She squeezed my arm. “Ever think you’d find yourself identifying with a rock star?”
“Who’s identifying with a rock star?”
“Sorry, darling. I must have misunderstood.”
Merilee had something on her mind. She sat with her back stiff as we rode to the restaurant, and kept wringing her hands in her lap. I kept up a line of polite chatter and waited her out. I waited a long time. She held it in all the way to the Grange, which is a very fine eating place on King Street in Covent Garden. She held it in through the martinis, complete with extra olives. She held it in while we destroyed their beef Wellington and two of their most amusing bottles of Haut-Médoc. It was only after the table had been cleared and the coffee poured that she spilled it:
“Zack wants to come over.”
I tugged at my ear. “For how long?”
“A-A few days. He said he feels like we’re drifting apart. He wants to—”
“Have it out?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Any idea when he’s planning to come?”
She swallowed and examined her coffee cup. “Tomorrow afternoon.”
I pushed my coffee away and called for a Calvados. Then I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Sometimes,” she offered, “things aren’t as neat as one would like.”
“Things are never that neat.”
“Zack is my husband, darling. While he’s in London he expects me to be his wife.”
“And what do you expect?”
“I expect nothing anymore,” she replied bitterly. “I feel like a cigarette.”
“You don’t smoke. You’ve never smoked.”
“You’re right. I’m being actressy. Sorry.” She swept her hair back. “I’m going to be a good wife to him while he’s here. I’m going to be the best damned wife I know how to be, even though I am being torn apart at the seams. And I’m very, very sorry about this. For you and for me. I’ve been so happy the past few—”
“Don’t. Don’t be sorry. I’ll take my things with me in the morning. Call me when you can, okay?”
She looked at me quizzically. “You’re being awfully damned understanding.”
“You were once very understanding.”
Her glance flickered south of my equator. “I tried to be.”
I drained my Calvados. “Good thing I’ve got the station wagon. I can put Lulu right in the back, bed and all.”
Merilee cleared her throat uncomfortably. “I still think she should stay with me.”
“Merilee, she’s my dog—even if she doesn’t happen to be speaking to me right now.”
“She’s our dog.”
“She’s my dog. I told you before—we’re a package. If I go, she goes with me.”
“I know, I know. Only, I still think she’s safer with me.”
“No.”
“You may still be in danger.”
“No!”
“You could stop by anytime and visit her. Keep the key.”
“Merilee, you’re asking me to give her up.”
“Just temporarily.” She put her hand over mine. “I need her, darling. Don’t you see? If she’s there, you’re there. Holding on to her is the only way I’ll make it through this. Please, darling. Please?”
It’s a good thing Merilee Nash doesn’t have a diabolical nature. I’d assassinate a head of state for her, if she asked me like that. “And what about afterward?”
“We agreed we wouldn’t talk about afterward.”
“To hell with what we agreed, Merilee.”
“Very well. What do you want?”
“I think that’s pretty obvious.”
“Try making it a little more obvious, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind. What happens at the end of The Philadelphia Story?”
“The curtain comes down.”
“Before that.”
Merilee flushed. “I-I get married to my first husband again.”
“Suggest anything to you?”
She sighed. “Happy endings are for plays, darling. And very, very old ones at that.”
“I kind of like happy endings.”
“I always thought you preferred the tragic, deep kind.”
“Not when I’m in the cast.”
Her forehead creased. It does that when she’s trying not to cry. “God, you look good in black, Mr. Hoagy.”
“You look good in everything, but I suppose you already know that.”
“A gal only knows it if her guy says so.”
“Am I your guy?”
“I wish I knew, darling,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I cupped her chin in my palm and got lost in her green eyes for a second. “You’re still mine for one more night.”
London’s vacant-stare district that season was King’s Road, Chelsea. Zonked, translucent punks shuffled along the sidewalk in black leather, their hair dyed a spectrum of repulsive colors. The wandering victims. They looked like they had framed eight-by-ten glossies of Sid Vicious hanging over their beds of nails.
I still didn’t know whether punk was a posture or a statement. More important, I didn’t care. I had enough problems of my own. I’d just said good-bye to Merilee and to Lulu, and I didn’t know when I’d see either one of them again. The Irish oatmeal Merilee had made me eat before I left still sat in my stomach like a bucket of ready-mixed joint compound. My head ached.
I left the Peugeot at the curb outside of Tulip’s building. I was about to buzz her flat when I noticed the street door had been jimmied open with a pry bar. The frame was smashed and splintered, the door ajar. I looked around. No one on the street seemed to be paying any attention to the ruined door, or to me, or to anything. I went in.
Tulip’s flat was on the second floor in the front, and her hall door matched the one downstairs. Splintered and open. I hesitated there at the top of the stairs. This looked like a job for somebody else. Somebody with guts and a pit bull.
I listened at her door, mouth dry. My heart started to pound. Silence. I knocked and called out her name. More silence. I took a deep breath. Then I pushed open the door and went in.
The closet in her entry hall had been ransacked. Its contents—scarves, shoulder bags, an old fringe buckskin jacket, an even older clear plastic rain slicker adorned with psychedelic flowers—were scattered on the floor.
I called out her name.
There had been a television and a cheap stereo sitting in a wall unit in the dingy parlor. They were gone now. Their outline remained in the dust there on the bare shelves. Lots of dust. I couldn’t imagine what it looked like under her bed. I hoped I wouldn’t have to find out.
I called out her name.
Dresser drawers had been yanked open in the bedroom. Underwear, socks, T-shirts were strewn everywhere. The jewelry box on her dressing table had been emptied and overturned. The bedroom closet had been tossed.
Dresses were heaped on the floor, shoe boxes dumped open upon them.
I called out her name.
The medicine chest over the bathroom sink had been pawed through. Open pill bottles were scattered in the sink, their contents dissolving in brightly colored smears under the dripping tap.
I called out her name.
Then I turned and banged into her.
Tulip was standing right there behind me in the doorway to the kitchen, her still-beautiful eyes open very wide, her face pale. She was pointing in the general direction of the parlor, and she was trying to say something to me but there was this unfortunate matter of the boning knife that someone had plunged into her stomach. All she could get out was a gurgling noise as she staggered toward me. I started to reach for her but not before she pitched forward into me. She was not a feather. We both went down, she directly on top of me—and if you think that doesn’t still give me nightmares, guess again. I pushed her off of me and over onto her back as gently as I could. But there was no need for me to be gentle. She was d
ead now.
Whoever did it to her had been thorough. He’d taken the silver cross from around her neck, too.
The British press handled the murder of Tulip, the once-famous Mod Bod, as a kind of sad postscript to the sixties and Swinging London. Her old glamour shots were pulled out and splashed over the front pages, along with the recollections of those who’d been there. Or claimed to have been there. A revolution, Derek had called it. The staid newspapers indulged in sober discussion of the early burnout and death that had overtaken so many of the youthful Carnaby Street luminaries—Brian, Puppy, Hendrix, Moon. The tabloids went straight for the low road, with gleeful stories about her weight, and how it had ballooned. Stories about how shed taken to spending her time at a storefront halfway-house mission called the Church of Life. Stories about how she’d lived, and died, in total squalor.
I was there. It wasn’t squalor. But it didn’t swing, either.
Jay Weintraub released a brief statement to the press on Tristam Scarr’s behalf: “Tulip was the only woman I have ever loved. She was the mother of my only child. Although we spent our lives apart in recent years, our feelings for each other never changed. I will always love her, and miss her terribly.”
It was the only comment on her murder that T. S. made, and he didn’t make it. He was in no shape to do so. Her death had so severely jolted him that a doctor was keeping him sedated.
The statement came from me. All a part of the service. Just don’t ask me to do thank-you notes or windows. I get a little crabby.
Our editor phoned from New York to make sure I was on top of this sizzling new development. I assured him I was, right down to the bloodstains all over my trenchcoat. Rolling Stone, he disclosed, would pay dearly for my exclusive first-person account. It would, he suggested, give the book “monster topspin.” I said it was a great idea. I lied. I had no intention of exploiting Tulip’s death. But editors feel better about themselves and you if they think you agree with their suggestions. Especially editors who use words like “topspin.”
By all the press accounts, Tulip had walked in on a burglary taking place in her flat, and had gotten killed for it. Whatever she owned of value had been taken. The ransacking of the drugs in her medicine chest suggested that her murderer was an addict.
The police, however, had a problem with this theory. I learned about it from Farley Root, that same apologetic buck-toothed, redheaded investigator in that same nile green suit. He made the trip out to Gadpole two mornings later, joined by a strapping uniformed officer who didn’t speak. The three of us sat around the kitchen table. Pamela put on tea.
“Nice to see you again, Inspector,” I said.
“It’s kind of you to say so, Mr. Hoag.”
“Hoagy,” I said.
“Hoagy. Right. And while we’re at it, I’m not actually an—”
“Your neck looks much better. Try that talc?”
Root reddened, glanced self-consciously over at the uniformed officer, who was working hard at not smirking. “I did,” he replied. “Floris number eighty-nine. Very soothing, as you suggested. Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
Pamela served us our tea as well as some hot scones. Then she returned to the laundry room, where she was in the process of removing the bloodstains from my trench coat. Don’t ask me how. I never press the masters for their secrets.
“Turn up any of those bullets yet?” I asked Root.
He bit into a scone, driving his long front teeth into it like a gopher. “No sir, we haven’t,” he replied, gnawing. “But that brings me to my business—Miss Tulip’s murder. It does seem rather straightforward on the surface. She returns home, discovers someone there in the act, and there we have it. Unfortunate timing. Break-ins are rather common in that district. Several have taken place in recent weeks, though none with so grievous an outcome.”
I sipped my tea and waited him out.
“I can find only one flaw in this reasoning,” Root said.
“Which is … ?”
“You, sir.”
“Me?”
“Yessir. I don’t wish to jump to erroneous conclusions, but this is the second bit of ugly business you’ve been party to in the past several days. I was inclined to classify the first incident as random street violence, and you as the victim of a bit of bad luck. But I’m afraid with this second incident … Well, you can see my point, can’t you?”
I tugged at my ear. “Yes, I believe I can.”
“Glad to hear that,” Root said, pleased. “Now then, Hoagy can you account for how you’ve found yourself at the scene of two violent attacks recently?”
“No, I can’t.”
Root stared at me, visibly disappointed by my answer. “I see,” he said at last. “You told the officers at the murder scene you had an appointment with Miss Tulip. What exactly was your business?”
“As I told you before, I’m helping Tris Scarr do his memoirs.”
Root asked me for the name of the publisher. I gave him topspin’s name. Then he told me to continue.
“Tulip played a big part in his life,” I said. “I’d met with her in reference to that. And I was supposed to meet with her again.”
“How did she seem to you?”
“Seem?”
“Her state of mind.”
“About as messed up as the rest of us. Maybe a little more.”
Root nodded. “Any idea what sort of people she knew?”
“Not really. She did tell me she was involved with her church.”
Root glanced through his notepad. “Yes. Fellow who operates it, called Father Bob, used to deal drugs. Been to jail for it, actually. There’s also some question as to the validity of his divinity school training.”
“Think he might be involved in it somehow?”
“No, I think you are, Hoagy,” Root said evenly.
He watched me for a reaction from across the table, bony, freckled hands folded in front of him, eyes impassive. Bashful he wasn’t, not when he felt he was being shut out.
I cleared my throat. “I appreciate your candor, Inspector.”
“I place great stock in candor. And I’m not actually an—“
“And I do understand how you feel. I wish I had an explanation for what’s been happening to me. Around me. But I don’t. I’m sorry.”
“As am I.”
“I will make a deal with you, though.”
Root glanced over at his uniformed colleague, then back at me. “A deal?”
“Yes. If I do come up with something, I’ll share it with you—if you’ll share something with me now.”
“I don’t make deals such as those, sir,” Root said firmly.
“Too bad.”
He swallowed, craned his neck. “Share what with you?”
“Have you inventoried the contents of Tulip’s apartment?”
Root turned to the other officer, who nodded.
“Could I get a copy of the inventory?” I asked.
Root frowned. “For what reason?”
“Let’s put it this way—I need it.”
He thought it over carefully. “Very well. You shall have it,” he said, draining his tea.
Pamela appeared instantly from the laundry room. “More tea, Inspector?”
“No thank you, madam,” he replied. “And I’m not an—”
“Another scone, perhaps?” she said.
“Thank you. No. But I would appreciate a word with Mr. Scarr, if that’s possible.”
She shook her head. “I’m afraid it isn’t. Mr. Scarr wasn’t strong to begin with, and the loss of Tulip has quite simply devastated him. The doctor insisted he not be disturbed.”
“Of course. Terribly sorry. Didn’t mean to seem insensitive.” Root lurched to his feet. “We’ll be going then.”
I showed them out, past the guards on the front door, and the surveillance cameras and the floodlights.
“Certainly believes in security, doesn’t he?” observed Root, as he climbed into his
unmarked Austin Metro.
“He believes in feeling safe,” I said. “Can’t say I blame him.”
Root rolled down his window, stuck his head out, “One more question, Hoagy.”
“Yes?”
“What is a cheese steak?”
“A hero sandwich—thin strips of steak topped with sautéed onions, mushrooms, and melted cheese.”
“Good Lord, sounds wonderful.”
“If you want a good one you have to go to Philadelphia. The Liberty Bell is there. It’s not the worst place there is.”
“Can’t say I’ll be getting to Philadelphia soon.”
“Neither will W. C. Fields.”
Tris looked different to me. Partly it was his hair. Pamela, that woman of many talents, had trimmed it for him. But mostly, I realized, I’d Just never seen him in the daylight before. He looked even more cadaverous and ghoulish than he did in his dimly lit royal chamber. Flesh-toned he was not.
He and I rode together in the back seat of the Silver Cloud to Tulip’s funeral, which was at her church in London. He wore a chalk-striped navy blue suit, white shirt, dark striped tie, ankle boots, and the look of a lost, bewildered little boy. Jack and Violet were up front, Jack behind the wheel with his jaw set grimly. Violet had on a black dress. Her luxuriant black hair was tied tightly back, and she was sniffling. For the first time since I’d met her, she looked her age.
Four bodyguards rode in the car ahead of us.
“I intended to thank you, Hogarth,” Tris said softly.
“For what?”
“The statement you wrote. It was very sensitive. I couldn’t have said it so well myself.”
“Sure you could have. You just needed a little time to recover.”
He dragged deeply on a Gauloise, let the smoke out of his famous flaring nostrils. “Thank you. I mean it.”
“Forget it. We ear-wigglers have to stick together.”
“That we do.” He gazed out the window. “It’s true, Hogarth.”
“What’s true?”
“What Derek said—I have no mates. Not true ones. Not anymore. I-I don’t make ’em easily, and when I do, I make ’em for life. I make ’em for forever … It’s not as if she’s gone. Or Rory’s gone. They’re in here.” He tapped his head with his finger. “They’re still in here.”
The Man Who Lived by Night Page 13