Mask Market Page 9

  I get those a lot, and I always trust their truth. For most, I wish I didn’t.

  The house was a three-story mass of wood and stone that had been built to look like a carefully preserved antique. No cars in the circular drive, but the door to the detached garage was closed. The place felt like someone was home.

  I couldn’t spot a security camera, but that doesn’t mean much today, not with tiny little fiber-optic eyes everywhere. I parked at the extreme end of the drive, at an angle. Anyone who wanted the license number would have a long walk to get it. I strolled up the driveway, casual.

  A pewter sculpture of a bear’s head was centered in the copper-painted door. I saw a discreet silver button on the right jamb, pushed it, and was rewarded with a sound like wind chimes in a hurricane.

  The click of heels on hardwood told me whoever was coming to the door wasn’t the cleaning lady. I felt myself being studied. The door opened—no security chain—and a tall, too-skinny woman regarded me for a second before saying “Yes?” in a taking-no-chances voice. She was way too young to be the wife I’d never met, but maybe Preston had gotten a divorce, and picked up a trophy on his next hunt.

  “Ms. Preston? My name is—”

  “Oh,” she said, smiling. “We haven’t had anyone asking for them in quite a while.”

  “You mean they—?”

  “Moved? Yes. At least…well, we’ve owned the place for…it’ll be eight years this summer.”

  “Damn!” I said, shaking my head ruefully. “I haven’t seen Jeremy since I moved to the Coast. I just got back, so I thought I’d drive out and surprise him. That’s what I get for not staying in touch.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, putting more sincerity into it than I expected. “I know the house was on the market for some time before we bought it. If we had known how prices were going to go through the roof, we never would have bargained back and forth for so long, but my husband…”

  “I’m the same way,” I assured her. “You wouldn’t know where they moved to, by any chance?”

  “I’m afraid not. We never met them, actually. Everything was done through brokers and lawyers. You know how that is.”

  “I do. Well, sorry to have bothered you, then.”

  “Oh, that’s all right.”

  I turned to go.

  “Mr….?”

  “Compton,” I said, turning back toward her.

  “Would you like to leave a card? I don’t think there’s much hope, but I could give the broker a call, and see if she has any information….”

  “I’d be very grateful,” I said. I took out a business card for Ralph P. Compton. It had a midtown address—I’ve got a deal with a security guard who works there; I slip him a hundred a month, and he slides any name I tell him into the building’s directory—and a 212 number that would dump into one of the cell phones at my place.

  She took the card, held my hand a little too long. I knew where that came from; one of the worst things about being locked up is how boring it gets, even in a mink-lined cell.

  I returned the Lexus, took the near-empty train back to Grand Central, grabbed the subway downtown.

  The car I picked was densely packed, but there was an empty seat on the bench at the end of a row. I started for it, but the woman sitting in the next spot pointed at a suspicious puddle on the gray plastic seat, warning me off.

  Three stops later, when she thought no one was looking, the woman reached into her handbag, took out a small bottle of water, and freshened the puddle.

  That held off all applicants until a guy wrapped in about seven layers of coats and an even thicker odor stumbled in. The woman frantically pointed to the puddle on the seat next to her. The homeless guy took that as an invitation, and plopped himself down. The woman jumped up like he’d hit the other end of her seesaw.

  The homeless guy had an empty seat next to him for the rest of the time I was on the train.

  Many paths to the same door.

  I stopped by a deli on my way home, planning on grabbing a sandwich to go. But the tuna looked suspicious and the egg salad looked downright guilty, so I passed.

  I looked a question at Gateman as I stepped through the doors.

  “All good, boss.”

  “You have lunch yet?”

  “Yeah. I had the Korean kid from down the—”

  “Okay, bro,” I told him.

  “I got the paper, you want to check last night’s Yonkers.”

  I hadn’t bet anything last night, but I took his copy of the News anyway.

  No messages waiting.

  I had roasted almonds and papaya juice for lunch, idly going through the paper by habit, a soldier scanning the jungle even when there’s been no activity reported in the area.

  If I hadn’t gone cover-to-cover, more to kill time than anything else, I would have missed it. The gossip column had an unsourced item: “What financier’s wife had filed for divorce just weeks before he was gunned down on the streets of Manhattan?” Then some stuff about how the wife had charged him with adultery, naming a “Ms. X” as the co-respondent.

  I went back through the paper. Nothing. Which meant the cops had already talked to the wife, and knew a lot more than they were releasing.

  I wished I was one of those private eyes in books; they’ve all got a friend on the force. I didn’t, but I knew someone who did.

  “She’s not going to meet with you,” Pepper said, letting a drop of vinegar into her sweet voice. “Nothing’s changed. And it’s not going to.”

  “I just want to ask a question. Not of her, okay? A question I want her to ask one of her pals.”

  “Ask me,” Pepper said, unrelenting.

  By the time I remembered that I had a date with Loyal that night—worse, that I had promised to take her somewhere special, somewhere she could really dress for—it was edging into five o’clock.

  “Davidson,” the lawyer’s bearish voice growled into the phone.

  “It’s me,” I said. “You still repping the guy who owns Citarella?”

  “The stores or the restaurant?”

  “The restaurant.”

  “Josephs by Citarella, yeah. Who wants to know?”

  “An old pal, who desperately needs a reservation for two.”

  “So call and make one. They’re open to the public.”

  “Uh, it’s for tonight.”

  “Christ. Business or pleasure?”

  “Business.”

  “Then you won’t need the window.”

  “Come on.”

  “This worth me using up a favor?”

  “I’ll make it up to you.”

  “Call me back. Half an hour. And, Burke…”

  “What?”

  “Make sure you order the fish—that’s the specialty of the house. And there’s no apostrophe in ‘Josephs,’ so don’t make a fool of yourself telling them there’s something wrong with their sign.”

  The hostess at Josephs treated me like royalty, proving she wasn’t just a pretty girl but a damn fine actress.

  “Oh, this is gorgeous,” Loyal said, tapping her foot as she tried to decide between sitting with her back to the window and missing the glittering view along Sixth Avenue, or facing the window and making everyone in the restaurant miss their view of her.

  The hostess immediately tuned to her wavelength. “The corner is perfect,” she advised.

  Loyal seated herself, glanced to her right out the window, to her left at the other tables, and, finally, across at me. “You’re so right,” she said to the hostess, flashing a megawatt smile. “Thank you.”

  I still had the image of Loyal’s little foot in the emerald-green spike heels, tapping a toe so pointed it looked as if it would deform her foot.

  “How do you get your feet into those shoes?” I asked her.

  “What?” she said, sharply. My sister’s voice rang in my mind like an annoyed gong. You are a hopeless, hapless idiot. Her refrain, when it came to me and women.

  “No
, no,” I said, hastily. “I meant the toes. They’re so…radical.”

  “Oh, don’t be so silly,” she said, shaking her head at my stupidity, but mollified. “They’re just for show.”

  I’m no gourmet—Davidson is, even though every meal I’d ever shared with him was sandwiches in his office—but I could tell the food was world-class. Loyal did her trick of appearing to really chow down, but only picking at her food as she moved it around her plate. I didn’t mind.

  “Lew,” she said, looking up from her perfectly presented crusted arctic char, “you know a lot about money, don’t you?”

  “Who really knows about money?” I said, positioning myself for a deflection move.

  “Oh, stop! You know what I mean. I’ve got a problem, and I wanted to ask your advice.”

  I heard the Prof’s voice in my head. We were back on the yard, and he was explaining women to me. If all you want is gash, all you need is cash. But if you want a woman’s heart, you gotta do your part. One way or the other, there ain’t no such thing as free pussy, Schoolboy. There’s always a toll for the jellyroll.

  So I was on all-sensors alert, but all I said was, “Sure, girl.”

  “Well, you know what the real-estate market has been like, right? I mean, it’s just insane. Even studios are going for half a million in some parts of the city.”

  “It’s a bubble,” I told her, with more confidence than I felt.

  “That’s what people say,” she said, nodding as if to underline the words. “But if it’s a bubble, when is it going to burst?”

  “If I knew that…”

  “I know. But I feel like I have to do something, before I miss out.”

  “But you already have a—”

  “That’s exactly it!” she said, excitedly. “I bought that apartment ages ago—well, not ages, of course,” she interrupted herself, not being old enough to have done anything too long ago, right?—“but it feels like that, the way the market keeps rising and rising.”

  “I still don’t see a problem.”

  “Well, I do,” she said, emphatically. “I could get…well, a lot of money for that place, if I was to sell it now. In two or three years, it could be worth a lot more…but it could also be worth a lot less. If I sold now, I’d have a big pot of cash.”

  “You’d need a big pot of cash if you wanted to keep living in this town.”

  “That’s just it,” she said, regretfully. “But if I had a place to stay, I could do it. I’d only need a couple, three years here, working, then I could go back home…with enough to live on forever, I bet.”

  “Where’s home, Wyoming?”

  “No, silly. I’m from a little town in North Carolina. I haven’t been back since—oh, I don’t even remember—but my daddy left me a little place when he passed on. There’s people living there now. Renters, I mean. It’s not a big house, but it’s got some land around it. I could be happy there…especially after this city. I know I could.”

  “I never picked up an accent,” I said.

  “Well, you better not, all the voice lessons I paid for,” she said, turning her bruised-peach lips into a practiced pout. “When I came to the city, I was just a girl, not even old enough to vote. I was going to be an actress. Everyone back home told me I was a dead ringer for Barbara Eden—when she was Jeannie, I mean—and I was dumb enough to listen.”

  “You do favor her,” I said, gamely.

  “You’re sweet, Lew,” she said, not diverted. “But I know that’s not going to be for me, not now.”

  “Things didn’t work out?”

  “I didn’t have any talent,” she said, soft and blunt at the same time. “This so-called agent I had told me to change my name—the only part I was ever going to get with a name like Loyal Lee Jenkins was if they remade The Beverly Hillbillies—so I did. A little. But that didn’t make any difference. Casting directors would see my pictures—oh, did I have to work to pay for those—and I’d get calls, but as soon as I opened my mouth, that was it.”

  “Your accent?”

  “Well, I thought it was my accent, but I ground that rock into powder…and that still didn’t change anything. I tried and tried for years until I got the message. You know what it comes down to, baby? I’m not fashionable anymore.”

  “You? Come on!”

  “You’re thinking of the shoes, aren’t you? There’s a lot more to being fashionable than buying things, Lew. You know those jeans everybody’s wearing now? They’re not built for girls like me. I work out like a fiend, but I can’t change my shape.”

  “Why would you want to?”

  She turned her big eyes into searchlights, scanning the terrain of my face for a few seconds. Whatever she found must have satisfied her, because she nodded as if agreeing with something. “I remember, once, this man who wanted me to pose for him,” she said. “He told me I had the classic American hourglass figure. I was thinking about that just this morning, looking in the mirror. And you know what, Lew? No matter how tiny the waist of an hourglass, the sand still drops through it. Running out. I have to start thinking about my future.”

  “Your apartment.”

  “My apartment,” she agreed. “Now, I told you some truth about myself, even if it was embarrassing. So can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Are you married?”

  I had been expecting that one for weeks. “No,” I told her. “Well, I guess that’s not a hundred percent. I’ve been separated for years, waiting for her damn lawyers and mine to get together on some financial issues.”

  “You have kids?”

  “No.”

  “And that one is a hundred percent?”

  “Oh yeah,” I said, shrugging my shoulders to show she was being absurd.

  “When you say ‘separated,’ you mean physically, too, don’t you?”

  “Well,” I said, seeing where she was headed, to block the exit before she got there, “it’s not that simple. I own a brownstone. That is, we own a brownstone. The lawyers made it clear that the one who moves out is the one who gets the short end of the stick, so we’re both still there. We live on separate floors, so we’re not even roommates. Sometimes I don’t even catch sight of her for weeks. But I’ve got so much of my money tied up in that place, I’m not leaving. And neither is she.”

  “So you sleep there?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And that’s why you can’t bring me to your place? Because that would be, like, adultery, right? And that would make your wife’s case better.”

  “That’s right,” I said, wondering how Loyal was such an expert on the topic…for about a second.

  “But if you had a friend who let you stay at their place anytime you wanted, for as long as you wanted, I’ll bet you’d like that just fine.”

  “I guess.”

  “I mean, a friend who’d just clear out and disappear. So, say, if your girlfriend wanted to spend some time with you…”

  “I guess I never really thought about it.”

  “Well, you should. Because it could solve both our problems in one jump,” Loyal said. Breathlessly, because all her breath had dropped into her cleavage.

  “I’m not following you,” I said. Stalling, because I was.

  “You wouldn’t want to rent an apartment in your name,” she said, leaning forward and licking a trace of something off her lips. “But I could rent one, couldn’t I? Then I could rent out my co-op, have a place to stay while I keep my eye on the market, and you’d have the best setup in the world, too.”

  For three grand a month, I could have a lot of things, I thought, but kept it off my face. “That could get tricky,” I said, still looking for an opening.

  “You mean you would have to go back to your place and spend the nights? That’s no big deal, honey. That’s what you do now, anyway. If I had my own place, like we’re talking about, I could be ready for you anytime you wanted.”

  Like you’re talking about, I thought. “There might be a way,
” I said aloud. “But it would depend on some things working out.”

  “I’ll do anything,” Loyal said, lips slightly parted in abject sincerity.

  I met Pepper the next morning, in the lobby of an “I’m cool, but are you?” hotel on West Fifty-second. It’s perfect for a man in my line of work. The people who hang out there put in so much mirror time that their observational skills have atrophied from disuse. And the doorman doesn’t come on duty until after dark, when his outfit works better.

  “What?” Pepper said, as she sat down on one of the quasi-sofas artfully scattered near the revolving door. Mick stood behind her right shoulder.

  “Daniel Parks…?” I began. Got a blank stare for my efforts, kept going: “He was gunned down a little while back. Made the papers. First he wasn’t ID’ed. When they released his name, there was nothing else, except for the usual filler. Then I read in a gossip column that his wife had sued him for divorce just before it happened. Named another woman.”

  Pepper turned and shot Mick a look that would have terrorized a gorilla.

  “The gossip columns have trollers,” I said. “They root through the bins in Supreme Court, looking for celebrities’ names. Lawsuits, restraining orders, divorce filings—stuff like that. This guy’s name wouldn’t be on their hit list until he got hit, which is probably why it didn’t make the columns before now.”

  Pepper rolled her eyes dramatically in a “Tell me something I don’t know” gesture.

  “That’s one possibility,” I said, unfazed. “The other is that a cop leaked the info. Some of them have a standing arrangement with the gossip boys.”

  “So?”

  “So I need to find out what was in the actual complaint, Pepper. Supposedly, the wife named the other woman—they called her ‘Ms. X’ in the column, which means either they don’t know or she’s not famous—and that’s info I need. Plus anything else she charged him with—”

  “Like?”