Coco drew the Rao’s out breathy and long like it was the name of an exclusive Parisian salon, instead of the basic little Italian bistro that it was.
“Is that a special place?” Olivia asked.
“Oh, c’mon, it’s not that big a deal.” Bailey sighed. “The exclusivity is the thing that gets people excited. But, trust me, if you could go whenever you liked, you wouldn’t get too excited about the place. The food’s okay, there are a few celebrities there, but it’s kinda divey, really. I’ll take Per Se over Rao’s any day.”
“Oh, you can’t get a table at Rao’s, Olivia, it’s invitation only. Unless you’re a Warfield, of course. And you don’t just take a one-night stand to Rao’s, ” Coco repeated. “You take someone you want to impress.”
“Oh! So is this something? Do you like the guy?” Olivia was suddenly curious.
“I’m not sure. That’s sort of beside the point right now,” CJ said, slightly bashful for a change.
Olivia was hurt. She loved hearing about new romance. “Well, if you don’t want to discuss your love life with us, I won’t push it.”
“Thank you,” CJ replied.
“I mean, you can trust us, you know. We did witness a murder together. That’s kinda special. But if you really think it’s none of our business….” Olivia pursued before CJ interrupted her.
“Okay, fine. I am really not sure what to make of this guy. He’s a bit of an asshole, actually. But then when we’re alone he’s kind of vulnerable and sweet. You have to understand, it’s really hard to live up in Greenwich being gay. It’s like being in a secret club that almost nobody around here belongs to, so when you meet someone who’s in it, it’s exciting. But I’m not sure who he really is: the sweet, vulnerable guy or the idiotic, political, suck-up guy. It’s one of those situations where either the occupation makes him an asshole or he was an asshole to begin with so he chose politics. Hard to tell,” CJ explained.
“How did you get him to talk about the mayor so quickly?” Coco asked.
“Oh, honey, one roll in the hay with the right guy and I’ll find out where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. Malcolm was easy to work. He needed to tell someone. I knew that if I challenged his fragile ego, he’d offer me something. I just didn’t realize how vulnerable he was and how much I was going to get out of him. He really has nobody to talk to,” CJ said tenderly.
“How much did he admit to you? What does he know?” Coco asked.
“Yeah, did he know all of our names?” Olivia said.
“I’m not sure. I didn’t want to push it, so I just let him talk. I thought if I asked too many questions, it would make him suspicious. He started out by telling me all about his job and how high-pressure it was, but later, while we were playing, he got to talking about how the mayor confided in him that he was into BDSM and that he thought he might have hurt someone ‘by accident’ in the midst of a recent escapade and that there might have been witnesses. Malcolm intuitively knew it was more than a minor injury, and when he suggested a solution, the mayor told him it had already been taken care of and that he should drop it and never mention it again,” CJ explained.
“So did he drop it?” Bailey asked.
“He did until the mayor withdrew a large sum of money from his campaign fund. This usually meant there was going to be a new advertising push or that the mayor had stuck his foot in something ugly and had fences to mend. But instead, he had Malcolm give the money to Police Chief Bruno,” CJ said.
“Oh, my god, how did you keep from screaming?” Olivia said.
“It was tough, but at the time Malcolm was a complete mess and I was comforting him. Remember, I was just some new guy he met at a bathhouse, so he was feeling pretty vulnerable. I had to let him keep thinking that, because we need to know what else the mayor is planning and if we’re still on his radar.”
“We also should get justice for that poor girl. We can’t let the mayor get away with bribery and murder!” Coco insisted. “Okay, who do we know?”
“I’ll talk to Detective Casey,” Olivia volunteered.
“No, I will,” Bailey insisted.
“Why you?” Olivia stuck her lower lip out, almost pouting.
“Because he called me saying he had some follow-up paperwork to do on the case,” Bailey said.
“He called you? Why did he call you?”
“Because I’m the one who got him involved in the first place. He wants to close the case, and he needs my sign-off since I’m the one who had him open it,” Bailey replied.
“Oh, okay.” Olivia slumped back in her chair.
“Who else?” Coco asked.
“Well, obviously I’ll keep working Malcolm. But we need an outside source, someone who can help investigate the mayor and the police chief,” CJ said.
“I actually happen to know someone with amazingly good resources,” Bailey said. “Saul King.”
“Saul King, the ‘Problem Saul ving’ guy from Channel Seven? Really? He seems like a bit of a doofus,” Coco said.
“I know, I know, but he has amazing connections. I have no idea how, but he’s the go-to guy for us at the station. He wanted to be a crime reporter, but nobody would take him seriously,” Bailey said.
“Maybe it’s because he looks like he’s wearing a Groucho Marx costume and talks like a cartoon character?” CJ said.
“Right. So now instead of going after embezzling bankers he goes after unscrupulous wedding photographers,” Bailey replied.
“Tomorrow you and I will talk to Saul to see what he can help us find out about the mayor and Bruno,” Coco said. “And, CJ, you need to get Malcolm to tell you more, like about us and those envelopes, and how they got that information on all of us.”
“What about me?” Olivia asked.
“It’s too dangerous for you at this point. You have a baby to take care of. Besides, don’t you have to meet with your lawyers tomorrow about the house? Concentrate on that for now. I don’t trust that crazy mother of yours,” Coco said.
“True,” Olivia agreed.
“Gas up the Mystery Machine, Scooby-Doo, we’re going on an adventure,” CJ exclaimed.
“Which one of us gets to be Velma?” Coco wondered.
Ten
The Yoga Club
The next morning the four gathered in the yoga studio and laid their mats out together for the first time. CJ and Bailey were in front and Olivia and Coco behind them, all off to the side and back of the room so they could talk more freely.
“Okay, we’re all here,” Olivia whispered. “Tell us about the bathhouse now. You can’t begin to imagine what I’ve conjured up without all the facts.”
“Oh, honey”—CJ frowned—“please. I really do not want to know. Okay, so, this bathhouse in particular is known for having men who work out…. a lot. No bears, no fatties, just the guys you see at the gym who are obsessed with themselves.”
Even though the class hadn’t actually started and everyone was quietly preparing their mats, stretching ropes, blocks, and towels, Kristi, the instructor for the day, walked by in her bare feet and bent from the waist toward them with a finger to her lips, shushing them quietly with a wink.
CJ gave her the sweetest smile, which melted away as he stuck out his tongue the moment she turned and walked to the front of the class. “The problem is when you get a guy who is obsessed with how he looks,” he continued, “he’s usually a total douche, so it’s a double-edged sword…. or a double-edged swordfight.”
Olivia stared at him blankly.
Kristi sat cross-legged in front of the class. “Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for starting your beautiful day with me. Let’s begin our session with three Oms to clear away the cobwebs and awaken our inner spirits with that beautiful vibration.”
“Ommmmmmmmm, Ommmmmm, Ommmmmm” went the class. Coco shot a look at Olivia, who did not echo.
“Om, my god,” whispered Olivia, finally understanding what CJ meant.
“Anyway,” CJ stage-whispered, cracking a
smile at Olivia, “you show ID and your membership card at the door and they ask you if you want a room or a locker, and then you get a towel and a key.”
The class began to do a set of sun salutations.
“A room? I thought it was all saunas and hot tubs,” Coco said, tilting her head up at CJ from a downward dog.
“Well, you have that there too, and it’s where I met Malcolm, in a sauna. You can go to these places just to pamper yourself and take a swim if you like; or, if you’d like to play with someone, that’s always an option too.
“Am I making you uncomfortable, sweetie?” he asked Olivia.
“No, no, I’m good. I had a baby. I am very comfortable with body things. Go on,” she insisted.
“Oh-kay!” said Kristi a little more loudly than usual. “Why don’t we work on opening our hips up today. Let’s start with the pigeon pose. I know you all like that.” Several people in the class groaned at the thought of the painful stretch.
“O-kay. So, anyway, other times you just get a room and you sit there in your towel, and it’s like ‘rib eyes on sale, honey.’ You just leave your door open, see what choice cut walks by, and then he nods, and you nod, and in he comes. From there you just point your toes, girl!” CJ looked for a reaction, but only Coco got the reference.
“Ladies—and CJ,” said Kristi, half smiling, half glaring in the most beatific, passive-aggressive way possible, “this is a yoga class, not a yoga club. If you could try to center and focus yourself a little more, then we’ll all get a lot more out of today’s practice.”
Bailey rolled her eyes, muttering, “If this were a yoga club, I’d beat you over the head with it.”
Only Coco was within earshot, and she snorted out a laugh so hard that she had to mask it with a coughing fit.
Bailey was at the studio waiting for Coco to get in from Greenwich. Coco had a business lunch in midtown, so they’d decided to meet there to discuss their strategy with Saul King. But something other than their case was on Bailey’s mind. Of course she was worried about this whole thing with the mayor, but she was also thinking about how poisonous her work environment had become.
Bailey sat in the edit bay angrily banging on the keys as she put together a package on the latest Samuel L. Jackson movie. It wasn’t the movie that enraged her but her job—the job she’d once loved. There was a time when this part of the process was exciting to her, but here she was loathing every second of it. She blamed her new boss for taking away the joy. It seemed that her new executive producer, a relatively attractive failed actress who claimed she looked too much like Winona Ryder to get work, had made Bailey’s job nearly impossible. At first Bailey thought the Winona wannabe was just a hard-news snob who didn’t understand the value of entertainment news in the midst of so many stories on death and destruction, but she quickly learned this wasn’t the case. It was her boss’s own need to be famous that drove most of her ill-advised decisions. Not until Winona began sending herself, instead of Bailey, the show’s entertainment reporter, on junkets to Los Angeles did it dawn on Bailey that she was not an employee but the competition. Everyone around Bailey warned her that Winona was jealous: of the job, of Bailey’s access, and of Bailey’s built-in fame. Winona’s jealousy caused her to make spiteful choices, from sabotaging Bailey’s work to cutting her segments in half, keeping Bailey’s airtime to an absolute minimum. It was contentious.
Bailey didn’t want to go over the woman’s head, despite the fact that she could do so quite easily. The person who ran the network was indebted to Bailey’s grandfather for launching his network news career. One phone call and Bailey could have a new executive producer, but she wouldn’t make the call. Since Bailey was starting to feel the Warfield curse—the need to report on more meaningful, hard-news stories— anyway, she was beginning to see her lousy boss as a way out. She was mulling over the possibilities when the front desk called to tell her Coco Guthrie was on her way up.
Bailey rang Saul King’s office knowing he would pick up—he always did for her. Saul loved Bailey like family, like an older brother…. a very bizarre, cartoonish, overprotective older brother. Bailey wondered if she should warn Coco about Saul’s little eccentricities, but she didn’t really have a chance because Coco was already on her way up.
Bailey went to meet her at the elevator. “Saul is waiting for us. Let’s get right over there, I have so much to do today.” She was tense.
They entered Saul’s office, where they found him playing garbage can basketball. Coco took a quick mental snapshot of the colorful room and immediately noticed that his clock was counting backward. She hoped he’d swiped it from a “Problem Saulvers” segment wherein he’d nailed the bastard who sold broken clocks, but by the looks of the office, she suspected that in Saul’s world it was just a clock.
“Hold on, hold on, I’m in the middle of some research,” he said as he took a shot first with the right hand, then with the left, concentrating so hard it looked painful. After each shot, he wrote something on a notepad.
His wardrobe betrayed his lack of fashion sense. Saul was stuck in the seventies—the eighteen seventies. He was dressed like Sherlock Holmes might’ve been, in a peaked hat, a well-fitted waistcoat with a visible pocket watch chain, and thick corduroy pants that were almost bell-bottoms. An ensemble trumped by the suggestion of—no, a feeble attempt at—a mustache. Coco thought, A wisp of a mustache, a wisp of a man, as she watched him try an over-the-shoulder shot. It ricocheted off the makeshift cardboard backboard positioned above the trash can and fell off the side, where it came to rest with a large pile of similarly crumpled paper balls. He turned back to his desk and made a note.
“Hi, Saul, thanks for seeing us. This is my friend Coco,” Bailey said.
“What’s up, toots?” Saul seemed enthusiastic.
Bailey continued. “We have a problem we hope you can help us solve.”
“You mean Saul-ve, don’tcha, toots?”
“Yes, whatever. It’s kind of a mystery. I know you love stuff like this,” Bailey said.
“Ah, a mystery! Is it murder most foul? Or perhaps a jewel heist?” he asked, almost comically, stroking his nonexistent goatee.
“Well, it’s actually the first one,” Coco said.
“Really?” Saul immediately sat up in his chair, shocked. “I’m so used to cat groomers who missed a paw during a clipping.” He started to rummage through his desk drawers. “I didn’t realize you needed real sleuthing. Hang on, let me grab my index cards. I have to take notes.”
“Can we trust him?” Coco asked Bailey.
“Oh, you can trust me. I’ve known Bailey since she was a little girl following her grandfather around with chocolate croissant all over her face,” Saul said cheerfully.
“We haven’t told this to anyone aside from the police, but we think we witnessed a murder, and we need help to get some solid evidence,” Coco told him as he wrote furiously.
“Why are you coming to me if you already went to the police?” Saul seemed genuinely confused.
“They tried to convince us what we saw was a prank, but we found out the police are in on it. So now we’re on our own,” Coco explained.
“A good old-fashioned hoodwinking! I like it,” Saul said. “Who is your murder suspect?”
“The mayor of Greenwich,” Bailey said. “But the head of the police, Chief Bruno, is involved somehow too. We just don’t know what the connection is.”
“Quilty, eh? Tsk, tsk,” Saul said as he took a note on an index card. He was New York’s version of Dominick Dunne and knew everyone of prominence in society, the mayor of Greenwich included.
“Yes,” Coco replied.
“I never did trust that scallywag, but I never would’ve suspected murder. Tell me what you saw, tell me everything! I need details! Don’t leave anything out.” He was almost drooling.
Coco and Bailey told Saul every detail. The girl, the mayor’s weird outfit, what they saw, smelled, heard—all of it. Saul wrote furiously on his index
cards. He was an aggressively mediocre man, but he seemed to be their only hope at this point.
“I want to assure you, you came to the right guy. I’ll get you dirt on these dirtbags, and together we’ll nail them to the wall,” Saul said confidently.
The girls thanked him and left.
“He’s nutty but very well connected,” Bailey said.
“I hope you’re right. I mean, those index cards—what the hell?” Coco asked, shaking her head.
“Trust me,” Bailey replied calmly.
As they left Saul’s office, Bailey began to tell Coco a little about the tension at her job, but then her cell phone rang. Bailey’s entire demeanor changed. She was suddenly energized.
“I have to take this, I’ll be right back,” she said hurriedly as she left Coco standing in the middle of the hall. Coco, not sure where to go, decided to just stay there and feign interest in the gallery of famous visitors that adorned the walls. Every type of celebrity was represented, from Jon Bon Jovi through Meryl Streep to crappy reality show contestants. It was quite a diverse group.
Bailey came back about fifteen minutes later, about the same amount of time some of the careers on the wall had lasted, but she was beaming. Coco had to know what was up, so she asked in the same straightforward manner as Bailey herself would have. Coco was already learning from her.
“Who was that, and why are you so happy all of a sudden?” Coco asked. “It’s like you just got back on your meds. What’s up?”
“Okay, I’ll tell you, but you have to promise not to tell anyone. ”
“Of course,” Coco agreed.
“Nobody!”
“I swear. C’mon, what the heck is going on?”
“I met someone. Someone amazing.” Bailey could barely get the words out. “I’ve been seeing Graham Shore. That was him on the phone.” She could hardly contain her enthusiasm.
“So, you’re having an actual relationship with Graham Shore? The Graham Shore from Chicago Counsel and Be My Spy?”
“Yes, yes! We’ve been seeing each other on and off over the past year,” Bailey replied.
The Yoga Club Page 14
