A Pinchbeck Bride (13 page)

Chapter Twenty

Jon Kim insisted we go back to Rudy’s townhouse on Beacon Hill. “After that treasure hunt, and all that’s happened, I could use a drink. I make a killer Mojito. You game?”

It was an opportunity to sound out his opinions about the new information I’d learned lately.

He hadn’t exaggerated about the cocktail. His drinks could shame those of my friend Arthur Hilliard from my old Provincetown days. Jon Kim stripped off his cranberry-red polo shirt so that he was clad in moccasins and running shorts that clung to his loins. He hadn’t bothered wearing underwear or a jockstrap. In Rudy’s back garden, the pink and white impatiens had risen gradually from their beds like so many bright soufflés.

“I’ve had a rough week, a rough summer, really. My company is facing a hostile takeover. Two other vice presidents have resigned, and, if the deal goes through, they’re moving our company to North Carolina. I mean, I’m just coming out, so the last place I want to go is the Bible Belt.” Jon Kim had brought us some bacon-and-scallop hors d’oeuvres left over from one of Rudy’s parties but was so involved with telling his own story that he neglected to share any with me. “The upside would be I’d escape Rudy’s advances.” He ate the last piece of bacon. “I mean, he’s a tiger in bed. He wears me out. My God, he’s buff! I was shocked the first time I saw him, that he could look that good and smoke so much. But in some ways he’s like a little kid, you know, got to get his way, not thinking of other people.” He placed the empty hors d’oeuvres plate by his director’s chair.

“I envy you, being settled and all. Settled psychologically, with your partner.” He kicked off his moccasins. He and Rudy both had huge bony feet. “I’m just transitioning. Between my wife and who knows what. When I was little, in Hawaii, we lived in Kaneohe, this place near the Valley of the Temples. There’s this big cemetery there, at the foot of the mountains. And this Buddhist-style temple, with a big bronze bell and a pond with carp.” He burped. “It rains all the time there, this fine sprinkling mist. If you stand still, you’ll grow moss. Everything mildews.”

He was talking to himself as much as to me.

“I’d go to the cemetery to ruminate. To figure things out. My parents owned a hardware store, the nuts and bolts kind. They were getting divorced. My brother was off in the Marines. My sister was kind of wild, skipping school, doing ice. I was the prodigy, all A’s and all alone. Pushing away the gay thing by studying twenty-four/seven, taking college-level courses at UH. But you can’t study yourself out of clinical depression.”

The garden was beginning to whirl. The federalist lines of Rudy’s rose-red brick townhouse were warping. The Mojito was dissolving my inhibitions, and I thought of the murders: “Do you think we’re in danger? Physical danger? You or me or Rudy?”

“Not me, I’m a black belt. I became one in my teens.”

“Bryce was beaten with a hammer.”

“He had a past. He’d probably handled some hot painting or jewel. He had some sort of conduit to the criminal world. We know that he got tipped off that a burglary might be in the works.”

Jon Kim could pound down his liquor better than the late Bryce Rossi.

“Why would Rudy trust a man like Bryce?”

“Hey, I don’t know Rudy’s every thought. Except about sex.” He grinned. “Bryce taught at a local college. The people in the various auction houses told Rudy he was competent. And Bryce was cheap and we’re on a tight budget.”

“No more.” I shooed away his pitcher of Mojitos. Was I becoming my mother, drinking too much? Now Jon Kim had grown a third nipple. “What did you think of Genevieve Courson?”

“Well, she was a little wacky. One time she was wearing this moth-eaten mink stole, with the animals’ heads and glass eyes. And she had her Goth phase, with black lipstick and pins in her ears. But she was a terrific researcher. Rudy testified to that. The paper she was writing on Mingo House was first-rate, top drawer. Rudy told me.”

So Genevieve’s research interested people outside Shawmut College, other than, say, Zack Meecham. “Genevieve wanted to show me something. The evening of the trustees’ meeting. The evening I found her murdered.”

“You’re a writer and an amateur historian. She probably wanted your opinion of a paper. Maybe she had some grammatical questions.”

“Had you seen any paper she’d done?”

“Uh-uh. I’m a numbers guy.”

“But Rudy had? You’re sure of that.”

“Yup.” He would reek of rum when Rudy returned later.

“Fletcher Coombs. Did you know him?”

“In the Biblical sense?”

“In any.”

Jon Kim flung the ice cubes from the empty pitcher into the impatiens. “He sure is well-hung.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious.”

“You measured it when he wasn’t looking?”

“No, really, I can prove it. Cut the crap and come inside.” He clasped my arm, yanked me with all of his black-belt might.

In Rudy’s living room, with the Warhol and the fish tank, Jon Kim inserted a DVD into the player and the cinema-sized screen came to X-rated life. He fast-forwarded through various scenes—of giant genitals and wrestling lips.

Then, finally, he permitted the movie to run unmolested, and there, on the screen, stood a sexy young man with red hair and a shaved chest, forcing a smaller man’s mouth toward his crotch. Could it be…? Next, a close-up panned from the top’s six-pack, past his pierced left nipple, to his Adam’s apple and, finally, lingered on his commanding, embarrassed face.

Yes, it was Fletcher Coombs
.

“I’d say he’s ‘gay for pay,’” Jon Kim said. “He lets guys do him but doesn’t reciprocate. He looks about as relaxed as a guy on a job interview. Pun intended.”

“How long have you known about this?”

“Rudy bought the DVD at a shop in the South End. It was going out of business. He bought a whole slew of DVDs, including some from this local studio in Roxbury. The studio was shutting down too. Because the owner of the studio was facing morals charges. So the clerk said.” Jon Kim stopped the action.

“Let me see the package. For the DVD.” Fletcher wasn’t on the cover of the movie,
Fresh Men Initiation
. It was produced by Zephyrus Studios on Lower Washington Street. “Did Larry Courson make this movie?” Was my head spinning because of the rum or more? Focus, focus, I told myself. “His name isn’t mentioned in the credits.”

“It isn’t in the credits onscreen either.”

“You say Rudy knew both Fletcher and Genevieve.”

“I told you. He saw them at Flex. Oh—and he had them here, once, for a party. Not a sex party. It was a kind of docent appreciation day. Dorothea Jakes was here, and Nadia Gulbenkian. Rudy made Baltimore-style crab-cakes. Really delicious, with lots of horseradish. And mint juleps. His mother is from Virginia. FFV, so he says.

“We all got bombed. Even Dorothea, which was a little weird since she’d brought her grandson, Chris, as her ‘date.’ I played the piano, Cole Porter, badly. Genevieve kept whining that Fletcher was the world’s worst dancer. But Fletcher let Rudy take liberties, grind his leg into his crotch. That’s when Rudy said Fletcher confessed he’d done a skin flick.”

“Was Bryce Rossi there?”

“He was never a docent.”

“Why did Fletcher tell Rudy—”

“Rudy admired Fletcher’s body, and Fletcher happened to blurt out that he’d done the movie. When Rudy went outside to smoke, and Fletcher went out…to get away from Genevieve, I think.”

I was tipsy enough to ask him now: “Ever seen my act?”

“No, but I’m sure you’re a standup guy.”

Chapter Twenty-one

I took the Orange Line from Back Bay station to the appropriate stop. A few blocks away, in a neighborhood that alternated between gentrified and ominous, I located a building of pistachio-green cinderblocks that, judging by its shattered neon sign, had once functioned as a hair salon. This matched the address of Zephyrus Studios but no trace of its term in the skin trade had survived. Someone had spent extraordinary effort to cover one of its walls with the quasi-three-dimensional, cartoonists’ writing that urban gangs perpetuate on flat, unguarded surfaces.

The building was bordered on its left by a lot of cornflowers and piles of sand and on its right by an old mansard-roofed house being rehabbed. A crew of workmen was prying asbestos shingles from the side of the house. Most of the crew spoke only Spanish but they found a colleague to answer my questions. “I was wondering about the building next door.”

“Well, we’re all wondering, buddy. Are you from the neighborhood association? That fuckin’ place was supposed to be demolished back in June, but it’s still here, the same goddamn eyesore.”

“I was wondering…” How to phrase my question, actually. “Was this ever…Zephyrus Studios?”

“Zephyrus. What’s that?”

Once prompted, I realized that I knew—it was the name of the Mingo soldier killed at the battle of Antietam, the young man referred to by the cousins, Corinth and Cleanth, in the correspondence I’d read in Rockport. Was that Larry Courson’s joke about his wife’s once eminent family? “There was a movie studio, I believe.”

“Well, there was that beauty parlor. They sold wigs, too, and painted little designs on women’s fingernails. There was a porno bookstore, if that’s what you’re after. But I never knew they shot movies there. It was a place with sticky floors, if you catch my drift. The neighbors got pissed off, they started a petition, then the owner got in some kinda trouble, and bang, it was shut.”

“Was the owner from Lynn?”

“How should I know? The guy who owns this house here is in Europe. In It-ly for the summer. He might know. But he won’t be back till mid-September.”

I struck up a conversation with various people I encountered, but no one could enlighten me as to the particulars about Zephyrus Studios, let alone Larry Courson’s connection to
Fresh Men Initiation
, if one existed. We were not ready for our close up, that was for sure.

Chapter Twenty-two

Nadia Gulbenkian lived in Brookline, in a cedar-shingled house, all gables and wisteria. I’d phoned ahead and been granted permission to visit her for precisely half an hour. Released from rehab the previous weekend, Nadia tired easily. But she remained the most informed, passionate, and intelligent of the Mingo House trustees.

She was attended by Henri, her nephew from Lyon who was studying at Harvard Business School. He grimaced at my box of Godiva chocolates. “You aren’t aware she is diabetic. Obviously.” He confiscated them, perhaps for himself. He’d thrive in corporate life, I decided.

Nadia was out back, reclining on a redwood chaise lounge, wearing a raincoat, of all things (it was a little damp), under a pergola woven through with more wisteria. She attempted to get up but merely squirmed in frustration. “See? I’m good for nothing. Nothing at all.” But she’d retained her massive faux-alligator bag, and, from it, pulled out her lipstick, which she touched to her lips without consulting a mirror. Then, she unwrapped several Rolos from their tube of gilt foil, and, devouring them, said, “Mark, I just want to apologize for collapsing at your performance. I’m sure you were absolutely hilarious.”

She said this without a vestige of humor or irony.

“I know there was something funny you said, and I wished I’d written it down. But then I just blacked out.”

“No one slipped you anything?”

“Heavens, no!”

“Was Jon Kim there? In the audience that night?”

“Oh, no! It was a very seedy crowd.”

“Everyone is so glad you’re better.”

“Sometime, when I’m back to normal, you must stop by and do your whole routine. Just for me.”

“I’d love to.”

She was sipping a can of nutrition supplement. “I’m supposed to build myself up. So they tell me. But this stuff tastes like chalk.”

I just asked her outright: “Nadia, what happened to you?”

Before replying, she scanned the garden, the rain-soaked clusters of perennials: azaleas, false indigo, asters. She dropped her voice to an espionage agent’s whisper, “Henri is my nephew by marriage. He’s quite the mercenary vulture. I caught him taking down a Winslow Homer watercolor. Nothing attractive, some canoeist in the Adirondacks. But he was appraising it. Like that awful Bryce Rossi Rudy told me he brought in to appraise everything. A bit crass, I’d say.”

“But are you all right?”

“Oh, yes. Thank God it wasn’t a stroke or a heart attack. I got my pills scrambled. And I’d been nervous in that questionable crowd at the club. I’d ordered a mai tai and drank it much too fast. Those college boys got on my nerves. And those greasy chicken wings were the worst.”

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln…“But you had said you had to see me. That night.”

“Absolutely.” She again monitored the grounds and the back porch.

“What did you need to tell me, Nadia?”

“I remember, I’d read you’d be at the Soong Dynasty and just barged in…” She ate the rest of her Rolos. Was she really diabetic? She was desperate enough to wash them down with the nutrition supplement, which I saw was black raspberry-flavored. “It was so important. I wish I knew what it was.” In her bag, Nadia found an appointment calendar, also with a faux-alligator cover, and leafed through its pages. “No, nothing. I guess it was too important to write down.”

Or remember. “Was it anything to do with who killed Genevieve? Or who killed Bryce Rossi?”

“
Oh, Lord
!” she said. Her dumbfounded expression meant she had been shielded from the media, at the rehab and here, by Henri. “Bryce Rossi was murdered?”

“I’m sorry—”

The crusty Nadia revived. “I’m not. He had a criminal past. I’d warned Genevieve about him. He was beneath her. He’d actually proposed to her. He’d gotten down on one knee—that was passé in my youth for heaven’s sake. He’d taken her to the symphony so there were troops of people around. Genevieve was mortified. And he wouldn’t take No for an answer. He kept badgering her. Buying her vintage clothing to buy her.”

“She was pregnant. Genevieve. They found out during the autopsy.”

Nadia sighed. “She never struck me as loose. How sad, the way people wreck their lives. But what happened to Rossi? Did some underworld associate do him in? And to think he had that house filled with reliquaries and crucifixes. Why, it was like visiting Philip the Second at the Escorial.”

So they
had
socialized with Bryce Rossi, some of the trustees, other than Sam Ahearn.

“Bryce was killed with a hammer, in his home. His assistant, Cat Hodges, found him. It was brutal, gruesome.”

“He was so attracted to the gruesome, your word, in art, all those bloody, martyred saints, do you think he…indulged in that sort of thing in his sexual life?”

“I could never read him well, read him at all, really. I mean, he kept touching me, touching my hand when we had dinner.”

“
You
saw him socially?”

“Only once. I was fishing—”

“Aunt Nadia!” Henri called from the back porch. “You must not overextend yourself. Time to go, Mr. Windsor.”

“Thank you so much for coming.”

“Of course,” I told Nadia.

As I followed Henri through the house, I felt compelled to mention my concerns for Nadia’s safety. I had first thought she had been drugged, at the Soong Dynasty. “We’ve had a…dangerous summer around here. In connection with Mingo House.”

Henri was the all-black sort: black turtleneck, jeans, sneakers, the SoHo hipster by way of the Left Bank. “Yes. The Victorian Girl. She has been of interest even in France. Did you also know this Genevieve Courson?” He gave her name a full French flourish.

“I don’t think it was possible to know her. But this house is secure, right?”

“Alarmed. And I am here with my wife and sons. And my uncle, Nadia’s brother, is flying in from Berkeley tonight.”

“Two people associated with Mingo House have been murdered. Genevieve Courson and Bryce Rossi. Both of them knew Nadia. To some degree.”

“We will take care. As you Americans say.”

Framed in the front hall was a photograph of the young Gulbenkians—with Nadia resembling the lush, early Ava Gardner, and her husband—a bona-fide hunk—smiling with John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office.

“He was quite the tom cat. My late uncle. My aunt learned, how do you say it? Forbearance.” He smiled for the first time. “Thank you again for the chocolate.”