The Man Who Loved Women to Death

by David Handler

I HAD PARKED THE Jag out front, my beloved red 1958 XK 150 drophead with its 60-spoke wire wheels, every inch of it original. I got in with Lulu next to me and started it up and cranked up the heat as high as it would go, which isn’t real high. Especially when you’re already feeling frozen.

  Very and Feldman stood there at the curb watching me, Feldman muttering something sour at him, Very’s jaw muscles clenching and unclenching. I watched them watching me. Then I got out of there fast.

  I headed uptown to my personal crumple zone, my drafty old fifth-floor walk-up on West Ninety-third, which I’d had since I first moved to New York and which I still kept as an office. This is where I go to brood and to pace and to think my nondeep thoughts. It’s not much. A small, dingy living room. A smaller, dingier bedroom. But it’s my refuge, my treehouse, my fort—no girls or babies allowed. Not that they ever came knocking. Merilee loathed the place and Tracy was forbidden to go there. Too many germs.

  The only bad part was the climb. My landlord wasn’t making it any easier—he kept adding another flight of steps every couple of years so as to drive me out. Even Lulu was starting to notice it. She slowed up herself when we reached the fourth-floor landing. Only, she wasn’t out of breath. She wasn’t so much as panting.

  She was stalking, her large black nose aquiver.

  Slowly, quietly, she resumed climbing. Until halfway up the steps to the top floor she froze, her hackles rising, a low, menacing growl coming from her throat …

  My apartment door was open. Maybe an inch.

  Someone was in there. I could hear a drawer being opened, then closed. Footsteps. I stood there on the stairs, wheezing, weighing my options. I thought about tiptoeing back downstairs to call the police, only, Lulu had other ideas. She does that sometimes—freelances. This was one of those times.

  She charged the door, teeth bared, a savage roar coming from her throat. Made straight for the bedroom, her nails clacketing, clacketing on the parquet floor. I heard a scream. A bloodcurdling woman’s scream. Followed by a voice I would know anywhere:

  “GEEZ, HOAGY, GET HER THE HELL AWFFA ME, WILL YA?!”

  I relaxed at once. Because there was only one person in the whole wide world who actually was afraid of Lulu and that person was Cassandra Dee, star of Face to Face or Cheek to Jowl or whatever the hell it was called.

  She was standing on a chair inside my bedroom closet, the better to go through the personal papers that were stored up on the top shelf. Lulu was circling the chair, barking up at her furiously. She had the poor woman treed.

  “How did you get in, Cassandra?” I asked, standing there in the bedroom doorway.

  “I shmeared the super, okay?” she cried in her nasal Bensonhurst bray. “Now w-will ya—?”

  “No kidding, I have a super?”

  “C-Call her off, will ya!” Cassandra was approaching hysteria.

  “Not until you tell me what you were looking for.”

  “Okay, okay. The answer man’s letters, okay? I f-figured maybe you’d hide ’em here. C’mon, Hoagy, will ya?”

  I called Lulu off. She snarfled victoriously and went swaggering off to the living room to patrol there for other enemy invaders and to gloat.

  Cassandra immediately leaped off the chair into my arms. “Gawd, cookie, I missed ya!” She kissed me hard on the mouth. “Chew my tights off,” she commanded me. “I’m yours.”

  Cassandra Dee hadn’t changed all that much since the last time I’d seen her. She was still tall and willowy, still young, still attractive in a vampy, campy sort of way. I always thought she came off looking like a mime done up as Betty Boop. Chiefly because of her eyes, which were permanently goggly, and her brows, which she plucked and penciled into high, exaggerated arches. Her skin was a vivid milk-white, her lips and nails a vivid crimson, her hair an abundantly curly mane of black. She wore an oversized, fuzzy gray sweater-coat-kimono thing with a big shiny leather belt around it, black leggings and a pair of those stupid race-car-driver moccasins with the bumps on the sole that everyone was wearing. A camelhair steamer coat was tossed carelessly on my bed.

  “There you go again, Cassandra. Playing hard to get.”

  “I ain’t playing at nothing, cookie. I’m doin’ it. I’m schmokin’.”

  Indeed she was. Because Cassandra Dee, short for D’Amico, had changed. Or maybe I should say the world had changed around her. She was still what she always had been—a bare-knuckle Brooklyn street fighter, a relentless tabloid reporter with no ethics, no regrets and no conscience whatsoever. In ghosting circles, she was known as the mistress of the slash-and-burn. Until she got out of the printed word altogether. Went to work for Hard Copy and never looked back. The pack ate her dust on Joey and Amy, on Nancy and Tonya, on John and Lorena Bobbitt. The O. J. Simpson trial, the story that forever blurred the distinction between tabloid and so-called respectable news, had landed her on the cover of People. The headline read: CAN’T ANYONE STOP DIS GOIL? No one could. Because Cassandra was, quite simply, a bad idea whose time had come. She ran her own half-hour tabloid news show now. She ran it, she owned it, she was it. On the air, Cassandra was equal parts sleaze monger, sensationalist, sob sister and shill. And she was fast becoming one of the biggest stars on television. Not as big as Oprah but getting there. Her audience adored her. Her colleagues hated her. Me, I’d always been somewhat fond of her. Maybe because she never pretended to be anything other than what she was. Maybe because she had always looked up to me. I never quite knew why.

  “C’mon, already,” she pleaded, tugging at the sleeves of my coat. “Lemme see his letters, will ya?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Cassandra.” She let out a shriek. “Cookie, this is me you’re talking to, not some uptight politically correct Times know-nothing bimbo. I’m on to him, okay? I know that he’s writing you. I know that he’s already struck twice. And I know that he’s the next Son of Sam. I’m calling him ‘The Man Who Loves Women to Death.’ Whaddaya think? … Okay, okay. You’re right. It sucks. I’ll work on it. Trouble is, the department won’t confoim. They’re too freaked, on account of this is the kind of story keeps the German tourists away and the locals from heading out after dark. But I’m breaking it on tonight’s show no matter how hard they lean on me. You lean on me, I bust ya in the fucking chops, baby. First blood, y’know what I’m saying?” She shot a hurried glance at her watch. “Look, I got a car and driver outside. I tape in a hour. So let’s not dick around, huh? Talk to me, Marine to Marine …” Now she froze, staring at me with her protuberant eyes. “What, why are you looking at me that way?”

  “I enjoy listening to you work. I can’t help it.”

  “You mean you missed me?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Gawd, Hoagy, I’m getting shivers down my backbone. You wreck me, you know that?”

  “That’s me, all right. A head-on collision.”

  “Promise me you won’t laugh—what am I saying, you never laugh—I missed you, too. Wanna know why? You got class. Not fake class, like Ralph Lauren or Martha Stewart or me. You’re the real thing. And, Gawd, you look gorgeous. That jacket you got on, what is that?”

  “It’s called houndstooth.”

  “Can I try it on?”

  “You may not. Guys don’t do that.”

  I moved into the living room. She had gone through my desk before she tried the closet. The drawers were open, the contents tossed. She followed me in there, eyeing Lulu, who was now totally focused on the door of the refrigerator. She was waiting for an anchovy reward. I went and got her one.

  “How much you pay for this place, anyway?” Cassandra asked, checking out the walls and ceiling, which hadn’t been painted in twenty years.

  “Three hundred a month.”

  “You’re getting hosed. I’ve heard of downscale chic but this is over the top.” She hugged herself with her arms. “And did they ever hear of a little thing called heat? I can see my breath.”

  “Have a seat, Cassandra.”r />
  She looked around. “Where?”

  I cleared the piles of newspapers and magazines from the loveseat. She sat. Lulu came over to sniff her legs and to scare her. Then she curled up in my easy chair, tail thumping happily. It isn’t often she gets to intimidate anyone.

  Cassandra immediately went back into action: “So tell me what you’re not telling me, cookie.” Her patented phrase. She stole it from me, actually. Except for the “cookie” part.

  I sat in my desk chair, an old captain’s chair that swiveled. “I have nothing to say, Cassandra.”

  “Yeah, yeah, shewa. You wanna deal, we’ll deal. You are talking to Domino’s—I deliver … I want ya exclusive, okay? I’ll pay you twenty-five grand a week to appear on my show every night until the answer man is caught. All you gotta do is tell the audience in your own words what’s happening. Two minutes tops. If the trial gets huge, we can renegotiate, okay? Whaddaya say? You don’t know what to say, am I right? You’re dumbstruck. You cannot believe how phat this is gonna be, you and me together in fifty million homes every night. We will go through the fucking roof.”

  “Tried it. Got one monstrous headache.”

  “Hoagy, read my lips: I can turn you into the thinking man’s Kato Kaelin.”

  Lulu let out a low growl.

  Cassandra eyed her warily. “What, what did I say?”

  “She’s just confused about the particulars. Do I or do I not have to bite the heads off live chickens?”

  Cassandra heaved her chest at me. “Okay, you’re doing an elitist number on me. Cookie, honey, sweetie, it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee. For as long as there has been civilization, people have gone to the circus. Now, thanks to the miracle of modern technology, the circus comes to them.”

  “On every channel, twenty-four hours a day.”

  “No one makes them watch.”

  “I don’t agree. I think there’s an evil spirit out there, the same one that makes them eat Egg McMuffins and shop at Wal-Mart.”

  “As if. They watch because they want to watch. And who are we to say they shouldn’t? Besides which, and I don’t mean to be critical, but you make it sound like you haven’t been a major player yourself. You’re the champ. That’s why you’re my idol.”

  “Still? I figured you would have moved on to Barbara Wawa by now.”

  “Uh-uh. That’s not how it works. When somebody’s your idol they’re your idol for life, like pigeons mating. Except you know what your problem is, Hoagy? You can’t enjoy the one thing in life that you’re best at.”

  “Oh, that. It’s a blood thing. Merely goes back six or seven generations.”

  “They got a name for it?”

  “In some circles it’s called being gentile.”

  “Gawd, I have this dream that someday I’ll wake up and understand everything you say.”

  “That’s amazing. I have that same dream, too.”

  “What, that I’ll understand what you say?”

  “No, that I will. Problem is, I keep waking up in the middle of it with leg cramps. Do you think I need more potassium in my diet?”

  “You’ll get a huge book out of it,” she pointed out. “Enough to put over your new novel.”

  “How did you know I have a new novel?”

  “Like I don’t follow your every move? Like I don’t pitcha us two riding off into the sunset together someday? Tell me what you want and it’s yours. You want my help selling the novel? Because, cookie, you are sitting on top of a major buzz ploy here. Just say the woid and I can put you on the bestseller list.”

  “Why settle for mainstream success when you can enjoy the comforts of a small, nongrowing cult?”

  “I give up,” she said wearily. “What do you want? Talk to me.”

  “I want you to tell me how you found out.”

  “That’s easy.” She got up and went over to the window, not that it’s far. She got a good view of the courtyard, not that it’s much. “It got leaked.”

  “By who?”

  “I got my sources at One Police Plaza.”

  “Feldman?”

  She turned to face me. “The Human Hemorrhoid? Yech, no way. He’s too busy telling everyone what a fucking genius he is. Nah, some deputy commish. Cost me a lousy hand job in his car. And he didn’t even deliver his payload, the old fat fuck. All he—”

  “I don’t need to hear this part.”

  “And now they are sooo desperate to keep a lid on it,” she went on, her eyes bright with excitement. “I mean, you wouldn’t believe the ’tude I got from some butthead named Romaine Very on the phone this morning.”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “This guy was nasty. He even accused me of making the whole thing up just to further my career, that scumbag, that dick, that—”

  “The lieutenant’s a huge fan of yours, Cassandra. In fact, he thinks you’re the second-best-looking woman on television.”

  “Who’s better looking?” she demanded angrily. “Little Courteney Fucking Cox? Who?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  She softened slightly. “Is he cute?”

  “Very.”

  “That’s who I’m talking about. Is he?”

  “In my opinion, he’s a stud muffin.”

  “Will you introduce me?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? You ashamed of me?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  She heaved a huge sigh. “Gawd, I’d give anything to get with someone.”

  “Hold it. This sounds like a personal problem.”

  “Night after night I rattle around in my house … Did I tell you I got my own friggin’ brownstone on West Tenth?”

  “That must be nice.”

  “It sucks. I’m so lonesome I’m ready to go out the window. I ain’t asking for the moon anymore, either. I’ve lowered my sights. All I ask is he’s got a fresh, unused brain and a good sense of direction.”

  “Direction?”

  “As in he knows the southern route,” she explained, with a flirty glint in her eyes.

  Lulu grunted sourly. Cassandra’s a bit unrefined for her.

  Now Cassandra came over and stood before me, rested her hands on my shoulders, which got a low growl from Lulu. She removed them. “Talk to me, Hoagy. Who is he? Who is the answer man?”

  “I don’t know, Cassandra.”

  “Okay, okay, how about this: Do you deny receiving two detailed accounts of his murders from the answer man? I’m talking on the record now.”

  “I have no comment.”

  She rolled her eyes. “But I thought we were going to deal.”

  “We did. You told me how you found out, in exchange for which I’m not going to call Lieutenant Very and have him arrest you for breaking and entering.”

  She peered down at me. “You’ve changed, y’know that? You’ve gotten … respectable.”

  “That would be this whole fatherhood thing. Do you see me in a homburg?”

  “Honey, I see you naked on my kitchen floor, slathered in peanut butter.”

  “Smooth or crunchy?”

  She ran her finger along my chin. “So, what, you’re a family man now?”

  “I’m a family man. Me and Charlie Manson.”

  “Gonna show me a baby pitcha or you gonna make me beg?”

  “Do I honestly look like one of those boring fathers who carries around baby pictures?”

  She just stared at me.

  “Well, if you’re going to insist …” I pulled out my wallet and opened it for her.

  “Geez, you got a whole friggin’ portfolio here.” She started leafing through it. “Ain’t her head a little large?”

  “It is not.” I snatched it back from her.

  “You and that green-eyed goody-goody still getting along?”

  “If by that you mean Merilee, the answer is yes.”

  “Me, I keep thinking one day you’ll wake up and realize you want a real woman. Somebody with Mediterranean blood coursing throu
gh her veins. Somebody who’d throw herself in front of a moving car for you. Me, in case I ain’t making myself clear.” Again she sighed. “But you’re wearing me out, Hoagy. I’m getting tired of waiting for ya.” She went and got her coat from the bed. She had a small black Ghurka card case in one of the pockets. She opened it and handed me a card. “In case you change your mind, all my numbers are on there—E-mail, voice mail, fax, the woiks.” I helped her on with her coat. She looked good in it, and she knew it. “I’m gonna reel the answer man in, Hoagy. You just watch me.”

  “I want you to watch yourself.”

  “Yeah, yeah, shewa. Egg me on.”

  “I mean it, Cassandra. This guy is a cold-blooded killer. Be careful.”

  “Careful’s my middle name. Actually, it’s not. It’s Apollonia. But I always hated it.” She kissed me again, on the cheek this time. Lulu watched her sternly. “You don’t fool me, y’know,” Cassandra said coyly. “I know why you won’t introduce me to Very.”

  “You do?”

  “Shewa. You’re saving me for yourself. You know it and I know it. And one of these days, cookie, I am gonna rock your world.”

  Okay, that was enough for Lulu. One toke over the line, happy-home-wise. She bared her fangs and charged, chasing Cassandra Dee screaming out the door. Barked “And stay out!” after her and harrumphed and made all sorts of territorial she-gal noises. Me, I locked the door and put the chain on. Also some Garner.

  Then I stood there staring at the framed photograph that was hanging over the loveseat.

  It was a photograph of three college track stars in uniform. How proud we three looked, squinting at the bright sun and the even brighter future that lay ahead of us. How sure. How ready. Each of us with our hands clasped before us like good little schoolboys in a class picture. Each of us with a crooked thumb sticking out of the bottom of our track shorts in a most X-rated manner. I was the one on the left, the third best javelin thrower in the entire Ivy League, looking tall and gangly and awful damned cocky. On the right, in the wire-rimmed glasses, was Ezra Spooner, looking like he was twenty going on forty. He was already balding. In between us, with his huge sloping shoulders and his wavy blond hair and his lopsided grin, was Tuttle Cash. We made quite some trio, we did—the angry young author, the unassuming numbers wonk and the Greek god.