Equivocal Death (26 page)

for me.”

18

w

19

“Is Hercules your real name?”

20

“What?”

21

“Is that what your parents named you?”

22

Kate heard an exasperated sigh behind her. She felt a quick tug 23

on her scalp followed by the sound of scissors. Wings of dark brown 24

hair fluttered into her sheet-draped lap.

25

“Kate, you know I can’t talk when I work.” Hercules’s voice was 26

aggrieved. “How would you like it if someone tried to talk to you 27

while you were writing a brief?”

28

“Sorry.”

29

Kate surveyed the room, a shabby loft on the Lower East Side.

30

She’d spent the morning racing through weekend errands, and the 31

calm of Hercules’s studio was a welcome break. She could do with-32

out the gloom, though. Only the palest haze of light made its way 33

through the tall, dirt-encrusted windows.

34 sh

Kate tried to keep her head steady as Hercules circled her chair, 35 re

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his eyes on the lookout for stray locks of hair. He was somewhere 2

in his late thirties, with a mane of graying dark curls and a hawk-3

like nose. He called himself a sculptor. His recent efforts, from 4

what Kate could see, involved the mutilation of retro toys. Every-5

where you looked, there they were: an elaborately built Lincoln 6

Log cabin sawed in two and splashed with red paint; a brunette 7

Barbie doll, her hourglass figure skewered on half a dozen knitting 8

needles; a shattered plastic Sno-Kone machine pieced together 9

with electrical tape. If this was Hercules’s calling, Kate thought, it 10

was good that he’d kept his day job.

11

Still, whatever his credentials as an artist, Hercules was a genius 12

with hair. Soon after she started work, Kate had noticed the Sam-13

son bob. After a summer spent studying for the bar exam, her hair 14

had fallen well below her shoulders. She’d toyed with the idea of 15

keeping it long but quickly changed her mind. Long hair, she con-16

cluded, was less professional. Besides, why stand out when the al-17

ternative was so appealing?

18

It didn’t take long to get the name behind Samson’s signature 19

look, and after her first cut Kate was sold. Hercules was expensive, 20

upward of $100 for a trim, but he was worth it. Easy maintenance —

21

fifteen minutes with a brush and blow dryer — and even after 22

twelve-hour days, her hair still kept its swing. How Hercules had 23

come to be Samson’s stylist of choice, Kate had no idea. She’d al-24

ways meant to ask, but Hercules’s strictly enforced no-talking pol-25

icy was a strong deterrent to conversation.

26

As Hercules studied her head and clipped, Kate’s thoughts wan-27

dered back to Douglas Macauley.
Stop,
she told herself sternly.
Just
28

think about today.
If only she could flip through a magazine, that 29

would keep her occupied. But reading was out of the question.

30

Hercules claimed that the movement of eyes across a page inter-31

rupted the stillness he required. “What about breathing?” Kate had 32

asked, the day of her very first cut. Hercules had ignored the ques-33

tion. She’d never tried to joke again.

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“There.” Hercules’s voice was pleased. He whipped off the white reg 35

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sheet that had shielded Kate’s clothing and handed her a mirror.

1

Kate tossed her head from side to side, watching the graceful swish 2

against her cheeks. “Hair with an attitude,” Andrea called it.

3

“Stunning as always,” Kate said. She hopped down from the 4

chair and dug around in her purse for money. Hercules worked on 5

a cash-only basis.

6

Kate was pulling on her black parka when she thought of her 7

question again.

8

“Hey, Hercules?”

9

“Yeah?” He’d moved over to the loft’s kitchen area, where he 10

was stirring a large pot on a gas-fueled range.

11

“How’d you end up cutting hair for a bunch of lawyers? It 12

doesn’t really seem like your style.”

13

Hercules snorted. “No, but it’s more my style than what I was 14

doing before.”

15

“Which was?”

16

Hercules turned to face Kate, his upper lip curled back from his 17

teeth. “I was a paralegal at Samson & Mills.”

18

Kate took an involuntary step back. “You’re joking.”

19

“Nope. Did it for a couple of years during the eighties. To pay 20

the rent.”

21

“That’s incredible. So how’d you go from that to this?”

22

“I used to cut my sisters’ hair when I was growing up. When I 23

moved to the city, sometimes I’d cut friends’ hair. I’m an artist, you 24

know. I keep my eyes open. I always sort of had a knack for it.

25

While I was working at Samson, there was this woman lawyer I was 26

sort of . . . friendly with. We used to joke around and shit. She was 27

cool. Anyway, she was working on this big case and hadn’t had a 28

haircut for months. I was hassling her about it. She claimed she 29

didn’t have time. I offered to do it right then and there. It was 30

really late, probably after midnight. I ran out to an all-night drug-31

store and picked up some scissors. Came back and gave her a cut.

32

She loved it. Everyone did. Before I knew it, I had more clients 33

than I could handle with a full-time job. Besides, I’d saved some 34 sh

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money. And I hated that fucking place. So I quit and started doing 2

hair instead.”

3

“That’s a great story. Who was it that got you started?”

4

“What?” Hercules seemed disconcerted.

5

“The lawyer whose hair you cut that first time. Is she still at the 6

firm?”

7

“No, no. Well, she was until . . .” A wary expression had come 8

into Hercules’s eyes.

9

“It was Madeleine. Madeleine Waters.” Crossing his arms, he 10

looked squarely at Kate, as if daring her to react.

11

“
Really,
” Kate said, then stopped. Suddenly, for no particular 12

reason, she felt a terrible uneasiness. Quickly, she began to talk, 13

trying to hide her discomfort behind a barrage of words. “It’s so aw-14

ful about what happened to her, isn’t it? I’d never worked with her 15

until recently, but I’d always heard that she was a great lawyer. And 16

beautiful, of course. But . . . I would never have guessed that you 17

cut her hair. It was so wavy and tousled looking.”

18

You’re babbling,
she told herself, and was relieved when Hercules 19

stepped in.

20

“I hadn’t cut Madeleine’s hair for a long time,” he said. “She got 21

this perm thing going a few years back. Said she wanted a change.”

22

As he spoke, Kate thought of the photo of Madeleine broadcast 23

on the TV news. Of course. Her hair had been cut short in that 24

picture, short and smooth. Just like her own hair now.

25

Hercules seemed to have regained his bearings. “Man, it’s really 26

awful about her being killed. I read about it in the papers. She was 27

a nice lady. Really nice. Not like those other freaks. I don’t know 28

what she was doing there.”

29

As Hercules talked, Kate’s eyes had settled on the Barbie doll 30

she’d noticed earlier. She stared at it in horrible fascination. The 31

doll’s wild dark hair spread out from her head like a storm cloud 32

about to burst. Her staring eyes took no notice of the knitting nee-33

dles plunged deep in her body. And then another image rose up ort 34

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in Kate’s mind. Madeleine Waters’s body, multiple stab wounds, a 1

tide of black hair that must have framed her head just as . . .

2

With a start, Kate realized that Hercules was watching her, wait-3

ing for her to speak.

4

“I guess I should be going,” Kate said, her voice artificially 5

bright. She handed Hercules his fee and then fumbled in a pocket 6

for her gloves.

7

“So, thanks a lot. I guess I’ll see you next month.”

8

Halfway down the six flights of stairs, something — perhaps a 9

flicker of shadow on the concrete steps — caused Kate to glance 10

up. There, from the top of the stairwell, Hercules was looking 11

down. She tried to catch his eye, to wave, but he seemed not to no-12

tice the gesture. Pulling her parka more tightly around her, Kate 13

continued, more quickly, down the stairs.

14

15

16

At home that night, miles from the bombed-out space that Her-17

cules called home, Kate decided to take a bath. She felt jumpy, ag-18

itated. She’d always viewed Hercules as a colorful but benign 19

eccentric. But that was before Madeleine’s murder. Before she’d 20

known that they’d worked together. Now, she wasn’t sure what to 21

think. Again, she thought of the ravaged doll, a plastic correlate to 22

Madeleine’s real-life death.

23

The tub was filling with water. Kate dumped in a capful of 24

bubble bath, then added a second dose. Tonight she was going 25

to relax. She flipped on the radio — always set for NPR — and 26

let the restful strains of classical music filter through her rooms.

27

Then she headed for her bedroom bookshelf in search of some-28

thing to read. What would it be tonight? Jane Austen? Stephen 29

King? Marissa Piesman? Glancing across a row of books, her eyes 30

fell on an unfamiliar volume.
Sexual Harassment of Working
31

Women.
The book Madeleine had given her just before she was 32

killed. She’d brought it home that night to look over. But in the 33

34 sh

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chaos following Madeleine’s death, it had completely slipped from 2

her mind.

3

Sitting down on the side of her bed, Kate folded back the book’s 4

red-and-black cover. Flipping through the first few pages, she no-5

ticed frequent pencil underlinings.
Sexual harassment, most broadly
6

defined, refers to the unwanted imposition of sexual requirements in the
7

context of a relationship of unequal power.
A pretty standard defini-8

tion by now. And then, a few pages later:
The legal argument ad-9

vanced by this book is that sexual harassment of women at work is sex
10

discrimination in employment.

11

Turning back to the front of the book, Kate checked the publi-12

cation date: 1979. A generation ago in legal terms, written before 13

the Supreme Court recognized sexual harassment as a cause of ac-14

tion. If she recalled correctly, this was a seminal work, outlining 15

much of the doctrine later accepted as law. Curious, she flipped 16

through the text.
Being at the mercy of male superiors adds direct eco-17

nomic clout to male sexual demands. . . . As work becomes degraded by
18

mechanization and routinization, it becomes defined as “women’s
19

work.” . . .

20

The words seemed abstract, endlessly remote from her own life.

21

Sure, a lot of her work was dull and routine — that was the nature 22

of the large pieces of litigation in which Samson specialized. Thou-23

sands of documents to be reviewed and catalogued. Dozens of de-24

position outlines and routine motions. But did female associates 25

get stuck with any more of the grunt work than their male col-26

leagues did? Not from what she could see. In her year-plus at Sam-27

son & Mills, she couldn’t think of one time when she’d been 28

singled out because of her sex. Of course, she belonged to a privi-29

leged breed. For the vast majority of women, stuck in word pro-30

cessing or secretarial pools, the situation could be very different.

31

Kate was about to close the book when another underlined sec-32

tion caught her eye.
Not being attractive enough does have an eco-33

nomic effect. You know you can’t get really well-paying jobs. If you ever
ort 34

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go to the top floor of an office building, you know the women look a cer-1

tain way.

2

The women look a certain way.

3

Kate smoothed her newly trimmed hair. Hair carefully cut and 4

styled like that of most of her female colleagues.

5

But, again, so what?