SoHo Sins (7 page)

“You seductress, you.”

It was an old joke—until you went back too far, to the time when no one laughed.

“Nathalie was a lovely, lovely girl, Jack. But you’ve got to take hold. Life is for the living.”

“So they say, Dot. It’s strange. Everyone tells me life must go on. Nobody tells me why.”

After a moment, Dorothy said quietly, “Please, just don’t dwell. I miss the old devilish Jack, you know. We both do.”

“I’m better than I was.”

“Really? I’m glad. But don’t get too, too good, dear. It doesn’t suit you. Would you like to speak to Ed?”

“He’s not as sexy as you, but he’ll do.”

“That’s much better now. You see what I mean? Hold on.”

The phone gave a dull hiss for a few seconds, and then Hogan came on the line. “What’s up, Flash?”

Same old Hogan. Whenever he wants to prod me a little, he uses that nickname from younger, faster days, when we were both more interested in stroked-and-bored ’57 Chevys than in spousal homicides or secondary-market prices for Henry Moore bronzes.

“I just got a message from Amanda Oliver.”

“Don’t tell me you’re going mystical on us. What did that woman do to men’s heads?”

“It wasn’t just her personality, it was her bank accounts.”

“Since when can you tell them apart?”

“I’m learning. Mandy’s e-mail helps. She sent it on the day she was killed.”

“Great. Does it say anything like ‘Philip is off in the study loading his automatic’?”

“No such luck. By the way, what did you think of the Oliver apartment?”

“Spiffy joint.”

“Of course, but did you notice a laptop anywhere?”

“Nope. One room loaded with computer stuff, but no laptop in sight.”

“Well, Mandy always kept one by her bed. Philip used to complain about it all the time. Every morning, she’d wake up and fire off a string of e-mails before she even washed her face. Said it kept her in touch, and she didn’t have to hear anyone else talk. She just sat propped up on pillows, clattering away at the keyboard for an hour or so. The thoughts went straight to her fingertips.”

“E-mails can be tough to track down.”

“Not Mandy’s. She had things rigged so all her messages fed automatically into a desktop file. Preserving her correspondence for the Archives of American Art. Or maybe for her memoirs, who knows?”

“Which means we’ve got the electronic equivalent of a diary.”

“We would if we had the laptop, but someone beat us to it.”

“Now, who would want to do a thing like that?” Hogan laughed glumly. “If we recover that computer, we’ll have the text of every e-mail message she sent in the last three months.”

“More like three years. It will be a tome.”

“Something for you to read through at your leisure.”

“Thanks. What did I ever do to you?”

“Don’t ask.”

Hogan didn’t say any more. He and I have known each other too long, too well, to be without a few reciprocal injuries. We joke about the small wounds; the others are pointless to discuss.

“Do you think,” he asked, “that Philip’s girlfriend might do his dirty work for him?”

“She loves him,” I said, “so I suppose anything’s possible.”

“Does she have a set of keys?”

“I don’t know. Philip doesn’t share all his domestic arrangements with me.”

“But you never saw Claudia use keys at the building?”

“When I saw her, she was always with Philip.”

“How touching. No hanky-panky between you and the Italian wench, on the side?”

“No.”

“I’m impressed. Honor among philanderers?”

“Maybe. Caution anyhow.”

“I think I better talk to her right away.”

“Tomorrow? I can call her now and see if she’s free.”

“The sooner the better.”

The next afternoon, we drove over to Williamsburg and parked Hogan’s dinged-up Torino near the Bedford Avenue subway stop.

“So this is where Philip Oliver wanted to hang out for fun?” Hogan asked.

Through the windshield, we watched small bands of twenty-somethings, in faded black jeans and scuzzy sneakers, drifting in May sunlight among bookstores, music shops, delis, low-end boutiques, and slacker-chic restaurants.

“You haven’t met Claudia yet,” I said.

We got out and walked down a side street toward the river, passing one low, boarded-up industrial building after another, until we came to a steel door bearing a partially peeled-away poster for Johnny Bubonic and the Pestilence. Claudia’s buzzer dangled at the end of two wires.

“I hope the doorman finds the
signorina
at home,” Hogan said.

There was no intercom. After a minute or two, we heard sounds behind the door and Claudia leaned out to swing it open.

“Jesus,” Hogan said under his breath.

Claudia was wearing a scooped-neck black top and tight jeans. Her skin was startlingly white, her face accented by long, midnight-black hair.

She smiled. “
Ciao
, Jack,” she said, kissing my cheeks. “What is the name of your friend?”

“This is Hogan. He’s kind of a cop.”

“Yes, of course. Philip told me. You want to know if I maybe killed his old wife. A very reasonable question. I think she wished, naturally, to murder me if she could. So why not wonder the other?” She put her hand out to Hogan.

“You have a gorgeous smile,” he told her, and pressed the back of her hand to his lips.

“
Grazie
. Please come up. I am sorry for the such long climb.”

We followed her four flights up the steep concrete stairs. I had the feeling that Hogan, who kept glancing up at Claudia’s fluid hips as we ascended, would have gladly done any number of floors.

At the top landing a corridor led past stacks of scrap lumber and discarded machine parts to a paint-splattered door scrawled with a flamboyant gold “Claudia.” The whole building smelled faintly of turpentine.

Claudia pushed the door back and motioned us through. Just inside was an L-shaped kitchen with a service island. Two bottles of red wine sat on a wooden table improvised out of sawhorses and a length of plywood covered with an ivory-hued bed sheet. A vase of fresh flowers stood between the bottles.

“Sit, sit,” Claudia said, waving us toward several folding chairs by the table. “Be comfortable.”

Hogan and I eased into the unstable seats.

“Jack, please, would you open for me?”

I clamped one of the wine bottles under my limp left arm and uncorked it, while Claudia went to a cupboard and brought out black olives, two cheeses, and a round loaf of bread.

“Fresh baked,” she said. “From two blocks, very near.”

I poured wine into three straight-sided glasses.

“To all our friends,” Claudia toasted, “living and dead.” Strangely, it was a salute I had heard Hogan use.

“You understand, Claudia,” I told her, “we’re not here just for a visit. Hogan has some unpleasant work to do. He might have to ask you rude questions.”

“But why?” She looked Hogan in the eye. “I did not kill Amanda. I liked her a great much. And I did not ask to Philip that he kill her.”

“What did you ask him to do?” Hogan said.

“Just to leave her.”

“To Mrs. Oliver,” he said, “it might have amounted to much the same thing.”

“It was not so easy for Philip also.”

Hogan nodded, with an expression that looked almost like sympathy. “All right, let me guess. He told you he would walk out on her, once a few important matters got settled—with his company, and between him and Mandy.”

“Yes.”

“But every time one thing got settled, something new came up.”

“Yes.”

“The art collection, the houses, the investments.”

“Many such things.”

“Until finally you got fed up and said you couldn’t take it anymore.”

“I told him I would not be his little art whore.”

Hogan studied his wine for a moment. “When was that?”

“Last week, before he left for California.”

Hogan slugged down my short pour of wine. Claudia, perfectly calm, slowly sliced two pieces of cheese onto a wedge of warm bread and handed it to him. She refilled his glass. All the while, Hogan’s eyes followed her skilled hands, darting away just once, when her head turned, to take in her swelling form.

“My friend wants to learn a bit more about you,” I said. “Can we look at your work?”

“With pleasure. Whatever you like.”

I topped off Claudia’s glass and mine, and we all walked into the studio. Paintings leaned in stacks against three of the walls. Pinned on the fourth wall was a loose canvas, its surface dense with the stylized carnal tanglings that had gained Claudia her nascent celebrity. The oversized studio had north light from a row of windows set high up under the fifteen-foot ceiling.

“I work on a new series,” Claudia said. We paused before the unstretched canvas, and she tilted her head from side to side as she studied it. “Do you think it’s alive, Jack?”

“Definitely.”

“Yes, it’s the only thing that matters in art.”

“Or in people,” Hogan added.

Claudia turned to face him. “No, some people are much better dead. In Italy we have much history, and we know the value of killing.”

“Anyone you’d care to nominate?”

“More than one. The men around Philip. Those
consiglieri
at his office.”

“What’s wrong with the men at his office?”

“They hate me, they’re evil. They try to make him—how do you say?—a hostage, a caged
padrone
.”

I stepped away from the interview scene, passing a cart loaded with paint tubes, brushes, rags, a coffee can jammed full of stir sticks, and several paint-thinner tins. Here and there, metal columns sprouted braces that triangulated up to the ceiling beams. As I made my way back to the kitchen, I caught sight of a mattress on a low pallet, facing a small TV with a rabbit-ear antenna. Bricks showed under the corners of the bed platform, and I tried to imagine Philip Oliver stretched out there, fidgeting as he waited for Claudia to come out of the shower with her skin moist and her black hair dripping. I wondered if he hung his hand-tailored English shirts in the same closet with her vintage bellbottoms and Chloé tops. Then I remembered, perversely, that he had told me once, in meticulous detail, about her penchant for La Perla lingerie.

At the table, I opened the second bottle. I could see Claudia and Hogan, vivid as miniatures, perfectly framed by the high steel-frame archway.

“You wish to question me, no doubt. I feel pleased to tell you whatever I know.”

“How often did you get together with Philip?”

“At first, once every two of weeks. Soon, twice the each week. Now almost all days.”

“A smart man, your Philip.”

“You are very kind, Mr. Hogan.”

I followed their conversation distantly, absently, as I slowly sampled Claudia’s cheap wine. Only a few words eluded me.

Had she ever seen Philip become violently angry?

No, he was a dear, sweet man—especially now that his mind was falling to pieces.

Wasn’t that just an act?

Not at all. Philip never pretended with her; he came to her bed in order to be true to himself, for the first time in his life.

Had she ever actually met his wife, Amanda Oliver?

Only once, yes, when for some reason Mandy turned up, trailed by a video cameraman, at the opening of a group show that Claudia was in at Roebling Hall. It was not a place one expected to see the great lady, who seemed shocked to find herself confronting the
something something
of her
something
husband.

How did the meeting go?

She had called Claudia a “minor media slut” (as Claudia repeated, not for the first time evidently) and left quickly with her handsome
something
friend still running the video camera.

As the wine began its subtle work on my brain, I forced myself to listen more closely.

“Have you visited the Oliver loft in SoHo?” Hogan said.

“Why would you ask this when Jack is right here? Would I lie? Even if I had done the worst, I would not be the foolish girl enough to fall into an ignorant trap.”

“So the police might find your fingerprints in the apartment? That wouldn’t be a surprise.”

“I am not so proud of how Philip and I met, or the things we had to do to be together. But love must find its way. It must.”

“And you loved Philip enough to take chances together?”

“Think what you like. Have you not felt some great awful passion, Mr. Hogan?”

“Once or twice.”

“And did feeling it mean you would kill?”

“A fair question. If they ever find Jack here dead, you’ll know the answer.”

Claudia tossed her hair slightly, puzzled but not backing down. “You tease me,” she said.

“That makes us even, Miss Silva.”

She turned slightly toward Hogan. The two, holding each other’s eyes, exchanged minute smiles.

Alone at Claudia’s makeshift table, I was watching it happen again, the old inexplicable business between Hogan and women.

What is it with this guy? To me, he’s just an average-looking man, of middling height, with so-so charm. But for a great many women of various classes and ages, Edward Hogan is an unexpected lothario, capable of exerting a gravitational pull. Maybe it’s the equation of baldness with sexual vigor; maybe his ladies are slightly awed to meet a man of such calm, polite demeanor, who, as he leans close to peer into their eyes, reveals a handgun strapped to his rib cage.

In any case, Hogan never lacked for confidence. Once, and once only, I asked him about his technique. All he could say was: “Hey, I know how to listen. It counts for a lot.” No doubt. But once he gets his answers, I’ve noticed, his attention quickly shifts elsewhere.

Right now, though, the full force of Hogan’s mind was focused unwaveringly on Claudia. He was sorry to have to ask, but he needed to know where she was last Wednesday, the day of the murder.

“I was here. Working in the studio.”

“Alone?”

“Completely. That is the only way to work.”

As Hogan shifted minutely toward her, his voice lowered and slowed. “A woman with your looks,” he said, “is alone only by choice.”