One Way or Another: A Novel (20 page)

“Wha’ the fuck ya wan?” he asked, fixing Marco with a glare from behind black sunglasses.

Marco quickly decided he’d better play it nice. “Sorry to disturb you, but I’m looking for Angie’s place.”

“Angie Morse, y’mean? That woman owes two months’ rent, I’ve been after her for days. You wastin’ yo’ time, bro, I’m bettin’ Angie’s not comin’ back.”

“In fact, sir,” Marco remained polite, “that is true. Poor Angie will not be coming back. I know you’ll be sorry to hear this, but Angie is dead.”

The man took a fast step back. He eyed Marco up and down, stiff with tension, ready to strike. “Wadd’ ya do to her?”

“Angie had an accident. She drowned.”

“Y’mean, like here? In the river?” He took off the dark glasses and stared hard at Marco. “She wouldn’t’ve gone swimming, not the type.…”

“Not here,” Marco said. “It was off the coast of Turkey. She fell off a yacht.”

The tension left the man and he flung back his head, throat rippling in a laugh. “You got the wrong girl, there, bro. Angie never went on no yachts. She worked as a hostess at that steakhouse, uptown, smart place. All the guys hit on her. She told me so. I kinda like Angie, she’s okay, y’know, just got a raw deal in life, way some of us do.…”

“She fell off a boat. A fancy yacht. I was there. I saw her fall. I tried to save her.” If he was to get any information at all Marco knew he had to convince the guy he was on the up-and-up. “Look, I’ll level with you, I know Angie was murdered.”

Shocked, the guy held up his hands, palms out. “Whoa-ho-ho, feller, don’t tell me no more, I don’t wanna know about no murders, I don’t give a shit who, what, where, when. Let Angie RIP, and that’s it for me.” Turning, he strode quickly away.

Marco flung a leg over the bike and wondered what to do next. But then the guy turned round. He walked quickly back, stood in front of Marco, put his face in his.

“Listen, prick,” he said in a low, menacing voice, dark glasses off again, eyes boring into Marco’s. “Angie was decent. All right? She helped my girlfriend one night after we’d had a bit of a … well, a fight. Angie took her to the ER, got her patched up. Listen, I ain’t proud of that and I’m on probation with my girl not to do it again, but I’ll tell you, Angie missed a night at her job, lost wages to take care of my girl. Anything I could do to repay that, y’know I would. But I don’t know nuthin’ about Angie being on yachts. Only thing I know is she’d met a rich guy and he’d come a’ courtin’, flowers, expensive gifts, pretty things like a gold chain necklace I knew musta cost … maybe that’s the guy you need to question. Not me.”

He turned quickly again and made to walk away. “Hey,” Marco called after him. He looked back over his shoulder.

“Y’know the rich guy’s name?”

He shrugged. “Only ever heard the first name, foreign sounding. Angie was discreet about her men, trust me on that. She was a good girl,” he added, sounding so sincerely saddened Marco felt for him.

He got back on his orange bike and pedaled swiftly through the mass of traffic, honked at on every side by irate drivers who barely missed him as they swerved lanes. He was glad he was wearing the crash helmet, though he felt a bit like Darth Vader. He stopped outside Houlihan’s Steak and Crab House. The neon sign flickered up and down, red and blue, blue and red, then across in a sparkle of white light. “Houlihan’s Famous.”

Well, famous it might be, but he had never heard of it and, what’s more, it was not a place he would have frequented. Inspecting it from outside, Marco got the impression it was the kind of expensive joint that would have a very low-lit interior, even at noon, with red, fake leather booths in the bar and stiff white tablecloths in the restaurant, and enough flowers to asphyxiate a man. Quite turned him off his glass of vodka tonic with a wedge of lime, which is what he ordered when he went in there.

He leaned up against the bar, helmet on the counter in front of him, checking out the clientele, in suits, ties unknotted after work, propped on their elbows, half turned so they could check out the girls who clustered at the other end and who were gossiping in girl-speak about the men while giving them the eye. The place was a pickup joint all right, though the menu was predictably expensive. Two male bartenders were keeping busy shaking cosmos and margaritas while a couple of girls in white shirts, black pencil skirts, and heels trotted around, trays aloft, looking for customers.

The greeter at the door, though, was a man. Marco sipped his vodka tonic, making it last since he was not there for the booze but on a mission and besides, he was “driving.” He watched the door, waiting to see if anyone had taken over Angie’s role, but there was only the guy: black, smartly dressed, well-spoken, and very much in charge.

Finally, Marco went over. “I can see you’re busy but I need to ask about Angie Morse.”

The guy threw him a sideways glance as he handed menus to a waiting couple. “Don’t ask,” he said shortly.

“So, okay, I’m not asking,” Marco said. “I’m just hoping you’re telling, because Angie might have been murdered.”

The guy, whose name tag said he was Phil, took a white handkerchief from his breast pocket and mopped his suddenly sweaty brow. “Listen, Angie is a nice girl, works hard, does her job well. I’m real sorry but I don’t know much more than that about her. She keeps to herself. A very private kinda young woman. Very nice. And if she’s really … I’m sorry … about all that, what happened … Now, if you’ll excuse me…” He went back to his customers and Marco went back to his vodka tonic.

He was getting nowhere fast. Nobody knew anything personal about Angie. Or if they did, they were not telling.

33

Lucy was thinking that if she was going to have to mess about helping Martha work out how to restructure Ahmet’s awful house, she might as well nail him on the elusive movie script he’d mentioned. More than mentioned—promised, in fact, though she did have the uneasy feeling that something might be expected in exchange for that promise. Well, shoot, he’d soon find out she wasn’t that kind of girl, even if she did accept a glass of champagne, dinner even, from a complete stranger. That was a one-off. A deal made out of necessity. Now, all she could think of was the pizza guy. She had dialed the pizza place, described him to the girl who answered with a knowing laugh and said of course that would be Phillip Kurtiz the Third.

“The third of what?” Lucy asked.

“In line of succession.” The girl paused, then added, “To Kurtiz Food Products, of Chicago, Illinois.”

“Oh. Right.” Lucy had never heard of them but to her he certainly was not a Marks & Spencer, so it didn’t count. Besides, if he was rich and all, why was he delivering pizzas so he could pay his Oxford fees? The girl must be wrong.

“Lucy!” Martha’s voice had an edge to it. Lucy snapped to attention.

“Here, take my iPad and make notes when I talk. We’re going to go room by room, so this will take some time.”

Already bored, Lucy did as she was told, trailing from one overstuffed dark room to another overstuffed dark room, wondering why nobody had thought to bring light into the place. Even the kitchen, where a solitary chef who said he was from Tunisia stood at a gray marble counter slicing out-of-season bright yellow papaya and fresh figs into a perfectly beautiful turquoise bowl that Martha stopped to admire.

“Why, it must be antique,” she said, stretching out her hand to touch its smooth, pale blue surface. “See how the light filters through it, I’ll bet it’s Limoges and rare, at that, because of the color.”

“Mr. Ahmet likes to use his antiques,” the man managed in deeply accented English, and Martha nodded; she had heard that before. It was a pity Ahmet’s good taste did not extend to his furnishings, but she could take care of that. She glanced at her watch, wondering where Marco was, what he was doing, probably still on the track of the missing girl, though what he expected he could do about it was beyond her. Last time they’d spoken he’d been on his way to talk to the Brooklyn police.

Ahmet had left them alone to assess what he called “the damage,” and because Martha did not know which of the many rooms he was in she now called him on his cell.

“I’ll be right with you,” he answered. And he was, and with him was Mehitabel, unsmiling, frozen into a kind of sartorial perfection Martha knew she could never hope to emulate. Feeling outdated in her tweed skirt and green, waxed, all-weather jacket, which was in fact far more suitable for a trip to the country than Mehitabel’s obviously very expensive black cashmere dress that fit like a second skin on a body Lucy certainly envied, Martha said they had seen enough to be getting on with and she would be in touch with her suggestions and a proper presentation, with sketches and samples, and of course, alternatives for both since she knew how hard it was for inexperienced clients to make a decision.

“Anyhow, I’m here to help you with that,” she said briskly, because she was suddenly in need of getting out of there, but then Lucy said first she had to go to the loo.

Mehitabel showed Lucy to the bathroom off the main hall and she disappeared inside, leaving Martha to make conversation with a woman who, for some reason, intimidated her. One way she had found to get out of these situations was to ask questions, and not answer any herself.

“So, Mehitabel,” she said, with a cheerful smile, “how long have you worked for Mr. Ghulbian?”

Mehitabel eyed her coldly. “I do not ‘work’ for Mr. Ghulbian. I am his personal assistant. And you might say it’s been a lifetime.”

“Ohh. Right, well of course … I see…” Martha did not see at all. She turned her eyes from Mehitabel to the staircase with its patterned red carpet. “I wonder if you know then, since you are so close to Mr. Ghulbian, when we might be able to change that carpet, maybe get upstairs, take a look around. Obviously it will need some changes too.”

Her smile faded as Mehitabel stared implacably back with not even an expression of interest. Her voice was chilly as she said, “Do not bother yourself with the upstairs. Your job is to take care of the main rooms down here. Mr. Ghulbian is no doubt paying you well and will expect the best results. If not,” she shrugged, “trust me, everyone will know about it. This job can make or break you, Miss Patron. You had better be very careful.”

Martha swore later to Lucy, she’d felt a chill crawl up her spine. “It was like I was on trial,” she said angrily. “I was hired by Ahmet for
who
I am,
what
I do,
my
reputation,
my
taste,
my
experience, and this bitch is putting all that on the line. Warning me off. As though she owns him or something. And anyhow, why can’t we look upstairs? What’s she got hidden up there that’s so special we can’t see it?”

Lucy said, “She must be mad or something.” She tried the pizza guy again. Again no reply. Shit.

34

Marco’s next stop was a Brooklyn police precinct, but even there he did not trust enough to leave his bike outside. He carried it in and planted it on the floor beside him by the front desk, eyed by a female police officer, who, with her round face and pulled-back brown hair, in her blue uniform shirt and badge, looked all of sixteen. He thought either cops were getting younger or he was getting older. Interesting face, though; strong bones, probably Russian or East European descent. The artist in Marco always emerged; he never simply looked, he took it all in, that is until he realized she was eying him warily, then he apologized and told her his mission.

“I need to speak to the detective in charge of the Angela Morse case.” He propped the bike against his hip and showed her his passport as proof of identity, so she wouldn’t think he was simply another nut drifting in off the street seeking a bit of notoriety.

“And why would you need to do that, Mr. Mahoney?” She handed back the passport and looked him in the eye.

“Because I was there when she was killed,” he said simply.

That got her attention, though she did fling him an under-the-lashes look as she tapped a name on her computer and awaited a reply. It came immediately.

“Detective Moreira will be out in a minute,” she said, handing him several sheets of paper. “Just fill out these forms first.”

Marco took a seat on a gray plastic chair, glanced at the sheaf of forms, and decided to ignore them. He was losing patience with bureaucracy; if they were interested in what he had to say, they could listen and make their own notes. His cell phone buzzed in his pocket. He grabbed it, saw it was Martha.

“Hey, hon,” he said in a low voice. “Wazzup?”

He heard her laugh and was immediately cheered.

“You’re even talking like them now,” she said.

“Waddya’ mean?” He laughed too. “Whatever,” he said, “it gets the message across, though nobody seems to know anything at all about Angie Morse, other than she was a nice girl. Young woman,” he added. “Have to be politically correct.”

“You can call me a ‘girl’ any time you like. It’s my sister who’d like to be a ‘young woman,’ because she’s only seventeen.”

“And you are…?”

“Old enough to want to be a ‘girl’ again. But listen, Marco, are you still sure about this Angie? That you really saw what happened, that she didn’t simply fall off the boat and drown?” She still doubted him.

His long silence spoke for him and Martha was sorry she’d even asked; it was just that he was obsessed with the redhead, the drowning, the Ahmet Ghulbian connection, and she felt it was better if he stayed away from the whole situation, let what was remain exactly that, no more questions asked.

“I met with Ghulbian again today,” she said finally. “At his place on the marshes.”

“Then you got to meet Mehitabel.”

“I did. She’s quite something. Gorgeous, in an odd way.”

“Yeah, like the way a block of ice is gorgeous, all scintillating beauty outside and freezing horror in.”

“Wow!” Martha said, impressed. “That’s a perfect description. I bet you wanted to paint her, though.”

Marco thought about that for a moment, then, “I couldn’t do it. I don’t know what’s under her surface, that essence I usually perceive, the true person beneath the façade.”