Over My Live Body (10 page)

1010 WINS news is brimming over with freshly perked murders all over the city. The badly decomposed body of a female found in the trunk of an abandoned car on West Street. A hit-and-run on East Houston. And across the river, a love triangle that led to a blood bath in Sunnyside. Vittorio’s murder is already
old
news by this city’s standards. I wonder what happens
after
that first twenty-four hours after a homicide which are supposedly
so crucial
for gathering evidence. I wonder if there is some kind of hourglass used to time just how long a detective can be expected to pursue a clunker of a case.

Vittorio’s murder isn’t even written up on page one, but on page five of the first tabloid I grab at the newsstand in front of the West Fourth Street subway station, even though the more recent murders were discovered too late to make the first edition, just as Vittorio’s body was the night before last. I wonder about priorities. If Vittorio had been
straight
, someone
esteemed
, his demise would make page one in bold print; no stone would be left unturned looking for who did this. The last line of the story implores anyone having
any
information about this crime to call (800) 577-TIPS. All such stories end like this. I wonder if even one person will call in this case, if this really is the end of the line.

I fold the newspaper and tuck it under my arm as I start to go down the stairs to the subway. I don’t look forward to telling Detective Quick that I haven’t heard from Morgan since yesterday.
He’s probably hung over. He’s probably blocked a lot of it out. He’ll come around. He’s responsible.

I can hear Quick now. Responsible for
what
, Miss Price?

I dig in my fanny pack for a MetroCard and swipe it at the turnstile only to find out I need to add more money to it. No back-up in my pockets either. I swing my nylon backpack off my shoulder and yank at the strings until it’s open wide enough for me to get at my wallet without anyone else being able to grab it. I yank out a ten-dollar bill and hand that and the card to the attendant in the booth. Then I whirl around and walk into Curtis

“Hi,” he says.

I don’t want to say even
this
much to him. I start to walk around him. He does a little side step to his left, effectively blocking my path. I try the other way. He slides to his right and gives a little smile of pleasure, like he’s doing the underground shuffle with me. I take a few steps backward and put a hand up like a cop stopping traffic, warning him not to advance.

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry about your friend,” he says gesturing to the paper squeezed under my arm. “It’s terrible to lose a friend. Especially like that
.
So unexpected. So undeserving. Obviously at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

I nod, all the while making a quick study of him, the soiled sweatshirt, the dirty jeans, the same dirty baseball cap. I wonder what color hair he’s hiding under there. I wonder
if
there’s any hair under there.
How the hell does he know Vittorio was my friend?

“If there’s anything I can do…”

“I think you’ve done enough,” I say.

“What do you mean?”

“The flowers were the absolute last straw!”

“Didn’t you like them?”

I
don’t believe
this guy. I take a deep breath and turn around and run up the stairs and around the corner. I drop the newspaper and don’t reach down to get it. I don’t turn around. I run all the way to the station between Broadway and Lafayette clenching my MetroCard in my fist and don’t stop shaking until I come out of the subway station on Canal Street and see nothing but Asian women around me. No sign of Curtis here. As I walk westward, I approach the red metal stairs leading up to the familiar art emporium. I duck inside to look around and pick up my order while I’m at it. A diversionary tactic.

The line in Pearl Paint is longer than I anticipated, and when I finally get well past the corner of Varick Street, I see Detective Quick standing between the green lanterns at the entrance of the precinct, unhappily looking down at his watch, then up at me as I approach. “You’re twenty minutes late.”

I feel bad about the bundle of art supplies I’m carrying awkwardly under my arm and at a loss to explain myself. “It was in the neighborhood,” I explain feebly.

“So you thought, why not try to kill two birds with one stone.”

I leave that stone unturned. I fall in step behind him as he leads me to an unmarked car that is in markedly better condition than the first one I rode in with him. “I was followed,” I tell him when he shuts his door, feeling like a fourth-grader fabricating a tale of why her homework wasn’t done on time.

Quick looks in his rearview mirror, making sure that nobody is following him as he pulls into traffic.

“By whom?”

“The guy who’s been stalking me. I would have been here sooner. I had to take a detour. You know, to get away from him.” I lean into the cushy leather upholstery and take a deep breath. I tell him about the flowers left at my doorstep, the message left at the school, the complaint I filed, glancing over at him to see if he’s buying it. I dig the piece of paper Rubenstein gave me out of my wallet and chant the case number twice like a mantra. “I talked to somebody called Rubenstein.”

“Marty,” he nods. “I know him.”

“He said there’s not much anyone can do right now unless Curtis makes some kind of move.”

“That’s true.”

Quick hangs a sudden left turn and pulls up on the curb in front of a sign that says NO PARKING EVER in bold red.

That is, unless you’re part of the blue.

“He’s already entered my building and accosted me on the street, and I have a creepy feeling that he’s done a lot more just to know all there is to know about me. I wouldn’t call that being
stationary
.”

I follow Quick and look up at the building where until Sunday night Morgan and Vittorio happily occupied a loft. Deflated black and orange balloons hang sadly from the rungs of the fire escape. Yellow plastic ribbon that looks like a party streamer sags to the ground. A garbage can heaving its contents on the loading dock blocks our path. Quick steps around the refuse. When I hesitate, he motions for me to follow him. “It’s okay,” he says, luring me away from the scene of the crime. “Come on.”

He slides the cage door of the service elevator aside for me to enter, follows me in, and pushes the button for the top floor. “I take it you haven’t heard from Morgan since we talked.”

I shake my head.

He takes a deep breath. As the elevator ascends toward the roof, I see the very polished tips of black leather shoes tapping the floor impatiently, then an ill-fitting dark gray double-breasted suit, then the cadaverous face of a man who looks so bored that he’s probably been tapping out the hours until he can start collecting his pension. The elevator creaks to a halt. Mr. Bored looks past me. “Already got the super to open up for us,” he says, flapping a folded document that could be the signed statement from Morgan or a bench warrant. It looks like a take-home project for a beginner’s origami class.

“Royko, you got anything?”

“Could be.”

Quick turns to me. “Miss Price, we need a picture of Vittorio, a fairly recent one, to show around. Someone who might not have known him might recognize the person in the photo and be able to tell us something.”

“Just look places where you think it’s likely you might find what we want,” Royko adds. “Chances are we already looked there. We looked everyplace else.”

“What makes you think
I
can find a photo in here if
you
can’t?”

“We weren’t just looking for a
photo
the other night, Miss Price.”

I lead the way into the loft where
just three nights ago
I was comfortably curled up on this white leather sofa. Now it might just as well be sheathed in plastic with a DO NOT REMOVE OR SIT ON UNDER PENALTY OF LAW warning tag attached. I cruise by the wall-to-wall paintings and stop at a familiar face. Vittorio.
Of course
Morgan would have painted him. Did he do it from a photo or did Vittorio pose for him? I reach for the painting. Quick clears his throat. “I don’t think we can use anything quite as big as a canvas when we’re conducting a canvass, Miss Price.” He smiles at the idea of this though, a smile that makes me think of a dress accessory, not something he’d have occasion to wear often. It looks good on him.

There are paintings of me here too. I forgot about that. Royko gawks at them like a fourteen-year-old flipping through his first issue of
Penthouse
. Morgan’s so good, so attentive to detail that my face is as identifiable as it would be in a photo. So are other parts of me that I suddenly wish were hidden with a layer of cobalt violet. I cross my arms in front of me. When at last Royko turns to me again, he brush strokes me with his eyes. Quick takes in the paintings too, but with the composure of a man who’s seen other works of art in his lifetime.

“Morgan may have done that from a photo,” I suggest, diverting attention away from the nudes of me to the portrait of a bare-to-the-chest Vittorio.

“Keep trying.”

I wander into the kitchen area, scanning for graven images push-pinned to the cork board or lined up behind some yuppie appliance. My fingers tentatively skim through a mail basket. Royko looks around. He gestures to the wall behind me. “Nice exhibit of cutlery there.”

I don’t know anything about the knives, can’t recall ever seeing the knives before. There they are stacked in a graduated rack above the butcher block counter, a family tree of cutting tools, and their flash under the fluorescent light seems leering.

Royko seems to be counting them off on his fingers
eeny-meeny-miny
style. “Nothing missing here.”

“Doesn’t seem that way.”

“Maybe there’s a photo in the bedroom,” I say. The two men stay at the threshold. I hear snatches of their conversation as I rummage through a straw basket on top of the pine dresser, aware that they are aware of me being aware of them.

“What do you have for me?”

“This may be nothing, but the neighbor across the street says he heard someone saying ‘Stay away! Stay away!’ or something like that. After ten.”

“Did he have an accent?”

“No, that’s the thing, Hat trick, the guy doing the yelling
didn’t have
no accent.”

“Any luck, Miss Price?”

“No.” I shrug haplessly, “Sorry.” It’s just that I’m afraid of what I might find or find out if I look too hard.

“Damn the fuck who tore out his damn passport photo,” Royko grumbles. “Oops. Sorry.”

Quick doesn’t say anything, but his body language is telling me that I’m not off the hook. He tilts his head to the left. “Okay, let’s go.” He steps back to let me pass. The sudden brief closeness to him in the threshold makes my skin prickle. I don’t dare look up at him, look at his eyes. I walk ahead of him and Royko, but I hear them tailing close behind. As I pass the wall of paintings again on the way out, I hear a speculative whisper: “You think there’s more there than meets the eye?” No answer. Royko continues, “I’ve
never seen
nipple
s
that
big. Sure must’ve been cold.” He chuckles. I’m sure not cold
now
. My cheeks burn like I’ve got a fever of 104.

“You could be getting yourself in
big
trouble if you’re withholding information. Interfering with an investigation is obstruction of justice. If Morgan did something he shouldn’t have in the heat of the moment and it turns out you’ve been protecting him, that’s a felony.” Detective Quick glowers at me as he starts the engine. “You’d have a criminal record. You could go to jail. Do you want that?”

“If you’re so sure Morgan did something he shouldn’t have, why didn’t you arrest him Sunday? You had him there all night.”

“Frankly I didn’t feel we had anything solid against him, so we let him go. I told him before he left we’d want to talk to him some more. Now he pulls a vanishing act. It’s not helping his credibility any. It’s also possible Morgan was a witness to the crime, saw it happen and fended off an attack on himself. He might be hiding out because he’s scared. If he’d let us know where he is, we could provide some protection and at the same time have a better shot at catching the killer. In
any
case, we want to talk to him further.”

I turn away and wince as the car rolls off the curb with a thud. “I have no idea where Morgan is.”

“This was a sham. Offering to come along to offer Morgan moral support while he got us a photo. You probably knew all along that he wouldn’t be coming along for the ride.” He stops short for a light. “Don’t
lie
to me, Miss Price.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

“But not the
whole
truth. You’re leaving something out. You have to be a pretty good friend of Morgan’s for him to have called you Sunday night. We gave him free access to the phone, but he didn’t try anyone else. Just you.”

“He trusts me.”

“And yet you expect me to believe that he won’t tell someone he
trusts
where he is and that you haven’t heard from him since yesterday? Damn!” Quick blasts his horn at a cabby with a death wish who cuts in front of him. “
I’m
beginning to not trust you, Miss Price.
I’m
beginning to think that you come up with one story after the other to cover your ass.” I bite my lip. “How can you expect us to take your complaints seriously when you ditz us around like this while there’s a homicide investigation going on? Level with me, Miss Price. Fill in a missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle so maybe we can get a clearer picture.”

I’m glad I don’t know where Morgan is, what he’s doing,
what he’s done
. I could never hide the truth from this man. His eyes are focused on the street in front of him. I almost expect them to beam an express lane through the gridlock like lasers.

“The other night, when you asked me how I would describe Morgan Sunday afternoon, I told you I was too busy to notice. That wasn’t exactly true. I
did
notice.” I clear my throat. “When Morgan came by to see me after the Marathon, he seemed disturbed. He said Vittorio was being moody and left before the race was over. I said maybe he was just hung over. Everybody had been drinking a lot at the party the night before.”
No one more than me
. “Maybe there was something he wasn’t telling me or Vittorio wasn’t telling
him
, but he
wasn’t
exactly in a murderous rage. I didn’t think anything of it.”

“You thought enough of it to not tell us,” he reminds me, and I sink deep into the looks-like-leather-but-sure-feels-like-Naugahyde seat, guilty as charged.

“I’m
sorry
.”

“Anything else?”

I shake my head vehemently, daring to meet his gaze head-on. His expression mellows. His grip on the steering wheel relaxes. I must have been validated by the lie detector he’s got wired to his brain. He pulls into a space in front of the precinct and turns off the ignition. “I wish I could be of more help,” I say. “Really.”

Quick nods. “I wish
I
could be more helpful too, Miss Price, concerning
your
predicament, but you don’t even know this person’s full name yet, do you? If I had that, I could check him out for priors. Then too, Curtis could be using an alias. You
don’t
remember ever seeing him before?”

“I’m not sure if I’d have known if I had.” I shrug. “He’s nondescript. There’s no way I’d have noticed him before he began to pay me notice.”

“He hasn’t been enrolled in the school on West 8th Street or on their payroll in any capacity?”

“No way. I’d know. It’s like a family there.” Even if some of the members of the family are dysfunctional.

He lowers his voice like a priest in the confessional, but his tone is far from fatherly.
“Is Morgan the only person you’ve posed for like that?”

Like without any clothes on.

“No,” I say faintly. “I pose for different classes in different art schools all over the city, not just at West 8th Street. There are quite a few students in each class.”

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Two and a half years.”

“And he could have been one of them?”

“Yes, he could have,” I admit, bracing myself for a you-should-know-better, what-do-you-expect lecture. “I honestly don’t remember.”
There have been so many of them.

Quick opens his car door. He doesn’t get out. “But you have no trouble recognizing him now, right?”

“None.”

“You could pick him out of a line-up or ID him from a picture, if you had to?”

“
Or draw him,” I exclaim. “I could do that. I could draw Vittorio too. Sculpture is my forte, but I don’t think life-size busts would be possible in short order. Or practical,” I say, hoping to score another smile.

Quick keeps the smile in the closet, but looks at me with the reverence he probably reserves for rookies at the range who hit bull’s eye on their first shot. “When can you have it ready for us?”

“Tonight,” I say, though that’s really pushing it. When I was taking advanced-level drawing classes in college, I had two days to produce a detailed portrait. I’m committing myself to finishing two in fewer than twelve hours. I should be committed for this. I get out of the car and grapple with my package of art supplies. Quick pauses at the corner before turning to go back through the doorway between the two green lanterns.

“I’ll pick them up,” he says, “Around ten. I have some other business to tend to in the neighborhood, if nothing else comes up.”

I clear my throat. “I’m working until ten. In Brooklyn.”

“Eleven, then,” he says. “And let us know if you hear from Morgan in the meantime.”

I nod.

“Where might a scared and lonely gay man go in this city to drown his sorrows, Miss Price?” I’m looking at him straight on. His eyes are like two welding torches, throwing sparks. If I don’t talk, I’ll be burned.

I give him several options, all conveniently located within a ten-block radius of my apartment. Morgan might drop in on any one or all of them if he’s on a serious bender. Judging from the way he sounded on the phone yesterday though, I think he’s probably bent too far out of shape to bar hop tonight.
Doing something far more dangerous, maybe.
If Quick comes up empty-handed, he won’t like it. He’ll show up at my apartment peeved and stare at me mercilessly, asking more questions, tolerating no lies.

I better make those drawings good.