What's a Girl Gotta Do?

by Sparkle Hayter

  Lawrence M. Griff, a licensed P.I., Bigger informed me in a tone of voice that implied I already knew all this, had been bludgeoned to death in Room 13D of the Marfeles Palace with a blunt metal instrument. The body had been discovered a few hours earlier by the night maid.

  “What do you know about it?” he asked.

  “Did this guy have sort of short, gingery red hair?” I asked, knowing even as I spoke that Bigger was sure to say yes.

  So I told him everything I remembered. Then I dug into my catch-all purse and after some rummaging, actually retrieved the note Griff had given me. Bigger held the hotel stationery envelope by its edges and handed it to Tewfik.

  But I broke my damn truth rule: I did not hand over the other page Griff had given me, the first page of the investigator’s report, and I did not make any mention of it. Because it spoke of my mother’s arrest in London and alluded to her mental illness, I felt it would not help me any as a suspect, nor would it help them except to build a case against me. They had the note and the envelope. That seemed enough.

  “What did this guy know about you?” Bigger asked. “How did he lure you to his room?”

  “When he spoke to me, on the phone … he knew my childhood nickname.”

  Bigger and Tewfik both looked at me expectantly.

  “Red Knobby,” I said. “And he knew, you know, embarrassing stuff. Who I lost my virginity to, okay?”

  “Was he trying to blackmail you?”

  “He didn’t say. I honestly don’t know why he was investigating me or what he expected from me.”

  “You are reputed to be bad-tempered and eccentric, some might say a little paranoid,” Bigger said.

  “That’s probably true to some degree at least. But I’m not dangerous.”

  “Well, witnesses say you threatened an old woman near your apartment building with a tire iron and later raised a knife to your husband.…”

  “Look,” I said. “I know I would make a fine suspect, but I didn’t kill this guy. I got a phone call from him, he gave me a note, I went up to the room at the appointed time. He never even answered the door.”

  Tewfik took over from Bigger. “Why did you leave your tire iron on the premises?” he asked. “Were you frightened? Did you panic and drop the weapon?”

  “Why would I leave the weapon in his room? Give me some credit.”

  “I didn’t say it was in his room. I said it was on the premises. How did you know it was in the room?”

  He was getting the better of me. I was starting to think hiring a lawyer wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

  “I assumed … Look, I didn’t know the tire iron was in the guy’s room. I just assumed when you said premises you meant the crime scene, where the guy was found. It was a lucky guess, really.” I sounded guilty. Shit.

  “It wasn’t found in the bedroom. We’re still looking for the murder weapon—but a tire iron would fill the bill.”

  “Oh.” I was relieved, yet felt oddly miffed that Tewfik had tricked me into establishing my innocence this way.

  “Besides, one of your colleagues who saw you outside Griff’s room said you weren’t carrying your tire iron. You appeared, however, to be carrying a small knife of some sort.…”

  “A butter knife. To protect myself.”

  Bigger still looked skeptical, but Tewfik smiled at me. Nice-looking man, Tewfik, a one-time Brooklyn hunk who, at forty-five, was settling nicely into middle age. His dark hair was graying and he was getting soft around the edges, but that just made him more accessible and thus more attractive. I’d known him professionally for a couple of years, marginally, through Crime & Justice. Used to have a little crush on him. But, alas, he was married to a cookbook writer and had two kids.

  As for Bigger—imagine a weasel, upright in a sports jacket. A nice sports jacket, okay, and he had blow-dried hair, a cop for the Cops TV-show age. But he had a weak, mean mouth he tried to disguise with a feeble moustache that looked like it was just resting and might crawl off his face in search of a sunny rock at any moment.

  “So who would want to kill this guy and who would want to frame you? Was somebody out to get you, or did they just see you put your tire iron down and then seize the opportunity?” Tewfik asked.

  “I have no idea. Why was this guy investigating me?”

  Now that I was off the hook as a suspect, at least for the moment, I had a few questions of my own.

  “And who else was he investigating? I mean, he asked me to meet him at the Marfeles, where ANN was having its New Year’s party. Coincidence? And when he gave me that note it was before nine thirty and he wanted me to meet him at eleven. So maybe he had the goods on somebody else at ANN.”

  “Who?” Bigger asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m asking you guys. He could have the lowdown on anybody—or everybody. Everybody has secrets.” I smiled at the aloof Detective Bigger. “What are your secrets?”

  Bigger didn’t answer.

  They reviewed my account of the evening before letting me go. I tried to find out what they knew about Griff, so I could maybe find out who the hell was checking me out. But they were on to me and wouldn’t go into specifics.

  “We may have to ask you some other questions,” Tewfik said.

  “My door is always open to men with badges and/or warrants,” I replied.

  Claire was waiting for me outside in the hallway, staring at herself in a window, and she didn’t see me when I came out. If you ask her she’ll deny it, but looking at herself is kind of a hobby of hers. Compliment Claire on what she’s wearing and she looks down with some surprise, as though she never really gave a single thought to what to wear while she was dressing, she just “threw this on.” She likes people to think her beauty is effortless, like if she really worked at it, really applied herself, look out—she’d be dangerous.

  But I know the truth. When she walks past any vaguely reflective surface—a mirror, a window, a polished piece of granite—she can’t resist looking at herself. Not only does she look at herself but, liking what she sees, she smiles at her reflection, like she shares a secret joke with it or something. Claire, a one-woman mutual admiration society.

  “God, you’re ugly,” I said.

  She jumped a little in her skin. “I didn’t see you come up. How did it go? Do they have a case against you? Should I bring you an eclair with a file in it?”

  “I’m not a suspect. Just a witness.”

  When we walked out the door into the street, lights flashed in our faces, blinding me temporarily. I heard voices shouting at me as the shadowy figures before me filled out and regained detail.

  “Did you kill Larry Griff?” someone called out. Another voice called, “Why did the police want you, Robin?” It was a New York Post reporter I knew vaguely. There were a bunch of them.

  Christ, I was in the middle of a gang bang, the vulgar term the news media uses to describe a mob of journalists descending upon an unsuspecting victim. I’d been part of the mob before, but never the object of its affections. It was frightening.

  Claire pushed me back into the building. We said nothing. I was willing to spill a lot of stuff for the cops, but I wasn’t fool enough to speak with the news media. Inside, a uniformed cop, drooling over Claire, directed us to a little-known exit.

  Murphy’s Law. One step out the door we ran right into my devoted husband, who was staked out with his crew on the sidewalk.

  “Burke,” I said.

  “Robin! What are you doing here?” he asked. “Where’s your crew?”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Are you here on the story?” he said, guarded.

  “What story?”

  “What story are you here on?” he asked. A dialogue between reporters, all questions and no answers.

  “You’re here about the Marfeles Hotel murder, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I can’t believe you’re on this story too. Kind of a funny coincidence, isn’t it?”
/>   “Or an accident of nature, like when masochists marry each other.”

  “Robin, can’t we please be friends, or colleagues?” he said. “Do we have to fight?”

  “I’m sorry. I always mean to make nice, Burke …”

  “I know you do …”

  “… but then I remember what a slimy piece of shit you are and I can’t help myself.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Robin, it happens,” he said.

  “Yeah yeah yeah. Life’s a bitch and then you die.”

  He took a deep breath. His eyes looked glazed and unholy in the blue-white of the streetlight.

  “Yes,” he said. “Life’s a bitch and people fall out of love with some people and into love with other people. Quit making a federal case out of it.”

  His camera crew was watching us, amused. Claire acted as if she wasn’t listening and pretended to be engrossed in her reflection in a car window.

  We were in public and I should have held my tongue at that point, but I didn’t.

  “So, what?” I said. “So just because people have been falling out of love for centuries, just because people have been cheating on their mates and lying to their mates since the beginning of time, that makes it all right? Yes, it is a federal case, in the United State of Robin and Burke. Fucking right, it’s a federal case. It’s treason.”

  “I can see there’s no reasoning with you,” Burke said. He changed the subject. “I heard they had a suspect up there. D’you see him go in?”

  “No,” I answered truthfully. The suspect Burke had heard about was me, and I loved that he didn’t know it.

  “Well, there was that tall guy …,” Claire interrupted, then stopped, acting as though she’d almost let the cat out of the bag.

  Burke smiled, thinking he had weaseled this out of her with his masterful reportorial technique.

  “White guy?”

  “Not as white as you,” I said.

  Let him harass big, swarthy guys all night. I was tired and wanted to go.

  Before I left he extended the olive branch. “It was nice seeing you again, Robin,” he said. He almost got me with that voice of his, that great damn, deep, slightly gravelly voice that made me want to cross my legs and bounce my foot.

  But then I realized his motives. Sure, he wants us to be friends, I thought. It’d make his life so much simpler. There’s nothing Burke hates more than a loose wire, especially one that carries high voltage, like me. Why the hell should I go out of my way to make his life easier when he’d made mine so crummy?

  So I said nothing. I smirked and turned and left with Claire.

  “Do you feel like you need to be alone, or would you like to go somewhere and talk?” Claire said, as we hailed a cab.

  “To tell you the truth, Claire, I’m starved. Do you want to grab something to eat?”

  “Sure. I know a great vegetarian restaurant near here.”

  “How about Old Homestead? Expand your horizons.” Old Homestead was a minor New York landmark, an old steak house off Fourteenth Street.

  She just laughed.

  Claire and I were friends and colleagues who liked and respected each other and agreed on almost everything. But food was one of those areas where Claire and I just didn’t agree. I still ate red meat, although not more than once a week, but Claire had opted out of the food chain and ate only fruits and vegetables, which included large quantities of green leafy things, lots of seaweed stews, and whole platters of cooked grain.

  The restaurant she took me to, Tatiana’s, was one of those converted diners so popular among the Unrepentant Yuppies of New York City. It gleamed of chrome and neon and looked like an art deco railway car that might break loose from its moorings at any moment and go careening down First Avenue. It was upscale vegetarian—no leftover hippies with ponytails, jeans, and acoustic guitars in this joint.

  They knew Claire at the door, but then she never took me anywhere where they didn’t know her.

  “You’ll like the food,” Claire said as we opened our menus. “Besides, they have eggs and dairy so you can have a cheese omelet if you like.”

  Frankly, I find vegetarian restaurants are to a gourmet dining experience what Christian theme parks are to Amsterdam nightlife, but I try to stay open-minded. A waiter came over and reeled off the night’s specials, which included tofu fritters served in a pool of sorrel essence and a ground millet mousse in a light orange sauce, which is what Claire ordered. I ordered the cheese omelet.

  “Are you worried?” she asked me.

  “Naturally. Whoever killed that guy is still out there, and might have some information about me I’d rather people didn’t know.”

  “Think maybe it’s just that fan of yours, Elroy?”

  “Nah. He’s been my fan for five years now. God, come to think of it, that’s one of my longest relationships with a man. Anyway, he doesn’t want to hurt me, he wants me to hurt him. Now, Christine Muke, she’s got a whole harem of disturbed fans.”

  Christine was one of our prime-time anchors, an aristocratic-looking black woman with a voice so sultry “men in the deep arctic instinctively mop their brows when they hear it” (TV Guide).

  “Remember that guy in brown polyester pants with rubber bands around the cuffs?” I asked. “The one who claimed if he and Christine didn’t merge—”

  “Fuse. He said they had to fuse together or else the planet would blow up.”

  “Yeah. I dunno, maybe Elroy did hire Griff. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but then who else would be so interested in my past? And was it just me this guy Griff was on to?”

  While we waited for our food, I played the tape of my interrogation for her. “You think someone at ANN killed the guy, don’t you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. But I think he had the goods on someone else and that’s why he picked the Marfeles Palace that night.”

  “Well, like you told the cops, he could have been investigating anybody, or everybody. But why?”

  “And why me? It’s not like I have power or money—or influence for that matter, not while I’m in Special Reports.”

  “Well, you’re off the hook with the cops, anyway,” she said. “Too bad the news media was there.…”

  “Enough about my petty problems. They’re too depressing,” I said. “You wanted to talk about that reporter spot?”

  “It can wait. The Browner job may not come to pass anyway. I would like to get away from Jerry, but I like working with you. We’re a good team.”

  Yes, we were, but I harbored few illusions about it lasting very long. Claire assisted me, but she was looking far beyond me and one day would cheerfully and politely leapfrog over me. Claire was great at finding the story, the right people to interview, those proverbial pictures worth a thousand words. She was fantastic in the edit room, putting sound and pictures together, and she had two important attributes I lacked, confidence and poise.

  Our food came. “Mmm, little chicken embryos whipped into a froth and fried,” I said. “Speaking of Spurdle, you know what McGravy told me today? Jerry wants me in Special Reports.”

  “McGravy’s right. Jerry’s not doing you a favor by letting you live out your exile there. He’s got personal reasons,” she said wickedly. “He likes you.”

  “That’s what I don’t understand. I give him shit all day long.”

  “He’s in love with you,” Claire said, matter-of-factly.

  “Give me a fucking break.”

  Claire smiled. I think she was enjoying my discomfort with this idea.

  “He’s in love with you, Robin,” she said. “He thinks he can bring you around, like in some Tracy-Hepburn flick where the spunky career woman at war with her boss realizes she’s really in love with him and falls into his arms and French kisses him in the last scene and …”

  “Oh! Stop! That’s so gross. Don’t say French kiss and Jerry in the same sentence when a girl’s trying to eat!”

  “Sorry.”

  “Ugh, ugh,” I said, tryi
ng to spit the very idea out before it attached itself to my subconscious.

  “Well, anyway, they live happily ever after and have sex every night and breed little Spurdles,” Claire continued.

  “Stop!”

  “What do you think Jerry’s like in bed?” she went on mercilessly.

  “Oh jeez. Oh God. Ick. What’s he like in bed? Ugh. Like chiggers, maybe.”

  “Okay,” Claire said. “What about this? If you had to either have sex with Jerry Spurdle or else do a really gross thing, what’s the worst thing you’d do before you’d have sex with Jerry?”

  Claire often came up with peculiar riddles involving a choice between two or three hellish options. Another of her riddles was, would you rather look good and smell bad, or smell good and look bad?

  “I’d rather eat live insects by the handful,” I said. “Of course, unlike you, I am a meat eater.”

  Claire shrugged. “I think it’s kind of sweet that someone as disgusting and venal as Jerry Spurdle can still entertain a romantic fantasy.”

  “Oh God. It really bugs me to think that I am in Jerry’s fantasies. I wonder what I do in them. Ugh. Something truly foul, I’m sure.” I put down my fork, my appetite irretrievably spoiled. “If I have a sex dream about Jerry tonight, Claire, I am going to blame you.”

  She leaned back and laughed.

  I have romantic fantasies too—in fact I think a minimum of four are required just to get through the average day—but mine do not include Jerry. I have to admit a bit of inverted sexism, in that I often look on men as sex objects. I can’t help it. When I meet an interesting man, I automatically wonder what it would be like to have sex with him. Men are not only sex objects, but they are sex objects also.

  The thing is, I still sort of believed in love. I was kind of agnostic about love, actually, but I hadn’t lost hope completely. I was waiting for the feminist wet dream, Spencer Tracy. And while I was waiting, great looks and a great bod could tide me over nicely. But Spurdle was not Spencer Tracy and I’d be hard-pressed to find any Hollywood counterpart for Jerry that walked on two legs and had opposable thumbs.