Gladyss of the Hunt (44 page)

“Bernie, you have to do something about the anger.”

“When I came on the force twenty years ago, I was like you, Gladyss—a smart, sexy young cop. Back then, the city was more like I am now—bitter and damaged. It smelled rotten. Midtown was loaded with guys like O'Flaherty. And we all thought the city would only get worse. I never thought it'd turn around like this.”

“But it did. New York's actually a great place now.”

“Have you traveled much?” he asked.

“Yeah, I went to Europe after college, traveled around the Mediterranean.”

“What did you see?”

“What are you getting at?”

“There was a time when, if you went someplace, you saw distinctive things just there. People dressed a certain way, each place had different music, different food, people spoke a different language. People even behaved a certain way that was their way. I mean, once you homogenize the world until every place is just like every other place, you destroy those distinctions, you destroy the beauty of the place. Yeah, New York was dirty and dangerous back then, but that kept the rich assholes away. And it allowed for a very unique style and character all its own. Times Square was the epicenter of that, at least for me.”

“But surely it's better now overall,” I argued. “safer, cleaner.”

“It was like some crazy, intense, unique character who was suddenly . . . lobotomized. And now it's happening to the whole city.”

He rose slowly to his feet and smiled. “Anyway after years of working with Bert, I know for a fact that he never would've got out of a warm bed on a freezing cold night, pulled me out of my car, and taken me to his home. Thanks for that.”

“I would've taken you to
your
home if I knew where you lived.”

“More than anything in the entire world, I'm glad that you didn't know where I live. Otherwise I never would've been date-raped. Thank you again for that.”

He gave me a kiss on the cheek, then limped out the door.

Over the course of the next decade, as New York seemed to steadily drain of its New Yorkishness, Bernie must've grew increasingly less
comfortable, until he finally gave up and tried joining other retired city workers in the relatively neglected outer boroughs. But without a family to put up with him and help him assimilate, what recourse would there be for the old curmudgeon but simply to retreat and become ever more reclusive.

More terrifying still is the realization that I might be on a similar path myself. Initially I liked the fact that New York was getting cleaner and better behaved, but one day I began to realize that the process was continuous. Slowly, as it kept changing, I found myself growing steadily crankier over the years. Whenever I would find myself ranting about how things used to be just a few years earlier—how the glamour of the big city that drew these revolving-door natives here is all bullshit—my current boyfriend, who arrived in the city only five years ago, accuses me of “olding.”

“You can't look at the city as a finished piece,” he once replied. “You should think of it more as a continuous work in progress.”

After her attack, Maggie had recuperated across town at Beth Israel Hospital, recovering from mild concussion and a damaged voice box. Apparently O'Ryan, while trying to strangle her, had dislocated her larynx. I'd apparently interrupted him when I knocked on her door. Even though her injuries were greater than mine, my insurance was much better than hers, so she was released before I was.

When I finally came home from the hospital, Maggie greeted me with a big hug. In a hoarse whisper she said, “Thank you for saving my life.”

This was the first time I had seen her since the shooting, so I asked her if O'Ryan had surprised her while she was alone with Crispin.

“No, it wasn't like that,” she began. “In fact, Crispin and I had broken up the day before.”

“Then how did he happen to get you?”

Speaking in a soft, methodical voice that made me wonder if she was overmedicated, she described how O'Ryan had knocked on her door holding a paper bag while I was getting my eye surgery. He claimed to be looking for me. She'd told him where I was and invited him into her place. He'd taken a plastic jug of fresh apple juice out of his bag, saying he'd just bought it at the farmers market in Union
Square and didn't want to drink it alone. She'd brought two glasses and they drank. When she started feeling woozy, he'd pulled out his gun and forced her to call Crispin, who was still in town, and plead with him to take a cab right over.

“Did you wonder why he wanted to see Crispin?”

“I thought it had something to do with the photos. I figured you'd told O'Ryan about them and he was pissed. I sure didn't think I'd wind up getting Crispin killed,” she whispered sadly.

“What photos?”

“Oh.” She looked away. There was clearly something she had never told me. “Crispin was a freak.”

“A freak how?”

“He knew I had a crush on Noel and kept dangling him in front of me.”

“Dangling him how?”

“Manipulating me.”

“How?” I pushed, but she just looked away and tears started rolling silently down her cheek.

“Just tell me, Maggie!”

“He told me that he wanted to punk you.”

“‘Punk me how?”

“Remember that Bible I had with me when I came over that one time?”

“Yeah.” It was the same Bible I'd seen when I went into her apartment and found her unconscious, only then it was open, revealing that it had been hollowed out.

“Crispin gave it to me.”

“What for?”

“Well, don't get mad . . . It had a miniature camera in it.”

“Why?”

“Remember that night when we kissed?” she asked.

“Uh huh.”

“He was behind all that.”

“Behind
what?
”

“Crispin gave me the Bible with the camera hidden in it and told me how to position it. He said it was just going to be a prank. I was going to show it to you later.”

“So there are photos of us kissing?”

“There were. I deleted them.”

“Some joke.”

“He'd wanted me to go all the way.”

“All what way?”

“You know, seduce you.”

“How exactly did Crispin—?”

“He told me to say I'd gotten the role in that soap. And I was suppose to be teaching you to kiss Noel.”

“I remember that. So it was all a lie?”

“Yeah.”

“But I'd been out on a date that night with Noel.”

“Yeah, he called me later and said you were on your way home. And that you'd be tipsy and randy. Those were his exact words.”

I remembered that evening now. I'd arrived late at some ridiculous premiere party on the South Street Seaport; I had forgotten about it, but Maggie talked me into going. Crispin had handed me a tall stein of beer and a Bushmills chaser when I walked in, and he more or less dared me to drink it. Then I remembered her kissing me—and all the while she was photographing it.

“How could you do that?”

“I'm so sorry,” she said. “People do dumb things when they're in love. I mean, that's probably why O'Ryan did what he did, right?”

“I guess so,” I said tiredly. Sadly.

“Could you do me one favor?” Maggie asked. “I mean, if you don't mind.”

“What?”

“I just need to talk to Noel one final time. When he calls you, can you ask him to give me a call.”

“Sure,” I said, half-disgusted, half-embarrassed by her pathetic request.

While I was still banged up and medicated, I had rebuffed a half-hearted attempt Noel made to come and visit me in the hospital. I just didn't want to be seen like that. Given what I had learned about celebrity behavior, I never expected to hear from him again. So I was startled when I woke up one morning roughly a week after I got back home to find a lengthy message from him on my voicemail.
He told me he was at a hotel in Saint Bart's, down in the Caribbean, recuperating. He said he was sorry about my suffering, and grateful that I had spared him a long and costly trial. He claimed he knew there was something off about Eddie when he first was knocked down by him that day we met.

“So I really want to thank you,” he said. “The DA was planning on going after me with everything they had. Hell, they had a witness who was ready to testify that I had left Venezia's room just prior to her being . . . What I'm trying to say is, I'm deeply grateful.”

He rambled on a while longer, as though I were actually on the other end of the phone. Then he must've spotted a sexy girl out his window, because without any transition he abruptly hung up. He didn't even say goodbye, let alone leave a phone number I could pass along to Maggie. When I checked my phone to see if his number was listed among the incoming calls, I was actually happy to see it said RESTRICTED.

Maggie and I stopped hanging out and just became hi/bye friends, who passed one another in the hallway. Three years later, when she was invited by some casting director to do a fifteen-minute audition for some TV show, she gave up her apartment and moved to LA. Ultimately I think we both were relieved we no longer had to pretend.

As for Noel, after his final phone call I made a point of changing the channel or flipping the magazine page whenever I glimpsed his sharpened face. I just wanted it all behind me. One night in 2007, I accidentally spotted him on a talk show and all the expensive makeup couldn't hide the fact he'd had a nip and tuck and a dye job. Like all glamour figures, he'd begun his long slide down.

As commercial rents kept rising in the neighborhood, the little yoga studio across the street finally had to say Namaste and fold. When I checked it out online, I found there was more to the story: a sexual harassment suit had been filed by Penrose, the yogarexic instructor, against the owner. Evidently he had not quite renounced everything.

A short time later, a shiny new fitness franchise appeared just
around the corner, complete with four yoga classes per day. It had all the old poses I enjoyed without requiring me to think about my seven spinning okras as written in the tantrums, or whatever.

While lying with my eyes closed during final relaxation one day, I tried to summon up the image of the statue of Diana, but to no avail. Instead, an image of Noel in a leotard wearing a cape popped into my head; I had just seen it on the side of a bus. He was playing some comic book superhero. When I considered the Greek myth that best suited him, I didn't even have to use Google to come up with Narcissus, the legendary egotist. Later though, when I did look it up, a sad story emerged. Narcissus had a relationship with a wood nymph named Echo. But as much as she loved him, he loved himself even more. Slowly Echo withered away, leaving only her reverberating voice behind. It was a classic tale of unrequited love, with Maggie's name echoing all over it.

My brother Carl returned to New York for Easter, which was spring break for him. I was still on sick leave, and went back to Astoria, Queens, to celebrate the holiday with my family. They had all heard about the murders and my brief fling with the Hollywood Hunk. Over dinner, I filled them in on some of the more interesting details that had never made it into the press.

Toward the end of the evening, after most of my cousins had left and I was planning to do likewise, Carl gave me a hug, something he rarely did. I hugged him back and asked if he was okay.

“I guess I'm just afraid that we're both getting worse.”

“Worse! I just helped catch a goddamn serial murder!”

“Well . . . which you, kind of . . . caused,” he added sympathetically.

“I caused!”

“I don't mean deliberately! But for years you protected your virginity like Fort Knox! Then, on New Year's Eve, you impulsively decide that you're wasting your innocence, and that very night you go to bed with that creep. Of course, he turns out to be a psycho killer! And you don't even
do
it with him, instead you end up giving him a homicidal case of blue balls!” He laughed.

“
Because you called
! We would've done it, but
you
interrupted!”

“Oh right, blame it on me!”

“It was all just really bad luck,” I amended for the sake of peace.

“Bad luck? Really. Well how about your flaky neighbor who tells you about some mystical brand of yoga that gives you x-ray vision—and suddenly you turn into the goddamned Goddess of the Hunt!”

Instead of pulling out my Glock, I grabbed my coat and left.

Eventually we made up, as usual, but over the last ten years he has grown increasingly combative. He's always on the side of justice for the little guy, and since I was a cop, what he calls “a security guard for the rich,” I invariably become a piñata for his growing rage.

By October of 2011, he'd become a regular member of Occupy Oakland. The last time he called me was that November night when Bloomberg shut down Zoo-cotti Park. He woke me up in the early morning hours screaming, “The rich have decimated this country, and when we protest that, you oinkers do their dirty work for them!”