At that moment the doors opened, and still kissing her, the chairman of the board pushed her outside.
He lifted ardent lips from her mouth to find chaos waiting for them in the corridors of the fifth floor.
“Don’t look, Michael,” Lacy cried, clutching the lapels of his suit jacket. “I can explain everything!”
Her voice was lost in the noise. As she stared up at Michael Echevarria’s face, she saw his eyes widen with shock, then the skin of his face go so taut that his features seemed to flatten perceptibly. He swiveled his head as a battery of CBS and ABC-television cameramen turned on their blinding portable lights. Flashbulbs popped. “You going to make your statement now, Miss Kingston?” someone shouted.
The fifth-floor corridor of the New York Supreme Court was mobbed from wall to wall. Lunch-bound Supreme-Court staffers struggled against a delegation of dapper tiny men with the unmistakable miniature machismo look of race-track jockeys, mixed in with the press and the electronic media and equipment. The Peptic Ulcers rock band from the Zebra Lounge were playing on a small portable stage, and in the crowd bunched around them could be seen the unmistakable red head of one of the Leonard Thornton agency’s most beautiful models, Candy O’Neill. Stuck in the sea of bodies were the Fishman Brothers, Irving and his silent partner, Morton, and two elegantly dressed ladies, obviously their wives. And as though they had been waiting by the elevator doors, Jamie Hatworth and her two little boys and Mike, the layout artist, pushed forward.
“Lacy,” the assistant editor yelled over the racket, waving her free hand.
If Lacy had been able to, she would have put both hands over her face to hide from what was before her, but her arms were pinned to her sides. She couldn’t even bat away a photographer’s camera that had just grazed her nose. Pottsy had done his job too well. This wasn’t just retribution; this wasn’t a setup to drive Michael Echevarria to the wall for humiliating her. This was total, irrevocable overkill of nuclear proportions!
Two burly bodies in electric-blue tuxedos with ruffled pink nylon shirts materialized in the hallway as the Peptic Ulcers struck up an ear-splitting reggae version of the wedding processional from Lohengrin. The crowd gave a few scattered cheers.
“Jeez, Mickey,” the transformed figure of Freddie the bartender from the Seven Seas Bar and Grill rasped, “Otto and me came dressed for a wedding. What the hell’s happening?”
“There’s going to be a wedding,” the president and chairman of the board growled. He held Lacy to his side tightly. “You can bet on it.”
“Please,” Lacy cried, her voice lost in the noise, “I want everybody to go home. This is all a big mistake! I’ll take full responsibility.”
“Lacy,” Jamie Hatworth yelled, “room five-oh-one—” The assistant editor tried to point.
“Heah, dahling girl,” the unmistakably Back Bay tones of Harrison Salstonstall Potts IV trumpeted as he plowed through the jam toward them. “Let me rescue you from this ovahly enthusiastic assemblage and welcome you, deah dreamboat, to yoah wedding.” Boston’s public-relations genius lunged for Lacy and planted a large kiss on her lips. “This is mah masterpiece, deah girl,” he beamed at her. “Marital mayhem—just as you ordered.”
“Statement,’“ the television-news crews were shouting. “Make your statement, Miss Kingston.”
“Do that again and I’ll deck you,” the black panther snarled, dealing Harrison Salstonstall Potts IV a shove that sent him back into the rock-band amplifiers.
“Mr. Michael Echevarria, I presume?” Harrison Salstonstall Potts IV boomed, prying himself out of a stack of woofers and tweeters. “I understand you’re to be shafted today, deah boy. Don’t forget to make a statement to The New York Times, will you, about molesting beautiful women?”
“Oh, no,” Lacy whispered, her knees buckling. Cameramen, faces, bodies, even the glaring television lights were growing dim. A grim deity, looking down from heaven on the worst media event in history was delivering terrible justice. But for her, not for Michael Echevarria. “Pottsy,” she cried feebly, “it’s all a big mistake. I’m not going to denounce anybody. I just want to go home! I’ve changed my mind!”
No one could hear her as the Peptic Ulcers segued into a version of “Oh, Promise Me” with a driving rock beat and drum solo.
“Stop,” Lacy moaned. She felt sick. But she was swept nonetheless toward the doors of room 501 and Judge Markowitz’s chambers, the chairman of the board on one side and Freddie, the bartender, on the other. A squad of uniformed New York Supreme Court bailiffs were clearing the area in front of the ladies’ room and the familiar choked snarls of Sicky-Poo could be heard, trying to attack them.
“Daddy!” Lacy cried, catching a glimpse of a familiar figure.
“Mother,” she gasped as the surging pressure of the crowd swept her forward. She felt something warm against her leg and then the cold slither of a metal chain and nearly went down on her knees as Sicky-Poo lunged past her, dragging Candy O’Neill, in a chartreuse gold-embroidered caftan, with him.
Judge Markowitz, impressive in his black official robes, stood in a siege position behind his receptionist’s desk as the wedding party, the groomsmen in electric-blue tuxedos, assorted guests and a delegation of race-track jockeys stumbled through the door. The judge slammed down the telephone receiver, looking displeased.
“Great snakes, Mickey, what the hell’s going on?” Judge Markowitz demanded. The president and chairman of the board of Echevarria Enterprises, Inc., fumbled vainly to retrieve his homburg hat as it disappeared over his shoulder into the hallway. The judge’s administrative assistant slammed the door quickly before more race-track jockeys could slide their small bodies inside.
“Some kook’s staged a circus in the hallway,” the judge went on, reaching under his black skirts to produce a handkerchief and mop his face. “And the press has been calling here all morning about some woman who’s going to denounce you as a rapist.”
“Just marry us, Sam,” Michael Echevarria told him grimly, bending to untangle Sicky-Poo’s chain from his leg. “I’ll explain everything later.”
“I’ll hold the dog,” Jamie Hatworth’s oldest boy volunteered as the Doberman lunged for him, slathering. “Mama, can I hold the dog?
“Gee,” he said, bending down to examine his shoes, “guess what he just did?”
“Quick, grab her arm,” Lacy heard someone cry. Then her mother’s voice seemed to come sweetly out from an enveloping grayness.
“Lacy,” her mother was saying, “you’re not going to faint on us, dearest, are you?”
But she did.
Twenty-Three
“I guess I’ll have to go ahead and marry Michael Echevarria,” Lacy said as her mother wiped off her pale face with a wet paper towel in Judge Markowitz’s private restroom. “Oh, Mother, I’m sorry nothing turned out the way I thought it would!”
A few minutes before, Lacy had gotten rid of the glass of orange juice and piece of unbuttered toast she’d had for breakfast. She’d been in a near faint for two or three horrifying minutes in the anteroom, and then after that, when her mother and Jamie Hatworth had steered her into the judge’s own restroom, she’d thrown up.
Now, she saw, peering critically at herself in the mirror over the wash basin, she looked better than she really had any right to, considering that she’d both passed out in the hallway and then tossed her breakfast. She was pale, but her lack of color gave her a rather interesting, ethereal look that was a new variation on the standard Lacy Kingston pizazz. It certainly helped to finally have time to do something with her hair. Now all she needed was a little lip gloss, she thought wearily.
Jamie Hatworth leaned against the door of a booth and turned the Dior hat in her hands, tucking portions of the tulle veiling into the crown to hide the holes. “Frankly, kid, if you were mine,” the assistant editor said, “I’d turn you over my knee and whale your tush until it blistered. Honestly, Lacy, you had no right to turn that lunatic from Boston loose on
the New York Supreme Court! There was total panic outside there for a while, and the bailiffs are still cleaning up the mess. If the judges on this floor ever find out who was responsible, they’ll arraign you on charges of trying to overthrow the municipal government.”
“We don’t believe in spanking,” Lacy’s tall, beautiful mother said firmly, “we never have. Lacy’s father and I have always believed that violence is not the answer to disciplining children. We followed Dr. Spock’s guidelines on that very closely.
“Dear,” she said to her daughter, opening a blue velvet Cartier jewel case with exquisite pearl solitaire earrings and handing it to her, “the best man—isn’t he the bartender from Brooklyn? He passed these in to us for you to wear for the ceremony, darling—they match your beautiful necklace. There was too much going on before you fainted to give you your engagement ring, but I saw it, and it’s perfectly lovely.
“Twenty-two carats may be a little too big,” she added thoughtfully, ignoring her daughter’s loud groan, “for my baby’s slender hand, but it’s a perfectly magnificent diamond.”
Lacy attached the pearl earrings to her ear lobes and stood back to view them in the wash-basin mirror. Their color, and that of the fabulous pearl necklace, was several luminous shades paler than the ivory tissue silk afternoon dress she wore. But the effect, as usual with the things Michael Echevarria chose for her, was incomparably tasteful. She squinted at herself doubtfully, hating to attempt a new hairdo but knowing she needed to wear her hair up. It was impossible to have the seed-pearl coronet of the Dior hat and its bridal cloud of shoulder-length veiling look right with her hair down and considerably disheveled.
“I wish Candy was here,” Lacy sighed. “Candy really wanted to be my maid of honor. I hope she’s making out all right at the jail.
“Of course,” she added quickly, for the assistant editor’s benefit, “I’m glad you could fill in, Jamie, I really appreciate it, and so does my family.”
“Glad to do it, kid,” the other woman responded. “I agree with your mother, my Macy’s brown corduroy really goes better with that arsenic-blue tux the best man is wearing, anyway.” Jamie shook out the tulle veil and handed the little Dior hat to Candy. “I certainly hope your girlfriend makes out all right down at the police station with the guy in the trench coat. That was some fight when he jumped that Harvard P.R. kook who set up this extravaganza. I told her not to worry, to go on over to the precinct station with him. Then she could go over to the emergency room at Bellevue and see if they had patched up the Boston nut case.”
“I have a lot to thank you for,” Lacy said genuinely grateful. “And Mr. Fishman and his brother for getting permission for the band to stay after the SWAT team left.” Lacy settled the Dior at the back of her head, where it fit nicely over her upswept French twist and lowered the transparent, shoulder-length tulle veil. Even she was somewhat startled at the transformation. Was that pale, glowing vision with jewel-green eyes and the seraphic face behind the tulle’s mysterious mist really she? “Good grief,” Lacy murmured, “I really do look like a bride.” She couldn’t stop staring.
“You look gorgeous,” Jamie Hatworth agreed. She sighed, too. “I don’t know how you do it, kid. You always come up looking so good it takes people’s breath away. Lacy, for Pete’s sake,” the assistant editor said suddenly, “why don’t you let up?
“I mean,” she continued quickly when she saw Lacy’s startled look, “why don’t you stop battling with the big boss and give him a break? I know, I know—personally I couldn’t cope with a ferocious-looking stud like Michael Echevarria. He’s too much for any one woman to handle. But don’t you realize you’ve got him bent all out of shape? Instead of murder one today, which would have been any man’s normal reaction, he looked like he was going to pass out himself when you fainted. It took both those crazy longshoremen and Judge Markowitz to keep him from charging in here while you were throwing up.” Jamie sighed. “Now they tell me he’s sort of catatonic—he can’t even talk or speak to anybody until you come out.”
“But he doesn’t love me,” Lacy protested. “Remember, it took the threat of a federal suit to get him to offer to marry me!
“I really haven’t got time to discuss it now,” she said, squaring her shoulders determinedly, “but all Michael Echevarria’s ever offered me was expensive jewelry and the Ferrari and a sable coat and a lot of sleazy, humiliating propositions.”
“Lacy—” Jamie began.
“It’s all right, I’ve made up my mind,” Lacy said, looking brave. “Although it’s going to be a loveless marriage, I feel I owe Michael something. I’m really very sorry for zapping him today with Potts Promotions and a media event where they had to call the riot police. I really had no idea Walter Moretti was going to show up when he wasn’t supposed to and attack Pottsy, just because Walter thought Candy was going to try to date Pottsy behind his back. From what I heard, nobody gave Walter a chance to explain that he has a permit to carry his gun because he’s a private eye. What happened after that certainly wasn’t my fault, but you’ve got to agree it is my fault that all the television cameras were here and that the riot is going to be on all three networks tonight. I did hire Pottsy to stage the media promotion, but I never intended to do all this to Echevarria Enterprises and Fad magazine, believe me.”
Lacy settled the pearl strands at the boat neckline of the ivory silk dress and viewed them critically.
“Lacy, what I was trying to say was—” Jamie began again.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lacy said firmly. “I don’t care what Michael Echevarria thinks—I didn’t want to totally put him out of business. I’m going to have to patch things up as best I can.”
“OK,” the assistant editor said, a rather puzzled look on her pretty face, “it makes sense, sort of. At least I think so. Anyway, I get the impression none of your wedding guests outside want a perfectly good marriage ceremony to go to waste. Not after what they’ve been through in the last hour and a half.” Jamie took a quick look at her wristwatch. “Which reminds me, they’ve been into the champagne for quite a while now. They were getting pretty happy the last time I looked.”
“How’s your tummy, dearest?” Lacy’s mother asked, kissing her daughter fondly on her pale cheek. “No more upchuckie feeling?” The slightly darker pair of emerald eyes looked into the other green ones questioningly. “How long, Lacy, dear,” she wanted to know, “have you been having these symptoms?”
Lacy looked from her friend the assistant editor to her mother and back again. “Well, actually,” she said frowning, “I really hadn’t thought about it until today.”
“Oh, baby,” her mother said, smiling tenderly, “are you sure, or are you just guessing? Have you bought one of those nice little kits they sell in the drugstore so you can find out?”
“No, not actually,” Lacy said, clutching her lower lip between her teeth and looking thoughtful. “But now that I’ve had time to think about it, I believe that’s just what’s going to happen.”
“Wait a minute,” Jamie Hatworth cried. “I’m not following this. Are you two discussing what I think you’re discussing? Just standing there calmly, discussing it?” She clutched her hair with both hands in mock despair. “I mean, is this the same obvious conclusion that people obviously conclude when they’re discussing such things?”
“Oh, darling,” Lacy’s mother rebuked her softly, “you really should keep track of these little items. Especially right before a wedding, when you want to look and feel your best. I could have brought some smelling salts, you know, or some soda crackers for your tummy.”
“Well,” Lacy said somewhat defensively, “there’s no need for panic. I still don’t have to get married, Mother. I could always be a single parent. I think I’d make a good one I am definitely not marrying Michael for that reason, I want to get that much straight.
“And don’t tell me what Dr. Spock says about single parenthood,” she added a hale crossly. “I don’t want to hear it right
now. I’ve got enough on my mind marrying a man who’s wonderful but who only does what his lawyers tell him to do.”
Lacy took a deep breath. “All I can think of is that it must have been that first night in Tu—that first night when I wasn’t expecting anything to happen. My goodness,” she said heatedly, “everything’s been so confused lately with my major career changes and a new job as a fashion writer, and then getting involved with Michael Echevarria, and then Alex van Renssalaer. I certainly couldn’t keep track of everything, could I?”
“We’re not discussing not getting married now, are we?” the assistant editor cried incredulously. “Dear heaven, is this the Echevarria conglomerate’s baby, or what? It must be, if I’m following this crazy logic.” She shuddered. “Oh, ray God, does this mean nobody’s gotten around to telling big, mean Michael yet? You mean he doesn’t know?”
“That’s another thing, dear.” Lacy’s mother said. “Do you really think you ought to go ahead and marry Michael just because you feel you owe him that much? Or should we have your father speak to him and give him a choice? Under the circumstances, don’t you want to be as considerate as possible?
“I mean,” she murmured, “if you think the bridegroom should be in on any decision making, your father would be glad to help. He could tell the best man very confidentially and then have Freddie—that’s his name, isn’t it?—relay the message to your bridegroom. I believe that’s what your grandfather did at your Aunt Prudence’s wedding.”
“The whole family’s crazy,” Jamie Hatworth breathed, staring at them. “But, by God, it explains a lot.”
“Oh, mother,” Lacy said testily, “it’s not the same thing at all. Aunt Pru never did want to tell Uncle John whether Norman was his or not, that’s what that was ail about. And Norman turned out to look just like Uncle John—Aunt Pru was just being bitchy.”
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