by Ann Aptaker
She holds back. “How about if I wait here?” she says, her green gloved hands rubbing up and down the sleeves of her dark blue wool coat.
“On the street? You’re already shivering.”
“Well, in the lobby, then.”
I want to ask her what she’s afraid of, ask her if she’s afraid of the memories she’d find in my apartment, memories of the night she showed up unexpectedly at my door and wound up in my bed. But I don’t ask her, because to ask could embarrass her, and I know the answer anyway.
So I just nod, escort her into the lobby, and take the elevator up to my apartment alone.
I’m back down to the lobby a few minutes later, equipped to take on Mrs. Dierdre Atchley.
I escort Vivienne to my car.
• • •
One likes to think of residential architecture as welcoming. Even an apartment building like mine promises a little bit of “Home Sweet Home” to the residents, and a note of “Nice to See You” if you’re a visitor. But the ritzy apartment towers lining Park Avenue don’t even try. Their facades were designed to ignore you if you’re not a resident, to be sentinels against the undeserving Everybody Else. Erected mostly during the late teens and 1920s, these la-di-dah buildings changed the definition of residential luxury from an ornate townhouse with a bunch of rooms stuffed with gewgaws and an army of servants to dust them, to spacious apartments with fewer rooms, fewer gewgaws, so requiring fewer servants. The rich love to save labor costs.
The building housing the Atchleys boasts of being the most exclusive on Park Avenue, the occupants among the wealthiest and most prominent people in town, people whose tentacles of influence reach across oceans. Perched atop this stately stone pile is the Atchley family.
Guarding the entrance to the tower is a beefy doorman in full livery of chocolate brown with brass buttons and gold braiding. His “Good afternoon,” is friendly enough, but the way he looks me over isn’t. But that’s okay. I’m used to it. “Are you expected?” he says to Vivienne.
In her bluest blueblood tone, she says, “Miss Vivienne Parkhurst Trent to see Mrs. Dierdre Atchley.”
With another disapproving glance at me, the doorman dials the intercom mounted beside the imposing entry door of etched glass accented with pointy-ended curlicues of iron. He announces Vivienne, adds “and guest,” then waits for the reply. After a wait of a few moments, presumably while the maid or butler checks with the family, the doorman hangs up. He says, “Sorry, folks, I can’t let you go up.”
Vivienne says, “Is the family not home?”
The doorman puts up his hands as if ready to shoo away the riffraff. “I’ve been instructed not to let you up. Now, just move along.”
I sense Vivienne stiffen beside me. Not only doesn’t she like being pushed around, she’s not used to it, and this is the second time today she’s gotten pushed around. Her annoyance, and her frustration that there’s nothing she can do about it, tightens every muscle in her face.
But there’s something I can do about it. I give the doorman a nod, give Vivienne a smile, and gently take her arm. “Let’s go,” I say.
She reluctantly lets me lead her away.
We’re a few steps along Park Avenue, walking toward the corner, when Vivienne turns her head to look back in the opposite direction. “Your car’s the other way,” she says.
“We’re not going to my car.”
“Then where are we going?”
“To talk to the Atchleys.” We turn the corner.
The Atchleys’ apartment building extends about a third of the way along the expensive street of elegant brownstones and the few remaining robber baron mansions. The service entrance is toward the back of the building, where tradesmen bring in the residents’ grocery deliveries or wrestle a new sofa inside.
Vivienne, realizing where we’re going, says, “This is a waste of time, Cantor. The building staff won’t let us in here, either. Don’t even bother to ring the bell.”
“I’m not planning on ringing the bell.”
“You mean you’re breaking in? You’re going to get us arrested. Again.”
I half expect her to stamp her foot.
When we arrive at the door, I tell Vivienne, “Stand behind me.”
I reach into the inside pocket of my coat, take out the leather case of lockpicks I took from my apartment. I took my gun and shoulder rig from my apartment, too. I’m still not sure if the Atchleys are killers, but I’m not going to be caught naked, especially with Vivienne along for the ride. I’m already feeling rotten about the deaths of Lorraine and Eve, and my guts were shredded with the murder of Alice. If anything happens to Vivienne, I don’t know if my soul could stand it.
I examine the lock on the service door, pull out the correct hook and pick, and with a little probing the lock clicks open.
I say to Vivienne, “Stay here; don’t come in until I tell you it’s safe.”
“Safe? Cantor, this is Park Avenue, not a Mob joint.”
“Tell that to Lucky Luciano. He lived down the street at the Waldorf. Now, stay behind me and don’t come in until I tell you.”
I turn the knob, open the door.
A guy in green work clothes and surprise on his boiled potato face is quick to the door. “Who’re you? And how’d you get in here?” he says, eyeing me like he’s never seen a coat and cap before, or at least never seen them on the likes of me.
Telling him who I am and why I’m here won’t get me past him. And it’s pretty clear I’m not delivering anything.
There are two ways that might get me through, get me and Vivienne to the service elevator and up to the Atchley penthouse. The first way is usually reliable in these situations. If it fails, the second way often does the trick, though leaving blood drops could jam me up later if the guy squawks to the cops or other wrong people.
I reach into the back pocket of my trousers, take my wallet, slip out a twenty-dollar bill. I say to the potato-faced guy, “You never saw us, understand? If there’s any trouble, I’ll know it was you who squealed.” I take out my .38 to make the point.
The guy’s gone gray as dust. He takes the twenty.
I motion for Vivienne to come in.
She says, “Good afternoon,” to the guy, gives him a smile.
He says, “Yeah sure, you too, lady.”
We walk into a large dingy room lit by glaring overhead bulbs with no shades. Hard shadows rake across shelves crammed with tools, electrical supplies, cleaning supplies, and other equipment to keep the building shipshape. There’s a battered desk with a cheap tin ashtray half filled with butts, coffee-stained paperwork held down by a telephone, and a desk chair with a torn seat.
I say to our potato-faced host, “How about you just sit down and pay no attention to us.” I indicate the chair with a wave of my .38. He sits down. I smile.
Vivienne and I walk across the room to a wide hallway and the service elevator. I lift the grating, and we walk in. After I close the grate and press the button on the brass panel for the penthouse floor, I notice Vivienne staring at me. If looks could kill, well, maybe I wouldn’t be dead but I’d be good and bloody, and there’d be wet red drops among all the dried paint drips on the elevator’s wooden floor.
She says, “Did you have to scare that poor guy by waving your gun around?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Would you really have shot him?”
“Waving my gun around made sure I wouldn’t have to shoot him.”
I guess that satisfies her since she gives it a nod and a hint of a smile.
We don’t speak again until after I lift the elevator grate at the penthouse floor. Vivienne says, “Are you going to wave your gun in the servants’ faces, too?”
“Depends on the faces,” I say.
That gets a tsk and an eye roll from Vivienne and a smile from me.
We step off the elevator into the concrete gray-walled service hallway, then go through a door into the thickly carpeted main hall. Here, the walls are
papered in silk and decorated with hand-painted scenes of colonial era New York. It probably cost more than most people’s yearly rent. Besides the service door, there’s a door at each end of the hallway; one is a double door of carved dark wood and big brass handles, the other’s a standard door with a standard doorknob.
Vivienne starts toward the fancy double door. I hold her back, say, “This way,” and lead her to the standard door.
She says, “But that’s the kitchen entrance.”
“Where we have a better chance of not having the door slammed in our faces.”
“Ah, I see your point,” she says. I start to press the button for the bell, but Vivienne stays my hand. “Try the doorknob.” In answer to my lifted brows, she says, “It’s often left unlocked during the day so if a servant arrives carrying things for the kitchen or the family, they won’t have to fumble for keys or wait for someone to answer the doorbell. And now I’m sorry I told you.”
My eyebrows go up again, but then I get it. I give her a wink and a smile. “Good thing I do my best break-in work at night after they’ve locked the kitchen door. You’re off the hook, Vivienne.”
“Very funny,” she says, not laughing.
I turn the doorknob slowly, quietly, and open the door. It takes a minute for the cook, a slender woman in whites, to look up from stirring something on the stove, its pungent aroma of lemon and garlic tempting me to try a spoonful. Seeing me and Vivienne, the cook stops stirring and opens her mouth to say something, her eyes wide. But a finger to my lips and the no-nonsense set of my face— helped by my scars, no doubt— quiets her before she can get even a single word out.
I follow Vivienne through the kitchen, which leads into the dining room. Tall windows along a wall covered in peach damask send streaks of sunlight across the rosewood table. There’s enough art on the walls to fill the Early American galleries of Vivienne’s museum, and what I’m pretty sure is an original Paul Revere silver coffee and tea service is on the sideboard.
My appreciation of the Atchleys’ taste and their ability to pay for it is interrupted by a woman’s scream coming through the dining room’s closed double doors. I pull out my .38 and tell Vivienne to wait here, which she answers with, “Like hell I will.”
We make a dash to the doors. I slide them open. We’re in the living room, a palatial gold-and-white cavern where Dierdre Atchley, in a green taffeta dress more suited to a cocktail party than a brawl, is screaming, “Brooks, no!” over and over as she runs out to the terrace. A tall guy in a navy blue suit has James Atchley pinned on the ledge of the terrace wall. One wrong move on either man’s part and James could go over, fall twenty-eight floors to the street.
Dierdre tries to pull her husband off her son, but she can’t shake his violent grip.
I shout to Dierdre and Vivienne, “Grab James’s arms!” and when they do I slam Brooks Atchley’s head with the butt of my .38. Stunned, he lets go of James while Vivienne and Dierdre pull him safely off the terrace ledge.
Dierdre, crying, hugs James. She wipes blood from his cheek and fingers the blood on his white shirt in a way that’s somewhat more than motherly.
I notice Vivienne wince.
Brooks Atchley, silver-haired, ramrod straight but unsteady and a bit wild-eyed from the smash to his head, mutters, “Vivienne?” as if surprised she’s here.
Vivienne says, “I thought you were in Geneva, Brooks. Maybe you should have stayed there.”
He puts a hand to his head where I walloped him. “I— I returned late last night.” He has a boardroom voice, smooth as polished wood-paneled walls.
We’ve been joined on the terrace by the Atchley butler, a guy with a round face tight with horror. “I heard a commotion,” he says with the understatement of the butler’s trade while trying not to trip all over his terrified tongue. “Do you need assist—”
Brooks Atchley cuts him off. “It’s all right, Evans. You may return to your duties.”
The butler answers with his obligatory, “Yes, sir,” and makes a quick exit from the terrace and out through the living room, disappearing in that way that butlers do.
Dierdre Atchley, slowly uncurling from her embrace of James, says, “Vivienne, I instructed the doorman not to let you up. I have nothing more to say to you. You are as much to blame as Cantor for the catastrophe facing my family.”
I say, “And you’re welcome, Mrs. Atchley, for Vivienne and me saving your son’s life. You might be the only one who thinks it’s a life worth saving. The police certainly don’t, and it looks like your husband doesn’t either.”
Brooks says, “Vivienne, who is this person?”
His wife answers, “It’s Cantor Gold. The thief I told you about, Brooks.”
“I see,” he says. He gives me the Park Avenue version of the look I’ve gotten ever since I put on my first set of lapels as a teenage Romeo. Instead of a sneer, Brooks Atchley regards me with a raised eyebrow and the pinched nostrils of a sniff. “Well, you may have successfully bullied your way into our home, but you are not welcome here. You will kindly leave.” He turns his attention to Vivienne. “I’m disappointed in you, Vivienne. I would not expect you to keep such low company.”
“And I would not have expected you to try to kill your own son,” she says. Her tone of voice, her confident posture, challenges him, blueblood to blueblood. But Vivienne has that trace of Trent ferocity to give it heat. Atchley’s outmatched.
He retreats into proud sniveling. “I did not try to kill him, merely beat some sense into his bumbling brain. And in any event, he is not my son. No son of mine would be such a blunderer. I’m sorry I ever allowed him to take the Atchley name.”
James’s lips are so tightly curled it twists his patrician face into the grimace of a gutter punk. He says, “And I’m sorry my mother ever married you,” practically hissing it. “It was your philandering that got us into the mess with Eve Garraway. She hated you for abandoning her, and you know something? I don’t blame her.”
I say, “Speaking of Eve Garraway, her murder case has gotten a lot messier. Maybe you’ve heard that Lieutenant Huber is dead? Yeah, he was shot in the back a little before ten this morning.”
The silence on the terrace is so complete, the whoosh of traffic filtering up from twenty-eight stories below seems loud.
All three members of the Atchley family look like they’ve stopped breathing until James says, “Good riddance.”
His mother snaps, “Be quiet, James.”
Brooks says, “Vivienne, you and your friend will leave here now, or I will—”
“You’ll what?” I say. “Call the police? The Atchley family is in enough trouble with the cops already, what with James looking at the electric chair for the murder of Eve Garraway. They have a good case, too. I’m inclined to go along with it, but I can’t figure one thing. How did you get into the house, James, without being seen?”
All three of them are quiet again, but this time they’re smiling. It gives me the creeps. It gives Vivienne the creeps, too, judging by the tight grip she suddenly has on my arm.
“On the advice of our attorney,” Dierdre Atchley says, “we will not answer any questions, Cantor. You are wasting your time here. In other words, go to hell.” I’m not surprised it’s Dierdre Atchley who speaks up. She seems to be the only one of the Atchleys with backbone.
It’s my turn to smile. “My time with you is never wasted, Mrs. Atchley.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The doorman’s surprised to see us when Vivienne and I come out through the building’s Park Avenue entrance. I tip my cap to him, just for the fun of seeing the confused expression on his face. After the ugly drama of the Atchley household, I’ll take a little fun wherever I can get it.
I say to Vivienne, “I could use a drink. Care to join me?”
She looks like the air’s been kicked out of her. “I think I’ll just go home, Cantor. I need to be alone for a while.”
“Sure,” I say. “Come on, I’ll drive you.” I ta
ke her arm to escort her to my car.
She holds back. “No please, don’t trouble,” she says. “I’ll just take a cab.”
“It’s no trouble, Vivienne. I don’t mind.” I start us along the avenue again.
Again she holds back.
I say, “Vivienne, what’s wrong?”
“I just . . . I just really need to be alone, that’s all. I feel like I’m turned inside out by what happened up there. I thought I knew those people, but it seems I don’t know them at all.” She shakes her head as if shaking it will reassemble an ugly tableau into a prettier one.
I lift her chin, say, “For what it’s worth, you were magnificent. You stood up to the Atchleys and called them out for the pompous asses they are.”
Those fabulous eyes of hers, those eyes of a pampered palace cat, glisten in the fading late afternoon sunlight, hinting at the seductive contradictions that live in Vivienne Parkhurst Trent: darkness and daring, passion and aloofness, elegance and ferocity. Right now, most of all there’s sadness.
She says, “Do what you have to, Cantor, to find out who killed Eve Garraway and Lieutenant Huber. And if it was any of the Atchleys, feed them to the lions.”
• • •
Turns out Vivienne was right; it’s time to be alone, time to quiet the noise surrounding the Garraway killing, the Huber murder, and the Atchley circus of horrors. So I’m home now, slowly sipping a Chivas in the comfort of my favorite chair while I watch the evening float down on New York through my living room window. The city’s lights are coming on as the neon colors of my neighborhood’s theater marquees, nightclub billboards, and neighborhood joints tint the air.
Feed them to the lions, Vivienne said. Best idea I’ve heard all day. Trouble is, the Atchleys might tear themselves apart and gnaw each other to the bone before the lions get their share.
There’s one lion who has the biggest bite in town. And after what I saw of the Atchleys, I might not feel too guilty about feeding them to him after all.
I finish my drink, get my coat and cap. It’s time to go back into the lion’s den.
• • •
