Silent Treatment (18 page)

“Here, keep these no matter what,” he said.

Thorvald did not have to hear that offer twice. He shoved the bills into the deep pocket of his caftan and listened impassively to Harry’s story.

“So, exactly what is it you want to know?” he asked when Harry finished. He still sounded wary.

“If you can tell me where she lived, that would be wonderful.”

“Lots of different kinds of people live in the Village for lots of different reasons. One of ’em’s a respect for privacy we have around here that doesn’t exist in a lot of places. Live and let live, if you know what I mean. If Desiree was your wife, and if she didn’t tell you about her place here, she must have had her reasons.”

Harry did not have to try very hard to produce the urgency in his voice.

“Mr. Thorvald, please. Evie’s dead. She was thirty-eight years old and she’s dead. We had a home, friends, plans for the future. I need to know who Desiree was. Regardless of what she called herself, she was my wife. I’m certain I have the keys to her place. Please. Just point me to the right building and I’m put of here. I won’t ask any more of you. Just that.”

Thorvald stroked his beard and stared down at his sandaled feet.

“Two doors down,” he said finally. “Newly painted red enamel door. Second floor, I think she once said. I’m not sure. I’ve never been in the building myself.”

“Thanks. I know you didn’t really want to tell me,” Harry said. “I won’t bother you again.”

Paladin Thorvald studied Harry’s face.

“I’m sorry your wife’s dead,” he said.

Two small panes of glass were set high in the red enamel door. Harry stood on his tiptoes and peered inside. The front entryway was deserted. He glanced about to ensure that the shadow people were still at bay, and then withdrew the rabbit’s foot and keys. Within him the sliver of a notion remained that somehow he had started from a misconception and built a secret life for Evie around it. That last bit of hope vanished as the first of her keys turned in the lock.

He slipped inside and closed the red door behind him. The small, poorly lit foyer, while not fetid, would certainly have benefited from a cleaning. There was a small, scarred table for magazines, two rows of mailboxes servicing about twenty-five units, and two columns of buzzers. Harry scanned the names on the boxes, each a first initial/last name done on a black plastic strip with a labeler. A few names were added with taped-on pieces of paper. None of the initials were D., and none of the names were familiar. But apartment 2F had no name at all. The mailbox key on Evie’s ring fit that lock. The box was empty. Suddenly, there was a soft scraping against the outside door behind him.
Harry whirled. His pulse, already on alert, was jackhammering. No one was peering through the window, but almost certainly someone had been.

Harry briefly considered checking the street, but thought better of it. Whoever had been outside the door was probably no one he wanted to deal with. All that mattered was getting up to apartment 2F.

The first floor consisted of a dim, stucco-walled corridor lined by several apartment doors. An uncarpeted staircase was off to one side, narrow enough to make Harry wonder how people on the floors above could get a couch or refrigerator into their places. There was, as far as he could tell, no elevator. Still unnerved by the notion that someone had been watching him, he ascended the staircase quietly and cautiously.

Apartment 2F was at the rear of the building. Harry approached, trying to picture Evie walking down the same hall. Standing by the door, he listened. There was only silence. He knocked softly. Then knocked again. Nothing. Finally, his pulse once more making itself known, Harry inserted the second key into the lock, turned it, and stepped inside the world of the woman who called herself Desiree.

The apartment was totally dark. Harry used the glow from the corridor lights to locate a lamp, turned it on and quickly closed the hallway door behind him.

The small, sparsely furnished living room was a stark contrast to their immaculate, impeccably decorated co-op uptown. It was clearly a busy writer’s retreat. Cardboard folders and small stacks of manuscript pages were set out on the threadbare carpet. Each was labeled, the titles suggesting to Harry that more than one project was going on. There was an electric typewriter on a folding table, and next to it a discount-house computer desk with a PC and laser printer. Off to one side, on the floor, were a TV, a VCR and seven or eight videos, a half-filled wine rack, a cassette player and two dozen tapes. There was also a telephone. Harry listened to the dial tone for a moment and then set the receiver back down. There was no number on it. It seemed likely that some people had access to the line.
But that group clearly did not include Evie’s best friend, Julia.

Harry checked the front closet, which was empty, and then the kitchen. There was a supply of diet soda, a Braun coffee maker, and a microwave. The cupboards were stocked with snack foods and canned goods, and the freezer had a supply of frozen dinners and half a dozen different flavors of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Evie’s favorite.

Next to the kitchen was a small bathroom with a shower stall, but no tub. The shampoo was Evie’s brand, and the mixed scent of powders and soaps reminded him of her. There was a mirrored medicine cabinet over the sink. Harry watched himself reach for it. He looked like hell—tired, drawn, and in need of a shave. He wondered if Gene Hackman ever looked this bad. Inside the cabinet were a number of unmarked bottles of pills. Harry recognized Valium, Seconol, and some type of amphetamine. He suspected the others contained various sorts of painkillers. The prescription labels had been torn off all of them. There was also a small bottle of white powder. Harry took some on a moistened finger and rubbed it over a spot on his gums. The immediate numbness it produced meant it almost certainly was cocaine. Evie had never shown even the slightest interest in drugs, and Harry could not remember her accepting so much as a hit of marijuana if it was offered to her at a party.

Desiree’s drug use had to have been recreational, or at most intermittent. Double identity or not, if she was strung out on drugs, Harry would have noticed.

He opened the single drawer in the vanity and stared down in utter dismay at its contents. There was nothing in the small drawer but condoms—perhaps fifteen different styles and brands in boxes and individual packets—some common and store-bought, some from exotic specialty houses. Harry picked up one of the packets. It was labeled
Thai Tickler
on one side, and had a lewd drawing printed on the other beneath the promise
Guaranteed Pleasure for Him and Her
. Harry threw it back angrily and slammed the drawer shut. Part of him wanted to leave—simply to get out
of there and forget the whole goddamn thing. He had already learned more about his wife and her alter ego than he ever would have wanted to know. And he dreaded having to face the revelations awaiting him in the pages and computer files in the living room. But he knew he couldn’t back off. He had been dropped into the middle of a nightmare and the only way out for him was through it.

There was barely space in the single bedroom for a narrow dresser and a neatly made queen-size bed. Double, louvered closets filled all of one wall. Harry checked beneath the bed and then pulled apart one set of the closet doors. The evening dresses—fourteen of them—were elegant, sexy, and far from inexpensive. On the floor beneath them were a number of pairs of dress shoes, all from the upscale shops Evie frequented. Behind the other set of doors was a collection of nightgowns, peignoirs, teddies, and other extremely provocative bedroom apparel. The hardly subtle collection was not very appealing to Harry. He was much more aroused by the feel of Evie’s body beneath a flannel nightshirt, or even a plain cotton T. Perhaps his taste was the reason she rarely wore the few lacy garments she had at home. Or perhaps Evie’s ways were simply different from Desiree’s. Bewildered and more saddened now than angry, Harry returned to the living room and the writings that had very likely cost Evie her life.

He picked up a thin folder labeled simply
Introduction
, and opened to the first of several pages.

Harry set the folder down and opened another marked
Correspondence
. It contained letters from senior editors at several of the big-name publishing houses expressing great interest in the sample chapters of
Between the Sheets
, by Desiree. The correspondence was sent to the post office box of an agent in Manhattan named Norman Quimby. Harry had never heard Evie mention the man and wondered if he existed at all. A number of the other letters were from the producers of syndicated television tabloid shows. Those letters were written to Evie in care of a different post office box. They suggested that if she could deliver Desiree and all the material she claimed to have on tape and film, there could be serious discussion of a long-term, on-camera deal. The producers also promised to investigate how to implement a number of high-tech safeguards Evie had insisted upon to protect Desiree’s identity and enhance the mystique surrounding her. One producer wrote:

Harry picked up one of the videos. It was labeled simply
#1
. He scanned the folders on the floor. One was marked
Vids
. Inside were six narratives, each two or more pages long, and each titled by a single number. He kept the one headed #1 and set the rest down. Then he slipped the video into the VCR.

This tape features a woman who calls herself Briana,
he read.

Harry watched in morbid fascination as a woman with large, youthful breasts and the perfect, muscled body of a teenager allowed herself to be undressed by a man whose
body was not nearly so well maintained. Calling him “Senator,” she teased, rubbed, dared, cajoled, and finally loved him into the promise to drop his support of another stiff tax on tobacco products. The woman was incredibly sexy, alluring, and skilled—so much so that the senator did not last more than two minutes once their actual lovemaking commenced.

The electronic blurring of faces and voices made it impossible to identify the man, and Harry wondered if, in fact, the tape was the genuine article or something Desiree had staged.
Was Desiree herself in one or more of the videos?
Unfortunately, the likelihood of that seemed quite high. Harry decided to put off viewing the rest of them until he had gone through all the other material.

He checked the time. It was nearly two. Silently, he thanked his profession for providing him with the hour-to-hour or even minute-to-minute self-control necessary to make it through an all-nighter followed by a full day of work. He would stay here until dawn, then stop by the apartment to shower and change before heading to the hospital for rounds. As soon as he could clear out his office schedule, he would return.

He scanned the folders and loose papers, trying to decide how best to get organized, One small pile caught his eye. It was, perhaps, five or ten pages, bound by a single rubber band. The label tucked beneath the elastic was written in Evie’s hand on a yellow Post-it. It read
Business Execs. (preliminary notes) See also Desiree’s Diary
.