanation of this comment and instead enjoy the awkwardness of the moment.
We walk our separate ways. At least for a moment we do. I’ve convinced Charlie that I’m walking across Central Park. Charlie’s heading down to meet Kovitz in Chinatown. They’ve agreed to meet at Mee-Hop at noon.
Charlie heads into the restaurant. I follow him. This is a particularly difficult task, given that Charlie knows my hobby and I am wearing his clothes. But I’m here, and I’m rather enjoying this challenge.
Kovitz is there. From what I can see, he and Charlie have a warm relationship. That doesn’t surprise me. Charlie’s a very nice person. If anyone can get to Kovitz, it’s Charlie.
The two eat their lunch: vegetarian chow mei fun and vegetable hot and sour soup. Charlie told me last night that Kovitz was a vegetarian.
“I would never have guessed that,” I told him.
“People are full of surprises,” he said. “Who would have known you were a murderer?”
What can I say? I love this man.
I don’t even know why I’m here. Mee-Hop is extraordinarily loud and I dare not remove my hat. Plus, Kovitz and Charlie are speaking in soft voices
. At times like this, Jaime Sommers and her bionic ear could come in handy.
Kovitz is obviously risking his career to confide in Charlie. This makes me love Charlie even more. I wonder what it would be like to wake up with him in the morning. I mean in his bed. Looking at him.
“Alice.”
He will say my name.
“Alice.”
He will say it again.
“Alice. Why are you dressed like that?”
Okay. This isn’t my fantasy. That voice is real and it isn’t Charlie’s.
“Roger.” He says it. Not me.
Oh, no. I try to look down.
“Alice. It’s Roger. From Justin and Felisha’s New Year’s party. If I recall, you are my New Year’s resolution.”
If I recall, my resolution was to get myself out of my mess. Roger’s doing nothing to help matters. He’s blocking my view of Charlie and Kovitz. More significantly, he has a booming voice. And he just blasted my name in front of the cop who has it out for me.
“Alice, don’t you think it’s kismet that we reconnected?”
“Huh?” If I go to jail, it’s going to be this loser’s fault.
“Alice, can you hear me?”
And if I go to jail, this guy’s going to be my only visitor.
“I thought we connected on New Year’s Eve. And wow. You look great. The boy outfit on you is kinda sexy. I always knew you were a woman of mystery.”
He always knew? The man met me for six minutes.
He is still talking.
“If I didn’t know any better, I would say you are working undercover.”
I laugh uncertainly.
“There you go. I just got you to smile. That’s because we have something, you and me. And that something is called chemistry.”
I am for a second tempted to scream Kovitz’s name and throw myself upon the mercy of the court. The room is spinning and my heart is beating in my ear.
“We had this moment.”
Roger’s voice is booming now.
“But then, Alice, you were out of there so fast.”
“Like this,” I say.
I put a ten-dollar bill on the table and run out onto the street as fast as I can.
Roger doesn’t follow me. But from the street I hear him shouting my name over and over again.
I’m in a lot of trouble.
I’m in Charlie’s living room when he returns. Dr. Michael Ledyard, the man who claims to cure gay people, is on Oprah promoting his book The Way: Part Two. I have never seen Oprah so angry. She uses the word “inauthentic” a lot and she directs it toward the “doctor.” His theory is that if you live as if you are straight, you are straight. And if living this way is hard, life is hard. He has brought several guests to the show. There they are all lined up, claiming to be cured of their sexual “oddities.” They all look as if they could be in the chorus of La Cage aux Folles, but there they are, each limply holding the hand of a female companion.
Charlie bursts in. “Alice,” he says, half Ricky Ricardo, half Jackie Gleason.
“Yes,” I say innocently.
“What was the point of that?” He’s referring to my presence at Mee-Hop.
“I don’t know,” I say truthfully. “I guess that I wanted to be in on it?”
“How much more in on it could you be? You are the number-one suspect in a murder case.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. I’m quite somber.
Silence.
“Really sorry.” More somber still.
More silence. I change my approach.
“I’m the level of sorry that I have to be to find out what you learned from Kovitz.”
“Alice. This isn’t funny,” Charlie says. “I’m going out on enough of a limb by harboring a fugitive. And now I don’t know if you have some sort of death wish for us. You’re lucky Kovitz had a couple of drinks in him.”
“You’re right,” I say.
Silence. This time I know not to say anything. Charlie’s face softens before he speaks. Phew. I knew we’d be fine.
“I forgive you. I have to, because this is really good.”
I can taste my freedom. “Do tell.”
“Remember when Jean told us that she knew a lawyer who said Polly was looking to sell her company?”
“Yes,” I say, almost breathless.
“Before she was ready to sell, she was engaging in some illegal activity. I’m not really sure what she was doing, but she ended up as an informant for the government.”
An informant.
“Like a spy?” I ask.
“Sort of. It seems that Polly was doing business with a big Wall Street muckety-muck who was getting greedy. She was about to sell her company to a big retail organization. She was knee-deep in an insider-trading scam when the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office nailed her. To avoid prosecution, she agreed to cooperate. She was going to rat on this big white-collar criminal. The government wanted him way more than her.
“A first tender offer was scheduled for days after her death. She had told this guy about the offer, and he was going to invest at twelve dollars a share when the market share was twenty dollars. She’d gotten him to agree to split the difference.”
I don’t say anything. Why is all of this sounding so familiar to me? I can’t quite place it.
“Who’s the muckety-muck?” I say, borrowing Charlie’s quaint verbiage.
Charlie sits at his computer and starts typing. “His name is Ralston Brown. He’s pretty famous.”
Charlie types in the letters R-A-L-S-T-O-N. A picture pops up.
“There he is.”
My heart stops. “It’s him. It’s him. That’s the library guy.”
“What are you talking about?” Charlie asks me.
“That’s the guy from the library. Suspect Number Four. The one I said had a relationship with Polly. Now it makes sense.”
“To you,” Charlie says. “I have no idea what you are talking about.”
I reach into my pocket and I show Charlie. 12/20 Tender Dutch.
“You see, I pulled this out of the card-catalog drawer. Polly had written it for the guy, but for some reason he left it there. I thought it was a love note. I thought they were going to make tender love on December 20 and either they each pay for the date or they would fly to Amsterdam. But it is clear: The tender offer was for twenty-dollar shares and an inside price of twelve dollars. And Dutch means—”
“Dutch means that she offered to split the profit with him,” Charlie says.
“Huh?” Reason Number 235 that I should have taken Economics in college.
“If Ralston Brown hadn’t been on the inside of the deal, he would have had to pay twenty dollars per share of Principessa. As an insider, she was offering him a huge discount, a huge illegal discount of twelve dollars. He saves eight dollars per share. But not really, because he has to split the eight dollars—”
“Oh. So she gets four dollars of every eight that he saves?”
“Precisely, my dear Watson,” he says warmly.
“Hey. How come I’m Watson?”
“Because Sherlock is the one who knows the basic principles of insider trading.”
Fair enough.
“So this wasn’t an affair at all?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
“But I was right that there was something between the two of them. I just thought it was something romantic, when it was really something criminal.”
“So the thought is that Ralston may have been so angry with Polly that he killed her?”
If there were a big cartoon lightbulb over my head right now, I wouldn’t be surprised. I’m picturing the e-mail to Polly at [email protected], the one that says “I am way ahead of you, princess, we’re off.”
Way ahead of her. As in he knew she was going to send him up the river for the rest of his life. That’s a motive to kill.
I tell Charlie that Suspect Number Four, Ralston Brown, may have implicated himself on the World Wide Web.
>
“Looks that way,” Charlie says unenthusiastically.
He’s not looking in my direction.
“Walter,” I say. When he’s wearing his stern face, I use only his real name.
He doesn’t respond.
“You’re angry with me, aren’t you?”
“I am,” he says without emotion.
“I’m really sorry that I waited so long to tell you about the note.”
“Alice, you make it sound as if you volunteered the information out of the blue. If I hadn’t told you about this information from Kovitz, you would never have told me about the note.”
He’s right.
“Sorry,” I say pathetically.
“I don’t want sorry. I want to rethink this partnership. I’m not sure I trust you.”
I want to tell Charlie that he’s mistaken, that I’d take a bullet for him. Instead, I don’t say anything.
“I don’t trust you, Alice, because you don’t trust me. I went to lunch with Kovitz this afternoon, and you followed me. Even though I gave you all the information that he gave me. But you weren’t equally forthcoming. You kept this note from me for some reason. It makes me wonder what other information you’re withholding.”
“I kept the note from you because I was embarrassed.”
“You were embarrassed about the note?”
“I didn’t want you to think I was that nosy.”
“You’ve got to be kidding. You stalk a woman for weeks and weeks, following her every move, and you don’t want me to think you’re nosy?”
“N-not just nosy. I used the term ‘that nosy.’ Somehow, I drew the distinction between following Polly and reading her mail. Reading the note seemed more intrusive. I didn’t want you to think I had boundary issues.”
Charlie starts laughing. I want to defend my statement, but I realize I’m ridiculous. Of course I’m intrusive. Of course I have boundary issues. I start laughing, too. My laughter makes Charlie laugh more. I realize I’ve never seen him in this state. At best, generally, he looks amused. I feel very close to him right now.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I do trust you. It wasn’t about trust.”
“I think I understand,” he says, “but why don’t we agree that we’ll tell each other everything, good and bad?”
Following Polly Page 20