Looker

by Michael Kilian

  “I haven’t forgotten,” she said. “I’m sorry about the way I left you today. It was inexcusable. I …”

  “It was a terrible thing that happened.”

  Hall looked at his watch.

  “Yes, a terrible thing,” she said. “Terrible.” She glanced down at her hands, then looked back at A.C., the smile vanishing. “Well, nice to see you again.”

  The silver-haired man put money on the table. He rose, and she quickly did the same.

  “Good night,” she said, and followed the man through the crowd to the door, leaving A.C. to stare forlornly after her. He returned to his table, feeling—and doubtless looking—rather foolish.

  He stared glumly at his drink, wondering if he would ever see Camilla Santee again.

  “Did you forget our table was over here?” said Theresa. “Or are you practicing for a job as a waiter.”

  “I’m sorry, Theresa.”

  “At the least, I hoped Bobby would cheer you up. He always does me.”

  “Not tonight.”

  Theresa reached for her stole and purse. “Normally, darling,” she said, “an evening with you is about the most fun there is that’s legal, but tonight you’ve been on another planet, and I think it’s time I returned to mine.”

  “I’m sorry, Theresa. You’re a good friend. I shouldn’t have done this to you.”

  “It’s all right, A.C. I’ll just jump in a cab. They’re those yellow thingies with the lights on the top? With drivers who all used to live in Odessa or Addis Ababa?”

  “I’ll take you home, Theresa.”

  A.C. always got women back to their homes as promised. It was one of the reasons their husbands trusted them out with him.

  When their cab pulled up in front of her apartment house, she kissed his cheek. “Call me when you get back from wherever it is that you are, A.C. Good night.”

  She was inside her lobby before the doorman could fully open the door.

  A.C. leaned back against the cracked vinyl of the seat. The driver, a patient, weary man, was indeed from Russia, according to the spelling of the name on his ID card beside the meter.

  “Back to Mortimer’s,” A.C. said. He had the ridiculous hope that Camilla might somehow return there.

  Detective Second Grade Tony Gabriel didn’t mind working a double shift. He and his partner, Charley Caputo, had spent the evening talking to models. Most of those on the list had been home. As one explained, models didn’t go out much at night during the busy season. Working three or four shows a day, plus photo shoots, they needed their sleep. As another had made very forcefully clear to Gabriel, they needed their sleep alone.

  Nearly all of them had been as hostile, incommunicative, or otherwise unhelpful. Two of them had husbands, who didn’t warm to the detectives’ presence at all. But one, a young black woman with skin as dark as Molly Wickham’s had been light, was more cooperative. Her name was Penny Hooper, and she said she had been Wickham’s friend. She said she wanted the girl’s killer caught and blown away.

  She and Wickham had double-dated, though not often, for Wickham preferred older white men and Hooper liked her men young and black. Hooper had little to say about Wickham’s past, except to note that she had formerly done a lot of work for a free-lance photographer who sold nude layouts to the cheaper men’s magazines. His name was Peter Bernstein, she said, adding that he had gotten Molly Wickham work modeling lingerie, and that’s where Philippe Arbre had discovered her.

  She couldn’t recall the names of any of Wickham’s recent boyfriends, but did say that one of them was supposedly important in politics or government. Hooper said she had never met the man, but Wickham had been very proud of the relationship. The man was very generous, and had helped Wickham acquire her Sutton Place apartment.

  Two of the nine models on the list had not been home and would have to be interviewed the next day. That left only Belinda St. Johns. Gabriel remembered resentfully how insistent Ray Lanham had been about leaving Camilla Santee alone for the night.

  St. Johns wasn’t home, either, but Gabriel decided to wait. She was an eyewitness, and Lanham hadn’t gotten very far with her. Gabriel would do better. He had his reputation to maintain.

  He and Caputo sat in one of the division’s newer unmarked Dodge sedans across the street from St. Johns’s Central Park West apartment building. The doorman had said she had gone out for the evening, but was expected back early. He said he kept particular track of her comings and goings, and she was seldom out late during the week. Gabriel took him at his word. Caputo wanted to go home.

  “For Chrissake, Tony. We’ve been on since eight fucking A.M.”

  They had started on their third round of plastic-cup delicatessen coffee.

  “Ray said to check out the models. She’s the last on the list.”

  “But he already talked to her.”

  “Yeah, right. He got her name.”

  “We’re gonna wait till tomorrow on those other two. What’s the difference with this one? She may be more talkative in the morning, anyway.”

  “Since when do you know so much about women, Charley? I want to hit her tonight. I’ll bet she’s got something Ray couldn’t get.”

  “Tits and ass and a furry fucker.”

  “She’s a looker, all right.”

  “Not as much of a looker as that Camilla Santee. Why do you think Ray put her off limits?”

  “I’d do the same fucking thing myself.”

  “What do you think, she gave Ray a hard time because he’s black? She’s about the whitest broad I ever seen.”

  “Sometimes blondes like it dark.”

  He lit a cigarette, the flame of his butane lighter limning the shadows and angles of his face, making him look a little sinister. Sometimes Gabriel scared the hell out of Charley Caputo.

  “I got a court case tomorrow,” Charley said. “I need sleep.”

  “So sleep.”

  A black Jaguar sedan pulled out of traffic and glided to the curb in front of them a few feet short of the entrance to St. Johns’s building. A long gray Mercedes-Benz stretch limousine came by just as slowly and halted forward of it. The driver of the Jaguar was Philippe Arbre. He came unsteadily around to the passenger side and opened the door. Belinda St. Johns stepped out, laughing. It appeared they’d both been drinking.

  The driver of the Mercedes remained where he was, observing the scene through his rearview mirror.

  “One of the witnesses said Wickham was walking toward a stretch when she got whacked,” Gabriel said.

  “But he said it was light blue.”

  “He said he wasn’t sure. Check out the plate, Charley.”

  Caputo reached for the two-way and called in a license and registration check, speaking softly. Arbre made a big show of smack-kissing St. Johns on both cheeks, then climbed clumsily back into his car and drove away, an easy mark for a DWI if Gabriel hadn’t been otherwise preoccupied. St. Johns went up to the limousine and spoke a few words to the driver before going inside, trailing a fur wrap behind her.

  Caputo lowered the volume of the two-way when the response to his query came back. The woman dispatcher said the stretch was registered to the Varick Cartage Company.

  “Holy shit, Tony. Varick Cartage. Isn’t that one of Vince Perotta’s outfits?”

  “Sure as shit.”

  “What do you think, St. Johns is one of Vince’s bimbos?”

  “That two hundred pound nursemaid in the Mercedes isn’t here ’cause he’s lost.”

  “Why would a big time wiseguy like Vince let a faggot squire his meat around?”

  “Because he’s a faggot, and won’t mess with the merchandise. A lot of busy guys use faggots like that. It saves on ammunition.”

  “Ain’t Vince afraid of getting AIDS or something?”

  “You can’t get AIDS from kissing cheeks. If you could, half the Upper East Side would be dead.”

  The Mercedes turned away from the curb, pausing as the driver looked back at Gabriel
and Caputo. Then he hit the accelerator, and sped away.

  “Okay,” said Gabriel. “I’m going up there.”

  “Tony. That’s mob cunt.”

  “I’m a police officer, investigating a homicide. If I’m not down in fifteen minutes, wait until I am.”

  “One of these days you’re going to stick your fucker into a meat grinder, Tony.”

  “This is not that day.”

  When Gabriel did come down, he was smiling like a buccaneer in a bad swashbuckler movie.

  “Time to go home, Charley,” he said. “I’ve found out all we need to know about Marjean Dorothy Wickham.”

  A.C. returned to a Mortimer’s that, in his brief absence, had become considerably less crowded. Its luminaries of the night had vanished. Camilla Santee had not returned. A.C. stared at her empty table as he might at a ransacked house.

  He went to the bar, finding no place to sit but space enough at the end to stand. He ordered a gin and tonic. He still held out the small, forlorn hope that Santee might reappear.

  “Buy me a drink, sailor?”

  A.C. looked down into a pretty yet unusual face—bright blue eyes and high cheekbones beneath a wild mane of long, unkempt jet black hair. Smoke from a cigarette stuck carelessly in the corner of a small, perfect mouth clouded an almost chalklike complexion.

  Memories rushed into A.C.’s mind that had nothing to do with fashion models and runways—canoeing on a lake in upstate New York, a lawn party in Westchester with girls in white summer dresses, late-night Manhattans after an outdoor jazz concert, a walk hand in hand along the beach at Cannes on a starry night.

  “Hello, Bailey,” he said. “Where in the hell have you been?”

  “In L.A. Where else would I be when I’m not anywhere else?” She inhaled deeply from her cigarette, then clouded them both with smoke.

  He was at a loss for anything to say. He had last seen her a year before, in Cannes, and they had parted strangely.

  “I got a movie,” she said. “Up in Boston. A made-for-TVer for cable. Yet another remake of The Scarlet Letter. Do I look like an adulteress?”

  “You’ve always looked like an adulteress. As I realized too late.”

  She smiled and frowned at the same time, a practiced gesture.

  “Golly, A.C. What a shitty thing to say.”

  He forced a grin. She was being playful. He wished he was in a better mood for it. When she was in the mood, there was no better companion than Bailey Hazeltine.

  “For having been in L.A.,” he said, “you haven’t much of a tan.”

  “Tan’s out. Pallor’s in. Everyone’s wearing hats and using number five hundred sunscreen. The last audition I went to looked like it was for Night of the Living Dead. Where’s my drink, sailor?”

  Bailey was the younger sister of a man who had been A.C.’s best friend in prep school and college. She had started drinking at a very early age and hadn’t stopped since.

  “What would you like?”

  “A double Tom Collins.”

  “I’m not sure they make those anymore.”

  “You can get anything here. That’s why I come.”

  A.C. tried to get the attention of the bartender. He was in conversation with two young men in Italian suits.

  “I changed my mind,” she said. “Let’s go someplace.”

  “This is someplace. Gloria Vanderbilt was here.”

  “She isn’t now. Someplace else.”

  “We can go to Billy’s,” he said, naming an unpretentious restaurant in the East Fifties with a very chic clientele.

  “Why do I know Billy’s?”

  “Greta Garbo lived around the corner.”

  They got a cab immediately, one of several patrolling south down Lexington Avenue.

  Bailey sat far across the seat from him, sitting sideways, enabling him to look directly into her eyes. They were very luminous and catlike. She was watching him speculatively. The effect was very provocative.

  “How’s your husband?”

  “Still a sleazeball.”

  “Is he still here in New York?”

  “Yes. I’m here on a conjugal visit.”

  She tucked one leg underneath her. She was wearing a short summer dress and her exposed thigh flashed white when they passed beneath the streetlamps.

  “How’s your wife?”

  He sighed. “She’s fine. She’s been mad as hell at me, lately, and I can’t really figure out why.”

  “You met her back in Paris after Cannes.”

  “Yes.”

  “Did I get you into trouble?”

  “I got me into trouble. It’s not been a good year.”

  She lit another cigarette, though the driver had pasted a large NO SMOKING sign on the back of the seat.

  “I don’t want to go to Billy’s. I want to go to your apartment. Why do I know your apartment?”

  “You and your brother came to a party we threw there when we first moved back from Washington.”

  “You have a terrace. I want to sit on your terrace. There’s a moon out.”

  A.C. looked at his watch. It was nearly one A.M. He wondered where Camilla Santee was at that moment.

  Once inside, Bailey took off her shoes.

  “Forget the Tom Collins,” she said. “I’ll just have gin. A lot of gin. And ice.”

  She went out onto the terrace, lighting yet another cigarette. She was standing at the railing when he came out with their drinks.

  “It’s a wonderful moon,” she said. “A moon over Dock Street. Did you know I once played Polly Peacham in The Threepenny Opera? It was out in L.A. In Pasadena.”

  He handed her her glass and she gulped from it thirstily, without turning away from the view. She was looking at the city as though it were a new toy.

  When A.C. and Kitty had married, they had made at her suggestion a peculiar agreement. They were normal adults. They were marrying for life, and long marriages were subject to many stresses, many strains—and temptations. So they would be rational and reasonable and accept that reality. She was a Catholic, but not a nun. If either of them were to have an affair, it was to be forgiven—like a sin at confession. It was not to ruin their marriage.

  More than one affair, Kitty had made clear, would be viewed as something far more serious.

  A.C. had never known if Kitty had made use of the license provided by the agreement, though many attractive men had been seriously attentive to her over the years. The closest A.C. had ever come to actually sleeping with another woman had been with Bailey at the previous year’s Cannes Film Festival, and Kitty had been furious.

  He had been covering the event for the Globe. Bailey had been there for the reason most struggling young actresses came to Cannes. They’d met by chance walking along La Croisette one bright, clear morning. What had followed was now only a blur of recollection—the sparkling little city descending steep hills to the sea; the smell of roasted fish, vinegar, and perfume; the crowds of tourists, movie people, thieves, and pickpockets; the indulgent beaches strewn with half-naked women where Bailey had removed the top of her bathing suit as nonchalantly as une française.

  One day that week they’d driven over to Monte Carlo, descending the Moyen Corniche that had years before taken the life of Bailey’s idol, Grace Kelly. Another night, they had just sat in the lobby of the Hotel Majestic, taking in the antic comings and goings of the movie folk and paparazzi.

  The final night, they’d ended up in A.C.’s hotel room with some British film people. The drinking had gotten out of hand, as it usually did when Bailey was around. By the time A.C. had gotten rid of the Britishers, Bailey had fallen into a rotten mood. He remembered her biting his ear as they kissed, and her swearing at him.

  They’d fallen asleep, fully clothed, on his bed. He’d stirred once, on impulse lifting her skirt and kissing her bare bottom. Then he’d passed out. She was gone by morning. It was the last he’d seen of her. It was the sum total of his infidelity.

  In Paris, Kitty had f
ound a woman’s comb, a champagne cork, and a hotel message slip with Bailey’s name on it in A.C.’s suitcase. The nuptial agreement had ended right there. Ever after that, she was unhappy and disagreeable whenever he was in another woman’s company, but her principal problem was the fact of Bailey.

  A.C. had never fully understood it, but his wife, despite her money and power, was obsessively insecure over class differences. Though it was her Irish immigrant grandfather who had made her wealth and life-style and position possible, she hated any reminder of his humble origins. She felt awkward and resentful whenever she was in the presence of anyone she feared was a social superior. A.C. was an exception. For all his ancient lineage and Ivy League education, he had no money. None. His parents had quit their upstate country club, and his mother had taken a part-time job in a local village shop to get him through college.

  Bailey was everything Kitty resented—and many things she disliked. Bailey was in the Social Register and, on her mother’s side, came from one of the wealthiest and oldest families in America. It bewildered Kitty that such a person would choose the disreputable life of an actress. It enraged her that A.C. might have chosen Bailey for his affair.

  Nothing A.C. had said made any difference, not even his protest that he had not actually had sexual relations with the woman. Whatever had happened with Bailey, Kitty had concluded she’d been snubbed, in the most unforgivable way.

  “I saw a murder today,” he said. He was standing at the railing next to Bailey. Their arms were almost touching.

  “That black fashion model?”

  “Yes. I wrote about it.”

  “That’s what I hate about writers. Everything goes into fucking words.”

  A thumping sound startled him. It was a taxicab, passing over a loose manhole cover. He looked to the rooftops opposite. He thought he saw a brief flicker of light, but decided it was just his nerves. The man in the sport coat couldn’t still be standing there in the middle of the night.

  “I don’t want to go home to sleazeball tonight,” Bailey said. She leaned close to him.

  A.C. was feeling reckless, unhappy, and still angry with his wife. He wasn’t certain if her asking him to come back home now was a surrender or a summons. He was tired of summonses, and he had done nothing wrong.