She went around the bend in the corridor to the service stairwell. A sign on the door warned:
EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. WARNING. ALARM WILL SOUND. NO REENTRY FROM STAIRWELL ALL DOORS ARE LOCKED EXCEPT GROUND STORY.
She pushed through the door. The alarm activated. It made a deafening sound, like the gargling of an electronic mouth.
With one hand holding the door open, she peered over the iron banister down the well.
The lights were out on one of the floors below.
Do I really want to do this? she wondered.
She thought about having the bed to herself all night.
I really want to do this.
She let the edge of the door slide off her fingers. It shut with a soft, air-braked slam. The alarm stopped. Silence fell like the drop of a blade.
Muggy, foul-smelling air stagnated around her.
She began walking. Her shoes clicked on each steel step, sending out a little tap that triggered an avalanche of echoing taps.
Halfway down the flight she wobbled. Two-inch heels, she realized, were not the best equipment for this hike. She attached a hand to the railing.
She passed the eighth-story landing.
Then the seventh. The sixth.
As she approached the fifth she saw that it was here that the lights were out. She looked over the banister and saw that there was no light below her.
That struck her as wrong. When she had looked down a moment ago, hadn’t the lights been out on only one floor?
With slow, echoing taps she passed from light into twilight. She gripped the banister tighter. As her steps took her deeper into darkness, she had more and more trouble seeing her feet and estimating how far down down was.
Her left foot completely missed the next step, swinging out into emptiness. The rest of her followed in a sickening lurch. She grabbed for the handrail.
She landed hard on her left assbone. A pain shot through her butt that was like a flash of blue in front of her eyes.
She tried to pull herself up. First problem: Where was the rest of her? A throb in her right ankle told her that her leg was somewhere in front of her, twisted very, very wrong.
Using the banister as a crutch, she pulled herself to half standing.
As she put weight on her ankle she saw red flashes. The pain was so much worse than anything she’d expected that she wanted to scream.
Shit. Double shit.
She realized she actually had screamed.
Shit … shit … shit … The syllable bounced like a pebble ricocheting off the walls of the dark well, pursued by Double shit … double shit … double shit …
She lowered herself to the step. Both hands explored slowly down the leg. When they reached the ankle they found a hard, stinging edge of cartilage where she had never felt a hard, stinging edge of anything before.
She sighed.
“All right, God, you made your point. I should have gone to Groton.”
After a few minutes she levered herself forward, bracing with the left leg. When she was far enough out, she lowered her butt to the next step. She sat catching her breath. Her mouth was parched and her heart was pounding.
She levered herself out again, down to the next step.
This, she realized, is going to take all fucking night.
Somewhere in the darkness above her an air brake exhaled.
She looked around. A door thudded softly.
“Who’s there? Is someone there?”
The word there … there … there … echoed around her.
Nothing moved.
She lowered herself another step. She thought she heard the tap of a footstep.
“Hello,” she sang out. “Is there a Good Samaritan somewhere around here?”
New dimensions in wishful thinking, she reflected.
She lowered herself two more steps. And another two. And then she rested, trying to catch her breath.
Something slid into her mind, just beneath the threshold of awareness. She tried to bring it up into consciousness.
Her eyes circled the darkness.
What? she wondered. What’s wrong?
Her instincts were flashing her a warning.
What am I hearing?
She turned her head and squinted. The darkness seemed to be waiting for her, holding its breath …
The breathing, she realized. That’s not me. I’m holding my breath.
Someone else was breathing.
Her ears strained to localize the sound. It seemed to be coming from no more than six feet away, up the stairs behind her.
The breathing stopped.
The seconds ticked by, crawling like cockroaches over her skin.
She heard three distinct taps. Three distinct footsteps. Each one closer, each one setting off a cascade of fading echoes.
“Please,” she said. “Don’t hurt me.”
Two more taps.
Now he was standing on the step directly above her. She could feel his body pushing out a heat that was different from the heat of the stairwell.
“I have money,” she said. “I’ll pay you. Let me go.”
A man’s voice said two words. “Stupid bitch.”
Something stranglingly powerful went around her and jerked her upward, up to her feet and then up higher. A whoosh came through the air, stinging hotly across her throat, and then a second whoosh, another sting.
Out of nowhere hot water gushed down the front of her dress.
That’s impossible, she thought, her mind flailing in denial. This isn’t happening. There’s no hot water here.
But each whoosh cut deeper, and with each unbearable sting she realized that it truly was happening, and she was the hot water.
FIFTY-FOUR
“BUT WHEN YOU TAKE A LOOK AROUND,” Tori said, “you have to know the city is in trouble.”
“But darling,” Kristi Blackwell said, “that’s only part of the story. Why not get people’s minds off all the mess?”
Tori shook her head. “That’s like putting Scotch tape over the cracks in a crumbling building.”
They had come, finally, to the end of an all-right meal at what struck Tori as a barely all-right new TriBeCa restaurant. She was on automatic pilot, trying to keep conversation going and at the same time swiveling in her seat and trying to signal the waiter for the check. All evening long she had felt Zack’s unexplained absence like a nagging ache.
“New York may be crumbling,” Kristi Blackwell said. “But this restaurant certainly is not. It’s thriving. And everyone here tonight is thriving. Look around you. I see the two top decorators in Manhattan sitting three tables away. The Eastern Seaboard’s most important philanthropist is entertaining eleven over there. Three top couturiers are here tonight, Bunny Dexter is over there with Claus von Bulow—and isn’t that Julia and Marty? Have they reconciled? This is, to put it bluntly, the hot spot. And it’s just as real and just as important as any slum or abortion clinic or crackhouse in this city.”
“But it’s not,” Tori said. “The slums and the crackhouses in this city could wind up destroying us.”
“And if I saw the prices on that menu correctly,” Kristi Blackwell said, “so could this restaurant!”
Kristi’s husband Wystan burst out laughing. “Touché, Kristi—touché!”
The waiter finally brought the check, snugly hidden inside a handsome Florentine leather folder. He set it on the table at Tori’s right hand.
The protocols of cool forbade Tori’s opening the folder and seeing how much was to be paid. In this age, in this social set, you simply slapped a charge card down and signed whatever came back. Anything else suggested that you doubted the restaurant’s addition or your own credit.
But she had expected Zack to be here to pay for tonight’s meal, and she tried to recall which of her cards left her the greatest leeway. American Express had no limit—on the other hand, that was the magazine’s card, and the magazine was three months behind on its accounts payable.
She decided Maste
rCard was her best bet—she couldn’t recall having used it lately.
With a small, courtly bow the waiter took the card.
“Why the hell,” Kristi Blackwell was saying, “should I dress down, just because bag ladies have no style sense?”
“Overdressing might be an incitement,” Tori said.
“An incitement to whom?” Wystan Blackwell said.
“To people who can’t even afford rags.”
“People who can’t afford rags in this city,” he said, “in this day and age, don’t exist.” Three weeks ago he had been installed as East Coast vice president of the country’s largest talent agency. His vice-presidential qualifications, so far as Tori could see, were two: a booming British public-school accent, and a gray goatee. He had begun taking himself very seriously. “The homeless,” he said, “are largely a creation of The Village Voice.”
“And just because they look horrible,” Kristi Blackwell said, “why must the rest of us? My friends get a kick out of my clothes. My husband gets a kick out of my clothes—don’t you, darling. Christ, my doorman gets a kick out of my clothes. My clothes make this city a better environment, and so do the clothes of every New York woman who has the taste and dedication to buy couture originals. We’re not just dressing ourselves—we’re dressing the city. And I’m damned tired of being accused of selfishness.”
The maître d’ brought Tori’s charge card back to the table. “I’m sorry, madam, but the bank has declined your card.”
“How annoying.” Tori engineered the stress of a smile over her cheekbones. “Oh, well, that happens—it looks like a case of corporate overstretch.”
He did not join in her smile. He did not even make the attempt.
“Did they say how close to the credit limit I was charged?”
“Madam, they simply said declined.”
“Okay, let’s have a look at where we are.” Tori waved a merry hand to the others. “Just a little mix-up. Everybody, please have some more coffee or order a liqueur.”
“I’d like a double Courvoisier,” Wystan said. “With a dash of bitters.”
Tori pushed her glasses down as far as they would go without falling off her nose. She examined the bill with its scrawl of illegible detail.
What was not illegible was the total: one thousand four hundred sixty-four dollars.
That couldn’t be right, she thought. They’d all had that consommé of white truffle in stock of unborn veal and then some pheasant, some duck, some salmon, and somewhere during the evening, in some salad or on some vegetable or other, she remembered alphabet pieces of fresh Dutch yellow and red peppers.
And dessert, of course, and wine …
The wine, she realized. The two bottles of Chateau Margaux ’85 and the two of Clos de Vougeot ’83. Nine hundred dollars for four bottles.
“Okay,” Tori said in her brightest, most can-do voice, “you’ll have to divide the bill.” She opened her purse and took out her Discover card, her Visa, her American Express. “Between them they’ll cover it. Just keep juggling.”
The maître d’s face became a blank wall of refusal. “I cannot do that, madam.”
“Darling,” Kristi Blackwell called over from her side of the table, “are we still having trouble?”
“It’s all under control,” Tori said.
Kristi Blackwell opened her purse. She took out her American Express card.
“No, Kristi,” Tori said. “Please. You’re a guest.”
“Next time.” Kristi handed the card to the maître d’. “These mix-ups can take forever. I’ve really got to get home. I hate being out late with that killer on the loose.”
“Thank you, madam.” The maître d’ bowed to Kristi Blackwell and took the card away.
TORI WAS TRYING TO READ the new issue of Fanfare when she heard the front door slam. Her ear followed Zack’s steps up the stairs.
When she looked across the bedroom, he was standing there with his jacket slung over his shoulder and his shirt unbuttoned. She slapped down the magazine. “You and I had a dinner date tonight.”
Zack’s face expressed apology only in that it expressed nothing. “I’m sorry. I got sidetracked.”
“You were inexcusably rude not only to me but to two of your friends.” She stood, tightening the sash of her nightgown. “Your friends, not mine.”
He gave a vague shrug. “They’ll handle it.”
“I was stuck for fifteen hundred dollars, plus tip, and the restaurant turned down my charge card.”
He swayed a little. “You look like you handled it.”
“Maybe it’s macho to be casual out there in your world of deals and bullshit, but not in our relationship.”
“Look,” he said, “today has not exactly been my day at the beach. Whatever argument you’ve got your heart set on, I’m not up for it. So could you please minimize this hyper thing you do?”
“The hell I’ll minimize! I waited five hours for you to show up, wondering if you’d been hit by a truck, wondering if some tenant activist had sent you a letter bomb. Wondering if Society Sam had decided to carve you up. You could have phoned.”
“I said I’m sorry.”
“A relationship has rules.”
“Rules are for games. I don’t play games.”
“I was raised with the old-fashioned notion that we keep the commitments we make.”
“Why the hell can’t you just accept that you’re pissed off and give me the silent treatment?”
“Because I am not a bimbo who’s going to resort to bimbo tactics.”
“Bimbo tactics might work a little better than yours.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means the wee hours of the morning are turning into the wee-wee hours, so excuse me.”
He didn’t use their bathroom. He stumbled into the hall and she heard the toilet flush in the guest bathroom. When he stumbled back, he was in his undershirt, with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
“I thought you’d stopped smoking,” Tori said. “We promised each other.”
“That was three years ago. Three years is long enough to keep a promise.”
She stared at him. His eyes were red, his face puffy. “You’re drunk, and you’ve been doing coke.”
“Can I level with you? I’m drunk, I’ve been doing coke.”
She watched him stumble over a footstool and fall. The can of beer sent a foaming arc across the Oriental rug. Christ, she thought. This is the man I want to marry?
She rose and moved to the window. She stood staring out at night silhouettes of the beautifully maintained co-ops of Park Avenue.
“I’ve accepted a lot about our relationship,” she said. “I accept that we don’t agree politically. Within limits I accept your womanizing. But I cannot accept your publicly humiliating me in front of people I have to work with.”
He sat on the floor blinking his eyes. “My head is killing me.”
“How serious are you about Gloria Spahn?”
“This discussion is killing me.”
She turned. “If you don’t give me a straight answer, Zack, I swear, I’m going to—”
“You’re going to what?”
For a moment she stood perfectly still, staring at the man in front of her. She had a complicated sense that they were both playing roles, and they both knew it. “I’m going to leave you.”
“Okay.”
She couldn’t believe he’d said it. She saw something goofy in his face. It’s the booze talking, she told herself. It’s the coke.
But she could see in his eyes that whether he meant it or not, he wasn’t going to back down.
For that instant she was flailing in her mind, trying to persuade herself that she wasn’t choking to death. She realized that if ever there was a time that called for faith in herself, it was this instant, right now.
“You’ve got it,” she said. It took her two minutes to throw on a dress and another five to toss some things
into a suitcase.
All the while he sat there, swaying a little on the edge of the bed, watching her with that slightly daffy look.
“I’ll send for the rest,” she said.
ZACK HEARD THE FRONT DOOR CLOSE. Just a closing, not even a slam. As though, even at the end, she had it all under control, didn’t care.
A silence slipped by and sank in.
Zack pulled himself to the bed. He turned off the light. He listened as though, if he listened hard enough, the dark could tell him a secret.
And then he pulled a pillow to his body and curled around it and began crying.
FIFTY-FIVE
Friday, June 14
CARDOZO SHOWED HIS SHIELD.
“In the stairwell.” The super breathed out a plume of gray smoke. “Fourth floor. You can take the elevator.”
“Thanks,” Cardozo said. “I’ll walk.” After all, the dead woman obviously hadn’t taken the elevator.
The air in the stairwell was damp and uncomfortably warm. As he climbed it got warmer, and a smell like unwashed towels grew stronger.
He stopped to wipe the sweat away from his eyes. Only six-thirty in the morning, and he felt himself perspiring, his undershirt already beginning to stick to his skin.
Overhead on each landing, a naked hundred-watt bulb glowed like a tired moon. Behind the wall he could hear something whirring and dropping inside the elevator shaft.
As he climbed up the half flight to the fourth-story landing, a flashbulb went off. The police photographer rose from a crouch. There was a whirring as film automatically rolled forward to the next exposure. The photographer found a smile for Cardozo. “Starting work early today, hey, Lieutenant?”
“No earlier than you,” Cardozo said.
A light had been set up on a tripod, as if this were a movie. A thousand watts beamed down on the dead woman. She lay on her back, sprawled diagonally across the landing. Her legs were splayed out, and one of her shoes was missing.
“Why’d she take the stairs?” Cardozo said.
“The super found two New York Posts jammed in the elevator doors,” Lou Stein said. He had hung the jacket of his summer-weight suit over the banister. From a crouched position he was playing the beam of his high-intensity flashlight over the ridges and valleys of the landing and the steps below.
Deadly Rich Page 45
