One Way or Another: A Novel (21 page)

“But that’s part of your talent.”

Marco shrugged. “Anyhow, it’s not her I’m to paint. It’s the ever-affable, ever-charming Ahmet. Mr. Nice Guy personified.”

“But he is nice. Anyway I thought so. He can’t do enough for Lucy and me when we are there, serves us tea, of all things, proper tea with scones and strawberry jam with dollops of fresh cream and cucumber sandwiches. I haven’t had tea like that since Mum would take us to Fortnum and Mason, for ‘the works’ as she called it, before we went back to school.”

“Somehow, Martha, I don’t think Angie got that kind of ‘tea.’ And I think Ahmet is involved and certainly that witch Mehitabel. Anyhow, I’ve agreed to do his portrait.”

“But why? If you don’t like him?”

“But I do like him. Obviously he has a history, but a self-made man is always interesting. Trust me, Martha, when he’s shut up alone in a room for hours with me, I’ll know more about him at the end of the day than his own mother might.”

“Does he have a mother?”

“Not that I know of, but it might be interesting to find out. Get to know exactly who the real Ahmet Ghulbian is. Family circumstances usually explain that.”

“But don’t we already know?”

“All we know is the story Ghulbian told. About the family losing money, half Greek, half Egyptian, no names, no places, other than what the media have fished out, which, since he seems to have covered his tracks and planted info where needed, all comes out to mean exactly what he wants you to believe. I like Ahmet but I don’t trust him, and there’s the truth.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have agreed to do his house, I mean, if you feel that strongly.”

“Of course you must do the house. And I shall paint his portrait. Between us, we have the man covered. Trust me, by the time we finish no stone of his past will be unturned.”

“Hmmm,” Martha said, thinking worriedly about Ahmet and Marshmallows and the bleak location, and of the almost ravenous way he’d looked at Lucy when he’d thought Martha hadn’t noticed. “I’ll have to keep my eye on him,” she said doubtfully. “Meanwhile, after I’ve completed the house—for which, by the way, I have a timeline of exactly five weeks—Mr. Ghulbian intends to throw a party. In fact, no mere ‘party.’ The man wants to have ‘a ball’ on the lines of Capote’s black-and-white New York masterpiece.”

“Then you’d better get yourself a new dress,” Marco said.

“Black, I think. After all, I’m too old for white.”

Marco was laughing as he closed the phone and went back to the police sergeant to inquire when the detective might possibly see him.

“Mr. Mahoney?”

The voice came from behind. Marco swung around, saw a stocky young man in his late twenties maybe, dark hair cropped to a stubble, goatee trimmed into a spike. He looked Latino despite having, as Marco would learn, a Portuguese name. He also had a long thin face, kind of Jesus-like, the way Marco remembered in Renaissance paintings, unsmiling and giving off the impression he’d been interrupted in something far more urgent and important than discussing Angie Morse’s drowning with a guy coming in off the street.

He held a thin file and indicated the way to a small cubicle office where Marco sat opposite him, suddenly tongue-tied.

“So what do you know about Angie Morse that we don’t know already?” Detective Moreira glanced through the half-dozen pages in the file, closed it, put it down on the small table between them.

“I know she was killed. I saw it happen.”

The detective’s face was unreadable as he sat back, legs spread, arms folded over his chest, looking silently at Marco. As though he could read his mind, Marco thought. Well if he could it would save him time and trouble, but if not he’d better tell him what he’d seen.

Detective Moreira listened without interruption. When Marco finally said that was it, he’d told him everything, the detective sat up straighter in his chair. “So where’s the proof? The evidence, Mr. Mahoney? Did anybody else see this ‘event’?”

“D’you mean did anybody else see Angie holding her head, fall off the boat, watch her drown, try to save her and fail? Unfortunately, no, sir, no one but myself.”

Detective Moreira made no response, simply sat looking at Marco for a long moment. Finally he said, “I don’t know why I believe you, Mr. Mahoney, but I do. And why do I? Because why the fuck would a man like you come in here with some cock-and-bull story, bringing trouble on yourself, taking on a responsibility and more angst than you’ve ever experienced, just to tell me about some young woman, unknown to you, that you saw, or believe you saw, killed. Unfortunately, this event allegedly took place in a foreign country. Out of our jurisdiction.”

“But she was an American citizen—”

“And how do you know that, sir? Since you said you had never met her?”

“I found out who she was.” Marco told him Angie’s story, about the steakhouse, the shabby apartment, about reading the missing-girl article in the newspaper when he was in France. “I knew it was her, I knew I’d seen it,” he said. “The only thing I don’t know is who did it. And that’s the truth. Sir,” he added politely.

“In fact, what you are saying to me is that you were the last person to see Angie Morse alive. That no one else was there when she drowned. You were alone, Mr. Mahoney.”

Marco stared at him. For a minute he wished he had not come here, that he had not gotten involved. But if he had not, a young woman would be dead with no person to remember her, no one to help. “What I saw was murder,” he said coldly.

“Well, as I said, for some fuckin’ stupid reason I’m inclined to believe you. We’ll take care of it from now on, Mr. Mahoney. You can leave the matter with us.”

Marco agreed, but as he made his way back on the orange bike, he knew he could not just let it go. He had to find her. He had to help her. Even if she was dead, he had to help her.

35

ANGIE

Time has no meaning. I am here, in this pleasant room with its two tall windows framed in bluish-gray shutters overlooking a treeless park, so green it reminds me of the watercress we used to grow on bits of flannel at school for our biology class.
School.
My laugh sounds harsh, too loud in the surrounding silence. School was another lifetime, a different
world
away from where I have ended up, because I have no doubt this is where I am to end up. Why this has not yet happened is what puzzles me. Why was I hauled out of the marsh that would so easily, so quickly, so silently have taken care of me without so much as a bubble left to indicate where I met my fate?

Why have I not yet met my fate? I can only think they have something even worse in mind for me. Some kind of torture perhaps, medieval-style racks and chains and sadistic practices that I know certainly Mehitabel would be capable of. Mehitabel must be an arch practitioner of S&M, it sparks in those evil eyes, in her steely body, in her, I am sure, unfeeling heart. I doubt she even has a heart. Which doesn’t help me much now.

Mom, I thought, breaking down and crying again, though how I had tears left I did not know. “I tried, Mom,” I whispered into the silence. “I really tried to get away, tried not to let you down.
Courage,
you always told me, you said that even when you were in pain, when you knew you were leaving me. And I tried to keep you, oh how I tried, I would have worked forever, anything, anywhere just to keep you alive, with me. You were the only person to ever love me, and that’s the truth, Mom. All those guys, well maybe not so many as you might think, but anyhow the men in my life amounted to nothing, no one that I cared deeply for after Henry, the Southern college boy. I wonder what happened to him. Met some debutante with a Southern accent and married money, I’ll bet. Odd, how you find out the truth about men too late. Maybe I’m just bitter, maybe I haven’t yet met the right man, and now for sure I never will. I’ll come and join you, Mom. We will see each other again, I feel sure of it, after all.”

Footsteps clattered in the hall outside. I swung from the window, hand clutched over my heart, holding the edges of my dress over my breasts; I knew those footsteps.

The door opened. Mehitabel stood there, looking at me, taking in the dress and my nakedness underneath. A long time seemed to pass. Eons of time, a lifetime, before she spoke.

“Mr. Ghulbian will see you again,” she said, coming closer, walking around me, inspecting me. “Think yourself lucky, my dear Angie. He’s giving you a second chance.”

She put her face close to mine, smiled that smile that curled only the outer corners of her red mouth, and added, “Something I would never give you. Remember that, why don’t you.”

*   *   *

Ahmet was sitting in his favorite red leather chair, fire blazing, the familiar scent of the logs mingling with the floral aroma from the bowls of hyacinths he had ordered delivered from London; they were out of season, of course, because Ahmet had to be different in everything he did. No white supermarket orchids, no too-tightly-budded red roses buried in swathes of fluffy phlox for him. The unusual, the rare, were what he preferred; the out-of-season bouquets of perfect white blossoms he sent his prey, his “girls” as he liked to think of them, wooing them with the eternal message that flowers meant love. As if he ever would, or perhaps could, love anyone other than himself. A narcissist he was and always would be, he admitted, as the door opened and he saw Angie standing there, pale, haggard, sunken-eyed, and most shocking, her shaved head.

What the fuck had happened to his Angie, the girl in the heels and tight skirt with the bold look in her eyes that made a promise she never intended to keep. Or rarely, anyhow, as he had personally found that night in the hotel, and subsequently, when they were in what he knew Angie had termed “a relationship.”

“Angie,” he said warmly now, “my dear, do come on in, you look so chilled standing out there in that flimsy dress. Why on earth has Mehitabel not found you something more suitable for this chilly evening?”

She made no response, stood, head hanging, not even looking at him.
Refusing
to look at him, he thought. So, okay, he could take care of that.

Ahmet knew how to play the gentleman even though he was not one. Now, he took off his own pale cashmere jacket, went and draped it over her shoulders. He stood in front of her, close enough to kiss, yet she did not lift her face to his, refused to acknowledge his presence in her own private world. He understood. Angie felt wounded by him, as well she might. And in fact, as she was very soon going to be wounded. He had no time for playing around anymore; he should have gotten rid of her when the opportunity presented itself, yet, thinking about it, perhaps not, because then he would have denied himself the pleasure of hurting her.

Mehitabel understood what he was about to do. She had disappeared, now she came back, carrying two long, narrow boxes. She opened the first and showed the whip to Ahmet. Opened the second, touched the rifle it contained with a soft finger, smiling at him. Their eyes met in mutual agreement.

Ahmet stood for a minute more, contemplating Angie, who from her drooped posture seemed to have removed herself to some other planet. He was about to bring her back from that place, back to him. He wanted to see her eyes, those eyes he had looked into when she was drowning, and this time he wanted to see them drowning in fear and in pain.

He took the whip from the first box, ran it through his fingers. It was an antique, of course, and from its history he knew it had been used in a turn-of-the-century gentlemen’s club where such things as whipping were part of the favored sexual delights offered. Now, Angie was about to experience that delight, as he would himself, especially when she would look up at him, her face twisted in pain, and beg him to stop, her eyes imploring … those eyes … he wanted those eyes to beg him … only then would he be able to eradicate from his mind the memory of them when she had been drowning.

Mehitabel went to remove Angie’s dress but he stopped her. “I want it this way,” he said, taking a step back, surveying the helpless woman. “Helpless” was exactly what he believed all women should be. He was the strength, the power … and if not the glory then the one she would eventually worship. That was his intention. To subdue her strong will, eradicate her personality, turn her into his kind of woman: lost, submissive, beguiling, eager only to please. And then he would be done with her.

The whip did not crack as he snapped it back, yet it whistled as he brought it down, a thin noise like a snake’s hiss, with a burning bite that notched her tender skin, left a raised red mark; as yet, no blood. Ahmet did not wish to draw blood, that was too amateur. He knew how to inflict pain in more ways than one, and pain was needed to tame Angie. Then and only then could he let her go.

She did not cry. She did not even call out, beg him to stop. She fell down and simply lay there, flat on the ground, untamed, unwilling to ask for his mercy.

After several minutes, Ahmet gave up. He nodded to Mehitabel to take care of her and stalked from the room, deeply upset. Angie had beaten him; he should be rid of her now, allow Mehitabel to take her away, never see her again. Yet he could not. He would not be beaten by any woman, and especially not this one.

Lucy came into his mind; chaste, simple, childlike Lucy. He knew he would never be beaten by her. Lucy would marry him one day, become mistress of Marshmallows, belle of the ball he would give to celebrate the house’s grand opening. Lucy was a different woman from Angie, who he now hated with all the passion he had in the beginning put into wooing her, loving her.… Was it love? Had he just wanted to fuck Angie? He’d wanted to see that long red hair trailing across her white breasts as she lay next to him in that hotel bedroom, starry-eyed with his simple gift of the Cartier neck chain with its little panther ornament. One girl had seemed to promise sexual delight there for his taking; the other would be his virginal bride. And while he was thinking about it he thought he had better check on that, find out who Lucy was seeing, make sure nobody unlocked that chastity belt before he could. Lucy was important. Angie was expendable.