Lost in New York: A Lucy Ripken Mystery (The Lucy Ripken Mysteries Book 5)

by J. J. Henderson

  "Billy, you'd better get out here," Jackson said, appearing in the doorway. "Mr. CK is getting pissy."

  "Yeah, yeah," Billy said. "So what do you want to do, Lucy?"

  "Can I borrow this photograph?" Lucy said.

  He looked pained. "I guess, but bring it back, please. I moved into this studio about two months ago, I've got a full-time person supposed to be straightening out my files, but my black-and-white negatives from the lost era of film—remember when?—are still a disaster area and all the hard copies of the digital stuff are crammed in there with all those old negs anmd prints. I have no idea where that particular stuff might be, physically or on the computer, and the project got kind of back-burnered this fall, I've been so busy, so for all intents and purposes, this is my only print. Look, I gotta get back to work. Take it, go ahead. Just return the damn thing."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  RUSSIAN ROOMS

  Lucy couldn't help but feel elated as she descended from Studio Ritz. Rich, famous, and hugely successful, Billy Ritz was an actual living, breathing nice guy! Her faith in humanity temporarily restored, she found a nearby Kinko’s and made a couple of copies of the Smithson photograph. She boarded the uptown train under Union Square, and exited down the block from Sanderson's precinct house.

  This station gave her the creeps, as they all did: the worst possible shade of pale green on the walls, the worst possible color of fluorescent light blasting down from cheap fixtures dangling overhead, and grime-blackened cyclone fencing over the dust-coated windows, blotting out the mid-day light. Shrieks, moans, and deranged laughter drifted out of the holding cells in the back, a random choir of desperate voices. Behind the high counter topped with a computer monitor, a bored-looking African American woman in a blue uniform read a newspaper, ignoring Lucy until she leaned on the counter and got in her face. Lucy asked for Sanderson and was told he was out. But we had an appointment. I'm sure you did but he's not here, he had an emergency. The implacability of the woman's expression precluded argument, and sent Lucy towards the door. She opened it and almost ran into the red-headed partner. "Hey, Riley!" A cigarette dangled from his lip, and he wore what looked like a habitual grimace, one eye half-closed to screen out the smoke.

  "Riles. You're the dog lady from downtown, right?"

  "Yeah. Lucy Ripken. You know, Patricia Moody."

  "Right." He removed the smoke from his lip and looked appropriately concerned. "Nothing new on that I'm afraid. Did you talk to Bernie?"

  "No, he's not here. But I have something for him."

  "What's that?"

  "This." She pulled the photograph out of a manila envelope, and showed it to him.

  "That's a pretty girl. Models, eh?"

  "Models? Forget models! This is the guy! The man that was with Patricia that night. The guy we're—you're looking for. Zane Smithson. Or Smith Patterson. Or whatever the hell he calls himself."

  "Where did you get this picture?" he asked, taking it from her for a closer look.

  "Doesn't matter," Lucy said. "The thing is, you have something to work with now. You can do a computer check."

  "Hell it doesn’t matter. Course it matters. The guy who took the picture knows the guy."

  "He doesn't know him any better than I did. He's—Oh, what the hell. The photographer's a guy named Ritz. Billy Ritz. Has a studio down on 17th Street. Listen, could you run this through the computer now?"

  "That's not possible. There are only certain hours we can access the federal computers." He looked at his watch. "Listen, soon as Bernie gets back I'll put a rush on this and see what comes up. You have any more of these? It might do to have a couple of them."

  "That's it. Look, Call me ASAP, please. I need to know who this guy is."

  "Why is that, Lucy?" he asked.

  "Why!? I was there that night. I met the guy. I had dinner with them, then he killed her." She glowered at him. He looked noncommital. "You can't just let this slide, Riles."

  "Bernie'll call you later today. I promise." He looked at his watch. "Gotta go." He headed into the station.

  Lucy hustled back to the train. En route downtown, she pondered the cops' lack of interest in the case. Not that it was all that surprising. As far as they were concerned, Patty had played, and Patty had paid. Apparently they had neither time nor resources to take their investigation past that. Well, maybe the photo would trigger some action. She got off the Number 6 at Spring Street and went home to work on the Parkistan photos on the computer. An hour later she was on her way back uptown. She could have shipped the whole mess of pics to Nina via email, but she still liked to go to actual offices and have actual physical contact with people on occasion, and this was one of them.

  Lucy threaded her way through the mobs in the Times Square Station and emerged at 42nd and Broadway. Throwback to the crazy old days, a zit-scarred white boy preacher rambled on the corner, flanked by two women waving pictures of bloody fetuses. "Burn in hell, abortionists," they babbled. Over the years Lucy had inured herself to much of the unpleasantness her lovely city had to offer—and now that most of it was gone, she kind of missed it—but this particular brand of shit got her every time. Even now in this Disneyfied version of Times Square, a few blocks away abandoned children still sold themselves for spare change, while these ideo-lunatics bemoaned the fate of the fetus. She limited herself to a nasty glower, then headed north a couple of blocks to the Crown Building, where Spaces' offices were located. She crowded into an elevator with half a dozen corporate drones, zipped up, and got off on the 33rd floor. SPACES was one of the top design magazines in the country, one of the few remaining in fact, but its staff worked in a poorly-lit, tastelessly-furnished warren of offices that had been laid out by a facilities manager with the sensibility of a prison warden, and "decorated" by the wife of the CEO of the parent company. The lady had an evident flair for color. The wrong color. Any color, as long as it was purple. Lucy wandered past the receptionist with a wave, and found Nina in her office on the phone.

  The ever-fashionable, black-haired Nina, sporting a new 60s-looking bob cut to go with her smart, bell-bottomed pants suit, waved Lucy over as she chattered into the speaker of her head set. Still yakking away, she took the CD from Lucy, slipped it into her desktop, and hit a few keys. The Parkistan images appeared on screen.. "Oh, these are marvelous," she said, interrupting herself. "I'm sorry, Joe, I just got some photographs in and—yes, I'll call you back. Don't forget, Thursday at Francois' place. It should be a splendid soiree. Bye now." She took the phone off her head. "Lucy Ripken, how are you?" she asked in her emphatic way. "My God, these pictures are to die for! Look at that chandelier. It's positively...Dostoyevskian!"

  "Yeah, it's a pretty cool place," Lucy said. "It was fun to shoot."

  "But what's with these black holes, darling," Nina said. "These are absolutely worthless."

  "The boys from Kremlin insisted I shoot without extra lighting, so rather than argue, I did it my way and theirs. So half of these are blackouts. I thought you might want to know that."

  "You've got to let these designers know, love, that you are the photographer, and they are the designers, and they can, pardon my French, get the fuck out of the way at photo time. They don't know what they're doing, and they think they do."

  "I tried, believe me, but this was easier."

  "I hope it didn't take too much extra time, love, because as you know, with our budget the way it is this year—"

  "Just one night, Nina, like we said. Five hundred plus expenses. And I didn't use a stylist, just an assistant. The boys from Kremlin were irksome, but they did help out."

  "Well, you've done a marvelous job, I can see that. Send a bill ASAP." She closed the door to her office, and lowered her voice. "So what do you think, Lucy? Are Kremlin for real? They've also done two shops and a little bar downtown somewhere, and they want me to put them on the cover with these four projects. I was tempted, call it The Russians Are Coming! or something. In fact I made a tentative commitment for A
pril, since we had a hole there."

  "Excellent idea! I might even have the cover shot already done for you." She riffled through the images on screen until she got to the portraits from the Icon Grotto. "Check this out."

  "God, that's great, but I can see trouble already. Cigarettes and religious icons. Did you do any without the smokes?"

  "Nina, we're talking about Spaces, not network television. Nobody cares about this stuff in New York."

  "Don't kid yourself, honey. The Moral Police and the hounds of the Politically Correct are everywhere these days. You don't take lightly the Lord—not on the cover—and you don't smoke in public places. But maybe we could photoshop it out. God, that is. Or at least his only begotten boy, the baby Jesus there. The cigarettes I can probably live with, since Eastern European artistes such as these are supposed to be dashingly self-destructive, right?" She placed a loop on the transparency and looked more closely. "These icons are gorgeous. They're fakes of course, but so what? It's still Mary Joe and Jesus. Now, what I was going to say earlier was that I was talking to Danny Horn today, and he told me that Kremlin—that Serge and—"

  "Alyosha."

  "Right. That Serge and Alyosha are not really responsible for the club's design. He said he knew for a fact that it was Vadim who came up with the concept."

  "I spent some time with Vadim. He's an interesting character. He didn't say anything to suggest that he was the designer."

  "Well, I just don't know about giving them the cover is all. We can work around it one way or another if it's just the one story. But I need you to check out these other projects, email me digital stuff to look at, and let me know what you think."

  "No problem, Nina. But are you going to use the test images if you like the work, or go back and do a more formal shoot?"

  "What do you think? What if I pay you for a day to shoot, and if you get me usable images of all three projects I'll pay you for another day even if you don’t need it. If we need to re-shoot in larger format, the job is yours—but I can only pay you for one more day. So either way you get paid for three days. And I need you to get on this ASAP. If we cancel the Kremlin cover for April, we have to get this Parkistan film in the works for February. I expect to hear from you by tomorrow night at the latest."

  "Just give me the numbers and I'm out of here. So tell me, Nina," Lucy said, while Nina hunted the info down. "What's this guy Danny Horn like?" Nina didn't know it, but Lucy's friend Rosa was seeing Danny surreptitiously. She'd introduced herself after a lecture he'd given on "The Social Responsibility of the American Architect," and ended up in bed with him, at her loft, the very same night. He was miserably married to a woman who taught political philosophy during the week at a school in Philadelphia, and tormented him over the weekends in New York. He himself was a noted architectural critic and theoretician who'd made quite a name by damning nearly every skyscraper that had been built in the 80s and 90s in New York as the work of corporate architects who had capitulated on principle, abandoning the guiding tenets of humane urban design for the sake of fat commissions and glitzy magazine stories. In hindsight his words were anointed as prophetic, and he had found a little niche on the lecture circuit. Unfortunately the publications that employed him had all folded, and the ones that remained, like SPACES, couldn't afford to hire him. Lucy didn't know him personally, but tonight she and Harold were supposed to meet up with him and Rosa.

  "Oh, Danny's all right," Nina said. "Just a little bad-tempered—but you can tell that from his criticism, after all. We'll just have to hear what tune he plays now that he's decided to go into practice."

  "As an architect?"

  "Well, he is trained and licensed. I can't wait to see what he comes up with, considering the raft of shit he's given to almost every other architect in town."

  "But who'll hire him?"

  "God knows. The other day he showed me a drawing of a building he'd designed that looked like a...wolverine. Or was it a badger? He's into animals in a big way, since they’re organic, or something." She handed Lucy a piece of paper. "Here are the numbers. The Kremlin office, the Volga Boutique, and Leningrad Prospect, which is also a boutique. The bar is called Siberia. I wouldn't call Kremlin unless you run into a problem, because they will probably cause one."

  "Several," Lucy said. "At least one at each location." She looked at the names. "They're really milking the Russki slash Slav thing for all it's worth, don't you think?"

  "I know. It is hardly a trend and I'm already tired of it," said Nina. "But we should do the story. So let me know how it goes." She picked up her headphone. Dismissed, Lucy headed out.

  On reaching her floor, she found the front door ajar half an inch. Unlocked. What the hell? Suddenly stealthy, she tried peering through the crack. Couldn't see a thing. Where was Claud? Who was in there? "Don't worry, it's me," said Harry from inside. "Come on in!"

  "Damn," she said, throwing the door open. "You scared the shit out of me, Harry. Wow!" she added. A huge, multi-colored bouquet of tall gladiolas occupied the coffee table, along with a bottle of white wine chilling in a bucket, and a pair of dewy glasses. Harry sat on the sofa with Claud's head in his lap. "Harry, you sly dog!" She laughed, pleased. "How'd you get in?"

  "I used to live here, remember?" he said. “For about five minutes.”

  "Yeah, yeah, I do recall something like that. So you still have a key, eh? But what's the occasion? I mean, I've got—"

  "Occasion? Who needs one? How about, I love you?"

  "Harry." She came to him, he rose, they embraced. The dog jumped up, front paws on her back. "Yo pup, back off," she said, laughing, pulling the dog into the hug.

  They broke apart. "You want some wine?" he said. "I thought we might have a little party before—"

  "Harry, I can't start the evening early today. Sorry. I just got another assignment from Nina. Gotta go shoot a couple shops, then a bar. It's a rush. Then we're supposed to meet up with Rosa and this guy Danny."

  He interrupted her with a kiss, which lingered. "OK, baby," he said. "Forget the wine. But—" he lifted her shirt, put a hand on her breast. "We need to get re-acquainted before anything else happens."

  "Harry, back off, you horny dog," she murmured, initially inclined to resist his abrupt moves, but deciding instead to let herself slide into an erotic state of mind. Why not? "OK, but we have to hurry, Harry," she murmured huskily, brushing against the front of his pants.

  They moved into the kitchen and Harry got to it: he pulled off her jacket and her red shirt, unsnapped and unzipped her pants, and pulled them down with her underpants; with one hand he massaged her, with the other helped her get one leg free; then he dropped his own pants and slipped on a condom and took her from behind, standing, her hands on the kitchen table: ten minutes of fast, furious fun. Afterwards they leaned together over the table for a moment, panting. He kissed her neck, and said, "I love you," again, and then they cleaned themselves up, pulled their pants back up, and tucked their shirts in. Lucy put the wine in the refrigerator, and Harry walked Claud while Lucy, crotch tingling with post-coital tension, checked her mail and messages. Nothing of any great import except a call from Mr. Moody, wondering about her progress. She got out her camera and extra batteries and memory cards, and packed a small bag. By the time Harry and Claud got back she was ready to head out.

  Arm in arm they strolled west through SoHo in the Indian summer twilight. Shoppers, gallery-hoppers, and beboppers of the coolest persuasion jammed the streets. As painfully post-hip and too-trendy as the ‘hood could be, Lucy loved it at times, and this was one of those times. A warm, clear evening, Spring Street full of life—urban civilization at its best, at play.

  The Volga Boutique occupied a little 300-square foot space on Sullivan Street just north of Prince. The store glowed like a lantern, windows full of Russian riches. It was not a clothes store but rather a junk shop, selling icons, mostly, but also jewelry, postcards, nesting dolls, puzzles, hats, and other paraphernalia of Russian origin. The design
was mostly about a paint job—with Cyrillic lettering in a band running all the way around the top of the walls where they met the ceiling. The walls were creamy, the lettering red. Some sandblasted glass, a couple of interesting light fixtures designed to look like samovars, and the icons, which filled the cases and covered the walls. In the middle of the neatly organized clutter, a young girl sat on a stool, an illegal cigarette dangling from her lip. Blond and lovely and cool, she spoke English with a strong Russian accent. Lucy identified herself, captured a dozen images inside and out, including several with the girl, and they moved on.

  "They're cute, aren't they?" she said to Harold as they headed up to Houston to find a cab to the East Village.

  "Who's that?"

  "Russian girls. I mean, I've met a couple lately, and contrary to the fat babuschkas waiting in line to buy tomatoes they used to show on the news way back when, there are some real beauties."

  "That one was definitely a dish," Harold said. "But honey, I only have eyes for you," he sang.

  "Jesus, Harold, you are waxing romantic these days, aren't you?"

  "Yo, cabbie," he yelled, then whistled, and the Checker cut across three lanes of traffic and jerked to a halt ten yards past them on Houston. "I've just been—" he opened the door for her—"we're not getting any younger, Lucy," he said as they climbed in. "And, you know, the time comes when you have to make some decisions." He closed the door and turned to the driver. "We're going to 6th and A in the East Village." He took Lucy's hand. "So I was just thinking that maybe, I don't know—" He looked her straight on. The cab lurched into motion. "We should think about getting married and trying to, you know, have a kid."

  Lucy felt a thrill, or was it a chill, slide down her spine. "Harold, are you floating possibilities, or asking questions, or what, man?" she said, playing for a little time. What did this mean? My God!

  "Hey, what do you think?" he asked. "I'm asking, Lucy. I'm, you know, proposing. What the hell, what better place than a Checker cab, headed east on Houston?" He slipped one knee down on the floor of the cab. He took her hands, and gazed at her face. "This is what the wine and flowers and sex were supposed to set you up for. Lucy, will you marry me?"