He doesn’t. When he gets to the lobby, she’s standing, looking about vaguely. She’s not tottering now, but appears almost catatonic.
She wanders, with little-girl steps, into the cocktail lounge. Cone waits a few minutes, then follows. It’s a dim room, almost empty. He sits at the bar, orders a vodka, and inspects the room via the back mirror. Grace is sitting by herself at a small corner table. A waiter is serving her a tall drink with a lot of fruit in it, topped with a little paper parasol.
Cone watches, and can’t figure her out. She’s sitting like a statue. Not smoking a cigarette, not sipping her drink, not looking around. He figures if someone touched her with a fingertip she’d topple sideways.
Finally Anthony Bonadventure comes striding into the cocktail lounge. Cone watches the action. Bonadventure looks around, walks smiling to her table. He’s carrying a folded newspaper under his arm. Cone thinks it’s The Wall Street Journal.
Anthony sits down at her table, takes one of her hands, turns it over, kisses the palm. Then he leans toward her and whispers rapidly. A waiter comes over. Anthony straightens up, gives his order. The waiter moves away. Grace gets up and walks to the lobby, carrying the folded newspaper. Bonadventure sits down again, and when his drink is served—something in a stemmed glass—sips it quietly.
Cone glances at his watch and waits for this little melodrama to be played out. In less than ten minutes, Mrs. Grace Clovis returns. No newspaper. She’s practically bouncing, bopping to a tune no one else can hear. She’s snapping her fingers as she walks, and kisses Bonadventure’s ear before sliding onto her chair in a lithe, sexy glide.
The two chatter, heads close together again. Then they finish their drinks, Bonadventure pays the tab, and they leave together. The waiter cleans off their table and brings a small tray with their empties and crumpled cocktail napkins back to the bar. Cone reaches for the discarded paper parasol.
“May I have this?” he asks.
“Sure,” the waiter says, “help yourself. Afraid it might rain tonight?”
Cone smiles dutifully. He turns the wee parasol in his fingers, opening and closing it. Made in Taiwan, probably. And here it is in Manhattan, decorating a drink in a fashionable Madison Avenue cocktail lounge.
“Go figure it,” he says to the bartender.
That worthy, experienced at humoring nutty patrons, nods and says, “You’re telling me.”
Cone drives home, figuring Joe Washington will get back to Queens one way or another. He finds a parking space only two blocks from his loft, but he’ll have to get up early to move the Honda to the other side of the street or risk it being towed away. He puts a sign inside the windshield. It came with the rented car. NO VALUABLES, DRUGS, OR RADIO. THIS CAR WIRED WITH ELECTRONIC ALARM. Lots of luck.
He isn’t hungry, but Cleo is. He gives the cat a treat: a can of tuna. Topped with the tiny paper parasol. Cleo sniffs at the fish, then looks up at him, suspicious of this largesse. But starts gobbling. Half the tuna disappears. The cat strolls away, licking its chops. Then sits down to groom its whiskers.
“Not even a thank you?” Cone asks, then, suddenly famished, eats the remainder of the tuna, spooning it directly from the can. He also eats a chunk of kielbasa and a piece of moldy cheddar. He belches—which is understandable. The sudden eruption startles Cleo, who darts under the bathtub.
It is almost midnight before he calls Samantha Whatley.
“I didn’t wake you up, did I?” he asks her.
“No. I’m watching The Johnny Carson Show.”
“Good?”
“A repeat. What do you want?”
“Not a thing. How are you?”
“I’m fine. Just the way I was this afternoon. Did you go to the party?”
“Yeah, I stopped by. Had one drink. A drag.”
“Find out anything?”
He considers what he might tell her. “Lucinda Clovis, the sister, lives in the same apartment with her brother and sister-in-law. Well, in the same building, anyway.”
“So?”
“Don’t you think that’s a little unusual?”
“Maybe,” Sam says.
“What did you do tonight?” he asks. “After you got home.”
“Washed my hair. Did some laundry.”
“What did you eat?”
“Chicken chow mein. With fried noodles. It was pretty good. What did you have?”
“A tuna fish salad.”
“You liar,” she says. “You ate it right out of the can.”
“Well, yes,” he admits. “Cleo’s leftovers. You’re feeling okay?”
She sighs. “What’s with you? Yes, for the second time, I’m feeling okay. May I go to sleep now?”
After they hang up, he wonders why he called. How are you feeling? What did you do tonight? What did you eat? A real nothing conversation—and so comforting.
He has a nagging suspicion that he’s being recruited as a living, breathing, dues-paying member of the human race.
“How did you make out?” Cone asks Washington the next morning.
“Like a thief. I practically OD’d on those meatballs. Dee-licious. Then I get home, and guess what the little wifey has for dinner? Spaghetti and meatballs. Wouldn’t you know?”
“Screw the meatballs. Did you get a chance to talk to Stanley and Lucinda?”
“Oh, yeah. I had a nice little chat with both of them, and I kept them in sight all the time I was there. They didn’t ask me where I was from, and I didn’t say.”
“What’s your take?”
Washington looks down at his desk and fiddles with a pencil. Then he looks up at Cone. “You think there’s something kinky there, don’t you?”
Timothy nods.
“I think you’re right,” Joe says, “but don’t expect me to swear to it in a court of law. Look, I got a sister I dearly love. We meet, hug and kiss each other’s cheek. Maybe I’ll put my arm around her. All casual-like—you know? But Stanley and Lucinda—they’re something else again. If you hadn’t told me they were brother and sister, I’d have figured them for a happily married couple, or maybe lovers. I’ve never seen so much hand-holding, and little pats, and strokings. I really don’t think they’re aware of what the hell they’re doing, or how it looks to other people. I spotted a few smirks and raised eyebrows, so other people probably have the same dirty, disgusting suspicions you and I have.”
“Yeah,” Cone says. “You got a Manhattan telephone directory?”
“Of course I’ve got a telephone directory. You think I’m a second-class citizen, honky?”
“Do me a favor, will you? Look up the home phone number of Stanley Clovis, then see if Lucinda has a different listing.”
He waits patiently, lighting another Camel while Joe flips pages. Finally the black looks up, his face twisted into a strained grin.
“Yeah,” he says, “you’re right. Lucinda’s number is the same as Stanley’s.”
“It figures,” Cone says. “I know Lucinda lives in the same apartment house. I just wanted to make sure she lives in Stanley’s penthouse, along with wife Grace and their two kids.”
They stare at each other.
“The family that plays together stays together,” Washington says.
“Maybe,” Cone says. “But how are you going to nail down something like that?”
“You’re not,” Joe says. “Unless you’re in the bedroom with a Polaroid and flash.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Tim says slowly. “There may be ways. Did you eyeball Stanley’s haircut?”
“Oh, yeah, man. All those ringlets. Real spiffy. The Blow-dry Kid. And Lucinda has the same style. His-and-hers.”
“Uh-huh,” Cone says. “I think I need a haircut.”
“I thought you did it yourself,” Joe Washington says. “With a salad bowl and an electric shaver.”
Cone grunts and goes back to his office. He spends almost a half hour with the Manhattan Consumer Yellow Pages, going through the section on Barbershops. He’s
happy to find a special Guide included that groups businesses according to the locations they serve. So he concentrates on the East Side, Fifty-ninth to Ninetieth streets.
He makes the same pitch to each barbershop he calls.
“Hello there! I wonder if you might help me. I met Mr. Stanley Clovis at a party the other night, and I so admired his hair styling. I’d like a do just like his, but I neglected to ask him where he goes. Is he a customer of yours?”
He strikes pay dirt on his eighth call: Venus-Adonis Hair Styling, Inc., a unisex barbershop on East Eighty-sixth Street.
“Is he a customer of yours?” Cone asks.
“Not a customer,” the receptionist says coldly. “Both Stanley and Lucinda Clovis are clients of ours.”
“And could I get a haircut like Stanley’s?”
“Just a moment, sir. I’ll have to talk to Luis. He created Mr. Clovis’s styling.”
Cone waits patiently. Finally the receptionist comes back on the phone.
“If you’re able to get here by eleven o’clock,” she says, “Luis can fit you in.”
Cone suppresses an obscene reply to that. “I’ll be there,” he says. “Thank you, and thank Luis.”
“Name, please?”
“Javert. J-a-v-e-r-t.”
He leaves his black leather cap in the office and drives up to East Eighty-sixth Street. The Venus-Adonis salon is as bright and bewildering as a discotheque, with garish colors, crackled pink mirrors, and hard rock blasting from ceiling speakers.
Cone identifies himself as Javert, and the receptionist, who’s wearing a black leather jumpsuit and a purple wig, looks at his spiky, ginger-colored hair in amazement.
“You do need help, don’t you?” she says.
But she gets him into a chair and swathes him up to the chin in a Ralph Lauren sheet.
“Luis will be with you presently.”
Cone waits, and waits. He’s not the only client; four of the six chairs are occupied: three women and a man, all swaddled in sheets. He remembers when barbershops had copies of the Police Gazette available for customers. This hair-styling salon has Elle and Town & Country.
Luis shows up, looking like an anorexic basketball player. He’s got to be six-eight, at least, and so thin a strong wind might blow him across to Queens, where he belongs. He’s wearing white painters’ overalls, with apparently nothing on underneath, and he’s doused with a cologne that reminds Cone of a visit to a geisha house.
Luis claps a palm to his cheek in horror after viewing Cone’s hair. “Oh, my God, my God,” he groans. “Who did this to you?”
“A butcher.”
“A sadistic butcher,” Luis says. “There is no way, no way, I am going to re-create Stanley Clovis’s styling with what you have. It will take at least three consultations. And meanwhile you must let the hair grow and grow to give me something to work with. The color isn’t bad,” he admits. “I can live with the color, but it needs brightening. And also a protein thickener and conditioner. I will start with the preliminary shaping, but you must promise to come back again in a month.”
“I promise,” Cone says humbly.
Luis sets to work, snipping gently, and frequently standing back to observe his handiwork through narrowed eyes.
“Stanley and Lucinda are wonderful people,” Cone offers.
“Beautiful people,” Luis says, clipping a bit here, a bit there. “So chic. So soigné.”
Cone isn’t sure what soigné means, but it sounds like a compliment. “Definitely soigné,” he says. “And so devoted to each other.”
Luis giggles. “Oh, you’ve heard those stories, too, have you? My lips are sealed.”
“Everyone’s heard those stories,” Cone says. “With Lucinda living in the same apartment.”
“Well, they do say that bro and sis are just a little too close, if you get my meaning. But Que sera, sera is my motto.”
“Live and let live,” Cone adds. “If they’re happy, that’s all that counts.”
“You couldn’t be more right, dearie,” Luis says.
“It’s the wife I feel sorry for.”
Luis laughs. “Don’t waste your sympathy. She gave him two pups, didn’t she? Now she wants to spread her wings and fly. And I do mean fly, if you catch my drift.”
“So I’ve heard,” Cone says. “That magic white powder.”
“You better believe it,” Luis says. “Now upsadaisy and over to the sink, and we’ll see what we can do with your wild mop.”
Sitting on a stool, head bent into a stainless steel basin, Cone feels Luis’ surprisingly strong fingers massaging shampoo in his scalp, and says, “They could be a little more discreet about it—Stanley and Lucinda.”
“With their money?” Luis says. “Who needs to be discreet? It just makes their reputation a little more piquant—wouldn’t you say?”
“Definitely piquant.”
Luis leans close, whispering in Cone’s ear. “The last time they were here together, I did her first, and when I started on him, she stood by his chair, and she was definitely groping him under the sheet. Can you believe it?”
“I can believe it,” Cone says.
He has some glop rubbed in his hair. Then Luis rinses away the soapsuds and other junk, and dries Cone’s hair with a big, thick towel.
“Back in the chair, ducky,” he says.
When Cone is seated and sheeted again, Luis says, “I can’t give you a perm; the hair is too short. But I can give you a little frizz, a little panache.”
“Soigné?” Cone asks.
“Absolutely,” Luis says, setting to work with blow-dryer and brush.
When, finally, Cone inspects himself in the crackled pink mirror, his heart quails. His hair looks like a Brillo pad.
“I like it,” he says bravely.
“But of course,” Luis says.
Cone pays everyone and tips everyone—enough money to buy Cleo a year’s supply of Norwegian sardines. He wonders how he’s going to get that tab approved on his expense account, but convinces himself it was solid investigative work. He wanted knowledgeable gossip, and he went to the most authoritative source.
He drives back to the office, all the Honda’s windows open because he can’t stand the miasma emanating from his scalp. As luck will have it, the first person he meets in the office is Samantha Whatley. She takes one look at his coiffure and collapses with laughter, leaning against the wall and holding her ribs.
In a few moments he’s surrounded—four or five people—all pointing at his hair and spluttering to get out their comments: “A demented porcupine!” “Sue them, Cone, sue!” “Did you fall asleep in the chair?”
“Fuck all of you,” he growls. “It happens to be soigné. With panache.” Then he stalks into his office and slams the door. Runs a palm over his frizz and tells himself, “It’s not that bad,” knowing it is. He lights a cigarette and then, after a while, lights another. It takes him a moment to realize he’s got two cigarettes going. He curses and stubs out both of them. Then, minutes later, rescues the long butts from the ashtray and straightens them out. He thinks he’s getting a good handle on the people involved: Stanley and Lucinda Clovis, Mrs. Grace Clovis, Constance Figlia, and Anthony Bonadventure. He’s beginning to grasp the interaction there, but he’s no closer to what’s going down. And no closer to why, or by whom, G. Edward Griffon was pushed in front of a subway train. That, he tells himself angrily, is all that matters.
He digs out the Clovis-Evanchat file and goes over it again. He has an aching suspicion that there are questions he should be asking, and isn’t. Somewhere, in all those PIEs and Griffon’s reports and his own notes, is something of real import. He’s convinced of it. But what?
He goes through the Preliminary Intelligence Estimates again and spots something he thinks is freaky. Clovis & Clovis do their banking at Manhattan Central, the Madison Avenue branch. But when he tailed Bonadventure and Constance Figlia from the press conference, they went into the Merchants International Bank
, and seemed right at home. Of course either of them might have a personal account there.
“Oh, my God,” Sidney Apicella groans, “you again? What happened to your hair?”
“Forget it,” Cone says angrily. “Your PIE on Clovis-Evanchat says that Clovis banks at Manhattan Central, but no bank is listed for New World Enterprises. How come?”
Apicella sighs. “I’ve got it somewhere,” he says. He goes to one of his many steel file cabinets, digs out a folder, flips through it rapidly. “New World banks at Merchants International. Satisfied?”
“Isn’t that a little weird, Sid? The parent company banks at one place and a subsidiary banks at another.”
“Nothing weird about it. When you’re dealing with that much money, you like to spread the risks. It’s done all the time. I mean, Clovis and Clovis is always making very heavy cash deposits and withdrawals. It makes sense to have more than one bank. Then you can shuffle funds in case of an emergency.”
“Yeah,” Cone says, “I can see that. Thanks, Sid. The place is Venus-Adonis Hair Styling on East Eighty-sixth. Ask for Luis.”
Apicella, who wears a rug, says, “Go to hell.”
Timothy spends another couple of hours on the Clovis-Evanchat file, smoking up a storm and pondering his next move. He decides he better dig into Constance Figlia, the mystery woman. He’s got some good skinny on the other characters, but that Constance is a cipher.
He locks his desk and prepares to leave. When he dons his leather cap, it slides down to his ears. “Shit!” he says aloud, and sneaks out of the office.
He spends three days on the track of Constance Figlia. It’s a frustrating penetration because he can’t get a firm handle on that short, dumpy broad with the posture and stride of a sergeant major. But at the same time it’s fascinating just because he can’t pin down her time-habit pattern, and the secrets of her daily activities remain secrets.
He starts by visiting Louis Kiernan in the attorneys’ section. Lou is a paralegal and custodian of Haldering & Co.’s collection of out-of-town telephone directories. Cone can’t find a Vincent Figlia in Suffolk County, but finds a listing in Nassau. Lou, who lives on Long Island, tells him the address is east of Hicksville.
Timothy Files Page 6