Ira Levin (14 page)

    She turned on the local news-radio and TV both, just loud enough to hear.

    Leaned against the window frame, looking down at the roofs of cars, vans, ambulance, in a swirling light show of red, white, and amber.

    A truly hellish night. ft new york City's newspaper readers, and its citizens who only glance at newsstands, relish those rare and delightful days when the two major tabloids headline the same headline. Tuesday, December 21/, was such a day, its twin front pages a true collector's item.

    Not only were the identical headlines typical of the "feisty, irreverent" style that had enabled both journals to survive right up to the rim of the new century, but also each of the two pages tucked fire and flood into a pair of those little boxes up top in the same order. Different wording there, but hey, you can't expect miracles, can you?

    A hideous crime, madman's work, the poor woman savaged in a way so bizarrely theatrical; and the setting, that building, that boutiquel-a tabloid editor's dream. The headline had offered itself on a feilver platter: blood- fest at tiffany's!

    Big, black, stacked in three lines.

    The reports in the two papers differed not much less. One said the dogs that smelled the still-warm blood were Weimaraners belonging to the owner of one of the upper-floor apartments,- the other "said they were wolfhounds belonging to the building's owner.

    Both papers had the victim lying naked on the boutique's central counter, her arms at her sides-likened by one to a patient on an operating table, by the other to a sacrifice to a primitive god.

    They agreed on the seven steak knives and the icepick. One said that other pieces of cutlery had been placed on and around the body; the other gave specifics. One mentioned minor looting-a few bracelets and watches, a punch bowl.

    Both papers featured the same wire-service telephoto in the same tepid newsprint colors: a side view of the victim, blurred where you expected, lying on the glass counter filled with touched-up sparkling riches, festooned with ribbons of reddish blood. The silver handles of the icepick and three knives were circled in white; a few spoons and forks could be seen, and in the background, holly branches.

    According to both papers, the luckless victim remained unidentified as of press time. She appeared to be in her late twenties and a Hindu; the icepick had been driven through the dime-size red dot on her forehead.

    Luckless all right.

    Jinxed, you might even say. 9-@lzandr8andZT less-than gs@lless-than just

    It was only when the coroner's men began readying the body for removal that someone wondered if she might possibly be Andy's Indian dish. You couldn't be sure, even the bellmen couldn't, the way she pulled the veil across her face in public most of the time, and Indian women with the dot aren't so unusual in New York City, especially in a hotel with an international clientele. But still, Andy's got a penthouse apartment and she's the right age, shouldn't somebody maybe give him a call?

    When Rosemary called down to the desk at midnight to ask the night man if the woman had been identified, he told her to sit tight, Andy was on his way up.

    Hellishness II. Or was it III?

    Andy had been hyper, on second wind, and distraught. Beyond distraught-enraged, furious, at the lunatic killer or killers.

    He filled her in on what little was known at that time. An inside job, beyond a doubt. The killer or killers had not only known how to disable the boutique's security system and fail-safe backup system, they had known the out-of-the-way location of the control box for the window shades; had known even-though this may only have been a matter of luck-that the boutique's staff had left en masse minutes after the eight o'clock closing to attend a wake for one of their number who had died that afternoon.

    Questioning of building and boutique staffs, hotel guests, office workers, and apartment owners and their guests would begin in the morning. Thousands of people would have to be interviewed.

    Rosemary wept, mourning Judy, so' young, so smart, so sure of herself-except where Andy was concerned- and mourning too the wrenching fact that at the dawn of the year 2000, despite Christmas, despite Andy, despite the advent of the Lighting, a woman alone still wasn't safe in the heart of what was supposedly a civilized world capital.

    Andy's outrage was naturally on a more intense and personal level. When Rosemary was finally dozing off, around three, wondering if maybe he knew what Judy had meant about reading something in April or May, she heard him on the phone in the living room describing the murder scene to someone, using phrases like "off- the-wall lunacy" and "Grand Guignol horror show"sounding as steamed as if he had the actual killer or killers by the throat and was venting all his anger and sorrow. Good, it would help him…

    "dis.. a production of the fucking Theatre Guild!!"     

**

    Joe came over at nine with the tabloids and a box of doughnuts, to keep Rosemary company while Andy went with William and Polly down to City Hall to meet with the Mayor and the Police Commissioner and representatives of the media. Andy asked Muhammed to drive them so Joe could be free.

    Andy had evidently been on the phone all night with GC'S major backers; there was concern that if word got out that Judy, Andy's Judy, was the luckless victim in the crime that-thanks to its bizarre, lunatic, off-the- wall theatricality-was traveling with the sunrise around the whole world of tabloid journalism and TV, the resulting media focus on Andy and the GC inner circle in such an unsavory context the week before the Lighting might disaffect some people. Right-wing Muslims, say. The Amish. The Lighting would be ragged and incomplete, instead of the unified, transcendent communion that was its intended purpose.

    Andy was confident he'd be able to persuade the Mayor and the others to keep Judy's identity under wraps till January first. They too wanted a flawless Lighting, and Christmas vacations had been planned and prepared for. William had found a tenable legal argument, in case one was needed for sweetening. Polly, the flirty widow of both a state senator and a judge in the Surrogate Court, had dirt on everybody.

    Sipping black coffee from a hotel cup, Rosemary stood in her warm-but-not-warm-enough Irish wool sweater gazing down at the ten damn tiles segregated from the rest of the herd. Deservedly, the lousy little bastards. She pushed them around into lousetrasm.

    From there into lostmauser. German soldier's problem. outslarems. "Why seven knives?" she asked.

    "When they find him, they'll ask him," Joe said, sitting on the sofa with a tabloid on a crossed leg, reading through half-glasses, an arm on the sofa back, Andy's face smiling from his sweatshirt.

    Rosemary turned and paced slowly back toward the foyer, holding the cup with both hands, frowning over it.

    Over his glasses, Joe watched her going by. "Sit awhile," he said.

    She stopped, looked down at the other tabloid on the coffee table. Shook her head. "They think they're so cleverst" she said. "They're sick, disgusting jackals who ought to be ashamed of themselves. They're a disgrace to their profession."

    "Tiffany's agrees," he said.

    She paced on toward the foyer.

    Turned and stopped there. "Why Tiffany's, really?" she asked him. "Prime location, heaviest traffic, best likelihood of passing hound dogs. Why not one of the smaller boutiques on the other side? Why a boutique at all, in fact?"

    "Sweetheart," he said, turning a page, "we don't ask reasonable questions of this kind of pervert. Or perverts." He sighed, read on through the glasses.

    She paced slowly back toward the Scrabble table, sipping, frowning.

    Stopped in the center of the room.

    He looked at her.

    She turned to him. "Was there anything else," she asked, "besides the knives and the-pick?"

    "Uh-huh," he said. "Forks and spoons in the pictures. Wait a minute…" He leafed back through the tabloid's pages, licked a finger.

    She moved closer, watching him with dark-ringed eyes. Put the cup down, raked a hand through her hair.

    He mumbled down a column, said, was 'He also said that other pieces of cutlery were placed on and around the victim." his "What others? How many?" she asked.

    "Doesn't say."

    "Maybe the Times has it…" She looked around.

    "Save your energy," he said. "It's on Z-nineteen, "Woman Slain in Boutique." That's about it."

    "Check that one," she said.

    He put his tabloid aside, lowering his leg, and leaned toward her, elbows on knees, Andy smiling at her on his sweatshirt. "Rosie," he said, "Judy is dead. How many spoons were around doesn't mean anything. These guys have their things, their fetishes,- they need things to be certain ways. Please, honey, don't dwell on it. It won't do any good."

    "Will you please look," she said. "I don't want to touch the rag."

    He sighed and picked up the other tabloid. "Myself, I think it's catchy," he said, opening it.

    "You would," she said. Waited.

    "Son of a gun," he said, "they've even got the pattern, "Edwardian." Eleven each, spoons and forks."

    "Eleven," she said. Stood still a moment. Turned and headed toward the table.

    He watched her.f

    She messed outslarems up, pushed the tiles around a moment-and stood looking out the window, tapping a tile against the thumbnail of her other hand. "Do you by any chance know her middle name?" she asked.

    "Judy's? "he said.

    She turned, nodded.

    "I don't even know if she had one," he said. "And would you please tell me what that's got to do with anything?"

    She said, "There's a phone book in the drawer in there. Maybe there's a middle initial, that's what matters. Kharyat-K, H, A, R, y, A, T. West End Avenue."

    "Her middle initial matters," he said, looking at her.

    She nodded. "Crucially," she said.

    He sighed, opened a drawer between his feet, lifted out the thick Manhattan phone book in a burgundy binder. "Why do I suddenly feel like Dr. Watson?" he asked.

    She waited.

    He found the It's, leafed; she watched him, her thumb rubbing the tile.

    "It's the only one," he said, a hand at his glasses. "Kharyat, J. S."

    She reached over the roses, spread her fingers; he caught the tile, looked at it, at her. "How'd you do it?" he asked.

    "I'm a psychic," she said. "I have visions."

    She turned and walked across the room. Stood looking at Andy della Robbia leaning on his easel atop the TV- seeing and being seen.

    She turned around and said, "Eleven spoons."

    Joe looked at her, holding a white arc of doughnut, his mouth full.

    "Eleven forks," she said. "Seven steak knives." Drew breath. "One icepick. What are they?"

    He swallowed. Said, "What are they?"

    "In Tiffany's," she said.

    "They're something different somewhere else?" he asked.

    "Maybe," she said. "Somewhere else they could be stainless steel, or aluminum. In Tiffany's they're silver." She raked both hands back through her hair, clutched it. "Thirty pieces," she said, dark-ringed eyes staring at him. "Thirty pieces of silver."

    His mouth opened, crumbs dropping.

    She stepped closer to him. "Thirty pieces of silver," she said, "in and on the body-of Judith S. Kharyat."

    He blinked at her, putting the doughnut down.

    She stepped closer. "Judith S. Kharyat." Leaned over the roses and rushed it: "Judithesskharyat." "Judas Iscariotl" he asked.

    She nodded.

    They stared at each other.

    "I have a feeling," she said, "it's not the name she was born with." She stood straight. Closed her eyes, put a hand across her forehead, turned. Started pacing a slow, wide circle…

    Watching her, he said, "Do you? Have visions?" "Sometimes," she said, pacing, holding her forehead, eyes closed.

    He watched her, backhanding hi@. mouth.

    She stopped and faced him, drew breath. "She needed a name that sounded Indian," she said. "VassarIndian- for when she got noticeably un-Hindu, I guess. She was a smart one, God bless her. And she likes, liked word games and puzzles." She stood a moment, blinking, lips tight, hands clasped tight together. "She came on to Andy," she said, "planning to dig up dirt on him and GC, to expose it as a scam, and him as, I don't know, a con man, a charlatan. We all know who he looks like, so she called herself Judith S. Kharyat, Judy Kharyat. She must have figured it would sail right past everybody, which it did, and she probably didn't plan to be here for more than a month or so anyway, if that. But Andy cast his magic spell"-she cleared her throat-"and she fell in love with him. She was stuck with the role. He "derailed" her, she said. I should have made the connection right then."

    "Made what connection?" Joe asked, peering at her.