Parisian Affair

by Gould, Judith

  'If he doesn't already know,' Todd said.

  The yacht was a floating palace, but unlike so many of the newly built temples to luxury that plied the warmer waters of the planet, it still had the air about it of being a ship. There was little plastic or fiberglass to be seen, nor were there waterfall chandeliers or fountains, tons of marble, or glitzy fabrics and furnishings. In their place were lots of teak and mahogany, high-maintenance brass and nickel, and natural fabrics on the furnishings. If the choice of materials used in its construction and decoration were old-fashioned, it still had every technological wonder available, including a Global Positioning System; two-way satellite communication; a digital navigation system with tracking software and 3-D charts; sonar; radar; and high-speed Internet connectivity capable of downloading large files, streaming video, and voice and video teleconferencing. Aside from the numerous large-screen plasma TVs and CD players and an onboard library for entertaining oneself, the vessel was equipped with a helicopter, speedboats, Jet Skis and Seascooters, and Windsurfers.

  It was not yet enjoyable yachting weather in the northeast, and normally the pleasure palace would have been in the Caribbean until summer. Hilton Whitehead had decided, however, that the occasion merited bringing the yacht from Saint Bart's to New York for a party cruise around Manhattan. He had quickly had the invitations hand delivered to titans of industry and society all over the world for the party, and he looked forward to using the occasion to announce his engagement to Kitty. At the same time, he would surprise her with the emerald ring that had belonged to Princess Karima.

  The yacht had arrived yesterday, docking in New Jersey because there wasn't a slip in Manhattan that would accommodate its vast length. Today, while the crew and caterers were busy preparing the huge vessel for the party the day after tomorrow at twilight, he had brought Kitty to New Jersey while he oversaw the details of the party.

  'You astound me sometimes, Hilton,' Kitty said, looking at him over the top of the latest issue of Italian Vogue, which she was devouring as if it were the Bible.

  He looked down at her, spread out on a blue-and-white-striped couch in the main salon. 'Why's that?' he said, smiling.

  'You have all these experts working for you, but you have to come out here to make certain they do everything right,' she said. 'I don't get it. What are you paying them for?'

  He pointed a finger at her. 'God is in the details, Kitty, and don't forget it,' he said amiably. 'I want this party to be perfect, and the only way to do that is be here and make sure nothing's overlooked.'

  She sighed with exasperation. 'I don't see what's so special about this party,' she replied. 'Just a bunch of businesspeople and a few high-society snobs. Why are you trying to impress them? You're more important than any of them.'

  'Well,' he said, 'it's sort of a special party.'

  She licked a finger and flipped another page of the magazine. 'I don't see anything special about it,' she said, looking down at the page, studying it with concentration.

  'You will,' he said. 'You will.'

  'Oh, really, Hilton,' she replied. 'You make it sound so mysterious. What are you going to do? Announce a new acquisition? A new merger?'

  'Maybe,' he said.

  'Personally,' she said, 'I think the best parties are those people have for no reason. Just to have a good time. So many of your parties are like boring business meetings for the men to have pissing contests and the women to make ridiculous small talk. A few of them try to outdress each other, but most of them look like cleaning women in borrowed clothes. Really, they're the most boring people on earth.'

  Hilton felt his jaw clench. Kitty was being a pain in the ass. If she only knew that all of this fuss was on her account, she might feel different, but he wasn't even certain about that. He knew that she couldn't stand most of his business associates or their wives, couldn't even abide most of the high-society folks he was friendly with. Kitty was more drawn to dissipated, self-indulgent hedonists who lived for parties and little else.

  'Look,' he said patiently, 'this party is important, and I hope you'll enjoy it. I know some of the people aren't very colorful, but most of them have really done something with their lives.'

  'Ha!' she said. 'Make money. That's all most of them have ever done, and they don't even know how to spend it.'

  'Kitty, that's ridiculous,' he said angrily. 'They just don't spend it the way you would. They give away millions of their money every year to very good causes. Some of them have started foundations for charity, built hospitals, orphanages, schools, museums—all kinds of things that may not be particularly sexy but make this world a better place.'

  Kitty knew that she'd gone too far again, and decided she'd better backtrack quickly. 'I didn't mean to upset you,' she said. 'I'm very sorry, Hilton.' She sat up on the couch and then rose to her feet and padded over to him. 'Please forgive me.' She kissed him. 'I just get a little bored with some of these people, you know. I know they're very nice and do good things. I didn't mean to put them down.'

  Hilton looked down into her eyes. No one had ever satisfied him sexually as Kitty did, but he'd come to decide lately that she was a con artist. He was beginning to ask himself if he could live with that. But now, seeing the plea written on her exquisitely exotic face and feeling her magnificent body next to his, he found it difficult not to tolerate her episodes of selfishness and vanity.

  She pressed her breasts against him and put her arms around him, stroking his long back and ass. 'Please,' she purred, looking up into his eyes. 'Hilton, I know I'm a naughty girl, but I'll try to be better for you. I promise.' She kissed him again and held him tightly.

  He felt the chemical attraction that he had no way of controlling. He returned her kiss, and his body immediately responded to her seductive power. Kitty moaned as his tongue sought out hers, and let one of her hands trail around to his thighs.

  Hilton's cell phone rang, and they both jerked slightly. 'Damn,' he said, drawing back from her. 'I have to get this.'

  'Not now,' she pleaded. 'Do you?'

  'Have to.' He released her and took the cell phone off its belt clip. 'Hilton Whitehead,' he said as Kitty retreated to the couch and spread out in a come-hither pose.

  'Hey,' he said, suddenly smiling. 'Give me just a second. I want to talk to you, but I've got to go to my stateroom. This place is a madhouse.'

  'You're on a boat?' Allegra asked.

  'Yeah,' he said. 'Docked in Jersey. I'm getting ready to throw a bash the day after tomorrow and was hoping you and Todd could get here in time for it.'

  'That sounds like fun,' Allegra said. 'Is this the—?'

  'It is,' Whitehead said. 'Just a second.' He had reached his stateroom and went in and locked the door behind him. 'Now,' he said, 'we can talk in privacy. Tell me what's going on.'

  'Well, there have been some little developments,' Allegra said. 'First, I wanted to tell you about last night. I'm sorry to say that Sylvie was killed in a car accident.'

  'Killed?' he gasped.

  'Yes,' Allegra said, 'and her friend Paul, too.' She told him the entire story. How Sylvie was trying to run down her and Todd, and the fiery conclusion to her efforts.

  When she finished, Hilton Whitehead exhaled a heavy sigh. 'It was so pointless,' he finally said. 'She was a good kid, deep down inside, I think. She was a great employee, and I'm really mystified by this.'

  'I feel the same way,' Allegra said.

  'I'm glad you let me know,' Whitehead said. 'I've been more or less out of touch getting ready for this party.'

  'There's something else,' Allegra said.

  'What's that?'

  'Today, Todd and I paid a call on Princess Karima.'

  'You what? I don't believe it.'

  'Yes. I wanted to see her response to the supposed mix-up at Dufour,' Allegra said. She gave him the details of their adventure.

  'You two are something else,' he said with a chuckle. 'I ought to hire you to work for me.'

  Allegra laughed. 'I d
on't think we could take much more of this.'

  'I probably won't be able to get hold of anybody at Dufour today,' Whitehead said, 'but Monday I'll start calling in some favors. I know a couple of people on their board, and we might be able to get to the bottom of this.'

  'There's one more thing I thought you might be able to help us with.'

  She told him about the wire transfers and the telephone numbers. 'When I looked at the wire transfers,' Allegra said, 'I also saw her address book. These names and numbers fell out of it.'

  'Hang on a second,' he said. 'Let me get a pen and paper.'

  Allegra waited silently, noting that they were already nearing the Porte d'ltalie and would be back at the hotel in a short time.

  Whitehead came back on the line and she gave him the names and their corresponding numbers. 'I don't know if finding out who these people are will get us anywhere or not,' she said. 'They could be gardeners, but something tells me they aren't.

  'You know, this Princess Karima is beginning to smell like a rat. She's obviously funneling money into an Arab bank and wants it kept quiet,' Whitehead said. 'Listen, I'll get on this right away, then give you a call. It'll take at least an hour or two, but I'll get back to you.'

  'Thanks a lot, Hilton,' Allegra said.

  He hung up, and Allegra pushed the END button, flipped the cell phone shut, and looked over at Todd. 'He's going to get to work on those telephone numbers right away,' she said.

  'I hope he can find something out,' Todd said. 'If nothing else, it would be nice to know what's going on with the princess.'

  Allegra could see the twin towers of Notre-Dame in the distance. 'It'll be nice to be back at the Ritz,' she said. 'I want to take a shower and have a nap. How about you?'

  He glanced at her and smiled. 'I like the idea,' he said. 'I like it a lot. We can save water and shower together.'

  Allegra laughed. 'Ah, ever the conservationist.'

  'Oh, yes,' he agreed. 'It's the only way to go.'

  CHAPTER 22

  Jason awoke with a pounding headache and a cotton mouth. His body felt leaden, and he wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep. It was the awful dehydration that finally forced him out of bed and into the kitchen, where he chugalugged three glasses of water, one after the other. He went into the bathroom then and looked at himself in the mirror. His hair was a rat's nest, his skin blotchy, and there were telltale circles under his bloodshot eyes. The groan that escaped his lips was almost a squeak. His throat was still parched.

  Retracing his steps to the kitchen, he poured a glass of orange juice and drank it down in one swallow, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He had never had a hangover like this before in his life. But then, he reminded himself, he'd never had so much to drink, mixed with all those drugs. He slumped into a chair at the small kitchen table, his throbbing head in his hands.

  The evening had begun with Cameron taking him to three very popular bars, all of them packed with hot guys. He'd bought him drink after drink—Scotch and water—and enthusiastically introduced him to some of the most eligible men in New York. Cameron had shepherded him through the maze of glitzy, expensive gathering places like a prize bull, and when they finally left for the restaurant, Jason had never shaken so many hands or been kissed by so many handsome men.

  At the restaurant, they had joined three couples, a famous fashion designer and his partner, a well-known interior decorator and his friend, and an enormously rich Wall Street investment adviser and his boy toy. There had been more cocktails, followed by exorbitantly expensive wine with dinner, topped off by after-dinner drinks.

  As midnight approached, Jason began to flag and was ready to go back to the apartment and hit the sack. 'We've only begun,' Cameron told him. 'The night's young.' That was when he herded Jason into a bathroom stall at the restaurant and took a small tin of cocaine out of his jacket pocket. He handed Jason a straw. 'Take a good healthy snort up each nostril, baby,' he said.

  Jason had second thoughts. He'd smoked marijuana a few times years ago, but otherwise he'd never experimented with drugs. Cameron persisted, however, and Jason finally did as he was told. He felt the cocaine almost immediately. It was as if it exploded in his brain. Suddenly he no longer felt tired. His body, in fact, seemed to vibrate with energy, and he couldn't wipe away the smile that had come to his lips.

  'We're off to the clubs now,' Cameron said. Thus began an odyssey through Manhattan's hippest dance clubs that lasted till the early hours of the next morning. Hours of dancing and necking with wild abandon. Hours of drinking one drink after another. Hours of snorting cocaine. Hours of downing ecstasy. Hours of sniffing amyl nitrite.

  Jason poured another glass of orange juice and sipped it this time. The water and juice combined were beginning to quench his thirst. Now if he could get rid of the excruciating throb in his head, he would feel a little more human. He got up from the table and quietly went back into the bedroom, then tiptoed into the bathroom. In the medicine cabinet he found a bottle of aspirin. He took three 375-milligram tablets, swallowing them down with a small glass of water. Tiptoeing back through the bedroom, he glanced at the bed and stopped in his tracks.

  Cameron and another man, whose name he couldn't remember— Gary? Greg? Gray?—were curled up together, Cameron's arms thrown across the young man's shoulders. They both slept soundly, the picture of satiated bliss, undisturbed by Jason's presence.

  Jason thought he was going to be sick. He remembered Cameron's luring the young man back home with them. The way his eyes and hands had been all over the stranger's body. His constant reassurances to Jason that it meant nothing. 'Everybody does it, right?' he'd said. 'It's nothing, baby. He'll just make our own sex even better.'

  Jason quickly left the bedroom and returned to the kitchen, where he sat back down at the table. He put his head in his hands and felt the sweat beading on his forehead and a discomforting feeling in the pit of his stomach. Grabbing a tea towel, he wiped his face, then sat staring into space.

  Tears suddenly sprang into his eyes, and trying to control the impulse to cry, he brushed at them with his fingers. He realized now that Cameron, while he might genuinely find him attractive, had simply used him as a way to gratify his own ravenous sexual desires. His protestations of love had meant nothing.

  Tears began to run down Jason's face, and sobs began to shake his body. He put his hands over his mouth to try to keep from making any noise. I was such a fool, he thought. Such a blind idiot. He's been using me for sex like some kind of toy and, much more important, to get hold of Allegra's designs.

  Because, truth be told, Jason finally had to admit that Cameron had run out of ideas. That, or he was simply too lazy to come up with them and then follow through with their execution. He was looking for a shortcut, the easy way out, and he'd found it when he met Jason. He'd lured Jason with sex and vows of undying love, and Jason had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker, becoming his willing accomplice in the theft of Allegra's work.

  How could I have been so stupid? he wondered. How could I have gotten mixed up with someone so unscrupulous? How could I have failed to see that he's nothing but a fraud?

  Jason felt as if he needed to take a long, hot shower, to wash away the memory of the man. He got up and pulled a length of paper towel from its holder and blew his nose, then leaned back against the granite kitchen counter, listless and miserable. He had never felt as lonely in his life as he did at this moment, he realized. What he would give to have a friend to talk to. But there was no one. Allegra had always been that person, and now he'd betrayed her trust.

  As the throbbing in his temples gradually dissipated and he became more clearheaded, he realized what he had to do. And nobody would stop him. He'd seen the error of his ways, and he was going to try his best to correct the mistakes he'd made.

  He went into Cameron's study, where they'd stacked the Xeroxes of Allegra's designs, and began putting them in his backpack and the duffel bag, which were still on Cameron's desk
. When he finished that, he opened the desk drawer into which he'd seen Cameron drop the bags of precious and semiprecious stones. He recalled how Cameron had done it with a carefree flourish of his hand, as if the stones were worthless garbage. Jason took the little bags of stones out and put them in the backpack.

  He left the study and placed the backpack and the duffel bag near the front door, then tiptoed back through the bedroom to the bathroom. There, he retrieved his shaving gear, toothbrush, and sundry items, shoving them all into his leather travel kit. He crept into the bedroom then and quietly gathered the clothes he'd worn the night before, not forgetting his shoes and socks.

  He dressed in the kitchen, then got his coat out of the closet in the entrance hall. Starting for the door, he changed his mind and went back to the kitchen. On a notepad used for grocery lists, he penciled a note to Cameron:

  Cameron,

  I'm leaving and taking the Xeroxes and stones with me. I've left some clothes. You can keep them, although I hardly think they're your style, but I'd appreciate it if you had them sent to my apartment. I don't want to discuss this with you or see you again. Please don't try to contact me.

  Jason

  Ram stepped into his library on rue Elzevir and crossed to the gilt console that served as a drinks table. Pouring two fingers of Armagnac into a cut-crystal old-fashioned glass, he downed it in a single swallow. He didn't want to drink too much, though. He wanted to be in top form for the upcoming evening. He was excited and energized by the mere thought of what lay ahead.

  He crossed the rug to his large Napoleonic desk and sat down behind it. Last night had been a successful evening, he thought as he lit a cigar. Josette had provided temporary satisfaction, but it had been nothing more than an amusing diversion. He was glad he'd called and brought her here, not something he usually did. She was elegant and sophisticated and always had the latest gossip, as she had connections in the highest levels of government, industry, business, and society. She had assuaged his sexual appetite in a ladylike fashion, as she was paid a small fortune to do, and now she would delight her powerful and wealthy clients with tales of Ram's prowess, his opulent home and exquisite tastes, and his generosity. Josette, however, had served only to whet his voracious appetite. It was tonight that would bring him the kind of satisfaction that people seldom achieved. He was certain of that.