Looker

by Michael Kilian

  A.C. could not recall ever meeting the man during his tour of duty with the Globe’s Washington bureau.

  He reflected a moment on what he’d read, then pushed the buttons that closed the file and began a printout. The Globe’s data search system had no access to any of the Carolina newspapers, whose files doubtless could tell A.C. much more.

  What A.C. wanted to look at most were photographs. He shut down the computer terminal and went to the reference room picture file desk, putting down the names Pierre Delasante, Pete Delasante, and C.C. Delasante on the request form. It took the clerk some time, but she came back with five photographs, all of them listed under “Pete Delasante.”

  Two showed the White House aide accompanying the president as they stepped out of a helicopter on the White House lawn after a conference at Camp David. Another was of Delasante and several other people partying at a charity ball. The last two photos caught Delasante entering the federal court building in Washington for his arraignment. He was not handcuffed, but was flanked by lawyers and U.S. marshals. He’d been immediately released on bond.

  The photographs were of a tall, slightly overweight, middle-aged man with dark, curly hair and heavy, black-rimmed glasses. There was a definite resemblance to the man at the fashion show. But A.C. could not be sure—not sure enough to declare them to be the same person in the public print.

  There were rules, backed up by a substantial body of libel case law. He could not write in a newspaper column that the mystery man in the Wickham murder case appeared to resemble an indicted former White House aide. If the police said they had noted such a similarity and were looking for the man, he could print that. But he could not say that the police should be looking for such a man.

  A.C. took his computer printout and the photographs back to his little office. He decided to save the matter of Pete Delasante for a future column. He certainly had enough for the column due that day—that Molly Wickham had once been a prostitute working Forty-second Street, that police were interested in talking to her former pimp, that one of the other models in the show was apparently dating a reputed mobster. That the glamorous world of high fashion was not necessarily what it seemed.

  Lanham had called this information “not for quote.” He hadn’t told him not to use it.

  When he finished the column, he gave it the headline THE SECRET PAST OF MOLLY WICKHAM, hit the SEND button, then leaned wearily back in his chair and swiveled toward the broad expanse of window glass that looked out over the hot, shimmering city.

  A.C. had always admired his view as one encompassing the magic, elegant world in which he lived and worked—the shining high-rise towers recognizable as the residences of friends and acquaintances, the streets stretching away to the north familiar for their shops and galleries and restaurants. When he looked down at the taxicabs and pedestrians below, he thought only of people he knew. He could imagine Theresa Allenby at that very moment, coming out of the Martha fashion salon on Park Avenue, or perhaps pausing at the Frick Collection on Fifth Avenue after a late leisurely lunch.

  Now he saw more. There was every imaginable kind of person out in that jumble, doing every imaginable kind of thing—drunks in bars, derelicts crumpled in alleyways, thieves and pickpockets, drug addicts and panhandlers, prostitutes like Molly Wickham—all part of his shining city. Quite possibly, quite probably, there was someone just then dying on those streets, lying sprawled on the concrete, life’s blood soaking into dirty cement, just like Molly Wickham’s.

  But there would be no newspaper column or screaming front page headlines about any such anonymous person. The death of a robbery victim or a loser in a domestic quarrel or a small-time criminal in harm’s way was nobody’s concern, as inconsequential as Molly Wickham’s shooting would have been a few years and an address change earlier.

  His telephone rang, startling him. Bailey Hazeltine would be in Philadelphia by then, playing Florence Nightingale to whatever freaked-out druggie it was who could lay such claim to her friendship. Perhaps she had decided she wanted no part of it. She could be returning home. She could be back by evening.

  It wasn’t Bailey. It was Kitty. She spoke very matter-of-factly. She sounded grim.

  “A.C., I’ve changed my mind. I’d rather you didn’t come up this weekend.”

  It was as though she had hit him in the face. “Why not?”

  “Because I no longer think it’s a very good idea.”

  “But it wasn’t twenty-four hours ago that you asked me to come.”

  “That’s not how I feel now.”

  “For God’s sake, Kitty. We made plans. I wanted to take Davey sailing.”

  “Well, I’d rather you didn’t. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t see the children again until—until this is all resolved.”

  “Until what’s resolved?”

  “I have to face up to the question of whether I want to be married to you or not. I haven’t decided exactly what I’m going to do, but in the meantime, I don’t want to see you. I want you to stay away.”

  “I don’t understand.” It was a lie. But she couldn’t possibly know about Bailey. Had the doorman said something to her? Had he been a fool for taking Bailey up to an apartment bought and paid for by Katherine Shannon?

  “I don’t know what’s made you change your mind, but I think we should talk about this,” A.C. said. “I thought that was the reason I was coming up this weekend.”

  “Oh, we’ll talk, A.C. I think next week. My lawyer will call you to tell you when and where.”

  “Why your lawyer?”

  “It will all be perfectly clear when we meet.”

  “But why disappoint Davey?”

  “Oh, he can get through a weekend without you, A.C. He’s done it enough in the past. And I’m sure you won’t be lonely.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Goodbye, A.C.”

  He held the phone for a long moment while the disconnected line made noises in his ear. Then he gently reset the receiver in its cradle.

  The phone rang again, a little light in one of its two plastic buttons flashing on and off. It was Pasternak, the city editor, out in the news room. He had read A.C.’s just completed column.

  “The Daily News says the police are looking for a white man, some guy in a limousine. In your column, you’ve got them looking for a black pimp.”

  “I got that from the detective in charge.”

  “Why don’t you quote him?”

  “He gave it to me not for attribution. I probably said too much as it is.”

  “What about the white guy?”

  If A.C. told Pasternak about Pete Delasante, the man would set the staff on a reportorial binge, and A.C. would be caught up in it, possibly for days. He wasn’t ready for that.

  “What about him?” A.C. said.

  “That’s what I want to know.”

  “Why do you ask me?”

  “Because you’ve been talking to the police. Because you’re a witness to this murder. Because you’re an employee of this paper.”

  “Okay. There was a white guy in a limousine. There were a couple of limousines there. The police want to talk to everyone who was anywhere near there. I don’t think Vanessa and I were that much help.”

  “Well, you’re sure as hell not much help to me.”

  “We have police reporters, don’t we? I’m the society columnist. I have the fruitcake beat, remember?”

  “I don’t like your attitude, A.C.”

  Before his troubles with Kitty, Pasternak wouldn’t have dared talk to him like that.

  “Look. I want to help you as much as I can. But everything I know for certain is in that column. If I learn anything more, you’ll be the first to know. But for now, let me get back to my art galleries and tea dances, will you? That’s what I get paid for.”

  “Thanks,” said Pasternak “for showing so much class.”

  A.C. locked his office and left the building, leaving a message with the receptionist telling
Vanessa where she could find him. It was in a bar on Second Avenue, a shabby Irish saloon Bill Shannon would never dream of entering.

  He was starting his second martini when Vanessa caught up with him.

  “Mon Dieu, A.C.,” she said, lighting a cigarette. “Are we going to have to put you in a dryer?”

  “I’m just treating a hangover. I went over the edge last night. I’m telling myself it was because of the murder.”

  “Feeling the creepy crawlies, are you? Well, I didn’t exactly dream about sugarplum fairies myself last night. I don’t think la belle Camilla is doing so splendidly either. Her booker told me she canceled all her jobs today.”

  A.C. motioned to the bartender, who broke off his conversation with another customer at the far end of the bar.

  “Gin and tonic,” Vanessa said. She fanned herself with her hand. The moving air violently stirred her cigarette smoke.

  “They’re running your column on page one again,” she said. “But everyone from Bill Shannon on down is a trifle pissed at you. They think you’re holding back something to save for your next column and letting the other papers get ahead. The Post has a story calling Wickham a Sutton Place sex kitten with lots of boyfriends. The Times, bless it, has an editorial calling for increased police patrols in the neighborhoods around the park.”

  “My next column is going to be about chic new summer resorts, or where Ivana Trump last had lunch.”

  “Like hell it is. Have you tried to reach your friend the mysterious blond lady? The one who wears other people’s clothes for a living?”

  Someone had put money in the jukebox. Improbably, it began to play a Ray Charles record: “I can’t stop loving you …”

  “All day. No answer.”

  “You poor thing.”

  “Has she ever used another name besides Camilla Santee?” A.C. asked.

  “Not that I’ve ever heard of.”

  “Think about it. Could she have used the name Delasante?”

  Vanessa shook her head. “Not on any runway I’ve been next to. Where did you come up with that name?”

  “Don’t you remember that White House national security aide named Pete Delasante?”

  “My dear, national security has so much to do with the fall collections.”

  “Delasante quit the White House to become a lobbyist. Now he’s in trouble. Indicted for influence peddling. I think he was the fellow sitting behind me at the Philippe Arbre show. I think he was in one of those limousines outside the Plaza. And Molly Wickham was leasing her apartment from someone named Delasante.”

  Vanessa shrugged. Her drink came.

  “Delasante sounds a lot like Santee,” A.C. said.

  “So does Santa Claus. Is it your brain that’s doing all this heavy thinking, or the Beefeaters?”

  “I think Camilla has something to do with all this. Or knows a lot about it.”

  “A.C. I think you’re on a quick trip around the bend. You don’t know anything about her. And even if what you say is true, it would only be all the more reason to stay away from her. Why don’t you pretend that yesterday was just another day and Santee was just another pretty face on the runway. Then get on with your life. If you want to get hung up on a woman, why don’t you make it a lady named Katherine Shannon James?”

  “That particular lady doesn’t even want to see me. She called up and canceled our weekend.”

  “If you’re not careful, she’s going to cancel more than that.”

  “You mean my job?”

  “It’s her newspaper.”

  “If I weren’t a gentleman, there’s a word I could use.”

  “The word is ‘shit,’ darling.”

  “I guess that’s the one.”

  “Poor A.C. You’ve been king of New York all this time, and now it can all come apart with one yank of the string.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

  “New York is an easy lay, sweetheart,” she said. “Real easy. But it’s got a way of kicking you out of bed.”

  Lanham and Petrowicz sat in Lanham’s unmarked Dodge, listening to their police radio as they idly watched the nightlife of the Deuce begin to stir and slither. They had parked on Eighth Avenue just south of Forty-second Street across from the Port Authority Bus Terminal. There was still a pale smudge of daylight in the sky, but the slime pit of the Deuce was already overflowing. Two hookers, one fat and white and the other tall and black, were lounging nearby at the doorway of an “adult novelties” store. A few yards down were the lurid posters and blinking yellow marquee of a porn movie theater: SEAR SUCKER! XXXXXXX!

  “Ten Twenty-two,” said a voice over the radio. It meant a theft was in progress. Another called in a Ten 53—a traffic accident up in the West Fifties. “Ten Seventeen” another car responded. He was en route to the scene.

  Intermixed with all this chatter, testament to what passed for a dull night in the city, was the audible manifestation of Tony Gabriel’s hunt for Bad Bobby. In language nearly as indecipherable as the Ten code, Gabriel and his assembled group muttered back and forth to one another—summoning each other to land lines when discreet communication was in order, checking frequently back with the dispatcher or with division headquarters for news.

  There wasn’t much. Bad Biker Bobby might as well have been in Jamaica. Perhaps he was.

  “Shit,” Petrowicz said, for the hundredth time that evening.

  Lanham had called in a Ten—meaning out of the car for lunch—but they had just gotten a couple of burgers and some fries from a McDonald’s and were eating in the Dodge.

  Petrowicz crammed a handful of fries into his mouth and chewed them.

  “I thought you didn’t want anything to do with this bullshit collar,” he said, his chewing not quite completed.

  “Who knows—maybe Bad Bobby’s got something interesting to say.”

  Petrowicz wiped his mouth with his balled-up napkin. “You ask me, Ray, I think this homicide is a shitcan. We’ll never knock that perp.”

  “Right now, that’s for downtown to say.”

  “You still think it’s the boyfriend.”

  “That isn’t what I said. I said we find the boyfriend, maybe we find out what was going down.”

  “What did Cassidy get out of the feds?”

  “Nothing much, yet. Tony pulled him off the record search to help with this here Manhunt of the Century.”

  “Checking out the saloons.”

  “Well, Bad Bobby was known to like his malt liquor.”

  A black man turned the corner and headed toward them. Seeing them, he spun around and retraced his steps. It was no one they recognized.

  “What if the perp is just an E.D.P.?” Petrowicz said, using the shorthand for “emotionally disturbed person.” “What if it’s just some freako who has it in for black girls?”

  “That’s what has Joey T. so uptight. That’s what’s spooking the mayor. A white perp and a beautiful black victim. Maybe black victims. That’s why they’re hoping that somehow it could have been Bad Biker Bobby.”

  “But you think that’s bullshit.”

  “When this Manhunt of the Century is over, I want to lean real hard on turning up the boyfriend.”

  A barely audible voice on the radio said something neither could understand.

  “Ten five,” said the dispatcher. It meant say it again.

  “Ten six,” said another unit. Be quiet. You’re tying up the airwaves.

  “G.F.Y.,” said the first unit, with perfect clarity. Go fuck yourself.

  One of the hookers, the tall black one, sauntered over to Lanham, who was sitting on the passenger side with his window rolled down.

  “Are you two gen’lemen fixing to fucking bust us, or what?” she said.

  Petrowicz gave her a mean look, then bit into another French fry.

  “Consider us off duty,” Lanham said. “Just having a leisurely meal after a busy day.”

  “Well, look, honey. Could you go find yourself some other corner to have your
little picnic? My friend and I are feeling lonely, and nobody’s stopped to talk to us since you pulled up.”

  She smiled good-naturedly, as though she was someone helping a tourist with directions.

  “Get in,” said Lanham. “In the back.”

  “Is this a bust?” she said, her expression wary.

  Lanham shook his head. “Get in.”

  She snapped open the rear door and flopped onto the seat, pulling at the elastic of her tank top in a way that lifted her breasts provocatively. Petrowicz started the car and pulled out into traffic, turning right and heading east on Forty-second.

  “If you’re looking for a free hose job, shouldn’t one of you public servants be back here?” she said.

  “We’re just interested in a little quiet conversation,” Lanham said.

  “Ain’t you the fancy nigger,” she said, making Lanham wonder how many times she’d been arrested. “You look almost like a suit.”

  “He is a suit,” Petrowicz said. “Fordham University.”

  “Didn’t know they had a basketball team,” she said.

  “You know Molly Wickham?”

  “You mean that poor girl got herself in the newspapers the hard way?”

  “A.k.a. Marjean Dorothy Wickham,” Lanham said. “She used to work the Deuce just like you. You know her?”

  “Sheeet. She used to be a working girl? Then there be hope for all of us, ain’t there, sugar?”

  “You don’t want what she got,” Petrowicz said.

  They were passing the ridiculous billboard façade a previous mayor had erected in front of the Forty-second Street police substation as a symbol of city hall and friendly, neighborly municipal government. Resembling a stage flat, it depicted classical white columns against a blue background. Given its immediate surroundings, the effect was rather like decorating a slaughterhouse with bunting.