Smart vs. Pretty (12 page)

Amanda squirmed in the chair. “Hello, Mr. Tierney. My name’s Amanda Greenfield. I’m calling about Chick Peterson.”

“Yeah?” he prompted.

Amanda realized suddenly that she’d have to do the ugly business of telling this man that his friend had been killed—and that his other friend, Benji Morton, was the accused killer.

The phone said, “Hello? Are you still there?”

“I’m calling from Benji Morton’s office,” she said, not knowing how to start this terrible conversation.

“Patch him through, will you, honey?” asked Tierney.

Patch him through? “He’s not here right now; he’s—”

“They probably keep him in meetings all day long. Just between you and me, I never thought Benji Morton would be vice president of global sales for Moonburst. Unbelievable. He wasn’t exactly the most likely to succeed in college.”

What on earth was this man talking about? “I’m sorry; I’m not sure how to say this.”

“You want a reference for Chick? I know, it’s awkward to ask if someone’s full of shit or not. Just tell Benji that Chick is okay. We’ve got the real thing down here. A whole new concept. And be sure to give Benji the message that there’s more where that came from.”

The front door rattled. At the sound, Amanda threw the phone receiver across the room. She scrambled to pick it up, saying, “Got to go,” before hanging up.

She took a few in-outs, deep ones, and got up. As soon as she stepped out of the office, Amanda saw a young woman in jeans and a down jacket peering into the storefront window. She relocked the office door despite her shaking hands and walked toward the front. She unlocked the door and exited Moonburst.

The girl barista on the street couldn’t have been more than eighteen. She said, “Don’t you work next door?”

Amanda ignored the question. She relocked Moonburst’s front door from the outside—her forehead veins nearly popping from the force of her blood pressure—and said, “Benji had an emergency. He asked me to make sure his staff got the message.”

“What message?” the girl asked skeptically.

Amanda calculated the karmic weight of what she was about to do, and decided to go ahead anyway. She said, “Tell them Moonburst is closed until further notice.”

Then Amanda took three big steps to the curb and chucked Benji’s keys down the sewer.

L
ess than a year ago, Frank had taken the number two train from her Greenwich Village studio apartment to and from her midtown office building every workday. Now she was a B-and-Ter, someone who had to cross a bridge or tunnel to get to Manhattan. Frank never really thought Brooklynites counted as B-and-Ters, despite their technical qualification. But all her former New York City colleagues and acquaintances had acted as if she were heading for the farm whenever she mentioned a trip to the largest of the five boroughs.

Nowadays Frank rarely ventured into Manhattan. The ride on the number two from Borough Hall in Brooklyn to Times Square brought back memories, not all of them unpleasant. It was almost 7:00
A.M
., and the car was nearly empty. Frank stood, gripping the aluminum pole above her head, staring numbly at the MTA advertisements on the car wall. Go to the Bronx Zoo, visit the Children’s Science Museum, take the whole family to the Hayden Planetarium. None of those destinations had anything to do with Frank’s life. Probably never would. She could see herself marrying and having kids as easily as she could picture herself performing the tightrope walk in the circus. Actually, the tightrope wasn’t as far a stretch, as it were. Frank shuffled her feet, knocking into someone’s feet. She muttered an apology. The woman sitting in front of her sneered.

Frank decided to prepare a speech. “Clarissa, I know we discussed Piper Zorn’s role in Romancing the Bean’s comeback. But I can’t shake the idea that it’s a big mistake that could destroy my life.” Too paranoid. “Clarissa, I know you don’t approve, but I had to made a judgment call—it is my business, after all, and I have the right to veto strategy.” Too polemic. How about: “I was so tickled by Zorn’s writing that I wanted to congratulate him personally on his coverage of our little café. I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t clear the visit with you first. I was feeling, I don’t know,
dangerous
for the first time in my life, and thought I’d go with it.” Forget that one. Clarissa would never buy it.

It frustrated Frank that she had to justify a difference of opinion with Clarissa. In the past Frank had always been able to stick with her opinions, however bleak they might be. What was it about Clarissa that filled Frank with doubts? Personal involvement, of course. If she didn’t care about the friendship, working with Clarissa would be easier.

No need to prepare for the talk with Piper. Having nothing at stake emotionally, she knew she’d be sharp and swift as a knife. The
New York Post
’s offices were in Times Square—Frank got off the train at the Broadway/Forty-second Street stop. The paper used to be located on South Street on the lower tip of Manhattan, but the press moved uptown and now resided next door to the
New York Times
and Condé Nast Publishing (
Vogue
,
Vanity Fair
, and
Mademoiselle,
among others). Times Square itself had been through a complete transformation in the last few years. Seeing it now, in the glow of early morning, Frank was both awed and troubled by the change. All the nudie theaters were gone, replaced by Broadway musical productions
The Lion King
and
Grease
(although both of those names would make great porno titles). Not a single piece of trash, literal or figurative, rolled down the street. A dozen tourist-friendly restaurants had replaced fast-food joints and bodegas. Playland—New York’s longtime red-hot center of teen prostitution—had turned into a Disney gift shop. Of course, any sane person would prefer the selling of stuffed animals to the pimping of kids. But Goofy’s rubber face plastered on a Broadway billboard frightened Frank the way a benign, well-meaning clown could terrify a toddler. The rank consumerism could only result in trouble. Now that Times Square had been sanitized, where would deviance go? Into homes and schools.

Across the street, Frank beheld the behemoth Virgin Megastore. Next to that, the All-Star café (some café—she wondered if they even knew what a varietal was). A Moonburst on the corner completed the picture, nearly puncturing Frank’s already thinly stretched membrane of hope for Romancing the Bean. If she couldn’t hold on to the store, what did she really have? What could she hold up to the light and claim as her own? She would be lost without her café, her anchor. It occurred to Frank that life would be safer if she diversified. What could her Plan B be? An image flashed before eyes: Frank crying on Clarissa’s shoulder when Romancing the Bean went down the tubes, the blonde stroking her black hair, saying, “Don’t worry, Francesca. I’m here for you all the way.”

The bittersweet daydream carried her inside the tabloid’s office building. In the lobby, a newsstand carried every paper and magazine in existence, but prominently displayed stacks of the home team’s product. She checked the directory for Zorn. Sixteenth floor. Finding no elevator security, she took the next car up without hassle.

The doors opened right onto the editorial offices. Compared to the relative quiet of the lobby, the newsroom was chaos (the city paper never slept). Men and women of all ages scurried around like wired mice in suits. Frank took them to be the editors. Men and women of all ages lazed at their desks, looking like relaxed mice in jeans. She took them to be the reporters who’d just finished stories. She was impressed by the diversity of the staff—not just their clothes and ages, but their ethnicity as well. In the magazine world, the vast majority of writers and editors were white women between twenty-five and fifty. That’d been Frank’s experience, anyway, but she’d worked at two women’s-service glossies before going to
Bookmaker’s Monthly
. Generally, the staff of a magazine tended to reflect its niche readership. Newspapers, especially daily tabloids, had to have a more diverse staff to appeal to a wider audience. This seemed healthier, less insular. Frank liked it, and let herself soak up the kinetic air.

A young man bumped into her by the elevator doors. Frank asked him to point her in the direction of Piper Zorn’s desk. He seemed extremely put out by having to jerk his thumb to the left. Frank thanked him overly nicely just to be annoying. She needed to ask the same question a few more times before finding Piper’s desk in a maze of computer terminals. It was in the corner of the newsroom. Not in a corner office. Just stuck in the corner like it was almost, but not completely, forgotten. She sat down in his swivel chair to wait for him. Clarissa on her mind, Frank wondered if she’d be stopping by to see Zorn, too. She hoped not. That would be a run-in Frank wasn’t up for.

Frank checked her watch. She’d been waiting for fifteen minutes. Maybe Zorn wasn’t planning on coming to work that day. She’d give him another half hour. Frank poked around on Zorn’s desk to kill time. She picked up some of his notes, but his scrawl was illegible. She used his desk phone and called her home number to check for messages. The first one: “Clarissa here. See the
Post
this morning? Isn’t it great? I’ll see you both tonight around six.” By then Clarissa would know about her confrontation with Zorn. Frank was torn between looking forward to seeing Clarissa and fearing her scorn. Frank was so distracted by her feelings that she almost missed message number two: “Hi, Francesca. This is Walter. I can’t stop thinking about you. I have to see you again as soon as possible. I’ll come to Romancing the Bean this evening. Maybe we can have dinner together? See you then.”

Just as the machine was telling her there were no more messages, Frank’s eyes trailed across the newsroom and settled on the back of a man at a Xerox machine. He had a long, straight back and even longer legs. His hair was the same color as Walter’s. He turned in profile. He had plunging sideburns. Frank closed her eyes. When she opened them the man was gone. It was incredible what the mind could do, she thought. Hearing Walter’s voice must have made her project his likeness on a man with similar looks.

Piper’s phone rang. On reflex Frank picked it up and almost said, “Barney Greenfield’s.” But before she could say anything, a woman’s voice squawked, “Okay, Zorn. You owe me big-time. I want flowers. Candy. A hotel room. I want romance. Compliments. You have to tell me I look beautiful every fifteen seconds. I want you to keep your eyes open when you kiss me and to do it with the lights on. And say my name, over and over. Clear?”

Frank said, huskily, “I’m sorry—”

The woman cut her off. “You’re not sorry and you can’t worm out of this. The toxicology reports on Charles Peterson are being reanalyzed for confirmation, but the preliminary results show that the cause of death was a blow to the head. But even without the head trauma, he would have died within the hour of a caffeine overdose. According to the report, to get a caffeine level as high as his was, he’d have had to drink a hundred cups of coffee in one hour or taken three bottles of NoDoz. The overdose resulted in complete paralysis of the body—a rare reaction to unusually high levels of caffeine in the blood. Once Peterson had crossed the line, his muscles froze completely and, if he hadn’t been killed, he’d have gone into cardiac arrest.” Frank heard the clicking of a keyboard. “And that’s about it. I’ll expect you to pick me up tonight, at my place, at eight. If you stand me up, I’m telling the police you stole hospital records. And don’t forget the flowers. Nice ones. You show up with carnations, you’re dead.”

The woman hung up. Frank looked around to make sure no one was watching her and dialed *69. She had to explain to the caller what’d happened, if she could squeeze a word in. Someone answered on the first ring. A man. He said, “Morgue.” Frank hung up.

Zorn dated his sources. What would Clarissa say if she knew he was swapping sex for information? What kind of woman was the morgue attendant to want Zorn so badly? Chick Peterson OD’ed on caffeine? Frank had never heard of such a thing. Could it have been from any of the beans in her shop? She remembered the purple peaberries in her pocket, the ones Matt had given her. They could be lethal. She’d have to figure all this out, maybe take them to the police. Chick’s final moments must have been ghastly: being bludgeoned without the power to defend himself. Frank’s mind spun like a computer hard drive, processing and downloading. This would have to be another secret to keep from Amanda, thought Frank. Her sister was distraught already. What would the real details of Chick’s demise do to her? Frank would have to bear this burden, like so many others, herself. The resentment crept up, but Frank, as always, swallowed twice.

Once he got the correct report on Chick’s death, Zorn could step up his attack on Romancing the Bean, really playing up the Borgia sisters/poison coffee thing. An interview with Frank at this point would only turn into fodder. She had to go (Frank was partially relieved—now she wouldn’t have to face off with Clarissa again). As she stood up to go, Frank noticed a small bookshelf next to Piper’s desk. The first shelf seemed to contain a matched set of dozens of volumes. She took a closer look. All the black-jacketed hardcovers were the same book, a novel called
The Dock Side of Murder
. It was published by one of the lowest-rent operations in New York—Shotgun Press. Author’s name: P. E. Zorn.

Well, how about that? thought Frank. Piper had written himself what appeared to be a mystery novel. Frank pulled a book off the shelf. Thick at 450 pages. The back-jacket copy described the work as “a hard-boiled noir flashback to the gritty days of New York City’s great butcher era.” Great butcher era? When was that? The back cover also reprinted a blurb review from
Bookmaker’s Monthly
. It read, “A…novel of intense…integrity. The book is full of…vivid…characters and…shocking…violence.” The ellipses said it all, thought Frank. If a reviewer wrote, “An incredibly lousy read,” the blurb on the book jacket would state, “An incredibl[e]…read.” Frank could only imagine what the review had really said. She never recognized her own reviews on covers.

She glanced around—no one was watching—and flipped the book open to the first page: “Chapter One: The Bloody Docks at Dawn. The meat packers hacked away at the giant pig. He was still alive for God knows what ungodly reason. Once dead, this porker will fill a freezer but good, thought Sammy, the one-armed ax-swinger who had a bone to pick with the unions—and the mob. Finally, the great bloated beast’s fatty heart pumped gallons of lumpy blood out of the gashes in his neck and into the gutter. Paulie wiped his brow with his sweat-, blood-, and visceradrenched bandanna and said to Sammy, ‘It doesn’t get better than this.’”

Frank dropped the book in her lap. “Oh. My. God.” She’d read those words before. She looked again at the title. “Holy shit.”

A couple days after her parents died, Frank gave notice at
Bookmaker’s Monthly
. Her boss asked her to do just a few short reviews before she officially quit. He needed the eyes, and he also thought that reading a few upcoming novels would help get her mind off the tragedy. The reviews she wrote for him that week were some of Frank’s best writing. She felt freer that she’d ever been before, reviewing books as if she were in a vacuum, as if her criticisms would never be read, especially by the authors. When she’d seen Piper’s book at that time, the title was
Meathouse Murder
. The story contained images of butchery so graphic, grotesque, and stomach-turning that she’d actually vomited after reading a passage about the exsanguination of a cow. Meat grinders, hooks, sides of human beef. Human meat sausages. The entire book was so demented and repugnant that the only reason she could imagine anyone publishing it was for pure shock value. But there was no value in the book, shock or otherwise.

Frank wrote a scathing review that practically called for the author’s imprisonment. That was the last she’d heard of it. The book was published—she held a copy in her hand—but it never made any major lists. Then again, most books didn’t.