“First of all, Gerald keeps double books. He claims he sells the work for a lower price than he actually sells it for, and he deals with a lot of sub-rosa buyers who don’t necessarily want to reveal how much they spend, or have, so they go along with it. But I happen to know he sold my paintings for five thousand and he only paid me fifteen hundred. I’m not the only one. I can give you a list of promising artists he’s screwed over this way.”
“Grace Rouse says she overheard you speaking to Woznik on the phone the day before his murder …”
“Yes, because he called me to say he’d be by the next day, early, to pay me the money he owed me. He pacified me with that. He didn’t show up until later, and didn’t call me the next day the way he was supposed to, so when I saw him in the elevator I was furious. I thought he was trying to slip past me without paying me. It would be just like him to do that.”
“She says you and Gerald had an affair.”
“We did, briefly. He was dating her and me at the same time, but he dumped me for her, moved in with her. Unceremoniously. He was such a coward, he had her assistant call me to tell me it was over.”
“She also intercepted an E-mail about a baby.…”
“Well, that I don’t know anything about,” she said. “I didn’t have his E-mail address. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he spawned a few on the wrong side of the blanket. Do you know who Ruck Urkfisk is? The painter? I always thought his youngest daughter bore a striking resemblance to Gerald, between you and me.”
“That would explain it. Maybe someone is having his baby,” I said. “What did Gerald tell you when you cornered him in the elevator?”
“That he was at the Chelsea to broker a deal and he’d come by my apartment later that evening or the next day at the latest to pay me. The sad thing is, the bastard was probably on his way to pay me when he got killed. Tant pis pour moi.”
“The cops didn’t find any money on him though.”
“Whoever killed him robbed him I suppose. That’s my luck, that I’d be so close to getting paid, and then the payer would die just feet from my door.”
I kind of believed her, as I kind of believed Grace Rouse. On a gut level, I was almost certain neither of them was the killer, but I’ve found that gut level is about as reliable as the rhythm method.
“You really think there’s a connection between Nadia and the murder?” Maggie said.
“I don’t know. I can’t find a solid one yet beyond the Chelsea Hotel and Tamayo Scheinman.”
“Who have you spoken with at the Chelsea?”
“The staff, you, Lucia, Carlos, the Zenmaster, Miriam Grundy.”
“You met Miriam Grundy?”
“Yes.”
“Does she know Nadia?”
“Yeah. She told me Nadia was interested in her love story with Oliver Grundy. Their are some similarities between their tales, I guess. I can’t get through to the Zenmaster. Scary guy.”
“You have to understand him,” Maggie said. “He used to be the sweetest person. He doesn’t look it, I know. He’s got a lazy eye, so he looks cross-eyed, and has fearsome features. People were always beating up on him for looking at some guy or some guy’s girlfriend ‘the wrong way.’ He can’t help looking at people that way, that’s just how he looks!”
He’d also had his heart broken a few times by women who just used and abused him, Maggie went on. Now, he stayed in the hotel, cashed a disability check, ordered his groceries in, and avoided all trouble. It seemed a wise policy.
“You can drop us here, driver,” Maggie said.
I paid the driver and got out after her at Seventieth Street and Central Park West.
“Your purse is open. You’d better close it. Don’t want to attract muggers.”
The purse was open so I’d have quick access to Mrs. Ramirez’s pistol if the need for it arose, but I closed it now.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“A big rock in the triangle between the Ramble and the boat-house and Belvedere Castle,” she said. “We’ll meet the others there.”
“The others?”
“The guerrilla artists. You are along on a guerrilla art operation,” she said. “Very handy you showed up, because my usual partner, Tommy Mathis, had to cancel at the last minute.”
“It’s not going to hurt anyone, is it?” I asked.
“No. You’ll like it,” she said. “I went to a guerrilla art meeting after I logged on to AOL the night Gerald died. I always log on to the chat before an operation, so if the cops come after me for a guerrilla art action, I can deny I was involved, as I was online.”
“You weren’t in love with Gerald still, or in passionate hate?” I asked.
“No. I just wanted my money. That’s all. In fact, I believe my affair with Mr. Woznik cured me forever of men like that.”
“Men like what? Hounds?”
“That’s a polite way of putting it. ‘Hounds.’ I like that. My relationship before Gerald was with a hound, this mad Irishman. The bastard went back to his ex-wife, of all things.”
That would be Mad Mike O’Reilly, and I thought he’d dumped ME for his ex-wife. That meant he and Maggie were having an affair in New York while he and I were having an affair in New York. Even though I was well over Mike, this irritated me and made me feel some sort of retroactive jealousy or something. Which one of us had he dumped first, I wondered.
“Look out!” Maggie said, suddenly pulling me off the stone path. Ahead of us was a huge brown coil of what looked like shit from either an enormous dog or a cloned dinosaur running loose in the park.
“Jesus H.…”
“Damn. Art Break is in the park tonight,” she said.
“Art Break?”
“Another guerrilla group. They’re so tacky and scatological. They mix up this foaming plastic with brown dye, and leave huge coils of fake doggie doo on big wax paper circles.”
“Wax paper circles?”
“So when it sets, it can be removed easily by park cleaners. Otherwise, it’s defacement and vandalism, which carries a stiffer penalty than littering. Art Break gets the press, but my group has more imagination. Don’t step in that stuff, in case it hasn’t set yet. It hardens like a rock. You’ll never get that dog shit off your shoe.”
“Speaking of hounds,” I said.
“‘Hound’ implies something kind of goofy and lovable,” she went on. “My ex was a hound. Gerald was worse than a hound, he was a vampire. He was one of those dazzling, gorgeous, brilliant, cruel men who can shut down women’s brains with a look, the kind of man otherwise reasonable women climb all over each other to get to, as a friend of mine put it. You met him. Did you feel that buzz effect?”
“Briefly,” I admitted.
“These men look at all women the same way. You think you’ve clicked in a special way, but the spell they cast is a generic, universal sort of spell.”
“Like some form of mass hypnosis,” I said. (Note to self: Study and master mass hypnosis so when looks go, it won’t matter.)
“Exactly right,” she said. “I got over Gerald very quickly, and then met a man who isn’t a hound or a brain stopper. He’s not flashy, glamorous, or temperamental. He’s cerebral, calm, caring, and sweet. It took Gerald to finally show me what I wanted and didn’t want in a man, and then I found it.”
“Sounds great. Is the new guy an artist too?”
“No.”
“Does he live in the hotel? Did he know Gerald … or Nadia.…”
“No, and actually, I prefer not to talk about him until the relationship has really gelled—and then some. I always get in trouble when I discuss my men with other women. No offense intended.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“Because the most well-intentioned friend can feed your insecurities and doubts and slowly poison a relationship, and the ill-intentioned might make a play for him. This is all in Man Trap. You should read it,” she said. “My experience backs it up. I’m thirty-seven. I’ve seen it al
l in the love stakes. It’s best to keep it between you and the man as much as possible.”
“That makes sense,” I said.
“If I hadn’t gone through that nightmare affair with Gerald, I wouldn’t have been able to recognize real love when it came along. There they are, my fellow Erisians,” she said.
“Erisians?”
“After Eris, the goddess of mischief and hilarity,” she said.
We approached a group of eight people sitting behind a large rock in the shadows of some big old trees. Some of them were in camouflage makeup. Maggie said hi, and introduced me as a “trusted friend” who’d be her partner.
“She doesn’t have blades, so we’ll go on foot,” she said.
“Okay, just be careful,” said the head “guerrilla.” “Listen up. Maggie brought the clothes. Stan has the lighting fluid. Missy brought old wallets. And I have the torches and fire extinguishers.”
“Excuse me. Fire extinguishers? Torches?” I said.
“Mini-blowtorches,” the head guy said.
“This sounds dangerous. What are we—”
Maggie shook her head at me sternly, while the head guy handed out maps, showing the areas to be avoided, where the police precinct in the park was (north of the Great Lawn), and where the other security details were situated. Each map had an area circled for each pair of guerrillas to cover.
“It’s not dangerous if you only use green wet grass. If you need to wet the area thoroughly first, do so and keep the extinguisher handy. We don’t want to start a forest fire in Central Park,” the head guy said. If the fire looks like it’s not going to go out, or spreads, extinguish immediately.”
This did not sound promising.
“And watch out for Art Break. I hear they’re doing something in the park tonight too.”
“We saw their fresh spoor on the trail in,” Maggie said. “They’re already here. It’s as if they’re following us. This is the third time we’ve been on an operation and Art Break has been here.”
“Keep an eye out,” the head guy said again. “Watch where you step.”
After we assembled our equipment, Maggie and I walked off toward the obelisk, just north of Turtle Pond. It was dark now, and the Victorian-style standing street lamps along the path flickered on with a foggy golden glow. Central Park is a very dark park at night. The big black rocks that jut out of the ground make it seem darker somehow, as do the trees and the gloomy tunnels under the footbridges.
“So Nadia met with Miriam to do what?” Maggie asked, picking up the thread of our conversation.
“Get her blessing, I guess. It’s weird though, because she left Tamayo’s apartment, said she was going to meet her guy, and she arrived at Miriam’s alone.”
“That is strange. The boy got lost on the way?” she asked.
“He’s a pretty dim bulb, and spoiled rotten.”
“And Nadia took off when she heard of the murder?”
“Evidently. I hope. The guy with the bad toupee, the man she was supposed to marry, showed up and is after her too. I scared him off and secured the apartment, but it is still very risky having that boy there.”
When we got to the obelisk, we scoped out the area to make sure nobody was watching us. There were a couple of people who had been on the path behind us. Once they walked out of our sight, Maggie squirted the lighting solution in a large circle about six feet in diameter.
“What are we doing?” I asked, suddenly realizing how it would look if I, a respectable-seeming TV executive, was caught starting a fire in Central Park just a few days after my apartment building burns down. It’s always in the back of my mind how easy it would be for people to build a totally wrong, circumstantial case against me because of the curse on my head.
“Patience. You’ll see. Stand by with the little fire extinguisher,” she said. “Just in case.”
Squatting low to the earth, she took the mini-torch and ignited the fluid. It flared up, then burned out quickly, leaving a sooty, black ring.
“Hand me the clothes, shoes and sock first,” she said.
When I pulled out a shoe, it stuck to one of her Roller-blades. It took me a moment to untangle it and get everything in place.
“Quickly,” she said.
The shoes and socks went down first, followed by trousers with the underwear inside, a shirt, a jacket, and an empty wallet, all in a carefully messed pile. When it was done, Maggie took a moment to admire it, then stepped out and brushed away her footprints in the grass.
“This is the first time we’ve used the blowtorch,” she said. “We used to just drop full suits of clothes in front of buildings and in elevators. But the torching is just such a nice touch.”
“I’ve seen that before, a full suit of clothes on the sidewalk! It never occurred to me it was guerrilla art.”
“What did you think when you saw it?”
“Someone was beamed up by the mothership from where he stood,” I said.
“Good, it worked, then. But not everyone gets it.”
This changed the way I looked at her. Anyone who would go to the trouble to do something so devilishly brilliant and meaningless gets major points.
“You’re just doing the park?” I asked.
“For tonight. We’ve already done it this year out in Flushing, Queens, and Madison Park in the Flatiron district. Next time we want to hit Wall Street.”
“You could torch the clothes too, and then people would think it was a case of spontaneous human combustion,” I suggested.
“Hmmm. I like the way you think,” she said with an edgy admiration. “It’s so odd that Tamayo has never introduced us.”
“Yes, isn’t it,” I said. “But I’m on the road a lot and so is she. I haven’t seen her in New York in ages.”
“I have heard about you, I think. Are you the friend of hers in television who once baked her cheating husband’s lucky shirt into a pie and made him eat it?”
“I didn’t make him eat it,” I said. “I was pissed off. That was the day I found out he was having an affair.”
“It’s a bloody good bit of revenge, all the same,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. We have to hit the Alice in Wonderland statue at seventy-fifth next.”
So we wouldn’t be seen and give ourselves away to Art Break, we took the lesser-used footpaths to get there. Taking this route after dark in Central Park is none too wise, but hey, I figured, who was going to bother one woman with a blowtorch and another with a pearl-handled pistol and a fire extinguisher?
“I’m a big believer in revenge,” Maggie continued.
“Nonviolent, nonlethal, in-your-face revenge is the best revenge, I think. Don’t you?” I wanted her to consider this possibility, lest she find out about me and Michael O’Reilly and try to sign me up for the American Nazi Party or forward all my mail to a cult in Texas. “It’s honest and harmless.”
“Oh, eye for an eye, I say.”
“Oh, but something that’s irritating to the object, and really funny to everyone else is so much better, karmically,” I said. “The punishment should not be as bad as the crime. Not even close. You can’t spread malicious lies, or call some guy’s wife or girlfriend to tell him you’re having an affair with him if you aren’t, or—”
“What about burning bags of dog shit on someone’s porch?” she asked.
“That’s a classic,” I acknowledged. “But it’s better to play fair and take the high ground. Taking the high ground is part of the revenge, you see.”
“Interesting. But not nearly as much fun as my way,” she said. “Oh look, Art Break has been here too. Looks fresh. They are so declassé. Their motto is ‘Shit happens.’ Watch your step.”
I could barely see the big coiled pile of fake dog crap. It was then I became aware that we were walking through a very dark part of the very dark park, down a path between sloping, tree-lined banks. There was rustling in the brush. I turned to look, and reassure myself, and two men jumped out onto the pathway, one behind us and
one in front of us, before Maggie and I could react. At first, I figured it was the Art Break people, but they were wearing ski masks and dark clothes, and they had guns.
I had a gun too, in my purse, as well as the fire extinguisher, and my deadly, brain-freezing shriek. Maggie had her mini-blowtorch. This might all be well and good if we were up against one armed man. But with two, one in front and one behind, we were trapped.
“Where is the girl?” asked the man in front of us, with that same weird accent that Rocky, Nadia, and the man in the bad toupee all had. He was wearing some kind of big cross around his neck.
“What girl?” I asked.
“Nadia.”
“I don’t know. I swear to God.”
“Where is the baby?”
“What baby? I don’t know anything about a baby. I don’t know what the hell is going on, I swear to God,” I said.
“I don’t either,” Maggie said.
“What about the boy, Raki?” he said, pronouncing it some-what differently than the Americanized Rocky did.
“Look, we can’t help you. We don’t know anything,” Maggie said.
The gunman behind us started to speak in another language. The gunman in front of us looked past us to his colleague, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the man behind had one foot stuck in the still-cooling brown foam left by Art Break.
Beyond us all, someone yelled, “Hey, let it set!”
When the gunman in front of us turned to see who was there, I looked at Maggie, nodded slightly, and in a split second we moved. She aimed her mini-blowtorch to the man behind us to hold him at bay. His gun went flying as he dodged the fire. I smacked the one in front of us in the head with the Rollerblades in the garbage bag, then shot him in the face with the fire extinguisher. I hit him again and again. The gunman behind had taken off, half-running, half-dragging the hardening brown foam. His fellow gunman followed. They disappeared into the bushes.
“Hey, where’s our shit?” asked a lanky young man in a gray T-shirt and jeans. “Maggie Mason?”
“Kip, I should have known you were involved in this,” Maggie said.
“Where’s our shit?”
The Chelsea Girl Murders Page 12
