The Chelsea Girl Murders (15 page)

“It smells like garbage,” I said as we got on.

“This is the elevator our rubbish rides down in,” she said, pushing the letter B on the old control panel. Just as the doors closed, a couple of guys who looked like workmen tried to get on. I went for the door open button but got there too late.

“Damn. They looked like staff, didn't they? I hope they don't tell Mr. Bard I was using the service elevator again. Bloody hell,” Maggie said. “Nadia hasn't shown up yet?”

“No. And she hasn't called.”

“That is very peculiar.”

“How well do you know Nadia?”

“Not well,” Maggie said. “I met her last year when she was staying with Tamayo. She'd come to New York to shop, with a chaperone, a big brute.”

“The guy she's supposed to marry, a man with a bad toupee, showed up at the hotel, threatened Rocky with a gun.”

“Well, that may be why Nadia is steering clear of the Chelsea. I liked Nadia.”

“You liked her?”

“Yes, what little I knew of her I liked. Any friend of Tamayo's is a friend of mine. Well, almost any friend. There are a couple of exceptions.”

“Are you part of Tamayo's underground railroad?”

“Yes, when she needs me to be.”

“Who might know the next stop on this railroad? Your contact?”

“My contact was out of town. I couldn't reach her. I know Nadia isn't there.”

Maggie seemed civil enough, but her voice had a serrated edge to it—despite the residue of an Irish accent that normally makes the most heinous people sound somehow charming—and she was dodgy, looking away when she talked instead of looking me in the eye.

“Nadia is probably just hiding out somewhere until things cool off, or she's looking for her fiancé in all the wrong places.” Maggie said. “She obviously doesn't know he's at Tamayo's or she would have called.”

“I hope you're right.”

The service elevator was slower than the regular elevators, which were themselves slower than most elevators, and it was much noisier, creaking its way down and grinding to a stop with a lurch. We got out in a small lobbylike space leading to two other corridors, a dim, narrow hallway and a bright plastered one lit by fluorescent lights. Even here, there was art everywhere, hanging on all the walls. For a moment, I worried that she was the killer, that I'd been lured down here so she could murder me for knowing too much. I opened my purse slightly so the gun would be accessible.

“The unvarnished heart of the Chelsea,” Maggie said. “The basement. Over here is the housekeeping room. The maids hang out here. I came down here one day and I heard loud, loud laughter coming from the maids' room. Tamayo was in the maids' room.…” Maggie started to laugh. “She was in pajamas and slippers, sitting with the maids, watching
Green Acres
on TV. She was helping them fold towels. They were all laughing. Tamayo kept folding the towels wrong, and another maid was beside her refolding them. Tamayo didn't even notice.”

“Her mind is on loftier things,” I said. “Where are we going?”

“To the secret exit. This is the engineer's room, there's the telephone room. Storage, storage, storage; this is the art room, where Mr. Bard keeps art that tenants have given him that he hasn't found a place for yet. This is going to be the dinner club, it has an entrance to the street which is left open sometimes so workmen can come and go, or so supplies can be brought into the hotel or the El Quijote restaurant,” Maggie said. “Leaving this way, we avoid an uncomfortable scene between me and the front desk over my back rent.”

We went through another little basement tunnel and a gated door leading to steps that led up to Twenty-second Street, where we snagged a cab.

The sun was setting over New Jersey as we cruised uptown on Eighth Avenue.

“It's funny that you and I never met, Robin, both of us being such good friends of Tamayo's,” she said.

“Isn't it?”

“I've heard a bit about you from Tamayo, but our paths never crossed before.”

“Tamayo has a lot of friends, all over the place. You meet them in the strangest places,” I said. “Grace Rouse is a friend of Tamayo's too.”

“I don't understand why Tamayo likes Grace. What did Grace have to say?”

“She says Gerald Woznik paid you all the money he owed you, according to his books. She also says—”

“First of all, Gerald keeps double books. He claims he sells the work for a lower price than he actually sells it for, and he deals with a lot of sub-rosa buyers who don't necessarily want to reveal how much they spend, or have, so they go along with it. But I happen to know he sold my paintings for five thousand and he only paid me fifteen hundred. I'm not the only one. I can give you a list of promising artists he's screwed over this way.”

“Grace Rouse says she overheard you speaking to Woznik on the phone the day before his murder …”

“Yes, because he called me to say he'd be by the next day, early, to pay me the money he owed me. He pacified me with that. He didn't show up until later, and didn't call me the next day the way he was supposed to, so when I saw him in the elevator I was furious. I thought he was trying to slip past me without paying me. It would be just like him to do that.”

“She says you and Gerald had an affair.”

“We did, briefly. He was dating her and me at the same time, but he dumped me for her, moved in with her. Unceremoniously. He was such a coward, he had her assistant call me to tell me it was over.”

“She also intercepted an E-mail about a baby.…”

“Well, that I don't know anything about,” she said. “I didn't have his E-mail address. But I wouldn't be surprised if he spawned a few on the wrong side of the blanket. Do you know who Ruck Urkfisk is? The painter? I always thought his youngest daughter bore a striking resemblance to Gerald, between you and me.”

“That would explain it. Maybe someone is having his baby,” I said. “What did Gerald tell you when you cornered him in the elevator?”

“That he was at the Chelsea to broker a deal and he'd come by my apartment later that evening or the next day at the latest to pay me. The sad thing is, the bastard was probably on his way to pay me when he got killed.
Tant pis pour moi
.”

“The cops didn't find any money on him though.”

“Whoever killed him robbed him I suppose. That's my luck, that I'd be so close to getting paid, and then the payer would die just feet from my door.”

I kind of believed her, as I kind of believed Grace Rouse. On a gut level, I was almost certain neither of them was the killer, but I've found that gut level is about as reliable as the rhythm method.

“You really think there's a connection between Nadia and the murder?” Maggie said.

“I don't know. I can't find a solid one yet beyond the Chelsea Hotel and Tamayo Scheinman.”

“Who have you spoken with at the Chelsea?”

“The staff, you, Lucia, Carlos, the Zenmaster, Miriam Grundy.”

“You met Miriam Grundy?”

“Yes.”

“Does she know Nadia?”

“Yeah. She told me Nadia was interested in her love story with Oliver Grundy. Their are some similarities between their tales, I guess. I can't get through to the Zenmaster. Scary guy.”

“You have to understand him,” Maggie said. “He used to be the sweetest person. He doesn't look it, I know. He's got a lazy eye, so he looks cross-eyed, and has fearsome features. People were always beating up on him for looking at some guy or some guy's girlfriend ‘the wrong way.' He can't help looking at people that way, that's just how he looks!”

He'd also had his heart broken a few times by women who just used and abused him, Maggie went on. Now, he stayed in the hotel, cashed a disability check, ordered his groceries in, and avoided all trouble. It seemed a wise policy.

“You can drop us here, driver,” Maggie said.

I paid the driver and got out after her at Seventieth Street and Central Park West.

“Your purse is open. You'd better close it. Don't want to attract muggers.”

The purse was open so I'd have quick access to Mrs. Ramirez's pistol if the need for it arose, but I closed it now.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“A big rock in the triangle between the Ramble and the boat-house and Belvedere Castle,” she said. “We'll meet the others there.”

“The others?”

“The guerrilla artists. You are along on a guerrilla art operation,” she said. “Very handy you showed up, because my usual partner, Tommy Mathis, had to cancel at the last minute.”

“It's not going to hurt anyone, is it?” I asked.

“No. You'll like it,” she said. “I went to a guerrilla art meeting after I logged on to AOL the night Gerald died. I always log on to the chat before an operation, so if the cops come after me for a guerrilla art action, I can deny I was involved, as I was online.”

“You weren't in love with Gerald still, or in passionate hate?” I asked.

“No. I just wanted my money. That's all. In fact, I believe my affair with Mr. Woznik cured me forever of men like that.”

“Men like what? Hounds?”

“That's a polite way of putting it. ‘Hounds.' I like that. My relationship before Gerald was with a hound, this mad Irishman. The bastard went back to his ex-wife, of all things.”

That would be Mad Mike O'Reilly, and I thought he'd dumped ME for his ex-wife. That meant he and Maggie were having an affair in New York while he and I were having an affair in New York. Even though I was well over Mike, this irritated me and made me feel some sort of retroactive jealousy or something. Which one of us had he dumped first, I wondered.

“Look out!” Maggie said, suddenly pulling me off the stone path. Ahead of us was a huge brown coil of what looked like shit from either an enormous dog or a cloned dinosaur running loose in the park.

“Jesus H.…”

“Damn. Art Break is in the park tonight,” she said.

“Art Break?”

“Another guerrilla group. They're so tacky and scatological. They mix up this foaming plastic with brown dye, and leave huge coils of fake doggie doo on big wax paper circles.”

“Wax paper circles?”

“So when it sets, it can be removed easily by park cleaners. Otherwise, it's defacement and vandalism, which carries a stiffer penalty than littering. Art Break gets the press, but my group has more imagination. Don't step in that stuff, in case it hasn't set yet. It hardens like a rock. You'll never get that dog shit off your shoe.”

“Speaking of hounds,” I said.

“‘Hound' implies something kind of goofy and lovable,” she went on. “My ex was a hound. Gerald was worse than a hound, he was a vampire. He was one of those dazzling, gorgeous, brilliant, cruel men who can shut down women's brains with a look, the kind of man otherwise reasonable women climb all over each other to get to, as a friend of mine put it. You met him. Did you feel that buzz effect?”

“Briefly,” I admitted.

“These men look at all women the same way. You think you've clicked in a special way, but the spell they cast is a generic, universal sort of spell.”

“Like some form of mass hypnosis,” I said. (Note to self: Study and master mass hypnosis so when looks go, it won't matter.)

“Exactly right,” she said. “I got over Gerald very quickly, and then met a man who isn't a hound or a brain stopper. He's not flashy, glamorous, or temperamental. He's cerebral, calm, caring, and sweet. It took Gerald to finally show me what I wanted and didn't want in a man, and then I found it.”

“Sounds great. Is the new guy an artist too?”

“No.”

“Does he live in the hotel? Did he know Gerald … or Nadia.…”

“No, and actually, I prefer not to talk about him until the relationship has really gelled—and then some. I always get in trouble when I discuss my men with other women. No offense intended.”

“Why is that?” I asked.

“Because the most well-intentioned friend can feed your insecurities and doubts and slowly poison a relationship, and the ill-intentioned might make a play for him. This is all in
Man Trap.
You should read it,” she said. “My experience backs it up. I'm thirty-seven. I've seen it all in the love stakes. It's best to keep it between you and the man as much as possible.”

“That makes sense,” I said.

“If I hadn't gone through that nightmare affair with Gerald, I wouldn't have been able to recognize real love when it came along. There they are, my fellow Erisians,” she said.

“Erisians?”

“After Eris, the goddess of mischief and hilarity,” she said.

We approached a group of eight people sitting behind a large rock in the shadows of some big old trees. Some of them were in camouflage makeup. Maggie said hi, and introduced me as a “trusted friend” who'd be her partner.

“She doesn't have blades, so we'll go on foot,” she said.

“Okay, just be careful,” said the head “guerrilla.” “Listen up. Maggie brought the clothes. Stan has the lighting fluid. Missy brought old wallets. And I have the torches and fire extinguishers.”

“Excuse me. Fire extinguishers? Torches?” I said.

“Mini-blowtorches,” the head guy said.

“This sounds dangerous. What are we—”

Maggie shook her head at me sternly, while the head guy handed out maps, showing the areas to be avoided, where the police precinct in the park was (north of the Great Lawn), and where the other security details were situated. Each map had an area circled for each pair of guerrillas to cover.

“It's not dangerous if you only use green wet grass. If you need to wet the area thoroughly first, do so and keep the extinguisher handy. We don't want to start a forest fire in Central Park,” the head guy said. If the fire looks like it's not going to go out, or spreads, extinguish immediately.”