That’s the thing that killed him driving all night to get here to marry me.“
Mike let me sit there alone for five or ten minutes while he walked further down the beach, before returning with an outstretched arm to pull me up from the sand.
“Give me the keys, kid, and let’s get to the plane. It would be my luck to get marooned here overnight at a time when you’re this maudlin, and stuck on another guy.”
We walked back to the car and Mike drove the short distance to the airport, where we turned in the rental car and waited in the terminal for the perky pilot to come back for the six o’clock Cape Air flight to Logan. There was no wind to speak of so even Mike stayed calm on the short hop into Boston.
I was leading him from the exit gate of the commuter plane to the corridor for the connecting shuttle flight, when I heard Mike call out for me to stop. He was standing still, staring at the television screen that was facing out at him from the airport bar, and gesturing excitedly for me to walk back to him.
“Hey, Coop, can you believe it?
“Jeopardy” must be on earlier up here than in New York. C’mon, they’re about to do the Final Jeopardy question.“
I reminded myself of a mother talking to a five-year-old kid as I shook my head in annoyance and called out to him, “No, Mike. Move it let’s not miss the seven o’clock shuttle.”
“Wait a minute. What’s your hurry? There’s another plane in half an hour. The category’s the Oscars. What do you say, blondie? I’ll bet you twenty-five dollars.”
Mike and I were both addicted to “Jeopardy‘ although I rarely got home in time from the office to see the seven o’clock show. There were some subjects I wouldn’t bet him on like the Bible because he beat me every time. And I had a few topics that he wouldn’t touch.
But we usually passed our ten dollars back and forth from week to week, challenging each other on our known weaknesses, when the ante could rise considerably. Mercer Wallace swears the worst time to get killed in Manhattan is between six fifty-five and seven-thirty in the evening.
He has known Chapman to stand in an airless tenement in the middle of July with three bodies strewn around a homicide scene, listening to Alex Trebek recite the answers to the Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy rounds while calling out the questions in response, as the medical examiner silently probes the corpses for clues.
I turned around and reached for my wallet, since we both knew the movies pretty well.
“It’ll cost you fifty if you make me stay.” I could see he wasn’t leaving in the next three minutes, in time to make the flight, so I put my money on the bar and told Chapman to do the same.
He pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, ordered us each a drink, and turned to me with a sheepish grin on his face.
“I’ve only got twenty bucks. I have to pick up my paycheck at the office when we get in. Trust me?”
I nodded as Trebek announced that the Final Jeopardy answer was: the only two actors who have ever won Oscars back-to-back, in consecutive years.
Mike and I both slammed our hands on the edge of the wooden bar counter at the same time, as though pressing the buzzer as the contestants on the program do.
“Tom Hanks and Gary Cooper.”
“Wrong. You better cash your check tonight, Chapman.”
“Whaddaya mean wrong? Who do you say?”
“Tom Hanks and Spencer Tracy. Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, Captains Courageous and Boys Town.”
“What about Gary Cooper? High Noon and Pride of the Yankees?”
“You’re really slipping. Those movies came out about ten years apart. Besides he never got the Oscar for Pride of the Yankees.”
“Are you kidding me? I don’t believe it. He was amazing in that flick. He was incred-‘
”Enjoy your cocktail, Mikey, ’cause you’re buying.“
Alex Trebek gave him the bad news, we finished our drinks, and made it onto the seven-thirty shuttle for the last leg home.
By the time we landed, picked up the car, and drove to my apartment it was after nine o’clock Friday night, and I offered Mike the chance for another fast-food dinner at home. He declined, explaining that he had a date that evening, although I wasn’t able to pry any more details about her out of him.
As I glared at the blue-and-white patrol car at the edge of the circular drive in front of my building, I turned back to Mike.
“Will you help me with one more thing?”
“Sure, what?”
“When I see Battaglia on Monday, I intend to ask him to call off the baby-sitters for me. I wasn’t the target for this, Mike, don’t you agree? Whoever did this was there to kill Isabella Lascar, isn’t that pretty clear at this point?”
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right. It was the middle of the week and like you said, anyone could have checked that you were at work. The shooting was too methodical and accurate to have been accidental. And there are at least a few characters we’re aware of with reasons to hate her.
We’ve probably only scratched the surface on that front yet. Cute as you are, blondie, I don’t think anyone who got a good look at that head before he fired could have confused it with yours. Somebody wanted Isabella dead.“
”Well, will you tell your boss to tell my boss to call off the dogs? Battaglia will want to speak with you, too, on Monday. You know he’ll want an independent opinion not just what I think.“
‘I’ll be there. Now go get some rest, you got a big day tomorrow. Get plenty of beauty sleep.“
I reached over and kissed Mike on his forehead.
“Thanks.”
As he drove out I waved good night to my bodyguards, greeted the doormen who handed me my dry cleaning and mail, and rode up on the elevator with my keys in my hand. I put down my things, made sure I had a Lean Cuisine Lasagna in the freezer, and went into my bedroom to undress and shower.
Six messages. Two girlfriends Nina and Joan; two hang-ups; the reporter Ellen Goldman to confirm Monday’s interview; and Rod Squires, my supervisor, just to reassure me that it had been a quiet day.
Nina Baum was right about me. It was a good thing I had no children and no pets to take care of. Most days it was a struggle for me to keep green plants alive, and tonight I didn’t even have the strength to water them. Zap that lasagna, chat with the girls, early to bed, and, if I could force the day’s events out of my brain, maybe even sweet dreams about tomorrow.
I fell into a sound sleep, and was startled bolt upright by the abrupt ring of the telephone. It was after midnight, as I could tell by the iridescent dial on the alarm. My heart pounded as I grabbed the receiver, praying I would hear Jed’s voice on the line, excusing himself for calling at that hour and blaming his timing on the six hours’ difference between New York and Paris.
“Hello? Hello?”
No voice, no heavy breathing, no background noise.
“Who are you, dammit?” I tried not to sound frantic, and assumed I would remember on Monday to order the caller ID service the telephone company had been advertising lately.
I slammed the phone back into place and stepped out of bed, walking in the darkened room to the window and looking out at the clear night. Usually, when I sat at my office desk or the courtroom counsel table, I had the false but comforting sensation that I could control or at least pay back the evil spirits that crept around this city after dusk. But now, as I stared down at the empty sidewalks and quiet streets, I had no idea where I could turn for safe haven.
By morning long after I finally put myself back into bed and thought of more pleasant things than my hang-up calls – I convinced myself that for the first time all week, I had a bad night’s sleep for a good reason. Jed would be home with me by the end of the day and I was excited about the thought of being with, him.
I tossed and turned until nine o’clock, distracting myself with visions of how Jed would caress me and baby me when he arrived from the airport later in the day. When I had played out several varieties of that theme, I went to the door
and brought in the Times to work on the puzzle while I had my first two cups of coffee at the dining-room table. The Saturday crossword was the only one I bothered with all week it was the toughest, and for years I used to race against my father to see who could complete it the fastest. When I got stuck in the bottom corner on 57 Across, descendant of Old Norse, I was too restless to struggle over the missing letters so I gave up and headed back to the bedroom to get dressed.
There are almost no forms of exercise that interest me, except that I have had a lifelong passion for ballet. I had started to take lessons when I was four years old, and didn’t abandon my dreams to be Natalia Makarova’s successor until about the time I entered college. But throughout my days in law school and whenever my erratic trial schedule permitted, I still took ballet classes to stay in shape and to relieve some of the enormous tension of the job.
The patrol car with two officers from the day shift at the Nineteenth Precinct was in the driveway of the building as I walked out the door with my ballet slippers in hand and a raincoat covering the black leotard and tights. Both cops two rookie women sat up in their seats as they saw me coming toward them.
“Hi, I’m Alexandra Cooper,” I said, although it was obvious they knew that when they spotted me.
“Sorry you’re stuck with this duty, but I think it’ll be over in a couple of days. In the meantime, do you mind running me over to West Sixty-fourth Street for an hour?”
“No problem.”
I got in and we drove to the studio on the West Side. It was near Lincoln Center, where one of the retired dancers from American Ballet Theatre gave lessons which I tried to attend on Saturday mornings and occasional weekday evenings, whenever my unpredictable schedule allowed it.
William and his six other students were surprised to see me when I arrived a few minutes into the barre exercises for the ten-thirty class, but the necessary silence of the participants during the workout was one of the extra benefits of ballet. I never needed to explain my personal circumstances or my trial results or the day’s dealings with the cases they had read about in the daily tabloids.
For close to an hour, as I stretched and plied and glissaded across the smooth wooden floor to the familiar music of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, the demands of concentration needed to perform the required steps pushed all other business from my mind. I sweated and ached like the other women who surrounded me in the class and was unhappy only when the recording stopped and William bowed to the group with his customary “Thank you, ladies.”
I exchanged greetings with the other exhausted dancers and cooled down before going out to the radio car for my escorts to get me back home. They let me out in front of Grace’s Marketplace, a fabulous emporium of gourmet foods, so that I could buy dinner for Jed and me. There is a section of elegantly prepared dishes which I relied on regularly complete meals that need only to be reheated and served and I knew that he would be too exhausted from the long day’s travel to want to go out again that evening. Veal francese roasted new potatoes, string beans, and a salad, and I was on the express checkout, back in the car, and dropped off at my front door minutes later. “That’s it for the day, ladies. I’m not going out again. My boyfriend will be here later that’s all the action you’re going to get today. Thanks.” I left the pair at their steady post in the driveway and went upstairs to put away my packages and get into the shower.
The only message on my machine was from Nina, phoning from her car on one of the freeways on her way to Isabella’s funeral.
“I’ll call back, after the show.
Don’t forget to watch C-SPAN is carrying the service.
Word in the biz is that there’ll be a lot of crocodile tears Sharon, Demi, Nicole all the girls who want to scoop up her scripts and incomplete projects will be front and center, in their deepest black, feigning grief. Later.“
It was almost one o’clock, so I settled into my sofa in the den to watch Isabella’s memorial service, broadcast from Forest Lawn. The commentator came on first, describing the arrival of the movie stars as if it were Oscar night at the Chandler Pavilion. Among the hundreds of celebrity mourners I was able to spot Nina and her husband, Jerry Baum – a literary critic and screenwriter, whom she had met and married when we were still at Wellesley.
The service consisted of a series of speakers who gave their favorite memories of Isabella. There was lots of talk about her great beauty and her screen talent, but very little was said that made one think she had ever done a kind thing or had a generous thought about another human being. I sat forward, scouring the crowd as I imagined Luther Waldron would have done at a Mafia don’s funeral looking for the furtive glance of a killer or the inappropriate smirk on the face of an ex-lover.
Some of the speakers had familiar names. Most had worked with Isabella on one project or another- producers, directors, her agent, a couple of co-stars. Then Richard Burrell introduced himself and began to talk about the private Lascar. I tried to make something of the fact that he wasn’t emotional enough about the death of a woman he loved, but it was clear that she hadn’t been easy to love, and emotion was visibly lacking from the entire ceremony.
The last salute was what the crowd had been waiting for. I couldn’t stop myself from breaking into a huge grin as Kirk Douglas moved up to the podium. I was tempted to pick up the phone and call Mike at home, but figured he must have been watching, too. As a serious movie buff, Douglas was one of his favorites. Mike could imitate him in almost any role, from The Vikings to Spartacus to last year’s remake of Blue Lotus, in which Douglas played Isabella’s father and won another Oscar nomination for supporting actor.
If there wasn’t any warmth to add to the portrait of the deceased, at least Kirk Douglas closed with the histrionic conviction that the fans wanted to hear. He conjured up every celluloid image of the young star in each of the roles she had played, and invested her professional life with the dignity of his unique voice. ‘… And the final irony, the fatal one, is that Isabella a name which means “beautiful little island” met her death in just such a place, a beautiful little island, where she went for solitude, for safe haven…“
Yeah, Kirk, that’s the bullshit she gave me, too.
A final prayer and the recessional, with six Johnny Gorilla lookalikes carrying out the coffin and probably having good cause to be sadder than anyone else in the chapel and I clicked off the television.
Joan Stafford called a minute later, still stunned by the spectacle.
“It’s hard to believe Isabella’s dead, isn’t it? She was so vibrant, so magnificent. It’s oh well, what do you think, Alexandra? Who did it? Could have been anyone in the first two rows, from the looks on their faces.”
I caught her up on yesterday’s trip to the Vineyard, told her about my plans for the evening with Jed, made a dinner date with her for later in the week and, hung up the phone.
Then I called Air France and learned that the flight from Paris had been delayed two hours at takeoff because of weather en route. Jed would arrive closer to six o’clock.
I tried to escape into the new le Carre novel that I had just bought a week ago but my thoughts raced back and forth between trying to solve the real murder that had presented itself in my life and fantasizing about making love to Jed.
I didn’t get very far on either course.
I picked up the receiver again and dialed the number for Special Victims at the Twentieth Precinct.
“Squad.”
“This is Alexandra Cooper. Who’s this?”
“Hey, Alex. It’s Frank Barber. Whaddya need?”
“I was just looking for Mercer, to see if there’s anything new on the pattern the Con Ed rapist.”
“Mercer swung out yesterday at four. Doesn’t come back until Monday afternoon. But I got the sheet in front of me.
All quiet on that case no developments, no new hits.“
“Anything I should know about, Frank?” Strange business, I acknowledged to myself. I’m looking for new
s of a good rape case to serve as a distraction from a murder investigation and my own love life.
“Two things, but nothing we were gonna bother you about at home. I got bad news and I got good news. Give you the bad first, okay?”
“Ready.”
“Got a 61 last night…” Frank started, referring to the police complaint report made in every case, which gets its name from the designated number of the police document, a Uniformed Force Number 61. “Twenty-third Precinct. Victim is sixty-eight years old. Lives in an old railroad flat with four bedrooms. She’s a widow, rents out rooms to boarders. Guy she’s been renting to for a couple of months comes home loaded last night. Mrs. Zalina goes down the hall to the bathroom and this scumbag drags her into his room and tells her to suck his dick. ”She says no, so he punches her in the mouth. She still says no, so he hits her again. He’s got her on her knees, trying to make her do it when another renter hears the commotion and tries to help old Mrs. Zalina. The perp has the good sense to run out and never come back.“
“How’s Mrs. Zalina, Frank?”
“Patrol responded. Took her to Mount Sinai. Say she’s fine. We logged it as an attempted sodomy and an assault.
Shook her up pretty good but she was tough as nails.
Doctors gave her a head-to-toe exam, and the rape crisis counselors spent time with her and took her home. She told them she didn’t need counseling about nothing if the late Anthony Zalina didn’t ever make her do “that disgusting thing” in forty-two years of marriage, she wasn’t about to do it for some drunken garage mechanic.“
“Good for her. I take it we know who the guy is, right?”
“Yeah. We found a lot of papers in his room with his name on it. Worked in a body shop in the Bronx, only he didn’t show up this morning. It’s just a matter of time, Alex we’ll drop him.”
“Okay. I’ll assign it to someone in the unit on Monday, so we’ll be ready when you pick him up.”
“You’ll like Mrs. Zalina. She wants to go all the way with this. Says she could recognize his penis anywhere – ”looks just like a teeny-weeny, crooked little sausage.“
Final Jeopardy Page 11