The Body In The Big Apple (7 page)

She punched in the code—and beep, “Faith, love, it's Granny. I'm totally distraught and can't understand why someone didn't tell me sooner! I suppose they were trying to spare an old lady.”

Whatever it is, it must be bad. Faith felt a flicker of anxiety. When her grandmother started referring to herself this way, it meant she'd lost another friend or received some other devastating news. Normally, she made a point of ignoring the aging process, and she still had the legs to prove it worked.

“Altman's is closing! B. Altman! They're having a
gigantic sale and simply gutting the place. I can scarcely take it in. I'd like you and Hope to come to lunch with me at the Charleston Gardens. Remember all those times we used to go there before the ballet? Humor an old lady and call me, dear.” Two mentions of “old lady” in one message. Faith hated that Altman's was closing, too, although she hadn't been there in years. It had furnished her grandmother and mother's trousseaux—and first apartments. When Hope and Faith were little girls, Altman's was de rigeur for party dresses, white gloves, navy blue Sunday school coats, and, of course, Easter bonnets. She felt a sudden nostalgia for the Charleston Gardens' rendition of chicken à la king. (And which king was that? British, surely, not French.) The memory was complicated by an equally strong one of Hope losing her lunch in the final moments of
Romeo and Juliet,
when sister and grandmother took her tugs on their sleeves to mean requests for information—Hope had been a great one for questions like “Why can't she climb down the balcony and leave?”—rather than the urgent need for the bathroom that it was. The image of mopping Hope up, as well as three ladies from a women's club on Long Island who had been in the row in front of them, had stayed with Faith as clearly as if it were yesterday. It was the first time she'd ever seen what she later learned was called a “merry widow.” Yes, she'd have lunch with Granny and they could all mourn the passing of yet another treasured New York institution and bemoan the shortsightedness of the philistines responsible—but Faith would stick to the BLT.

Beep: “‘ “Hither, page, and stand by me,/If thou know'st it, telling,/Yonder peasant, who is he?/Where and what his dwelling?”/“Sire, he lives a good league
hence,/Underneath the mountain,/Right against the forest fence,/By Saint Agnes' fountain.” '”

Richard Morgan! Things were looking up. “I can sing some more verses, too. If you'd like to hear them, meet me for dinner tonight. I know it's short notice, but I thought I'd still be out of town. Give me a call. Five five five, eight nine four seven. I'll even not sing, if you'd rather.”

The last message was from Hope. She was at work and had her work voice on. “Please let me know some times when you're available for dinner, so we can arrange a date and place to meet. Best call me at work. I won't be home until late all week.” Hope got to the office well before dawn and seldom left until it was time to tumble into bed. It wasn't until all the Michael Milken stuff came out, revealing, among other things, that, like many in the business, he rose at 4:00
A.M.
, sleeping only four to five hours a night, that Faith conceded her sister wasn't seriously disturbed, simply seriously lacking perspective.

She shook her head and dialed Richard. He answered on the second ring.

“Hi, it's Faith Sibley, and as it turns out, I am free, and trying to remember all those verses has been driving me crazy. Your call came just in time.”

“One so rarely has the opportunity to be of service. I'm delighted. Now, what's your pleasure?”

That awkward moment had arrived. Where to eat? And she had no idea how fat his wallet was. Did the absence of an overcoat mean good circulation or an unhealthy cash flow?

“I dunno. What do you want to do, Marty?” Faith had been brought up on black-and-white classic movies. Apparently, so had Richard.

“If I remind you of Ernest Borgnine, we may have a problem.”

Faith laughed. “Okay. What kind of food do you like to eat, and if you say everything, I'm hanging up.”

“Don't do that! Let's see, there's wassail. No, how about I dare the impossible and choose for the caterer. They make great margaritas at Santa Fe on West Sixty-ninth, and the food is pretty good, too.”

Faith had been there a few times and liked it. The warm brick-colored walls and soft lighting were any girl's best friends. “Done. Meet you there at eight?”

“Meet you there at eight. And Faith, I'm looking forward to moving on to the next topic.”

“Me, too. See you soon.” Frankly, at this point in her life, she wasn't the least bit curious about the forest fence or Saint Agnes's fountain. She already knew how it turned out.

 

Richard Morgan was a freelance journalist, and Faith now recalled seeing his byline in a wide variety of publications—
The New Yorker,
the
Village Voice, The New Republic,
as well as the
Times.
She was going to have to be very, very careful. But she brightened at her next thought. She'd be able to pump
him
for information. First, it seemed that they needed to find out what each other thought about everything from Leona Helmsley's trial—“Anyone who goes on record saying, ‘I don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes' has to take her knocks,” said Richard—to Paul McCartney at forty-seven—“Can he still cut it?”
“Flowers in the Dirt
has some great moments, but it's mixed,” said Faith.

Richard had been at Tiananmen Square and Faith listened spellbound as he described what it had been
like to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the students as the tanks rolled in.

“Enough about me,” he said.

It had been awhile since Faith had heard these words. Maybe he had a brother for Hope.

“Tell me about Faith Sibley. I want to know everything. All your secrets.” His grin was disarming. There's nothing like charm to extract information. He must be very good at what he does, Faith thought, beginning to realize writing wasn't his only talent.

She gave him the Cliffs Notes version of her life to date. He smiled again at the vehemence with which she declared she would never, ever marry a man of the cloth.

“Good news for the rest of us.”

“Unless you've grown up as a PK—preacher's kid—it's hard to understand. We never gave the parish anything really juicy to comment on, like running away to join a cult or shaving our heads and piercing our noses. But there were plenty of annoying day-to-day remarks. ‘Isn't she a little young for makeup?' ‘Did I hear the girls were going to Europe by themselves this summer?' ‘Has Faith decided on a career yet, like Hope?' You get the picture.”

“Yeah, might make a good article. Don't worry,” Richard said, seeing Faith's look of alarm, “another PK. I don't take advantage of my friends—or try not to, anyway.”

If one of them was sitting on a story as big as the one she was, Faith was sure Richard's scruples would vanish before you could say “Pulitzer Prize.”

They were waiting for their main course—they'd both ordered a pork dish with green chili. It would make splitting the bill easier, but Faith wouldn't be
able to find out how comfortable he was about sharing food. She firmly believed “Do you promise to share what's on your plate?” should be worked into the traditional marriage vows. Forget
sickness, health, love, honor,
and especially
obey.
Most divorces could be avoided by a simple test. Order something you don't particularly want in a restaurant and urge him to get something you adore. Ask for a taste and take careful notes. A cousin of Faith's reported her fiancé's reaction: “If you wanted it, why didn't you order it?” Faith advised caution, was not heeded, and they were splitsville less than a year after the honeymoon. But tonight she was really in the mood for the pork. Maybe next time?

Inevitably, the conversation turned to food, which then led to travel. Richard had been all over the world and even expressed a desire to hop aboard a space shuttle should the chance arise. Faith was drawn to space travel in theory—the extraordinary sight of earth from far, far away, that big blue marble. Yet, lurking beneath her adventurous spirit was a tiny voice insistently whimpering, But what if you couldn't get back? For the moment, she wasn't taking a number. She definitely
did
want to go to the Far East, and she listened intently—and enviously—as Richard described his journeys. The margaritas were drained and they ordered dark Dos Equis beer to go with the rest of dinner. Faith was feeling more relaxed than she had been all week.

“But you haven't told me any secrets,” he said suddenly.

“You haven't told me any, either,” she countered. Two could play at this game.

“All right. I'm secretly writing a book that is going
to blow a certain southern town sky-high. A best-seller for sure.”

Faith looked at him scornfully. “Every other person in this city—and probably the rest of the country—is writing some kind of explosive book. That's not a real secret.”

He leaned forward. He really was good-looking. Deep brown eyes and lighter brown hair—wavy, not curly. He was thin, but not skinny; his chin and cheekbones well defined. Kate Hepburn's cousin, without the voice.

“While I was doing a story on something else, I stumbled across a mystery. I met the principals and haven't been able to stay away. It's one of those situations in life where nothing you could dream up as fiction could match the bizarre and byzantine nature of this reality.”

Faith was with him there. She found herself nodding. Nothing one could imagine…

“So what's yours?”

She came to with a jolt.

“I stole a ceramic animal from the gift shop at the Museum of Natural History when I was nine years old, never told my parents, and kept it.” She didn't add that she had felt so guilty, she was unable to look at the little lion. Too afraid of the questions that might arise if it was discovered in the trash, she had stashed it in a shoe box in her closet until two years ago, when she donated it to a local thrift shop as a collectible.

“So, keep your secrets. My nose for news, and experience with sources, tells me you're a complicated woman and one extremely capable at keeping things hidden, Faith. And how did you end up with a name
like that? I've never met a Faith before. Funny, though, it seems to suit you.”

Faith told him the family story and they moved on to discuss an article about the eighties he was finishing up for the
Times
magazine section.

“This could get depressing,” Faith remarked. “I keep thinking of people like Mark Chapman and John Hinckley. And the Ayatollah putting a price on Salman Rushdie's head. So much craziness.”

“The
Challenger
tragedy, the savings and loan crisis, Black Monday…”

Faith began to chant, “Nancy Reagan's china, Beemers, ‘Whoever Dies with the Most Toys Wins,' Malcolm Forbes's two-million-dollar Moroccan birthday bash…”

“But there were also all those
KILL YOUR TELEVISION
bumper stickers, and we weren't involved in any major wars during the entire decade, although there's still time.”

“Not much. I read a wonderful quote from that British novelist Angela Carter the other day commenting on the heavy pronouncements we've been reading almost all year: ‘The
fin
is coming early this
siècle.
'”

They both laughed.

“I'll track it down and use it. It would make a terrific title.”

The only dessert Faith ever wanted at Tex-Mex places was flan. It was the perfect counterpoint to the spicy main dishes, and she recalled that Santa Fe's was perfect—rich, creamy, yet not cloying. They both ordered coffee. Richard didn't seem to be in any rush to get back to his article, and though Faith was tired, it was pleasant to linger. Besides, she realized, she'd been having such a good time, she'd forgotten to work
Fox's murder into the conversation and see if she could get any further information. She had to act fast before the evening ended.

“How about the murder of Nathan Fox? Do you intend to use it in your article?”

“It's worth a mention. A lot of what's happened in the eighties—the excesses—was what people like Fox were predicting in the sixties. It hasn't simply been a case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. That's always been true. But in the eighties, the rich got
much
richer. Even after the 1987 crash. Last year, in '88, Milken made five hundred and fifty million dollars—ironically fifty million more than the Gambino family, crime apparently not paying as much as it used to, or their kind anyway—and I
am
using that. Fox and his cohort believed that the widening gap between rich and poor would lead to revolution. Well, it hasn't. At least not yet, and I don't see it happening anywhere in the near future, but the seeds of the eighties were sowed in the sixties. Ironically, Fox liked nothing better than schmoozing with wealthy New York intellectuals and socialites. He was a regular at certain dinner parties, delighting the guests by telling them what decadent leeches they were. That all the finger bowls in the world wouldn't be enough to cleanse the blood of the workers from their effete, uncalloused hands—that, or something very similar, was one of his lines.”

Faith thought again that Fox wouldn't have lasted long at Aunt Chat's Madison Avenue ad agency if the tired, trite slogans she'd been hearing were any indication of his acumen.

“So you haven't really heard anything. But why murdered? Why now? What's the ‘bottom line'?” She
injected the eighties buzzword to keep things light—and keep the conversation going.

Richard thought for a moment. “There has been some talk that Fox's murder was tied to his politics—that it wasn't just a robbery by some cokehead—but I haven't been able to come up with an angle. Unless he's been keeping some pretty heavy stuff under wraps all these years. Maybe about someone else in the movement. Or let's say he was about to get a pardon and write a tell-all book. If Reagan could get a seven-million-dollar advance, Fox could certainly have hoped for half that—or more in hush money! But I jest. He wasn't into material goods. More to the point, he's not the pardonable type. Wrong haircut. Besides the politics theory, there are a lot of rumors about where he's been all these years, and maybe there's a motive there. Someone he crossed. A woman? And from all accounts, in Fox's case there were always lots of ladies.”