Sins
Page 3
He set his suitcase down. 'I want a room,' he said softly.
'Well, there's not much choice,' she answered in a hoarse voice. 'All I got's one.' She snapped her bubble gum. 'Rest's full up.'
'Does it face the street?'
She shook her head. 'Nope, out back. Looks down on the parking lot. Third floor. Real quiet.'
'How much?'
'Twenty bucks a night.'
'Twenty bucks a. . .? But the sign outside says five!'
'Yeah,' she said wearily, 'I know. It's an old sign. Take it or leave it.' Her voice sounded annoyed. She wanted to get back to the confession magazine.
He sighed. 'All right, I'll take it.'
'How long you want it for?'
He considered. 'Oh. . .make it a week.'
She shoved the registration book toward him and watched him bend over and sign in. 'A. Samuels,' the legible script read, from Washington, D.C. A change, she thought, from all the illegible John Smiths that filled the ledger. She turned around and took a key from one of the cubbyholes behind the desk. He reached out for it.
'Uh-uh,' she said with a shake of her head. 'That'll be a hundred and forty bucks. In advance.'
He reached for his wallet and counted out three fifty dollar bills.
'Room's number three-oh-four,' she said, slapping a ten and the key down on the linoleum counter. 'That's on the third floor. Elevator's over there, on your right.' She nodded vaguely in the direction. 'And leave the key here at the desk whenever you go out. The management don't like their guests takin' off with their keys.'
'Sure,' he said, picking up his suitcase. Then he walked to the elevator.
Room 304 was everything he had expected. It was small and shabby, the paper-stiff sheets on the bed hiding a stained, lumpy mattress. In the bathroom, a leaky faucet endlessly dripped into the green-stained sink. Rough voices and rock music filtered through the thin wall from the room next door.
He pushed aside the faded curtains and peered out into the darkness. He couldn't have chosen a better place. All around were the backs of old office buildings. At this hour of the night they were empty. Below, the parking lot was dark and deserted, strewn with garbage. And right outside his window, the fire escape led down to that parking lot. A grimy private staircase. He would be able to come and go up and down that fire escape anytime after nightfall. If he was cautious, maybe even during the day. And best of all, the Hotel Zanzibar was far removed from that glittering world of high society he'd have to come into contact with. He might end up getting bitten by bedbugs, but at least he wouldn't be connected with the job. When it was done, the police would scour among the Beautiful People, not the city's cheap hotels for an anonymous stranger. Anyway, by that time he planned to be long gone.
He drew the curtains, turned away from the window, and went over to the bed. He placed the suitcase on it and unlocked it. So far, everything was going according to plan. In the bus terminal he'd found the key and the suitcase in two separate lockers.
The suitcase was neatly packed with stiffly folded clothes. Unceremoniously he dumped them on the floor. Taking out a pocketknife, he slashed apart the lining inside the lid. Then he slid his hand between the lining and the vinyl shell.
The Chameleon smiled. His fingers felt paper. 'Oh, baby,' he whispered to the suitcase. 'Sweet, sweet baby. I could come all over you.'
He pulled twenty-six envelopes out from behind the lining. First he tore open the twenty-five thick ones. Each was filled with crisp new hundred-dollar bills. He stacked them neatly in a pile. Then, wetting his finger, he quickly counted. The amount checked out: $50,000.
The down payment on a murder.
Finally he tore open the twenty-sixth envelope. It felt empty. But inside was a single newspaper clipping, neatly folded. Slowly he unfolded it.
He let out a low whistle and blinked. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and stared at the photo of the first female target he'd ever had. Such a pity, he thought. God, she was a beautiful dame. She didn't stand a chance. Not against him. The Chameleon was the best contract killer in the business. He lit a cigarette and glanced again at the photo with its simple caption: Hélène Junot.
3
The Junot Building was located on the northeast corner of Fifth Avenue and Twelfth Street. In the midst of that sedate old neighborhood it stuck out like a dazzling, blinding diamond. Hélène had hired Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo, and Associates to design the nineteen-story structure.
'I want something spectacular,' she had told the architects. 'Something dazzling and chic, yet something with panache and guts.'
And that, exactly, was what she got. It literally stopped traffic. A small- scale forerunner of their spectacular U.N. Plaza Hotel, Roche, Dinkeloo, and Associates had designed an award-winning structure of angular walls of mirrored glass. In the morning light the Junot Building looked frosty and ice-cube cold. During the day it caught movement and activity and seemed alive. At night it was almost as if a million candles shimmered inside the facade. But at sundown it was at its most spectacular. It faced west, and the dying sun turned its faceted mirror walls to fire.
The building's facade loomed cold and silvery at nine-thirty when Hélène emerged from her white Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud, New York license plate HJII. The mirrors threw reflections of the car all over the building as the gray-liveried chauffeur held the door open for her. On the sidewalk, several passersby looked at her. Hélène was the type of woman who naturally made heads turn. Wherever she went, she was noticed. This was due in part to her celebrity status, in part to her extraordinary beauty.
Anyone who did not know her would have laid odds that she was under thirty and a fashion model. Actually she was thirty-eight and owned the controlling shares of Hélène Junot International, Inc., the publishing empire that bore her name. She had founded and forged the corporation that printed the world's most influential and widely read fashion magazines. She was slender, stood five feet, ten inches tall in her stocking feet, and held herself with regal poise and grace. Her exquisitely pale oval face was as delicate as a Dresden figurine's, and she had the most strikingly violet eyes. Set in her face like radiantly rare jewels, their exact coloring was dependent on the lighting around her. Fluctuating somewhere between smoky amethyst and translucent violet, they were speckled with the tiniest flecks of sapphire. Her luxuriant hair was raven black. Drawn back into a chignon, its severity only emphasized the delicate cheekbones that were as pronounced as a Bolshoi ballerina's. Her lips were full and sensual and her teeth had the gleam of new porcelain. The collar of her lush Blackglama mink coat was turned up and hid her long, graceful neck.
She glanced down Fifth Avenue toward Washington Square. This was basically a residential area: the sidewalks were nearly deserted. At the foot of the avenue the arch gleamed white in the sunlight. In front of it the giant Christmas tree was still up. Her lips tightened when she saw it.
Merry Christmas, she thought, shaking her head unhappily. Such a sad holiday, so sad because it is always what others seem to celebrate. Others, all those secure, nameless families snowbound in quaint little houses with creaking rocking chairs and colorful quilts and wonderful relatives with whom they can share the holidays.
I had a wonderful family once.
She felt a shiver, but it was not from the cold. Instinctively she drew the mink lapels closer to her throat and held them there.
'Madame?' a voice said gently from behind her.
She came out of her reverie and turned around. The chauffeur was still holding the car door open, unable to close it. She was in the way.
'Oh! I'm sorry, Jimmy,' she said in her throaty, French-accented voice. Her breath made little white clouds of vapor in front of her face. Quickly she moved aside.
He shut the door. 'Shall you be needing the car for lunch, madame?'
She considered. 'No. . .five-thirty will do.'
'Very well, madame. Will you be needing anything else?'
She shook her head. 'No. Tha
nk you, Jimmy. Just drop the luggage off at the apartment.' She could not help smiling faintly as he clicked his heels together, Prussian fashion, giving a slight bow while touching his visored cap with his fingertips. A moment later the Rolls-Royce engine purred and the big car slid silently down Fifth Avenue.
Nothing had changed in the week she had been gone. Except for the Junot Building, nothing on the block had changed for decades. Across Fifth Avenue, the massive gray hulk of the Forbes headquarters squatted with the invincibility expected of a financial soothsayer. It amused her that the solid, classical temple had to face her building. The Junot Building did not fit in with Malcolm Forbes's pillared tabernacle to the almighty dollar. Nor did it fit in with the haughty elegance of the prewar apartment buildings that lined the avenue down to the arch.
But the location fit. After all, her empire was to the fashion world what Forbes's was to economics. Her name had become just as synonymous with haute couture as the Fairchild empire housed in the squat, ugly factorylike building next door. Fairchild, the downtown publisher of Women's Wear Daily and W, was not a Junot competitor like snooty uptown Conde Nast was with Vogue, or Hearst was with Harper's Bazaar. Regardless, jokes abounded about two fashion publishers rubbing elbows on the same block.
Smiling faintly, she pivoted on her heel and walked to the entrance of her building. The blatant snobbery of New York's 'glamour' industries never failed to amuse her; they always insisted on being associated with the posh Upper East Side. After all, where was Conde Nast? Where were all the modeling agencies? But she showed them. She alone had been responsible for shifting glamour's axis back downtown. When she'd decided on the tranquil Twelfth Street location for the building, the whole boardroom had been in shock.
Would the ridiculous snobs never learn? If uptown was always pictured as being so very fashionable, what, then, was more fashionable than fashionable lower Fifth Avenue? What could compare with the peaceful elegance reminiscent of Paris, and the stateliness associated with London?
The glass doors of the Junot Building slid open electronically, and she entered the warm, cavernous lobby. Nodding to the receptionist seated behind the marble desk, she crossed the lobby to her private elevator. Though she had entered its doors countless times, she still looked around with pride. This was her world, the world she had created, the world over which she alone reigned. Employees on errands rushed around purposefully, their brisk footsteps echoing on the black marble floor. Voices became part of the low murmur that drifted to the ceiling, and occasional coughs rang out like the dull tolls of a cracked bell. Faintly she could hear the relentless ringings of telephones in the distance. This was the way she liked it. Her world was alive and well.
She glanced up at the enormous silver block letters on the lobby wall above her. 'HJII,' they read. And underneath, smaller letters translated: 'Hélène Junot International, Incorporated.' It was a ritual with her to always check those letters. Just to be sure she wasn't dreaming.
'Good mornin', Miz Junot,' a cheerful voice said from behind her. She turned. Henry, the uniformed daytime guard, was following her. His wizened black face wore a wide, toothy grin. 'Happy New Year,' he said.
Hélène smiled. 'And a very Happy New Year to you, too, Henry,' she answered.
'Thank you, ma'am.'
They had reached her private elevator. He punched the button outside it, and the door slid silently open. Courteously he held it aside for her.
'Have a real nice day, Miz Junot,' he said, meaning it.
'Thank you, Henry, I will,' she replied in spite of what she knew. She stepped into the small walnut-paneled elevator and pressed the button marked nineteen.
The nineteenth floor was the executive floor. The windowless reception area was dim, spacious, and lavishly appointed. Here the dollar-and-cents value of the empire was translated into tangibles for all to see. No expense had been spared. Even the blond receptionist behind the enormous ellipsoid marble desk was gorgeous, chicly dressed in a peach-colored designer shift. The floors were carpeted in thick mahogany pile which ran all the way up the walls to the acoustic-tile ceiling. Suede-upholstered conversation pits—by Brueton, $24,000 per sofa—were scattered all around, with brass tables holding neat stacks of the latest Junot magazines. The magazines were not listed on a roster by name. Instead, all around on the walls they were represented by the covers of their most recent issues. Lit by all but invisible lights, the shadowboxed blowups hung at evenly spaced eye-level intervals like twelve small movie screens. Without fail, they were changed each month at the exact moment the issues hit the newsstands.
Hélène's imperious gaze swept over them. She had seen each cover hundreds of times, and had the final say on each one, had helped choose the layout and the color, style, and size of the typeset, and still she felt a thrill of maternal pride coursing through her. Her babies, and she was their proud mother. Each one of them called by the name she had baptized it:
Les Modes
(American edition)
Les Modes
(English edition)
Les Modes
(French edition)
La Moda
(Italian edition)
Mode
(German edition)
Les Modes Homme
(French edition)
La Moda Uomo
(Italian edition)
Glamorous Miss
Ladies' Bazaar
Bride's World
Yachting and Boating
Beauté
Les Modes (American edition)
Les Modes (English edition)
Les Modes (French edition)
La Moda (Italian edition)
Mode (German edition)
Les Modes Homme (French edition)
La Moda Uomo (Italian edition)
Glamorous Miss
Ladies' Bazaar
Bride's World
Yachting and Boating
Beauté
All beautiful slicks with a combined monthly circulation of almost twenty-eight million copies. Worldwide. All part of a publishing empire that spawned new vogues and changed lifestyles around the globe.
The cover girl behind the reception desk glanced up with visible surprise. 'Miss Junot!' she said quickly. 'We. . .we hadn't expected you back so soon. Not until this afternoon. . .'
Hélène began to unbutton her mink. 'I decided to come back early, Maggie.'
Maggie glanced around suspiciously, and her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. 'The Comte de Léger is already here. He came in twenty minutes ago. Almost as if he knew you were arriving this morning instead of this afternoon.'
Hélène stopped unbuttoning her coat. Hubert de Léger? As usual he was too well-informed. She had left no word that she was coming back early. There was only one way he could have known: he probably had someone in Paris watching her Ile St.-Louis apartment. Spying on her. So it had come to this. She had suspected that sooner or later it would. 'And he's the only one?' she asked.
Maggie nodded. 'So far. But the grapevine's on Red Alert. Rumor has it the whole board will be here by this afternoon.'
This came as no surprise. She herself had scheduled the board meeting more than a month ago. For those not in the know, it was a routine formality. For those in the know. . .She felt a strange tightening of her throat. In a faraway voice she murmured, 'Yes, they'll all soon be here.'
Maggie gave her a strange look. 'Are you all right, Miss Junot?'
Hélène managed a smile and nodded. 'Yes. Thank you, Maggie.'
The reception phone rang and Maggie picked up the receiver. Hélène turned and walked down the long, plushly carpeted corridor to her office. Vaguely she could hear snatches of Maggie's conversation drifting after her. 'Yes. . .she's already here. . .just came in. . .' But Hélène wasn't paying attention. Over and over she kept thinking: It's another winter, another one of those cold, dreadful winters.
'Miss Junot!'
She stopped and turned around. Albert Lourie, her execu
tive secretary, was running to catch up with her. He was a thin, pasty-complexioned man in his thirties with mousy brown hair. In one hand he clutched a folded newspaper.
'Why, Albert!' Hélène said. 'You are in a hurry!'
'Thank God I caught you,' he said breathlessly. His face was flushed. 'Maggie just told me you came in. There's something I think you ought to see right away.'
From his discomfiture, Hélène could tell it was something serious. Albert was not one to sound false alarms. 'Well?' she asked.
'Not out here.' He gestured to a small conference room off the corridor.
Hélène nodded. They went into the walnut-paneled room, closed the door, and sat opposite each other on rich brown leather Tucroma chairs. 'Now,' she said, 'what is this matter of life and death?'
'This.' Morosely Albert tapped the newspaper in his hand. 'Today's Wall Street Journal. Have you seen it yet?'
'I haven't had a chance. And. . .?'
Without answering, he handed her the paper and jabbed an accusing finger at an article on page two. Hélène stared at it. The three-column headline seemed to scream at her: 'SHAKE-UP AT JUNOT PUBLICATIONS?'
Her lips went dry as she read the second bank of headlines: 'Publishing Giant in Serious Trouble?' Stunned, she read on:
A formal, but unannounced meeting of the board of directors of Hélène Junot International, Inc., is expected to commence today. A reliable source who wished to remain anonymous disclosed that the meeting will focus on what seems to be a secret power struggle for control of HJII. It is no secret, however, that Miss Junot is overextended with loans, and that You!, Junot's new magazine oriented toward the working woman, has been a commercial failure, with a loss of millions. Observers in the publishing industry and on Wall Street speculate that a power struggle at this time could conceivably harm HJII's financial footing and already tenuous stock value.
The power behind the publishing giant has always been Hélène Junot, the legendary French publisher who began the magazine Les Modes in 1957 in Paris and who built it into a worldwide publishing conglomerate noted for its ability to set fashion trends and arbitrate taste.