“We met for the first time about a year and a half ago. It was at a presentation for securities analysts. As you know, she makes a striking first appearance.”
He didn’t correct himself when he used the present tense.
“The presentation was given by a real estate investment trust of which I’m a director. She was working for Morgan Stanley at the time. Our initial contact was simply some brief chit-chat at the meeting and then a couple of drinks at the Plaza afterwards.”
He paused and took a sip of coffee. He was the kind of guy who stuck out his pinky when he drank from the cup.
“The next time I saw her was about a year ago. I went to a party given by my ex-partner, Joel Edelstein. It was to celebrate his endowment of a chair at Princeton. Alicia and I recalled our first meeting and thought it would be fun to see each other again.”
I knew Edelstein. We’d been undergraduate drinking and whoring buddies at Princeton. And I knew about Edelstein’s relationship with Chisolm. According to the information I had, Chisolm was worth some seven million. The seed money had come from his wife. He’d made the rest of it from paired REITs when the market for them was hot. He started the genetic engineering company four years ago. Chisolm was the money, the contacts, the business acumen. Edelstein was the scientist, the man with the ideas and the patents.
Two years ago, Chisolm had bought out Edelstein with a cash and stock package worth three million. Edelstein had taken the stock, sold it when the SEC rules allowed him to, and invested the after-tax proceeds in half a dozen Internet start-ups.
When I met Edelstein at an alumni reunion, he was a guy who had his heart’s desire-a teaching career, a research lab and a plush and comfortable cushion on the side. “That way I can tell them to fuck off whenever I feel like it,” he’d told me. I wondered if Edelstein had ever regretted leaving Insignia Biotech.
Chisolm cleared his throat. “I’m a married man, so our relationship had to be discreet. We’d meet once or twice a week, usually in the city.”
“Was she seeing anyone else?” I asked.
He seemed genuinely surprised by the question. “Why? Was she in the habit of doing that?”
I didn’t answer. Let him ponder that possibility.
He smoothed his hair back as if he were looking into a mirror. “I don’t think so,” he said. “At least, I didn’t think so at the time.”
I could see he was thinking about it.
“What did she do in her spare time?”
“She didn’t have much spare time. She was a real work horse-put in long hours. And when she wasn’t working at the office, she was working at home. You probably remember that about her.”
I nodded. “Yeah.” At least that much about her hadn’t changed. She was always a hard worker and a hard player.
“You have any thoughts on who’d want to kill her?” I asked him.
He shook his head slowly and I had the sense he was trying to find the right words. “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought the last few days. Trying to find the who or the what. The problem was that she never spoke much about herself and her inner feelings. In a way, that was one of the masculine traits about her. That and her competitiveness.”
He stopped and stared out the window at a bird that had landed on one of the hedges. “Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked.
I shook my head.
He went over to his large polished mahogany desk and took out a pack of Benson amp; Hedges. He lit one, held in the smoke for a long minute and blew it out slowly. “Most women can’t stop talking about themselves, you know. Their emotions, their hang-ups, their desires. Alicia was different. She very seldom would let you know what she was thinking. She kept it hidden-almost like a poker hand.”
He paused, then asked, “Did you find her to be that way?”
He wanted to compare notes, but I wasn’t playing that game. He was astute-I had to give him that much.
“Go on,” I said.
“There was one other thing. Her feminism. She was an ardent feminist. She’d talk at length about it-almost as if it were an obsession. She’d go on and on with this drivel, and I’d listen to her and nod, yes…yes, just because I wanted to hump her.”
“What did you think was the point of her feminism?”
“Well, she said she was never going to be dependent on a man again, and I had the impression she really meant it.”
“What about her friends?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I didn’t know any of them. She never mentioned any friends and we never went out with any of them.”
“How well did you know her sister, Laura?”
“Yes, we had a few conversations. Nothing more than that. But I liked her. She was quite warm-very different from Alicia.”
He studied a painting on the wall. There was no mistaking the artist. It was by Francis Bacon. Two indistinguishable bodies twisted in an embrace to the death. A gaping shrieking mouth. A bloody slab of beef. An odd painting to be in a business office. “Alicia was like a thoroughbred. She was frisky and high-spirited. A lot of fun to ride. But…” he paused, “in the last few months she turned skittish. She didn’t seem to be as much fun anymore. She seemed preoccupied about something. I had actually…”
He stopped and fell silent.
I didn’t say anything. He was doing the talking, not me.
Finally, he said, “I was going to terminate our relationship. I told her so. I wasn’t enjoying it any longer. It was becoming a chore. You know, a Frenchman once said the only value a woman has is in her novelty. I subscribe to that theory. We had sex exactly seventy-nine times. I always keep meticulous records. Sixty-five times straight intercourse, eleven times oral sex, three times anal sex. So you can imagine how tedious it was.”
That was a new one on me. I would’ve liked to see his baseball scorecards.
“How did Alicia take it when you told her you wanted to break up?”
“Quite composed, as a matter of fact. I thought she would have taken it harder, but she didn’t reveal any emotion at all. She sort of shrugged her shoulders and said, well, let’s carry on. I had the sense she was tiring of me also.”
I nodded. “What about her work as an securities analyst? Which industries did she cover?”
He took another drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out in an ashtray. “Well, as far as I know, she followed companies in the real estate industry. She used to cover defense and technology areas. That was unusual for a woman. I kept on trying to interest her in genetic engineering but she was reluctant to change. I told her that this was a hot industry-this was where man played God.”
He stared at me. “And that brings me to the reason why I wanted to talk with you.” He leaned forward in his chair. “Now that the human genome has been sequenced, we’re going to be a very successful company. We have several genetic engineering projects going on at the present time-one of which is particularly exciting.”
His hungry eyes grew positively rapacious as he spoke. This guy made the big bad wolf look bush league. “We’ve produced hemoglobin from genetically-altered bacteria. We use recombinant hemoglobin that’s been engineered to mimic natural hemoglobin. This means we can mass-produce cheap synthetic human blood that would be free of HIV and hepatitis viruses. You could give a transfusion to any recipient without worrying about blood-type matching and the product would have a much longer shelf life than human blood.”
His eyes flashed. “Do you see how this blood could be useful for accident victims or wounded soldiers on the battlefield?”
I nodded. “And why are you imparting all this valuable insider information to me, free of charge?”
“Because…” And his eyes gleamed brighter than the Eddystone lighthouse, “we are about to make an initial public offering of our stock. We’re a closely-held company. This is going to be an exceptional opportunity. I know you have top-drawer contacts. I’d suggest you purchase some stock at the offering and inform your associates about this opportunity t
o make a large profit very quickly and very easily.”
I looked at him. This clown was violating just about every SEC regulation in the book and some they hadn’t even thought of yet. “And you’re going to make me a rich man because you like the cut of my jib?”
He snorted. “I do like your style, Mr. Rogan. And I know you’re not stupid enough to turn down an opportunity like this. Aren’t you interested in making a killing?”
“Not this way,” I said.
“Don’t you understand what we’re doing? We’re creating new strains of human gene cells that will enable us to pass on better traits from one generation to the next-actually improving the human species. We’ll theoretically be able to create a race of superbeings-far superior to the diseased and disabled wrecks you see around you. Something Nietzsche would envy and be proud of. Something he could only hope for in his writings. And think of the fortunes we’ll be making in the process. These new people will be smarter, tougher, more disease-resistant. In short, they’ll be far above and beyond your pathetic human beings of today.”
This insufferable son of a bitch was starting to get on my nerves. I gave him a sour grin. “You better go back and reread your Cliff Notes on Nietzsche. His Superman was a man of integrity, considerate to his inferiors-not some money-grubbing stock jobber.”
His mouth opened but he didn’t make a sound.
I stood and said, “Don’t trouble yourself to show me out. I’ll find my way.”
CHAPTER VIII
I dropped the paper bag on Gene Black’s desk in his office next to the squadroom. “Here’s a six-pack for you,” I said.
He squinted up at me. “You gotta be out of your fuckin’ mind. They’re tighter than a nun’s asshole around here,” he rasped. “You want me to lose my pension? Me with five years till retirement?”
“Calm down, officer. Don’t get your balls in an uproar.” I took out a bottle of Perrier, opened it and put it in front of him.
He grunted. “Perrier water?” He pronounced the final R. “What’re you? Some kind of faggot?”
“Drink it,” I said. “Good for your beer belly. No calories.”
He took a swig and grimaced.
“Wadda ya want?” he asked.
“About my ex. What did you find?”
He nodded and rolled his swivel chair over to a file cabinet without getting up. He took out a file and rolled back to where I was sitting on the edge of his desk. Without looking at me, he thumbed through the contents and said, “You’re not looking through this. You can’t see it, so don’t even ask me.”
“What happened to Mr. Personality?”
“Who?”
“Your partner, Forgash.”
“Shit.” He shook his head. “I’m trying my damnedest to get him transferred to Tremont Avenue. That sombitch is driving me up the wall. You know what they say about oil and water.”
“I thought you two got along like ham and eggs.”
He wrinkled his brow. His face was one of those that always had a dark shadow, even when he’d just shaved.
“More like a cobra and a mongoose,” he said as he leafed through the file.
I surveyed the squadroom. The nineteenth was pretty quiet today. The place was mostly empty except for a couple of cops talking on the phone or typing reports. One cop with his feet up on his desk was tossing wadded-up balls of paper into a wastepaper basket.
“Did you see the story on Channel five? About your wife.”
“No.” I shook my head. “I didn’t feel like watching.” The local TV news shows had pounced on the story and were featuring its most gruesome aspects with unalloyed delight.
The Post had carried the story on page four. “Wall Street Beauty Shot Dead.” I guess the headline had an element of human interest in monosyllables.
Black looked up from the file. “We don’t have anything good yet, Rogan. Apartment ransacked, valuables missing, no forced entry. It was a nine-millimeter slug caught her in the back of the head.”
“Anybody hear the shot?”
He shook his head. “No one we can find. You figure it. I personally searched her place for two hours-couldn’t find as damn thing. No footprints, tracked in dirt, hair…” He rubbed his chin. “There were fingerprints, but nothing unusual. Michael Chisolm, he was her boyfriend…her sister…”
“What about Chisolm?” I asked.
“What about him?”
“He shoot her?”
Black shrugged. “Find me a motive. He was her boyfriend. He was entitled to be in her apartment.”
He took a long look at me and shook his head. “Sorry, but that’s the way it is. Way I figure it, push-in job. Some punk stops her outside on the street, pulls a gun, makes her open the door and let him in, kills her, takes the loot and splits.”
“What was her position when she was shot?”
“She was sitting.”
“That make sense to you?” I asked.
“You got something better?”
“Let me see the photos.”
He held up his hand. “You sure you wanna see them? It’s pretty rough.”
“Sure,” I said. I’d seen death before. Both friend and enemy. You never get used to it, but after a while it doesn’t seem so awesome.
Black scrutinized the photos one by one before he handed them over to me, as if he were censoring them. His face was twisted like he’d just smelled something bad.
I realized I was holding my breath as I looked at the pictures. I exhaled slowly. They were rough all right.
Alicia lay spread-eagled on her stomach, the left side of her head blown away, her legs awkwardly askew. You could see the hands on her watch, even the thin second hand. The watch showed twelve thirty-seven, the time the crime photographer took the shot.
It’s different when you see someone you know. Someone you remember eating, talking, sleeping. There was this finality.
The photos were exceptionally sharp. Brightly lit. I could see the jagged edge of her skull and the pattern of blood on the rug.
“There’s one more thing,” Black said.
“What?”
“I don’t know if I should tell you.”
“What are you going to save it for? Christmas Eve?”
“Her tongue was cut out and stuck into her vagina.”
“Jesus,” I said. I recognized it. I’d seen it before. It was a crude inversion of what Charlie did to our boys in Viet Nam.
That was about all I could take. I felt like someone had been beating my chest with a baseball bat for half an hour.
“You seen enough?” Black asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve seen enough.”
CHAPTER IX
The hallway stunk of fish and cabbage. The floor was covered with cracked linoleum that curled up at the edges. The linoleum had long ago lost whatever color it once had. The wallpaper was a puke green from the turn of the century. From behind closed doors came the dreary sounds of domestic life, muffled curses, children crying, women screaming, TV blaring.
Typical New York Saturday night.
The apartment building was on Eleventh, not far from the New School. It was a five-story walk-up located in a neighborhood “in transition” as the bureaucrats delicately put it. That meant it was rapidly sinking into a cesspool.
4H was at the end of the corridor. The sound of loud rock and the smell of pot came from behind the door. I jabbed the bell.
Nothing happened. I rang the bell three, four, five times. It looked like nobody was going to open the door. Finally, I tried the doorknob. It was unlocked. I pushed the door open slowly.
A man in a plaid bathrobe stood there and looked out through me. He had a black bushy full-face beard, dark hair pulled back in a pony tail and a round gold earring in his left ear.
“Dr. Garbarini?” I shouted over the racket.
He opened his eyes as if he was surprised to see me.
“My name is Rogan. I called you this afternoon.”
He sta
red at me vacantly.
“I’m Alicia’s husband…ex-husband.”
He blinked for the first time. “Oh, yes. I’m sorry. Of course you are. Come in, come in. I’m so sorry. Forgive me.”
He stepped to the side to let me in. The whole apartment was dark. He led me into the living room. The place was lit by three thick candles that gave off a whiff of bayberry or some other kind of sickly sweet scent. On top of that there was incense burning on a low table in the middle of the room.
My eyes needed some time to adjust to the dark. I had trouble hearing Garbarini over the music. It sounded like Procol Harum or Iron Butterfly or one of those acid groups from the sixties, the kind of endless rock we used to play in the hooches while we drank ourselves into oblivion.
Garbarini waved me to some pillows on the floor. I was still wearing a suit and wasn’t too pleased with myself for not changing. Not too cool looking like an executive when you’re trying to gain the confidence of a band of unreconstructed hippies. Or just maybe they were too stoned to even notice.
“Care for a toot?” the professor asked as he offered me a joint.
“Thanks,” I said and waved it off.
He lit the joint carefully and inhaled deeply.
I watched Garbarini in the candlelight. He had regular features, wide-set eyes and a relaxed manner, to say the least. His eyes were hypnotic-the way they hardly blinked.
There were five other people in the room in various stages of impairment. A man and a woman were lying on pillows next to me on the floor. Another couple of indeterminate sex were fondling on a sofa. They were oblivious to my presence. A girl sat on a chest up against the wall. She was in the lotus position with her eyes closed. She had an untroubled expression on her face. I couldn’t tell if she was sleeping or not.
I sat there for a long time. I knew you weren’t supposed to disturb the natural rhythm of the universe, or something like that, but I was getting edgy. That’s what happens when you put a type A in a nest of tranquillity.
I tried to be one with the spirit.
A Murder Too Personal (ed rogan) Page 4