All in One Piece (30 page)

“So what are climbing shoes?”

“They got high arches and cupped heels for edging and bouldering. They look like slippers.”

“Like slippers?”

“That’s what I said.” He studies my face. “You got a rock climber friend, Cutter?”

“You mean… the break-in wasn’t the dancer? It was somebody else?”

“Figure the odds. Hedge your bets. I mean, it could be a dancer, but maybe not. What about that crowbar?”

“I told you, it smashed the glass.”

“A small mallet would do. And be easier to handle. A crowbar means business.”

“Overkill?”

The word hangs between us. “You mean the crowbar was meant for more than… property damage.”

“I’d think so.”

“But why? Why would anyone come after me?”

“What about that car that knocked you down last month?”

“It could have been a joyrider.”

“You didn’t think so when you hit the asphalt.”

“I was upset.”

“Shit, Cutter, another minute, you’ll say it’s the man in the moon. Get real.”

“I am real.”

“Get out of your trance.”

“Don’t insult me.”

Our voices rise, and Biscuit looks from one of us to the other and barks. We watch, silent, as she jumps to the middle of
the kitchen floor, stance wide, chest out facing the two of us, then barks, barks, barks.

“She’s pissed,” says Stark.

“Upset,” I say.

We both extend contrite hands to Biscuit, who turns, tail down, disgusted, and walks out on us both. We lower our voices.

“For the life of me, Stark, I don’t know why I’d be targeted.”

“For the life of you, Cutter, you better try to figure it out.” He drains the mug and stands. “I gotta go. Do me a favor.
Pick up the glass in the alley. Do it today.”

“Why?”

“So Fatso doesn’t get a flat when I ride back there at night. Call it the Stark patrol. See ya later, Cutter. Take it easy.
Dress warm.”

S
tark goes, half rough rider, half my caffeinated guardian angel. My ears ring all over again. Climbing shoes, not dance slippers?
Should I call Devaney to tell him that I don’t know a dancer from a… a boulderer?

Suppose it wasn’t Alex gripping that crowbar.

Suppose the crowbar was meant for my skull. Was it Xian? When the
Shanghai
left Long Wharf, did Xian stay ashore to finish the job he began with Steven’s murder? The climber went first into Steven’s
empty apartment. Was he looking for the mooch list behind the mantel? When he found it was gone, did he guess that I’d got
hold of it and climb down after me?

Suppose Sinclair Wing sent him. Suppose that Steven called his Helping Hand victims from the
Shanghai
and gave the yachtsman a cut of the money. Maybe something went wrong between them, murderously wrong for Steven. The superrich
can be greedy, thrive on sleaze and crime, and respect murder as a regrettable necessity. Or a hobby.

Or am I clutching at straws? At chopsticks? The memorial service is looming, almost here, countdown to launch. Steady, Reggie,
stay on course.

Laundry. Nothing grounds a woman like a mundane load of wash. With household help a mere memory, I gather an armful from the
hamper and head to the basement and start the machine. The setting for a second rinse feels somehow virtuous. While down here,
I’ll throw a dustcover over Steven’s sofa. I drape an old sheet carefully, avoiding the center seat cushion where I’d sat
in the emptied upstairs flat just before Meg showed the apartment to Mackenzie Carruthers—and just before I got covered in
chimney soot. In the center cushion, I’d felt the water of Steven’s drowning, and the log… the log of his concussion?
Was he knocked unconscious before he drowned?

Pity… it was pity and horror that engulfed me back then. Pity for the young man who was kind to me and died so horribly.

And now?

Disgust. It surges from head to toe. Such potential, so smart and charming, Steven became crime’s own protégé. Schooled by
the Voglers, a star pupil, he trumped Corsair crimes with Helping Hand. Self-employed? Yes, Steven became an entrepreneur—and
an assassin of sorts. He killed financial futures.

But Steven Damelin did not deserve the death penalty.

Who is his executioner?

I tug the sheet as the washing machine starts to hum and slosh. Pulling one corner around a down-filled back cushion, I feel
a crackling. It’s probably a stiff tag, but nothing I’d noticed when Stark and Oliver moved the sofa. I pull the sheet and
again feel the crackle, then knead the soft cushion because there’s something inside.

A quick zip of the cushion cover, and I’m pulling an envelope from the down fill inside. It’s a big mailing envelope. I hold
it under the dim basement bulb, then dash upstairs to the light of the front room.

Clasp open, I reach inside and pull out photographs. They’re large black-and-white glossy photographs of Steven, who’s posing
… yes, he’s modeling. These are modeling photos. A quick shuffle, and here’s the face of the Steven I met, pleasant and
quick.

But other Stevens too—sultry, pouting, scowling. He’s in leather, in suits, in bikinis. He wears crosses and a spiked dog
collar and nothing else. His chest looks oiled.

Here’s the stunner: an eight-by-ten glossy shot in a restaurant kitchen. Six chefs in white jackets and toques with knives
surround Steven, who is lying naked on his stomach on a stainless table, surrounded by live lobsters. I count twenty-three.
He winks at the camera, arms and hands out as “claws.” The chefs’ expressions are lascivious. The tableau is all camp comedy
and sex.

A calendar shot? A gay men’s magazine with New England themes? Maine lobsters? The claws are wedged shut. Nobody will really
take a blade to the star crustacean.

My scalp beats with my heart. So this is Steven’s modeling career. He wasn’t in
Esquire
or
GQ,
but yet these are professional shots. I turn the prints over. There’s no photographer or studio name. No ID at all.

It’s another tantalizing dead end.

Shuffling the photos, I pause again at the lobster shot with the six chefs, knife blades and claws. On the steel surface,
Steven in the buff in prone position, head raised in a vampy wink.

It’s the wink that stops me at this moment, the facial expression. Something about his cheekbones, or is it his hairline?
I look closer, get out the magnifier, look again. And again. Something about the eyes.

It takes minutes to sink in. I’ve sorted back through the other photos—Steven in dog collar, Steven in leopard bikini. Absolutely
Steven. No question.

The lobster shot, however, is… is not. The nude man lying with the lobsters is Andrew Vogler.

I
t’s Wednesday afternoon. two hours till the 3:00 p.m. memorial service, and I don my black St. John knit from the Regina Baynes
days and fasten a silver onyx brooch to the shoulder. The mail flutters, and I pick it up. Here’s a postcard. “The Beaches
of Waikiki,” it says, showing white sand, blue waters, and surfers. It’s addressed to me. “Pacific is all good. Let’s sip
Kona when I get back—next stop, Beirut.” It’s signed Knox and postmarked Hong Kong.

I stick it on the fridge with a magnet. It’s about a fantasy life on another planet. It might as well be from Mars.

Off to All Souls Church, I stop at a stationer’s for a guest book, “In Memory” stamped in fourteen-karat gold, billable to
Corsair Financial.

Soft light filters through the stained glass of the vaulted sanctuary. It’s 2:18 p.m., and Rev. Gail Welch meets me in a cream
robe with a cowl collar and heavy cord belt, which is surely monastic chic. “The flowers are beautiful,” I say, gazing at
vases of gladiolus clustered around the pulpit—and wishing for metal detectors at the entrance. Devaney has reported no arrest
of an assailant and no gunshot wound victim treated in area hospitals, at least none that can be connected to my case.

Glassware clinks. “Mimi’s Kitchen?” I ask.

“Mimi’s supply corps. Reggie, we didn’t discuss this, but leftover food, All Souls has a program…”

“Glad to hear it. It’s yours.”

On the vestibule table, I arrange the boyhood photographs of Steven that Margaret Vogler lent me. What would she or Eleanor
or Leonard think of Steven with mascara and eyeliner and a spiked dog collar? I open the guest book. Just days ago, of course,
the book was one of my clever devices to gather names, possibly the killer’s among the signatures.

This afternoon I will watch Drew Vogler like a hawk, but carefully so that his suspicion is not aroused, which is why no one
has been informed about the lobster photo.

I set out pens, arrange two bud vases of single roses, the Gina Baynes touch. And here come Andrew Vogler, Dani, and a woman
introduced as Fay, her accompanist. Brother and sister pause at the memorial photos. Dani turns away, blinks and rubs her
eyes—carefully because of her makeup. She’s in a mocha sheath and cream voile blouse.

“I’m going to sing Schubert’s ‘Heidenröslein,’ which is a famous folk song from Goethe. And also one late song, which translates
as ‘None but an Aching Heart Knows My Suffering.’”

Gail takes her and Fay down front to the piano, and we hear warm-up exercises sung in a voice that I would call thin, though
serviceable. I’m with Andrew at the table. He, too, rubs his eyes. The hands are healing, the skin a paler pink.

A close look at his facial features confirms it: he’s the nude in the photo with the chefs.

“We were twelve that summer,” he says, pointing to a picture of Steven on horseback. “See how Steve sits him, like a jockey.”
He pats his breast pocket. “I wrote out my eulogy, but I’m no writer.”

“If it’s from the heart—”

“Oh, straight from the heart. I took a lot of time, a whole afternoon off. Sarita gave me a hand with edits.”

Footsteps and a sharp
tap-tap
mean Margaret and Leonard Vogler. And that leprechaun cane.

“Regina.”

“Margaret, Leonard, good to see you.” She’s in smoke-gray chiffon with jet jewelry. His tie is black on black. Drew kisses
her on the cheek.

Trills ripple from the piano near the nave where Dani rehearses. “. . . weiss was ich leide…”

“Ah, our Dani,” says proud-papa Vogler. Margaret asks me about the reception.

“Everything’s set.” Aromas of herbs and butter are wafting. Tinkle of glassware.

“Corsair is glad to sponsor… er, to host,” says Vogler. “My dear, let us take our seats. Drew, join us? Regina?”

“Thanks, I’ll see you in a bit.”

I’m the unofficial greeter by default and design. As people arrive, I welcome and guide them to the guest book. Most are strangers.
The Corsair young men… I recognize their names from Drew’s list as they sign the book. Physically they’re either bench
pressers or couch potatoes, but all seem to use the same wet-hair-look product and greet each other awkwardly. Bucket-shop
buccaneers.

Neighborhood people are here too, from Hyde Park to Barlow Square. There’s a tall, gaunt woman with tiny gourds on her hat,
a young couple with their baby, and a pink-cheeked older man who might have come from a tramp across the moors. Plus a number
of leather-jacketed men apparently from the Apollo Club scene despite the sour Matt Kitchel.

Is there a Helping Hand victim here in the church—an older woman who kept faith in Steven? A true believer who couldn’t imagine
that he’d cheat her of every last cent? How about the frail silver-haired figure in tweeds whose spidery handwriting says
“Charlotte S. Vickery”? Or the plump woman in navy who writes “Rest in peace” under her name? By 3:52 p.m., there are about
a hundred people here.

Here comes Matt Kitchel himself. Surprise. He nods curtly but refuses to sign the book. Trudy arrives with some Mounds bars,
and I point her to the reception hall.

“Meez Reggie—”

“Ari Tsakis.”

“I come for my brother George too. The store open—people needs babies’ milk.”

“Of course. Please put George’s name on the guest book too, and stay for the reception if you can.”

It’s three minutes until three o’clock. Here are others I recognize. The receptionist Sarita with the espresso eyeliner. Then
Eleanor Comber sweeps in in a long black skirt and boiled wool jacket. She’s with the trainer, Vicky, who smiles as Eleanor
gives me a stony hello, signs the book with a flourish, and proceeds to sit several pews behind Leonard and Margaret Vogler.
Vicky takes a pew by herself on the other side, a lone figure in khakis.

Here comes a dark-haired woman in aqua blue with a big teenage boy in a Raiders jacket. “Buenos días, Carmine. Buenos días,
Luis.”

Carmine shakes my hand. Luis jams his fists into the jacket pockets and stares at the floor. The crowbar man? Steven’s killer?
I can’t believe it.

The bell strikes three. Gail suggests I sit close to the pulpit. Down a side aisle, I walk slowly, scanning faces.

Here’s Maglia and Devaney in a back pew.

“I am the resurrection and the life.” A hush falls. The distant tinkle of caterer’s glassware suddenly sounds jarring. Gail’s
voice claims the space. “We gather… pay tribute in respect and in love…”

She reads prayers from Old and New Testaments, the Koran, and
Teachings of Buddha
. I step to the pulpit microphone and briefly play my part: describing Steven’s friendship with Jo across generations, his
kindness on the day we met.

Newcomers catch my eye in the back pews—two women, Crystal and Doris Damelin. They sit together yet apart, Crystal staring
and her mother—Steven’s mother, his
mother
—slumped.

“Today’s timely tribute to Steven…”

I also see—for godsake—Stark. What’s he doing here, looking stuffed into a sport coat, glowering. He’s no friend of Steven’s,
so what’s the point? I swear, the man is nearly stalking me.

“To this community…”

There’s another figure too, bearded with bleach-blond-tipped short hair. Something about him, the carriage of his shoulders
… something familiar about those shoulders.