SoHo Sins

by Richard Vine

  Angela didn’t flinch. “Don’t push me, Ed. I know how to deal with people who push me.”

  “Listen to yourself, Angela,” I said. “Is that the sort of lesson you want to teach Melissa?”

  Angela’s chin quivered. She turned to face me and replied very quietly. “Don’t speak that name to me, Jack. Now that this is over, I want you to stay away from my daughter.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t be coy. Just stop.”

  “I’m sorry, Angela, but Melissa needs me. I’m the only person you can name who hasn’t hurt her.”

  “Oh, please.” Angela regarded me closely. Something came into her voice that I had not heard before. “This is New York, not Shanghai, Jack. Melissa isn’t your little sing-song girl. Leave her alone.”

  “You’re not in such a great position to be giving me orders, Angela. I know too damned much about you now.”

  “Know? You know bloody nothing.” Angela smiled crookedly, ruefully. “You suspect.”

  “That’s right, I do. I told Hogan so.”

  “And then you depended on our dim, brave detective here—always wrestling with his demons. Even when he’s out on the streets, battling the angel of death.”

  “Is that you, Angela?” I asked.

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because I loved Mandy. And Philip as well. They saved me once.”

  “You loved Nathalie, too,” Angela said. “How well did that turn out?”

  I felt the rush of blood to my face. “Better than you think,” I protested quietly. “Better than anyone thinks.”

  “You do have a corrupt mind, Jackson Wyeth. Everyone knows you did Nathalie in out of spite.”

  “I didn’t kill my wife.”

  “Not with a gun, no. You just let her die slowly, in shame, for doing the very same things that you did every bloody chance you got, with every slut from here to Rangoon.”

  “It’s not the same.”

  “No two killings are,” Angela said. “Isn’t that what your P.I. friend here would say?”

  In fact, Hogan said nothing. He simply waited for Angela to wear herself down.

  “Just don’t plead clean hands with me, Jack,” Angela hissed. “I know where your stinking fingers have been.”

  She was like a hunted animal now, baring her fangs at each circling pack dog in turn.

  “Let’s just try to make this right for Melissa,” I said. “Give her a chance for a normal life.”

  “Normal, Jack? With you?”

  “Maybe. Without you whispering hate in her ear.”

  “Jack, please,” Angela said. “You can’t let them do this to me. I’m her mother. She’s already lost her father. If I go to prison, it will destroy her.”

  “You think she can’t live without you?” I said. “She can live very well, with my help. It’s what Philip wanted, isn’t it? What he wrote in his will. I’ll give her a beautiful life.”

  “Will you, Jack? With your dirty art money and your blank moral slate?” Angela spoke softly. “Do you really think one more betrayal will wipe out all the rest?”

  “For Christ’s sake, Angela, why did you ever make Missy part of this?”

  “I had no choice.”

  “You have one now,” Hogan said, stepping between us. “You can tell it all, the whole story, your own way. No one will blame Melissa for lying to cover for you.”

  “Stop it, Hogan. Please.”

  “Just keep it simple and clear. You know McGuinn. He doesn’t like extra complications, extra work. So just give him a short, plain statement, confessing both crimes. You can rehearse it in the squad car, then deliver it in a cozy little interrogation room with a video camera running. You can pretend it’s an art project, if you want.”

  “Don’t make me do this.”

  “It’s my way or McGuinn’s. You decide.”

  I could see Angela break. Physically, mentally, she was done. “All right,” she said, soft as an old woman fading. “All right.”

  “That’s better,” he said. “Now you’re finally getting smart.”

  Angela turned to me. “You have to see, Jack,” she murmured. “You have to see how much I loved Philip. How much I love Melissa now.”

  “I’m trying, Angela. It’s not always easy.”

  Her eyes widened. “The glue worked on other broken things. It was worth a try.”

  “You thought death would fix Philip?”

  “I couldn’t let him suffer for years like a dog.”

  “So you killed him out of mercy?”

  “You watched Nathalie die,” Angela said quietly. “Would you wish that on Philip?”

  “No, not on anyone.”

  “He was sick and dying. I couldn’t stop it, Jack, but I could make it go faster.”

  “You think Melissa will see it that way?”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. She always listens to me,” Angela said with a note of pride. “Someday, if you get to truly know her, you’ll understand. You’ll see that I did the right thing. Not for anyone else, maybe, but for Melissa. The rest of us don’t really matter. We’ve all screwed ourselves and each other. We deserve whatever we get.”

  McGuinn, no longer so hostile, came up to Angela and grasped her left wrist—almost gently, it seemed to me, even with a hint of regret. He cuffed it and moved her left arm behind her back and, as she turned, cuffed the right wrist to the left.

  “Jack, you’ve got to tell Melissa what I did today.”

  “That you confessed to both murders?”

  “Yes, exactly. Promise me.”

  “All right, Angela. I promise. Every word.”

  “You have to make it real to her. At last. Please, or else she’s lost forever.”

  “I won’t let that happen.”

  “No, don’t. She could be so fine for the world. Thank you, Jack.”

  McGuinn took Angela’s elbow and led her toward the door. Hogan, hanging back slightly, leaned close to me.

  “This is payback for the Crosby Street bust, Jack. Now we’re even.”

  “We’ve been even for years. You didn’t owe me anything.”

  “Yeah, well, I owed McGuinn, I owed Bernstein. All the pieces fit now. They need to stay that way.”

  “Why would anything change?”

  “Just see that it doesn’t.” Hogan glanced around at the couches and chairs, the paintings. “I don’t ever want to come to this damn place again.”

  I grasped his arm, making him pause. “Thanks for not arresting Angela in front of her daughter. Who knows what it would have done to the girl?”

  Hogan looked at me as though I were a man condemned.

  “Melissa is yours now,” he said. “Try to make something decent of her, will you? That’s what you asked for once.”

  “Yes, of course. She’s my new chance. My last.”

  “Yeah, Jack. And you’re hers.” Hogan’s eyes swept the loft one last time. He nodded. “Just don’t blow it.”

  63

  I waited for Missy after school that day and brought her home—to my home, on the fifth floor. I feared that the emptiness downstairs, the mute sculptural figures, the faint lingering smell of resin, might profoundly spook her.

  Without delay, I sat the girl down on a chair in the front room and told her everything, from beginning to end.

  Oddly, nothing seemed to surprise Melissa very much. She had a fixed exasperation that came naturally with her approaching teen years. Whatever adults did seemed equally inconsequential, equally stupid. She sat there in her Bradford School uniform, with her long legs crossed, saying nothing.

  “Angela wanted me to tell you exactly what she did today. How she confessed.”

  “What, Uncle Jack? That she did the right thing? OK, fine. You told me.”

  “Are you angry at her?”

  “Not really.”

  “She’s worried about how all this will affect you.”

  “Why?”

  “She put you in the middle of something grisly, someth
ing insane.”

  “No big deal. We helped each other out, that’s all. It’s what mothers and daughters do.”

  I couldn’t tell if Melissa was incredibly brave or simply in shock.

  “You and your mom against the world—is that it? Like you told me once?”

  “Yeah, sisterhood.” Melissa sighed deeply, looking down. Her blond hair covered her face.

  “Sometimes I feel like just myself,” she said, “and sometimes I don’t know where Mom leaves off and I begin.”

  “What did Angela say to you afterwards?” I asked. “After the murder?”

  Melissa looked up. “A lot of junk. Kind of loud, because the windshield wipers were on. She just kept saying how horrible it was, what had happened, but that it just had to be. It was kind of monotonous.”

  “You were in the car with her? She took you along? How awful for you, Missy. What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘OK, Mandy is dead now. Calm down.’ ” The girl shrugged. “I said it a couple of times. It wasn’t a major issue really. Mandy was half dead anyhow from the cancer.”

  “Half dead? No, no. Amanda was halfway well. She’d been successfully treated.”

  “Oh, you don’t know anything.” The girl shifted in her seat, keeping her eyes on me. “Mom gave me the 411 before we drove into SoHo.”

  “If Mandy was sick again, she never told me.”

  “Why would she? You’re not real family. Not one of us. You’re not in anybody’s family, are you?”

  “No, not for a long time now.”

  Melissa gazed at me with a look that resembled pity.

  “But Amanda was getting better,” I said. “Her hair was growing out.”

  “Don’t you get it?” the girl demanded. “It was just one of those dumb stories that adults tell each other when they’re scared. They told Aunt Mandy the cancer wouldn’t come back, but it did. Bad things always do, don’t they—sooner or later?”

  “No, not always. They’re not going to come back to you. I’ll see to that.”

  “Will you, Uncle Jack? That’s so sweet.”

  Her hair fell forward in waves on both sides of her face.

  “Your father’s lawyer will make sure I’m confirmed as your legal guardian,” I told her. “It’s in Philip’s will.”

  “Then everything’s fine, isn’t it?”

  “But you must be terribly afraid for your mother now.”

  “Not really. Mom can handle herself. She’s a killer, right?”

  Melissa kicked off her shoes and rolled down her knee socks, crossing and recrossing her legs to pull the white stockings off one after the other.

  “That’s better,” she said. “My legs were so itchy, you know.”

  She bent forward, looking steadily up at me, rubbing her calves slowly as she spoke. “And Uncle Bernie will see that I get my money?”

  I must have shown my puzzlement.

  “Daddy’s money. My inheritance.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Good.” She sat straight again. “But we might have to fight with Amanda’s family first.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Mom did.”

  I watched as Missy rummaged through her purse, searching for a mint. Once she retrieved the little plastic box, she offered me a round white candy before taking one for herself. Always the polite Bradford girl.

  “I didn’t know you cared about money so much,” I said.

  “I don’t care about it at all—not the dirty paper, the numbers in columns. I just care about being free. That, I care about really a lot.”

  “How much?”

  “Gobs. I’ll do just about anything for it.” She looked at me defiantly yet earnestly, making sure I had heard. “As long as I can choose whatever I want afterwards. Whenever I want.”

  I had heard her, all right.

  “You shouldn’t think that way,” I said. “No one is free completely, Missy. To be that free you have to stop caring if anyone loves you.”

  “But I’m pretty, Uncle Jack. People will always love me. Until I’m really old anyhow, and then who cares?”

  “You can’t live that way. It’s too sad.”

  “But you do. I mean, the way I want to live. Free.” She straightened her skirt, without taking her eyes from me. “I need to be the boss of my own life. No one else.”

  “Well, a fortune will certainly help, once you’re old enough.”

  “Of course, in eight years. When I’m twenty-one.”

  There was a glint in her eye for a moment, or I thought there was.

  “It will be about time, after all the waiting and stuff I’ve had to do for it.” She put a white lozenge on her tongue. “I’ve had like eons of waiting already.”

  “When did you start thinking about all this?”

  “When Daddy got sick.”

  “He told you his plan?”

  “No, I had to ask him. I made him promise.”

  “All by yourself?”

  “No, Mom said I should.”

  “And was making me your guardian also your mother’s idea?”

  “No, dummy, she totally hates it. It was mine.”

  “Why?”

  “At first daddy wanted to put in my grandparents or some nice couple he knew. I said, ‘Oh please, no. They’ll just try to make me ordinary.’ I mean, bleh, gag, how boring. ‘But Uncle Jack won’t.’ ”

  “Right. Uncle Jack couldn’t.”

  “It’s the best part, don’t you think—me and you? Besides the money, I mean.”

  “You should be very grateful to your father, Missy. Philip was wonderfully generous.”

  “Well, what did you expect me to do when I grow up? Get a stupid job or something?”

  I had never thought of Melissa’s life in quite those stark terms. She gave me a long unreadable glance. As I watched, her tongue worked the mint around methodically inside her mouth.

  “Luckily,” I said, “you don’t have to worry about that now. Not ever.”

  “Good.”

  “While you’re in school, you can keep your place here. With a live-in nanny and housekeeper. With tutors. And I’ll be here, right up above.”

  “Like a guardian angel.”

  “Of sorts.”

  “Will you really take care of me, Uncle Jack? Always?”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “You know what I want.”

  “Do I? Tell me.”

  “I want us to be together. Just us.”

  “All right, we’ll put all this horror behind us.”

  “You’re the best. It will be our secret now, honey.”

  “Will it?”

  “You always wanted that, didn’t you?”

  “What?”

  “To have a secret with me. I wanted it, for sure.”

  “Well, you’ve gotten your wish then, Melissa.”

  “Of course. I always do.”

  For some reason, my right hand had begun to tremble.

  “Don’t worry,” Melissa said, noticing. “I’ll be good.”

  “I can only hope.”

  “You’ll see.” Smiling, she shifted restlessly again in the chair. “But why are you so far away, Uncle Jack? Let’s sit on the couch together.”

  She moved swiftly to the sofa. Drawing a deep breath, I followed in my own slow way. We sat side by side. It was not a cure for my trembling.

  “And what do you wish for now?” I asked

  “For you to come see me every day.”

  “All right, then, I will.”

  “Anytime, Uncle Jack. I’m right downstairs.”

  “Yes, I’ll come down every day.”

  “Or sometimes I’ll come up.”

  “Whatever you want, Missy.”

  “I know.”

  64

  That is nearly all I can remember now about the Oliver affair. I am surprised, really, how completely the scenes have come back to me, how effortlessly the words have flowed. Call it a feat of reclamat
ion. The SoHo we knew in those days has now vanished like a dead civilization, like the towers that once presided, ablaze with light, over our restive journeys through the downtown streets. To record this minor episode, to write it out with clarity and ease, in a sustained delirium, has required merely the shattering of my life, the death of several friends, the loss of my last tender illusions. Apparently that’s the price art commands, if it is more than a joke. But I’m not complaining. Fine merchandise, as any dealer will tell you, is always a bargain in the long run.

  Under my watchful eye, Melissa flourished. Once Angela’s arrest was reported, my art world friends, appalled by the travesty of motherhood, grew immediately sympathetic to Missy, holding the girl in a kind of sacred awe. The fact that she was “brilliant”—the term her tutors invariably used—certainly helped, but it wasn’t the only winning factor.

  My ward was utterly gracious. Even Missy’s nannies adored her. Unfailingly polite and obedient to them, she was like a model prisoner currying favor with her indulgent guards. (The same could not be said of Angela, who regarded her life sentence as a license to make each day hell for everyone else—especially her penitentiary mates and her low-wage, undereducated keepers.) The fortunate Melissa, unlike her mother, knew exactly when her freedom would come.

  Being the child of a murderer might have caused Missy some problems at the Bradford School. Instead, her familial calamity impressed her classmates and cowed the trustees. After a single emergency meeting, Mrs. Dorfman announced the board’s unanimous decision: “Surely this poor girl cannot be held in any way responsible for the crimes of her mother. The Bradford School will continue to welcome her.”

  It was all very uptown and enlightened. Hogan’s much-thumbed Bible may have something rather different to say on that score—the phrase “unto the third and fourth generation” sticks in my mind—but I concede that Old Testament interpretation is not my strong suit. Making large donations to educational institutions, however, is.

  New York University concurred with Bradford’s judgment. After Melissa earned her undergraduate degree—attending classes that were never more than a short walk away from the Wooster Street loft—she was swiftly admitted to the school’s Institute of Fine Arts up on 78th and Fifth. I was touched that she chose to study art history at my alma mater. Missy wanted, she said, “to find out how we got where we are culturally.”