A POKY LITTLE COMMUTER train called the Shoreliner shuttled its way back and forth through the villages and tidal marshes that stretched in between Old Saybrook and New Haven, where Mitch could pick up the Metro North line into Grand Central. It was Metro North that carried the Wall Street warriors in from Fairfield every morning, armed for combat with their matching Burberry’s, cell phones and game faces. For Mitch, the trip was about two and a half hours, door to door. The Shoreliner was not particularly crowded. He had a two-person seat to himself, which was fine by him. He did not enjoy bumping elbows and knees with someone he did not know. He had bought the morning papers to read. He spread them open and read.
Lieutenant Mitry’s superior, Capt. Carl Polito of the Central District Major Crimes Squad, was expressing his support for her in the Hartford Courant. “The investigation is proceeding in a swift and thoroughly professional manner,” he said. “We have every reason to believe we will have a suspect in custody very soon.” To Mitch this sounded remarkably like one of those ringing votes of no-confidence Yankee owner George Steinbrenner gave to his soon-to-be outgoing manager. No wonder the woman seemed uptight-her head was on the chopping block. There was still no acknowledged link-up between the two Dorset slayings and the Torry Mordarski murder. They were, it seemed, choosing to keep that under wraps for now. There was a mention that Niles Seymour would be buried tomorrow in Dorset’s Duck River Cemetery. Burial arrangements for Tuck Weems were still being made.
The New York tabloids, meanwhile, were pouncing on the Mandy Havenhurst angle with obvious relish. Her torrid love life, her run-ins with the law. “Beer Baroness Finds More Trouble Brewing,” screamed the headline in the Daily News. “Fanning the Flames of Mandy’s Passion,” shouted the Post. Both carried old photos of her. She was practically a teenager in them. Her hair was worn very differently-piled high atop her head. And she wore tremendous quantities of eye makeup. Mitch barely recognized her.
As he was reading, a woman strode down the aisle, stopped and asked if she could join him in his two-person seat. It was Mandy, of course, flashing her dazzling smile at him.
“I had a feeling I’d run into you,” she said happily, sliding in next to him and depositing a Ghurka shoulder bag at her feet.
“That’s funny,” said Mitch. “So did I.”
“I wouldn’t say the lieutenant sounded totally enthusiastic about me coming in, but she did say it was okay. She’s kind of a tight-ass, don’t you think?”
Mandy smelled of a heavy, fruity perfume, the kind that Mitch had always associated with the old widows he used to ride up and down in the elevators with in Stuyvesant Town when he was a kid, the bubbies with their shopping carts and moustaches and Eastern European accents. Styles must have changed, he decided. Because Mandy Havenhurst was nobody’s idea of a bubbie.
“The lieutenant came to see you this morning?” he asked her politely.
“No, no. I just bumped into her, is all. She was on her way out to talk to Red.”
“She was?”
Mandy stared at him intently now, as if suspecting his words held some secret double meaning. “Yes, she was.”
“Hey, did you know you made the papers today?”
“No way, really…?” Mandy drew her breath in sharply when he showed her the headlines. Then she heaved a long, pained sigh. “Lies,” she said between gritted teeth. “Nothing but lies. But what can I do-people have been telling them about me since I was thirteen years old. That’s what happens to you in this world when you’re someone like me. I’m pretty. I’m blond. And my family has money. Therefore, I am automatically considered a bitch-by people who don’t even know me. I’m used to it. But it hurts.” She turned the tabloids over so she wouldn’t have to look at them. “God, I’m so glad I’m coming in to the city today. It’ll be impossible out there. Reporters will be calling nonstop. And poor Bud will be wigging out.”
“Are you going to speak to them?”
“No way,” she said with sudden savagery.
“But if they have the story wrong don’t you want to tell your side?” he asked, wondering just exactly what her side might be. The facts in the stories seemed to jibe with what the lieutenant had told him about Mandy’s stormy past.
Mandy’s response was, “Why bother? Once people make up their minds about you there’s not a goddamned thing you can do to change it. No one ever believes me when I tell them that the men I’ve loved were abusive toward me, both physically and mentally. That I’ve had to literally fight for my life in order to survive their cruelty. I don’t know why I provoke that in men, Mitch. I really don’t.” Her big blue eyes locked on to his now. “When I love someone, I’ll crawl across broken glass on my hands and knees for him. There’s nothing I won’t do. And I’m as kind a person as you’ll ever meet. I don’t have a nasty bone anywhere in my whole body.” She sighed. She ran the tip of her tongue over her lower lip. She said, “I sure wish we could get together tonight.”
“Like I said, I’m going to be tied up all-”
“The God’s honest truth,” she broke in, “is that there’s something I have to talk to you about. It’s really personal, Mitch. And it’s really, really important. Could we meet somewhere after your dinner date? Just for a little while?”
Mitch wavered. She was married. She was crazy. She was trouble. But he was also intensely curious. What did she want to talk about? Was it the murders? Was it Bud? He had to find out. He couldn’t not find out. So he agreed to swing by her apartment at about ten and buzz her. She lived at 20 E. Sixty-fifth Street, a very posh address. They would go out for a nightcap together-someplace quiet where they could talk.
Their train pulled into Grand Central right on time. They separated in the Grand Concourse, near the clock, in a shaft of the bright morning sunlight that streamed in the newly scrubbed windows. As Mitch started to say good-bye Mandy surprised him by throwing her arms around him and giving him a big juicy kiss on the mouth, her pelvis pressing tightly against his own. Heads turned. Wolf whistles sounded. All of the blood in Mitch’s body seemed to rush right to his head. “Later,” she purred. And then she was off, the heels of her backless sandals clacketing sharply on the marble floor.
Mitch stayed right where he was for a long moment, waiting for some of the feeling to return to the lower half of his body. No, I really do not want to get mixed up with this woman.
He found he was way out of sync as he made his way across the floor of the giant terminal. The commuters criss-crossing in front of him were moving with much greater urgency than he was. Sauntering along at his Dorset pace, he kept bouncing off of them, like a human bumper car. But Mitch found this to be a short-lived phenomenon. It took less than thirty seconds for his metabolism to rev back up from small-town slo-mo to Big Apple overdrive. The city’s pace simply demanded it. Soon Mitch was darting this way and that, back in the flow, just another one of the hyper multitude.
He made his way down the long tunnel to the subway and caught the shuttle across town to Times Square. There was no faster way to get across town, day or night. When the one-stop shuttle pulled in at Times Square he maneuvered his way across the crowded underground station and down the steep stairs for the number One train, heading downtown. It had been a while since a train had come through. Folks were stacked up ten-deep at the edge of the platform, fanning themselves impatiently. The warm air was heavy and reeked of overflowing garbage cans and unwashed people. Burrowing his way in among them, Mitch found himself missing the crisp, clean, sea air of Big Sister. Also the sheer luxury of having so much space to himself. Here in the city, there was no such privilege. Everyone shared the same island.
When he finally heard the train pulling in Mitch began working his way closer to the edge of the platform so he’d have a shot at getting on. Boxing out was a standard aspect of belowground life in New York. Nothing unusual about this. Until, without warning, Mitch suddenly felt it-the ultimate New York nightmare.
He felt someone trying to shove him onto the tracks right in front of the onrushing train.
It all happened so fast that Mitch had no chance to react. No chance to resist. No chance whatsoever. One second he was fine. The next second he was teetering helplessly there on the edge of the raised platform, fighting desperately to hold on to his balance, to his life-as the tracks yawned before him and the four-hundred-ton train bore down on him, someone’s full weight pressing violently, murderously against him. Brakes screeched. A lady screamed.
Two things saved Mitch’s life. One was his unadulterated love of high-caloric sweets, which made him just an exceptionally hard man to knock off of his feet. The other was the immense construction worker standing next to him, who grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and yanked him back at the last possible second as the train shot past him.
“Damn, you got to be more careful, man,” he scolded Mitch. He was Jamaican by the lilt of his accent. “Take your time. That’s how accidents be happening.”
“That was no accident-somebody pushed me!” Mitch cried out, his eyes flicking wildly around at the passengers surrounding him. “Who? Did you see who?”
“Didn’t see nobody, man,” Mitch’s savior replied gruffly. The other passengers offered him nothing more than blank stares. They were like zombies. The un-dead. “You lost your balance. Too big a hurry.”
Now Mitch saw it-a blur of green streaking up the stairs back up to the station. Someone wearing an olive-colored trenchcoat with an upturned collar and a baseball cap with its visor pulled low. Someone he was not able to recognize. He could not even tell if it was a man or a woman.
“Hey!” Mitch shouted at his would-be killer. “Hey, stop!”
The figure sped up. Mitch went after it. Fighting his way through the crowd. Dashing up the stairs in breathless pursuit. He caught sight of his attacker sprinting down a narrow, dimly lit corridor. He broke into a mad sprint of his own across the underground station, running into people and over people, leaving grumbles and curses and spilled purses in his wake. Trying to keep up with that distant figure in green, gasping for breath, his loaded day pack growing heavier and heavier on his shoulders. And he was keeping up. Until, that is, he ran smack into a phalanx of slow-moving Japanese tourists in shorts and sandals who were walking, what, twelve abreast? There were small children and elderly grandmothers among them. And, for a brief moment, he could not get around them. That brief moment was all it took for the figure in green to shoot through the turnstiles and up the steps and out into Times Square. Gone.
Mitch did go tearing up the steps onto Forty-second Street, his chest heaving, but it was no use. Whoever it was, they had disappeared.
But who was it? And why had they tried to kill him?
He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything. Except that he was lucky to be alive.
Shaken, he opted for a cab ride home.
Mitch hadn’t been to his apartment in over two weeks. It was stuffy and smelled musty. He turned on the air conditioners in the living room and bedroom. Checked his phone messages. Sorted through his mail. Thought long and hard about calling the police to tell them what had happened. Decided not to. Thought about calling Lieutenant Mitry to tell her what had happened. Decided not to do that either. He opened the fridge and threw out whatever had gone to blue in his absence, which was most everything. Made himself some scrambled eggs and stale toast. Sat at the dining table and ate, realizing to his surprise that this apartment didn’t feel like home anymore. His little cottage out on Big Sister felt more like home. Mitch had not expected this to happen. Most of his world was here, after all. His books, his tapes, his memories. Then again, he reflected, this had been their home. The carriage house was his. Maybe that explained it. Still, for Mitch this was a disconcerting feeling. He had never known a time in his entire life when he didn’t consider the city to be home.
Sitting there, he wondered how Clemmie was doing.
His afternoon screening was in the 666 Fifth Avenue building, near Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Mitch forced himself to take the subway there, even though he didn’t much feel like it. He stood well away from the tracks while he was waiting for the train to come. And he kept glancing around the platform to see if anyone was showing too much interest in him. Or furtively looking away. No one was. No one did. He was not being followed. Or at least he didn’t think he was.
But he still felt exceedingly jumpy.
He also felt as if he were the only person on Fifth Avenue who had any actual business to conduct there. This was a phenomenon Mitch was still having trouble accepting. Fifth Avenue had undergone a remarkable transformation in the past few years. He almost never came upon businessmen with briefcases anymore. He came upon very few New Yorkers, period. Just tourists, the majority of them foreign, wearing cameras and sensible shoes. The shops along the avenue reflected this. The fine B. Dalton’s bookstore in the ground floor at 666 was now a store devoted to the sale of NBA merchandise. And the fabled Scribner’s bookstore across the street was now a Benetton.
The screening room was up on the ninth floor. It was small-two dozen plush seats for two dozen plush critics. Mitch knew all of the people who were slouched there, pale and round-shouldered. They were his compadres from New York’s other daily papers, from the local TV stations, from Time and Newsweek, from the network news and entertainment outlets. They were his fellow fungi, that rare breed of folks whose passion for the movies actually equaled his own. All of them had an opinion about Mitch. Some of them looked up to him. Some of them envied him. A few of the older, second-tier reviewers downright hated him for having attained so lofty a berth at such a tender age. It had taken Mitch a while to get used to this, but he had. He exchanged cordial greetings with one and all. Caught up on the latest news-what was hot, what was not. And then the lights dimmed and Mitch took a seat by himself with his press kit, feeling that same stirring of excited anticipation he always felt when he was about to see a brand-new film for the very first time.
This one, its studio’s major $160 million Fourth of July weekend release, was all about evil aliens inhabiting the body of the president and first lady. Fortunately for mankind, first daughter Heather noticed the difference. And knew how to operate a ray gun. It was painfully awful, Mitch felt. He was not alone in this. Several very distinguished New York film critics started talking back to the screen. One even stormed out in the middle. Mitch would never do either of those things. Movies were his religion. Every film, no matter how awful, was sacred. And every theater was a temple.
But he did find himself drifting away, his thoughts straying toward how contrived and false Hollywood’s big-budget thrills seemed compared to what real life had had to offer him lately. How devoid of genuine personal consequences such films were. How mindless and predictable and safe. Real life? Real life was not predictable and it was not safe. And there were no stunt doubles or feel-good Spielbergian moments to soften its blows. Real life was Maisie rotting away before his eyes. Real life was the sound of that shovel colliding with Niles Seymour’s leg.
Real life was that someone had just tried to kill him. But who? And why? Did he know something? What, damn it?
After it was over, Mitch headed back downstairs, momentarily disoriented by the late-day sunlight and the bustling cab traffic that greeted him out there on the avenue. Blinking and yawning, he trudged his way westward to his second screening, this one in an editing lab in a Times Square office building. All in a day’s work.
Mitch hated what had happened to Times Square. His Times Square was the spiritual cradle of the Jim Brown double bill, the Sonny Chiba triple bill and the peep show that never quit. It was garish, grotesque and glorious, an aging streetwalker with smeared lipstick and runs in her stockings. Mitch had always adored it. It was real. It was vulgar. It was New York.
The new Times Square was clean, safe and bogus-a processed cheese food theme park. Disney started the transformation when it cleaned up the New Amsterdam Theater so tourists would come see The Lion King roar on Broadway. And then pause afterward to shop at the smiling, happy Disney store, a giant shopping mall emporium festooned with billboards hawking the studio’s latest fun-filled family classics. Seemingly overnight, the genuine Times Square had been morphed into a Disneyfied version of Times Square-a soulless, fresh-scrubbed, crime-free urban tourist zone. All that was missing, Mitch felt, was a hologram of Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munchin dancing down Eighth Avenue in their sailor suits.
His second screening was the new Bruce Willis, which he found to be very much like the old Bruce Willis. If pressed, he could have written his entire review in five choice words: More broken glass, less hair.
Afterward, he met Lacy at Virgil’s, a boisterous two-story barbecue emporium on West Forty-fifth. Lacy came loaded with some choice office gossip-one of the paper’s editorial page columnists was sleeping with one of its Washington correspondents-and neither her husband, who was the managing editor, nor his wife, who worked for CNN, knew about it.
“If that’s the case, then how do you know about it?”
“Because I’m the one who used to be sleeping with him,” Lacy shot back, washing down a huge mouthful of pulled pork with a gulp of Dos Equis. Mitch’s editor was needle-thin, yet she ate and drank like a longshoreman. She could also chow down on barbecue while wearing white linen and not get a single drop of sauce on herself. He didn’t know how she did it. Any of it. “But enough about newsroom yakahoola,” she said. “I am way more anxious to hear about you, young sir. Tell me what it’s like to be mixed up in a true life murder.”
“It’s revealing,” he answered, chewing thoughtfully. “Fear has a way of bringing out the things that people ordinarily do their damnedest to hide about themselves. Human nature, I guess. We drop our guard. Say things to other people-people such as me-that we wouldn’t ordinarily say.”
“Such as…?” Lacy asked eagerly.
“What I’m discovering is that you’ve got this privileged, sheltered little enclave-let’s call it old money’s last bastion, because that’s literally what it is. And on the surface it’s all so beautiful and carefree and perfect. But, underneath, these people are just incredibly unhappy, messed up and obsessed with keeping up appearances.” He paused to sip his beer. “Dolly’s husband, Niles Seymour, didn’t belong there. They didn’t approve of him. He wasn’t one of them. And so one of them took him out. All three murders, I’d swear, spring from that single fact. And a single pathological fear.”
“Of what?”
“The outside world,” Mitch replied. “That’s what this is all about, Lacy. It’s not about some evil Freddie Kreuger lurking in their midst, sadistically picking off his victims one by one. It’s about the future. It’s about change.”
“You’ve changed,” Lacy observed, studying him carefully. “What’s her name?”
Mitch frowned at her. “Whose name?”
“The woman you’ve met.”
“I haven’t met anyone.”
“Oh, yes, you have.”
“Lacy, I haven’t met anyone.”
“Trust me, I know about these things,” Lacy assured him. “Other people’s love lives happens to be the only subject I’m truly an expert on. In every other way, I am a complete fraud, as you and I both know.” She delicately dabbed barbecue sauce from her mouth with her napkin and reached for her alligator handbag. “I’m very happy for you, my child. Mother approves. And now I have to go. My Wall Street titan will be asleep, limp dick in hand, in precisely one-half hour. The madman gets up at five A.M. Can you imagine?” She rose to her feet, snatching up the check. “You should do a piece on this for the Sunday magazine, Mitch. You really should.”
“Maybe I will. When it’s all over.”
Mitch lingered for a few minutes after she was gone, finishing his beer. Several young career women were seated together at the bar, drinking and laughing. One of them was quite pretty, with shiny eyes and a brilliant smile. She noticed that he was looking at her. And returned his gaze, steadily and frankly. Mitch looked away, suddenly feeling very alone.
He had never missed Maisie more than he did at that moment sitting there by himself in Virgil’s.
The night air was breezy and fresh. He strolled across town to the Havenhursts’ apartment with his hands in his pockets, enjoying it. The theaters were beginning to let out. The sidewalks were swarming with animated, excited people. Policemen on horseback patrolled the streets. Vendors hawked pretzels. It was life in New York at its finest-something that Mitch never grew tired of.
Still, he glanced over his shoulder every once in a while to see if he was being followed. He was not.
He reached the well-tended brownstone on East Sixty-fifth Street just after ten. He buzzed, as he’d said he would. But Mandy didn’t come down. Instead, she told him through the intercom to come on up. He did. The building was elegant and spotless inside, with ornate hallway lamps, charcoal-gray herringbone wallpaper and a banister of polished hardwood. There were two apartments to a floor. The Havenhursts’ was on the third floor, in back, and it had to run them at least three thousand dollars a month.
“We rented it furnished,” Mandy said in reference to the decor, which had the just so look of a Bloomingdales showroom display. “Don’t you just hate it?”
“Not at all,” said Mitch, although the gold-veined mirror over the ornamental fireplace did strike him as a bit overwrought. So did the screechy Michael Bolton CD Mandy was listening to. “I thought we were going out.”
“I didn’t feel like getting dressed again,” she said offhandedly. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“I guess not.”
In fact, what Mandy was wearing was outrageously sexy. A white, gauzy, see-through summer shift that buttoned all the way down the front. She’d left the top two and several of the bottom ones undone, and near as Mitch could tell she didn’t have a stitch on underneath. Her bare legs were shapely and shiny. She was barefoot, her toenails freshly painted the same shade of crimson as her fingernails. Her newly trimmed hair seemed an even creamier shade of blond than it had that morning.
Mandy was a very desirable woman. But she was still married to Bud Havenhurst. And she was still no one who Mitch wanted to get mixed up with.
She was drinking white wine. She offered him some. He accepted it.
“This is nice, isn’t it?” she said, pouring him a glass. “Getting away from that island, I mean. I spoke to Bud on the phone this afternoon. He said the press had been calling all day long, wanting to talk to me. I am so glad I’m here. It is so narrow out there. It is so impossible to hide.”
And she was, Mitch suddenly realized, so drunk.
“I didn’t tell him you were coming over,” she added, handing him his glass.
“Why not?”
“He would not understand. He just gets terribly jealous.”
He sipped his wine. “What was it you wanted to tell me, Mandy?”
Mandy stared at him, dazed and dumbfounded. “Don’t believe in wasting time with small talk, do you, Mitch?”
“It’s been kind of a long day.”
“Well, then have a seat,” she commanded, waving him over toward the sofa. “Relax.”
He sat on the sofa, but he did not relax. She turned off the music and curled up next to him, one bare leg folded underneath her.
“It’s about the night of Dolly’s cocktail party,” Mandy began. She suddenly seemed edgy and distracted, as if she were trying to listen to a radio broadcast in the other room. Only no radio was playing. “The night when the Weems man was murdered, remember?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, Bud did not come to bed that night,” she revealed. “Truth of the matter is, he was not even home.”
“Where was he?”
Mandy took a sip of her wine. “With her,” she said to him over the rim of her glass.
“Dolly?”
She nodded her head, slowly and gravely.
“What are you saying exactly?”
“I’m saying that he and that bitch are still sleeping together,” Mandy replied, her voice now low and menacing.
“How do you know this?”
“I know because he slips out in the night on me all the time. I’ve followed him to her place. I’ve seen him.”
She wasn’t necessarily telling Mitch anything he didn’t already know. He knew that Bud kept an eye on Dolly in the night. He’d run smack into the lawyer in her kitchen. “Go on,” he urged.
“He didn’t come home that night until almost five in the morning. And when he did he was wet-and I mean soaking wet. Not from running next door in the rain. But from being out in it for a long, long time.”
“I see…” Mitch considered this for a moment, wondering where else Bud had been on that stormy night. Where had he gone after Mitch was safely back in his own bed? For that matter, where else had Dolly gone? Mitch had no idea. And his mind was racing now. Because the two of them could have killed Weems together. “Did you tell Lieutenant Mitry this?”
Mandy lowered her eyes and gave a brief shake of her head.
“Why not?”
She didn’t respond, other than to shake her head again.
“Why are you telling me?”
Now her blue eyes met his. And she did not seem the least bit drunk. She seemed cold sober, her gaze piercing, her body tensed. “Because I want there to be trust between us.”
“Well, sure. Trust is important between friends.”
“Is that what we are… friends?” she asked him imploringly. “People who can say anything to each other? No shame? No fear?”
“Absolutely, Mandy. We’re friends.”
She untensed now, smiling at him. “Good, I’m so glad. Because there is a favor I wanted to ask of you. It’s kind of a humongous one
…”
Mitch sipped his wine. “Name it.”
“Do you remember me mentioning how much I want to start a family?”
“Two or three little Havenhursts, as I recall.”
“Well, Bud can’t anymore,” she said matter-of-factly. “His sperm count’s too low or something. Actually, I’m not sure what it is, since he refuses to go see a fertility specialist. In fact, he’s dead set against the whole idea of starting a new family with me. And so what I thought was…” She trailed off, swallowing. “He’ll believe it’s his baby, Mitch. And he’d never find out the truth. I swear I’d-”
“Whoa, freeze frame!” Mitch broke in sharply. “What are you saying-that you want to have my test tube baby?”
Mandy frowned at him prettily. “Why, no, Mitch. I’m saying I want to go to bed with you.”
“Whew,” he gasped, fanning himself. “Is it getting weird in here or is it just me?”
“I’m perfectly serious, Mitch.”
“You can’t be serious!”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
“Well, no, but…”
“Save my marriage, Mitch,” she pleaded. “Save me. Make love to me.” Her voice was a soft purr now. And she had moved very close to him on the sofa, her hand caressing his chest. “I am way serious.” She took his hand and guided it along her bare leg, her skin like electric velvet to his touch. “And way good.” Now she moved his hand under her shift… up, up, up… there. “And way ready,” she whispered. Which she most definitely was.
Briefly, Mitch could not believe this was happening to him. Utterly amazing. Also utterly out of the question. He snatched his hand away from hers and got up and crossed the room toward the faux fireplace, Mandy’s eyes following him.
“You barely know me,” he said hoarsely.
“I know plenty,” she countered. “I know you’ve got brains. You scored at least fourteen hundred on your SAT exams, am I right?”
“Well, yes, but that doesn’t necessarily equate with-”
“You’re smart. I want someone with smarts. I’m a big, healthy girl, a good athlete, pretty. Between us, we’ve got all the bases covered. Our kid would be great, Mitch. Pure dynamite.”
Mitch cleared his throat, swallowing. “Look, I’m very flattered. And I think you’re incredibly attractive. But there’s something you have to understand about me…”
“What is it?” Mandy wondered anxiously.
“I haven’t slept with anyone since my wife passed away. And when I do-if I do-I want it to be someone who I’m seriously involved with. I want it to be special. Can you understand that?”
She let out a sad laugh and got up and came over to him. “Of course, I do. You’re a romantic. I think that’s wonderful. Quaint and sweet and wonderful. I really do. Only answer me this…” She set her wineglass down on the mantle, then whirled and slapped Mitch across the face as hard as she could, an open-handed blow that stung like fire. “What am I, a goddamned bag lady?! Do you know how gorgeous I am? Do you know, how many men want me? How dare you say no to me?! What are you, some kind of fag?” Now she hurled herself at him, pummeling his chest and shoulders with her fists, kicking him, kneeing him.
The woman was out of control. The woman was totally mad.
Mitch tried to subdue her. He grabbed her by her bare arms, gripping her tightly. They wrestled. They grappled. They fell to the floor with a loud thud, her nails raking his face, an animal snarl coming from deep down in her throat. She was coiled and strong, but he was stronger. And he did outweigh her. And now he had her pinned to the carpet with his body. And as the fight slowly began to seep out of her, her eyes grew softer and her body began to shift and writhe and undulate beneath his, her lips pulling back from her teeth, her breathing becoming shallow and swift. She was, Mitch realized much to his horror, intensely aroused by this. She wanted this.
“God, give it to me right now, Mitch,” she moaned, her arms and legs entwining around him now, clutching him to her. One bare, perfect breast was fully exposed, her breath was hot on his face, her tongue in his ear. “Give it to me!”
Recoiling from her as though she was toxic to the touch, Mitch scrambled to his feet and fled out the door, Mandy screaming curses after him at the top of her lungs. He caught a cab home. His driver didn’t seem to notice-or care-that he was bleeding from his face, neck and hands. His lip was swollen and numb. His shirt was torn. He felt as if he had just been mauled by a tiger. He had. She was a tiger. Also a card-carrying lunatic. And the knife cut both ways-if Bud wasn’t home in bed the night Weems was murdered, then she had no one to vouch for her own whereabouts either. What if she and Niles Seymour had been an item? What if Niles had tried to break it off with her after he took up with Torry? What if Mandy had murdered them both? She did not exactly cope well with rejection, Mitch now felt safe in saying. And she was certainly capable of it. What if Weems found out and had to be done in, too? Mitch could believe it. He could believe all of it.
Mitch took the longest, hottest shower of his entire life when he got home. But he still did not feel clean. He applied antibiotic ointment to his scratches, an ice pack to his lip. He helped himself to a pint of Haagen-Dazs chocolate-chocolate chip. Popped Angels with Dirty Faces into his VCR. Turned off all of the lights in the apartment and sat there in the darkness, watching Cagney trade spunky, crackling barbs with Ann Sheridan.
And, slowly, life began to make sense again. And it was fair and it was just and it was fun. And, for the umpteen-millionth time in his thirty-two-year life, Mitch Berger remembered why they made films and why he loved films and why it was that they purposely had nothing whatsoever to do with real life.
After a while he dug out Lieutenant Mitry’s business card and called her pager number. She got back to him in exactly two minutes, her voice alert and anxious.
“I’m sorry if I woke you up,” Mitch apologized, it being 1:30 in the morning. “But I thought I ought to check in.”
“Not a problem, that’s why I gave you my number,” she responded, her voice partially drowned out by an entire choir of cats meowing in the background. “Sporty, you behave now, girl. No!”
“Just exactly how many cats do you own?” Mitch asked, his words somewhat slurred by his fat lip.
“Not a one. They own me. And if you’re wondering about Clemmie…”
“I’m not. But seeing as how you mention her…”
“When I stopped by this afternoon I found her curled up downstairs in your easy chair. The girl’s just moved right on in. Pretty soon she’ll be making microwave pizza, talking to her girlfriends on the phone… Now what have you got for me? And please, God, make it good.”
“Well, somebody in a green trenchcoat did try to push me onto the subway tracks today.”
She fell silent.
So silent that Mitch said, “Hello…?”
“Where was this?”
“Times Square.”
“Did you report it to the transit police?”
“And say what?”
“What you just said to me.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because whoever it was got away. And no one else saw anything. Who knows, it could have been a random act, some subterranean loon…”
“Uh-hunh,” she said doubtfully.
“Then again, I should also point out that Mandy Havenhurst and I had just parted company a few minutes earlier.”
“You’re saying it could have been her. She. Mandy.”
“Well, yeah,” Mitch acknowledged, fingering his fat lip.
“She was wearing a trenchcoat?”
“Well, no. But she was carrying a good-sized shoulder bag.”
“Um, okay, there’s one other possibility-Bud Havenhurst.”
“What about Bud?”
“He wasn’t around today.”
“She told me she spoke to him on the phone.”
“Maybe she did, but she didn’t speak to him at his office. Or at their house. Because he wasn’t at either one of those places all day. He wasn’t in town, near as I can tell.”
“You think he might have followed me in?”
“Her, more likely-if I know men.”
“Do you?”
“I can check with the conductors on the Shoreliner tomorrow,” she said, deftly slipping his jab.
“What if he drove in?”
“Then he’s very clever,” she admitted. “Are you all right?”
“Why, don’t I sound all right?”
“No, you sound like Elmer Fudd,” she said, stifling a yawn. “Have you been to the dentist or something?”
“No, I’ve just paid a round-trip visit to Mandy’s dark side. She came on to me this evening, big time.”
“And…?” The lieutenant’s voice seemed a degree or two chillier now.
“And I told her I wasn’t interested, right?”
“How would I know? You’re the one telling the story.”
“Okay, I told her I wasn’t interested.”
“Fine. You told her you weren’t interested. And…?”
“And she tried to claw my eyes out.”
“Well, that certainly fits with the girl’s history.”
“I did find out something interesting from her, though. While she was still in full cuddle mode, I mean.” Mitch filled the lieutenant in on what Mandy had said about Bud being elsewhere, and wet, the night Tuck Weems was murdered-taking care to point out how this meant Mandy had no one to vouch for her own whereabouts either.
“Interesting,” she concluded. “Sounds like you’ve had yourself quite a day.”
Mitch allowed as how he had. And then she was yawning again. And the cats were yowling. So he said, “I’ll let you get back to sleep. Sorry I woke you. What does it say anyway?”
“What does what say?”
“The T-shirt you’re wearing.”
“Man, how do you know I’m wearing a T-shirt?”
“I just do. Why, have you got a problem with it?”
“With what, the way you keep acting like you’re up inside my head?”
“I guess this means yes.”
“No… Just trying to understand you, that’s all.”
“Well, that’s it right there, Lieutenant. I’m trying to understand you, too.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“Man, that’s a riddle, not an answer!”
“I don’t know why, okay? Only that nothing in my life makes any sense right now. And it seems important to understand something. Or someone.”
She was silent a long moment. “It doesn’t say anything.”
“What doesn’t?”
“My T-shirt. It’s blank. No message. None. Good night, Mitch.” She hung up the phone before he could get out one more word.
He threw the dead bolt on his front door and climbed into bed. It wasn’t until he’d turned off his bedside lamp, punched his pillow two times and closed his eyes that he realized she’d finally stopped calling him Mr. Berger.