POLICEMEN were everywhere. Deafening ambulances shrieked to a halt under blinding, flashing red lights. Gawking faces hovered in the background as hulking men shoved glass-eyed video cameras at Amanda, Marc, Christine and Mr. Wilde.
Nathan and Professor Angeli were quickly loaded onto stretchers. Amanda begged to go with the professor but the police said no. She erupted in fury. Fought them. Kicked and screamed as Marc held her back and absorbed her flood tide of anger. He refused to react to the dreadful names she called him and the vicious accusations she threw until the flashing red lights and warbling sirens were gone and she was utterly spent.
Cops wrapped Marc in a blanket and they were all taken in ear-shattering, wailing police cars to the local station. More video cameras. Accompanied by big-faced male and female, television reporters desperately pleading and battling to get at them. Christine swung at the reporters. Mr. Wilde glowered. Marc was stony, buried in his blanket. Amanda was enraged. Until her emotions finally shut down and she became numb.
The cops found old sneakers and a pair of pants for Marc. He remained bare-chested under the blanket.
He doesn’t even shiver in the cold, damn him.
No one asked about the backpack he handed her, which she slipped on and wore as if she were a 60s Village hippy with her ripped, long skirt and glittering, dirtied bodice.
Now I’m an accomplice in this whole disgusting mess.
Marc explained to the police about the private posing session and the costumes. Nathan had stolen a valuable drawing and they had all given chase. The gun was Marc’s. Licensed. He was a private investigator and Nathan had stolen the gun. The detectives were used to dealing with the eccentricities of the artistic inhabitants of the Ansonia and accepted his explanation blandly and without question.
Marc continued that they could only assume the professor had been seized by a sudden desperation to come to the aid of the naked model when the gun fell at his feet and then, in a horrified realization of having actually shot someone, shot himself.
At Amanda’s insistence, the sergeant called the hospital.
Nathan was badly wounded, in Intensive Care but expected to survive. He might lose the use of his right arm… his drawing arm. Christine snorted it served him right and burst into sobs.
The professor was dead.
Considering the outcome, no one wanted to press charges. It was decided they could all be released in their own recognizance and would be called in for more questioning later. They must remain in Manhattan for the time being. The silent group returned to Mr. Wilde’s apartment.
They dressed in their own clothes and downed much-needed drinks. Amanda found it difficult to even swallow liquid.
Christine referred to Marc’s blond hair and his now-blue eyes. “I think we deserve to know what the hell is going on. And,” she added pointedly to Amanda, “why we weren’t let in on your little game.”
Christine was right. This whole thing had seemed like an exciting game to Amanda; a game that raised her adrenaline and made her seem more alive.
Alive? What do you call what you do at the office? You’ve worked hard to get where you are. A good-looking pair of pants comes along…okay, he didn’t have pants on…and makes you feel loved and wanted and more alive than you’ve ever been in a man’s arms before and you’re ready to throw your career away.
Marc explained to Christine the case involved international repercussions in the art world and hardly qualified as a “game”. He answered what questions he could and then asked Mr. Wilde for clarification of the assumptions he had already come to.
“Yes.” The older gentleman’s voice was tired and flat. “I gave the drawings to Angeli over a period of years. I thought he would be the one to best appreciate them.”
“And then, trying to mentor Kid Ass-hole,” Christine continued, bitterly, “Angeli gave them to Nathan, who sold them to Pinks who got them to the European fence and on the market.”
Wilde’s shoulders slumped lower. “It seemed such an innocent endeavor. Almost noble. To attempt to emulate the great master.” He turned his head away. “I also wanted to impress Angeli. His talent was always far greater than my own.”
A talent the world would never know. What had gone wrong in the professor’s life? Why had he ended up expending his enormous gifts on “Ahn-sel in the 21st Century”? Hoping to pass his love of art on to a self-centered nothing. A talented nothing but an unworthy receptacle for the professor’s hope and dreams.
Marc looked at her; worry lines creased his forehead.
Why am I in this city? Amanda thought dully. What am I working for? What havoc have I caused? Why couldn’t I have figured it out before… before…
Marc reached for her. She turned away.
Someone who excited my senses. Lifted me to magical realms. Nothing wrong with being lifted a little.
The wine bit the back of her throat, burned her gullet, its fine vintage a waste on her blunted taste buds.
Made me soar.
She turned a flat gaze on Marc’s handsome face. His brows contracted more tightly.
Sorry, kiddo, she thought. I’ve got more on my agenda than being a part of getting dear friends killed.
His face saddened and his gaze drifted down. He turned away. After a moment, he straightened and his head lifted: his finely-shaped head, with the deep iron-gray blue eyes and the soft, beautifully sculpted lips set in a firm, manly jaw. He looked at her squarely, peering deep…
But she knew she wasn’t there for him to see.
“I KNOW the damn case isn’t closed.” Ace was annoyed again. “Who the hell is the big guy? Where is he now? What’s he going to do now that Cambiare knows for sure the drawings are fake? And should we care a whit?”
Marc was getting fed up with the woman.
Sure, she made him proud to be a man. She probably had taken courses somewhere in this hateful city on how to nail a guy in bed.
Well, he had done some investigating of good bed practice himself and had obviously proven he had learned his lessons well. She had seemed pretty happy. She seemed elated. He certainly…
His chest hurt. His head hurt. His groin ached. And not from that rotten kid’s punch to the solar plexus.
No matter how he tried, he couldn’t put the blame on her. No matter how hard he called her every name in the book and she damn well deserved half of them, the smart-assed, smart-mouthed, conniving corporate cookie. God help those poor suckers who wanted to throw money at her rotten little comic book factory.
He sighed. What could he do to get her back? What could he do to take away the ache in her heart, in her soul? She seemed so in pain. He couldn’t bring the old guy back.
She would be busy finding someone to take Nathan’s place, to keep turning out “Ahn-sels” to the greater glory of Double-A Communications, to keep climbing to the top.
He missed the waves. The implacable surf. He missed having nothing between him and the forces of nature. He had been down this female road before. He had survived.
You twerp, she’s the greatest thing that ever happened to you. Don’t demean her. Be a man.
What? Give up his manly P.I. life to come back to this God-awful town and hang around waiting for her to realize what a catch he was? Even his brother had found true romance. And Cissy and Jimmy, for God’s sake. He wouldn’t even have a drinking buddy.
His chest hurt even more.Damn, I’m getting an ulcer…
He returned from the shower with a towel wrapped around his middle and with first aid cream for Amanda to apply to the vicious roadway scrapes on his back and thigh. She pushed the towel down to attend to the scrapes at the top of his buttocks.
Cissy was spending the night at Jimmy’s. He and Amanda were alone, working out the details of how to fit the final piece of the puzzle in place: how to trap the big guy.
He had said no to her involvement. She had insisted that now it was as much her mission as his. She wanted someone to pay for Angeli’s death. Dearly.
Lord, the woman has a mouth on her when she’s riled.
Under her healing touch, he felt the knotted muscles begin to unclench. The touch of her gentle hands spreading the soothing cream sent waves of sensual arousal through him. She might not be there but her hands were.
She had pulled her dark hair back, glistening with golden highlights matching the flecks in her melting, angry, sorrow-filled eyes. She had swept it from the sides of her face and caught it with a spring clamp made of horn- like the frames of his horn rimmed glasses, his only apparel, other than the towel.
He caught the quickening pulse in her delicate neck. Glancing down, Marc saw the tented terry cloth indicating his filling manhood. He glanced back at the shadowed nape of her neck, the exquisite flow of her ear lobe into her jaw.
“Maybe I should take a shower, too.” He seemed to detect a glimmer of life in the dead sound of her voice.
She continued to firmly stroke the ache from his shoulders and in his back. Her fingers probed the dimples at the base of his spine. Her hands continued lower to smooth over the firm swell at the top of his buttocks and he knew he was lost to her touch.
“I’m pretty grubby.” Her words dropped like falling velvet.
“I’ll help.” His voice was as musky as the scent of her body. “You’ll need somebody to un-grub your back.”
The warm water poured over them. Soothing, healing rain. Obliterating the chaos and confusion of the last few days, the last horrible hours. They were alone in the world under the gentle, showering spray.
Amanda explored his wet, muscular terrain being careful to avoid the abraded territory; Marc found no imperfection on the silken surface of her perfect skin. With his fingers and tongue he followed the racing rivulets flowing down her neck to between her full, firm breasts, pausing to press his face home between the enfolding blooms. He could lose himself in her freshness, bathe in her delicious, taunting spice and tartness, immerse himself in her beauty forever.
He moved past the puddling in her navel down to the rain-forested center of her pelvis, burying his face in the dampening depths to soothe and enrage the engorged tissues with his caressing lips. She was milk and honey to him. She tasted of purity and sense, of horseplay and undying love.
Amanda threw her head back wantonly and arched her hips. The water flooded over her face and slicked her soaking dark tresses against her back. She was elemental. A force of nature. Marc’s soul ached as much as his body rejoiced.
Does she love me? There’s no way she can be this responsive. You’re kidding yourself, buddy. It’s love ‘em and leave ‘em. And you’re the one being left. You explained it to her yourself. Face it, she’s gone. Her body’s here, but her soul’s… vamoosed.
ALL AMANDA’S senses rejoiced. All doubts floated away, unresolved but out of mind. All questions drowned. Nothing mattered but the complete and total devotion with which Marc attended her.
At least for these few minutes- Shhh. Don’t think.
She felt clean and pure and totally receptive. She needed attending to. She needed caring for.
His wide shoulders dropped, the muscles rippling as he knelt on the shower floor and pressed his head through her parted legs, his mouth stroking the inside of her thighs.
Amanda groggily smiled at the slippery, muscular frame sliding under her and chuckled as he almost toppled her. He emerged behind her and rose to bury his face in the softness of her bottom. She laughed, sputtering in the falling water, in unsuppressed relishing of his infinite physical invention.
She became whole again under his touch. She felt adored, loved and wanted. Filled with bliss. He was magic.
His traveling tongue ferried up her spine sending tendrils of delight skittering throughout her being. His head wetly nestled into the grotto of her shoulder and her backward lolling head. His hands moved possessively around to take the weight of the throbbing fullness of her breasts.
She could be held like this forever, bathed in a warm spring rain, pressed safely against the strength and urgent need of the man she loved. Held. Captured. Protected. Amanda’s chest rose and fell quickly, filled with all-consuming passion.
She felt the hard presence of his raging masculine probe, sheathed and ready, forcing itself against her backside, and she wanted to possess this magnificent man, now; needed to devour him with her body and love him with her complete being.
She revolved within his watery embrace as his arms circled to contain her. Her breasts pressed against the powerful swell of his pectoral muscles. His mouth reached down to close over her upturned lips.
She loved his body. His perfect instrument, that transported her to realms she had only dreamt of.
If only that were enough…
Be still. Stay, my lady. Enjoy.
With one all-encompassing movement he drove possessively into her with such filling solidity that she sailed into the air. Like a bird. Free.
Amanda’s was thrilled to the center of her being. The first time they had made love he had lifted her with his power. She flew. Her senses raged as she circled their melded bodies, recapturing the rapture. The soothing hiss of the gushing spray, the glittering highlights off their gleaming wet bodies, the taste of their battling tongues, the freshness of the water mixed with the musk of their own enticing moistness combined to urge Amanda to strive for heights of sensual demand she had never conceived of before. Marc answered those demands.
She clasped herself to this man of men. Their writhing bodies tumbled down the rapids of overwhelming desire and then suddenly together, as one, they were swept over the falls of complete and total fulfillment.
She gasped for air. He filled her so full of caring. She couldn’t tell if it was in her head or into the fevered night that her cries mixed with the roar of the waterfall. She was bound to him as to elemental forces combining. He clutched her to him with the desperation of a drowning man, yet groaning in overwhelming joy at their joining and his rescue.
They slowly slithered down the slick tiles of the shower, clasped together in the quiet downpour, their bodies joined as one, locked together, enfolded in each other’s watery arms. For eternity. Would that it could be eternity and the ugly reality of what she must do would never have to be done.
Eternity dissolved and they slowly roused themselves to still the flowing water and towel each other dry.
In bed, they lay together quietly, neither sleeping.
He turned to her in the darkness. She felt the heat of his breath against her face, drew the scent of his maleness into her nostrils. The sadness in his voice echoed throughout her.
“You’re gone, right? And I’ll never get you back, right?”
Tears seared her cheeks.
“MARC, THIS is really sick. The Plaza? Why don’t you just kick me in the gut and get it over with?” How could he treat the memory of their wonderful stay there so badly.
She was tired of the bullshit, the being nice, the putting up with his condescending, masculine acceptance. No fight. No balls. Obviously he wanted this thing between them to be not only over with, but dead. Kicked to death. Totally destroyed.
Okay, what had to be, had to be. But, dammit, it hurt.And she was tired of being hurt, of having her insides ache day in and day out.
Get this wretched “operation” over with and get out of town.The dictum drummed in Marc’s head like a mantra. Get far away from her so she could get on with her life. So he could get on with his.
“You want to go over the plan again?” He was being overly solicitous. Kind to the poor, little wretch whose heart he had trampled, she thought…
“I think I’ve got the picture.” Her voice was brittle, a tone it had taken on ever since the sight of the professor dropping to the pavement had burned permanently into her brain.
“Hopefully, Dracula got the word to the Big Guy,” she clipped off tartly, “that Ms. Rich-European-Fake-Art-Grabber and her Money Man would only deal directly with the international fence into whose care Saber Tooth placed his best drawings.”
Marc chuckled. “The look on his face when you hit him with that entrance line was worth the price of admission to his lair.”
“Frankly, I preferred the look of what little blood he has left draining from his face as you flapped Mr. Wilde’s latest in front of him. His sharp little teeth fairly dripped with covetousness.” She nodded admiringly. “You’ve got quite a nice little Mafioso accent yourself, buddy.”
Marc repeated. “Ya see, creepazoid, we got the Michelangelo- the last Michelangelo there’s gonna be. We got no intention of going through no middle man. You tell your fence, Trask, we want in on the deal, now.”
“I loved the way you snarled out ‘Trask.’ It was like a verbal stake through the guy’s heart.”
“Thank you, thank you. I accept this supporting award only because of the extraordinary talents of my leading lady.”
She guffawed.Gee, I’m gonna miss… And felt emptier.
He leaned close. “You’ve gone through a real tough time these last few days, Ace. We never could have gotten this far without your guts.” He gave a rueful snort. “And you’ll never know how hard it was for this self-centered P.I. to say those words.” He looked tough. “Especially for an amateur and agirl.”
She punched him in the stomach listlessly.Hard as a rock; like his head.
She remembered the difficulties of the past hours with pain. She had gone to the professor’s to provide clothes for the funeral home. Angeli had lived alone. Died alone. She forced herself to believe she had provided some measure of friendship, but now realized all the artist’s hopes had resided in Nathan’s talent, and those hopes the untrustworthy young man had squandered.
In the professor’s tiny, well-kept apartment, she had found the phone log. An entry from several weeks back had caught her eye. $50,000-overwritten, then circled several times. In the professor’s precise handwriting, immediately preceding, was a London telephone number, followed by two names: Phibbs. Trask. The insurance company confirmed Phibbs was their missing investigator. Who was Trask?
A stock manipulator, Cambiare had informed them. A man named Trask had been buying large amounts of Cambiare stock over the last few years. They had feared an attempted takeover, but the man’s broker had informed them he simply believed in the firm.
Particularly if Cambiare held possible unknown Michelangelos and was waiting for a last one to appear to announce the news to the world-wide art community. Their stock would zoom.
But how had this Trask person gotten the information, unless he was somehow a member of the pipeline? The only one not accounted for-the fence! Possibly a friend of the missing insurance man.
And then she discovered the professor’s journal.
Exquisite cursive writing:
I am shattered. Nathan has sold my beautiful gifts- for those dreadful pills. Pray Mr. Wilde never discovers the loss.
A few pages later, representing a number of months:
The “drawings” have surfaced! There is talk of their being saved for Her Majesty! To imagine I might have held something she may one day own! I have received an astonishing note from a person called Trask who knows of my involvement. He suggests I hold my tongue. I am completely mystified as to his identity. And terribly unnerved.
Later:
The dreadful man has offered me an immense amount of money to “see to it, g’vn’r, that the true identity of the ‘reproducer,’ if you follow my drift, is never discovered.” I am incensed to think this wretched person assumes I myself am incapable of such work. I would, of course, never stoop to such a falsification of my talent. What does this dreadful person think I am to do to Mr. Wilde? End his life? I often wonder what the loathsome creature must look like. He sounds immense. Like Wilde. How quaintly appropriate.
Still later, the date nearer:
He has threatened Nathan’s life! My own! Why doesn’t he take care of the “problem” himself? Why does he lay it on my terrified and incapable shoulders?
Just a few days earlier:
How could I have been so deceived? Nathan and that painted woman! He squanders not only his talent but his precious self. In moments of passion I have fantasized revealing to the wretched person how heartless is that thankless child. It is Wilde’s fault! Why must he be so determined to keep producing those hideous falsities? That dreadful man is right. Wilde should be stopped.
Amanda’s heart chilled. Her dear friend had had a harder heart than she could have imagined. Now, more than ever, she wanted to get the bad guy. She and Marc came up with a plan.
Cissy had been less than enthusiastic this time in recreating Amanda’s European wealthy art buyer persona. She chose cheaper hose and an Adrienne Vittadini sheath that she had grown tired of, but kept the Garbo hat, with a mind of its own like its namesake, and the giant sunglasses.
“They can be yoursignature, honey. Did I tell you whatsweet name Jimmy called me last night?” She had chuckled to herself as she’d tied another dreaded scarf around the dreaded hat. “He is so original”
Marc had showed up in a Hugo Bass suit that took her breath away and warmed the cockles of her…pelvis.
“Gotchur gat?” She’d asked, as she yanked the slouch over her eye.
He’d patted his chest and looked her up and down with a heavy-lidded look and reaction that all but steamed his contacts.
And now her breath steamed the window of the Plaza Hotel overlooking the Park.
“Now, if we’re right in our assumptions…”
“That the big guy, Trask, for whatever reason, put the fear of death into Dracula when Mr. Wilde and I were down there,” Amanda said.
“Probably he wanted to shut off the supply, check to see if there were any more fakes in the pipeline. Who knows?”
“And if the Pink Bloodsucker wants to get Big Guy Trask off his back, then he will have alerted him about what we have, and said Trask will presently be charging through the door of one of the Plaza’s finest.
“And if we are wrong…”
“Then Dracula himself might come swirling through that door, eyes blazing- and let’s hope that’s all- wrap us in his black cape and grab the pitchur for hiz own evil purposes.”
There was a hard knock on the door.