“What on earth is that?” I asked.
“Oh, no!” Bree hissed in dismay. “Dogs!”
“What?”
“Dogs! Little dogs!”
This isn’t Paris, so you wouldn’t expect to find dogs inside a bookstore, but Bree was right. And not just one dog. Somehow, among the crowd, at least six women had smuggled in oversized rats pretending to be canines. Six! The smell of King Royal apparently drew them like raw hamburger. The dogs managed to escape the grasp of their owners and streak toward the table where King was standing. They surrounded it like pixie-sized Orks out of Lord of the Rings. A teacup poodle. A Yorkie. Two Chihuahuas. A wiener dog. A little terrier mutt. King saw them and froze in what can only be described as primal loathing.
He hated the dogs.
The dogs loved him.
The wailing moaning spitting squeaking Bieber concert intensified, and the crazed dogs jumped up and down as if on a trampoline, claws scratching on the legs of the table as they tried to get to King. Their owners screamed their names, which included Giggle, Squink, Taco, Burrito, Magoo, and Queen Latifah. (This is why I do not have pets.) The frantic women pushed through the crowd to retrieve their furry darlings, but the more they pushed, the more others pushed back, and finally, the velvet rope barrier that separated King from his fans crashed to the carpet. Everybody surged forward, rushing King and the dogs. The poodle and one Chihuahua hid under the table. The wiener dog chased his tail in circles. I couldn’t see the terrier or the Yorkie, but the second Chihuahua, who was obviously slyer and more determined than the others, used the body of the nearest spectator to claw upward and do a Fosbury flop onto the book table.
King went wild with panic.
The dog attached itself to his leg like a suction cup and would not be dislodged. King danced like Dick Van Dyke, kicking books into the air as his legs flailed, trying to separate himself from the Chihuahua. No such luck. The scraggly brown beast clung to its prize as ferociously as a rodeo star riding a bucking bronco. King spun in circles, he pried at the dog’s paws, he swatted its backside with a book, but the dog had found the love of his life and humped King’s leg like a Viagra-crazed porn star.
“GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!” King bellowed into his microphone, announcing his dilemma to half of New York. “GET THIS FREAKING LITTLE MANGY FREAKING PISSANT FREAKING CREATURE OFF ME!”
No, he didn’t say “freaking.”
He kicked again with his leg in one of the best Rockette imitations I’ve seen outside Radio City Music Hall. Two things happened. King flew backward off the table like a skydiver as his feet spilled out beneath him, and the Chihuahua soared out in mid-air over the heads of the crowd like a home run headed for the bleachers. People ducked to avoid the canine missile. I heard the dog’s owner bleat with fear. As it happened, the dog flew right at me, paws splayed. It was high, and I’m short, but I channeled Brett Gardner, leaped up with both hands above my head, and caught the airborne Chihuahua before it sailed over the railing down to the first floor.
I clutched it to my chest, and the dog, utterly unfazed by its ride into space, happily began to kiss my face.
“EVERYBODY BACK!” Bree shouted with authority.
We couldn’t see King anymore. He was completely obscured by the crush of fans. I handed off the dog to its crying owner, and Bree and I squeezed toward the podium to rescue our author. People around us laughed and shouted, but just as quickly, the laughter cut off into terrified screams, and we dove out of the way as the crowd surged backward, nearly trampling us. When we reached King, he was sprawled on the floor on his back, making a big X. I expected to see the other dogs making love to his legs, but this was much worse.
King wasn’t alone.
A man stood over him. King stared up at the man with his mouth open, unmoving, as stiff as a corpse. If I had to guess, King was in the process of wetting himself. I didn’t blame him. I knew the man standing there. It was the same man who had attacked me with Libby Varnay at Tavern on the Green.
What did Nick Duggan say his name was? Walter Pope.
The man who had lost everything, his life saving, the money for his wife’s cancer treatments, to Irving Wolfe.
Walter Pope was pointing a gun at King’s head.
Calm people scare me more than angry people. Walter Pope was serenely calm. He wasn’t the same angry fanatic he’d been at the Tavern. He’d crossed over to a distant land where nothing mattered anymore.
“Where’s my money?” Pope asked.
King, who normally couldn’t shut up if you stuffed his mouth with a sock, didn’t say a word.
“Where’s my money?” Pope repeated in the same monotone.
King made a choking sound reminiscent of the yip of the little dogs. His white skin became even whiter. His eyes grew huge and round.
“I want my money back,” Pope told King, and he leaned forward until the barrel of the gun pressed into King’s forehead. If he fired, it would make a big hole. “You know where Irving Wolfe hid the money. I want it.”
“There’s no money,” King rasped.
“Liar.”
King’s skull shook back and forth like a bobblehead. If there had been any money, he would have given it up in a heartbeat. He would have picked pockets on the street and dumped wallets at Walter Pope’s feet.
“Mr. Pope,” I said, and when the words came out of my mouth, I looked behind me, because I wasn’t sure it was me who’d spoken. As a general rule, distracting a man with a gun, who has already attacked you once, isn’t a smart idea.
Pope looked at me, and so did the gun. It looked right at me and said hello. I was not happy to make its acquaintance.
“Mr. Pope, I know what you lost,” I said. “I’m very sorry.”
“This man knows where the money is,” Pope insisted. “I want what’s mine. I want what was stolen from me.”
“I understand. I do. It’s terrible what Irving Wolfe did to you and so many others. But this won’t get you what you want.”
Pope waved his gun around the bookstore, and people screamed and ducked. “All of this is because of what Wolfe did! All of you are profiting from that monster! And this freak, this pervert, he’s turning my grief into a sideshow.”
He pointed the gun at King again. Then back at me. Then at King. It was obviously a tough call, deciding who to shoot first.
“Mr. Pope, I heard about your wife’s illness. Please. Don’t leave her all alone by doing something foolish.”
“It’s too late.”
The gun. King. Me. King. Me.
“Please, won’t you put the gun down?” I asked.
Pope shook his head fiercely. He pointed the gun at King, who began blubbering like a newborn.
“Last chance,” Pope said. “Tell me where my money is.”
“No!” King wailed. “Stop! Don’t!”
I saw Pope’s hand trembling, and then he did it. He squeezed the trigger. He fired. He put the gun to King’s head, and he fired. I winced, expecting a big bang and lots of blood.
Click.
Nothing happened. He fired again. And again.
Click. Click. Click.
Then click was followed by BONK. From behind, I saw something as big as a concrete block go up and down and land like a hammer on Pope’s head. The gun tumbled from his hand. He stuck out his tongue, saw stars, and crumpled to his knees. A second BONK reduced him to unconsciousness. He fell into a limp pile on top of King Royal, who pushed him off and scrambled to his feet and galloped for the stock room.
My unlikely heroine winked at me.
Bree, looking like one of Charlie’s Angels, stood there with a ridiculously heavy bargain-priced hardcover copy of Stephenie Meyer’s last vampire novel in her hands. For the first and only time in my life, I was grateful that the woman couldn’t write a book that was shorter than 700 pages.
29
“If you wanted him unconscious, you could simply have read to him from the book,” I told Bree when the excitement was
over.
“Well, that’s the thanks I get,” she replied.
Actually, I’d thanked her profusely after the police took Walter Pope away. I hugged her. I kissed her. I tend to get emotional when I come close to violent death, but I live in New York, so it’s not really an uncommon occurrence.
“I guess this won’t go down in history as the most successful book signing,” I said. “King didn’t actually sign any books.”
“Are you kidding? This will be the top story on every news show across the country. The video probably has a couple million YouTube hits already. I didn’t think this book could get any bigger, but it just did. I’m only sorry I never thought of the crazed gunman idea before.”
“The dogs, too,” I said suspiciously. “Pretty amazing, all those women showing up at a book event with little dogs. I can’t remember that ever happening before.”
“Yes, life is full of astonishing coincidences,” Bree remarked.
She winked at me. I think she was kidding, but with Bree, you never know.
“Where is King?” I asked.
“I suspect he needed a change of underwear.” She wrinkled her nose.
We were still in the bookstore, but the crowd was gone. We sat in armchairs near the children’s section with bottles of water in our hands. Bree flipped through a copy of Walter the Farting Dog.
“Did you see your life flash before your eyes?” she asked me. “When he pointed the gun at you, that is.”
“I’m not sure. Maybe. I was naked a lot, so I think it was your life.”
“Could be.” Bree tapped her water bottle gently against my head. “I’m awfully glad we’re friends again, darling.”
“Me, too.”
“Dinner tonight?”
“I’m seeing Thad before curtain, but I don’t think he’ll want to eat before the show. So sure, why not?”
“You have better things to do with Thad than eat,” Bree said.
“I don’t know. We’ll see.”
“I wish all my lovers approached sex with that kind of rampant enthusiasm,” she replied slyly. “Darling, please don’t tell me all of your pent-up lust was quenched in a single evening. If so, then I really need to get to know this man.”
“I have plenty of lust,” I said.
“But not for Thad?” she asked with a knowing stare. “Well, never mind, I’ll find a restaurant for us with hot young Spanish waiters. Text me when you’re ready to eat, drink, and be merry, okay?”
“I will.” Time had zoomed by, thanks to the police and press. I checked my watch. “I’ve got to go,” I said. “I’m meeting Helmut.”
“Ja wohl,” Bree replied. She flipped more pages in the children’s book. “I’m going to hang out with this cute little flatulent dog for a while. I like him. He reminds me of my last boyfriend.”
“See you later.”
I pushed myself out of the chair. I hunted down the store manager and apologized again for the chaos, but he could barely smother the grin on his face. They had sold hundreds of copies of Captain Absolute despite the dog attack and the attempted murder, so it was all good. I waved at the counter staff as I headed for the Fifth Avenue door, but I didn’t make it out of the store. I bumped into one of the café baristas, who was going in as I was going out, and she recognized me.
“You’re from the publishing house, aren’t you?” she squeaked in a high-pitched voice.
“That’s right.”
“So you know that author guy who was here, right?”
“I do.”
The girl nodded. She was about twenty-two, ridiculously pretty, like most girls at twenty-two. “Well, I was just over at Victoria’s Secret,” she said. “You may want to go over there, ’cause there’s kind of a problem.”
“What’s the problem?” I asked.
“That author guy, he’s there, and they can’t get him to leave.”
Great.
I thought about retrieving Bree, but she had already done her heroic deed for the day. This one was mine. I left the bookstore, put on my sunglasses, and made my way down Fifth Avenue to the flagship lingerie boutique, where I was confronted by posters of discreetly topless skinny models. I’m pretty sure that one of the lingerie models in the window displays was the body paint model that Thad used to date. She was beautiful and very sexy. I did not like her.
“Wow, I love your hair,” said a clerk inside as she approached me.
“Thank you.”
“You want to try something on?”
“No, I’m stocked on power panties, thanks. I’m looking for King Royal. I’m his publisher. Someone said he was here.”
Her brow wrinkled in confusion. “King Royal? Oh, the Assy McHattie guy, yeah! Oh, wow, it’s good you’re here. We were thinking we should call the cops or something.”
“Don’t do that. He’s had a rough day. Where is he?”
“He’s in one of our changing rooms. He’s fondling the bras. It’s a little creepy.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
I made my way to the changing rooms at the rear of the store. “King?” I called.
When no one answered, I tapped on each door and called his name. The voices answering back to me were all feminine, but at the last door, there was no response from inside.
I tried knocking a few more times and then gingerly pushed the door open. The interior was bright under fluorescent light. Several items hung on hangers, including lace teddies, underwire bras, and thongs. King sat on the changing bench, staring into space, kneading the cups of a large pink bra between his fingers. His white dress shirt was untucked, his tie was loose, and his pants were a wrinkled, disheveled mess. His curly mop of hair looked flat. His droopy nose seemed to droop more than usual.
“King, you okay?” I asked.
“Julie Chavan,” he replied. “You have found me.”
“I was a little worried when you disappeared.”
“Yes, I ran. It was cowardly. The Captain would have been disappointed in me.”
“Well, you had quite the scare at the bookstore. That would freak anybody out. Why don’t you go back to the Gansevoort and rest?”
He studied me with that same faux upper-crust stare he used on Pierce. “I do not need rest. I need money, Julie Chavan. It has become urgent.”
“I already told you, King. There’s no more money. We’re selling a lot of books, so if you stay on the media circuit, you’ll earn royalties.”
“I am not certain I can stay here,” King said. “I may need to disappear.”
“King, what are you talking about?”
“My life is in danger. There are those who would kill me for what I know.”
I shook my head and sat down next to him. “Look, I’m really sorry about Walter Pope. Irving Wolfe had a lot of victims, and this one went off the deep end. We’ll ramp up security. When you do Good Morning America tomorrow, we’ll have guards on the set to make sure no one gets close to you. Okay?”
“You cannot protect me.”
I pried the bra away from his fingers – it was several cup sizes too large for any woman living on Earth – and hung it on a hook, where it dangled like a pink mountain range. “What’s really going on here, King?”
“It is better that you not know, Julie Chavan. The best thing for all of us would be if you help me to disappear.”
“Exactly what is it you know that could get you killed?” I asked.
King put a finger over his lips in dramatic fashion. “You should not ask so many questions. People who ask questions get hurt. That reporter asked questions, and you saw what happened to him.”
“Nick Duggan?” I asked. “Are you talking about Nick Duggan? This is serious, King. If you think you know who killed him, you have to tell the FBI.”
“I am the keeper of secrets, Julie Chavan, but I tell no one.”
I thought about kicking him in his robust manhood. “Look, I saw you and Nick Duggan talking outside the hotel. What did he want with you?”
&
nbsp; “He wanted what everyone wants. The Captain. I’m the keeper of his soul. It’s a heavy burden. How I miss him! I loved him, you know, I really did.” He opened his mouth and sang in a booming voice:
Or were I in the wildest waste
So black and bare, so black and bare,
The desert were a paradise,
If thou wert there, if thou were there
In the other changing rooms, women applauded and whistled.
“That’s Robert Burns,” he said.
“I don’t care if it’s Robert Pattinson or Robert Goulet. What did you tell Nick Duggan?”
“Nothing,” King said. “I told him nothing at all, but Duggan was shrewd. He was getting close to the truth. Too close for his own safety. I warned him that he was on a dangerous path.”
“What truth? What are you hiding?”
King shook his head. “No, no, no, Julie Chavan. If I say a word to anyone, I will pay the price, just as Duggan did. If you won’t help me, then I need to see to my own protection.”
“I want to know what’s going on, King,” I insisted. “Are the rumors true? Is there a secret stash of cash somewhere?” I thought about what I really wanted to know, and I said: “What was Sonny’s role in all of this?”
“Yes, that is what troubles you, isn’t it?” he said. “The truth about your father. I already made you a generous offer. You pay me what I need to disappear, and in return, I give you his secrets.”
“Forget it. I’m not playing this game.”
I turned to leave, and he called after me. “Julie Chavan!”
“What?”
“If you persist in this quest, you will hurt people you care about,” King told me. “Remember that.”
30
I tried to forget about King and his threats. I had other things to worry about that day. Namely, Hellmoooooooot.
I wasn’t surprised that Sonny didn’t join me in spirit for the meeting at Gernestier. He’d never set foot in that building when he was alive, so I didn’t figure he was going to start now. Besides, I think he knew what I was going to do, and he didn’t want to be there to see it.
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