“I must be going,” Jon said hurriedly. “I don’t want to leave Barbara waiting by herself. So we’ll be in touch?”
He smiled at me, a warm, friendly smile marred only by the fact that his eyes didn’t focus on me for more than an instant, darting away nervously to the direction of the staircase. I didn’t remember him being so weak. Or maybe Barbara brought it out in him. The next moment he was retrieving his coat from Java’s desk and hurrying back upstairs, the leather soles of his shoes flapping on the metal staircase in his haste to rejoin his wife.
I looked down at his card. It announced that he was a critic for ArtView. I knew it, vaguely. One of those unbelievably glossy magazines, heavier than most coffee-table books, which only American money and advertising can afford to produce. Back in the UK he had been an art teacher at the local comprehensive. Marrying Barbara had certainly taken him upmarket. Perhaps he considered free will had been a small price to pay for it.
I shoved the card into my pocket and debated what to do next. I had to be on hand to talk to the police, but they would be working their way through the entire staff, so there was no great urgency. I would doubtless come bottom of the list. Plus, as they said over here, I was starving. I looked at my watch. It was two o’clock. No wonder. I’d picked up a very indifferent bagel for breakfast before I caught the bus, but that felt like aeons ago now. And as soon as I realised I was hungry my stomach started turning over like a combine harvester getting ready to sink its teeth into some wheat.
There must be somewhere close by I could get a sandwich. And at that thought my stomach went into roaring overdrive. It would start to eat my intestines if I didn’t feed it now. In a second my hand was on the door latch. I turned it, half-expecting alarm bells to burst out as I did so, and opened the door. Outside it was as bright and sunny as it had been a few hours ago. I had noticed before that when a murder happens an incidental effect—once you’ve had time to take in the news—is surprise that the world is still going about its business: the rain hasn’t started bucketing down in empathy, and people aren’t rending their clothes in mourning on the streets.
I stood for a moment on the pavement, orienting myself, a rush of relief spinning through me at my temporary escape. SoHo seemed like a trendier Bond Street: warehouse-sized galleries interspersed with expensively artistic designer clothes shops which I Must Not Enter At Any Cost. Across the street was what looked like yet another gallery. But, as I watched, a couple of people emerged from its dark façade carrying enormous polystyrene cups, tiny trails of steam emerging from the hole pierced in the top of each one. The black clothes they were wearing were a perfect backdrop for the fragile little curls of steam. It was a pretty effect. I headed over the road and went up the steps.
Inside it was like a Covent Garden café—the Café Casbah in its glory days—stretched out into hyperspace. There were the same black-framed tables, the same aspirant artworks on the walls, the same pretty but ineffective waiting staff, the same blackboard with tasty-yet-healthy-sounding specials chalked up in swirly handwriting, the same cards on the notice-board advertising macrobiotic Jungian workshops and colour therapy flat-shares. There was even the same marble counter stacked with layers of tempting baked goods. A Covent Garden eaterie would not label almost everything either fat-, dairy- or egg-free, however, nor would it offer seventeen different kinds of coffee, some of which probably took longer to order than they did to consume.
Still, it was with an odd sense of familiarity that I had to repeat my simple order—a mocha coffee and a large piece of carrot cake—three times to the young man behind the marble counter, who was twirling his dreadlocks and staring dreamily at his admittedly charming reflection in the framed poster on the far wall. Dimwit would-be models-slash-actors were the same all over the world.
Dreadlock Boy finally managed to fiddle boyishly with the terrifying complications of the coffee machine, producing my mocha with an air of shy triumph. The tip of his tongue protruded between his lips with concentration as he cut my cake. Bless. I looked around to see if there was a table available. I thought I could see someone waving from the far corner, and headed in that direction. If they weren’t hailing me I would look an idiot, but in a strange town that never worries me too much.
Suzanne and Don, an unlikely combination, were sitting together. So much for my furtive escape from the gallery. Suzanne was staring at the glassy brown surface of a cappuccino whose foam had melted a long time ago, completely untouched. And indeed Suzanne looked incapable of consuming anything. As far as I knew she hadn’t cried at the news of Kate’s death. Instead it seemed that she had retreated far into herself. She moved like a puppet whose strings were being pulled from high above, and her gaze was infinitely detached, registering everything but hardly reacting to it, as if storing it up for processing later.
It was Don who had been waving at me. There were two empty plates stacked in front of him, but he still fixed his stare on my carrot cake as I put it down with the single-minded attention of an ape eyeing the last fairy cake at the chimpanzees’ tea party. He seemed determined to be cheerful; perhaps I was being unfair to attribute this to a wish to prove his toughness in the face of sudden, violent death. But I didn’t think so.
“Hi,” I said, sitting down. I was unsure of what to say, confronted by two people in such different states of reaction. “I thought you guys were still in the gallery.”
“You mean the morgue,” Don corrected sarcastically. “Nothin’ for me to do, anyway. Cain’t start cleanin’ up theyt shit on the walls till everyone’s good ‘n’ done with lookin’ at it for clues.”
“You talk to the police yet?”
Don shook his head. “Cain’t say I’m in much of a hurry to, either. Wait till they pull my record.”
“Oh, you too?” I said in an access of chumminess. It was not the right response. Suzanne’s head lifted from the contemplation of the coffee and fixed on me instead with what would have been horror if she hadn’t been near-catatonic with shock. “What did they get you for?” I asked matily.
“Oh, punched out a couple of sheriffs, did a few nights in jail here and there for bad attitude….” Don lit a cigarette. Doubtless whatever he would admit to was the tip of an iceberg proportionately bigger than the one that sank the Titanic. “Hick stuff. And you?”
“No convictions. No charges even pressed,” I said, shrugging and wishing I hadn’t started this conversation. No sooner said than changed. “Anyway, guess what just happened?”
I told them about my encounter with Jon Tallboy. I didn’t see why I should cover up for his inadequacies. And I was curious to hear their reaction.
“Shee-it, that guy sure is pussy-whipped,” Don drawled, slapping the table to emphasise his point.
Suzanne glared at him. “Hey, watch it. You know damn well how sexist that is.”
Her voice seemed to come from a long distance away, not quite connecting with the sense of the words; but the automatic reaction showed traces of the old Suzanne. I was grateful that she was coming back. Don shrugged.
“OK,” he said, hiking up his accent for extra emphasis, “I could whup his dumb candyass with both hands tied behind mah back and mah legs in a vice. How’s thet fer size, little lady?”
He leered at her. Suzanne ignored him completely. I looked at him with disfavour myself. Trying to wind up Suzanne was fairly pathetic, considering how upset she was. I wasn’t warming to Don.
“Man can’t say anythin’ here without being jumped on,” he muttered. His head was ducked but I caught a flash of blue as he looked up under his lashes to see what effect this further provocation was having. I was beginning to agree with Laurence; Don’s dumb country boy act was all a front to see how much he could get away with.
“You know, I don’t remember asking you to sit with me,” Suzanne snapped, getting stronger by the moment.
“Hey, cool it!” Don said amiably, shoving back his chair. He held up his hands as if to ward her off. “Let’s not figh
t, OK? I’m off to the little boys’ room. Give you ladies a chance to talk amongst yoursaylves.”
“Are you OK?” I said to her as Don shambled off.
She gave me a long, unnervingly detached stare. I was glad when her eyes dropped to her pack of cigarettes on the table.
“God, he bugs me sometimes,” she finally said, lighting one. “Ever since he came over I’ve been sitting here waiting for him to say one word about Kate, and has he? No way. He just ate like a hog and burped a lot.”
“What do you think happened to her?” I asked. Hearing her talk like her normal self somehow liberated me to dig into my carrot cake, which was calorie-counting-free and all the better for it. I felt it was in bad taste to be eating at a time like this, particularly after Suzanne’s disparaging remark about Don, but I was uncontrollably hungry by now. And it seemed somehow less offensive to be stuffing down a snack than an actual meal.
“I have no idea,” Suzanne said simply. “I thought she was going off to meet Leo last night. And she let us think that, didn’t she? I mean, if she was meeting someone else, she didn’t say. And she knows how much I’d hate the thought of her seeing him again. So it must have been something pretty secret if she’d just go ahead and let me assume it was him.” She took a long drag on her cigarette. “I tried to ring Leo,” she went on. “This morning, when I heard. But he wasn’t in. Or he hadn’t got out of bed yet,” she added nastily. “I left a message. But I’ll tell the cops that’s where we thought she was going last night. I’ve got no reason to protect him.”
I nodded slowly. “What’s this problem of his?”
Suzanne sighed. “You don’t look like you’d be shocked,” she said. “He’s a junkie. Does most stuff he can get his hands on. Crystal meth, special K, but mainly H. Only every now and then—or at least that’s what he told Kate. But still.”
“H? You mean heroin?”
She nodded. “It’s so easy to get in this city. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but it’s gotten really fashionable over the last few years. Just go down to Tompkins Square Park, there’s hundreds of dealers ready to pop you a dime bag.”
“Dime bag …”
“Oh, ten bucks a bag. Enough to get you high, anyway.”
“You seem to know a bit about it,” I said cautiously.
She gave me a tired smile. “When Kate started seeing Leo, I asked around. He’s like a friend of a friend of mine. I found out more than I wanted to know. Not that I see her any more,” she added. “That friend, I mean. That’s New York for you. You go through people and jobs like you do paychecks.”
“How cynical.”
“Oh, New York …” Suzanne said, dismissing this. “You’ve got to be tough here. Everyone has their own agenda, you know?”
I left a little pause, then said: “Can I ask you something? Why did you tell Carol Kate had rung in and said she’d be late?”
There was no need for me to spell out the fact that Kate would have been long dead by the time Suzanne had said she’d rung the gallery.
“Oh, that.” Suzanne looked less fazed than I would have expected. “When Kate didn’t show for work I just thought she was running late, you know? I’m used to covering for her. Time-keeping isn’t exactly her priority.”
She didn’t even seem to realise that she had slipped into the present tense. And before she could catch up to it, a cup of coffee plopped down on the table in front of us. I hadn’t even seen Don coming back. He sat down, mumbling something, pushing back his chair so he could sprawl out his legs. Suzanne stared at the cup pointedly.
“You didn’t think to ask us if we wanted a coffee?” she asked him.
Don broke into a shit-eating grin. He looked like a little boy who’s deliberately done something naughty to provoke his mother.
“Knew you’d get mad at me for not getting you one,” he said, as if confessing.
“Right, that’s it. I’m getting back to work.” Suzanne shoved back her chair and stood up. “And you’d better, too. You know? Work? Remember that?”
“Hey, ain’t nothin’ for me to do over there yet.”
“Apart from talking the cops through all your convictions for manslaughter,” Suzanne said caustically. I winced. She turned to me.
“Coming, Sam?”
I was caught between a rock and a hard place. My sympathies were with Suzanne, but I didn’t want to get on Don’s wrong side; never piss off the guy who’s going to be installing your exhibits. I paused for a moment. Don was still grinning at me.
“Don’t stay on my account,” he said affably. “I don’t take things personal.”
“OK,” I said, but now I was annoyed that Don had acted as if I needed his permission to leave. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but I didn’t think so. Don was a master winder-up. I stood up as nonchalantly as I could. “Catch you later.”
“Sure,” Don said smugly, and started slurping his coffee like a pig at a trough in a deliberate effort to set our teeth on edge.
“I wish it’d been him,” Suzanne said viciously as we crossed over to the gallery.
“Sorry?” But I knew what she meant.
“If someone had to get killed. I wish it’d been him. Or Barbara—I don’t like her and I think her paintings suck. But no, it had to be Katie who died. There is a God, right?”
We had reached the door of the gallery. Suzanne had let off steam in the open air, where no one could overhear us; and now, as she unlocked the door and let me in, she wouldn’t look at me again. Avoiding my eye, she headed upstairs. I followed more slowly. I was thinking hard.
“Well, that all seems pretty straightforward, Ms. Jones,” said Detective Frank. “We’ll hafta run your story by the doorman at your building, of course.”
“Oh God.” For some reason this prospect hadn’t occurred to me. “Do you have to? I only just got there yesterday. I was hoping to build up to notorious gradually, not just explode it on them all at once.”
Frank leaned back in his chair, exchanging a glance with Thurber.
“Well, what if we say you reported the theft of a camera?” he suggested. “You think you left it in the cab and we’re checking to see what time exactly that would be.”
“It’s better than nothing,” I agreed. “It might even work, if the doorman’s as thick as a plank.”
Frank gave me an understanding smile. “We’ll do our best,” he assured me. “It’s not part of our job to go harassing visitors to New York.”
I was suspicious of everything this pair said; they were being far too nice to be true. Still, I had to pretend to take them at face value.
“That’s a relief,” I said. “So if the doorman backs me up, that would let me out?”
“If he confirms there’s no way you could have got out of the building again. Kate Jacobson was killed around midnight. If you got back at eleven and stayed there, you should be OK. And with your flight landing yesterday afternoon I don’t imagine you had much time to scope out secret exits from the building, right?”
“It wasn’t my first priority,” I said, wondering why he had told me the time of death. Maybe there was mandated disclosure of that kind of information over here. Or maybe he was trying to catch me out.
“Though she was killed pretty near where you’re staying,” Thurber chipped in. The robotic flatness of her voice was always a shock after she hadn’t spoken for a while.
“Where was that?” I asked.
They both stared at me.
“No one told you yet?” Frank said, surprised. “Strawberry Fields. Thought you’d know that, being British and all.”
And now I did remember her saying that Kate had been found in Strawberry Fields. But coming as it had just after Frank’s terrible faux pas about Barbara’s paintings, not to mention the news of Kate being garot-ted, the oddity had somehow passed me by.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Would that be halfway down Abbey Road? Next to Lucy in the sky with diamonds?”
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They were both looking at me in honest bewilderment. I treasured the moment. It’s not often you can claim to have perplexed two New York cops.
“Strawberry Fields,” said Thurber, the voice as dead as the computer program from a Radiohead album, “is just opposite the Dakota building.”
“Right,” I said encouragingly. But she seemed to have stopped. They were staring at me again, and now it wasn’t so friendly.
“Where John Lennon was shot!” Frank said incredulously. “They made this garden opposite in Central Park into a kinda shrine. Memorial, you know? Kids hang out there all day, playing guitar. That’s why it’s called Strawberry Fields.”
I shuddered. “It sounds foul,” I said candidly. “Endless versions of ‘Woman’ and ‘Imagine’ sung out of tune by teenagers in flared paisley trousers. Thanks for warning me.”
Frank didn’t think I was funny at all. He was glaring at me as if he’d found out I once killed someone—in self-defence. But under suspicious circumstances.
“I always liked the Monkees better,” I said lamely, deciding I had gone too far. “If they were all singing ‘Daydream Believer’ I’d much prefer it. They were cuter, too.”
“Davy Jones,” said Thurber unexpectedly, a gleam of something approaching humanity in her blank-wall eyes.
“Mickey Dolenz,” I responded. “Each to their own, eh?”
Frank harrumphed in disgust. I was grateful we didn’t fancy the same Monkee. No way I wanted to get into a catfight with Thurber.
That wound up the interview. I didn’t think they suspected me. But they kept their cards very close to their chests. I had asked them whether Kate’s gallery keys had been found on her body, and when Frank had told me that they hadn’t it was clear that this was a piece of information they were happy to release for reasons of their own. I emerged from their company feeling that they had got everything they wanted from me and given me only what they chose to in return. Sucked dry and thrown away like a worn-out glove on the garbage heap. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. My investigative pride was wounded and my metaphors were slipping like a bar of soap in a shower.
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