LITMIR.BIZ

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back in his pants pocket.

      “Thanks for your input,” he said to everyone in the room. Then to Rica: “Let’s go next door and chat with the new widow.”

      “Cheerful goddamn job,” one of the techs said, as Stack and Rica were leaving.

      In the hall they passed the paramedics on their way to remove the body. Two hefty guys chomping gum and discussing the merits of different Italian restaurants, their emotions and discipline to duty on two different tracks. Doing their job with linguini on their minds; and when the body bag zipper rasped closed, their job was well on its way to being over for the evening. Stack and Rica, on the other hand, were knocking on an apartment door so they could talk to a woman married to ashes. One body with so many different meanings. Death sure was selective in its impact.

      An expensively groomed woman in her fifties, whose only flaw was that she appeared to have been crying, opened the door. After Stack and Rica identified themselves, she led them to another woman slumped in a corner of a cream-colored brocade sofa that looked as if it cost more than a car.

      Sharon Lucette was a tiny, attractive blonde in her forties. Her blue blouse was stained with tears. Her dark slacks were rolled up at the ankles and there were wads of cotton stuck between her bare toes, the nails of which were a brilliant crimson that Rica would describe as blood-red. She had been wearing sandals, but they were upside down on the carpet. Next to them were two red-stained cotton wads. When the neighbor who’d ushered in Stack and Rica introduced them to Sharon as police detectives, Sharon wailed.

      “It’s all right, Mrs. Lucette,” Stack said soothingly. “We won’t bedevil you at a time like this. Believe me, we know it isn’t easy.” He moved closer and touched her quaking shoulder. “It’s one hell of a world sometimes, the things it can throw at you when you least expect it. An old cop knows that if he knows nothing else.”

      When the grief-tortured woman stopped sobbing and looked up at Stack, Rica saw that half her hairdo was perfectly sculpted, and the other half was wildly mussed and flattened to her head where she must have had her face buried sideways in a throw pillow. Her smeared mascara made her look like a stricken raccoon.

      She seemed to draw strength from Stack. She sniffed and swiped at her nose with the back of her bare wrist. “I can talk. I’ll try…I want that bitch arrested and punished!”

      Stack and Rica exchanged glances. “You have some idea who did this to your husband?” Rica asked.

      “I have exactly an idea,” Sharon Lucette said. “Her name is Lillian Tuchman. She was suing Ron and his partners because of her navel.”

      Rica touched the point of her pencil to her tongue and began writing in her notepad.

      Stack sat down next to Sharon on the sofa and patted her ever so softly on the back, a father calming a desperate child. “Her navel, is it, dear?” he asked gently.

      “Yes. She claimed it wasn’t where it should be.”

      “Ah,” Stack said.

      Sharon Lucette began to talk and couldn’t stop talking. Stack spoke to her encouragingly now and then, guiding her in her grief and obviously feeling genuinely sorry for the distraught woman. These were the only sounds in the hushed apartment: Sharon’s disbelief and pain set to words; Stack’s solicitous, soothing voice; and the sharp point of Rica’s pencil scratching paper.

      Rica tried to write as fast as Sharon talked, making sure she wasn’t missing anything pertinent, noticing that the smell from next door had permeated this apartment, too.

      Probably it had permeated Sharon Lucette’s mind and would never leave her, awake or asleep.

      Rica wished Stack would talk to her sometime the way he was talking to Sharon Lucette.

      FOURTEEN

      Dinner was at Four Seasons, and on Myra. Billy Watkins accepted her generosity with solicitous charm. He was thirty-one, blond, looked like a college quarterback, and was getting tired of his job, though he liked Myra all right. She was one of the service’s richest and least-demanding clients, and as far as he knew he was the only escort she ever requested. And though she was a bit old, she wasn’t all that unattractive. Her body was still young enough.

      Billy knew Myra liked him, too, but that she didn’t love him. He’d learned a great deal about women, and this one was tough and vulnerable at the same time, and wary of love. They understood each other without having expressed it in words—neither of them would ever really love again. It made Myra sad. It made Billy strong.

      In her soft bed in her expensively furnished apartment, she was as usual almost insatiable. She’d started out on top, as she often did, then let him turn her onto her back and thrust deeper and harder. She would beg him to be rough with her, biting his bare chest and shoulder hard in an effort to urge him on. Her nails would dig into his back, and her heels would batter his thighs and buttocks. Myra could be hard work, but Billy didn’t mind. He’d dealt with more desperate and physical clients. Like the woman on East Fifty-fourth who would only fuck in the tile shower with the water almost hot enough to boil lobsters. Or the one—

      “Ah, Christ, Billy!…”

      Beneath him, Myra had climaxed again. He’d spent himself almost completely the first time, an hour ago, and hadn’t completely recovered enough to give her his best. But it had been good enough, which pleased Billy, though not as much as it had pleased Myra.

      Raising his weight so it was supported on his knees and extended arms, he withdrew from her, careful not to hurt her as he rolled off her and onto his back. He lay there catching his breath. The ceiling fan above the bed was turning, the light fixture attached to it set on low. He bet the fixture, with its opaque delicate pink shade, cost a fortune.

      It didn’t surprise him to hear Myra begin to cry. Sobbing softly, she came to him and he put his arm around her and held her close. Her bare body was cool against his, though they were both perspiring.

      She was the only woman he’d ever known who cried almost every time after sex, as if the act brought forth memories or a reality too painful to confront. Someday maybe he’d ask her what it was all about, what it all meant.

      Her sobs were contained and quiet, as if she was ashamed of them. Billy knew they would build to a soft crescendo, then trail off, and she would mutter things he couldn’t understand before she embraced her dreams and her breathing evened out. The same pattern, every time. People were captives of their pasts. He began stroking her damp hair and forehead softly, assuring her over and over that everything would be all right, that whatever they’d held at bay with their frantic coupling wasn’t worth their fear. They both knew he didn’t mean it, but they both wanted so much to believe.

      Half an hour later, when Myra was asleep and snoring softly, he gently extricated himself from her and pulled the sheet up over her bare body so she wouldn’t catch a chill from the fan’s faint breeze. Then he worked his way over to the edge of the mattress and sat up, his toes digging into the plush carpet. From the street below, the sound of a car repeatedly blasting its horn was muffled and barely audible. This was one of Manhattan’s more desirable prewar high-rises, and the quietest apartment Billy had ever been in.

      Almost silently, nude, he padded barefoot into the white-and-lavender-tile bathroom that was nearly as large as his bedroom. He stood before the commode and rolled and peeled a condom off himself, dropping it into the toilet’s blue-tinted water. Then he relieved himself, watching the color of the water change to something ugly. Like my life.

      He turned away as he flushed the toilet. It made a sound little louder than a whisper.

      Maybe it was telling him in a hushed tone that life could change, would change, if you made it.

      Myra had drunk quite a lot of wine at dinner, so she was sleeping soundly. Billy enjoyed these times after sex with her. It was almost as if they were a genuine devoted or resigned couple and he lived here and owned everything around him. As he had last time he’d been here, he decided that before showering he’d

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