Boyfriend from Hell (20 page)

“No?”

“The people who were protesting Cummings, they alibi each other. The guy who worked there has his alibi. The girl who wrote an article, who was also there, is no bigger than you are, she couldn’t strangle someone that size. What do I keep telling the father?”

“That you’re doing your best.”

“Are we?”

He had to consider the implausible: Someone came in from the outside with a delivery, someone who snapped, offended by what Cummings stood for, or the size of his tip, or some other imagined offense. Pitalis gave them a list of everyone who conceivably could appear at the church during the day. The detectives checked, nobody in the area, at take-out places, or at the post office, or Federal Express, confirmed a delivery made at the time of the crime.

They began working on the idea of a crime of passion: Somebody, a woman, a man perhaps, a person Cummings would have known and allowed to enter the building, who caught him by surprise and before he could react, overpowered him. The father had given the detectives a list of names of everyone Cummings knew on a personal level whom the father was aware of, and they had found an address book in the drawer of his desk and were working through those names.

As part of the process, they called a Beth Colette, Santini telling her she was in Randall Cummings’s book and they needed to speak with her in connection with his murder. Santini and Gomez went to see her in an apartment in the West Village. She was an artist working in wire sculpture, abstract pieces filled her loft apartment. Beth was thirty-eight, six feet tall, thin, in a blouse, jeans, and sneakers, a striking woman, with a countenance that was serious verging on morose. She motioned them to a sofa in a living room area.

“Could you tell us please what your relationship was with Randall Cummings?” Gomez asked.

“We were together for about a year. Living here mostly. We broke up three years ago.”

“And breaking up, whose idea was that?” Gomez asked.

“Mine. You reach a point where it goes one way or it goes the other.”

“You were in his address book,” Santini said.

“We talked now and then.”

“When was the last time?” Gomez said.

“About a year ago.”

“Is this where you work?” he continued.

“My sculpture, yes. I’m an art therapist. I work at Roosevelt Hospital.”

“What are your hours?” Gomez asked.

“Monday to Friday, ten to six.”

“And on Tuesday, May twentieth? Can you recall that day?”

“This is too funny. The day Randall was murdered? I was working. You can check.”

“We have to check everything.”

“I understand. I didn’t kill Randall.”

“Any opinions on who might have?” Santini said.

“None. He was Icarus. He flew too close to the sun. Or the dark side of the moon.” From a calm demeanor, she began to cry. “The fool. The stupid fool. What was he doing? A satanic cult. Stupidest thing I ever heard. He had no beliefs like that. Too smart for his own goddamn good.”

“What do you mean, too smart?” Santini said.

“The entire conceit, it was like some New Age theater project he was trying to pull off. Ridiculous. He would’ve been better off just selling out, working on some soap opera.”

“Was he straight?” Gomez asked.

“Totally straight. If you’re done with me …”

They reported back to Rourke, Cummings was likely straight, so a male lover of sufficient strength to commit a crime of passion was the remotest possibility. And although it had no bearing on the identity of the assailant, as general information, his former girlfriend was of the opinion he didn’t really have the convictions for his calling.

“Makes it even worse,” Rourke said, wearily. “Made a wrong career decision and got himself killed.”

Ronnie, back from food shopping, played her messages, startled to hear the voice of Michael, celebrity chef and three-star cad.

“Ronnie, it’s me, Michael, remember me?” he said in a puckish voice. With more urgency he added, “It’s very important that you call me. Please, Ronnie.”

At her desk she contemplated Michael—and Richard. She missed Richard. Paris couldn’t alter the reality; he was away more than he was there. This
must
be what it’s like to be involved with a CIA agent, she speculated, and from there she went to the possibility that he
was
a CIA agent, really, something like that, but then there was his book, and the articles, and his public appearances; yet you could be both, perhaps he was both, an expert on cults
and
a CIA agent, or someone working in the substrata of a government agency, the kind in
The Bourne Identity
or
Mission: Impossible
type of movies. His being away more than he was present—was that the appeal, was the shrink on to something, his appeal was in his very absences? Had she become a New York career girl who didn’t want to be held back by a relationship, things to write, a ladder to climb; or was she just wary of getting involved, you get involved and you get hurt. Michael was her longest relationship and it contained a cautious quality, they weren’t actually living together. Did it go back to the Bronx, did all roads lead back to the Bronx, the remote, distant father-daughter relationship, the man holds himself away from you, and you do the same, you love your mother and she dies, so don’t get too close to anyone.

This material, along with the hideous demon of her dream, was what she brought into her next session.

“Implications of your social life—I like you thinking about that, Veronica.”

“Instead of horrible dreams?”

“Seems to me this latest one is still another variation of Satan, just as the nun imagined her variations.”

“My omnipresent Satan.”

“Your omnipresent feeling of being bad, or evil. If you could only see yourself.”

“Meaning?”

“You’re a beautiful woman. And talented.”

“So
am
I attracted to Richard because he’s the man that isn’t there?”

“Are you?”

“He’s other things. Sexy. Supportive. He could be funnier. Not all that much humor there. Also there’s the vanity of it, it feels great to walk into public places with him.”

“Then the good features
could
be the reason you’re attracted to him.”

“Am I allowed to ask if you think I should call back my previous boyfriend? He left a message.”

“Do you want to call him?”

“I liked him very much. I was very hurt.”

“My opinion, anything that makes you feel good about yourself is what you should be doing these days.”

“Strange. This takes on some of what I would imagine a mother-daughter dialogue would be. I never had one in my adult life, or my teenage life, even. All the conversations I never had with my mother, the things she would never know, that Bobby Muzo kissed me in ninth grade on the stairway and said I was pretty, that I got into Science, that I went to Brown, that I got my first bylines, that I became a writer.”

Tears formed in her eyes and as they trickled onto her cheeks she didn’t wipe them away, she needed to feel herself crying.

“When you were a little girl you must have had many conversations you can’t remember with her, and in part the person you are, and the successes you’ve had, come from her.” Ronnie was pensive and Kaufman studied her. “What you’ve had to be is your own mother and your own father. It’s a burden and another kind of strain, so that when you’re thrown off balance, such as by those terrible threats, you’re shaken more than other people would be, because you need to maintain such tight control.”

“And when I lose it, I lose it.”

“Yes. You’ve been frightened. Who wouldn’t be? And given your background, when you’re frightened you’re particularly vulnerable, therefore, the blacking out. Your way of saying, ‘I can’t do it all myself, I can’t handle it anymore.’ And instead of the adult woman, we get the helpless little girl.”

“This is deep,” she quipped.

“You’re doing a service,” Kaufman said, smiling, “good material for our research.”

She decided she would call Michael. As Kaufman said, “Anything that makes you feel good about yourself.” Swimming in the anger wasn’t going to put her in a good place.

“I thought we’d end up playing telephone tag, Michael.”

“How are you?”

How was she? Emotionally troubled, under siege, recently in therapy for the state she was in.

“Coping.”

“Name of the game. Can I see you, please? It’s really important. Tomorrow, my night off, dinner, a drink, you name it.”

“We can meet for a drink.”

“Come to the restaurant. It’ll be quiet. Seven?”

“Seven it is.”

Stars and Stripes was located on Ninth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street. In a feature on American homestyle cooking, the
New York Times
writer said, “Celebrity chefs such as Michael Ruppert, with his cooking show on cable, sometimes stumble under the weight of their celebrity. Mr. Ruppert is doing fine, thank you. Please pass the meat loaf.” Ronnie didn’t watch Michael’s program. With the book and Richard occupying her, he had moved outside her field of vision.

The restaurant was closed on Mondays during the summer and it was Michael who greeted her when she tapped on the door. He was much slimmer than the last time she had seen him, markedly so, wearing a cotton sports shirt that showed off his new clothing size.

“Look at you.”

“Changes,” he said, leading her inside.

He threw a light switch. The decor was tasteful: simple white tablecloths, recessed lighting, beige walls adorned by large-format black-and-white photographs of American roadside restaurants.

“Do you have a reservation? We’re pretty full tonight,” he joked.

“This is fine,” and she sat at one of the tables.

“Would you like me to make something for you to eat?”

“No, thank you. A drink is what we said. A Diet Coke would be good.”

“You can do better than that.”

“That’s all I want.”

He brought the soda for her, a glass of white wine for himself, and sat at the table.

“So what’s going on with you?” she asked. “You look fantastic.”

“I have a trainer. I’m on a new diet. I’m in therapy.”

“Seems to be working.”

“You
come up a lot.”

“Oh.”

“The way I behaved. Why I did that. By the way, I’m not seeing Rosetta anymore.”

“Her album is selling really well and she dropped you for Emeril?”

“I ended it. We were stage props for each other.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“It was a mistake. With therapy I’ve gained some insights.”

“Michael, people
not
in therapy don’t talk that way, ‘gained some insights.’”

“It’s true, though.”

“Were your insights about fear of commitment and love of celebrity?”

“Some of that, all of that. Ronnie, I was in love with you and I couldn’t deal with it.”

His voice trembled as he said it.

“I see. Too bad we both didn’t know that,” her voice uneven, as well. “But I can’t say if it ever would’ve worked out with us. Your hours—”

“Lots of chefs have relationships.”

“Seems to me, when you’re not married, all you have is the commitment you make to each other.”

“I would now. It’s a new me.”

She had cared for him and now he was asking to come back. The timing was off.

“Maybe I’m not the girl you think I am. I’ve been seeing a therapist, too. For bad dreams and bad memories and some bad experiences. So I’m not much of a bargain these days.”

“You just said it. You were a bargain beyond my imagining and I let you get away. I’m the one to see you through a bad time. I’m your man.”

“If you’re that person now, then that’s good for you and you’ll be all right, Michael. Problem is, I’m sort of in a relationship. Or I’m in sort of a relationship, which might be more accurate.”

“I’m really stupid. How could I assume you’d be available?”

“You look wonderful. Keep it up. And thank you. I’m touched. And sad. We both lost out from the timing of all this.” She kissed him on the nose. “Maybe some sweet angel will look out for us both.”

Ronnie remembered reading in an article somewhere a quote from an interior decorator who said cynically about his clients, “When they’re paralyzed about making a decision and they can’t buy a dish towel without you, is when you have them.” Was she becoming dependent in that manner on Kaufman, she wondered, or was this the therapeutic process? She discussed the meeting with Michael at her next session. Kaufman was interested to know if Ronnie felt guilty about her decision not to resume with Michael. Ronnie said she did.

“Because you assume guilt so easily,” Kaufman said.

“I seem to, don’t I?”

“You would do well to recognize that. Guilt over things you shouldn’t feel guilty about.”

“I also feel guilty because he looked so contrite and I really did care for him.”

“Richard Smith, do you really care for him?”

“I miss him when he’s not here. Am I becoming some kind of sex slave?”

“I don’t know what that means. Sex can be an expression of love or a form of love, if you will, pleasurable, a release of tension, a way of feeling alive—or for you, not what your background dictated, and therefore rebellious. If any of it keeps you in a bad relationship, or keeps you from a better relationship, it could be enslaving, to use that term. Is this a bad relationship?”

“Is that a judgment?”

“It’s a question.”

“I’d say it’s an unusual relationship—and interesting.”

“Your move then, Veronica.”

In Kansas City for a business meeting, Bob was going to pick up food from Arthur Bryant’s famous barbecue place, have them wrap it, carry it with him on the plane, and serve the long-distance take-out at Nancy and Ronnie’s apartment. He was also inviting one of his colleagues from the office, who was bringing his girlfriend. The roommates, excited, stocked up on wine and beer and prepared the apartment. The phone rang and they thought it might be Bob, he was about to land. It was Richard. He just came back into town, he told Ronnie, and wanted to take her to dinner that night. She thought you could overdo the element of surprise, which he apparently thrived on.