Looker

by Michael Kilian

  Another of the models emerged from the Plaza, but halted on the steps behind them, waiting her turn for a cab. It was the brunette Vanessa had identified as Belinda St. Johns. She was chewing gum. A moment later, she was joined by the bald man A.C. had seen in the changing room. Philippe Arbre, come to join the mere mortals on the street. He chatted with St. Johns, studiously ignoring A.C. He kept looking at his watch. A.C. guessed he was late for a lunch date.

  The doorman, blowing his whistle noisily but futilely, moved away down the street, searching the oncoming traffic for the rooflight that would identify an approaching available taxi.

  “I don’t understand why there are no cabs on such a nice day,” A.C. said. “You’d think they’d be prowling the streets begging for fares.”

  “We ought to walk,” Vanessa said. “In this traffic, we’d get there just as fast.”

  A vague movement at the entrance caught A.C.’s eye. He turned to see the black model Molly Wickham standing goddesslike just outside the revolving door. It was as though she were still performing on the runway, and waiting for all to notice her before proceeding farther.

  She smiled at A.C. in recognition, looked up and down the street, and then, moving quickly, started down the steps. The lead limousine began to move, as though pulling away. A.C. caught a glimpse of a man in the rear seat. He was wearing glasses and leaning forward. Then the limousine halted as a motorcycle came roaring up swiftly on the driver’s side.

  What struck A.C. so profoundly—and would later haunt his sleep for nights to come—was the brutal suddenness of what happened next. The motorcycle abruptly slowed, pulling almost to a stop just ahead of the limousine. The motorcyclist, a man in black leather with a demonic-looking black crash helmet that shadowed a movie-actor-handsome face behind a clear visor, was looking at them. He reached into his heavy jacket.

  There was a muted pop, and then A.C. saw Molly Wickham’s head snap back and felt the splash of wetness against his cheek and neck. But he witnessed all this in surreal slow motion and eerie soundlessness, even as the motorcyclist sped away through the traffic and around the corner into the park. Then all sound came back in an overwhelming rush.

  People everywhere were screaming. It was as though all the world were wailing over Molly Wickham’s savage death. And utterly dead she was. With long limbs akimbo, her graceful body lay sprawled impossibly on the steps. She had a terrible wound in her face and the back of her head was missing. Blood was gushing in surges from the cavity, and there was the bright red of blood and other, darker stains all over the sidewalk. Her long, full wig had been blown several feet away.

  A number of people on the street had turned and fled at the report of the gunshot, but many more were now hurrying up to see what had happened. Incredibly, a uniformed policeman was already there. A.C. looked down at the dead girl again, transfixed by the extraordinary innocence of what remained of her beautiful face. He felt an urgent need to kneel beside her, to hold her hand or cradle her body, to make some useless but still important gesture of help. But he could not. Brusque, flippant, cynical Vanessa was clutching him tightly, her face pressed tightly against his shoulder as her small chest heaved with her sobbing.

  A few like the policeman were impassive, but the expressions of most of those crowded around them were those of shock, grief, or horror. Arbre seemed utterly bewildered. Belinda St. Johns’s face was utterly blank. She had been splattered with much of the gore.

  Looking up, A.C. saw Camilla Santee standing on the landing by the door. She was staring down the street in the direction the motorcyclist had gone. Instead of shock, grief, or horror, her face was full of fury.

  CHAPTER 3

  A sweaty, unpleasant policeman asked them to wait in the hotel lobby. A.C. and Vanessa complied with some reluctance and Arbre and the St. Johns woman did so only after angry protest. Camilla, her eyes staring vacantly, obeyed without a word, taking a seat off to herself. She sat as if she were posing for a somber portrait, her hands perfectly still. She was wearing a simple skirt and patterned blouse, and sandals. A country setting would have been more suitable, a meadow with flowers—perhaps flowers in her hair.

  More and more sirens were heard, their sounds rising and mingling until it was impossible to differentiate one from another. Policemen came in and out, including a number of detectives. One of them, a very tall and improbable-looking black man with glasses, light skin, and an odd color to his hair, took their names and addresses. He wore a dark three-piece suit and looked more like a lawyer or professor than a cop. Though he introduced himself simply as Detective Lanham, the others seemed to defer to him, including a lieutenant of detectives and several uniformed sergeants.

  Arbre, mopping his head with his large breast pocket handkerchief, became very agitated and demanded that they be allowed to go, complaining that he had an important luncheon engagement. St. Johns joined in his lament, arguing that she had to clean up, had another booking, and was losing large sums of money. In response, the detectives curtly asked them to come to the homicide division to give statements.

  “We’ve done nothing!” Arbre protested. “Why are you arresting us?” His faintly French accent slipped slightly in his excitement.

  “You’re not being arrested,” said Lanham, politely, but with some exasperation. “Look. This is a homicide. Murder One. Whatever else you’ve got to do—and I’ve got other things to do, too—nothing’s more important. We sure as hell plan to catch this son of a bitch but we have to convict him in court. That isn’t always easy nowadays. So please, help us as much as you can.”

  They were taken to the police station in two police cars—A.C. and Vanessa in one; Arbre and the two models in the other. Once there, Arbre began demanding to see his lawyer. Lanham and another detective, an equally large white man named Petrowicz, explained patiently again that that would not be necessary—that they were merely witnesses, that there was nothing to fear.

  They took Arbre into the interrogation room first. It was obvious they wanted to be rid of him as soon as possible.

  A.C. waited uncomfortably in the old wooden office chair they had given him, looking around the squad room as old memories of his police reporter days came back to him. They were squalid memories—of murderers, thieves, drunks, wife beaters, dirty people in T-shirts, bloodstained victims, and cops who treated everyone who was not a cop as an alien species. It had seemed high adventure at the time. Now it hardly seemed possible it had been part of his life.

  Squad rooms had certainly changed little since then. This one was large, but overly crowded. The desks were heaped with papers and jammed together every which way, wherever there was room. Phones were ringing incessantly. Detectives were everywhere—typing, talking on the phone, standing about together—each wearing a pistol and many holding a plastic cup of coffee, as though it were part of their regulation equipment. There were two men behind the chicken wire of holding cells along one wall. One of them, a black man, appeared to be bleeding, and sat clutching his bandaged arm.

  A.C. noticed one difference between then and now. He could remember a time when detectives had mostly worn cheap gabardine suits and even hats. These men were nearly as well dressed as he. One of those working with Lanham had on what appeared to be a Giorgio Armani double-breasted pin-striped suit. Another was dressed like a very wealthy gangster.

  Vanessa and Belinda St. Johns carried on a desultory, unhappy conversation to the effect that this was another example of the general miserableness of life in New York. Camilla Santee remained utterly silent, gazing at her folded hands, her extraordinary legs crossed at the ankles.

  She looked so very sad, A.C. felt like hugging her. It was the silliest possible notion in the circumstance, but he was consumed by it. He imagined that her trim shoulders would be hard and strong beneath his touch. Her golden hair, however, would be soft and silken, her cheek cool and perfumed.

  “Mon Dieu, si fatigant, ça” Vanessa said, in response to something St. Johns had said. Santee
looked up, as though the French words were directed at her. Seeing they were not, she withdrew into herself once more.

  Arbre, still mopping his head, emerged from his interrogation quite flustered. He barked something at St. Johns and then hurried out. Belinda, looking sullen, was summoned next. Vanessa gave a weary sigh and looked at her nails.

  “It won’t be so bad,” A.C. said lamely. He addressed the words to Vanessa but was looking at Camilla Santee. She ignored him.

  “I told myself this morning the day looked too good to be true,” Vanessa said.

  “We’ll have a late lunch,” said A.C.

  “More likely an early dinner.”

  Belinda St. Johns seemed restored to her natural demeanor when she sauntered out of the interrogation room.

  “They’re shitheads, like all cops,” Belinda said to Vanessa. “All I had to tell them I could have told them back where it happened. Now I’ve probably blown my booking. These fucking assholes probably cost me five hundred bucks.”

  She traipsed out through the double doors leading to the corridor. She might have been a prostitute who’d just made bond.

  “Mrs. Meyers?” Lanham was standing in the doorway, like a doctor at a waiting room with not very good news.

  “Save my place,” Vanessa said.

  When she had gone, A.C. noticed the large coffeemaker against the opposite wall and the tall stack of white cups. Impulsively, he stood up. “May I get you a cup of coffee?” he said to Santee.

  She lifted her head slowly. Her eyes were very wide and melancholy. Instead of speaking, she shook her head just once, and then lowered her gaze. He brought coffee back for himself, though he didn’t really want it.

  They kept Vanessa nearly twenty minutes. She was all business when she came out, fiddling with the catch on her purse.

  “I’m going to call the office,” she said. “I can’t possibly think why, but I have the strange feeling our beloved editors will be wanting to speak with us.”

  “Mr. James?”

  There was nothing in the interrogation room but a long table and four chairs. A.C. was gestured to one in the middle. Lanham took the seat opposite, a tape recorder and a yellow legal pad in front of him. Petrowicz, wearing a green plaid sport coat and tan pants, was at the end of the table, smoking, his light blue eyes studying A.C. carefully.

  Lanham clicked on the recorder and then turned to a clean page of the pad. He consulted a small notebook A.C. had seen him use back at the Plaza, then began to write.

  “Arthur Curtis James,” Lanham said, consulting the notebook. “Are you by any chance a relation of Mrs. Arthur Curtiss James of Newport?”

  “No.” A.C. was surprised. That Mrs. James was long dead, and had been many millions of dollars distant from being related to A.C.’s genteel but contrastingly impoverished parents. “That’s a different family entirely. They spell their name C-u-r-t-i-s-s. Mine has just one s. And we come from upstate New York, not New England. How do you know about Mrs. James?”

  He wished he hadn’t said that. It made him sound as if he had presumed that such a man couldn’t possibly know about anyone like the Newport Jameses. The detective’s expression hardened somewhat, but he remained very polite.

  “She had a very famous garden. I do a little gardening in my spare time. Roses, mostly. Damascene and odorata.”

  “What?”

  “Damask and tea roses,” Lanham said. He spoke in a low, well-modulated tone. One couldn’t tell he was black from his voice. He might indeed have been a college professor. There was little coplike about him, except for the eyes. Cops all had a very weary, haunted look to their eyes. They reminded A.C. of a famous war painting of a marine he recalled hanging in the Pentagon when he had worked in Washington. The Ten-Thousand-Yard Stare.

  “I also grow vegetables,” Lanham said.

  “Come on, Ray,” said the white detective, Petrowicz. He squashed out his cigarette disgustedly and sat back, his arms folded. A.C. remembered good-cop, bad-cop routines. This team was chatty cop, churlish cop, although he sensed that Lanham was on the verge of becoming a little churlish himself.

  “Okay,” said Lanham, picking up his pen again. “Mrs. Meyers says you and she are with the Globe and you were covering the Philippe Arbre show for the paper.”

  “She was covering it. I was just along.”

  “Okay, tell us what you saw, please.”

  “It all happened so quickly.”

  “We don’t get many slow shootings,” said Petrowicz.

  A.C. related the incident as conscientiously as he could, as he might have doped a news story to an editor. He remembered things that he had not realized he had noticed—that the motorcyclist had slowed, but not stopped; that the weapon the killer had used had been a large revolver; that the black girl had not seemed to sense any threat in the motorcyclist; that she had continued to walk toward the curb, and thus ultimately toward his pistol. A.C. recalled also that the murderer had fired from a position slightly forward of his victim, over the hood of the limousine, at an angle that had left all the others on the sidewalk out of the line of fire.

  He said he had seen the motorcyclist’s face, and that it had struck him as handsome. He couldn’t describe it well, though, because of the visor.

  “Was he dark or light?” the detective named Petrowicz asked.

  “Dark?”

  “He means black or white,” Lanham said.

  A.C. felt uneasy. “I’m not sure. He didn’t strike me one way or the other.”

  “Was he as black as me?” Lanham said.

  A.C. refrained from saying that the detective was not very black. “He had a dark complexion. He could have been a black man, but he could have been white. I’m not sure. I’d have to look at him again.”

  “If we sat you down with a police artist could you help him make a composite sketch?” Lanham asked.

  A.C. wanted to help. He felt a strange sense of guilt over the girl’s death—as though there were something he might have done to stop the killer. Stepped in the way. Pulled her aside. Something. But his memory of the man’s face was fading. If he misdirected the artist, the police might end up looking for the wrong person. A.C. was tiring of all this. He wished desperately to escape, to resume his normal life.

  “I really wish I could,” A.C. said. “But it was so quick. I didn’t get as good a look as I thought. His helmet had a visor. And the sun was shining. There was a glare. No. I don’t think I could help your artist.”

  Lanham removed his glasses and wiped perspiration from his face. “Okay, you didn’t see him clearly. But if you remember anything more, please let us know. I mean anything. That’s how murders get solved. Little things. Okay?”

  “Certainly. Whatever I can do.”

  “How come you go to fashion shows if you don’t cover them?” Petrowicz asked. He was looking at A.C.’s white shoes and pants. There were splatterings of blood on one leg.

  “To see who was there. I write about these people.”

  “You do the ‘A.C.’s New York’ column in the Globe,” Lanham said.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know the victim, Marjean Dorothy Wickham?” Petrowicz asked.

  “As a matter of fact, yes. Well, sort of. I interviewed her a few weeks ago. Marjean? I only knew of her as Molly.”

  “Can you tell us anything about her? Anything about her background?”

  “Just that she said she came from New Jersey. Paterson, I think it was. She said she’d been a cheerleader, and that she’d gone into modeling after high school. We mostly talked about her movie career. She had a small part in a prizefight film they made here. She did a nude scene, a rather violent nude scene. It reminded me of a movie called Angel Heart, in which Lisa Bonet did a rather violent nude scene. Lisa Bonet was one of Molly’s, er, Miss Wickham’s idols. That’s all. I didn’t have much space. It was just a column.”

  “Where did you interview her? In her apartment?”

  “In a restaurant. That’s
where I usually do interviews.”

  “Did she say anything about any of the people she knew? Any boyfriends?”

  “No. We didn’t go into that. It was just about sex. I mean, doing nude scenes. You know, a respectable ex-cheerleader from New Jersey, breaking into show biz the all too typical way.”

  “A black ex-cheerleader,” Lanham said. “What was the name of this movie?”

  “The Last Round,” A.C. said. “It seems odd, now, because she got killed in it.”

  “Who produced it?”

  “Peter Gorky, I think. Yes. Peter Gorky was the name. He wrote, produced, and directed it. Very low budget. I think she said she used to do commercials for him.”

  Lanham wrote this down and then leaned back in his chair. He looked to be an inordinately strong man, for all his professorial demeanor. His coat was open but A.C. could see no sign of a revolver.

  “Anything else?” Lanham said.

  A.C. hesitated. “Well, I remember it seemed odd. She walked past us toward the curb very directly. But there were no cabs. The doorman had gone off down the street to hail one. There were two limousines, though, and I think one of them began to move.”

  “Cadillac? Mercedes? What?” said Petrowicz.

  “Now that you ask, I don’t quite remember. It was an odd color, though. White. Or light blue.”

  “Did you see the license number?”

  “I didn’t notice. The motorcycle came up and … and there was the shooting. I didn’t notice anything else. The limousine must have moved off into traffic.”

  Lanham scribbled down A.C.’s words with a stenographer’s efficiency. “Anything else?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Maybe you can explain something to me. This Philippe Arbre gave his real name as Phillip Abramowitz. Why would he go by a French name instead?”

  “It’s a vanity of the profession, I suppose. Ralph Lauren’s real name is Ralph Lipschitz. Oscar de la Renta was born simply Oscar Renta. Geoffrey Beene was Sammy Bosman. Arnold Scaasi? Scaasi is Isaacs spelled backward.”