Mike babbled on but I was fixated on the photo that stared up at me from the coffee table. My focus was not Isabella, nor was it the man’s hand that showed itself for the first time. My thoughts were tripping over each other as they competed for my full attention.
“Oh my God.”
Mike ignored me the first time, or perhaps my mutterings started under my breath and were inaudible to anyone except me. In my brain they were pounding louder than thunder.
“Oh my God. It’s not possible.”
“What?”
“Paul Stuart,” I managed to say out loud.
“Who’s that? Are you telling me you know—”
“It’s not a who,” I interrupted him, “it’s a what.” My stomach rolled with nausea as my thought processes reached my gut before I could even articulate what I was thinking. “Paul Stuart is one of the best men’s stores in New York, Mike. Madison Avenue and Forty-fifth Street,” I rambled on. The pale blue-and-green plaid of the shirt that covered the man’s arm in the photograph—Isabella’s protector—screamed at me from the detail of the photograph which sat before me. “I bought that fucking shirt at Paul Stuart the week before Labor Day. Sea Island cotton, a hundred and forty-seven fucking dollars. Call off your APB, Detective Chapman, that rotten, lowlife piece of human excrement standing next to the screen goddess on her way to my home is Jed Segal.”
I picked up the photograph and winged it at full force across the room like a Frisbee, so that it ricocheted off my huge armoire and came to rest under the sideboard that held my favorite assortment of silver-framed snapshots of family and friends. Then I sank back into the deep pillows of my oversized sofa to wallow in the revelation that Jed and Isabella had betrayed me in the most profound way two humans could torment a third.
“Jesus, Alex, calm down a minute. You can’t tell from one of these pictures who this guy is,” Mike said as he went to retrieve the telltale photograph and study it again. “That store must have sold dozens of shirts like that one, and stores all over the country sold hundreds more. There’s no way you can say who that arm belongs to on the basis of an inch of plaid material in a blown-up photograph. Don’t start with the self-pitying martyr bullshit—you can’t jump to any con—”
“Maybe you’re too fucking stupid to make conclusions at this point, Mikey, but don’t bet the farm against me on pieces of fabric and clothing. That’s like you and the Mamelukes. I have been stabbed in the back—no, in the heart—by that miserable bastard. It’s not just the shirt, it’s everything else that’s falling into place.”
“Please don’t start crying on me again tonight, Cooper. Let’s look at this very care—”
I interrupted him again, amazed he couldn’t see that there should have been smoke coming out of my ears by this point. “Cry? Cry?” I was practically shrieking at him now. “Do you actually think I’m going to waste any more of my very short supply of emotion on that man? You must really have a very low opinion of me after all this time. Don’t worry, no more tears.” I stood up and reached across the table to grab the picture out of Mike’s hand.
The section of the photo containing the man’s hand and sleeved arm represented about three inches of surface in the enlargement. I looked at it again, hoping that the distinctive fabric I had found so attractive the day I had gone shopping had changed to stripes or polka dots or pink elephants. Instead, the second glance confirmed all my fears. I lowered myself back onto the sofa as I inspected Jed’s fingers on the film—fingers that had caressed my breasts, stroked my thighs, and knew exactly how to make me respond excitedly to their pressure and touch.
“It’s not just the shirt, Mike.” I didn’t have to tell him out loud about Jed’s fingers. He would know what I meant just as well as I did. “Take this away from me before I tear it in shreds,” I said, handing the painful image back to Mike. “I could kick myself for missing all the little clues. You should have seen the way his mouth dropped open when he got off the elevator on Saturday and saw me standing here wearing those silk pajamas Iz had given me—you know, like the pair we saw in my bedroom when we packed up her stuff? He must have thought he was seeing a ghost.” Of course, the one thing Isabella wanted that I had provided for her: a respectable man. “I could kill him with my bare hands.”
I was out of control and Mike didn’t know how to bring me back. “Calm down, Alex. You’ll wake the neighbors.” A light seemed to go off in his head when he said the word “neighbors.” “Hey, you think maybe your shrink friend is still awake at this hour? Maybe he could come in and help—”
“Help what? There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m just angry and pissed off and mad and miserable and—”
“And maybe he should like tranquilize you or something. I don’t know. I don’t want you to hurt yourself over this. I can’t leave here with you in this condition.”
“Leave David out of this. There’s nothing wrong with me. No wonder I couldn’t reach Jed at the Ritz the first time I called there on Thursday. He probably hadn’t even gotten to Paris yet—of course he couldn’t get back here till Saturday. That whole trip must have been just a sham to cover his rendezvous with Isabella.” I stood up and started pacing around the living room to calm myself down. Mike and most of my other colleagues had seen the Cooper temper in a flare-up, and most tried to avoid it. It finally occurred to me to move toward the bar and fix myself a drink.
“Not a prayer, blondie. No drinking. C’mon, let’s deal with this rationally. I should have known, too. Anybody who drank bottled water with fried clams had to be a yuppie—and an asshole. What a fucking phony.”
“Oh, jeez, Mike. Worse thought. Do you think I should phone Battaglia and wake him up at this hour? He hates to be the last to know. Oh, I think I’m going to be sick—no kidding.” I sat in one of the armchairs and doubled over with my head pounding against my hands.
“That’s your call, Alex. You have to answer to him, I don’t. I suppose if you get to the office at the crack of dawn and tell him then—nobody’s gonna find out before that. I mean, I think the chief has to know tonight, but—”
I snapped my head up to protest that idea. “Why does the chief have to know anything about this? Suddenly my aborted love life is going to be fodder for the department? No way, Mike, no way. No way.”
Chapman squatted down directly in front of me, put his hand on my knee, and tried to force me to look him directly in the eye. “You don’t get it yet, kid, do you? If that sleeve really does belong to Jed Segal—and that’s the very first thing we have to find out for sure—then this is not just about someone cheating on you with one of your friends. If you’re right about Jed, then we’ve got to look at him as a suspect in Isabella’s murder.”
My head started shaking back and forth slowly in disagreement with what Mike had just announced. I hadn’t thought of that at all, as busy as my mind was with its own unhappiness, but I could not accept or absorb that concept when it emerged from his lips.
“That’s ridiculous, Mike. That’s—that’s not possible,” I stammered as I tried to reason why someone who was capable of such deceit and who lied so facilely and convincingly could not have carried out the cold-blooded murder of his consort.
“Better face it. Jed Segal goes to the head of the class. He has some very serious explaining to do before he gets cleared from the list of possibles. If he was the guy sharing the clams with Isabella an hour before she was killed, he’s got the access and the opportunity and—”
“But no motive, Mike, he’s got absolutely no motive to kill her. She’s the goose with the golden egg, for Chrissakes. The guy is making love to a gorgeous, world-famous movie idol—it ain’t getting better than that for Jed Segal—what the hell would he kill her for?” I almost gagged on the expression “making love.” Clearly, those had been Jed’s condoms in my wastebasket. No wonder he was so concerned when I said we could do DNA testing to find out who Iz’s lover had been.
“No motive? Ha, that’s more bullshit. Suppose she
threatened to tell you about their tryst? Suppose she told him he wasn’t as good in the sack as Johnny Garelli? Suppose she pissed him off like she did almost everyone else I’ve spoken with who was in her presence for more than ten minutes?”
I rocked back and forth in my chair, my arms crossed over my stomach as though they could quell the sickening waves that rippled underneath their grip.
“I can’t handle this, Mike, I really can’t handle this.”
“Sure you can, Coop. We’ll get you through it. What do you think you’re doing now?” Mike asked as I brushed past him and headed for the door to my coat closet. I reached in for my trenchcoat and threw it on over my outfit, grabbing my keys, some cash, and moving toward the apartment door.
“Take those photos out of here with you when you finish your coffee and leave. I’m doing this one face-to-face. I know exactly where to find this lying piece of shit and I’m going to be the first one to accuse him of murder. It’ll be a pleasure.”
“Your old man is right about one thing, blondie—this job really has trashed your vocabulary. Where’re we going? It’s after midnight.”
“Uh, uh, Mikey, I’m alone. I’ll grab a taxi. Point of honor. I can’t wait till tomorrow to look this guy in the eye and tell him all the things I want to say.”
Mike had a grip on my arm, holding me inside the apartment. “I’ll handcuff you to this closet door and leave you here unless you tell me where Segal is and let me go with you. At worst, he’s a killer and he’s dangerous—and at best, you’re a killer and I gotta protect him. C’mon, be reasonable. You need me there as a witness, if nothing else. Don’t do this, Alex, please—don’t make a scene.”
My despair of ten minutes ago had turned to an almost manic punchiness at the prospect of confronting my infidel.
“Fine, Chapman, you want to be there with me, that’s fine. Wish I could get hold of Court TV—this could be one of my better cross-examinations.”
We were out the door together and I turned to lock it as Mike warned me to remember my job and behave myself.
“Balls, Mikey! You better have balls tonight. I don’t care if I lose my job and I’m working at the Chilmark dump next week.”
“Where to?” he asked again as we began our descent in the elevator.
“The University Club. Tap Room. Lights and sirens, please, Detective Chapman.”
Mike pulled out of the driveway and headed west till we reached Fifth Avenue, where he turned left at my direction to go south to the “U” Club.
“You belong there? I mean are you a member of this place?”
“No.”
“No broads?”
“Yeah. They admitted women a few years ago, but it’s not for me. Jed’s a member, though. Likes to breakfast there or have lunch in the Grill, drink at the end of the day, use the pool and squash courts. The old guys—the sixty- and seventy-year-olds—most of them voted to let women in when the first lawsuits started. The thirty- and forty-year-olds—you know, the ones who are a bit threatened by skirts—they tried to keep women out. Male bonding, Mike. Doesn’t it move you?”
“What street?”
“Corner of Fifty-fourth and Fifth.”
As we crossed the intersection of Fifty-seventh Street I saw a caravan of Daily News trucks lumbering eastbound with their first load of morning papers for the all-night newsstands.
I groaned as I leaned my head onto the seat back. “Oh no. Don’t even let me think that this story’s going to be another tabloid headline.”
“You can go to the bank on that one, Coop. You better hope somebody goes through the front door of Cartier’s tonight with an atomic blowtorch and walks out with the Hope diamond. Otherwise, if it’s a slow news day, you and Jed could be right on the front pages. I can see them in the newsroom now—Post goes with single-word header in all caps: BETRAYED—News uses SEX PROSECUTOR IN DEADLY LOVE TRIANGLE.”
“I’m not a ‘sex prosecutor,’ dammit. That’s the same thing they tried to write when Iz was killed. I prosecute crimes of sexual assault, not sex.”
“That’s a healthy approach, blondie—the semantics. Don’t worry about what the headlines say, it’s how they say it.”
“I don’t know who I feel worse about—Battaglia, my mother, or me.”
“Good thing you got an alibi for the middle of the afternoon when Lascar was killed. You can bet that Pat McKinney will be in there telling Battaglia that you had the best motive to knock off your fair-weather friend—for playing with your man behind your back.”
I was silent as I thought of the endless rounds of gossip this case would now generate in the office, where I had always worked to maintain a healthy distance between my personal and professional lives. Chills ran through me as I tried to make a mental list of my friends and my enemies, but I would have a chance to see them all by the end of the next day before I could ever attempt to parse up the groupings in my head.
Mike had gone around the block and come up directly in front of the club building at One West Fifty-fourth Street, defying the NO PARKING sign by sticking his laminated NYPD vehicle identification plate inside the windshield on the dashboard, announcing to the handful of nocturnal passersby that we had come to this bastion of gentility on official business. Sort of.
It was well after midnight as I led Chapman up the front steps and through the glass entrance doors of the University Club. It is one of the handsomest buildings in the City of New York—a McKim, Mead, and White structure, built to house the private retreat established for educated gentlemen in 1865.
Up another few steps to the lobby where, on the left, a uniformed employee stood beside a large wooden board to record the comings and goings of members as they entered and left the building. Most of the time the initiated simply nodded their greetings upon arrival and he recognized them, sliding their small wooden nameplates into the appropriate place to mark their presence at the club.
I trooped past the startled guard, crossed through the formal lobby with its double-height ceiling, massive columns, and enormous marble fireplace, and went beyond the slow-speed elevators to the back staircase which led directly up to the Tap Room, the bar on the second floor.
“Madam,” the unhappy lookout called out several times after me as I continued to ignore him, refusing to look back and hoping that Chapman was still at my heels.
“Who are you, madam? I’m sorry but you’re not appropriately dressed for the Tap Room.”
My trenchcoat was wide open, so he could see that the oversized man’s shirt, leggings, and Capezio ballet flats marked a blatant departure from the dress code preferred for the public rooms, which gave me added pleasure on my late night odyssey.
“Madam, I must insist, madam. Whom are you meeting?”
I had practically reached the landing at the top of the stairs when I looked down at the source of the voice calling up to me. All I could see was the top of his uniform cap.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry. Were you talking to me? I’m with an escort service—Mr. Segal called for me half an hour ago—said just to come ahead as I was, what he needed wouldn’t take us very long.”
I continued down the short hallway and waited at the entrance to the bar so that Mike could catch up with me before I pushed open the padded leather door and walked in.
There were about five clusters of drinkers scattered about the large room, relaxing around cocktail tables with armchairs and easy chairs, nursing their nightcaps before heading off to rest up for tomorrow’s deal-making.
“Alexandra!” Jed spotted me almost immediately and called out to me as I stood in the doorway, scanning the room to find him.
“Come with me, Mike,” I whispered as I moved forward.
Jed rose to his feet, followed in rapid succession by his two bootlickers, Larry and Stan—slightly younger versions of Jed, hoping to grow up just like him, I was sure. Anderson Warmack, the centerpiece of the group, never budged from his chair, but just leaned in and rested his elbows on the table as he w
inked at me in welcome.
“Jed, I think you remember Mike Chapman. He’s with Homicide. Mike and I need to ask you some questions, Jed. We’d like to—”
“Alex, darling, why don’t you and Chapman join us for a round. We’re celebrating Mr. Warmack’s big night and anything you want to tell me can certainly wait till we get home.” Could he really be as cool and unconcerned as he appeared to be, seeing me burst in here—looking like a shrew—with a detective at my side? Was it possible that I had made a ridiculous mistake?
Larry and Stan—or was it Curly and Moe—were scrambling to pull up two extra chairs from nearby tables now.
“Don’t bother. We’re not sitting. Jed, this is not a joke. We need to go somewhere private and talk. Right now. We can go upstairs to the library on the fourth floor—I’m sure it’s empty at this hour.”
Anderson Warmack chose that moment to begin to blow his hot air into our business. “Alexandria, my dear…”
“It’s not Alexandria. It’s Alexandra.”
Now I had Jed’s attention. I could mess with him but I better not cross old moneybags.
“Alexandra—young lady—I’ve been keeping your sweetheart from you too long, is that the problem? Called the police in on me, have you? You look mighty perturbed.”
Well, you’re a master of understatement, you pompous old fart. I’m not perturbed—I am fucking pissed off and heartbroken and confused and hurt and angry, but I am much too well brought up to say exactly that to a polite fool like you who likes to have his dimpled old ass kissed as frequently as possible.
“Quite the contrary, Mr. Warmack. I only need to see Jed for fifteen or twenty minutes, and if you’ll be good enough to wait for him, I won’t ever need to take him out of your presence again, for as long as I live.”
Jed was mad now. He was furious that I was bringing his idol and his underlings into some spat they thought I was starting, and he was trying to placate Warmack before he dealt with me.
Alex Cooper 01 - Final Jeopardy Page 17