People Like Us (23 page)

“Where’s Bernard?”

“Dancing with his aunt.”

Lil Altemus and her daughter both looked toward the dance floor. Bernie, dancing with Hester, gave Justine a wink. At that moment a late arriving guest entered the ballroom. Wearing a turban, she had an exotic look about her. She appeared to be looking for someone.

“My God, there’s that horrible woman,” said Lil. “What’s she doing here?”

“What horrible woman?”

“In the yellow dress, and the turban. Mrs. Lupescu. Did you invite her?”

“I certainly didn’t invite her, Mother.”

“She’s surely not one of Uncle Laurence’s business acquaintances, like Elias Renthal.”

“Do you suppose Constantine de Rham is here too?”

“He’d better not be. Consuelo was one of my best friends. That woman crashed. I never heard of anyone crashing a wedding reception before. That’s the tackiest thing I ever heard. Throw your bouquet, Justine. I want to wind up this party.”

* * *

“Oh, hello, Gus. I’m sorry I’m so late,” said Yvonne Lupescu.

“Late?” asked Gus, surprised to see her.

“I was so thrilled when you asked me to come. Poor Constantine wasn’t feeling well. He’s been so depressed, and he thought it would be marvelous for me to get out. So sweet of you, Gus,” said Yvonne.

Gus looked at Yvonne. She smiled at him and linked her arm in his and looked at the dance floor. “Shall we dance?” she asked.

“No,” said Gus. “I don’t like to dance.”

“I bet you’re a marvelous dancer.”

“I’m not.”

“Oh, look, Gus, Justine’s going to throw her bouquet. Let’s go watch.” She took Gus by the arm and led him into the room.

Justine, with Bernie by her side, stood on the stairway of the club, her train wrapped around her arm, and looked down at her friends. People pushed Dodo Fitz Alyn and Violet Bastedo to the front. There was a drumroll from Peter Duchin’s band, and Justine raised her hand and threw the bouquet. Dodo, crimson with embarrassment, reached her hands up in the air. Violet, already twice-married, squealed with excitement as she held up her arms. In an instant, Yvonne Lupescu stepped in front of both ladies and grabbed the bouquet just as it was about to land in Dodo Fitz Alyn’s hands.

“Oh, how marvelous,” said Yvonne. “Wait till Constantine hears. Gus, isn’t it exciting?”

Gus, speechless, stared at Yvonne Lupescu.

Meanwhile, Constantine de Rham’s body, as yet undiscovered, lay in a pool of blood on the floor of the den in his house on Sutton Place.

18

The next morning, Gus was rushing for the airport to go to Los Angeles, in response to a message Detective Johnston had left on his answering machine. At the same time Innocento was arriving in the lobby of his building with Gus’s standing order of three containers of coffee and the morning papers. “I’ll be gone for a few days, Innocento,” said Gus, grabbing the papers and the coffee and heading for the car that he had ordered to take him to the airport. “I’ll call you when I get back to start up the papers again.”

“Have a good trip,” called out Innocento, but by that time Gus was telling the driver not to put his bag in the trunk of the sedan but to keep it on the seat next to him, as he was late, so that he could just make a run for it when he got to JFK. The driver, who looked Hispanic, nodded as if he understood Gus’s instructions, but he didn’t understand Gus’s instructions and put the bag in the trunk of the sedan anyway.

“Innocento,” Gus called out. “Tell this guy I’m in a hurry. I’ve got an eight ten to catch.”

If the plane hadn’t been late, Gus would have missed it, but planes were always late these days, and he arrived at the airport in plenty of time, although not on speaking terms with his driver.

“When was the last time you were on a plane that wasn’t late starting?” asked the pretty middle-aged advertising executive who was sitting next to Gus in the business section, looking up from some copy she was revising with a pink Hi-Liter. She was wearing a tailored suit and gold jewelry, and her nails were perfectly manicured. And she was ready for some cross-country conversation.

Gus smiled politely and said, “I can’t remember.” Then he picked up the newspapers that Innocento had brought him and buried his face in them, starting with the tabloids, saving the
Times
, because he didn’t want to get into a conversation about late planes and the reason for their lateness, and because he knew, from instinct and experience, that by the time the plane had flown over the border of the state of New York, the woman would have told him about her impending divorce, her husband’s girlfriend who used to be her best friend, her daughter’s abortion, and her ideas for the new advertising campaign of a cigarette company her agency had just taken on.

It was then, aloft, that Gus read about the suicide attempt of Constantine de Rham. De Rham, dying, had been discovered by his Filipino butler, who had returned early to the house on Sutton Place from his day off, because he was feeling unwell. The butler, Ramon Enrile, 62, found de Rham when he began turning on lights in the darkened house, lying in a pool of blood on the floor of his den, beneath a painting of a stag being torn apart by hounds. In his left hand was a revolver. A single shot had been fired into his stomach. At first the butler thought he was dead. He went to look for Mrs. Yvonne Lupescu, Mr. de Rham’s companion, who was a visitor in the house, but she was not there. He then called the police. De Rham was in the intensive care unit of New York Hospital under police watch. No note had been found near the body nor was any reason given as to why the 50-year-old de Rham should wish to take his life. When Mrs. Lupescu returned to the house, she was informed by police of the suicide attempt and became hysterical. She blamed herself, she said, because she had decided to leave him. It was later ascertained by police that at the time of the suicide attempt Mrs. Lupescu had been attending the society wedding reception of the Van Degan heiress, Justine Altemus, to the television anchorman Bernard Slatkin at the Colony Club.

Gus, stunned, put down the tabloid and stared out the window of the airplane! In his pocket, on a sheet of expensive but plain white paper, typewritten, was the name, address, and telephone number of a man in Los Angeles called Anthony Feliciano. It had arrived in the mail the day before in an unmarked envelope, with no accompanying letter, several hours before Detective Johnston’s message had been left on his answering machine telling him the date Lefty Flint was to be released from prison. Gus knew that the sender was Constantine de Rham.

Gus approached Los Angeles with dread. He always approached Los Angeles with dread. Once he had lived there. Once he had worked there. Once he had raised a family there. Once he had been happy there. But that was long ago and far away.

There were several places Gus could have stayed. Peach, possibly, would have him. Peach no longer lived in the house where they had lived when they were married. Several years earlier she had moved to a smaller house in the part of Beverly Hills known as the flats. She did not enjoy guests, but the house had a guest room, which she called a spare room, to discourage guests, as well as a small apartment in the pool house that she let out to students from U.C.L.A. so that there would always be someone on the property, and Gus happened to know that the apartment was empty at the moment. But Gus didn’t want Peach to know he was in town until after he had done what he had come to do.

He thought about staying at Cecilia Lesley’s house in Bel-Air, but Cecilia, who was the daughter of the film mogul Marty Lesky, as well as an old friend of Gus’s, was always giving parties, or going to parties, or having people drop in from noon until two in the morning. There were times when he enjoyed Cecilia Lesley’s land of pandemonium, but this was not one of them.

Then there were his friends Nestor and Edwina Calder, who had rented a house in Malibu while Nestor
was writing the screenplay for the mini-series of
Judas Was a Redhead
, but being with Nestor and Edwina would have meant having to answer questions about his trip to Los Angeles, and he did not wish to either lie to them or be questioned by them.

In the end Gus decided to stay at a hotel on the Sunset Strip where it was unlikely he would run into anyone he knew, as he most certainly would have if he had stayed in any of the well-known hotels in Beverly Hills or Bel-Air, where even the waitresses in the coffee shops all called him by name. Checking in at the Sunset Marquis, he was pleased to find out it was within walking distance of the address that Constantine de Rham had given him for Anthony Feliciano.

“How did you get my name?” asked Anthony Feliciano.

“In New York, where I live,” said Gus.

“New York, huh?” Anthony Feliciano seemed pleased that he had been discussed in New York. “Who told you about me in New York?”

“A man called Constantine de Rham.”

“That’s a name from the past. How is Constantine de Rham?”

“Almost dead, apparently, according to this morning’s New York papers.”

“How almost dead?”

“Shot in the stomach, by his own hand.”

“He never struck me as a suicide type,” said Feliciano.

“Nor me,” replied Gus.

“Did you know him long?”

“No, and not well at that.”

Anthony Feliciano sat behind a desk of fake mahogany in a small office in a second-class building on a street that looked down on the Sunset Strip. Behind him on a credenza that matched the desk was a huge fake orchid plant in full purple bloom. Next to it were several color photographs of the same woman, excessively blond and pretty, one of her in a bathing suit,
arm in arm with Feliciano, stripped to the waist, on what appeared to be a Hawaiian beach.

“That’s Wanda,” said Feliciano, seeing Gus look at the photographs. “My wife Wanda.”

“Very pretty,” replied Gus.

“What is it you wanted to see me about?”

“There is someone I would like to have followed.”

“And you went to Constantine de Rham?”

“I felt he would know.”

“He did. Who is this person you want to have followed?”

“His name is Francis Flint. He is called Lefty Flint.”

Anthony Feliciano jotted the name on a pad in front of him with a desk pen. “What is it you want to know about this man?”

“I want to know where he lives. I want to know what he does with his time.”

“When will you want me to start?”

“October thirteenth. That is the day he is to be released from prison.”

“Where is the prison?”

“Vacaville.”

“What is he?”

“A strangler,” replied Gus.

“A strangler?” repeated Feliciano, surprised.

“A strangler is someone who puts his hands around another person’s neck and chokes the life out of that person,” said Gus.

“I am aware of the definition of a strangler, Mr. Bailey. What I meant was, what is this man’s profession.”

“Oh,” said Gus, shaking his head. “Jack of all trades.”

“Like what?”

“A guitarist sometimes. Or a singer. Then again a sculptor.”

“A nothing, you mean,” said Feliciano.

“No, that’s not what I mean. A charmer would be a better word to describe him. The ladies always liked him.”

“What is this man’s connection to you?”

“He has caused grievous harm to me and my wife.”

“Grievous harm of a strangulation nature, I take it?” asked Feliciano.

Gus did not reply directly to the question. “He was also a jury pleaser, especially to the ladies on the jury. They all wanted to be his mother. He carried a Bible. He used to be an altar boy, his lawyer said. He wore preppy clothes. No, no, he could never be what they said he was, he convinced them. It was a one-time thing, a crime of passion, a boy who simply loved too much. That’s what he made them think. Or, rather, that’s what his lawyer made them think about Lefty Flint.”

Feliciano nodded but did not press for a more specific answer. “That shouldn’t come as a surprise to you, Mr. Bailey. Any smart defense lawyer’s going to do that. He’s only interested in one thing—getting his client off, guilty or hot guilty. It don’t matter to him.”

“And slander the victim? That’s okay too?”

“I didn’t say it’s okay. I said it was legal.”

Gus shook his head.

“How long will you want him followed?” asked Feliciano.

“Indefinitely.”

“You have credentials?”

“Constantine de Rham, if he lives, will back me up.”

“What is it you have in mind, Mr. Bailey?”

“I’ve told you, Mr. Feliciano.”

“You’ve only kind of told me. Do you want this guy thrown out a window?”

“No. I don’t want anything like that.”

“It will look like an accident. No one will ever know. You won’t meet the person who is going to do it, and he will never have heard your name. Very easily arranged. Not cheap, but safe.”

“No, that’s not what I want,” said Gus, shaking his head.

“I sense there’s more that you want than what you’re telling me.”

Gus looked out the dirty window at the flat sunlight of the California afternoon beating down on the Sunset Strip. “How do you think I feel, knowing that Lefty Flint is going to be out there, living a free life, having dinner in restaurants, going to movies, moving in a world of people who probably don’t know that he has killed someone, and served a joke sentence, and that he feels he has atoned and has a right to a normal life?”