Visibly relieved that she was not entertaining a handyman, she resumed her path to the booze. “I can see why. She was a pretty young thing.”
She had suddenly remembered the tragedy and her face sagged; behind the booze and the brittle facade may have lurked a woman of substance. Abruptly she said, “I should never have hired her…” She had reached the sanctuary of the bar and her voice trailed off under the sound of rattling bottles.
“Why not?”
“Do you bring candy to a diabetic? Misha has a serious sweet tooth when it comes to women. Cassie was only fifteen when I hired her last summer, but she turned sixteen in the fall. Sweet, sweet sixteen. And Misha started going out to the beach more. Good weather and bad.”
“They were having an affair?”
“I hope not. But who’d ever know for absolutely sure? He was smitten, and he doesn’t give up easily. If she had any sense she turned him down. And please don’t dignify Misha’s every score with ‘affair.’” She was drunk but she wasn’t stupid.
“I gather you two aren’t getting along.”
“Never better. I haven’t seen the bastard in weeks. I got what I deserved.”
“How’s that?” I prompted, although this woman didn’t need prompting.
“Thinking I could civilize him after two wives failed. But they were Russians, raised to expect nothing from their man but a kid or two and a belt across the chops on Saturday night.” She handed me a generous Scotch on the rocks. Her own was even bigger. “I forget. What was it brought you here?”
“I care what happened to Cassie. I think you do too.”
The brittle shell was easily punctured. She said softly, “I wish I knew who did that. And why. Misha is cunning and he’s got the conscience of a house plant. But that…” She couldn’t say it, and her sculptured jaw quivered. “What happened. That’s not his style. Not anymore. Cassie may have brought it on herself.”
“How?”
“Exploring the world of grown-ups. Testing her powers and going too far. What do you think?”
I didn’t want to speculate about that. I said, “I don’t know what she was like at the end. We’d been out of touch for months.”
She let me off the hook. “Yes, at that age months can be years. God, can they.” Her face softened further at some memory. I took a closer look. Tarnished gentility now, she must have been something at that age.
I changed the subject. “All those wives, including you—did any of you teach Misha to make a bed?”
“Misha? He resented having to tie his own shoes. Russian men!” And then, shrewdly, “Didn’t you say you weren’t a cop?”
“I’m not. But a question keeps nagging me. I don’t figure your husband for a nester. And yet his bed at the house was made this morning—not made well, maybe too quickly, but made. Sheets, blankets, pillows, cushions, bedspread, the works. And not by Cassie—she hadn’t even begun her housework when she was killed. That bed must have been made up when Misha left for the city last weekend. Any idea who might have done it?”
“None. Except, you’re right, it wasn’t Misha. In all our years together I never saw him make a bed. Even badly.”
I took a shot. “Is there someone else here who can help us with this?”
She dug a hand in her yellow hair. “What do you mean, someone else?”
“Am I sticking my nose in where I shouldn’t?”
Kitty stared at me, but she said nothing. She hadn’t stopped drinking since I arrived but she had been growing progressively less drunk.
I said, “Okay. I’m looking at two sections of the Times on two chairs, one folded neatly, the other badly. By different hands?”
She took a moment before she said, “You are a cop.”
“Again, no. But I used to be. I got it right, huh?”
She called, “Roy!” And then, “Roy, would you come in here, please?” And then, to me, “It’s no big deal. My brother moved in when I threw Misha out. They’ve never gotten along. You’d never say anything about his being here…?”
I shook my head. “You threw Misha out because of Cassie?”
“No. How could I compete with that? My blood boiled over only when he went after women past thirty.” She looked at me and she was no longer vaguely flirty; she was suddenly too insecure to go on using me for target practice.
I took a swipe at reassuring her. “The better-looking the woman, the more she hates rejection. I’d hate to be near when your blood boils. I hear you pitch chairs.”
She may have seen through my flattery, but she rallied. “I’ve heard that too. It’s not true. Sunbathing breeds gossip. All that lying around with nothing to do.”
The brother had walked into the room; he had pulled on a sweatshirt over rumpled cords, but he hadn’t taken the time to comb his hair. I had figured, brother my eye; she’s taken a live-in lover. But he did look like her—a softer version, pudgy, with drooping eyelids and a self-conscious languor. I’d have given odds that he had been out of work for two years while he looked for “a really suitable business opportunity.”
Kitty introduced him as “Roy Chalmers, my baby brother,” and me as a “Mr. Shale.” She hadn’t been so drunk as not to remember my name. Roy allowed in a faintly preppy voice that he was pleased to meet me, as though I had shown up for an audience. I decided that this pair might be the remnants of a once proud WASP family that had gone through the last of the money.
“Roy,” Kitty said, “if I told you someone was currently playing house at the beach with my dear husband—even made his bed for him—would you take a guess?”
“Only if there’s a prize for getting it right the first time.” He didn’t wait. “Let’s see, I’d look for someone witchy, greedy, and calculating—a woman who may be better at unmaking beds than at making them, but who’d better nail him before her looks fade and her chances vanish.”
Kitty’s lips tightened; the tail end of that description cut too close to the bone. But she said, “You do have someone in mind.”
“Of course. So must you. Olivia Cooper. Or you wouldn’t have thrown that beach chair last summer. Kit, have you given any thought to dinner? What would you say to the little Turkish place we discovered last week?”
He had dismissed me. I stayed only long enough to learn that Olivia Cooper lived in Manhattan, and I left brother and sister arguing dinner plans over fresh drinks.
NINE
CHINATOWN WAS CREEPING up on this part of Little Italy; in five years it would vanish in a sea of wonton soup and black bean sauce.
Muccio’s didn’t seem to notice. I hadn’t been to the joint in nearly two years, but it might as well have been ten. The front room never changed; I suspect it had looked this way since Rocco Muccio opened the doors in 1922 to share with the world his wife’s punishing version of Sicilian cooking. Rocco’s son Jack was not so much maintaining a tradition as failing to see that the moldering place had one. The regulars didn’t care; if they didn’t object to the food—Jack’s cousin Angelina was keeping up the standard in the kitchen—why would they complain that the decor was fifty years out-of-date?
That front room still had all the warmth of a storefront gypsy mitt joint. A long bar, scarred and bruised, was the main attraction here. Above the back bar hung an overripe nude in overripe colors I had painted for Jack Muccio twenty years ago in exchange for meals. Looking at it now gave me the same heartburn as Angelina’s cooking.
A few drinkers could usually be found at the bar, but diners ate in the large backroom. I had never seen any of the four tables in here occupied. Forty years ago two mob hit men had lurched through the front door and sprayed this room with submachine guns, killing two patrons and wounding four, although none was the rat fink they were after. He was in the john at the time, upchucking Mrs. Muccio’s linguini con vongole. Ever since the massacre, the tables in the front room had been considered undesirable.
I had forgotten that on Friday and Saturday nights a pudding-faced woman named Mona held forth
in the front room on an electric dreadnaught; when I came in the door she was winding up a bone-rattling “Volare.” “Lieutenant Shale!” she yelled happily, over it.
It was good to be remembered. “How goes it, Mona?” I asked and stuffed a couple of bucks in the cloudy tooth glass she kept next to the keyboard.
“Not bad,” she yelled, “except for a touch of arthritis in the fingers.”
“Mona, you mean you haven’t always had that?”
She laughed appreciatively and launched into “Sorrento.” It was as though I had never been away.
I bellied up to the bar and a full-throated greeting from Jack’s nephew Enzo, the bartender. “Sid-ney!” he said; he always gave me the measured two syllable treatment. “Long time. You been dead or something? Your gang is in the backroom.”
“In a while, Enzo. Good to see you. I’m expecting a lady.”
“Here?”
I wasn’t surprised at his surprise. “Not to eat. Would I lay a lawsuit on the joint? What’s new?”
“Here?” he said again, and looked confused; I had forgotten that nothing was ever new at Muccio’s. “I miss you, Sid-ney. The guys miss you. I think even the button men miss you.”
He was pouring me a red wine, my usual drink here. I said, “No, Enzo, I’m on Scotch.”
He gave me a look that said, Aren’t we fancy tonight: expecting a lady, drinking Scotch. He poured the wine back in the jug and reached for the well scotch. I wasn’t so fancy that he would offer me a premium brand.
I looked at my watch: five to eight. Olivia Cooper had agreed to meet me here at eight.
After Roy Chalmers’s unflattering capsule description of her I had expected to be given a hard time when I phoned, but she had been receptive, even cordial. Cassie Brennan’s murder had made the six o’clock newscasts, she told me, and although she knew the girl mostly from having seen her at work at the Sharanov house, she was, of course, shocked by the news.
When I started to explain who I was, she interrupted to say, “Of course. I know who you are. I’ve passed your house.” She paused, and I sensed she was stifling a giggle. “It’s right out of a kindergarten crayon drawing. You do know how to express yourself.”
“Thank you.”
She lived on Gramercy Park, not that far uptown, and yes, she was agreeable to meeting me for a drink—just for a drink, she made clear—to talk about the murder. I suspected she was at least as interested in taking a look at the painter who lived in the weird house east of Sharanov’s. I had to repeat Muccio’s address twice; I think if I had given it to her before she agreed to come, she might have turned me down.
She showed at eight straight up. Mona’s mighty organ had just finished returning us to Sorrento when Enzo said, “That’s got to be your lady.”
I gave her a gold star for punctuality, turned on my bar stool, and gave her another for looks. I had been half prepared for the femme fatale Roy Chalmers had described; what I got in the doorway was a trim, vital woman in her thirties with an easy smile and dirty blonde hair worn what the hell. I went to meet her, and while I introduced myself she sized me up and seemed reasonably satisfied.
As an icebreaker, I suppose, she began describing the difficulty her Pakistani cabdriver had finding this place; meanwhile she was drifting toward the table area. I took her arm and steered her, with apologies, to the bar, where the four or five other patrons were seated.
She looked around as she climbed onto a stool. “Doesn’t anyone sit at the tables?” she asked.
“Not since they peeled the bodies off them in 1957.”
Her lips formed a respectful “Oh.” She didn’t have a follow-up question, and I asked her what she would like to drink. Enzo was standing by attentively.
“A gin martini?” she said doubtfully. “Straight up?”
I said, “Enzo, this is Ms. Cooper.” As they shook hands, I continued, “Enzo can tell the red wine from the white and he can read the labels on whisky bottles. Mixed drinks…”
Enzo chuckled and produced a dusty pitcher. “For a friend of Sid-ney, why not?” He set to work and we averted our eyes.
I said, “I’m sorry to drag you down to this joint. I’m joining some friends for dinner.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Here?” she said.
“It’s a manhood test. You’ve seen Indians walk on hot coals?”
“Okay.” She was satisfied.
I had been studying her. She was even better-looking than I first thought. She had a glow. And high cheekbones, a straight-ahead nose, well-shaped lips. Sharanov had taste. “So, are you still seeing Misha?” I asked.
“If I was seeing Misha, would I be free on a Friday night on thirty minutes’ notice to have a drink with a stranger?”
“You might be, if he was under arrest.”
That brought her erect on her bar stool. “Is he?”
“I have no idea. I wanted to see if you were paying attention.”
She leaned toward me and bit down on the words. “Does this satisfy you? I am not ‘seeing’ Misha, I never ‘saw’ Misha. Misha is a married man.”
“Technically.”
“I’m a stickler for technicalities. Where did you get that story?”
“His brother-in-law.”
“Roy Chalmers.” She nodded her full understanding and relaxed. “The original lounge lizard. No visible means of support, except what he earns as his sister’s cheering section. And Kitty was never my fan.”
Enzo deposited the martini in front of Cooper. “Enjoy,” he said with a flourish. The drink was in a heavy-duty wineglass, and it was flush with the rim.
“That’s a healthy martini,” I said.
“You know my customers,” Enzo said. “Fill the glass halfway and they bitch.”
“That’s with wine.”
He shrugged and Cooper said, “Enzo, could I trouble you for a twist?”
“I’ll try the kitchen,” he said. “They’ll have lemon for the veal piccata.”
I shook my head. “Not unless you plan to peel the ReaLemon bottle.”
“Never mind,” Cooper said. “Not important.” She lifted her glass in a graceful arc and didn’t spill a drop. “Cheers,” she said.
Enzo beamed as she brought the glass to her lips. He waited for a verdict. And waited.
“Mmm,” Cooper said.
Enzo nodded his appreciation of what he decided was a compliment, and moved down the bar to serve another customer.
“How long has this place been here?” Cooper whispered.
“Seventy-five years,” I said.
“That explains the vermouth,” she mused. “It was the best they could get during prohibition.” She raised her glass again. “Here’s looking at you.” She took another sip.
“How come Kitty Sharanov doesn’t like you?” I asked. “What’s not to like?”
She put the glass down and turned it with long tapered fingers while she composed her answer. Finally she said, “Do you know Misha?”
“We met for three minutes.”
“Think of a sleeping tiger. Power at rest. Scarier than the out-front kind because you never know how much is there waiting to be unleashed.”
“That’s close to my impression.”
“Then you know a lot about Misha. People say he may be a gangster. Whether it’s true or not, the rumor alone makes him appear dangerous. That’s catnip to many women. Very sexy. There are usually women around the Sharanov place, around Misha. Much better-looking women than me.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“I wasn’t angling for a compliment, I’m simply telling you the way it is. Some real stunners. So why does Kitty single me out as a threat? I’m the one who’s not interested in Misha. He takes that as a challenge, and he hits on me. Kitty thinks I’m playing a game to snare her husband, and that makes her mad. If it was true I wouldn’t blame her.”
“So how come Misha’s charm escapes you?”
“Because I’ve been down that road. I had
a man like that in my life. Not a gangster, but macho, controlling.”
“What happened to him?
“I divorced him. One is enough.”
“You’re not interested in Sharanov, but you do hang around the Sharanov house.”
“I sure do. It’s entertainment. I’ve got this little place in Southampton, and I go out most Fridays after a bitch of a work week. During the day I play tennis, and in the evening I wind up at Sharanov’s a lot. I find what goes on there more interesting than the scene at this week’s cutting-edge East Hampton restaurant.”
“Like what?”
“Like the furtive comings and goings of broken-nosed hunks Misha growls at in Russian; I always imagine he’s sending them out to break the noses of other people. Whatever he tells them, they jump—in front of a train, I bet, if he told them to do that. There are memorable house guests. The last few weeks the best guest bedrooms have gone to a loudmouthed Texas software tycoon and his pushy daughter. Daddy, poor sap, thinks he’s going to hornswoggle, if that’s the word, Misha in some scam or other. He thinks he’s dealing with a Slav off the steppes and still not totally defrosted. Misha will not only pick him clean; he’s already, I wouldn’t be surprised, had his way with the daughter.”
Could anyone ever really have “his way” with Tess Turkinton? Any “way” was likely to be hers. But I could see where observing Sharanov at work and play might hold the same fascination as watching a pit of rattlesnakes.
I said, “What about Cassie Brennan? Was she much of a presence in that house?”
“Not really. Misha would have her in when there was a big crowd on a Saturday night. She’d fetch, clean up, whatever. She seemed eager to please. A really pretty kid, full of life. But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”
She knew I was waiting for more. After a moment she said, “Maybe he had an itch for her, but I never got a hint it went the other way. Is that what you’re looking for?” She gave me a hard, clear-eyed look. “What exactly is your interest in Cassie’s death?”
“She was a friend. I’d like to see her killer nailed. Maybe I can help with that. I used to work homicide for a living.”
Artist's Proof Page 8
