Then she hung up on me.
I was still groggy, and I had a headache. It was not helped by the noise from the street. People were shouting and laughing and singing. I looked out of the window and saw grown men not of the West Village persuasion hugging each other. It took a few seconds for me to twig what was going on. I turned on the TV to be sure.
The Miracle Mets had won the World Series.
Wearing my Yankees cap, I was about to leave the house when an unmarked police car pulled up outside. I knew it was a police car because it had that carefully cultivated anonymous look, and anyway I could see Detective Campbell in the front passenger seat. I watched through the blinds as Campbell and his partner, Detective Cole, made their way up the stoop. When I opened the door, Campbell looked at my cap and shook his head sadly.
“Mind if we come in?” he said, redundantly showing me his badge.
Today he had on an old gabardine suit the color of split-pea soup, a midnight-blue shirt, and a peach-colored tie. I wondered if color-blindness was an impediment to police work.
“I was hoping you’d be able to stop by,” I said. “Won’t you gentlemen make yourselves comfortable?”
“We’d rather stand,” Campbell said. “It’s the only exercise we get. But you don’t mind if I light up, do you, Novalis? Prairie Flower is my brand these days. It’s herbal. You’ll find the aroma quite agreeable. It’s not dissimilar to some of the exotic blends I’m told you and your friends enjoy.”
I reminded him that I’d already had the pleasure.
“Detective Cole and I dropped by,” said Campbell, “to ask a few questions about the young lady who was here last night—Miss Smollett.”
My first thought was that someone had reported the dead man.
“Why would the Special Affairs Bureau be interested in Miss Smollett?”
“That’s privileged information,” said Campbell.
“I’ve had a lot of that thrown at me lately,” I said. “It doesn’t stick.”
“My question is,” Campbell continued, “how long have you known Miss Smollett, Novalis?”
“Since Tuesday afternoon.”
“And how did you come to know her?”
“I met her on the street.”
“You picked her up?”
“The other way around, if anything.”
“Wonders, as they say, will never cease. And where exactly was this?”
That was one I didn’t want to answer too precisely.
“In Little Italy. I don’t remember exactly where.”
“Little Italy? One of my favorite neighborhoods. Are we talking about Mulberry Street, perchance? Where there was an altercation in a delicatessen Tuesday afternoon? A deli which, as it happens, I often patronize. I’m especially fond of their mortadella.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. As I recall, I saw Miss Smollett somewhere just north of Canal and she asked the way to the Staten Island Ferry. I gave her very precise directions, but then we got sidetracked into a conversation about hemlines—how many inches above the knee is considered appropriate this season. You probably didn’t realize I’m an aficionado of women’s fashion. We found ourselves in a bar—the name escapes me. The World Series was on the television and we placed a friendly wager on the likelihood of Boog Powell striking out the next time he was at the plate. It seems Miss Smollett is a Baltimore fan, whereas of course I favored the Mets.”
“Which explains why you are now wearing a Yankees cap?”
“A gift from my ex-wife.”
“I used to root for the Giants,” said Campbell, gloomily.
I offered condolences.
“And how much time,” he continued, pulling himself together, “have you spent with Miss Smollett since this illegal wager?”
“As I think you know, she slept over Tuesday night. Last night too.”
“Does that mean she lost the bet?”
I passed on that one.
“And when did you last see her?” Campbell asked.
“This morning. She left fairly early—I don’t know quite when, and I don’t know where she was going, or if or when she’ll be back.”
“She was still headed for Staten Island, perhaps?”
“Possibly.”
“And am I to presume that this colorful suitcase is yours? And the fetching dress draped over the chair? Not to mention the dainty lingerie . . .”
“I guess she’ll be back for that stuff.”
“But you don’t know when?”
“I’m not a mind reader. I imagine she’s at work.”
“It seems she’s not going to the Alibi today.”
“Then you know more than I do. I have no idea where she is.”
“At her apartment, maybe?”
“I’ve never been to her apartment. She slept here, remember? She told me she had a place—a sublet, I think—somewhere on the Upper West Side.”
“Near Lincoln Center?”
“I really don’t know.”
“And where did you spend your day?” Campbell asked.
“Here and there. I passed quite a bit of time in the Donnell Library—doing research. A lot of people saw me there.”
“Research for a client?”
“For a job I’m hoping to land.”
Campbell paused to suck on his pipe, which as usual was not pulling to his satisfaction.
“Well,” he said, “I’m sorry to have wasted your time, Novalis. And mine.”
“Always a pleasure to chat with a buddy,” I told him.
“If I see Miss Smollett,” he said, “I’ll give her your regards.”
I watched through the window as he walked to the car, his gait suggesting that he was wearing an imaginary kilt and sporran.
ELEVEN
What happened next didn’t make things any less confusing. While I was standing there by the window, an ugly black stretch limo pulled up outside. A chauffeur in livery disembarked and rang my doorbell. It was as if the limo had been waiting till the fuzz departed, then slid into the vacated slot. The driver, who had a fake British accent, inquired if I was Mr. Alex Novalis. Then he informed me, in tones that I took to be a touch patronizing, that Mr. Jack Debereaux had requested the pleasure of my company.
Well, well! Jack Debereaux, gubernatorial hopeful, craves the presence of humble-yet-honest private eye. Curiouser and curiouser. Debereaux’s political clout might explain the involvement of the Special Affairs Bureau with whatever was going down.
“Heavens to bestiality,” I said. “Is it pinochle night again already? How time flies.”
Stress brings out the sophomore in me.
“All I know, sir,” said the driver, “is that Mr. Debereaux emphasized the need for promptness.”
They always do.
“I’ll just change into my white tie and tails,” I told him.
“As I understand it,” said the driver, “this is more of a come-as-you-are occasion.”
The Debereaux family made their money in distilling and brewing, which suggested that back in the Prohibition Era they likely kept some pretty choice company. While the limo crawled uptown, I checked out its cocktail bar—stocked with a multitude of Debereaux brands—and mixed myself a martini, which I then sipped, debonair as all hell. Traffic being stalled as usual, I had plenty of time to think about why Big Jack, as he liked to be called, wanted to see me. The only thing I was reasonably sure of was that it probably had something to do with the fact that he was regularly seen at spots like The Pierre and Le Pavillon, dining with Sami Mendelssohn, Yari’s mother.
Eventually we arrived outside a big Dutch Colonial row house not far from the offices of Lucking, Thorpe, & Lucking. I rang the bell and the door was opened by a slender valet of Asian ancestry. I wished I had a hat for him to hang somewhere. He showed me to a room that f
elt like an undiscovered corner of the Frick, with good European furniture and Old Master paintings hung on brocaded walls. I was studying a small canvas of becalmed fishing boats by a follower of Aelbert Cuyp when I heard someone behind me.
“Don’t let me interrupt,” said the new arrival.
It was one of those gravelly, meta-masculine voices that has the mysterious ability to reassure lackey voters that—if they will be so kind as to oblige by approving a massive but necessary tax break for cologne-soaked extortionists with offshore bank accounts and top-heavy trophy brides—then they will get to enjoy a blissful retirement with an endless supply of Lucy reruns and Cocoa Puffs laced with Valium for breakfast every single morning of the week.
Like a good lackey, I allowed myself to be interrupted and turned to see a face familiar from newspaper photographs and television news bites. A smooth, almost babyish face that seemed to ask rhetorically, “And why wouldn’t you trust a puss like this?”
“You like the Dutch?” Debereaux asked. “My father worshipped the Dutch. He appreciated their ability to find both wealth and beauty in everyday things. He would look at a painting like this and see the entire Dutch economy as it existed at the height of Holland’s Golden Age—the Gouden Eeuw as he liked to call it—interpolating from the cod and herring in the holds of these vessels the riches of the Dutch East India Company and the wealth that it brought to Amsterdam and Delft, and New Amsterdam too of course—the wealth to which we are all heirs. This is his room. I’ve left it as it was when he passed away.”
Big Jack was a lot smaller than I had imagined he would be, with shrewd eyes and thick white hair—a New York politico straight out of Central Casting. He had on a burgundy velvet smoking jacket with shawl lapels and a pleated dinner shirt open at the neck. He put an arm around my shoulder and guided me toward an inlaid sideboard on which was displayed an array of liquor bottles and silver-plated accouterments for preparing cocktails.
“Let me make you a gimlet,” he said. “That’s what you private investigators drink, isn’t it?”
“Mostly we drink anything,” I assured him.
“I thought you were all disciples of Raymond Chandler?” he said.
“Only the ones that can read.”
“In any case,” said Debereaux, “Chandler’s gimlet is a travesty. Half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice indeed! Shameful.”
I watched as Debereaux rubbed the rim of two martini glasses with slices of lime, then poured gin into a cocktail shaker half-filled with crushed ice, added a small quantity of Rose’s Lime Juice, threw in a sprig of mint, shook the mixture vigorously, strained it into the glasses, and added twists of lime peel.
“Now that’s a gimlet,” he said, awaiting my reaction.
It was passable, if a little effete. I forced myself to make an appreciative face.
“I suppose,” he said, after a couple of sips of his own drink “you’re wondering why I asked you here?”
“To try out cocktail recipes?”
He laughed. It was a laugh the way dehydrated broccoli is a vegetable.
“Well,” he began, “I understand you’re an art lover, so to start with I thought I’d give you a tour of my collection—the tiny part that’s here.”
I’ll skip the catalogue, but he had corralled an impressive hoard, ranging from Cézanne and van Gogh to a Warhol soup can. In between there was Picasso, and Braque, and Gris, and Ernst, and Dalí, and Bacon, and Dubuffet. Americans privileged to join the club included Pollock and Rothko and Rauschenberg and Johns, and there was a room dedicated to realists like Hopper and Marsh and, inevitably, Stewart Langham.
“You know Stewart Langham?” I asked.
“Well, of course,” said Debereaux. “I’m on the board of practically every museum in town, how could I not know Stew? Also, for a while anyway, he belonged to a set I socialize with.”
“When he was married to Cynthia Cutteridge?”
“You’re uncommonly well informed,” said Debereaux.
He seemed to be in no hurry. As we moved from painting to painting, he was ready with anecdotes about this artist or that dealer. I made appreciative noises. Not much of an imposition given that the quality of the work was mostly superior. At the end of the tour he gestured toward a doorway and said, “Let’s step into the den for a chat.”
The den was a paneled room, informally furnished, with a large rolltop desk against one wall and a fire blazing in a fireplace—although the house was not in the least chilly. Everywhere you looked there were silver-framed photographs of Debereaux with Democratic Party bigwigs, from FDR and Harry Hopkins to Adlai Stevenson and Bobby Kennedy. Seated in a red leather armchair, wearing a ritzy black cocktail dress and a red shawl, was a formidable woman in her late sixties. She was slender, with long, shapely legs and a manner that can only be described as regal. With high cheekbones, a profile resembling the Wicked Witch of the West’s, and her hair pulled back in a chignon, she was probably more striking than she had been forty years earlier.
“Nice to see you again, Mrs. Mendelssohn,” I said.
“I had forgotten we met before, Mr. Novalis,” she replied. Her eyes were even closer to purple than Yari’s, and she was taking me in like a Westminster Dog Show judge sizing up a mutt who’s been admitted by mistake in the nonsporting category.
“Mrs. Mendelssohn has been anxious for me to speak with you,” said Debereaux. “It seems you are acquainted with a young woman named Sandy Smollett.”
“We’ve crossed paths,” I said.
“Please don’t misunderstand me,” said Debereaux. “There’s nothing wrong with you knowing Miss Smollett, though I should add that she should be approached with great caution.”
“What do you mean by ‘approached’?”
“He means,” interrupted Mrs. Mendelssohn, “that you’re stepping on dangerous ground. I won’t pretend that I’m interested in your welfare, but I am concerned for Yari’s. As I now recall, you know from personal experience that Yari has a knack for getting himself into scrapes. We have reason to believe that anyone who becomes entangled with this Smollett girl is likely to find himself in very hot water. That would include anyone who delves too deeply into her background.”
“And where does Yari fit into all this?” I asked.
“That’s better left unsaid,” she told me, “though I’ll pass on to you my conviction that his possible involvement is purely a matter of happenstance.”
Yeah, sure.
“The bottom line,” said Debereaux, “is that I’m prepared to pay you handsomely for staying out of this affair. We’ve reason to believe that Miss Smollett is in possession of information that makes her a danger to herself and to others.”
“I guess that’s why someone is trying to kill her,” I said.
Their expressions of shock could have passed for the real thing.
“I was approached,” I told them, “by a party I cannot identify to provide protection for Sandy. Providing her with protection is what I’m doing.”
They exchanged glances.
“That does not mean you cannot accept my proposition,” said Debereaux. “In fact, I insist on it. I’m putting you on a retainer.”
I tried to stop him right there.
“I’m not interested.”
“I would have thought it was preferable to being in a cell, or to being interminably questioned by the police.”
“And what could you do to prevent that?”
“To be frank, that’s no business of yours—but let’s just say that I know people and have influence. I think I might be able to persuade the Department to keep its hands off you, at least in the short run. I might be able to convince them that it’s in their interest to have you out on the street.”
This was adding another layer of nuttiness to an already preposterous situation. What did Debereaux know about it being in the cops
’ interest to have me on or off the street? That only made sense if he was much better informed—perhaps by the Special Affairs Bureau—than he was letting on. I asked him what he knew that I didn’t know. His expression was too plaintive to be called a smirk.
“Many things,” he said. “Some that I wish I didn’t know. Just be thankful that I can rent you your freedom—for a day or two at least.”
Some flicker of uncertainty—the kind you see in a politician’s eyes when the exit polls from Erie County start to come in—made me suspect he was trying to bullshit me.
I stood up and said, “There’s nothing more to talk about.” Then I made my exit.
Nobody tried to stop me, but Debereaux handed me his card.
TWELVE
Once out of there, I walked over to Madison and headed south toward midtown. I took my time, trying to squeeze some sense out of that encounter. Everything about it had been off-key. Why the leisurely tour of the art collection? And why the bullshit about the retainer? And why did he tell me not to trust Sandy? What was his interest in her? Yari might have been able to answer some of my questions if he were around, though whether he would have chosen to was another matter.
I’m a perverse son of a bitch, and Debereaux’s warning not to trust Sandy just made me want to trust her implicitly. But what the fuck was I thinking? This was no time to be losing touch with reality. On the other hand, I didn’t have much to lose by believing anything I chose to believe, and right then I chose to believe that Sandy—though she had plenty to hide, much of it probably none too savory—was on the right side of this standoff. That’s what my metastasizing hunch told me, and at that juncture there was no point in fighting it. As I looked back over the previous couple of days, it hadn’t played out so badly. It just hadn’t got me anywhere. The question was, where was Sandy? By now, I suspected, quite possibly in the loving care of the NYPD.
Debereaux’s talk about being able to guarantee my freedom, if only for a limited time, made me suspect that some deal had already been cut with the cops before his car picked me up. The more I thought about it, the more I felt certain it was no accident that the limo had arrived outside my door immediately after Campbell’s car had left.
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