SoHo Sins

by Richard Vine

  “I do indeed. Though I’m not sure ‘like’ is the proper word. They’re rather fierce.”

  “Good. I’ve been much too nice in my life. It’s time for something tougher.”

  “Actually, Angie, I never thought of you as particularly meek. Rigorously polite, maybe.”

  “Yes, I was schooled in good appearances. It was the only way to live with Philip as long as I did.”

  No one could fault Angela’s performance as a wife, or her absolute fidelity during the marriage. I should know. But after Philip dropped her for Amanda Wingate, Angela did the one thing that her ex-husband had not expected and could not abide. The little Brit immediately found other men—attractive, intelligent, successful men—and bedded them in quick succession, with energy and delight, almost with abandon.

  The once blasé Philip was shocked. Even though he had betrayed his wife, leaving her for his own well-to-do lover, he was devastated by Angela’s new appetite. When I pointed out the inconsistencies, he waved them aside.

  “All I’ve ever wanted in my life,” he said, “is a woman who’s wise enough to accept a double standard.”

  “What would be so wise about that?” I asked.

  “It just might work, and nothing else does.”

  Philip made his complaint almost sadly—as though Angela owed him an indulgence. After all, she was small and plain, while he was enormously wealthy and, as Angela’s mother said, “quite posh for a Yank.”

  “Is that so much to ask?” Philip said. “Of all the things that people do for love, is it really the oddest or most difficult?”

  He seemed genuinely baffled, oblivious to the fact that the same brash manner and sleek, eager body that once drew him repeatedly across the ocean to Angela, “that little English minx,” now made her equally alluring to other men.

  “You’ve had your hands full,” I conceded to Angela as we walked among her twisted figures. “First with Philip, now with your daughter.”

  “Yes, sometimes I do worry awfully about Melissa and her dolls.” Angela paused for a moment to close up the studio. “Why on earth would a child do such a beastly thing?”

  “I have no idea. I’m not very familiar with dolls.”

  “But you know something about girls.”

  “A little, but the ones I deal with are older. They prefer dismantling men.”

  Angela gave me a wry look. “Oh, poor old Jack,” she said. “We’re not all French, you know.”

  8

  We strolled back to the house and settled into a small sitting room. With a bit of embarrassment, Angela asked if I could help her find a decent apartment downtown, a loft preferably. She wanted to be back in the SoHo mix. Melissa, fortunate girl, had already been accepted at the Bradford School on the Upper East Side.

  “It’ll be hard for her to leave her friends here in Westchester, of course,” Angela conceded. “But she’s a trouper, and it’s Bradford after all. Her life will be made.”

  There was an odd noise in the hallway, and then Melissa appeared, in a short sundress, carrying a large silver tray laden with teacups, a white pot, Melba toast, and three small jars of jam.

  “Such a lady,” I said.

  “I do try to teach her not to be a total barbarian.”

  Melissa wrinkled her nose. “Mom, you’re being a prig again.”

  Keeping her back very straight, the young lady set the tea service down and poured out a steaming cup.

  “Serve your mother first, sweetheart.”

  “No, you’re the guest.”

  Angela accepted the second cup. “I think she’s got a crush on you, Jack.”

  “Mom, don’t be gross.”

  “All right. Help your Uncle Jack with the marmalade lid.”

  Melissa made a face. “I know.”

  Taking the jar from me, she freed the top with a single firm twist—one of the little things my withered left arm will not permit me to do.

  “Would you like to see me ride my horse later?” she asked.

  “I certainly would. But business first, Missy. I have to help your mother get famous.”

  There was a measure of truth to the thought. Somebody would have to do something to save Angela from the ruinous effect of a hired flack.

  But for the moment, I had other preoccupations. Once Melissa left, I pressed Angela to tell me exactly what she knew about Mandy’s death.

  “Just what I’ve read in the papers, and heard through the rumor mill,” she said. “I assume she was killed by that new tart of Philip’s. The pneumatic Italian.”

  “Why?”

  “Who else would want Mandy dead?”

  “I hate to say it, but there are other candidates. Philip, for one. You, for another.”

  “Philip was in California.”

  “Did you read that in the papers?”

  “No, he told me he was going. I called him there on Tuesday night—at the Beverly Wilshire.”

  “Why?”

  “He has to co-sign the papers for Bradford.”

  “When they check the phone records, the police might wonder if it was some other message you gave him. Maybe an ‘everything’s set for tomorrow.’ ”

  “Oh, please. My only task last Wednesday was for the membership committee at the Katonah Museum. I chaired the annual benefit that evening, a gala attended by seven hundred people.”

  “And you were here all day before the party? The cops are sure to ask.”

  “They already have. Yes, I was home with Melissa. We did yoga together and made gingerbread cookies.”

  “Of course the nanny can verify that?”

  “And the gardener. Would you like me call them in?”

  “No. I’m no sleuth. But my friend Hogan is.”

  “The one who walks like a bantam rooster?”

  “He’s been hired by Joel Bernstein.”

  “That damn shyster. If Philip had listened to Joel when we split, I’d be homeless.”

  “That’s the Bernstein we all know and loathe.”

  “He screwed me out of every share of O-Tech stock, but Philip—dear man that he can be sometimes—drew the line at the house. ‘She has to have a roof over her head,’ he said. ‘She and my little Melissa.’ ”

  “Quite a heart.”

  Angela smiled faintly and shrugged. “With Philip, you learn to take what you can get.”

  “Just make that clear to Hogan, if he comes around.”

  “I don’t hide things in my life, Jack. It’s a big difference between you and me. One of the reasons we get on so well.”

  Before I left, we stopped out by the barn so I could say goodbye to Melissa. Wearing jodhpurs and an English riding hat, she held the chestnut gelding in a disciplined trot. As she rose and dropped successively in the stirrups, the buds of her breasts pushed briefly against the white cotton of her shirt. She halted the big animal in front of us.

  “Are you leaving already?” she asked.

  “For now,” I said. “Be good. Have your mom bring you to town for a visit sometime.”

  “I will, but I won’t be good. It’s too boring.”

  I glanced at Angela. “Another artist in the family, I see.”

  “Not if I can bloody well help it.”

  Melissa adjusted the reins. “I like your car,” she said judiciously. “But it’s kind of old.”

  I looked back at the silver Porsche 911, gleaming under the trees along the driveway.

  “It’s vintage,” I said. “Like its owner.”

  “There’s no room for kids.”

  “No, that’s right.”

  “Who do you play with then?”

  “Oh, Uncle Jack plays lots of games,” Angela assured her daughter. “He plays the art game and the real estate game, and sometimes the girlfriend game.”

  “Mostly I play with my pal Hogan.”

  “What do you guys do?”

  “We pretend to be grown up and solve mysteries. Hogan’s better at it than I am.”

  “I’ll bet I ca
n pretend better than either of you.”

  “Maybe so, honey.” I kissed Angela’s cheek and lifted my good arm in farewell to the girl. “When you’re a little older, Missy, we’ll see.”

  9

  I arrived at the gallery in the early afternoon, nodding to two staff members as I passed through the outer office. In the private back room, my Diego Giacometti desk waited in monastic quietude. Laura, ever thoughtful, held off until I was at ease with my coffee before bringing in the first routine items.

  “You look like crap,” she said. “Sign these checks.”

  “Thanks for your concern. What am I buying?”

  “Mostly you’re paying me and keeping the lights on. Then you’re giving Harold Baxter his stipend, settling with the printer for the Denton catalogue, and purchasing a 1951 de Kooning pastel.”

  “Do I like the de Kooning?”

  “You’re going to love it, once it resells to the Whitney next month at a ten percent gain.”

  “Is that going to happen?”

  Her eyes rolled almost imperceptibly. “Don’t start with me, Jack.”

  As you can see, I have an ideal relationship with my gallery director. Like most people in her position, Laura Cunningham, her mind as sharp as her style, once dreamed of walking away with half my clients and opening a shop of her own. Instead, I bought her full loyalty by granting her an outrageous commission rate and letting her make key managerial decisions without running any of the high risks of ownership.

  Fortunately, Laura is a natural. Her skill, backed by the intangible asset of beauty, relieves me of the daily headaches of administering the business. As sole proprietor, however, I retain the right to full write-offs for virtually everything I do—from dining with a museum director at Aquagrill to buying a distressed-silk jacket at Yoshi’s. Plus it’s remarkably easy to lose money through an art gallery. The income that underwrites a year of high living can be negated, on paper, by a fourth-quarter purchase of one blue-chip painting—a system that provides me both a sumptuous daily life and a healthy offset, at tax time, for the embarrassing profits from my real estate holdings.

  Laura stood waiting.

  “Something else?” I asked.

  “How’s Angela Oliver?”

  “Good, progressing quite nicely. She’s going to have a show in the fall.”

  “A show, Jack?”

  Rigid, with one hand on her hip, Laura looked like the world’s most exacting schoolmarm—dressed out of the best SoHo boutiques.

  “With Michael Loomis in Chelsea.”

  “Thank God,” she said. “That seems about right.”

  When I turned to my private messages, I found a dozen voicemails, sixty-three e-mails, and a six-inch stack of paper invitations and charity appeals. Using my left arm as a paperweight and working with my one good hand, I spent an hour or more sorting through artist pitches and curator queries before I got around to scanning my e-mails.

  Suddenly I was stopped by an unopened entry from “arthag@aol.com.” Amanda Oliver—ever wry, even in death. I checked the “sent” date carefully, then clicked the message with a faint dread, half expecting some grim record of foreboding or terror—only to encounter Mandy’s bright, insouciant voice one last time:

  Jack Dearest,

  Erich Tennenbaum just called to offer me $7.5 million for my ’63 Rauschenberg. What do you think? I’m tired of the thing and it clashes with the Miró, so I wouldn’t mind selling, but the price seems awfully low, don’t you think? These dealers are all such snakes. Except you, of course, darling. Do you suppose I could do better at Christie’s? Oh probably, but that’s so public and dirty. People writing in newspapers about how much you get and whether it’s higher than estimated or sets some new auction record. As if that were anyone’s business. Isn’t it enough that I give a few pieces away to museums each year? Now I have Philip’s lawyers to contend with. And the house in St. Bart’s needs to be completely reshingled, whatever that means. It’s terribly costly, I hear. Life is just one trial after another, isn’t it? Do tell me what you advise. I suppose I should hold out for $8 million even.

  Many kisses,

  A

  After a few minutes, I called Hogan’s home number in Bayside, hoping to catch him before he started the long commute into Manhattan. My friend does most of his legwork in the late afternoons and evenings, when the criminal element tends to emerge. His wife picked up the phone.

  “Hello, Dorothy. Ready to run away with me yet?”

  “Nearly, Jack dear. Are you eating enough?”

  “I’m OK.”

  “You looked so thin the last time I saw you.”

  “Hogan worries, too. About other aspects of my well-being.”

  “Three years is a long time.”

  “It certainly is. I’ll get over it.”

  “You must. You really must.”

  “I promise. Just for you.”

  “You should come visit sometime. I’ll make pierogi.”

  “You seductress, you.”

  It was an old joke—until you went back too far, to the time when no one laughed.

  “Nathalie was a lovely, lovely girl, Jack. But you’ve got to take hold. Life is for the living.”

  “So they say, Dot. It’s strange. Everyone tells me life must go on. Nobody tells me why.”

  After a moment, Dorothy said quietly, “Please, just don’t dwell. I miss the old devilish Jack, you know. We both do.”

  “I’m better than I was.”

  “Really? I’m glad. But don’t get too, too good, dear. It doesn’t suit you. Would you like to speak to Ed?”

  “He’s not as sexy as you, but he’ll do.”

  “That’s much better now. You see what I mean? Hold on.”

  The phone gave a dull hiss for a few seconds, and then Hogan came on the line. “What’s up, Flash?”

  Same old Hogan. Whenever he wants to prod me a little, he uses that nickname from younger, faster days, when we were both more interested in stroked-and-bored ’57 Chevys than in spousal homicides or secondary-market prices for Henry Moore bronzes.

  “I just got a message from Amanda Oliver.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re going mystical on us. What did that woman do to men’s heads?”

  “It wasn’t just her personality, it was her bank accounts.”

  “Since when can you tell them apart?”

  “I’m learning. Mandy’s e-mail helps. She sent it on the day she was killed.”

  “Great. Does it say anything like ‘Philip is off in the study loading his automatic’?”

  “No such luck. By the way, what did you think of the Oliver apartment?”

  “Spiffy joint.”

  “Of course, but did you notice a laptop anywhere?”

  “Nope. One room loaded with computer stuff, but no laptop in sight.”

  “Well, Mandy always kept one by her bed. Philip used to complain about it all the time. Every morning, she’d wake up and fire off a string of e-mails before she even washed her face. Said it kept her in touch, and she didn’t have to hear anyone else talk. She just sat propped up on pillows, clattering away at the keyboard for an hour or so. The thoughts went straight to her fingertips.”

  “E-mails can be tough to track down.”

  “Not Mandy’s. She had things rigged so all her messages fed automatically into a desktop file. Preserving her correspondence for the Archives of American Art. Or maybe for her memoirs, who knows?”

  “Which means we’ve got the electronic equivalent of a diary.”

  “We would if we had the laptop, but someone beat us to it.”

  “Now, who would want to do a thing like that?” Hogan laughed glumly. “If we recover that computer, we’ll have the text of every e-mail message she sent in the last three months.”

  “More like three years. It will be a tome.”

  “Something for you to read through at your leisure.”

  “Thanks. What did I ever do to you?”

  “
Don’t ask.”

  Hogan didn’t say any more. He and I have known each other too long, too well, to be without a few reciprocal injuries. We joke about the small wounds; the others are pointless to discuss.

  “Do you think,” he asked, “that Philip’s girlfriend might do his dirty work for him?”

  “She loves him,” I said, “so I suppose anything’s possible.”

  “Does she have a set of keys?”

  “I don’t know. Philip doesn’t share all his domestic arrangements with me.”

  “But you never saw Claudia use keys at the building?”

  “When I saw her, she was always with Philip.”

  “How touching. No hanky-panky between you and the Italian wench, on the side?”

  “No.”

  “I’m impressed. Honor among philanderers?”

  “Maybe. Caution anyhow.”

  “I think I better talk to her right away.”

  “Tomorrow? I can call her now and see if she’s free.”

  “The sooner the better.”

  10

  The next afternoon, we drove over to Williamsburg and parked Hogan’s dinged-up Torino near the Bedford Avenue subway stop.

  “So this is where Philip Oliver wanted to hang out for fun?” Hogan asked.

  Through the windshield, we watched small bands of twenty-somethings, in faded black jeans and scuzzy sneakers, drifting in May sunlight among bookstores, music shops, delis, low-end boutiques, and slacker-chic restaurants.

  “You haven’t met Claudia yet,” I said.

  We got out and walked down a side street toward the river, passing one low, boarded-up industrial building after another, until we came to a steel door bearing a partially peeled-away poster for Johnny Bubonic and the Pestilence. Claudia’s buzzer dangled at the end of two wires.

  “I hope the doorman finds the signorina at home,” Hogan said.

  There was no intercom. After a minute or two, we heard sounds behind the door and Claudia leaned out to swing it open.

  “Jesus,” Hogan said under his breath.

  Claudia was wearing a scooped-neck black top and tight jeans. Her skin was startlingly white, her face accented by long, midnight-black hair.