Looker

by Michael Kilian

  A.C. looked down at a fashion magazine at his feet. It was open to a picture of Camilla. He snatched it up and, closing it, dropped it on the table.

  Lanham noticed. He was staring at A.C. hard.

  “You don’t know of any startling new evidence, do you?”

  A.C. shook his head. “Can I get you some coffee?”

  “No thanks. I don’t have time.” He hesitated. “Maybe I do. To hell with the mayor.”

  “I have some instant,” A.C. said. He needed to go to the bathroom, but he needed to attend to something first. He went into the kitchen and set some water to boil, then quickly took some tomato juice from the refrigerator and poured it into a glass, adding a slug of vodka.

  Lanham was standing behind him. A.C. ignored him, spooning some coffee crystals into a clean cup he managed to find.

  “Sugar?”

  “Black.”

  A.C. paused to gulp some of his pick-me-up. “I’ll be right back.”

  He wasn’t long in the bathroom, but took time to quickly wash his face and hands and, after a furtive look at the wretched derelict he found in the mirror, to make a hasty pass at shaving. It wasn’t a very successful job of it. He cut himself in several places. But it was at least a token gesture toward respectability. He buttoned his shirt and stuffed it into the belt of his khaki shorts.

  Lanham had gone back into the living room. The tea kettle was whistling, but the detective had done nothing about it.

  “I’ll get it,” said A.C. “Be right with you.”

  He returned with the coffee, spilling it slightly as he handed it to the policeman. Lanham sipped politely, eyeing A.C. over the rim of the cup.

  The fashion magazine was not where A.C. had left it. Lanham had not only looked at it, he wanted A.C. to notice that he had looked at it.

  “Have you seen Camilla Santee?” Lanham asked.

  A.C. shook his head. “Not in days.”

  “Not at all? You haven’t been talking to her on the phone or anything?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve been trying to reach her. No luck.”

  A.C. took a deep breath. “I’ve been trying to reach her, too. I don’t know where she is.”

  “You talked to Belinda St. Johns last Friday. You were asking about a videotape.”

  “Videotape?”

  “Hot stuff, starring Belinda, Molly Wickham, and company. You asked Belinda who had it, who she was paying to keep it out of the wrong hands.”

  “How did you know I talked to Belinda?”

  “I’m a police detective. Don’t ask me how I find out things. How did you learn about the tape?”

  A.C. said nothing.

  “Did Molly Wickham tell you about it? In your interview?”

  “No,” said A.C. “Of course not.”

  “How about Peter Gorky, the great moviemaker?”

  “I’ve never met the man. I never met any of those people until that fashion show, except for Molly.”

  Lanham drank some more coffee. He didn’t seem to like it.

  “I’ll tell you the answer to your question, Mr. James. Pierre Delasante is the one who has the tape. He’s the one who’s been shaking the others down. Belinda St. Johns has already paid him ten thousand bucks.”

  “Pierre Delasante?”

  “Was Camilla Santee mixed up in any of that? Does she make movies, too?”

  “Certainly not!”

  Lanham smiled. “You seem pretty sure about that, Mr. James, for a man who only just met her, who hasn’t talked to her in days.”

  He set his coffee cup down on top of the fashion magazine. A dark, circular ring began to spread out from the bottom of the cup.

  “I asked for your help, Mr. James. And you haven’t given me squat. I’d still like to have it. I plan to go on with this. In the meantime, let me give you some helpful advice. The concierge at Molly Wickham’s apartment building got beat up last week. It happened just after a woman he positively ID’d as Camilla Santee entered the building. He could have gotten killed. As it is, he’s doing some hospital time.”

  A.C. remembered the rough voice of the man who had knocked him down—remembered the pain of his kicks.

  “You’ve already gotten worked over once yourself,” Lanham said. “If you get into this any deeper, it’s you who may need my help. And may I remind you that I am a homicide detective.” He pronounced the syllables of “homicide” as though each were a separate word.

  “Thank you very much for the advice,” A.C. said, with exaggerated politeness.

  “Have a nice day,” Lanham said. “Call me when you come to your senses. Just ask for the ‘hero cop.’”

  A.C. slumped into a chair and pondered all this, coming to the conclusion that, if nothing else, he had better get on with his life—get back to being the king of New York, as Vanessa had so inaccurately put it. He’d lost enough dignity. He was weary of his troubles, tired of drinking, disgusted with feeling sick and frustrated. Kitty had not been so angry, or at least so cruel, as to fire him from his job. He’d go do it, get back on the boulevards, go back to reporting on the delights and amusements of “A.C.’s New York” for his thousands of readers.

  He showered for a full half hour, scrubbing himself as though ridding his body of some vile contamination. He shaved again, this time with a new razor blade, and cleaned his teeth as a dentist might. Brushing his sandy hair vigorously—fifty times on each side with his military brushes—he splashed his best cologne all over his face, neck, and chest. Turning on his radio, happy to hear the station playing wonderful 1930s swing, with strings, brass, and drums, he set about dressing his very best—freshly pressed white duck trousers, his nicest blue blazer, his newest striped Guards tie.

  His white shoes still had dark, splattered stains on them. He rubbed them off with cleaner and then applied a thick, fresh coat of liquid white polish. While, his shoes dried, he made a cup of coffee for himself and read through the Sunday Globe carefully. His last column had been stuck at the very end of the feature section, surrounded by liposuction and hair removal ads, but he refused to let that bother him. They were down on him. So be it. Once he had told Camilla what she wanted to know, that her cousin Pierre was the one who was blackmailing the people in the videotape, the Molly Wickham story would be behind him. He could step smartly back into “A.C.’s New York.”

  A cab came along just as he stepped outside, as though it had been waiting just down the street, especially for him, an encouraging omen.

  As he came through the newsroom, no one spoke to him. No one that he noticed even looked up. It disconcerted him slightly, but he forced his ebullience to prevail. The absence of Pasternak’s usual bitter asides made it all the better a day. He picked up his messages from the copy clerks’ desk and read through them on the way back to his office.

  Nearing his door he abruptly halted, looking at his watch. One of the messages was from Camilla. She had called not fifteen minutes before. The message had only her name, and the notation that she had called. There was no request to return the call, nor a notation that she would call again.

  “She didn’t leave a number?” he said to the girl at the desk. He had almost bounded back to her.

  “No, Mr. James. She didn’t want to leave her name. She just blurted it out as she hung up.”

  “Did she say she’d call again?”

  “No sir.”

  Pasternak was watching him now. A.C. returned the look sharply. The city editor returned to the computer printouts he’d been reading, but a slight, sly smile came to his lips.

  A.C.’s door was locked, as he had left it, but his office had not been left unmolested. The photo on his desk of Kitty and his children was missing. In its place was a quart bottle of Gilbey’s gin.

  Closing his door behind him, he angrily hurled the gin into his wastebasket—a mistake, for it broke and the basket toppled over and rolled, spilling glass and alcohol on his carpet.

  A.C. left it there. He began pulling open his des
k drawers, looking for the picture, finding no sign of it. Under more normal circumstances, he would have torn into the city room raising the unholiest hell. But, under normal circumstances, no one would have dared touch the photograph.

  He sat down, leaning back slowly, calming himself. Bill Shannon was most likely responsible for the removal of the picture, though certainly no Princeton gentleman would have been involved in the bottle stunt. It was a vulgarism worthy only of Pasternak.

  A.C., as a gentleman, would not, of course, reply in kind. But he wasn’t feeling very gentlemanly.

  Stepping over the mess on the floor, he locked his door from the inside and returned to his chair, pulling over his computer terminal. A good columnist always keeps two or three ideas in his hip pocket against the day when no others present themselves. A.C. had a couple in mind. The safari jacket had returned as a “new fashion look” once again. He would write about the recurring ridiculousness of that. He had also talked recently to Kelly McGillis, his favorite actress, who had taken a Broadway role after several years in Hollywood. The conversation had been at a party, but he could easily transform it into an interview.

  He set to work. By a little after one o’clock, he’d completed two rather nice columns. With a feeling of triumph, as though this quick and easy manifestation of competence sufficed as riposte to Pasternak’s crude humor, he hit the keys that sent the columns into the editing system and then swiveled his chair back to face his desk. His next deadline was not until Friday. He could devote the rest of the week to a far more pressing concern.

  His mail was stacked precariously in its usual box. He went through it hurriedly, pulling out only those envelopes that looked to be invitations. Retrieving those from the previous week as well, he tossed the lot into an expensive English leather briefcase—a birthday gift from Kitty—and snapped shut the lid.

  Now he’d call Camilla’s booker. He had four days all to himself.

  An assistant answered when he phoned the modeling agency. She said the booker was out at a fashion luncheon. She did not know where Camilla was or how she could be reached. A.C. said he’d call back.

  On the way out past the news desk, he said not a word, but farther on, passing the clipping counter where some of the copy clerks tended to loiter, he summoned one of the dumbest and gave him a twenty-dollar bill.

  “I want you to go to the liquor store and get Mr. Pasternak a bottle of Gilbey’s gin. Bring it to the city desk. It’s to replace the one I accidentally broke.”

  Lanham’s phone rang, another in an endless succession of calls that were interrupting his day. He knew it would probably not be his wife, who still was not speaking to him. He wasn’t much interested in talking to anyone else.

  It was Peter Gorky. Lanham didn’t want to talk to him, either.

  “You bastards!” said Gorky. “What are you, the Gestapo?”

  Lanham felt very tired. “What’s your problem?”

  “I’ll bet you didn’t even have a warrant. You just walk in and tear everything apart. I told you I’d find the tape.”

  “What happened, Mr. Gorky?”

  “You know goddamn well what happened. You assholes came in and went through my studio. Shit, you must have looked at everything I’ve got.”

  Lanham picked up his pen and made a notation on his message pad.

  “Someone broke into your studio?” he said.

  “You guys did.”

  “Mr. Gorky, nobody from this department did anything of the kind. No warrants were issued and no searches were made.”

  “Well, someone was in here. Shit, what a mess.”

  Lanham sighed. “You’ve been burglarized, Mr. Gorky.”

  There was a long pause. “Maybe.”

  “Well, what was taken?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? What about that tape you were going to find for me?”

  “It wasn’t here. I don’t have it anymore.”

  “But you said nothing was taken.”

  “I … Oh shit. Never mind.”

  “I do mind. You said you had that tape. What happened to it?”

  “I gave it to somebody, more than a week ago.”

  “You gave it away? To one of the people in it?”

  “No. To somebody else.”

  “Who?”

  “I—I sold it.”

  “You what?”

  “I sold it to a guy. There’s a market for this stuff, you know.”

  “You made a tape of people at a private party and sold it as a skin flick? Isn’t that against copyright laws, not to speak of invasion of privacy? Not to speak of the obscenity laws of the State of New York?”

  “It isn’t like it sounds. I mean, it won’t turn up in video stores or anything. There are private collectors. I sold it to a guy who sells to them. I got five large for it.”

  Lanham shook his head sadly. Of all the unbelievable stupidity he had encountered in this whole sorry mess, this was without question the dumbest. It was a new world record.

  “You sold this tape on the underground market to be resold to ‘collectors’?”

  “Yeah. What are you going to do about this break-in? Or was it you guys after all?”

  “Did you go to college, Mr. Gorky?”

  “Yeah, Pratt Art Institute. Almost two years. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I’m just amazed, that’s all. In my day, colleges didn’t accept imbeciles.”

  “Hey, fuck you, too. What’re you talking about?”

  “You know very well why you got so much money for the tape, Mr. Gorky. You have two top-dollar fashion models in action, models right off the pages of the slick magazines. Models you see in television commercials. Almost celebrities, right?”

  “Something like that. So what? Who’s going to see it, a few rich guys. Nothing public.”

  “A few rich guys, my ass. You’ve worked in this town long enough to know who runs the pornography business. It’s not Twentieth Century-Fox, is it? It’s the same guys who run all the big-money businesses on the funny side of the law. I’m sure you know Belinda St. Johns in the biblical sense by now, but do you know anything about her? Did she ever tell you about her boyfriend?”

  “Molly did. Some greaseball. So what? Belinda’s a greaseball herself.”

  “The gentleman’s name is Vince Perotta, Mr. Gorky. Do you remember the newspaper articles about the family reunion he had upstate last fall?”

  “Vince Perotta?”

  “I don’t know what sort of film fare he goes in for,” Lanham said. “He may be one of your biggest fans. But if he sees this little epic, I don’t think you’re going to like the review.”

  “Oh shit.”

  Taranto had come into the squad room. He was looking at Lanham impatiently.

  “I’m going to turn this over to a burglary detail, Mr. Gorky,” Lanham said. “There’ll be some evidence technicians out to get fingerprints, and I’d like you to give them your full cooperation.”

  “Sure. Anything you say.”

  “In the meantime, you’d better start busting your ass to get that tape back. And if you’ve got a sister in Seattle or Anchorage or someplace, I’d begin making plans to pay her a long visit.”

  “You’re sure Perotta—”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Gorky.”

  He hung up. Before he could dial burglary, Taranto came over.

  “Your arm okay, Ray?”

  Lanham flexed it, wincing slightly.

  “Okay enough,” he said.

  “Good. Uniformed force have picked up an eyewitness on that Central Park killing. They’ve got her at the precinct house. Get on up there. She saw the victim with a guy, going at it under the bushes.”

  Lanham stood up, reaching for his coat. They’d already talked to the last person known to have seen the girl alive, some East Side kid who was seen picking her up in a late-night fern bar. He’d said he’d taken her home, but that she hadn’t invited him in. He’d said he’d left her at her door
.

  Sometimes life was easy. If you were lucky, you got a case like Molly Wickham only once in your career.

  A.C. became the most visible man on the Upper East Side. He threw himself into his columnist’s job with all the vigor of a green reporter working hard toward a big break. In one afternoon alone, he went to two fashion shows, a benefit tea, a book party, and a cocktail reception.

  Camilla’s booker got back to him, saying that she had gone to Canada. She said that she didn’t know how to reach Camilla, but that she’d relay his message as soon as Camilla called. He took heart from the fact that the booker seemed very friendly, recognition that A.C. was more than a stranger or business acquaintance.

  The following day, he stopped for an afternoon drink at his club. It wasn’t as powerful and prestigious an institution as the Union or Knickerbocker, but owing to its smaller size and hereditary requirements for membership, much more exclusive. A.C.’s grandfather had belonged to it, before he’d lost his money. Kitty had happily provided the funds for A.C.’s dues, though it was not an establishment her brother could join.

  A.C. found the place insufferably stuffy, but he was happy for a refuge where Bill Shannon could not come after him.

  A.C. had a gin and tonic brought to him in the gentlemen’s lounge, where he had taken a chair by the window overlooking Central Park. He began looking through the day’s newspapers, and was just getting to “Suzy” in the New York Post when he looked up to see Cyrus Hall standing before him.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. James. May I join you?”

  The man looked disparagingly at the Post, but otherwise seemed amiable, much more so than he had that night at Mortimer’s. A.C. gestured to the leather chair opposite and set aside his paper.

  “I do apologize for disturbing you, Mr. James,” Hall said with great courtesy, “but I hoped you might be able to help me in a matter—well, a matter of very serious concern.”

  “Certainly.” Members were sworn to come to the assistance of any fellow member if needed, as long as the assistance did not entail any violation of club rules.

  “You’ll recall in Mortimer’s the other night,” Hall said, “that I was in the company of a young woman, Camilla Santee. I believe you know her.”