Over My Live Body

by Susan Israel

  “Okay now, how about throwing some light on what happened here tonight, Miss Price?”

  23

  The bright overhead ceiling light burns out the minute I open the door and flick it on.

  “I’ll change the bulb,” Quick volunteers.

  I open the utility cabinet under the sink and grope around inside. “I think I’m out of them.”

  I pull the chain on the antique lamp with the fringed shade suspended over the couch like a swooping bird. It can only accommodate a forty-watt bulb and isn’t up to interrogation standards. Looking at him in this light with dark shadows filling the hollows in his face, Quick looks like he could forget about what he came here for, sit down, settle back, and fall asleep in an instant.

  Appearances are deceiving.

  “Let’s have it,” he says, reaching for my sketch pad. He flips through it looking for Vittorio, but not without looking at what else is inside: several other faces of models I’ve done for my sculpture, several nudes of both sexes and various proportions, some more detailed than others. When finally he comes to the drawing I did for him, he carefully tears it out of the book and crimps it in half, then in quarters. I wince. More smudge. He closes the sketch pad and hands it back to me. I drop it on the throw rug. Now that he’s got what he came for, he wants more. He stares me down. Let’s have it.

  “I’m glad you came when you did,” I say. “There’s no telling what might have happened.”

  “How about telling me what did happen,” Quick finally does sit on the couch, but not with the lassitude of someone about to fall asleep. I know that pose. He’s comfortable with it; he could hold it all night. He pats the cushion next to him, compelling me to join him there and too bad if I still feel like standing. “And who it happened to.”

  I curl up against the arm of the couch for support while I brief him none too briefly on Ivan’s part in this. Like an actor in repertory, I tell him, he played several parts. He was exceptionally good as The Charmer and The Button Down Wall Street Whiz. His portrayal of The Jealous Lover doesn’t get such rave reviews from me. His latest role is The Bodyguard. I fill Quick in on the scenes we’ve played together: the shove into the wall, the frantic call to the police Friday night after I changed the locks on him, the incessant phone calls since. “And tonight he’s sitting on the front stoop waiting for me to come home! I wouldn’t ordinarily be happy to see Curtis come along, but tonight…yeah!”

  “Is there a chance that Curtis and he know each other?”

  “I don’t think so.” I shake my head vehemently, “Anyway, Curtis doesn’t seem to be the kind of company Ivan likes to keep.”

  “They don’t have to be squash partners to be in collusion on something like this. This could be a set-up between the two of them. Another act. Curtis playing The Bad Guy and Ivan The Concerned….Ex?”

  I smile for the first time tonight. I like the way Quick has picked up on my metaphors. “Definitely ex,” I confirm.

  “He wasn’t hurt that badly. As I said, he may have staged this whole scene with Curtis to make himself look like The Good Guy, to get you to let down your guard.”

  “I don’t think…”

  “So that you’d take him back.”

  “I’m never taking him back.”

  “He doesn’t appear to be convinced.”

  “Tell me about it!”

  “Miss Price…”

  “Delilah,” I insist wearily. Hearing Miss Price over and over makes me think of a piece of merchandise with the wrong tag attached. After what happened here tonight, I wonder if he knows what tag to put on me.

  “Pressing harassment charges against him might make things a little clearer to him. Something you haven’t done. Why not?” I shrug and shift my weight, and my discomfiture isn’t lost on him. He bears down. “And why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

  The light feels like a sun lamp scalding my face. “I was worried about my credibility,” I whimper. “Complaining about two stalkers…”

  “Yes, I can see why that would bother you, you’ve been so credible up to now.”

  I bolt up and stand in front of him, folding my arms to ward off any more barbs. “Ivan said nobody would take me seriously if I complained about him and somebody else; that’s why I didn’t tell you about him before now, and how about that, for once he was right. I didn’t even want to bring it up with Rubenstein…” I wrap my arms around me tighter. “When I did, he had this attitude…like he was thinking, ‘How bad can things be if the ex-boyfriend is still looking out for her?’ He didn’t get it. He took down Ivan’s name as a witness after I told him Ivan had seen Curtis and might be able to identify him.” I force a thin smile. “Which, what do you know, he did. Well, he was good for something, at least.”

  “I’ll talk to Rubenstein,” Quick cuts in. “I’ll fill him in on what happened here tonight. We’re talking assault now. He’ll take it seriously.”

  “What’s he going to do about it?”

  “The same thing I’m going to do. Have someone check the drawing you did of Curtis to see if it matches any photos of known perps with a similar MO. Post him on the wall alongside other wanteds we’re on the lookout for. Fill out more paperwork.” Quick grunts. “He’ll like that.”

  “What about Ivan?”

  “He walks. He didn’t do anything wrong tonight. He simply defended himself, and in the past, when he did, you didn’t press charges, Miss Price.”

  “Delilah.”

  “You’ll probably get a phone call from Marty. Probably not until later in the day. He’s on the eight-to-four. What’s that case number again?”

  I take a deep breath and reach in my fanny pack where I stashed the piece of paper and give it to him. As he pulls a small ruled notepad from the inside pocket of his blue nylon windbreaker, I notice the gun in his shoulder holster. He jots down the case number on a page a third of the way in the pad. He’s left-handed, I notice, and has long tapered fingers more befitting of a surgeon or an artist than a cop. He hands the paper back to me and gets up, but not to go, not yet. He looks over my shoulder at my cell phone. The red voice mail alert is flashing in tandem with an amber hazard light outside. “Looks like you have some voice mail,” he says. “Why don’t you play it back?”

  I push what I’ve come to call the panic button.

  “Delilah, this is Morgan…”

  Quick looks like, if he could, he’d reach in and pull Morgan out of the machine by his hair. I recall having heard a couple of cops call him Hat Trick and wonder if this has anything to do with the powers of magic. Maybe hecan.

  “I just wanted to let you know I’m okay…”

  I close my eyes and whisper a prayer of thankfulness.

  “…I’m in Park Slope…”

  Quick reaches in his pocket for the pad again. He clicks his blue ball point with the same deliberation he probably uses to load his gun. He’s waiting for an address with a gotcha gleam in his eyes.

  “…I’ll try calling again later…”

  Click.

  “You didn’t mention any bars in Brooklyn, Miss Price.”

  “I don’t know about any bars in Brooklyn.” Not true. “Not the kind Morgan would go to.” Truer. “Not the names of any anyway.” The closest I can come to the truth. Quick should be able to forgive me this mental block since he seems to have his own where my name is concerned. “And anyway, he might not be calling from a bar…”

  “You were in Brooklyn tonight, weren’t you, Miss Price?”

  Delilah, damn it!

  “I wasn’t anywhere near Park Slope. I was…” I cut myself off before I can say baring my ass in front of a bunch of artists. Quick would just remind me that Morgan is an artist. “Just over the river, in Clinton Hill.”

  “Ssshh…”

  Click.

  “That’s him,” I whisper, “that’s Curtis.”

  Quick looks at me like he’s appraising my own untapped powers of sorcery or thinks I’m crazy. More likely, he’s
thinking I’m trying to get him off my case and onto the case I want him to be working on. Which is also my case.

  “He hasn’t been leaving messages any more,” I explain. “Last time he called, he said he was getting tired of one-way conversations.”

  “Maybe he’s in a bind,” Quick suggests. “Can’t make calls as freely.”

  I shrug. “I’ve turned my phone off a few times.”

  “You told me he’s still been leaving you notes though, right?”

  I nod. “Right at my doorstep.”

  “I’d say that’s pretty one-sided.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “Let me see them.”

  “There are only two…” I say, realizing I sound apologetic as I place them in the outstretched palm of his hand.

  He unfolds them, reads one, then the other, then holds them next to each other. “Looks like he used the same paper. The printing could have been copied out of a grade school primer. He didn’t jot these in a hurry. They’re too uniform, too neat for a spur-of-the-moment thing. He probably wrote these way before he left them for you, before he left home, in fact. Wherever home happens to be in his case. Nothing like this could be traced. That much he probably knows.” He hands them back to me. “Did Rubenstein see these?”

  “Just the second one. The one that came with the flowers, not exactly FTD. He told me to save everything.”

  “Okay now, what about the other messages?”

  “Lots of hang-ups and one looong message.” I say, sorry again for having so little in the way of evidence to offer him.

  “Play it for me.”

  My fingers start trembling as I hit replay. I remember the contents of this message too well. I wonder how it’s going to play with Quick, who looked at the paintings of me so impassively and then wanted to know, was Morgan the only person I had posed for like that. “You look good without your clothes on,” Curtis begins, interrupted by a too-short screech of static. “You look good with them on too, but not half as good as you do naked. And I like the way you look at me when you’re doing that slow strip of yours, like you’re doing it just for me. One of these days, you will be, Delilah. Now that you’ve finally dumped that tightass, it’ll be sooner than you think. I can’t wait.”

  Click.

  All this time I’ve looked every which way but up at Quick. I know he hasn’t taken his eyes off me. I’ve never felt more undressed in my life. I cross my arms in front of me and look down at the parquet floor. My feet point forward and outward. What a good pose this would be. I have to remember it.

  Quick moves toward the windows. He pulls up each shade and looks across the street, then left, then right, then up, as if Curtis, being the bird of prey that he is, might be peering down at me from an aerie. “No one can see in,” I tell him. At least not any more they can’t.

  “When you’re working,” Quick says, “are the shades in the studio drawn?”

  “Everything in the studio is drawn but the shades,” I flinch when I look up at him and catch his reaction. “Or blinds or shutters. The students like natural light.”

  “What about night classes? Do they work by moonlight?”

  I shake my head.

  “You worked tonight. Were the windows covered?”

  It’s a miracle that the windows were kept closed. “Maybe partially. I don’t remember. I wasn’t looking.” I see the displeasure in his eyes. “I was concentrating on the drawing I was doing,” I remind him.

  “Next time you go to work in one of these places,” he pauses, giving the slide projector in his mind time to change images, “take a look out the window at what buildings are nearby. Make a note of it if you notice anything unusual, like a vantage point someone may be using to get a better look. It wouldn’t hurt to at least be observant,” he cautions me, “because somebody else is certainly observing. How did Ivan feel about your work?” Again there is that pause before the word work, so palpable I could reach out and squeeze it. Click. Another image of me is projected in his mind, an even bluer nude than the one before.

  “He hated it,” I tell him.

  “Did he ask you to stop?”

  “Several times. And he didn’t like it much better when the shoe was, or I should say wasn’t on the other foot.” Quick frowns and I elucidate. “Like when I had male models posing for me in my studio.”

  “Maybe he felt that this would make you stop.”

  “I stopped seeing him,” I remind Quick. “So he really has no say in the matter.”

  “He still may not see things that way,” Quick insists. “I may want to have a little talk with him after the boys in the Sixth are through taking his statement.” A little man-to-man talk, I’m thinking, wonderful. I can hear Ivan now. You’re a man. How would you feel, Detective Quick, if it were your girlfriend, someone you hoped would be your wife someday, and she was posing naked in front of all those people all over the city? Have you seen any paintings of her in the course of your investigation? You must have. There are so damn many pictures of her floating around they might as well be plastered on the sides of buses and on the walls in subways. How would you feel, knowing she’s alone in a studio with some naked guy who thinks he’s a stud and never be sure she doesn’t think he is too? How would you feel when you looked at her after that?

  I’m not sure how he’d feel or how he feels right now. I’m reluctant to give Quick Ivan’s number, but I realize he can get it easily enough from the Sixth and it looks better if he gets it from me. The way things are right now, I couldn’t be cast in a worse light, natural or otherwise. It just so happens that Wall Street is within First Precinct territory, Quick says when I give him Ivan’s work address and phone number. Very convenient. Right in the neighborhood. This is worse. I don’t even want to think about what Ivan is going to have to say when he finds out that this isn’t a business call, that the only investment Quick plans to make is in the interest of my safety. He reaches in his pocket and pulls out another of his cards and jots something on the back before handing it to me. “Here are a couple more numbers where I can be reached if I’m not at the precinct,” he says. I glance at them. One of the numbers is prefixed by 718. I flip over the card. The name Patrick A. Quick is printed in the center of the card, in bas relief. Patrick. A real cop name. I look back up at him. He doesn’t look anything at all like a Patrick. “One of these is my cell number. The other is another line.” He doesn’t indicate which is which. “In case you need to get in touch with me before four. If you think you’re in immediate danger, call 911.” I nod numbly. “Otherwise, call Rubenstein, then call me. You have the number at the Sixth?”

  I point to the legend of numbers I pasted on the refrigerator door, a modern girl’s urban-terrorism survival guide. I’ve added numbers to the list. I’ve Scotch-taped an auxiliary roster on the wall. Quick nods in approbation. “I’m glad you came when you did,” I say again, edging near the door. “Thanks.”

  “I’ll do what I can to help,” Quick says as I undo the locks and turn the knob. “This isn’t my jurisdiction. I’m here to follow up on a murder investigation and I’d welcome a little cooperation,” he reminds me, as if I need reminding. My hands are so sweaty they slip all over the place. I know he’s noticing this, knows how nervous I am, which makes me more nervous. Just as he steps over the threshold, he stops, turns back, leans against the door jamb and looks down at me. His proximity to me makes me feel like I’m about to break out in hives. If we’d been on a date, this would be his ploy to get a kiss, but there’s something else he wants out of me. “Who does Morgan know in Park Slope?”

  “Nobody that I know of.” This is the truth. Nobody that Morgan knew of before tonight either, I’d be willing to wager. All Quick has to do is flip through the list of names of people who were at that party to know absolutely none of them live in Brooklyn. He’s probably interviewed them all already. I can’t be responsible for what they haven’t told him or for any of the things Morgan never told me about his life. I went out with him
and his friends to gay bars, we’d talk about art and diss old boyfriends, then we’d go home in different directions to different lifestyles. I didn’t know everything. Morgan may be getting himself in as much peril as Vittorio was two nights ago, only his undoing probably won’t be at the point of a sharp instrument, but in a drop of blood, a speck of semen, the kind of perp that Quick can’t collar. Only protease inhibitors can.

  Quick shifts his weight from one leg to the other. I flinch. Even the slightest sound out here is bound to rouse Mrs. Davidoff’s curiosity. I’m surprised she hasn’t made a grand entrance by now. This is her golden opportunity to complain to the police about me and she’s blowing it big time. I wonder if she’s been listening to all this through an eye cup suctioned to the wall. I wonder if she might be dead.

  This interrogation, though, still has a beating pulse. “Listen, Miss Price, every time I talk to another of his friends, I get the same non-answers,” Quick complains. “They don’t know anything. It’s like being pinned up against a brick wall of silence.”

  Stonewall, I think. This is where I’ve been told everything began.

  I recall the detective who made reference to Morgan Fairchild, Morgan Le Fey, who no doubt was the same one who asked Gary and Abel what sex joint Morgan could be found at. I wonder how Quick can be so surprised by the reticence he’s encountered that seems to me to be, under the circumstances, entirely warranted. “Look, there’s something you’ve got to understand,” I say. “These friends of Morgan’s don’t exactly trust the police.” And I can’t say I’ve blamed them most of the time. “They’ve had a lot of bad experiences.”

  “One of theirs has been murdered. I’d say that’s about as bad as an experience can get, wouldn’t you?” Quick barks at me in the exasperated tone he’d use to reprimand a misbehaving child. Yes, sir. No, sir. I won’t say anything stupid like that again, sir.

  “What about the staff at the restaurant? You seem to be totally ignoring…”