“It’s possible.”
“Yeah, great, but who did it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was she a hooker?”
“No.”
“So we’re not talking some Shriner with a mean streak?”
“No, nothing like that.”
Scarelli thought about it for a moment. “What was her name?”
“Sarah Rosen.”
“Jewish girl,” Scarelli mused. “Could have been a twisty little thing.” He smiled. “That’s something, at least.”
“She was starving,” Corman said. “She’d been selling blood to feed the doll. There were empty cans of Similac all over the place. She was living in a burn-out.”
Scarelli handed Corman the picture, leaned forward and dropped the side of his face into his open hand. “Could it be that this kid just got a screw loose somewhere along the way?”
Corman glanced at the picture hopelessly. “Maybe.”
Scarelli grinned impishly. “Well, that’s the way it is with a lot of things, right?”
“So, you’re not interested at all?” Corman asked.
Scarelli hedged a moment. “Well, that’s not exactly what I’m saying.”
“What is?”
“What you need is a suspect, Corman,” Scarelli told him. “It doesn’t have to be that solid. You can finesse that sort of thing.”
“Finesse?” Corman asked. “Finesse what?”
“The mystery element,” Scarelli said. He took a swig from the glass. “A mystery element’s what I need. If I had that, I could invest some time.” He shrugged. “The rest is nothing to cheer about.”
“Okay,” Corman said.
Scarelli leaned back and looked at him carefully. “Now as far as this mystery thing is concerned. Come clean, okay? You got anything or not?”
“Just the button.”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it’s early,” Scarelli said almost to himself. “These things take time.”
“I don’t have any time,” Corman told him.
“You don’t?” Scarelli asked. “How come?”
Corman didn’t feel like going into his own troubles. “Nothing,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Well, I’ll tell you this,” Scarelli said. “If you get something good, I could run with it mucho pronto.” He laughed. “You know what they call me in the trade? Deadline Scarelli. You know why?”
Corman shook his head.
“Because I’m a professional,” Scarelli said. “I get my stories in when I say I’ll get them in. Nothing stops me. Booze, women, forget it. Some movie star butt-naked wouldn’t matter to me if I was working a deadline.” He glanced toward the television monitor that faced him from across the room. “Not even the ponies.”
Corman leaned toward him. “If I came up with a suspect, something interesting, how long would it take for you to get a deal?”
Scarelli kept his eyes on the monitor. The horses were at the starting gate. “The track’s pretty wet,” he said to himself. “Have to watch a couple races to figure out the bias.”
“A day?” Corman asked insistently. “A week?”
Scarelli looked at him. “With Deadline Scarelli?” he said with a wink. “The fall of a sparrow, my man, the blink of an eye.”
The bell rang at Belmont, sending the horses slogging across the wet track. Scarelli’s eyes immediately swept over to the television monitor. “The blink of an eye,” he repeated absently, his own eyes locked on the horses’ flight.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
GROTON WAS SITTING in one of the enormous high-backed chairs which dotted the lobby of the Waldorf. Plush carpet spread out in all directions. Two huge porcelain vases rested on either side of the lobby, both of them overflowing with sprays of silk flowers. As Corman strolled across the lobby, it was hard for him to imagine that the place itself had once been a potter’s field, and after that, the site of a women’s hospital. Much was buried under the marble floor, deeply buried. Except for still surviving photographs, it was all beyond recall.
Groton had taken a chair near one of the vases. He looked as if he’d been sent down to make sure no one used it for an ashtray.
“You the guy they sent?” he asked as Corman came up to him.
Corman nodded and sat down.
“So you talked to Pike?”
“Yeah.”
Groton took a long drag on his cigarette. “He tell you the problem?”
“Yeah, he did.”
“I told him he could do that,” Groton said. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“No.”
Groton shrugged. “Even before I knew, you know, for sure, I said to myself that I was going to take it like a man. What else can you do?”
Corman smiled quietly.
“Nobody’s problem but mine, anyway,” Groton added. “I never connected, you know? You got a kid, right?”
“A daughter.”
“That’s good,” Groton said with a casual nod. “Somebody to do the crying for you.” He crushed the cigarette vehemently into the stainless steel ashtray beside his chair, lit another, glanced at his watch. “They’ll be having us in pretty soon.”
“Having us in?”
“Inviting us to the party,” Groton told him. “You wait until everything’s set up. That’s the way it’s done.” He thought a moment. “And another thing, there’ll be a shitload of food spread around. Don’t eat any of it until you’re invited to. They usually invite you, but wait until they do. A beat like this, you got to have manners.” He took another long drag on the cigarette and let his eyes drift from Corman’s shoes to the hat that still rested unsteadily on his head. “And spruce up a little for this kind of gig,” he added. “Brush the dust off your jacket. It’s not like the street. These people, they’re what you might call fashion-conscious, you know? I mean, you don’t see a chauffeur in a sweatshirt, right?”
Corman nodded.
“And another thing about the food,” Groton added. “Don’t eat too much. Don’t make like it’s your meal of the day. Just a nibble, to be sociable. But don’t gobble the stuff. You look like an asshole, you do that.”
“Okay.”
“These are just the tips of the trade,” Groton said. “That’s what you want, right?”
“Yeah.”
Groton glanced about, chewed his lip, turned back to Corman. “You got to get along with the society reporters, too,” he said. “Whoever it is, you got to make like they’re top notch, really know how to move with the upscale crowd, you know? One thing you notice, they get to believing that they’re really one of the bunch, not just people who tell the rest of the world what the rich are doing, but one of the group themselves. That’s bullshit, and the shooter never falls for it. It’s the writers who get sucked into that, but you got to play to it, anyway.”
“All right,” Corman said, then listened as Groton continued on with the rules of the game. He tried to imagine what Lazar would have said in the same situation. But Lazar had never been in the same situation, had never had anything to think about but his camera. He’d lived in a small furnished room just off Times Square, had slept in his clothes, listening for the next voice on the police radio, and leaped up the instant it called to him. He had lived with only the streets as his companion, lover, wife, child, everything. He had nursed the streets, loved them, pitied them. They were in his eyes, mind and heart. He had grown old in his devotion; it had become a state of grace.
“Never more than one glass of champagne,” Groton said. “They see you swilling the good stuff, they might mention it to somebody. And I don’t mean to some greaseball from the City Room. These people don’t know him from the shoeshine boy. They don’t know the people who work at the paper, they know the people who fucking own it.” He tapped the side of his head with his index finger. “You got to remember that.”
Again, Corman nodded, and for the next few minutes the t
wo of them sat silently while people swept past them, heading for their rooms or in the opposite direction, toward the large revolving door which led to Park Avenue.
Stuart Clayton came up slowly, his long, slender body draped in an elegant blue double-breasted suit. “You ready, Harry?” he asked.
Groton pulled himself to his feet. “Anytime, Stuart,” he said. “Hey, by the way, you know David Corman?”
Clayton’s eyes shifted over to him. “I don’t think so.”
“He’s a free-lance shooter,” Groton said. “He may be taking over my job.”
“Really?” Clayton said. He offered Corman his hand, shook it, looked back at Groton. “I didn’t know you were leaving the paper.”
“In a couple of weeks,” Groton said, adding nothing else.
“Retirement?” Clayton asked.
Groton shrugged. “I guess that’s what they call it.” He headed off toward the ballroom. “Let’s get going.”
They walked to the ballroom immediately, and for the next few minutes, Corman strolled about, taking in the surroundings, the long tables, filled with hors d’oeuvres, the fully stocked bar, the enormous flower arrangements which stood here and there throughout the room. In the old city, the Fifth Avenue mansions had had ballrooms of their own, sleek marble corridors where the Fricks and the Vanderbilts ate, laughed and made deals across glittering ice sculptures of slopenecked swans. Now they gathered at the Waldorf, the Plaza, the Pierre, their ranks swollen by the well-dressed security men who lined the floral walls, glancing about apprehensively while they spoke softly into the little microphones that winked from their lapels.
It was late in the afternoon by the time the last of the guests had drifted out of the ballroom, but Groton was still shooting, his body craning for this shot, stooping for the next one. There was an obsessive quality to it which Corman found alarming. It was as if Groton were trying to get one last shot of everything he saw, repeatedly taking one picture after another until he’d photographed every face in the room a hundred times, every square inch of carpeting or wall space, every petal of every flower.
Finally Corman caught up with him and touched his shoulder. “Clayton left a long time ago,” he said.
Groton crouched at the edge of a table, focused on a small porcelain tureen and snapped the picture.
“Everybody’s gone,” Corman added softly.
Groton straightened himself, turned to Corman. “Everybody but us,” he said.
“Time for us to go, too, Harry.”
Groton nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said with a sudden weariness. He slung the camera over his shoulder and headed for the door.
The rain had started again by the time they reached the wide entrance to the hotel. Up the avenue, a fountain was spurting its white frothy torrent. For a moment, Groton watched it expressionlessly.
“It wasn’t a bad party,” Corman said, to lighten the atmosphere.
Groton said nothing, his eyes still on the distant fountain.
“Well, I got to go,” Corman said after a moment. He turned up his collar and stepped out from beneath the wide sheltering canopy.
Groton’s eyes darted over to him, intense, wondering, as if he’d just heard something he could not possibly believe or any longer doubt. “I got two more shoots,” he said urgently. “And that’s it.”
Corman glanced back toward him, felt the rain drumming on his hat.
“One on Wednesday, one on Friday,” Groton added.
Corman smiled. “Maybe I’ll come along.”
Groton’s face brightened very briefly, then sank again. “Up to you,” he said.
The Bull and Bear was only around the corner from the Waldorf, but by the time Corman got there he was drenched. A slender stream of water spilled over the brim of his hat as he took it off, shook it gently, then hung it up beside the table which Jeffrey had already taken.
“I don’t think it’s ever going to let up,” Jeffrey said amiably.
Corman eased himself into a chair and glanced at the speckled marble table which separated him from Jeffrey.
“Care for a drink?” Jeffrey asked.
“Scotch.”
“Any particular kind?”
Corman gave him a chilly smile. “Why don’t you order for me, Jeffrey.”
Jeffrey looked at him glumly. “I didn’t mean that to sound pretentious.”
Corman glanced away and said nothing.
“I guess we’ve started off badly,” Jeffrey said.
“Looks that way.”
Jeffrey offered a tentative smile. “So, shall we start again?”
Corman looked at him and nodded.
“Well, is there any particular brand you’d prefer?”
“I usually settle for the house brand,” Corman said. “If you know a better one, order it.”
Jeffrey nodded for the waiter. He appeared instantly. “A Glenlivet for both of us,” Jeffrey said to him.
The waiter vanished.
Jeffrey tested another smile, didn’t like the feel of it and grew solemn. “I hope this can be a profitable talk, David,” he said hesitantly.
“Me, too.”
“I understand that Edgar spoke to you.”
“That’s right.”
“About Lexie.”
“Lucy.”
“I mean, Lexie’s concerns.”
“Yeah, he talked to me,” Corman said. He tugged his collar down, felt a trickle of rainwater make a jagged dive down his back.
“And I understand that you’re meeting Lexie on Saturday night?”
Corman nodded.
The waiter returned, placed the drinks in front of them and disappeared again.
Jeffrey lifted his glass. “Cheers,” he said.
Corman nodded and drank. “So what’s on your mind, Jeffrey?”
Jeffrey shifted uneasily in his seat. Behind him, a lighted tickertape machine was running off the closing prices from the New York Stock Exchange. American Telephone and Telegraph was up an eighth, but things didn’t look good for the steel industry.
“Lexie is quite unhappy these days,” Jeffrey said softly, casting an eye about quickly to make sure only the anonymous strangers in the Bull and Bear were in earshot.
“She is?”
“Yes,” Jeffrey said. “Particularly about Lucy.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Well, she’s worried about a great many things,” Jeffrey said. “I’m sure Edgar mentioned a few of them.”
“She doesn’t like my apartment,” Corman said coolly. “Lucy’s school, she doesn’t like that.”
“She wants the best for her, David,” Jeffrey said sincerely. “She really does. She wants to protect her.”
“From what? Me?”
Jeffrey laughed nervously. “You? Of course not.”
“The bottom line is that she gave me custody,” Corman said bluntly.
“That’s true.”
“And now she wants custody herself.”
“Yes,” Jeffrey admitted. “I think that’s what she wants.”
“And you’re here to persuade me.”
Jeffrey looked at him, puzzled. “What?”
“I said, you’re here to persuade me,” Corman repeated.
“Persuade you to what?”
“To give Lucy up.”
Jeffrey’s face relaxed. He laughed. “Well, no,” he said. “Not exactly.”
Corman watched him, confused.
“I’m not here to try to get Lucy,” Jeffrey said, still chuckling to himself. “Just the opposite.”
“What?”
“Well, as you can see by my hair, David,” Jeffrey said, finally bringing his laughter to an end, “I’m not getting any younger.” He shifted his head to the right, so that the abundant gray could catch the light. “And, as you know, I already have three children by my first wife.”
Corman nodded. He had never met Jeffrey’s first wife, but he had seen her picture from time to time in the soc
iety pages of the paper. She had the look of a woman who had once been beautiful, but whose skin had now dried to a wrinkled crisp, her lips curling down, sagging, along with what was left of her self-esteem.
“I’m fifty-three, David,” Jeffrey announced. “And to tell you the truth, males in my family are notoriously short-lived.”
Corman stared at him expressionlessly.
“My father died when he was sixty-three,” Jeffrey added. “And his father was even younger, fifty-eight.” He shook his head. “Those are biological facts, and in my estimation, they are very good predictors of one’s own life span.”
Corman leaned toward him and stared at him intently. “So what are you getting at?”
“Well, the fact is, when I married Lexie, I didn’t bargain for the possibility of a second round of parenthood.”
“So you don’t want Lucy?” Corman asked.
“Well, that’s not exactly it”
“What is?”
“I want to ease Lexie’s mind,” Jeffrey said. “About Lucy’s surroundings.”
“How could you do that?”
“I’d like to help with some of the expenses,” Jeffrey told him.
“What expenses?”
“Yours, David,” Jeffrey said. “And Lucy’s. The rent, maybe a private school for Lucy, things like that.”
Corman felt his lips part involuntarily and closed them.
Jeffrey leaned forward slightly, fidgeting with the napkin. “I’m a wealthy man,” he said. “I have everything but time. That’s the one thing I’m not rich in.” He took another drink of scotch. “I believe that these are my last years, David, and I want to live them well. I care about Lucy. I really do. And I certainly care about Lexie. I want both of them to be happy, but I don’t want both of them in my house.” He shrugged. “I’m being very frank. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” Corman said.
“I’m being selfish, I admit it,” Jeffrey added. “Lexie is a beautiful woman, and I want her to myself.” He lifted the glass again, downed the rest of the scotch. “So there you have it.”
Corman’s eyes drifted up to the ticker-tape scoreboard. If he had money, he realized that he would keep it in a nice little country bank where nobody cared if Ecuador could pay its bills.
The City When It Rains Page 14