Body in the Big Apple ff-10

by Katherine Hall Page

  Richard Morgan was a freelance journalist, and Faith now recalled seeing his byline in a wide variety of publications— The New Yorker, the Village Voice, The New Republic, as well as the Times. She was going to have to be very, very careful. But she brightened at her next thought. She’d be able to pump him for information.

  First, it seemed that they needed to find out what each other thought about everything from Leona Helmsley’s trial—“Anyone who goes on record saying, ‘I don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes’ has to take her knocks,” said Richard—to Paul McCartney at forty-seven—“Can he still cut it?” “Flowers in the Dirt has some great moments, but it’s mixed,” said Faith.

  Richard had been at Tiananmen Square and Faith listened spellbound as he described what it had been 69

  like to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the students as the tanks rolled in.

  “Enough about me,” he said.

  It had been awhile since Faith had heard these words. Maybe he had a brother for Hope.

  “Tell me about Faith Sibley. I want to know everything. All your secrets.” His grin was disarming.

  There’s nothing like charm to extract information. He must be very good at what he does, Faith thought, beginning to realize writing wasn’t his only talent.

  She gave him the Cliffs Notes version of her life to date. He smiled again at the vehemence with which she declared she would never, ever marry a man of the cloth.

  “Good news for the rest of us.”

  “Unless you’ve grown up as a PK—preacher’s kid—it’s hard to understand. We never gave the parish anything really juicy to comment on, like running away to join a cult or shaving our heads and piercing our noses. But there were plenty of annoying day-today remarks. ‘Isn’t she a little young for makeup?’

  ‘Did I hear the girls were going to Europe by themselves this summer?’ ‘Has Faith decided on a career yet, like Hope?’ You get the picture.”

  “Yeah, might make a good article. Don’t worry,” Richard said, seeing Faith’s look of alarm, “another PK. I don’t take advantage of my friends—or try not to, anyway.”

  If one of them was sitting on a story as big as the one she was, Faith was sure Richard’s scruples would vanish before you could say “Pulitzer Prize.” They were waiting for their main course—they’d both ordered a pork dish with green chili. It would make splitting the bill easier, but Faith wouldn’t be 70

  able to find out how comfortable he was about sharing food. She firmly believed “Do you promise to share what’s on your plate?” should be worked into the traditional marriage vows. Forget sickness, health, love, honor, and especially obey. Most divorces could be avoided by a simple test. Order something you don’t particularly want in a restaurant and urge him to get something you adore. Ask for a taste and take careful notes. A cousin of Faith’s reported her fiancé’s reac-tion: “If you wanted it, why didn’t you order it?” Faith advised caution, was not heeded, and they were splitsville less than a year after the honeymoon. But tonight she was really in the mood for the pork. Maybe next time?

  Inevitably, the conversation turned to food, which then led to travel. Richard had been all over the world and even expressed a desire to hop aboard a space shuttle should the chance arise. Faith was drawn to space travel in theory—the extraordinary sight of earth from far, far away, that big blue marble. Yet, lurking beneath her adventurous spirit was a tiny voice insistently whimpering, But what if you couldn’t get back?

  For the moment, she wasn’t taking a number. She definitely did want to go to the Far East, and she listened intently—and enviously—as Richard described his journeys. The margaritas were drained and they ordered dark Dos Equis beer to go with the rest of dinner. Faith was feeling more relaxed than she had been all week.

  “But you haven’t told me any secrets,” he said suddenly.

  “You haven’t told me any, either,” she countered.

  Two could play at this game.

  “All right. I’m secretly writing a book that is going 71

  to blow a certain southern town sky-high. A best-seller for sure.”

  Faith looked at him scornfully. “Every other person in this city—and probably the rest of the country—is writing some kind of explosive book. That’s not a real secret.”

  He leaned forward. He really was good-looking.

  Deep brown eyes and lighter brown hair—wavy, not curly. He was thin, but not skinny; his chin and cheekbones well defined. Kate Hepburn’s cousin, without the voice.

  “While I was doing a story on something else, I stumbled across a mystery. I met the principals and haven’t been able to stay away. It’s one of those situa-tions in life where nothing you could dream up as fiction could match the bizarre and byzantine nature of this reality.”

  Faith was with him there. She found herself nodding. Nothing one could imagine . . .

  “So what’s yours?”

  She came to with a jolt.

  “I stole a ceramic animal from the gift shop at the Museum of Natural History when I was nine years old, never told my parents, and kept it.” She didn’t add that she had felt so guilty, she was unable to look at the little lion. Too afraid of the questions that might arise if it was discovered in the trash, she had stashed it in a shoe box in her closet until two years ago, when she donated it to a local thrift shop as a collectible.

  “So, keep your secrets. My nose for news, and experience with sources, tells me you’re a complicated woman and one extremely capable at keeping things hidden, Faith. And how did you end up with a name 72

  like that? I’ve never met a Faith before. Funny, though, it seems to suit you.”

  Faith told him the family story and they moved on to discuss an article about the eighties he was finishing up for the Times magazine section.

  “This could get depressing,” Faith remarked. “I keep thinking of people like Mark Chapman and John Hinckley. And the Ayatollah putting a price on Salman Rushdie’s head. So much craziness.”

  “The Challenger tragedy, the savings and loan cri-sis, Black Monday . . .”

  Faith began to chant, “Nancy Reagan’s china, Beemers, ‘Whoever Dies with the Most Toys Wins,’

  Malcolm Forbes’s two-million-dollar Moroccan birthday bash . . .”

  “But there were also all those KILL YOUR TELEVISION

  bumper stickers, and we weren’t involved in any major wars during the entire decade, although there’s still time.”

  “Not much. I read a wonderful quote from that British novelist Angela Carter the other day commenting on the heavy pronouncements we’ve been reading almost all year: ‘The fin is coming early this siècle. ’ ” They both laughed.

  “I’ll track it down and use it. It would make a terrific title.”

  The only dessert Faith ever wanted at Tex-Mex places was flan. It was the perfect counterpoint to the spicy main dishes, and she recalled that Santa Fe’s was perfect—rich, creamy, yet not cloying. They both ordered coffee. Richard didn’t seem to be in any rush to get back to his article, and though Faith was tired, it was pleasant to linger. Besides, she realized, she’d been having such a good time, she’d forgotten to work 73

  Fox’s murder into the conversation and see if she could get any further information. She had to act fast before the evening ended.

  “How about the murder of Nathan Fox? Do you intend to use it in your article?”

  “It’s worth a mention. A lot of what’s happened in the eighties—the excesses—was what people like Fox were predicting in the sixties. It hasn’t simply been a case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. That’s always been true. But in the eighties, the rich got much richer. Even after the 1987 crash. Last year, in ’88, Milken made five hundred and fifty million dollars—ironically fifty million more than the Gambino family, crime apparently not paying as much as it used to, or their kind anyway—and I am using that. Fox and his cohort believed that the widening gap between rich and poor would lead
to revolution. Well, it hasn’t. At least not yet, and I don’t see it happening anywhere in the near future, but the seeds of the eighties were sowed in the sixties. Ironically, Fox liked nothing better than schmoozing with wealthy New York intellectuals and socialites. He was a regular at certain dinner parties, delighting the guests by telling them what decadent leeches they were. That all the finger bowls in the world wouldn’t be enough to cleanse the blood of the workers from their effete, uncalloused hands—that, or something very similar, was one of his lines.”

  Faith thought again that Fox wouldn’t have lasted long at Aunt Chat’s Madison Avenue ad agency if the tired, trite slogans she’d been hearing were any indication of his acumen.

  “So you haven’t really heard anything. But why murdered? Why now? What’s the ‘bottom line’?” She 74

  injected the eighties buzzword to keep things light—

  and keep the conversation going.

  Richard thought for a moment. “There has been some talk that Fox’s murder was tied to his politics—

  that it wasn’t just a robbery by some cokehead—but I haven’t been able to come up with an angle. Unless he’s been keeping some pretty heavy stuff under wraps all these years. Maybe about someone else in the movement. Or let’s say he was about to get a pardon and write a tell-all book. If Reagan could get a seven-million-dollar advance, Fox could certainly have hoped for half that—or more in hush money! But I jest.

  He wasn’t into material goods. More to the point, he’s not the pardonable type. Wrong haircut. Besides the politics theory, there are a lot of rumors about where he’s been all these years, and maybe there’s a motive there. Someone he crossed. A woman? And from all accounts, in Fox’s case there were always lots of ladies.”

  “Where do people say he was?”

  Richard signaled the waiter for more coffee. “If Fox was everywhere I’ve heard he’s been, he would have racked up enough frequent flyer coupons to last through the next millennium. California, the Pacific Northwest, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Maine, Florida—

  oh, and Cuba, to name a few. Apparently, he was all set to spend his golden years with Fidel, but Nate got kicked out when he said, ‘Thank you for not smoking’

  to the big guy.”

  “And what about the murder weapon? According to the papers, he was shot at close range and the weapon hasn’t been found.”

  Richard rubbed his chin. He was in slight, very slight need of a shave.

  75

  “It would have been pretty stupid to leave the murder weapon behind as a calling card. If it was your average B and E, they’d have further use for it. If it wasn’t, but, rather, someone Fox knew and let into the apartment, then all the more reason to get rid of it, say in that big Dumpster known as the East River.”

  “The papers haven’t said what kind of gun it was.

  The police would know from the bullet. Have you heard anything?”

  Morgan shook his head and then looked sharply at Faith. “Why so much interest in Fox? He wasn’t a well-known food connoisseur, to my knowledge.

  Don’t tell me—your parents were in the Weather Underground and you’re actually a red-diaper baby.”

  “Sorry, my father never even remembers to carry an umbrella and my diapers were as snowy white as the diaper service could make them. Mother has always believed some things are best done by others. Now come on—that business with Fox in Cuba, you were making that up.”

  “I kid you not.”

  Faith made a face and, terrierlike, held on to the subject. “Why do you think he wasn’t caught?”

  “At first, probably because no one squealed on him, and it’s not so easy as you might think to find someone who doesn’t want to be found, even if you’re the feds.

  Especially when he disappeared. Pre–cyber spying.

  Then later, they had more important things to do. Better ways to spend taxpayers’ money. They probably un-loaded a bunch of dusty file folders on all those Weathermen, Yippies, pinkos, et cetera, on one poor slob and he’d make a few calls every once in a while.

  Check the taps on their parents’, siblings’, old lovers’

  phones. Reel somebody in by chance now and again.” 76

  “Then Fox wasn’t taking much of a risk moving into the city.”

  “Well, it did get him killed.”

  “So you do think his murder is tied to his past?”

  “Isn’t everything?”

  77

  Four

  Almost everybody was wearing black at Nathan Fox’s memorial service, which was exactly what Faith had expected. It was not from a deep sense of propriety, but because this was New York City and everybody, especially women, wore black most of the time. It wasn’t timidity; it was the acknowledgment of a universal truth. You always looked good in black—and in style.

  Fox was going out in style. Going out on the Upper East Side at Frank E. Campbell’s, where anybody who was anybody had his or her service. Faith walked in under the marquee and quickly went into the building.

  There was a basket of yarmulkes at the door to the chapel. They seemed at odds with the bland, goyish entry room, complete with an Early American grandfather clock. But Fox had been, if not Jewish, a Jew, and many of the men were covering their heads.

  Faith slid into a seat far enough back for a good view of the audience—the mourners, she corrected herself—but close enough to hear the lines—the eulogies, that is. It had felt like a performance from the mo-78

  ment she’d pulled up to the entrance, her cab nosing out one limo and pulling up behind another. The service was private, the paper had said, and no time or place was given, but Emma had called Campbell’s, posing as her father’s cousin—“He has some,” she’d told Faith—and received the information. She’d called Campbell’s because, Faith realized, it would never have occurred to Emma that there might be other possibilities. So here Faith was—waiting for the curtain to go up, or down—after getting the message from Emma the night before.

  The night before. Faith had been tired, but pleasantly so. After finishing dinner at Santa Fe, Richard and she had gone to Delia’s, a newish downtown club on East Third Street. The owner was Irish, and Delia’s had a slightly Celtic air, enhanced by books on the

  “auld country” scattered about. But its main charm was in its unabashed romanticism. The interior was the color of raspberry silk sashes on little girls’ party dresses. There were vases crammed with fresh roses. A vintage bar and minuscule dance floor completed the decor. Prints of elegant long-ago ladies hung on the walls.

  They hadn’t danced, not this time, but talked for hours more. Then Richard had taken her back to her apartment building. At the front door, he’d asked,

  “When can I see you again?” “When would you like to see me?” she’d answered, slightly muzzy from fatigue and a large cognac. Richard asked, “Tomorrow?” It woke her up instantly, a dash of cold water. This is going fast, she thought, half in fear, half in delight.

  “That’s too soon. Besides, I have to work. The next day?” He kissed her, and it was a good one, not too dry, not too wet. Her purse slipped off her shoulder into the 79

  crook of her arm. He slid it back into place. “I’ll call you.”

  “ ‘To everything there is a season . . .’ ” Faith opened her half-closed eyes. The service had started.

  It was plain by the third tribute that if she had hoped to get any clues as to Nathan Fox’s true nature, it would not be here. But she had not harbored any such hopes. Funerals and memorial services are only venues for truth in fiction, where scenes of bereavement might dramatically reveal hitherto-undisclosed feelings. In reality, most people keep their private opinions private and eulogized. True, she’d been to heart-wrenching services where the naked grief of those left behind laid bare their hearts, but it was never a surprise. The same for those stoic occasions where not a single tear was shed.

  There were no tears at Fox’s service, but a great deal of talk. The din
osaurs—the remaining larger-than-life figures from the radical sixties—needed to weigh in and be counted. Radical lawyers, radical professors, radical clergy, radical writers, professional radicals.

  The chapel was packed. People were standing.

  Faith began to feel fidgety in the warm room. Outside, it was cloudy, with gray skies. A light snow had begun to fall earlier in the day. It was bitterly cold. Inside, the smell of wet wool, designer perfumes, the single floral arrangement of oversized stargazer lilies, and furniture polish commingled. The temperature crept up, increased by the crowd. Faith began to feel slightly nauseated.

  She took off her coat and tried to concentrate on what the speaker was saying. There was no casket, no urn. The only sign of Fox’s mortal existence was a 80

  large framed photograph next to the flowers. It was the same picture that had been in the Times. His smile looked less smug and mocking now, more self-deprecating, sadder. But that could just be the place getting to her. She leaned over to look directly toward the man who was sonorously droning on, and for the first time she spied Poppy, who had turned around, presumably looking for someone, or counting the house.

  Poppy Morris was sitting in the middle of a row.

  Protective coloration? Unlike most of those Faith could see, Poppy looked genuinely stricken. There were deep circles under her eyes that even carefully applied concealer didn’t mask. She turned her head back, face-forward. Noting the woman’s distress, Faith seriously doubted that Emma was the only one to know that Fox had been back in town; the only Morris to have seen him in all these years.

  Two more pundits spoke, and Faith did not even attempt to concentrate after hearing the beginning of the phrase “This is the end of . . .” It was all so impersonal.

  What was she going to tell Emma? There was no wail-ing, no gnashing of teeth, no rending of garments. Not that Emma herself would have behaved with such primitive lack of control, but Fox’s daughter was bereft. She’d want to hear that others were also. That her father would be missed. That her father had been cherished.