“I’ll call the handyman.”
She waited for what seemed like an annoyingly long time, force of habit making her check her wrist though her watch had been stolen from her at knifepoint right on her block a month ago. Rannie checked her cell. Finally a tall guy in navy work clothes appeared with keys.
Back at 26J he rapped loudly after a long buzz, then unlocked the door to Ret Sullivan’s apartment.
They found themselves in an airy, open expanse of living room/dining room/kitchen with wall-to-wall windows interrupted only by French doors opening onto one of the shoebox terraces Rannie had seen from the street. The decor was stark, modern: a gray U-shaped sectional sofa wrapped around three sides of a square glass-topped coffee table. The artwork, by contrast, was all religious. On one wall was an assemblage of crosses centered around a massive stone one that might have once been a tombstone.
“Ret?” Rannie called, then, “Ret Sullivan?” as if adding her last name might elicit a response.
To their right was a hallway that could only lead to the bedroom or bedrooms. “I’m going in to check,” the handyman stated. “You stay here.” Rannie didn’t and was right behind him at the entrance to the master bedroom when he let out a disbelieving “Jesus fuckin’ Christ!”
There was only one light on. At first Rannie’s eyes were drawn to a painting above the bed of a Madonna tenderly cradling baby Jesus. The painting seemed enveloped in a frame of light.
In the next instant Rannie’s gaze dropped to the bed. Ret Sullivan, clad in a black push-up bra and panties, lay stretched almost Christlike on it, wrists lashed by brightly colored scarves to brass bedposts. Her head drooped sideways. Her eyes were open; one of them was made of glass. She had no lips, only a black hole for a mouth, and a bulbous nodule of skin in the middle of her face vaguely resembled a nose. Her hair, normally worn in a sixties French twist, was loose—or had been loose before being tied in two bunches to rungs on the bedstead. Rannie willed herself to look away but somehow couldn’t, riveted by the sight of the woman’s tongue protruding lasciviously from the black hole of her mouth. One more scarf, long and flowing, was knotted way too tightly around Ret Sullivan’s neck.
At some point Rannie must have stopped screaming because later she remembered drinking a Diet Coke the handyman got her from Ret’s fridge and also catching sight of a slim, brushed-steel briefcase near the front door. Ten to one, the manuscript.
It was while they waited on the sectional sofa for the police to arrive that Rannie realized two things. Her throat was now really and truly sore. And there was indeed justifiable paranoia.
Chapter 3
Why was everyone—at least, her so-called nearest and dearest—acting as if it was Rannie’s fault she’d stumbled on Ret Sullivan’s body? The cop who arrived at Ret’s apartment had shown more compassion, offering Kleenex and chewing gum while he questioned her. Yet that evening back home Rannie found herself in the unfair position of having to defend herself.
“Rannie, really! This has got to stop!” Harriet Bookman commanded from the sanctity of her Shaker Heights Tudor in an aggrieved tone that implied one more misstep and Rannie would be grounded indefinitely. “Your sisters never find dead bodies!”
“Ma, what are you, some kind of corpse magnet?” Nate asked.
Alice via e-mail sounded almost as outraged as Rannie’s mother but more out of literary snobbery. “Mother, what were you doing there? Ret Sullivan writes such trash.”
Even Mary, Rannie’s blue-blooded former mother-in-law, in whose eyes she could usually do no wrong, seemed upset mainly by the possibility that Rannie’s name might appear in the paper, as if finding a dead body constituted an unforgivable breach of etiquette.
Tim Butler was the last to weigh in. His opener was “You can’t just stay away from trouble, can you?”
Rannie explained the reason for her appearance at Ret Sullivan’s apartment. “She asked for me to be the copy editor on her new book. I was supposed to pick up the manuscript.”
“So who’s getting smeared this time?”
“Not allowed to tell.”
“For real?”
“I signed a confidentiality agreement.”
“I’ll keep it hush-hush, cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Okay, Tim. Make fun if you want.” Rannie paused. “What I don’t understand is how Ret dug up any dirt this time. Supposedly she hardly ever set foot out of her apartment.”
“Doesn’t seem hard to me,” Tim replied. “She paid somebody to do the snooping for her.” Then he fired off a bunch of standard cop questions.
“I’ll tell you what I told the cop. Nothing seemed out of place in the apartment. There was no sign of forced entry—the door was locked.” Rannie paused and sighed. “So anyway now I’m out of a big fat freelance job . . . at least I got to ride in a Rolls.”
No reply from Tim.
“Sorry. That sounded selfish and crass.”
“Really? She got murdered and you’re no poorer than you were this morning. I wonder who I feel sorrier for?”
The trouble with Tim was he wasn’t shallow. Not a superficial bone in his buff body. Of course, considering his stats—he’d been drunk at the wheel of the car crash that killed his wife, had done a stint in rehab followed by years of AA, and was raising a son who knew why he had no mother—small wonder that Tim took life seriously. Still, Rannie bet he’d been born that way, and sometimes she had to bite her tongue to keep herself from saying, “Lighten up a little.”
She described the way she’d found the body, omitting particulars of Ret Sullivan’s disfigured face. She felt a pang of guilt. This was serious.
“Maybe it was sex that got out of hand.”
“The woman was strangled, Tim!”
“You never heard of the choking game? Space Cowboy? Rannie, kids have filmed themselves. Go on YouTube and see for yourself.”
“I know about the choking game.” But what she’d read involved teenaged boys, terrifying since she owned one. So did Tim. The formal term for the choking game was autoerotic asphyxiation. A kid masturbated and then right before orgasm choked himself, with a tie or noose at the ready, just to the point of unconsciousness. The brief strangling supposedly produced a surging rush—and a much more intense orgasm—by denying and then replenishing blood to the brain. According to pediatricians, some cases of what appeared to be suicide were accidents, horrible instances of kids masturbating and ending up dead.
“Her hands were tied. She didn’t strangle herself. Plus I never heard of women liking that,” Rannie said.
“You’re not housebound or freakish looking. Maybe the same old, same old got boring. If that’s the case, it’s probably involuntary manslaughter.”
“Ooh, I like it when you talk cop.”
“I can come over right now and read you your rights.”
Rannie begged off. “I’m exhausted. And some friends of Nate’s just arrived.”
“And what? You’re chaperoning?”
Hardly. She’d been dozing when Tim called, her cheek soaking in a pool of drool on her pillow, the television set on. “Look. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
A second call from Tim around ten greatly improved her peace of mind: the police had already picked up a suspect.
The Offbeat, the West Side bar that Tim owned, was a cop hangout, and often Tim heard about crime investigations before the public did. “Evidently the drill on Saturday afternoons was the regular boy toy at two thirty. According to the doormen, he’s been coming every Saturday—for a couple of years now. ”
“I thought I heard someone inside Ret’s apartment!” Rannie said. “Oh, Jesus. He was still in the apartment the first time I buzzed! Maybe Ret was still alive.” Rannie suddenly felt light-headed. It had taken twenty minutes for the damned handyman to come with the keys.
“The guy’s claiming he was out by three thirty and that Ret Sullivan was fine . . . at least, as fine as somebody can be with only half a face. But nobody on the buil
ding staff remembers seeing him leave.”
“What about security cameras?”
“Several guys in gym clothes with roughly the same build are seen leaving the building late afternoon. Any of them could be him or could be tenants. . . . He has a record, robbery and assault.”
“So? This was a robbery?” That didn’t sound right.
“Not necessarily. Like I said before, maybe it was rough sex that got too rough.”
So . . . case closed or just about to be. Not that it did Ret Sullivan much good. Rannie brushed her teeth—having disgusting morning mouth before midnight seemed in violation of the social contract. The local news at eleven reported that the suspect in Ret Sullivan’s murder was Gerald Steele, an instructor at a midtown health club. A camera panned across its mirrored walls reflecting rows upon rows of young buns-of-steel singles, clad in tight tees and spandex, working away on shiny equipment that, to Rannie, appeared to have been designed by direct descendants of the Marquis de Sade. Didn’t these people have anything better to do on a weekend night? There was also a brief clip of the guy, in handcuffs, being loaded into the back of a police car; with his back to the camera, all Rannie could make out was his stocky, bowlegged physique. That and a cocky, rolling Saturday Night Fever gait.
Rannie turned off the TV and turned her pillow over to its dry side. It occurred to her that she had no business scoffing at gym rats, considering where she was on a Saturday night, though at least she’d had the opportunity for something better. Why had she said no to Tim?
Tim had even won Nate’s approval, no mean feat, because of shared tastes in eighties music—Squeeze, the Cars, Crowded House. Then, in the past weeks, they’d played tennis together a few times on the courts at Chaps—doubles, with Nate and his friend Ben against Tim and his son, Chris. There had even been one dinner at Tim’s bar/restaurant with both their sons. Rannie suspected Nate would not have much problem with Tim staying overnight. Yet she never broached the subject—to either of them. It would make everything, well, much more serious. Serious. There was that adjective again. What was her problem? Did she only like shallow people and only want shallow relationships? Postdivorce and pre-Tim, that had certainly been her MO. Men who were fun, both in and out of bed. Even her eleven-year marriage to Peter Lorimer seemed superficial on many levels. When he up and left for California with the girlfriend du jour in tow, she hadn’t been devastated, not really. She had ached for her kids, shed tears for what the breakup did to them. And the reason she and her philanderer of an ex-husband could remain friendly, even once succumbing to a shamefully terrific tryst at a New York hotel, was not solely because of their children but also because they’d never been so deeply in love that they had to hate each other once the marriage was over.
Willing her body to relax, Rannie pulled up the covers to her chin and tried her best to push away troubling thoughts about the state of her psyche as well as selfish thoughts about the juicy manuscript by Ret Sullivan, sealed inside a brushed aluminum briefcase now in police hands instead of hers.
Chapter 4
At a little past ten the next morning, Rannie stood in front of a cashier at the Barnes & Noble superstore at Eighty-Third and Broadway and parted with more than twenty-five bucks for a copy of Tattletale: The Life and Times of Ret Sullivan. Why did she buy it? Rannie couldn’t say for sure, except that she was drawn by the fact that her own prosaic path had, however briefly, intersected with Ret Sullivan’s far more lurid trajectory.
This morning’s Sunday Times had carried a short article about the book and its brisk sales. A “spokesperson” for the publishing company had been quoted as saying, “For quite a while rumors have been floating around that Ms. Sullivan was finishing up a new tell-all so we decided to bring out a biography of Ret Sullivan. She was, after all, a celebrity in her own right. Of course, we are terribly saddened by her demise.”
“Demise.” It was such a clunky, unconversational word, one that you came across in crossword puzzles yet rarely heard uttered. On the walk home, she picked up a copy of the Daily News and ducked into the nearest Starbucks to read it. A long-ago photo of Ret and one of Gerald Steele, the murder suspect, shared the front page. The headline read POISON PEN RUNS OUT OF INK. Rannie sat with a container of coffee and scanned all the stories, including one on Mike Bellettra, the movie star responsible for disfiguring Ret.
Ret Sullivan’s unauthorized biography—Mike Bellettra: Dark Side of the Moon—came out soon after his Oscar for best actor in Moon Landing. Bellettra’s portrayal of an aging U.S. astronaut on his final mission traded on everything that made the 50-year-old star box-office gold—his upbeat American can-do attitude and seemingly rock-solid sense of decency.
Ret Sullivan blew the myth of Mike Bellettra sky-high by revealing what payoffs to the New Jersey police and several hospitals in Camden had kept secret for years: Bellettra was beating and raping underage girls.
Days after the book’s publication, Bellettra waylaid Sullivan outside her Upper East Side building and threw lye in her face, blinding her in one eye and burning ninety percent of her face. That night Bellettra was arrested. He is now serving a fifteen-year sentence at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York.
Almost as soon as she left Starbucks, carrying what little was left of her vente house blend, Rannie’s cell rang.
It was Ellen Donahoe. The last time Rannie had spoken to her was from the Rolls en route to Ret’s.
“Omigod, Rannie, I freaked when I heard about Ret. This morning when I read ‘a concerned friend found her,’ I knew that had to be you!” A short pause in which Rannie could practically feel Ellen shuddering. “So listen. Last night I tried calling umpteen times. Was your cell off? And every time I tried the landline it was busy, busy. Don’t you believe in call waiting?” Ellen didn’t stop to hear the answer, which was no.
“I didn’t want to leave a message because, well, because of how sensitive this whole thing is but, Rannie, I need you to get to work right away. I mean this instant.”
It took a moment more of Ellen’s headlong chatter for Rannie to realize that by “sensitive matter” Ellen was not referring to Ret Sullivan’s “demise,” but rather to the manuscript Ret had written about Charlotte Cummings.
“Wait! You’ve got a copy!”
“Yes. I told you that yesterday. Didn’t I? The briefcase you were supposed to pick up included the disk in case she wanted to make small, last-minute changes.”
“The police have that.”
“Doesn’t matter. You can work on the printout I have. It’s not like Ret was planning any major rewrites. She wanted the book out pronto. . . . So the question is: How fast can you do the job?”
“How soon can I get the copy?”
“How soon can you get here?”
Rannie did a quick about-face and sprinted—well, walked at a brisk pace—to Ellen’s apartment on Ninety-Fourth Street off Broadway. Less than half a mile, but that probably doubled her total exercise for the year. In Rannie’s mind, sex was all the workout a human body needed. She was naturally thin: no matter how many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches she scarfed down, she remained a size 4. Nevertheless, it surprised her how winded she was by the time she reached Ellen’s apartment.
Ellen greeted Rannie at the door dressed in running shorts and a sweat-soaked souvenir T-shirt from a Queens half marathon. She had just returned from her daily run. She was short and dark haired like Rannie, though some years younger and, since recent implants, far better endowed in what Rannie’s mother always referred to as “the bazoom department.”
“Here, it’s all yours.” She thrust a briefcase at Rannie, a twin of the one in Ret Sullivan’s apartment, and slipped an elasticized bracelet with a key over Rannie’s wrist.
“Gee, you act as if it might blow up any second.”
“The way Ret died—way too scary for me.” Ellen pulled off the sweaty tee. Even in a bazoom-flattening sports bra, she looked bodacious. “All I ask is that you delete
my name from the acknowledgments page.”
“Come on. The murder had nothing to do with the book. A guy’s in custody already.”
“Fine. Still do it, okay?” Then Ellen squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “Oh, God. Poor Ret! I can’t stop thinking about her! . . . I hope she made it to heaven.”
“Heaven? Are you kidding?”
“Absolutely not. Ret was seriously Catholic. Believed in heaven, hell, the whole deal.”
Rannie remembered the collection of crosses and the Madonna painting in the apartment.
“Right after the Mike Bellettra horror show, she considered taking vows, entering a convent where nobody would think twice about her face.”
“Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea . . . she’d still be alive.”
“Puh-leeze.” Ellen waved a hand dismissively. “I told her, ‘Ret, you would have lasted a day, tops. No TV? No blog? No phones?’ ” Ellen smiled ruefully and sighed. “I remember her saying how once this Charlotte Cummings book was out, all the morning news shows would want to have her on. She was considering it too. She thought wearing the ski mask would titillate viewers and boost sales.”
Then Ellen glanced at her watch and turned businesslike again. “Look, I need to shower and get ready for a lunch date.”
“Date! As in, ‘with a guy’?”
“Yeah. An insignificant other. Believe me.”
“Name? Stats?”
Ellen dodged the question. “Just somebody who takes my mind off Frank.”
Frank was the son of a bitch who had unceremoniously dumped Ellen after a fraught two-year-long relationship.
Ellen patted the briefcase. “With all the publicity around the murder, S&S wants the book out yesterday. Nobody cares, Rannie, if the grammar is wrong in some places. Believe me, as long as Charlotte Cummings’s name is spelled correctly, that’ll be good enough.”
After demonstrating how to unlock and lock the ingenious superslim briefcase, Ellen waited for the elevator to whisk away Rannie. At the last moment, before the elevator doors closed, Ellen uttered the words that were music—the “Hallelujah” chorus—to the ears of all freelancers: “Charge whatever you want.”
Almost True Confessions Page 2
