One Fifth Avenue

by Candace Bushnell

  He found Annalisa in her prettily decorated office, researching something on the Web. When he appeared in the doorway, she jumped and quickly hit a button on her computer. “What are you doing home?” she asked in alarm. “Has something happened?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Of course,” Paul said. “Why shouldn’t it be?”

  “Considering what’s gone wrong in this building in the past two months,” she said with an edge of sarcasm, “I don’t know.”

  “There’s nothing to worry about now,” Paul said, heading upstairs to visit his fish. “I’ve taken care of it. From now on, everything is going to be fine.”

  Billy Litchfield spent the two days leading up to Sandy Brewer’s arrest in a haze of fear. He called no one, not trusting himself to behave normally, afraid, if asked, that he would inadvertently blurt out the story of his involvement with the cross. Four or five times, he considered leaving the country, but where would he go? He had a little bit of money, but not enough to stay away forever. Perhaps he could go to Switzerland, where he’d be able to collect some of his money. But the fear paralyzed him. Although he spent hours on the Internet Googling Sandy Brewer’s name to see if anything had happened, the reality of booking a flight and packing a suitcase overwhelmed him. The very thought sent him to his bed, where he curled up in the fetal position under the covers. He had random, unhealthy, repetitive thoughts and kept thinking about a line from a ghost story that had terrified him as a kid—“I want my liver.”

  It also occurred to him that maybe Sandy Brewer wouldn’t be caught, and they’d both go free. Who knew how much evidence the detective had? Perhaps it truly was nothing more than a rumor that might persist for a while and then go away. Mrs. Houghton had kept the cross on her bureau in her bedroom in One Fifth Avenue for years with no one the wiser. If he wasn’t caught, Billy vowed he would somehow change his life. He had predicated his entire existence on social obligations, on the desire to be with the right people at the right time and in the right place. Now he saw all too clearly his mistake. He’d thought that this desire for the best in life was going to add up to something substantial and concrete. It hadn’t.

  Trapped in his apartment, he remembered the many times in his life when he had told himself, “Who needs money when one has rich friends?” He wondered how his rich friends could help him now.

  Staring out his living room window at the same view he’d had for years—the Episcopal Church, the stones brown with grime—he saw that a scaffolding was being erected around his building. Of course. The owners were renovating to prepare for the conversion to co-op. He’d done nothing about his apartment situation, not knowing if he would be able to stay in New York City. Was it too late? Would it even matter? Taking himself back to bed, he turned on the television.

  The story about Sandy Brewer’s arrest was all over the evening news. The clip of Sandy being led out in handcuffs and then, with a policeman’s hand on his head, pushed into the backseat of a squad car, played over and over. The newscasters claimed Sandy Brewer had been caught in possession of an invaluable English treasure believed to have come from the estate of one of the city’s most important philanthropists, Mrs. Louise Houghton. There was no mention of Billy.

  Immediately, Billy’s house phone and cell phone began ringing incessantly. Friends or reporters? he wondered. He didn’t answer either line. His apartment buzzer went off five or six times—apparently, whoever was trying to get in had made it up to his floor, because then there was a pounding at his door that eventually went away. Billy took refuge in his bathroom. It was only a matter of time before they came for him. He, too, would be all over the newspapers and the Internet, and there would be clips of him on the news and on YouTube, his head bowed in disgrace. His behavior was justifiable, perhaps, because he needed money, but no one would see it that way. Why hadn’t he immediately turned the cross over to the Met? Because it would have besmirched Mrs. Houghton’s name. But she was dead, and now her name was besmirched anyway, and he was probably going to jail. In despair, he even wondered why he had ever moved to New York in the first place. Why couldn’t he have stayed in the Berkshires and been happy with what life had handed him in the beginning?

  He opened his medicine cabinet and took out all his pills. He had several kinds now: two types of sleeping pills, Xanax, Prozac, and the Vicodin for his tooth pain. If he took all the pills and drank a bottle of vodka, he might be able to end it. But staring at the pills, he realized he didn’t even have the courage to kill himself.

  He could at least knock himself out. He took two Vicodins, two Xanaxes, and one of each kind of sleeping pill. Within minutes, he was asleep in a vibrant, multicolored dream that seemed to go on forever.

  Enid Merle was one of the first people to hear about Sandy Brewer’s arrest. A reporter from the paper who was on the scene called her immediately. As yet, all the facts weren’t in, and the conclusion was that Sandy had somehow managed to buy the cross from Mrs. Houghton, who had stolen it from the Met. This allegation, Enid knew, was false. While it was true that Louise had possessed the cross, Enid guessed that she hadn’t taken it from the Met but from Flossie Davis. Flossie had always been the obvious culprit, but what had never made sense to Enid was why Louise hadn’t returned the cross to the Met in the first place. Instead, she’d kept both the cross and the secret, protecting Flossie from being punished for her criminal act. Louise was a devout Catholic; perhaps a moral imperative had prevented her from revealing Flossie’s crime.

  Or perhaps, Enid thought, there was another reason. Maybe Flossie had something on Louise. Enid should have gotten to the bottom of this mystery long ago, but she’d never considered it important enough. At the moment, there wasn’t time. She had a column due, and since it concerned Louise Houghton, she would have to write it herself.

  Enid looked through several printed pages of research on Sandy and Connie Brewer. The story wasn’t of much importance in the larger world—certainly nowhere near the impact of a presidential election, or the innocent murder of civilians caught in a war, or all and any of the insults and indignities suffered by the common man. It was only about New York “society.” And yet, she reminded herself, the desire for some kind of society was an innate human trait, for without it, there could be no hope of civilized man. Picking out a clip of an article from Vanity Fair written about Connie Brewer and her fabulous country house in the Hamptons, Enid wondered if it was possible to have a desire for too much society. The Brewers had everything in life—four children, a private plane, no worries. But it wasn’t enough, and now the children’s daddy might be going to jail. It was ironic that Sandy Brewer and Mrs. Enid Houghton should end up in the same sentence. If Mrs. Houghton had been alive, she never would have acknowledged an arriviste like Sandy. Enid sat back in her chair. There was a big chunk of the story missing, but her column was due in four hours. Positioning her hands above the keyboard, she wrote, “Louise Houghton was a good friend of mine.”

  Eight hours later, Billy Litchfield woke up in his claw-footed bathtub. Checking his arms and legs, he was surprised to find himself still very much alive—and inexplicably exultant. It was the middle of the night; nevertheless, he felt an overwhelming desire to hear David Bowie. Sliding a CD into the machine, he thought, Why not? and decided to play the entire four hours of a two-CD set spanning Bowie’s career from 1967 to 1993. As Billy listened, he walked around his apartment, dancing occasionally on the worn wooden floors in his bare feet, and flinging his paisley robe around his body like a cape. Then he started looking at photographs. He had hundreds of framed photographs in his apartment—hung on the walls, lined up on the mantelpiece, piled on top of books, and packed into drawers. While he was looking at his photographs, he thought he might as well play all his CDs. During the next twenty hours, he sensed that either his cell phone or land line was ringing again, but he didn’t answer either one. He took more pills and at some point discovered that he’d
consumed nearly a whole bottle of vodka. Then he found an old bottle of gin and, singing loudly along with the music, drank it down. He began to feel queasy, and wanting to maintain his dizzy feeling of pleasure in which nothing that had happened in the past seemed to matter, he took two more Vicodins. He felt a little better, and with his music still blaring—it was now Janet Eno—he passed out on top of his bed.

  At one point, like a sleepwalker, he did get up and go to his closet. But then he collapsed again, and sometime in the middle of the night, his kidneys gave out, followed by his heart. Billy didn’t feel a thing.

  Act Four

  18

  That evening, Schiffer Diamond ran into Paul and Annalisa Rice on the sidewalk in front of One Fifth. Schiffer was coming back from a long day of shooting, while Paul and Annalisa were dressed for dinner. Schiffer nodded at them on her way into the building, then she paused. “Excuse me,” she said to Annalisa. “Aren’t you a friend of Billy Litchfield’s?”

  Paul and Annalisa exchanged glances. “Yes,” Annalisa said.

  “Have you seen him?” Schiffer asked. “I’ve been trying to call him for two days.”

  “He doesn’t seem to be answering his phone. I went by his apartment, but he wasn’t home.”

  “Maybe he’s gone away,” Schiffer said. “I’m sure it’s fine.”

  “If you talk to him, will you let me know?” Annalisa asked. “I’m worried.”

  Upstairs, Schiffer searched through a drawer in her kitchen, wondering if she still had the keys to Billy’s apartment. Years ago—years and years now—when she and Billy had first become friends, they’d exchanged keys to each other’s apartments in case of an emergency. She’d never cleaned out the drawer, so the keys should still be there, although there was a slim possibility that Billy had changed his lock. In the back of the drawer, she did find the keys. There was a blue plastic tag attached to the ring on which Billy had written LITCHFIELD ABODE, followed by an exclamation point, as if proclaiming their friendship.

  Schiffer walked the three blocks to Billy’s building, pausing under the scaffolding before trying the key in the front door. It still worked, and she passed a row of metal mailboxes. The door to Billy’s mailbox was ajar, held open by several days’ worth of envelopes. Perhaps Billy was away. Renovations had apparently begun in the building—the stairway leading to the fourth floor was covered with brown paper and secured with blue tape. Hearing music coming from inside Billy’s apartment, she knocked loudly. At the other end of the hall, a door opened and a middle-aged woman, neatly groomed, stuck her head out. “Are you looking for Billy Litchfield?” she asked. “He’s gone away. And he’s left his music on. I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried to call the super, but he doesn’t answer. It’s all because of the conversion. Billy and I were the last holdouts. They’re trying to force us to move. The next thing you know, they’ll probably turn off the electricity.”

  The thought of Billy being in this situation was depressing. “I hope not,” Schiffer said.

  “Are you going in?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” Schiffer said. “Billy gave me his keys.”

  “Will you turn off the music? I’m just about going crazy here.”

  Schiffer nodded and went in. Billy’s living room had always been overcrowded with stuff, but he’d kept it neat. Now it was a mess. His photographs were strewn on the floor, empty CD cases were scattered around the room, and on the sofa and two armchairs, several coffee-table books lay open to photographs of Jackie O. She found the stereo in an antique wooden cupboard and turned off the music. This wasn’t like Billy at all. “Billy?” she called out.

  She went down the short hallway to the bedroom, passing empty hooks on the walls where the photographs had been removed. The bedroom door was closed. Schiffer knocked and turned the handle.

  Billy lay sprawled across his bed with his head hanging over the side. His eyes were closed, but the muscles under his pale, freckled face had stiffened, giving him a grim, foreign expression. The body on the bed was no longer Billy, Schiffer thought. The Billy Litchfield she’d known was gone.

  “Oh, Billy,” she said. Looped around Billy’s neck was a long noose constructed of Hermès ties that trailed on the floor, as if Billy had been thinking of hanging himself but died before he could complete the act.

  “Oh, Billy,” Schiffer said again. She gently untied the loose knot around his neck and, separating the ties one from another, carefully hung them back up in Billy’s closet, where they belonged.

  Then she went into the bathroom. Billy was fastidious and had done his best with the space, placing thick white towels folded carefully on a shelf above the toilet. But the fixtures themselves were cheap and probably forty years old. She’d always assumed that Billy had money, but apparently, he had not, living exactly as he had when he’d first come to New York. The thought of Billy’s secret penury added to her sadness. He was one of those New York types whom everyone knew but didn’t know much about. She opened the medicine cabinet and was shocked by the row of prescription pills. Prozac, Xanax, Ambien, Vicodin—she’d had no idea Billy was so unhappy and stressed. She should have spent more time with him, she thought bitterly, but Billy had been like a New York institution. She’d always thought he’d be around.

  Working quickly, she poured the contents of the prescription bottles into the toilet. As in most prewar buildings, there was an incinerator chute in the kitchen, where Schiffer disposed of the empty bottles. Billy wouldn’t want people to think he’d tried to kill himself or that he was addicted to pills. Back in the bedroom, she spotted a crude wooden box on top of his bureau. It wasn’t Billy’s style, and curious, she opened it to find neat rows of what appeared to be costume jewelry folded in bubble wrap. Did Billy have a transvestite bent to his nature? If so, it was another aspect of his life that he wouldn’t have wanted people to know about. Searching through his closet, she found a shoe box and shopping bag from Valentino. She put the wooden box into the shoe box and into the bag. Then she called 911.

  Two police officers arrived within minutes, followed by EMS workers, who ripped open Billy’s robe and tried to shock him back to life. Billy’s body jumped several inches off the bed, and unable to bear it, Schiffer went into the living room. Eventually, a detective in a navy blue suit arrived. “Detective Sabatini,” he said, holding out his hand.

  “Schiffer Diamond,” she said.

  “The actress,” he said, perking up.

  “That’s right.”

  “You found the body. Why?”

  “Billy was a good friend. I hadn’t heard from him in a couple of days. I came by to see if he was okay. Obviously, he wasn’t.”

  “Did you know he was under investigation?”

  “Billy?” she said in disbelief. “For what?”

  “Art theft,” the detective said.

  “That’s impossible,” Schiffer said, folding her arms.

  “It’s not only possible, but true. Did he have any enemies?”

  “Everyone loved him.”

  “Did he need money?”

  “I don’t know anything about his financial affairs. Billy didn’t talk about it. He was very…discreet.”

  “So he knew things about people?”

  “He knew a lot of people.”

  “Anyone who might want him dead? Like Sandy Brewer?”

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “I thought you were good friends.”

  “We were,” Schiffer said. “But I hadn’t seen Billy in years. Not until I moved back to New York nine months ago.”

  “I’m going to need you to come to the station for questioning.”

  “I need to call my publicist first,” she said firmly. The reality of Billy’s death hadn’t hit her yet, but this was going to be a mess. She and Billy would likely end up on the front page of The New York Post tomorrow.

  Early the next morning, Paul Rice was trawling through the Internet when he came across the first item about Billy Litchf
ield’s death. He didn’t connect Billy to the Brewer scandal, so the news didn’t have a big impact. But then he saw several small pieces from The New York Times to The Boston Globe, stating that Billy Litchfield, fifty-four, a sometime journalist, art dealer, and society walker, had been discovered dead in his apartment the evening before. The coverage in the Daily News and the Post was much more extensive. On the covers of both newspapers were glamour shots of Schiffer Diamond, who had discovered the body, and a photograph of Billy in a tux. There were other photographs as well, mostly of Billy with various socialites and one of him arm in arm with Mrs. Louise Houghton. The police were investigating, suspecting foul play.

  Paul turned off his computer. He considered waking his wife and giving her the news, but realized she might start crying. Then he would be stuck in an emotional scene not of his own making and therefore of an unpredictable length. He decided to tell her later instead.

  Hurrying through the lobby, he spotted several photographers just outside the door. “What’s going on?” he demanded of Roberto.

  “Someone died, and Schiffer Diamond found the body.”

  Billy Litchfield, Paul thought. “But why are they here? Outside One Fifth?” Roberto shrugged. “Never mind,” Paul barked, and knocked on Mindy’s door. She opened it a crack, trying to keep Skippy, who was barking and jumping on her leg, inside and away from Paul. For the moment, Paul had gained the upper hand in the building; Mindy had to agree to keep Skippy out of the lobby in the morning and evening when Paul would be passing through. “What is it now?” she said, glaring at him with hatred.

  “That,” Paul said, motioning to the paparazzi outside.

  Mindy came out without the dog, closing the door behind her. She was still in her cotton pajamas but had thrown on a chenille robe and flip-flops. “Roberto,” she said. “What is this?”