Tonight, the audience seemed composed of all of the college students spending the summer in Boston. Portions of my routine were political humor focusing on the mayor and the Big Dig, the billion-dollar project to replace a crowded elevated expressway with a series of tunnels, still incomplete in the early 2000s. I worried how this would play with young people originally from Illinois or Virginia.
In the midst of this audience, it was all the more startling to spy Nadia Gulbenkian in her lilac tweed suit, sitting all alone by the entrance to the rest rooms, just below the dragon’s spiky tail. She was sipping a cup of tea and smiling wanly while some backslapping frat boys laughed over their Scorpion Bowls at the next table. When she saw me, she waved her hand with the authority of a traffic cop.
I had to squeeze past the college boys, who were evidently football players, judging by their jerseys. “Hey, you almost spilled our bowl, man. Are you the comedian? Are you funny? Because the drinks here suck. They’re like fruit punch.”
“I’ll do my best.”
Nadia had actually aged since the last time I’d encountered her. “I’m not really in the mood for comedy, but it’s very urgent that I speak with you. And I think you’re…a potential voice of reason about Mingo House.”
The frat boys were laughing at photos one of them was brandishing on his cell phone. “And that’s before she got drunk, before the concert.”
“I’ve been out of town, in New Hampshire,” Nadia said. “I left just after the funeral.”
“I saw you there.”
“Oh, certainly. Genevieve was a little full of herself, but she knew the score, if you know what I mean.”
“I don’t. Tell me.”
“I’d like to speak with you in private. I wasn’t sure where you lived and I didn’t want people to know I was contacting you. I saw this show listed in the Phoenix.”
Nadia wasn’t in the demographic for the formerly “alternative” but now vaguely mainstream weekly paper. I noticed that one of her customarily flawless scarlet fingernails had chipped. “What I have to say is most urgent. And most confidential…” The frat boys drowned out the rest of her sentences. I could see a pair of breasts on the screen of the cell phone they were trading around.
The owner of the Soong Dynasty, Ray Leung, was near the stage entrance, nodding to me. “We can talk after the show,” I told Nadia.
Ray ushered me backstage and gave me a plate of hot Buffalo wings, which I slid onto the vanity table next to my cue cards. I ate a couple of wings and got sauce on my shirt, of course.
The clubs had changed since my stint doing improv in the Nineties. They were smoke-free, so I didn’t feel polluted at the end of a night. The complimentary food was just as unhealthy: baskets of French fries, nachos, onion rings. People ask where comedy comes from—from an aquifer of wit and the isolation of the observer, I’d say. Wit bubbles up and surprises you, spontaneous as a sneeze. And you need isolation and its silence in order to observe, ponder, and comment on your surroundings.
Checking my face in the mirror, I saw to my relief that a shaving cut near my nose had healed. Miriam and Chloe had persuaded me to try meditation, so, to calm my flickering nerves, I closed my eyes and began letting the mantra float in and out of my consciousness when Ray interrupted: “Hey, Siddhartha, I never knew you were that religious. Is your new material that bad? Sorry to bother you, but there’s a friend of yours who’s very agitated and says you want to talk to her. ”
Nadia barged right in. “Just ignore me for now. Those college kids got on my nerves. I’ll wait here until your act is over. I’m sure you’ll be hilarious. I think I remember how to laugh.”
“Nadia, you don’t look well.”
Behind her back, Ray Leung was mouthing “Want me to…?” and jabbing his finger in the direction of the door.
“You can wait here, of course, Nadia,” I said as much to Ray as to Nadia. Ray shrugged as though he thought I was crazy and went off to command the stage, blaring, “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome one of Boston’s finest comics…Mark Winslow,” which generated some robust applause.
The routine went fine. I did some of the Big Dig jokes in the voice of a new character, an engineer whose background was building sand castles at Revere Beach. Others were done in various voices: “Hey, when they said this was the Big Dig, who would have thought they meant digging in our pockets? Twelve billion dollars from grown men playing in the mud…”
A few people actually gave me a standing ovation, but some were on their way to the rest rooms. “You’re a great audience,” I said, bowing, “Thanks so much.” In the area of the cash register, I thought I recognized a familiar face, our Asian entrepreneur, but Ray Leung had a number of hunky nephews moonlighting at the place.
Then I ducked backstage to find, Sherry, Ray Leung’s wife, sobbing, and Ray on his cell phone, looking like he’d never laughed in his life: “…Yes, the Soong Dynasty. It looks like she’s already dead. She must have collapsed in the lavatory. I heard someone fall. Paul is giving her CPR right now…”
In the hall, one of the waiters was bending over Nadia Gulbenkian, who lay sprawled across the threshold of the door to the rest room. She’s been murdered, my intuition all but shouted, and then the sirens became more shrill, audible even above the restaurant’s air conditioning. I scratched at something on the wall, a gold plastic plaque of a pagoda, scratched at it to be sure this was real and not a delusion.
The EMTs, stretcher and defibrillator in hand, came in—calm and without optimism. One of them said to me, “This happened while you were in the room, sir?”
“He was performing,” Ray said. “She’s a friend of Mark’s. She was waiting to speak with him.”
“What was her name?” an EMT asked me.
“Her name is Nadia Gulbenkian.”
“Did she have any illnesses? Was she taking any medications?”
They whisked her away. One minute she was present, in body at least, and the next she was gone, to what fate, I was unsure. I was convinced she would die, but no, she was to linger, comatose, in the ICU. I tried to contact the police, but they listened patiently before assuring me that no foul play was suspected in Mrs. Gulbenkian’s situation.
But was Jon Kim in the audience that night? Could he have insinuated himself backstage and done something to Nadia, spiked her drink or frightened her somehow? Whoever it was in the murk, his face was as indistinct as if it had been airbrushed.
“This seems suspicious to me, her just collapsing,” I said.
“You’ve been under a great strain, Mr. Winslow,” the police told me. “What with the Courson case and all.” True enough.
Chapter Thirteen
I felt I had to inform someone from Mingo House about Nadia’s, what, illness, misfortune, attempted murder? So I telephoned Rudy Schmitz, the first thing in the morning, at home. It pleased me to realize that I’d woken him up. Yawning and clearing his throat, he informed me that he had to “find my contacts and drain the lizard,” then, with a new outlook and an empty bladder, he was ready to listen.
“Nadia collapsed last night. Nadia Gulbenkian.”
Silence.
“She’s in the ICU at Boston General.”
Silence, and then the sound of what might have been a refrigerator door closing and perhaps water gushing from a faucet.
So I elaborated, telling him how Nadia had happened to attend my show, seeing the ad in the Phoenix, but keeping secret her urgent desire to speak privately with me. “One minute she was perfectly fine, and the next, she was stretched out backstage on the floor, unconscious. It’s just too much of a coincidence, Nadia in a coma so soon after Genevieve was strangled.”
Now Rudy was obviously grinding coffee beans, judging by the ensuing fresh-roasted racket. “Mark, you’re unduly addled. First of all, Nadia Gulbenkian was never ‘perfectly fine’ in her life. She’s been blatantly paranoid since her husband went to Washington during the Kennedy administration and began banging as many cute
young females as possible. Second, Nadia is actively delusional. Do you know she once saw a UFO hovering over a cornfield in southern Vermont? Or that she firmly believes that HIV was developed as a means of biological warfare by the CIA in a laboratory in the Gambia?” He then tortured more coffee beans, and I thought I could discern a second male voice in the background.
“And Nadia’s health was marginal at best. She carries a Walgreens’ worth of pharmaceuticals in that exhausted Chanel handbag—which she has a long history of abusing. She was hospitalized last June when she bungled the dosage of her Atenolol.” Then he set the phone aside to remind someone: “Sweetie, you know I want my eggs soft-boiled! And don’t use that carton of orange juice, it’s tired.”
I visualized Jon Kim, naked except for a chef’s apron, cooking in Rudy’s high-tech kitchen.
“I’m sorry if I’m interrupting you,” I said, delving for information he had no intention of providing.
“Well, thank you for keeping me informed,” Rudy said, cheerily. “We’re always concerned about our Mingo House family.”
Somehow the coldest people always use family analogies…
Just as I hung up, Roberto, finishing a high-calorie breakfast of French toast, sausages, hash browns, and gingko tea—to sharpen his memory and retain more of the intricacies of law—told me, “You need a vacation. How about weekend in Ogunquit?” Roberto was now collecting turn-of-the-last-century comic memorabilia, and an antique dealer had chanced upon a reasonably fresh page of a “Little Nemo in Slumberland” from 1916. “How about it? Lobster, antiquing, relaxation. Not a historic house in sight.”
“I feel awful about Nadia.”
“She’s getting the best care possible.”
“Everyone dumps on her. Just because she has a conscience.”
So we embarked for the weekend, booking a room for two nights at one of the better motels along the Marginal Way. Ogunquit was a much shorter drive than Cape Cod, especially Provincetown, and slower, more sedate, less of a scene. And Maine lacked the associations with Chloe’s kidnapping and Lucas Mikkonen’s fraudulent Norse commune. Since the sea water in Maine is ankle-cracking cold, even as far south as Ogunquit, we immediately swam in the motel’s heated outdoor pool. That was a smart move, because it drizzled fitfully for the rest of our stay.
Finally, it was time to pick up Roberto’s comic strip, at one of the barn-sized antique stores along one. Roberto was delighted with the newspaper, with ink vivid as a still stinging tattoo and an account of the Battle of the Somme. As we were about to leave, squeezing by a family scrutinizing a splintery old rocking horse, I spied a dummy wearing a pale green Victorian dress, with, yes, a bustle. I flagged down a member of the staff, a muscular woman in Madras shorts. I asked the price of the dress and was given a figure that was substantial but not highway robbery. “It’s a theatrical piece from a production at the Ogunquit Playhouse,” the woman said. “It’s supposed to look like silk, but it’s some kind of polyester. I think it was used in a run of The Importance of Being Earnest. We just sold it.”
Thinking of some fetishist, of Genevieve’s killer, I asked, “Who…?”
“This is going to a photographer in Portland. In the Old Port. So people can dress up and have an ‘old-fashioned’ photograph taken.”
They had places like that in Rockport, where you could “become” a Wild West outlaw with chaps and gun, a saloon girl with spangles and fishnet stockings. Had Genevieve been posing for a photographer when she was killed? Was that why she’d been fitted with Victorian finery?
Going home, Roberto drove, gobbling salt water taffy and keeping his foot steady on the accelerator. He was always more assertive when behind the wheel, so, just as we were passing the York Wild Animal Kingdom, he blurted out, “You’ve still got Genevieve Courson on the brain. Don’t deny it, you have that look.”
I braced myself for a reprimand, but before I could respond, he said, “That’s understandable, I mean, you found her, that must have been horrible. Awful.”
Rather than asking if he wanted to stop at Stonewall Kitchen and replenish our supply of chutney, I let him continue.
“That dress is the central clue, isn’t it? The dress she was found in, that made her such a media sensation.”
“Yeah, absolutely.” I took a piece of cranberry taffy, a flavor that doesn’t really work. Then I confessed: “I went to her funeral.”
“No shit, Sherlock.”
Had Chloe told him, was she a little tattletale? That wasn’t in character at all.
“I saw you on TV. Giving Marcia Haight the bum’s rush. And you were on Good Morning America. At least your back was, ducking into the funeral home. Hey, it’s national exposure. But it isn’t exactly Comedy Central, is it?” We were speeding along the Maine Turnpike, the straight highway bordered by dark conifers that hint at the vast stretches of forests up north, swaths of wilderness owned by paper companies. “Sorry. That Genevieve sounds like a piece of work, what with the perv father. That must have done a number on her head. How could it not?”
“She seemed so smart, so intelligent.”
“Intelligent and messed up can go together.”
Then, crossing the Piscataqua River, Roberto confided he was having second thoughts about law school. The memorization involved, the importance of precedent, was a world away from our previous lives, from the freewheeling spirit of improv. “I’ve been consulting the I Ching, and I keep getting this answer—”
“That can mean five different things? So it means nothing at all?”
Passing an elderly driver in a Cadillac with a “Kennebushport” bumper sticker, Roberto quoted a passage, something about birds, a fire, and a broken pot.
“That’s clarity. Surely you won’t change your career because of a line from the I Ching.”
He was gnawing through the taffy at an alarming rate.
“Well, finding Genevieve Courson’s killer would be achieving justice. You don’t need the I Ching to know that.”
That night, as we were unpacking, Marcia Haight broke the news of Genevieve Courson’s pregnancy. “We now know that the so-called Victorian Girl, Genevieve Courson, was with child. The autopsy on the slain Shawmut College coed determined she was four months pregnant.”
So Bryce Rossi, the flamboyant aesthete, was indeed telling the truth. He was the father of a child, but not by choice.
Chapter Fourteen
Rudy Schmitz called a meeting of the Mingo House board of trustees “in light of the tragedy about poor Nadia Gulbenkian,” as he put it in his slightly saccharine e-mail. He scheduled the meeting at Mingo House at eight in the morning, instead of at the customary evening hour. He came bearing gifts, éclairs, Neapolitans, and biscotti from a bakery in the North End. Jon Kim was helping him serve—using the raspberry-pink, gilt-edged Mingo family china.
“Aren’t these, well, museum pieces?” Sam Ahearn wondered.
Rudy ignored him. “There’s a superb pastry shop in Portofino that I love, but this bakery on Hanover Street is a close second.” When Rudy had said the word “love,” he had gazed pointedly at Jon Kim, whose custom-tailored suits seemed to be getting tighter and sexier.
“How is poor Nadia?” Sam Ahearn asked Rudy.
“She’s holding her own.” Rudy bit into an éclair and consumed a draught of coffee from one of the brittle teacups. “She seems to be in stable but critical condition. So we can only pray.”
I almost asked Rudy how to spell that last verb.
“It could go either way.” Jon Kim opened his Darth Vader-black laptop. “I spoke to my cousin. He’s a neurosurgeon in New York. He said she could remain comatose for…weeks.”
Sam Ahearn, his bald pate glowing, was scorning the coffee and pastries. “Nadia is so passionate about this place, about everything. Do you know she was instrumental in moving that lighthouse down in Brewster, when it was threatened by erosion? She used her connections at National Geographic to get them to do an article about it, and then she helped ra
ise funds to move the thing. And she was pressuring the Turkish government to acknowledge the Armenian genocide—”
“Yes, yes, we all have our Nadia stories.” Rudy crumpled the paper doily that had escorted the éclair to his plate. “She is greatly missed. There is only one Nadia. But it is our duty to carry on as thoroughly and enthusiastically as she would have.”
“Are we bound to elect an interim trustee?” Sam Ahearn asked.
“We are not,” Rudy stated. “We are, however, certainly in a kind of limbo when it comes to the future of Mingo House. Unsure, literally, about the roof over our heads, and of the funds to sustain us. I think this is a time to take stock. To do an accounting of what we have in our collection.” He seemed to nod toward the alleged Millet of the peasants in their wooden shoes in the autumnal field. “We need our collection appraised, from top to bottom. We need to close up shop, temporarily, and sort through our treasures.”
“For what purpose?” asked Sam Ahearn.
“Simply to know where we stand.”
“Are you proposing bringing Sotheby’s in?” Sam asked Rudy.
“Absolutely not. Nothing as definitive or expensive as that. We can use a fellow we’ve worked with in the past. He’s very qualified but a lot less brutal on the wallet. Bryce Rossi.”
I could now ask a question I’d been pondering: “Who is this guy?”
“Bryce Rossi, Ph.D., is a superb collector who specializes in Italian art. He’s an expert on the nineteenth-century painters of classical subjects that Corinth One collected. He’s worked with museums in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Denver. He’s erudite, charming, and reasonably priced.”
And up to his neck in Genevieve Courson’s life, and, possibly, her death, I almost blurted.
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