Looker

by Michael Kilian

  At the corner, she saw two police cars, their rooftops ablaze with light, sweeping up from Fifty-seventh Street. She held her place, scarcely glancing at them as they flashed by. Then, as the traffic light changed, she headed west across the street, more quickly now, seeking the dark.

  CHAPTER 8

  A.C. had a dream of Bailey Hazeltine. It began in a familiar way, with his running after her on a summer lawn. She was laughing and barefoot, in a long-skirted white summer dress. It was night and the shrubbery was lit with floodlights. She leapt over some small bushes, her legs flashing shadows within the gauzy, illuminated cloth of her dress.

  Then they were on a beach, a gritty, rocky French beach on the Riviera. All around them, reclining like beautiful sea creatures, were bare-breasted women. There were couples, too, youthful men and girls with arms wrapped around one another, lying very still.

  He and Bailey were not lying still. They were both quite naked and they were making love. He tried to get up but she would pull him back, pull him into her. He heard people speaking French, their voices quite distinct. He lifted his head. A fully dressed Japanese man with a camera was sitting just a few feet away, snapping picture after picture of them.

  A.C. sat up. His telephone was ringing. He sensed that it had been ringing for some time.

  He grabbed up the receiver. “Hello?”

  He couldn’t quite understand the woman’s voice. She was calling him “Mr. James.”

  “Bailey? Where are you?”

  “I’m sorry. Is that you, Mr. James?”

  “Yes. James. Who is this?”

  “It’s Camilla, Camilla Santee.”

  Another dream? He blinked his eyes against the dark. It was difficult to make out the hands of his watch. He turned on the light.

  “Mr. James?”

  “Yes. I’m here. I’m glad you called. I need to talk to you.”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  It was almost two. “Tonight?”

  He waited for her to continue.

  “Miss Santee?”

  “I’m here. Not tonight. It’s too dangerous. Tomorrow.” She paused again. “Tomorrow afternoon, at three. Do you know Le Train Bleu, the little restaurant on the sixth floor of Bloomingdale’s?”

  He had been to a book party there in the spring. “Yes.”

  “I’ll be there. In the back. Spend some time in the store first. Make sure no one’s following you.”

  He’d done that before—in Northern Ireland. “Okay. Are you all right?”

  “Yes. But you—you must be in awful pain.”

  “I’m managing. Your call helps.”

  “Good night, my dear Mr. James.”

  After she hung up, he sat still in the darkness for a long time. Sleep did not come until very near morning.

  Lanham came into the squad room carrying a briefcase and two very heavy shopping bags. He emptied their contents as carefully as possible onto his desk, but they spilled onto Petrowicz’s desk opposite and onto the floor as well. They quickly attracted the attention of everyone in the squad room.

  “Hey, Ray,” said Caputo, dressed that day in a light-blue suit, cream tie, and red and blue striped shirt. “You get transferred to vice or something?”

  Everywhere there were breasts, thighs, buttocks, female genitals, male genitals—entwined and engaged in every imaginable position—decorously, athletically, and clinically displayed on the glossy covers and open pages of a pornography collector’s wealth of books and magazines.

  Caputo picked one up and studied it thoughtfully. “There’s something I never tried.”

  “I don’t suppose many have.”

  “Betcha Tony has.”

  Lanham took the Polaroid photograph of Molly and Belinda from his briefcase and set it slightly to the side.

  “What’s this all about?” Caputo asked, perusing further.

  “I want to find out who took this Polaroid,” Lanham said. “It’s got a very distinctive style, very artistic. You see? You can’t tell what’s up or down.”

  “You mean who’s on top.”

  “It’s not your usual skin mag shot. A professional photograph, even if it is a Polaroid. I’m hoping I might find another one like it.”

  “Tony could help you. He could tell a Michelangelo ass from a Leonardo ass.”

  “What do you know about Michelangelo?”

  “Hey. I’m Italian.”

  “Where is Tony?”

  “Over in records. Workin’ on some old cases.”

  Lanham pondered the perfect curve of Belinda St. Johns’s cheek visible in the Polaroid. “He could tell this one.”

  Phones were ringing throughout the squad room, as they were always ringing. Sergeant Futterman, Taranto’s major doma, was taking most of them. Hanging up from one, he looked over at Lanham.

  “Hey, Ray. Mendelsohn over in robbery called. Maybe you should talk to him.”

  “Something on the taxi drivers?”

  “On Wickham, Marjean Dorothy. That building on Sutton Place where she lived? The doorman or whatever there got beat up last night. They talked to him this morning. He said some blond woman came in just before he got hit. Said she was a real looker.”

  “Why didn’t you let me talk to him?”

  “He didn’t ask for you. He asked for the lieutenant.”

  A.C. heard nothing at all from Bailey. He made two innocent calls, one to her brother and one to her mother, but they both said they believed her to be in Los Angeles. He thought of calling her husband, thought better of it, and wondered if she had tried to call him.

  He’d found the door to his terrace unlocked and slightly ajar in the morning, but couldn’t remember if he’d opened it before going to bed. Drinking his coffee by the railing, he’d glanced down to see a man on the sidewalk staring up at his apartment, then quickly moving on when noticed. His morning copy of the New York Times was on the hallway carpet outside his door as always, but there was no copy of the Globe. The phone rang—one and a half rings—and then abruptly stopped.

  He wandered about Bloomingdale’s for some time, pausing in the men’s department and even buying a tie. He arrived at Le Train Bleu a few minutes early. She was already there, at the last table in the rear, as gracefully posed as though sitting for a formal portrait. She was dressed as though for an afternoon in the Hamptons—navy jacket, white, wide-collared blouse, expensive beige slacks, beige flat shoes. She wore a red silk scarf at her neck.

  When he came toward her, her eyes widened a little in recognition and he thought he caught a hint of welcome at the corners of her mouth; otherwise, her somber expression didn’t change.

  “Don’t look so sad,” he said. “You’re in Bloomie’s—the shopper’s paradise.”

  “Hello, Mr. James.” She gave him a smile. The skin below her eyes seemed a trifle red beneath her makeup.

  “Are you all right, Camilla?”

  “Yes. You look much better than I thought you would—than I was afraid you would.” Her odd Southern accent was once again very strong, a measure of how upset and distracted she must be. He wondered how she must have talked when she’d first come to New York.

  He rubbed his face. “I’ll survive.” He sat down, moving his chair slightly so he could observe the entrance. She had a glass of white wine in front of her. He ordered coffee.

  “Camilla. The police want to see you again. Detective Lanham has been after me about you.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing. I said I knew nothing about you.”

  “He’s been leaving messages on my answering machine.”

  “They’ve been to your apartment. They really want to talk to you.”

  “I have nothing more to say to them. Aren’t they looking for that man, Molly’s procurer?”

  “The word is ‘pimp.’ They’re looking for him, all right, but Detective Lanham has his own ideas about a suspect.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Not the pimp.”<
br />
  “Lanham is the black detective, the one in charge of the case?”

  “Yes. He wants to talk to the man in the limousine,” A.C. said. “He doesn’t know it’s Pierre Delasante, but he’ll probably find out.”

  “You won’t tell him.”

  “I promised you that.”

  His coffee came in a silver carafe. Camilla reached to pour it for him, setting cream and sugar before him afterward, the Southern lady, offering hospitality to a gentleman caller.

  After he had stirred and sipped, she took his injured hand in both of hers, examining the torn skin, careful not to cause pain.

  “You said you’d help me, Mr. James.”

  “Yes. Of course. Anything.”

  Camilla took a deep breath, and then sighed. “I must tell you something first. I’ve put you in great danger just meeting with you. The man who killed Molly—”

  “You know who it is?”

  “Yes. I did from the beginning. I can’t tell you who it is. Not now.”

  “Why not? This is murder, Camilla.”

  “I know that! I don’t want it to happen again. I’m trying to do something about it. He’s already beaten you up. Next time he could kill you!”

  He let her anger subside. “How can I help you?”

  Her eyes met his. “You’ve probably guessed. Pierre Delasante is my cousin. He’s a very bad man, incorrigible. He’s been doing some dreadful, awful things. Molly was shot because of him. I … I had nothing to do with it. I had no idea anything like that could happen …”

  He glanced away. Her beauty was so overwhelming that it was hard for him to look at her and pay attention to what she was saying at the same time.

  “Pierre’s being blackmailed,” she continued. “He and Molly and some others had a party in her apartment, in the apartment I was renting her on Sutton Place. They had what I guess you’d call an orgy, and made a videotape of it. Someone has that videotape. Belinda St. Johns is in it. So is a male model named Jimmy Woody. They’re paying, too. They’re all being blackmailed. Pierre told me that much. He wouldn’t tell me anything else.”

  “Molly was killed because of that videotape?”

  “No. Not because of the tape. You’re a newspaperman, Mr. James. You have ways to find out things, better than the police. You found out so much about me.” She paused to take a sip of her wine. “I want to know who has the tape. I want you to find that out for me. I’d be much beholden to you.”

  “You want the tape,” he said. “You want to use it against Pierre. Why? What will that accomplish?”

  “I want the tape. I’m not asking you to get it for me. God, no. I’m putting you at risk enough as it is. But if you can learn who has it, that would help me very much.”

  “But why do you want a piece of pornography, especially with your cousin in it?”

  “I don’t want to look at it, Mr. James.”

  “Belinda St. Johns and that male model must know who it is. Did you ask them?”

  “Belinda won’t even talk to me. I don’t know where Jimmy is. Pierre wouldn’t tell me and now he’s left town.”

  A.C. frowned, pondering the problem.

  “I’m leaving town, too, Mr. James,” she said. “I have to get away from here. For a while, anyway.”

  “If I can find out what you want, how in hell will I let you know?”

  “Call my booker at the agency. Evie Livingston. She’ll be expecting your call. She’ll tell you where to find me.”

  “All right. I’ll do what I can. I will.” He grinned confidently, though he felt no confidence at all. He was agreeing to this mostly as a means of keeping her in his life.

  “There’s a danger for you, Mr. James. I hate myself for dragging you into this. I—”

  “It’s all right.”

  “No it isn’t. The man who killed Molly. He’s looking for the tape, too. I don’t think he’ll find it. He’ll only cause more trouble. I’m afraid he’ll hurt someone again. I wish I hadn’t told him about the tape. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  She took her hands away and rested them on her lap, staring down at them.

  “He’s made threats about you,” she said. “He told me he’d kill you if you came near me again, and here I’ve lured you to this place.”

  “You didn’t lure me.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you if you just got up and walked away.”

  “I wouldn’t do that. I’ll help you however I can. I’m your friend, Camilla.”

  “You’ve only known me a few days.”

  “A lot has happened in those few days, more than happens in most friendships.”

  “I’m lucky you were there, A.C. James. I’m very lucky.” She gently smiled. “You know what you are?”

  He shrugged.

  “You’re my chevalier, my knight.”

  “That’s a very romantic notion.”

  “I’m a very romantic lady—at least I used to be. When I was a little girl, I’d read about knights all the time. In one book it said that, in the days of chivalry, the looks, the words, and the sign of a lady were supposed to make knights at time of need perform double their usual deeds of strength and valor.”

  Her words reminded him of what had been written on the folded paper hidden behind her family photograph.

  “At tournaments,” she said, “the ladies were supposed to have called to the knights: ‘Think, gentle knights, upon the wool of your breasts, the nerve of your arms, the love you cherish in your hearts, and do valiantly, for ladies behold you.’ The knights responded: ‘Love of ladies! Death of warriors! On, valiant knights, for you fight under fair eyes!’”

  “You must give me something of yours, if I’m to be your chevalier.”

  She thought a moment, then pulled the red silk scarf from her neck.

  “You gave me your handkerchief in that bar by the police station, and I’m afraid I’ve lost it. Don’t lose this.”

  He folded it carefully, then, stiffly, slipped it into his pocket. “Never.”

  Worry crept into her eyes. She looked at her watch.

  “I’m going to leave you now, A.C.”

  With a gentleman’s reflex, he rose, bringing pain to his leg and side.

  “Stay here, please,” she said, rising herself. “Give me time to get away.”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “I’ll be all right. Just you be careful. If you were ever in a war, be that careful.”

  “Very careful.” She was near enough for him to put his hand to her waist, and he did so. Her eyes responded in kind to his, but she came no nearer.

  “People are looking at us,” she said, half whispering.

  “I don’t care.”

  She came against him, her hand moving gently to his neck. Her lips caressed his, then she pulled him closer, her cheek pressing his. “Until I hear your voice again.”

  “Until I see you.”

  She lingered, but said nothing further. Then she pulled away, averting her head. There was a brushing touch of her fingers upon his arm, and then she was gone. He didn’t look after her. He returned to his seat and finished his coffee, thinking, his hand caressing her red silk scarf.

  Henry Mohai, the night concierge at Molly Wickham’s apartment building, had suffered a deep cut on his head requiring seven stitches and enough of a concussion to be kept in the hospital for twenty-four hours for observation. He’d described his attacker’s weapon as a pistol, and he had apparently been struck with the butt. The man had come up to him as though to inquire after one of the residents and then, without hesitation, had pulled the gun from beneath his suit coat and hit Mohai before he could even lift his arms in self-defense.

  The assailant had been an unusually handsome, well-dressed man, with black curly hair and a dark complexion. The doorman said he looked like someone who belonged in such a building, which had apartments costing one to two million dollars and more.

  No one had reported a break-in. Evidence technicians had gone over
Wickham’s apartment again and had reported finding fresh prints. They hadn’t been able to identify them, except to note that they matched some very old prints they’d taken from the premises on their first evidence sweep.

  Mohai’s keys had been recovered in a trash basket on First Avenue. They bore no identifiable prints.

  The concierge had given two statements to uniformed force from the precinct and been interrogated again in his hospital room by robbery detectives. His wife, a stout, middle-aged woman who spoke English with an Eastern European accent, did not take kindly to Lanham’s appearance.

  Lanham had a uniformed officer take her outside. Mohai’s was a semiprivate room—Lanham wondered who was paying for the extra cost—but the other patient was absorbed by a movie on the television set bolted to the wall. Lanham drew the curtain that separated the beds.

  He opened his briefcase, first taking out official front-and-profile mug shots of Robert Darcy.

  “Is this the man who hit you?” he said.

  “No,” Mohai said. “Hell, no.”

  His voice was weak, but clear.

  “You’re sure?”

  “I wouldn’t have let that guy get through the door. The guy who hit me was white. A gentleman. This one’s a … I mean, he’s black, isn’t he?”

  “You have no doubt whatsoever,” Lanham said. “This is not the man.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You said a woman entered the building just before you were attacked. A blond woman.”

  “That’s right. The best-looking woman I’ve ever seen, and we’ve got some in that building.”

  “She said her name was Mrs. Avenue?”

  “Avenue, yeah. That’s what she said. I mean she didn’t say she’d come in from the avenue. She said her name was Avenue, Mrs. Avenue. Well, something like that.” Mohai lifted himself slightly higher on his pillow. “She came in like she owned the joint. She had a key and everything. I probably shouldn’t have stopped her. But I’d never seen her before.”

  Lanham took a fashion picture he’d clipped from a magazine.