Marlene looked him up and down while she drained her glass. Miraculously, a tray and waiter appeared, and she replaced the empty with a full. "You don't look like a private dick, Walsh. You're too pretty."
"You're pretty."
"Yes, but I'm hard as nails. Are you hard as nails?"
"Hard enough, in the right circumstances." He had moved closer. She wanted to sag against him, sag against something, but she held back. A good thing she had kept the champagne down to four hits.
"You're not an ex-cop, though, are you?"
"No. I'm an actor. But I played a cop once."
"Anything I would've seen?"
"Not unless you're a connoisseur of New Jersey community theater. If you watch TV real late, you can sometimes catch me demonstrating the amazing multiwrench."
"An unusual background for a PI. Most of them are ex-cops, ex-military. Sometimes ex-DA, like me. Where did you learn how to investigate?"
"Oh, off a matchbook. Good jobs at high pay. No, what they hire me for is hanging out, blending in with a crowd, seeing what you can pick up."
"Impersonation."
"Not necessarily. If you show up at a place in the right clothes, with the right look and speech, people assume you belong there. In a factory, they assume you're a worker. In a DA's office they assume you're a DA. At a function like this, they assume you're a rich art lover. People say things, do things, they wouldn't ordinarily do in front of an outsider."
"So you're working now?"
A shrug. "Not really. A client of mine passed me a ticket. Since I don't have any stock options, I appreciate the free eats. And, of course, you never can tell when you might pick up something." He waggled his eyebrows theatrically, and she laughed.
"Oh, Walsh, you are too smooth for me, too smooth by far. I need more traction nowadays. I don't like to skid out of control." She gave a tiny tug at his cummerbund, presented her gaudiest smile, finished her… what was it, fourth?… glass of champagne, and flounced away.
A dull gong sounded, and she found herself caught up in the flow of people. The dinner. Did she want dinner? Not really, but it was too much trouble to fight the flow. Besides, she had to sit down-the marvelous jacket felt like a full combat load on her shoulders. She felt her elbow gripped. It was a large man, beautifully barbered, tanned, with deep, dark eyes. "You're at table four," he said.
"Am I? How do you know?"
"I know because I arranged it." A little squeeze on her upper arm. "I'm Shelly Solotoff. I'm an old pal of Butch's. He's not here tonight?"
Somehow Marlene suspected Solotoff already knew that. "No, he's home with the babies. Besides, he has no interest in being nouveau riche."
"But you do?"
She yawned. "Excuse me. Three champagnes and I'm off my feet. Do I? I don't know. It serves to pass the time and show off one's taste in clothes."
They arrived at the table. He held her chair; she sank gratefully and slipped out of the jacket.
"I used to work with your husband, back in the stone age, when the sainted Phil Garrahy was still in charge."
"That must have been before I got there. Do you do this kind of service for all the wives of men you worked with twenty years ago?"
He chuckled. "That would depend on how many wives they had. But only when they're beautiful, exciting, and dangerous."
"And rich?"
"That comes under excitement. The poor are so dull, don't you think? Noble maybe, but dull."
Marlene fanned her face. "Gosh, Shelly, all this charm. I'm quite overcome. Now tell me about the time shares in St. Bart's you're selling. Or mutual funds."
He grinned. "Nope, no deals at this table. This is the laid-back table, right, Jimmy?"
This was a cell phone magnate, who seemed disappointed when Marlene did not immediately recognize his name. He obviously knew Solotoff. They exchanged some good-natured ribbing as between men who have little to say to one another. Also at the table: one of the one-name people, whom Marlene thought looked older than she appeared on TV, with her boy toy, sculptured from bronze and clearly coked up; and two rubicund middle-aged men with silvery toupees and women young enough to be daughters. Laid-back, indeed. The star cooed when Marlene was introduced to her and wanted to know about shooting people and pouted when Marlene declined to expatiate on the delights thereof.
Silent waiters brought the heavily worked and barely identifiable food of the rich: cuttlefish cannelloni with morel-asparagus puree; lobster bisque with carmelized truffles; terrine of baby lamb, roasted foie gras, Scottish salmon, ambergris, cocaine, uranium… Solotoff gorged and was excessively knowledgeable about the food and wine. Marlene picked at the food, longed for a banana, drank the succession of wines. Also gorging: the boy toy, the daughters, although Marlene felt sure they were scheduled for an after-dinner barf in the ladies'. Their men ate lightly and conversed about possessions and exotic and strenuous vacations. The cell magnate flirted with the one-named star. Solotoff had eyes for no one but Marlene, however, which Marlene thought was flattering, considering the lookers at the table. Something about the guy was off, however; there was more than the instinctive drive to try to seduce an available woman, although she had enough of a load on for that not to matter too much. She was having a little vacation was all, nothing wrong with that. Solotoff, though, seemed inordinately interested in her husband. Every other sentence seemed to be fishing around about Karp, and there were insinuating remarks, backhanded compliments. Even partly anesthetized by drink, Marlene did not like it and said so.
"Why're we talking about Butch? Butch is fine. Butch is home with the babies."
"What I said, he's a great man. Watches babies. Bestrides the legal system like a colossus. Beautiful wife, who he doesn't mind is running around town. Total confidence, Butch. I mean who could compete with the almighty Karp? It must be hard, though, married to perfection."
Marlene giggled. "He's far from perfect, believe me."
Solotoff leaned closer. She could feel his breath on her face and smell his winey exhalations. "Oh, yeah? Tell me some of his imperfections." Under the tablecloth, his hand fell upon her thigh.
"He's more perfect than me, that's the main one," she said, and then the waiter was there with a wine bottle, and Marlene found that her hand had moved without conscious will to cover the glass.
Solotoff's hand increased its stroking pressure. "Oh, go ahead. It's Chambertin. A very good year, too."
"No." She closed her eyes. Something bad was happening. There were hidden messages in the sounds of the banquet, the murmurs and the clink of implements. Her skin felt clammy, and the rich food roiled in her belly. There was someone she had to see, someone she had to talk to, a friend… who was it? Who had the answer? Or the question?
Someone was talking into her ear, things about Butch. About a different Butch, a cheat, a hypocrite, corrupt and manipulative, which made kind of sense because she was a different Marlene. What had happened to the real ones? She didn't know. A shudder ran through her. She shook her head, and the room reeled around her in slow motion, the chandeliers making long, slow circles. The one-named star had her head thrown back, cackling, showing the little face-lift scars under her ears. The waiters passed out peach bavarois with goat's-milk ice cream, swirled with semisweet chocolate. Hieroglyphics in the swirls. The message… horrible, horrible.
"I have to go now," she said, and rose to her feet and fell hard against Solotoff, who rose, too, and grabbed her around the waist. She felt the crystal jacket being dropped on her shoulders, and she floated through the room, leaning into the man. Butch? How did Butch get here? Butch didn't like these kind of things. Maybe the different Butch, the monster.
Now in a car, a limo, dark. Far away, someone was doing stuff to her body, fingers probing up her skirt, plucking at her underwear, squeezing her breasts, breath on her neck, a leech of some kind there sucking away. She let it go on; she had no strength, and besides, she was not even sure it was her, whoever she was now.
&nb
sp; Brightness, a hotel lobby, an elevator, more grappling. Pausing before a door, the man was probing through her purse, finding the key card, the little light going green, into the room. Marlene saw the bed, its coverlet turned down, the green-wrapped chocolate on the pillow. Oh, good, once she was in bed, everything had to stop. She took three steps and flung herself on it, facedown.
Solotoff looked at the prone figure with satisfaction. Her skirt had flown up, exposing the full length of her thighs and one buttock, enclosed in patterned silk. He took off his jacket and tie, unhitched his cummerbund, and kicked off his pumps. He had drunk a good deal of wine, but knew that it was not enough to keep him from screwing Karp's wife. She was a little older than he liked for strange pussy, but she could have been a hundred and he would still have gone for it. He slipped his suspenders off his shoulders and dropped his trousers. Too bad he didn't have a camera, but who knew he would luck out this way? In his mind he anticipated his next meeting with Karp. I fucked your wife and now I'm going to fuck you in court. No, too crude. Had to be subtle, make it last, make it hurt more. Things had not worked out well for Solotoff in recent years. He had the practice, he had the rich wife, but something was missing. There was a nasty ache where contentment should have been. But this, somehow this was going to make up for a lot of it. This was going to be sweet. Maybe she'd even like it. Maybe she'd like it from him better than from Karp. His groin stirred. That would be a bonus.
He took a step toward the bed. Yank those panties down and fuck her like a dog. A set of heavy thumping steps sounded behind him, and then a sound, like some machinery starting up, a low growl. He spun around, his heart pounding, and tripped over his pants. From the floor the dog looked as large as a grizzly bear. It growled again and came a step closer, moving to put itself between Solotoff and the bed.
"Easy, boy, good boy." Solotoff looked wildly around for a leash or something. How did the goddamn thing get in here? He got slowly to his feet. Lock it in the bathroom, that was a plan. The thing looked stupid as shit. Holding his pants up with one hand, he made shooing motions. The dog didn't budge. He went to the bathroom, opened the door.
"C'mon, boy," he crooned, walking slowly around to get behind the monster. The dog held its ground, the great head swiveling to follow him. A little nudge with the toe to give the fucking animal the idea…
Thirty seconds later, Shelly Solotoff found himself in the hallway outside Marlene's room, shaking and sans shoes, sans jacket, sans tie, sans cummerbund, sans the seat and half of one leg of his trousers (these remains well-soaked with urine) and now divesting himself of an expensive meal and a good deal of slightly used Chambertin. Yet another thing to blame Karp for.
15
The morning after, one of a series: actually, it was early afternoon before Marlene awakened from a hideous dream of being smothered by jellyfish, to find her dog licking her face with a tongue the size of a washcloth. The usual raging thirst, pounding head, disorientation in time and space. The usual panicked thoughts: What did I do drunk now? Then a really awful thought, as the events of the evening just past surfaced like corpses rising from a shipwreck. No, I couldn't have, not even drunk, I absolutely refuse to believe that I took that jerk back here and… But now she registered that she was fully dressed, and that her luxurious underpants were intact, bone-dry and in place. What now, false memories? He had been here-there was his jacket on the chair. She rose slowly from the bed and looked around the room. Trained detective that she was, it took her hardly any time to cop to what had happened; the torn strips of tuxedo trousers stiff with dog drool told all. It made her feel better than she had in ages, and she hooted and hugged the dog and immediately called her good friend the concierge and ordered a large pepperoni pizza and a bottle of merlot.
So they brunched together, Marlene sucking abstemiously on the wine and slipping warm, greasy, spicy triangles down the animal's maw; schlup, schlup, they vanished like dollar bills into a change machine. Her career as a drunk seemed to be entering a new phase. The first shock was over; the deep, embarrassing scenes would not happen again, she told herself-that was like the shaky, wobbling start of a kid on a new two-wheeler. There would be rules now: a little pick-me-up in the morning to get her through lunch, when she would deserve a couple or three for being good, and then cold turkey for the P.M. while doing useful work, and then the evening when she would keep a comfortable level until it was time for oblivion, the nightcap, as they called it. Plenty of people, she knew, even famous and successful people, did it for years, and so would she. This way she could go back to work, face them all down, go back to her family, discharge her responsibilities, for as long as her liver held up. Not quite ready to go back home yet, though, wait a while for the routine to kick in, not quite ready to face Butch, definitely not ready for the daughter. But soon.
So she went to work, in her new outfit, a neat little black suit with a cream silk blouse sporting a demure black ribbon at the throat. So she was welcomed back: by Lou Osborne, who looked nervous now, having sold his baby. He had to worry about becoming a takeover target, about the stockholders, about the latest Nasdaq quotes (453/4, down a quarter for the week), about growth targets-message, pull your load, Marlene; by Harry Bellow, who looked at her with a sad eye, from his own dryness, and tried clumsily to talk to her about it, but she put him off with a barrage of funny one-liners; by her staff, who were happy to cover for her. Which she needed. She did not go out anymore, no poking around with the clients. She sat in her office and moved paper while the expensive watch counted off the hours until lunch, until quitting time. They wrote her speeches, which she gave to frightened women. They made sure she did not interview new clients in the afternoon. Good old staff. Oleg was out of town, she learned, which was a pity. Oleg was always willing to go out for a quick one. He did not have the new American attitude toward drink. Good old Oleg. But in the long afternoons she had plenty of time to think. Her thoughts were not particularly clear, but they were vivid and disturbing. The money, root of all evil. The money came from the stock. Why had the stock gone through the roof? The publicity about the Richard Perry rescue. How convenient for Osborne! Still, that was life-good luck, bad luck. What had Oleg said that day, before the kidnapping? Something about events make market. And hadn't Oleg been a little evasive that day, some meeting or other that she hadn't heard about. Of course, evasive was Oleg's middle name. She turned to her computer and brought up Osborne's intranet. Every call that came into the phone system was logged and digitally recorded in compressed form. Everyone's call file was protected by a twelve-digit password known only to the user and to the system administrator and his staff. That's why she couldn't find out what Oleg had been up to on the phone in the weeks before the kidnapping. She typed out a message for Wayne Segovia, encrypted it, and sent it out. Wayne couldn't work in the field anymore, at least not for a long time, but he was a bright kid. They had put him in the computer department.
Then she called her husband. She spoke with Butch every day. He told her how the boys were doing, and she talked to them, too, sad little conversations with long pauses. When Karp asked her when she was coming home, she said, "Soon, a week." She said, "Pretend I'm in Chicago." She said, "I miss you," which was all true. And he said, "I miss you," too, but he did not mean the same thing by it.
For Lucy, the days started at five. Her tutor lived not, as Lucy had supposed, in a godfather-type mansion with an iron gate and extensive grounds, but in an ordinary, if large, brick, five-bedroom house in an old neighborhood in north Bridgeport. The neighbors were local bourgeoisie, people who owned insurance agencies and car dealerships, and Tran seemed to fit in well. His lawn was immaculately mown and tended, and the shrubbery was minimal, low, and perfectly shaped, affording, as Lucy was not slow to notice, excellent fields of fire in all directions. Four people lived in the house besides Tran. Dong drove the Mercedes, Vo kept up the house and grounds, Dinh seemed to be some kind of accountant or business manager, and Mrs. Diem was the cook and hou
sekeeper. All three of the men had the quiet, hooded look of soldiers, and Lucy knew that they were not just domestic workers.
When Mrs. Diem knocked at her door at dawn, Lucy arose with alacrity because if she did not, Tran would arrive and deliver a blistering lecture, with quotations from The Analects, The Tale of Kieu, and Chuang Tzu, about the vital importance of duty. She would wash herself and dress in pajamas and go down to breakfast, which was tea and congee or noodles and fish. Then she and Tran would go out into the back garden and do tai chi. Lifting Water. Flying Diagonally. White Crane Flaps Wings. All the twenty-four patterns of the simple set, for an hour, rain or shine. Lucy had done some of this in Chinatown, but never as seriously as she did now; she had not known Tran was an adept. His strong, scarred hands moved her body through the evolutions. The chi started to flow again in its secret channels; it settled in its proper home below the navel. She breathed more easily; the impacted garbage began to drain from her head.
After that, study all morning with Tran, math and science. He was a good teacher. Use your strengths, he said, math is a language, science is a language. She saw that it was true. The quadratic equations, the sines and cosines, the chemical formulas started for the first time to make sense, like Chinese. The boiling of foreign tongues in her head slowed to a mild bubbling. She spoke French to Tran, Vietnamese to the others. In the afternoons she would be driven to the University of Bridgeport to do research for the papers she owed. Then back home, where after dinner she would work on papers and do the assignments Tran had given her. After a few days of this she called Dr. Shadkin at the lab, another duty. He was appalled.
"Lucy, for God's sake," he cried, "you're sweating high school? High school? Okay, let me fix this-by the authority vested in me by the trustees of Columbia University, I hereby grant you a Ph.D. Now, come back here."
She laughed, she said she would be back when she got this worked out. Her parents wanted it, she had let them down, she had to do it.
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