Shadows Still Remain (14 page)

The picture O'Hara drops on Juergen Muster's gray enamel worktable draws a blank but not a denial. “Aphrodite is far and away my favorite service in the city,” he says, running his long fingers through his short professionally tousled light brown hair. “Evelyn sends me three or four girls a week, and usually they do me right here in this office. It clears my mind, helps me concentrate.”

Wonderful,
thinks O'Hara.

And then raising his voice to throw it over a translucent partition just behind him, Muster says, “Isn't that so, Christina?”

Last night, when O'Hara Googled Muster, his name popped up all over the place: perfume bottles, nightclub VIP rooms, magazine makeovers, even that topless Kate Moss billboard for Calvin Klein looking down over Lafayette and Houston. One gushing profile dubbed him downtown's most inspired design polymath.
More like Polly wants a hooker,
thinks O'Hara, which is surprising in a way, since Muster, long and angular, as if he sketched himself, with chiseled features covered with three days of silvery stubble, is certainly attractive enough not to have to pay for female attention.

“Try concentrating on this,” says O'Hara, pointing at the picture. Other than the picture, the only item on Muster's pristine oblong table is a sketch pad open to a blank page. When O'Hara slides the photo toward him, Muster's pale green eyes follow its progress like a spreading stain.

“Lee said you called her repeatedly. Said you practically begged for a second date.”

“Holly,” says Muster. “Yes, of course. The picture doesn't do her justice.”

“How'd you feel when Lee couldn't contact her?”

“Chagrined,” says Muster, whose beautifully cut gray suit makes it hard to tell where his desk ends and he begins. “One thing about having sex with pros, as opposed to quote unquote amateurs, is that I generally get to decide when the relationship is over. Getting dumped by a call girl is quite deflating.”

“Your feelings were hurt?”

“Something like that. But I didn't fly into a murderous rage. And if you check with Evelyn, you'll find I've been on many other satisfactory dates since.”

Delfinger's office was a photo album. Muster's Tribeca loft is uncluttered by evidence of anything as corny as a family or a past, and every detail is pared to within an inch of its life. How disappointed Muster would be, thinks O'Hara, if he knew that when it came to women, he had the identical taste as a slimmed-down striver from Brooklyn, who buys his suits off the rack and drives home to the suburbs every night.
Men spend their whole lives propping up a personality a millimeter thick.

“Where were you at four a.m. Thanksgiving morning? And please, for their sake, don't tell me with your family.”

“Right here,” says Muster. “The same place I was last night and the night before that. I do have a mother and father, by the way, but they're in Vienna; we don't celebrate Thanksgiving on the Danube.”

“What were you working on?”

“A spoon.”

“Really, sounds like an important project.”

“The right spoon can change the world.”

“Anyone with you?”

“Christina.”

Without a word, O'Hara gets up and crosses to the much smaller space on the far side of the partition, where a painfully thin Asian woman looks up from her large coffee. “I hope he pays well,” says O'Hara.

“He doesn't.”

“So?”

“He's brilliant, and believe it or not, I'm learning something. If I hold out a little longer, I can work in any design studio in the world. If I quit, I'll have eaten ten months of shit for nothing.”

“The night before Thanksgiving, you were here with him all night?”

“Pathetic, isn't it?”

“You don't have family either?”

“In LA. I couldn't afford to go back anyway.”

“Any proof that you were here?”

“Why would I lie for that cretin?”

“Same reason you won't quit. Would you blow him too if he asked—you know, to clear his mind?”

“None of your business.”

“Probably not,” says O'Hara, leaving a copy of Pena's picture and her card. “But a young woman your boss had sex with got murdered. You think of anything, please give me a call.”

As anxious as O'Hara is to leave this pristine loft and get back on a filthy New York City curb, she stops in Muster's office on the way out. “On your date with Holly,” asks O'Hara, “was there any role play?”

“She dressed like a schoolgirl,” says Muster. “Plaid skirt, button-down white shirt, long wool socks. Even had a book-bag and Partridge Family lunchbox. It's all in the details, and hers were excellent.”

“Your idea?”

“No. All I ever ask for is a nice ass and no tits.”

“But you liked it, the little girl routine?”

“It's a hopeless cliché. But it worked for me.”

O'Hara picked the Empire Diner because it's just up the street from Privilege. She hadn't been there for a couple of years and had forgotten just how swank and sophisticated it is, not to mention how gay. An enormous bald-headed black man sashays over and introduces himself as Maître Dee Dee. As he walks her to her table, O'Hara is reacquainted with the warm candlelight bouncing between the black countertops and the mirrored ceiling, and the dude playing Gershwin on the upright in the corner, and the small backlit bar dispensing old-timey cocktails. Monday night's special is “the painkiller”—rum, cream of coconut and pineapple juice—but O'Hara restrains herself. She orders an Amstel and watches the cabs race up Tenth.

Erika, who goes on at midnight, arrives first. When O'Hara slipped that twenty in Erika's g-string, O'Hara's NYPD card was tucked inside. Erika helped O'Hara get in touch with Teresa, Leslie and Ina, and they walk in together ten minutes later.

“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” says Dee Dee, escorting them over. “You ladies are so gorgeous, you must be celebrities.”

“Try strippers,” says the six-foot blond Teresa.

“For real?” says Dee Dee, putting his hand to his mouth. “You are my heroes and role models. I'm a drag queen—Monday nights, Bar Dot.”

“I learned half my act from drag queens,” says Ina when Dee Dee departs. “The less you got, the harder you work it.”

“Tell me about it,” says Erika.

O'Hara is buying. She, Teresa and Leslie order burgers, Erika a niçoise salad, and Ina, French toast. “What do you remember about Holly?” asks O'Hara after the food and cocktails arrive.

“Not much,” says Leslie. “She stuck to herself.”

“That's a nice way of putting it.”

“That stuck-up Ivy League bitch wanted nothing to do with any of us,” says Teresa, and takes an enormous bite of her burger. “Acted like she was the only stripper in the history of the world who'd ever read a book.”

“Does
Harry Potter
count?” asks Erika.

“It better,” says Leslie. “I'll say one thing—the bitch could dance. She did stuff on the pole I'd bust my head trying. And growing out her bush like she did. She was crazy.”

“Crazy smart,” says Teresa. “It made her stand out.”

“She ever do a little schoolgirl routine?” asks O'Hara.

“Shit, we've all done that.”

“We've never ridden out on stage on a tricycle,” says Leslie, laughing.

“It was a Big Wheel,” says Erika. “And that was sick.”

“About how much could she make a night?” asks O'Hara.

“Not much,” says Teresa. “All she did was the stage.”

“To make money,” explains Erika, “you got to do lap dances. Holly didn't go back there. If she was lucky, eighty dollars a night.”

After the girls leave, O'Hara calls Krekorian, who is just ending his shift. “Serge, I need another favor. You got to go to Privilege for me.”

“But they've got girls on stage, Dar. And they're practically nude.” O'Hara explains that she needs to find out if Pena had any stalkers or obsessive fans. “How am I going to find out that?”

“They got a little office in the back. If you go through the credit card receipts for Monday nights, maybe the same names will keep showing up. I'd do it, but I can't risk ending up in the
Post
again. I'll be waiting up the street at the Empire Diner.”

O'Hara moves to the counter and settles in near the little altar of a bar, where she orders a martini. The more she thinks about what the girls told her, the less it adds up. If Pena wasn't willing to do lap dances, she could do better as a waitress. And if she had some kind of academic fascination with strippers, she'd be talking to them and taking notes instead of snubbing them. Or maybe Pena was just a dilettante scratching an itch, dabbling on the wild side, like with those three dates through Aphrodite?

Krekorian walks in just after four in the morning, as the place is filling with x'd-out club kids. “T and A makes me thirsty,” he says. “I need a beer.”

“Hell with that,” says O'Hara, nodding toward Dee Dee. “This guy makes a great martini, and you're having one.”

“Sure he's a guy?”

“Technically, he's got to be.”

“Why's that?”

“He's a drag queen.”

Dee Dee assembles and dispenses the cocktail with precise flair, and as O'Hara watches her partner unwind in the candlelight she wonders why the two of them never hooked up. Probably because they like each other too much and don't want to blow it.

“You're right as usual, Dar. Dee Dee makes a hell of a martini.”

“Was I right about anything else?”

“As a matter of fact, you were. The Holly Gomez Fan Club had two charter members. On the last ten Mondays she worked, one showed up eight times, and the other didn't miss a night. And both were women.”

“They have names?”

“Two old friends of yours: Deirdre Tomlinson and Madame Evelyn Lee.”

O'Hara looks down at the uneven surface of her kitchen table. When she dragged it home from the yard sale last summer, it seemed like a miraculous find. Now, with a certainty that applies to nothing else, she sees that it's a couple of inches too big for the space and a wobbly piece of crap.

At Empire, O'Hara was on her best behavior, stretching three martinis across four hours, but when she got home K.'s discovery left her too amped to sleep. She fixed herself a nightcap and another, and kept pouring until her supply of Maker's Mark was gone. She didn't get out of bed until three in the afternoon. Now it's five, and except for the unsought realization about her kitchen table, she would be hard-pressed to say how the last two hours have passed. O'Hara refills her mug at the stove and tries again to focus on the unlikely pair of strip club regulars, but her clumsy brain stumbles from question to question like someone bumping into furniture in the dark. When O'Hara tries to imagine the scene at Privilege, it always comes out like slapstick, the two women falling off their pink Naugahyde stools as they clamor for Pena's/Holly's attention.

Did the two sit near each other or at opposite ends of the
horseshoe bar? Is it possible they weren't aware of each other? After so many overlapping Monday nights, that seems unlikely, but did Tomlinson know that the Jappy Korean with stylish bangs is a madam? And did Lee know that her painfully thin rival is an associate provost at NYU? Did they take turns lobbying the scholar athlete, or was it strictly a bidding war, the two seeing who could stuff more twenties into Pena's stretched-out g-string? Wouldn't that make a lovely picture for the NYU yearbook.

O'Hara knows that for both women, landing Pena was a major coup. NYU and Tomlinson beat out every top college in the country, and in a city that never sleeps, Lee outrecruited as many escort services. At the memorial, Tomlinson claimed she'd called Pena so often because she had a terrible if vague feeling Pena had fallen in with the wrong crowd. Clearly, it was more than a hunch, but maybe she was essentially telling the truth, and she and Lee were playing the parts of good and bad angels, Tomlinson showing up every week to try to shame Pena back into her clothes and school and Lee trying to lure one of her best potential earners deeper into the sex trade.

After a while, the surplus of scenarios hurts her head as much as last night's drinking. O'Hara looks up from her table at the printout of Pena's tattoo, which is stuck to her freezer with a magnet from Riverdale Pizza, although calling that pizza is a bit of a stretch. That dollar sign at the center of the heart creeps her out as usual, but the
T, B
and
D
on the left, and
H, T
and
B
on the right mean no more than ever, and neither Tomlinson's initials nor Lee's fall neatly out of the let
ters. At seven, O'Hara feeds Bruno his dinner and leashes him for his walk, and on the way back stops at her car for the plastic bag of fan mail she took from Pena's locker. She rereads the first note, then spreads the other four over her wobbly kitchen table.

• 2. I miss you. Pizzas and my bed are too big when you're gone.
  
• 3. No one will ever touch you the way I do.
  
• 4. I miss you so much, I can taste it.
  
• 5. What's the matter, F? I thought you liked the way my tongue felt inside you.
  

Although the notes are undated, O'Hara rearranges them in what she believes is the order in which they were sent. In the new sequence the sign-offs start with “sincerely,” “affectionately” and “ardently Tommy” and escalate to “achingly” and “desperately Tommy.”

Sincerely, affectionately, ardently Tommy. Touching, licking, tasting. Tommy. O'Hara thinks of the pinball-playing Tommy from the rock opera, and when it hits her, it's so obvious, she feels like the deaf, dumb and blind one. Tommy is not a horny nineteen-year-old boy, but a horny thirty-something assistant provost. “Tommy” is short for Tomlinson, the nickname she reserves for lovers or at least the most special of college applicants.

Forget good and bad angels, thinks O'Hara. Maybe this whole thing is personal and romantic, two thirty-something women fighting over a teenage girl. One woman, Lee, wins, and the other, Tomlinson, despite all her education and culture, and
the priceless art on her wall, turns out to be a very poor loser. Just another downtown lesbian love triangle gone bad.

At nine-thirty at night, O'Hara's head and stomach still feel like crap, and the surge of adrenaline brought on by her belated discovery makes both feel worse. Unfortunately, O'Hara doesn't have it in her to sit back and wait till morning. On the off chance Tomlinson is working late, O'Hara calls her office and hangs up when she gets her machine. As she expects, Tomlinson's home number is unlisted, but ex-detective Larry Elkin at Campus Security is happy to provide it.

“While I got you,” says O'Hara, “is there anything you can tell me about Tomlinson? Her personal life, her professional life, rumors, anything?”

“We both got to NYU about the same time,” says Elkin, “but I've only met her once. I'm pretty certain she resides on the Isle of Lesbos, but so do half the faculty. No student, as far as I know, has filed a complaint, not that I would know necessarily. About three years ago, we dispatched an ambulance to her apartment. An overdose, accidental according to her. I guess that means she changed her mind.”

Thirty seconds later, much too soon to have thought it through, O'Hara, her head and heart pounding, has Tomlinson on the phone. “I need to talk to you about Francesca.”

“Can't it wait till morning?”

“No, it can't.”

“It's ten o'clock, Detective. I'm about to go to sleep. Can you at least tell me what this is about?”

O'Hara hesitates, but whether owing to Tomlinson's lying
to her from the beginning, racial stuff she is barely aware of, or the lingering effect of too much gin and bourbon, she can't resist rattling Tomlinson's cage. “It's about Privilege,” says O'Hara. “Not the concept…the one on Twenty-third, with a capital
P
, and a big mane of hair sticking out the back.” When the phone falls silent, O'Hara regrets it immediately.

“Meet me in front of the library in half an hour,” says Tomlinson.

“I'm coming from Riverdale. Can we make it an hour?”

“You were the one in such a hurry, Detective. Half an hour or I'm gone. And good luck finding me.”