He did not respond.
“I hear you have a third eye,” I said. “Did it see anything the night of the murder?”
When he didn’t answer, I tried a looser approach.
“You know what would be even more fun and more useful than an invisible third eye? An invisible third hand. Think of the trouble you could start with that on the subway during rush hour,” I said. “Or in church. Or with a juggler.”
He was not amused.
“I know you told the cops that you don’t know anything. But did you mean you really don’t know anything about this, or did you mean that in the ‘everything worth knowing is unknowable’ sense?” I asked. “Just tell me if you do NOT know anything. That will give me one milligram of peace and I could use it right about now. Then I’ll leave you alone.”
He twitched a little, but just kept lifting those fucking hand weights. It only served to make me angrier and I had an involuntary cartoonish vision of grabbing those fucking hand weights out of his hands, breaking them in two, and hammering him into the ground like a big spike.
“I don’t know who fed you that Classic Comix Buddhism, BUD, but it’s bullshit,” I snarled.
Politeness hadn’t worked, humor hadn’t worked, and anger didn’t work either, although at least this time I elicited a reaction. He looked terrified as he stepped backward and slammed the door in my face. I got to him, but got diddly out of him. Did he not say anything because he DID know something? Or because he was still maintaining his silent noninvolvement?
“Yeah, leave me wondering, just like every other human being in my life. Why can’t people just play it straight with each other! Why does everyone have to be finessed and schmoozed?” I screamed just as the uptight Mary Sue lady who looked like Marilyn Quayle was leaving her room. After a split second frozen in panic, she withdrew into her room and slammed the door.
“I’m not nuts, lady! I’m just pissed off,” I screamed at her door.
Preoccupied, I punched in the wrong code on the security buzzer. When I unlocked and opened Tamayo’s door, the alarm let out a wail that opened doors up and down the hallway, all except those of the bodybuilder, the Mary Sue lady, and Maggie Mason. Took a couple of fumbling moments to shut the damn thing off.
Rocky was at the table, his hands over his ears, a large spoon stuck in his mouth, milk dribbling down his chin back into a cereal bowl.
“Sorry,” I said. “You’re eating cereal at this hour?”
“It doesn’t have to be cooked,” he said.
“There are cold cuts in the fridge and Bag O’ Salad. You should eat that.”
“Did you get my CDs and my videos?” he asked.
“What? Am I made of money?”
The kid hadn’t offered me any cash—he claimed he had spent everything he had feeding himself while he was wandering around New York after I turned him away the night he’d arrived, though I half-suspected this was a cheapskate con of his.
“I did have my personal shopper at Macy’s send you over some things. They should be here later today. Other than that, I’ve been busy,” I said. “I’m trying to find your fiancée. Why hasn’t she called here?”
“She maybe doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Granted, she doesn’t know you’re here but common courtesy … Doesn’t she know how worried I am? What if she’s been kidnapped or something?”
“Oh no. I know her. She’s hiding out,” Rocky said.
“Who would they deliver the ransom demand to if she was kidnapped? Her family?” I asked. “Tell me her parents’ names. Tell me how to contact them.”
He shook his head. “They’ll kill you. You know too much,” he said matter-of-factly.
“I hardly know anything,” I said. “I don’t know nearly enough—”
“The light is flashing on the phone, for messages,” Rocky said.
“Thanks, you’re so helpful.”
On the voice mail was a message from Maggie Mason: “Hi, Robin, sorry I haven’t been back to you. I’ve been incredibly busy running around. Can we talk tomorrow? À bientôt.”
Okay, this was suspicious. My one lead and she was avoiding me.
There was a second message, from my assistant, Tim, saying he really needed to talk to me. When Maggie didn’t answer her phone, I called Tim back.
“I’m glad you called, Robin. Things are happening here,” he said.
“What’s happening?”
“Jerry’s assistant requested some programming files. I saw her in the copy room photocopying some of the documents in it.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Your idea for Tranquil TV,” Tim said.
Tranquil TV was a proposal for two hours of soothing, beautiful television programs, one hour for adults and one for children, which overstimulated viewers could tape and watch when they needed something that’s intelligent, visual, and calming. The demo reel we’d done consisted of songs by “girl singers” like Jewel, Victoria Williams, Nana Mouskouri, Bjork, and a tiny Taiwanese singer whose name I could never pronounce, lovely ballads and folk songs with smart lyrics and soul-enriching scenes of natural beauty, interesting faces, art, ballet, animation, philosophical snippets, and a lot of little “smell the flowers” moments. Jerry had scorned it as “video Prozac.”
“He’s also been photocopying old news stories about you, the bad ones, and reviews, the bad ones, and asking the staff about you, gathering complaints,” Tim said.
“So what? I have a contract and Jack Jackson likes me. I’m not worried.”
“Did you once belch on live TV?” Tim asked.
“Oh that was so long ago. He’s using that too?”
“Yeah, and some stuff about the time you pushed the mayor’s face into a bowl of soup.”
“Tim, for the record, I was getting up to receive an award at a big diner, and on my way to the head table, I tripped on the hem of my dress and accidentally pushed the mayor’s face in his soup. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“He has a letter from a New Jersey widow …”
“Okay, someone should have warned me ahead of time that if you attend an airborne ash scattering, keep your mouth shut and beware the updraft. These aren’t things people are born knowing, you know? I learned from all these things.”
“He also has all the reports on your recent worldwide trip. There was a new one came in today. Apparently you ate with your left hand at a dinner with a newspaper publisher in—”
“Hey, the guy I offended beats his servants, with both hands, and I have a sneaking suspicion his newspaper empire is funded with heroin trafficking. But I must say, he has exquisite table manners.”
“—and kept calling one of his wives his ‘lovely young daughter.’”
“She’s seventeen! He’s gotta be sixty. He had a wife with him there already. It was a natural assumption. Tim, photocopy my triumphs file so we have something to counter with,” I said.
Admittedly, that triumphs file isn’t a very thick one, but it had some good things in it. Man, you can save the world, you can solve a few homicides, you can win a few awards, but what everyone remembers is the time you accidentally pushed the mayor’s face into his soup, or asked that plane crash survivor a cannibalism question. What good were my triumphs going to be, anyway? In a rare, generous moment, I had attributed all my successes to others during an interview for a newspaper piece the year before, which undercut my triumphs a bit. I was trying to be fair, since I hadn’t done those things alone. Other people had saved me—my aunt Mo, a bunch of animal rights guys, my cat—and I decided to clear a little extra karma and give a little extra credit where it was due. It would look really jerky for me to now lay personal claim to all those triumphs.
“I just think you should be aware,” Tim said. “Solange and Jerry have both been stabbing you in the back, and they’ve been talking to Jack Jackson on the phone a lot. Maybe you should give him a call.”
“Jack is not going to fire me,” I said. “Trust me. But all th
e same, try to get some positive stuff together about me.”
I needed to worry about the machinations of the Holy Woman Empire on top of everything else? Jesus. Those giant fingers were squeezing harder and harder. I felt like I was going to pop right out my skin.
This called for a drink, a healthy shot of vodka from Tamayo’s liquor cabinet, and another for the attempt to bond with the manboy, who eluded conversation by going back into the bathroom and taking yet another bath. He took Tamayo’s Cosmo in with him.
Dinner had to be made—a seafood stir-fry served with brown rice and microgreens. It had been a long time since I’d actually cooked for anyone other than my cat. I rarely did it for myself. I was quite proud of the results, but when Rocky emerged from the bathroom he took one look and made a face.
“Why can’t you get me the food I want?” he asked.
“Just eat and be grateful you’re not a starving refugee …” I began, and stopped.
He was holding a photo of Nadia, and his eyes were red-rimmed. He’d been weeping about his girlfriend, I thought. Poor kid. Why did I have to be such a bitch?
“I did get you some beer and some more ice cream,” I said. “Beer’s in the fridge, that big appliance in the corner there. Can’t miss it. All you have to do is open the door and take the beer out.”
He shot me an angry look. What did I say?
While he chowed down, I logged on to AOL to check out Maggie Mason’s alibi. She’d said she’d been in the comic-books chat room at the time of the murder. Under the comic-books listing, I saw an archive for logged chats. The chat for that date and time was a moderated chat for underground comic-book artist Martha Rodriguez and had just been uploaded.
I downloaded it and read.
Maggie Mason, aka, Eire8, entered the chat shortly after it began, about fifteen minutes before Woznik died. Early in the chat, she submitted a question to the moderator. After it was answered, she did not “speak” up in the chat again. Fairchild had told me the cops checked with the server and she was indeed online that whole time. But even if she was, it wasn’t an alibi. She could have stepped away from the computer, left herself logged on, perhaps with anti-logoff software, and come back whenever she felt like it.
And if she was home, and logged on, why didn’t she respond to the police when they knocked on her door? Why were they not able to interview her the night of the murder? There were some big holes in this alibi. Without Fairchild’s assistance, I wasn’t going to be able to get info from the cops on Maggie or anyone else.
Outside, Maggie’s door slammed. Without even thinking, I grabbed Mrs. Ramirez’s pearl-handled pistol, threw it in my purse, and went out to try to catch Maggie Mason before she ran away again.
chapter nine
Maggie Mason was walking down the hallway, carrying a huge black garbage bag.
“Maggie, wait up!” I called.
“Oh. Robin, hi,” she said. “I’m in a dreadful hurry.…”
“I need to talk to you. I spoke to Grace Rouse …”
“That spoiled, homicidal harridan? You do know she was arrested?”
“She got out on bail. I don’t think she did it.”
“What load of shite did she feed you?” Maggie asked.
“She says she didn’t kill Woznik. She says you did it.”
“She’s insane. I have an alibi.”
“You were on an AOL chat, right? Eire8.”
“Yes. How did you—”
“A police source told me,” I said. “But you only spoke once in the chat, before Woznik died, and didn’t speak again. And when the police went to your door to interview you that night, they got no answer.”
“I was listening to music on a headset,” she said.
“But in the elevator, when you confronted Woznik, you told him you were going out later.”
She shot me a dirty look, then said, “I didn’t kill Gerald. The guy owed me money. If I was planning to kill him, I would have waited until AFTER he paid me. Look, I have to meet someone in exactly half an hour. I have to run …”
“Grace Rouse says you called him about a baby.…”
“Baby? What baby? She is insane. You’re a friend of Tamayo’s, so I suppose I can trust you. You want to meet my real alibi? I’m on my way over there now.”
“This is important.”
“Yes, but people are waiting for me,” she said. “You can come along.”
She began walking toward the swinging doors to the east wing. She might be a killer, I thought, but my curiosity was piqued. I followed her.
“You must swear you won’t reveal what happens on this trip,” she said.
“Why?”
“Swear.”
“Okay, I swear,” I said.
“Do you have Rollerblades?”
“No.” Me on wheels. What a good idea.
“We’ll have to hoof it when we get there then. Do you have any money?”
“Yes.”
“Good. We can take a cab,” she said.
“Where are we going?”
“Central Park.”
“What’s in the bag?” I asked her. It didn’t look like it was too heavy so it probably wasn’t a body, I figured. She scared me, but her hands were full so she didn’t pose a threat, and besides, I had Mrs. R.’s gun. I hate to say this, as I am antigun, but having a real gun on my person gave me a new sense of confidence that was kind of worrisome.
“You’ll see. Let’s take the service elevator,” she said, leading the way to an unmarked door past the trash room. “We’ll go out the back way. I’m a bit behind on the rent and I don’t like to walk by the front desk if I can avoid it.”
“I didn’t even know this elevator was here.”
“The tenants are not supposed to use it,” she said. “We all do, but we’re not supposed to.”
“It smells like garbage,” I said as we got on.
“This is the elevator our rubbish rides down in,” she said, pushing the letter B on the old control panel. Just as the doors closed, a couple of guys who looked like workmen tried to get on. I went for the door open button but got there too late.
“Damn. They looked like staff, didn’t they? I hope they don’t tell Mr. Bard I was using the service elevator again. Bloody hell,” Maggie said. “Nadia hasn’t shown up yet?”
“No. And she hasn’t called.”
“That is very peculiar.”
“How well do you know Nadia?”
“Not well,” Maggie said. “I met her last year when she was staying with Tamayo. She’d come to New York to shop, with a chaperone, a big brute.”
“The guy she’s supposed to marry, a man with a bad toupee, showed up at the hotel, threatened Rocky with a gun.”
“Well, that may be why Nadia is steering clear of the Chelsea. I liked Nadia.”
“You liked her?”
“Yes, what little I knew of her I liked. Any friend of Tamayo’s is a friend of mine. Well, almost any friend. There are a couple of exceptions.”
“Are you part of Tamayo’s underground railroad?”
“Yes, when she needs me to be.”
“Who might know the next stop on this railroad? Your contact?”
“My contact was out of town. I couldn’t reach her. I know Nadia isn’t there.”
Maggie seemed civil enough, but her voice had a serrated edge to it—despite the residue of an Irish accent that normally makes the most heinous people sound somehow charming—and she was dodgy, looking away when she talked instead of looking me in the eye.
“Nadia is probably just hiding out somewhere until things cool off, or she’s looking for her fiancé in all the wrong places.” Maggie said. “She obviously doesn’t know he’s at Tamayo’s or she would have called.”
“I hope you’re right.”
The service elevator was slower than the regular elevators, which were themselves slower than most elevators, and it was much noisier, creaking its way down and grinding to a stop with a lurch. We got out
in a small lobbylike space leading to two other corridors, a dim, narrow hallway and a bright plastered one lit by fluorescent lights. Even here, there was art everywhere, hanging on all the walls. For a moment, I worried that she was the killer, that I’d been lured down here so she could murder me for knowing too much. I opened my purse slightly so the gun would be accessible.
“The unvarnished heart of the Chelsea,” Maggie said. “The basement. Over here is the housekeeping room. The maids hang out here. I came down here one day and I heard loud, loud laughter coming from the maids’ room. Tamayo was in the maids’ room.…” Maggie started to laugh. “She was in pajamas and slippers, sitting with the maids, watching Green Acres on TV. She was helping them fold towels. They were all laughing. Tamayo kept folding the towels wrong, and another maid was beside her refolding them. Tamayo didn’t even notice.”
“Her mind is on loftier things,” I said. “Where are we going?”
“To the secret exit. This is the engineer’s room, there’s the telephone room. Storage, storage, storage; this is the art room, where Mr. Bard keeps art that tenants have given him that he hasn’t found a place for yet. This is going to be the dinner club, it has an entrance to the street which is left open sometimes so workmen can come and go, or so supplies can be brought into the hotel or the El Quijote restaurant,” Maggie said. “Leaving this way, we avoid an uncomfortable scene between me and the front desk over my back rent.”
We went through another little basement tunnel and a gated door leading to steps that led up to Twenty-second Street, where we snagged a cab.
The sun was setting over New Jersey as we cruised uptown on Eighth Avenue.
“It’s funny that you and I never met, Robin, both of us being such good friends of Tamayo’s,” she said.
“Isn’t it?”
“I’ve heard a bit about you from Tamayo, but our paths never crossed before.”
“Tamayo has a lot of friends, all over the place. You meet them in the strangest places,” I said. “Grace Rouse is a friend of Tamayo’s too.”
“I don’t understand why Tamayo likes Grace. What did Grace have to say?”
“She says Gerald Woznik paid you all the money he owed you, according to his books. She also says—”
The Chelsea Girl Murders Page 11