“And you don’t have any idea what she considered a story that would rock the industry?”
“Not a clue.”
Neeve sighed and stood up. “I’ve taken enough of your time. I suppose that I should be reassured. It would be just like Ethel to get hot on a project like this and go hole up in a cabin somewhere. I’d better start minding my own business.” She held out her hand to him. “Thank you.”
He did not release her hand immediately. His smile was quick and warm. “Do you always make such fast getaways?” he asked. “Six years ago you darted out of the plane like an arrow. The other night when I turned around you’d disappeared.”
Neeve withdrew her hand. “Occasionally, I slow down to a jog,” she said, “but now I’d better run and pay attention to my own business.”
He walked with her to the door. “I hear Neeve’s Place is one of the most fashionable shops in New York. Can I get to see it?”
“Sure. You don’t even have to buy anything.”
“My mother lives in Nebraska and wears sensible clothes.”
On her way down in the elevator Neeve wondered whether that was Jack Campbell’s way of telling her that there was no special lady in his life. She found that she was humming softly as she stepped out into the now warm April afternoon and hailed a cab.
When she reached the shop, she found a message to call Tse-Tse at Ethel’s apartment immediately. Tse-Tse answered on the first ring. “Neeve, thank God you called. I want to get out of here before that jerky nephew comes home. Neeve, something is really queer. Ethel has a habit of stashing hundred-dollar bills around the apartment. That’s how she happened to pay me in advance last time. When I was here Tuesday, I saw one bill under the carpet. This morning I found one in the dish closet and three others hidden in the furniture. Neeve, they absolutely weren’t here on Tuesday.”
Seamus left the bar at four-thirty. Oblivious of the jostling pedestrians, he darted along the crowded sidewalk up Columbus Avenue. He had to go to Ethel’s apartment, and he didn’t want Ruth to know he’d been there. Since his discovery last evening that he’d put the check and the note into the same envelope, he’d felt like a trapped animal, leaping wildly, trying to find a way to escape.
There was just one hope. He hadn’t stuffed the envelope deep into the mailbox. He could visualize the way the edge of it had been sticking out of the slot. He might be able to retrieve it. It was a one-in-a-million chance. Common sense told him that if the postman had brought more mail, he probably shoved that envelope down. But the possibility still allured him, offering the only course of action.
He turned up Ethel’s block, his eyes skimming the passersby, hoping he would not encounter the familiar faces of any of Ethel’s neighbors. As he reached her building, his sense of hopeless misery swelled to the point of despair. He couldn’t even try to steal a letter without bungling it. You needed a key to get into the vestibule where the mailboxes were located. Last night that obnoxious kid had opened the door for him. Now he’d have to ring for the superintendent, and the super certainly wouldn’t let him fool with Ethel’s mailbox.
He was in front of the brownstone. Ethel’s apartment was the walk-in entrance on the left. There were a dozen steps up to the main entrance. As he stood, uncertain what to do, the fourth-floor window opened. A woman leaned out. Over her shoulder, he could see the face of the kid he’d talked to yesterday.
“She hasn’t been around all week,” a strident voice told him. “And listen, I almost called the cops last Thursday when I heard you shouting at her.”
Seamus turned and fled. His breath came in harsh gasps as he ran unseeingly down West End Avenue. He did not stop until he was safely inside his own apartment and had bolted the door. Only then was he aware of the pounding of his heart, the shuddering sound of his struggle for oxygen. To his dismay, he heard footsteps in the hallway coming from the bedroom. Ruth was home already. Urgently he wiped his face with his hand, tried to pull himself together.
Ruth did not seem to notice his agitation. She was holding his brown suit over her arm. “I was going to drop this at the cleaners,” she told him. “Will you kindly tell me why in the name of God you have a one-hundred-dollar bill in the pocket?”
• • •
Jack Campbell stayed in his office for nearly two hours after Neeve left him. But the manuscript which had been messengered to him with an enthusiastic note from an agent he trusted simply could not hold his attention. After valiant efforts to become involved in the story line, he finally shoved it aside with rare irritability. The anger was directed at himself. It wasn’t fair to judge someone’s hard work when your mind was ninety-nine percent preoccupied.
Neeve Kearny. Funny how six years ago he’d had that moment of regret that he hadn’t managed to get her phone number. He’d even looked it up in the Manhattan directory when he was in New York some months later. There were pages of Kearnys in the book. None of them Neeve. She’d said something about a dress shop. He’d looked under Kearny. Nothing.
And then he’d shrugged and put it in the back of his mind. For all he knew she had a live-in boyfriend. But for some reason he’d never quite forgotten her. At the cocktail party, when she approached him, he’d recognized her immediately. She wasn’t a twenty-one-year-old kid in a ski sweater anymore. She was a sophisticated, fashionably dressed young woman. But that coal-black hair, the milk-white skin, the enormous brown eyes, the dotting of freckles across the bridge of her nose—all these were the same.
Now Jack found himself wondering whether she had a serious involvement. If not . . .
At six o’clock his assistant poked her head in. “I’ve had it,” she announced. “Is it okay if I warn you that you’ll wreck it for everyone else if you keep late hours?”
Jack shoved aside the unread manuscript and got up. “I’m on my way,” he said. “Just one question, Ginny? What do you know about Neeve Kearny?”
He mulled over the answer on the walk uptown to his rental apartment on Central Park South. Neeve Kearny had a sensationally successful boutique. Ginny bought her special outfits there. Neeve was well liked, well respected. Neeve had caused an uproar a few months ago when she pulled the plug on a designer who had kids sewing in sweatshops. Neeve could be a fighter.
He’d also asked about Ethel Lambston. Ginny had rolled her eyes. “Don’t get me started.”
Jack stopped in his apartment long enough to be sure that he didn’t feel like fixing his own dinner. Instead he decided that pasta at Nicola’s was the right way to go. Nicola’s was on Eighty-fourth Street between Lexington and Third.
It was a good decision. As always, there was a line for tables, but after one drink at the bar his favorite waiter, Lou, tapped his shoulder. “All set, Mr. Campbell.” Jack found himself relaxing at last over a half bottle of Valpolicella, a watercress-and-endive salad and linguine with frutti di mare. When he ordered a double espresso he also asked for his check.
As he left the restaurant, he shrugged. He had known all evening that he was going to walk over to Madison Avenue and see Neeve’s Place. A few minutes later, as a now cooling breeze made him aware that it was still April and that early-spring weather could be capricious, he studied the elegantly dressed windows. He liked what he saw. The delicately feminine soft print dresses and matching umbrellas. The assured poses of the mannequins, the almost arrogant tilt of their heads. Somehow he was sure that Neeve was making a statement with this combination of strength and softness.
But carefully studying the window display made him aware of the elusive thought that had evaded him when he was trying to tell Neeve exactly what Ethel had pitched to him. “There’s gossip; there’s excitement; there’s universality in fashion,” Ethel had told him in that hurried, breathless way of hers. “That’s what my article is about. But just suppose I can give you a lot more than that. A bombshell. TNT.”
He’d been late for an appointment. He’d cut her off. “Send me an outline.”
Ethel’s insistent, pe
rsistent refusal to be dismissed. “How much is a blockbuster scandal worth?”
His almost joking “If it’s sensational enough, mid–six figure.”
Jack stared at the mannequins holding their parasollike umbrellas. His eyes shifted to the ivory-and-blue canopy with the scrolled letters, “Neeve’s Place.” Tomorrow he could call Neeve and tell her exactly what Ethel had said.
As he turned down Madison Avenue, once again finding it necessary to walk off the vague, undefined restlessness, he thought, I’m really reaching for an excuse. Why not just ask her out?
At that moment, he was able to define the cause of the restlessness. He absolutely did not want to hear that Neeve was involved with someone else.
• • •
Thursday was a busy day for Kitty Conway. From nine in the morning till noon she drove elderly people to doctors’ appointments. In the afternoon she worked as a volunteer in the small sales shop of the Garden State Museum. Both activities gave her a sense of doing something useful.
Long ago in college she had studied anthropology with some vague idea of becoming a second Margaret Mead. Then she’d met Mike. Now as she helped a sixteen-year-old select a replica of an Egyptian necklace, she thought that maybe in the summer she’d sign up for an anthropology tour.
The prospect was intriguing. As she drove home in the April evening, Kitty realized that she was getting impatient with herself. It was time to get on with the business of living. She turned off Lincoln Avenue and smiled as she saw her house perched high at the bend of Grand View Circle, an impressive white colonial with black shutters.
Inside she walked through the downstairs rooms turning on lights, then lit the gas-fueled fireplace in the den. When Michael was alive, he’d made satisfying, glowing fires, expertly piling logs over the kindling and feeding the flames regularly so that the hickory scent of the wood filled the room. No matter how she tried, Kitty couldn’t get a fire started properly, and with apologies to Michael’s memory she had had the gas jet installed.
She went upstairs to the master bedroom that she’d redone in apricot and pale green, a pattern copied from a museum tapestry. Peeling off her two-piece gray wool dress, she debated about showering now and getting comfortable in pajamas and a robe. Bad habit, she told herself. It’s only six o’clock.
Instead she pulled a teal-blue sweatsuit from the closet and reached for sneakers. “I’m back to jogging as of right now,” she told herself.
She followed her usual path. Grand View to Lincoln Avenue, a mile into town, circle the bus station and back home. Feeling pleasantly virtuous, she dropped her sweatsuit and underwear into the bathroom hamper, showered, slipped on lounging pajamas and studied herself in the mirror. She’d always been slim and was holding her shape reasonably well. The lines around her eyes weren’t deep. Her hair looked pretty natural. The colorist in the beauty parlor had managed to match her own shade of red. Not bad, Kitty told her reflection, but ye gods, in two years I’ll be sixty.
It was time for the seven-o’clock news and obviously time for a sherry. Kitty walked across the bedroom toward the hallway and realized she’d left the bathroom lights blazing. Waste not, want not, and anyhow you should conserve electricity. She hurried back and reached for the bathroom light switch. Her fingers turned numb. The sleeve of her blue sweatsuit was dangling from the hamper. Fear, like a cold blade of steel, made Kitty’s throat constrict. Her lips went dry. She could feel the hairs on her neck bristle and tighten. That sleeve. There should be a hand on it. Yesterday. When the horse bolted. That scrap of plastic that had hit her face. That blurred image of blue cloth and a hand. She hadn’t been crazy. She had seen a hand.
Kitty did not remember to turn on the seven-o’clock news. Instead, she sat in front of the fire, hunched forward on the couch, sipping the sherry. Neither the fire nor the sherry could ease the chill that was engulfing her body. Should she call the police? Suppose she was wrong. She’d look like a fool.
I’m not wrong, she told herself, but I’ll wait until tomorrow. I’ll drive back to the park and walk down that embankment. That was a hand I saw, but whoever it belongs to is beyond help now.
• • •
“You say Ethel’s nephew is in the apartment?” Myles asked as he filled the ice bucket. “So he borrowed some money and then put it back. It’s been known to happen.”
Once again, Myles’s reasonable explanation of the circumstances surrounding Ethel’s absence, her winter coats and now the hundred-dollar bills made Neeve feel slightly foolish. She was glad she hadn’t yet told Myles about her meeting with Jack Campbell. When she arrived home, she’d changed into blue silk slacks and a matching long-sleeved blouse. She’d expected Myles to say, “Pretty fancy for slinging hash.” Instead his eyes had softened when she came into the kitchen, and he’d remarked, “Your mother always looked lovely in blue. You grow more like her as you get older.”
Neeve reached for Renata’s cookbook. She was serving thinly sliced ham with melon, pasta with pesto, sole stuffed with shrimp, a mélange of baby vegetables, an arugula-and-endive salad, cheese and a tulip pastry. She flipped through the book until she reached the page with the sketches. Again she avoided looking at them. Instead she concentrated on the handwritten instructions Renata had scrawled over the baking time for the sole.
Deciding she was fully organized, she went over to the refrigerator and took out a jar of caviar. Myles watched as she put toast points on a platter. “I never developed a taste for that stuff,” he said. “Very plebeian of me, I know.”
“You’re hardly plebeian.” Neeve scooped caviar onto a sliver of toast point. “But you’re missing a lot.” She studied him. He was wearing a navy jacket, gray slacks, a light-blue shirt and a handsome red-and-blue tie she had given him for Christmas. A good-looking guy, she thought, and best of all, you’d never dream he’d been so sick. She told him that.
Myles reached over and gingerly popped a caviar toast point into his mouth. “I still don’t like it,” he commented, then added, “I do feel well, and inactivity is getting on my nerves. I had some feelers about heading up the Drug Enforcement Agency in Washington. It would mean spending most of my time there. What do you think?”
Neeve gasped and threw her arms around him. “That’s wonderful. Go for it. You could really get your teeth into that job.”
She hummed as she brought the caviar and a platter of Brie into the living room. Now if only Ethel Lambston could be tracked down. She was just in the process of wondering how long it would be before Jack Campbell phoned her when the doorbell rang. Their two guests had arrived together.
Bishop Devin Stanton was one of the few prelates who at private functions still seemed more comfortable in a Roman collar than a sports jacket. Traces of now subdued copper-color hair mingled with gray. Behind silver-rimmed glaases, his mild blue eyes radiated warmth and intelligence. His tall, thin body gave an impression of quicksilver when he moved. Neeve always had the uncomfortable impression that Dev could read her mind and the comfortable reaction that he liked what he read. She kissed him warmly.
Once again, Anthony della Salva was resplendent in one of his own creations. He was wearing a charcoal-gray suit of Italian silk. The elegant lines masked the additional weight that had begun creeping onto his always rotund body. Neeve remembered Myles’s observation that Sal reminded him of a well-fed cat. It was a description that suited him. His black hair untouched by gray glistened, matching the gloss of his Gucci loafers. It was second nature for Neeve to calculate the cost of clothes. She decided that Sal’s suit would retail for about fifteen hundred dollars.
As usual, Sal was bursting with good humor. “Dev, Myles, Neeve, my three favorite people, not counting my present girlfriend but certainly counting my ex-wives. Dev, do you think Mother Church will take me back in when I get old?”
“The prodigal son is supposed to return repentant and in rags,” the Bishop observed dryly.
Myles laughed and put his arms around the shoulders of both
his friends. “God, it’s good to get together with you two. I feel as though we’re back in the Bronx. Are you still drinking Absolut vodka or have you found something more trendy?”
The evening began in the usual pleasantly comfortable fashion that had become a ritual. A debate about a second martini, a shrug, and “Why not, we’re not together that much” from the Bishop, “I’d better stop” from Myles, a nonchalant “Of course” from Sal. The conversation veered from present-day politics, “Could the Mayor win again?” to problems of the Church, “You can’t educate a kid in a parochial school for less than sixteen hundred dollars a year. God, remember when we were at St. Francis Xavier and our parents paid a buck a month? The parish carried the school on Bingo games,” to Sal’s laments about the foreign imports, “Sure, we should use the union label, but we can get the clothes made in Korea and Hong Kong for a third of the price. If we don’t farm some of it out, we outprice ourselves. If we do, we’re union busters,” to Myles’s dry comment, “I still think we don’t know the half of how much mob money is on Seventh Avenue.”
Inevitably it turned to Nicky Sepetti’s death.
“It was too easy for him, dying in bed,” Sal commented, the jovial expression gone from his face. “After what he did to your pretty one.”
Neeve watched as Myles’s lips tightened. Long ago Sal had heard Myles teasingly call Renata “my pretty one” and, to Myles’s annoyance, had picked it up. “How’s the pretty one?” he would greet Renata. Neeve could still remember the moment at Renata’s wake when Sal had knelt at the casket, his eyes flowing with tears, then gotten up, embraced Myles and said, “Try to think your pretty one is sleeping.”