The Chelsea Girl Murders (22 page)

It wasn't Urkfisk or Rouse, but a pretty young Asian man.

“Is Grace Rouse up there?” I asked him.

“Yes, unfortunately,” he said. “And she's making Ruck crazy.”

“Who are you?”

“I'm Ruck Urkfisk's boyfriend, Daniel.”

“I need to talk to Grace Rouse …”

“Go right on up,” he said, holding the door for me. “Second floor.”

G
RACE
R
OUSE WAS SITTING
in an armchair, her head propped up with one hand, watching Ruck Urkfisk paint, or rather, stand staring at a red canvas, a paintbrush in his hand. Some kind of medieval choral opera sung by a soprano and a backup choir of monks blared through the stereo system, and neither Rouse nor Urkfisk heard me come in. Paint and canvases and other painterly things were spread out on rough wooden tables. The place smelled of paints and linseed oil and the murky solvents used to soak brushes in big jars and white dairy buckets. It made me wonder if fumes weren't just as responsible for artists' crazy reputations as genius.

“Grace,” I said.

She was asleep.

“Grace,” I said again. She didn't awaken, but when Urkfisk stepped away from the canvas, she bolted upright.

“Don't stop!” she shouted at him. She saw me. “Robin, how did you …”

“I need to talk to you, privately,” I shouted back.

She walked over to the stereo and turned it down. “Ruck, take a break,” she said. “Fifteen minutes.”

We went into the kitchen. Rouse stood by the kitchen door, watching to make sure Urkfisk didn't escape.

“What do you want, Robin?” she asked, not looking at me.

“I know that you called Nadia the day Gerald died. But when I asked you about Nadia, you denied knowing her.”

“Nadia who?”

“Nadia, Tamayo's friend,” I said.

“I'm not familiar with—”

“I know you called her, Grace. Don't bother denying it.”

“Oh, but, well …”

“Why did you call her?”

“Apparently Tamayo or one of her friends had given her my home number in case she needed help.”

“You're part of Tamayo's underground railroad too.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn't you tell me before?”

“She told me she didn't trust you. That's why she called me. She didn't trust you and wanted the name of another safe house until she and her fiancé could make it out of the city,” Rouse said. Now she turned away from the door to look directly at me. “I didn't trust you either.”

“That's funny,” I said, “because of all the characters I've met because of this Nadia business, I am the most trustworthy one. Where is this safe house?”

Rouse was still hesitant to speak to me.

“Look, I have no selfish motive in this,” I said. “Where did you send her?”

“My aunt's place, uptown. But she didn't go there. And I frankly forgot about her. I've had a few other things to think about—my dead lover, my arrest, my lazy artist …”

“Why didn't she go to your aunt's place?”

“How should I know? It was a quick conversation. I mentioned I was coming by the hotel later to find my lover, and if I had time, I'd stop by and check up on her at Tamayo's. I admit, some of my interest came from the fact that Nadia was at Tamayo's, next door to Maggie Mason's.”

At this point, she began to weep in her abrupt, terse way. I was really tempted to tell Rouse the whole bit about Gerald coming to the Chelsea not to meet his pregnant lover, but to sell an icon people called the Baby. But I wasn't going to give it away, in case Rouse was the killer. Very quickly, she regained control and the tears stopped.

“Have you checked out Maggie Mason?” she asked me.

“Maggie has an alibi.”

“Yes, yes, an online chat. That could be faked.”

“She has a better alibi than that. She was with some other people.”

“Friends who might lie for her?” Rouse suggested. “Maggie wanted Gerald.…”

“Maggie is in love with someone else,” I said.

“You know this for a fact.”

“Yes,” I said. I did not add that the man Maggie was in love with was the man I now believed I was in love with.

chapter fourteen

Back at the Chelsea, the Zenmaster was in his doorway, lifting hand weights and staring into the hallway. He wouldn't even look me in the eye. How could one get through to this guy if he had, indeed, seen something?

Maggie had left a note taped to Tamayo's door. “Lucia and I are going over the phone records Edna dropped off. I'm waiting for Ben to call me back. Take a nap. I'll call you if we find anything.”

There she was, still being sweet and considerate, making it hard for me to despise her.

If I went back to sleep now, I was afraid I'd sleep for a week. There are times when it is better to just bite the bullet and keep going. I knocked on Maggie's door.

“Who is it?” Lucia trilled.

“Robin.”

It took a couple of moments before Lucia let me in.

“Would you like coffee?” Lucia asked.

“As much as possible.” I followed her into the kitchen and she poured me a cup.

“Where's Maggie?”

“She had to return a call to her boyfriend.”

The pink kitchen's ceiling was covered with bent silverware, the refrigerator with photos, including one I recognized. It was a photo of a road sign on the Karakoram highway in northern Pakistan that said, simply, “Relax.” My ex-boyfriend Michael O'Reilly had given me the same photo during a stressful time a few years before. My copy had gone up in smoke the night of the fire.

On the door to the kitchen was a poster of Angelica Huston as Morticia Addams with the quote:
“Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
—We gladly feast on those who would subdue us. Not just pretty words …” Masochistically, I looked for signs of Pierre, but saw none other than a map of the Paris Metro on a bulletin board.

Maggie, still on the phone, poked her head around the corner of the kitchen and waved us into the living room/studio, where her paintings hung on the wall, paintings that seemed to be some surreal fusion between comic-book art and classical realism, very detailed in a realistic way, but with heads and muscles out of proportion and wild eyes in the faces.

“
Oui, je sais
,” Maggie said.

“Maggie has a boyfriend,” Lucia said, handing me a chunk of computer printout—of phone numbers. The numbers were not sorted by room number, so we had to weed through all the calls made that day from the whole hotel.

“Have you met him?” I asked Lucia.

“She won't tell me anything about him. He must be French.”

I smiled politely at this example of deductive reasoning, and tried to tune Lucia out as Maggie talked, hoping to hear her call him “Luc,” or “Michel,” or something else that would assure me it wasn't Pierre. Once again, I cursed the fact that I had studied Swedish in high school back in Minnesota instead of French.

When I heard her say “Sorbonne,” I knew.

I had slept with her boyfriend. It was all Tamayo's fault, of course. Pierre was a friend of hers and Tamayo had arranged for him to meet Maggie, just as she had arranged for me to meet him, and Claire before me.

“You have to look for the room number on the list,” Lucia said, having noticed that I was preoccupied and not going over the computer printout. “So far, the only call I've found made from the room that day was to the deli.”

“Right. Let me check this list,” I said, but I couldn't focus on it.

Maggie hung up with a sigh after several
je t'aimes.
“Found anything?” she asked.

God, I hated her just then.

“Not yet,” Lucia said.

“Anything in the papers about Woznik?” I asked.

“Grace Rouse is still the number one suspect, that's all. All the papers have stories about the Art Break dog crap, incidentally. Not one mentioned the alien abductions,” Maggie said.

“What about Nadia—have you learned anything?”

“I was just about to call Miriam's assistant. The line was busy when I called before,” Maggie said. “I keep getting switched to the voice mail.”

“How is Miriam involved?” Lucia asked.

“Nadia apparently had a piece of valuable art she brought here to sell, to finance her new married life,” I said.

“And Gerald was brokering the deal,” Maggie said, her ear to the phone. “He specialized in sub-rosa deals like that. Miriam is a collector. Nadia and Gerald were supposed to meet and go see Miriam to sell the icon, we think, but Gerald was killed before he could meet up with Nadia … Ben! Finally! I've been calling and calling … Yes, I know you're busy. Is Miriam there?”

Evidently not, because Maggie shook her head at us.

“I need to find her. It's urgent,” Maggie was saying. “Don't give me that. You know where Miriam is. You owe me a favor. You know her schedule backward and forward. Ben, I know you're busy with the party …”

She put her hand over the phone and whispered to us, “He's having a bad day. One of the Swinging Miriams is sick and he still has to find a very tall woman for Miriam's party.”

“Miriam has such good parties,” Lucia said to me.

“Ben, how's your married boyfriend?” Maggie said. “Your secret is safe with me, Ben, but trust is a two-way street. Uh-huh. I thought so. Thanks, Ben.”

“She's at her spa, being prettified for tonight,” Maggie said, hanging up. “Lucia, can you look after these phone calls while we go speak with Miriam?”

“I think so,” she said.

“Be discreet if you talk to these people Nadia called. Mention that you're a friend of Tamayo's …”

“‘ … and I'm looking for another friend of hers, whose name I'd rather not mention,'” Lucia said. “Maybe I will just call you if I find anything, and you can call.”

“You know the secret knock, right?” Maggie asked.

Lucia knocked on the table with the first bars of the
William Tell Overture
.

“Good. Don't let anyone in unless you hear that knock. If you don't hear that knock, don't answer the door. Be very quiet and call Victor in security downstairs.”

“Yes, Maggie.”

“You have Robin's cell phone number. Call as soon as you learn anything.”

W
E HAD TO BE ANNOUNCED
at the Esther Fine spa. After Miriam Grundy had been located, an attendant in a trim uniform escorted us through the hallways to see her.

This was a tony joint, the place where old money gets its topknot tended. Not a topknot in the lot, actually. The clientele was very up-to-date and stylish. Miriam Grundy, Maggie told me, had spent 1981 with a pink streak in her white hair, though she normally wasn't quite that faddish. The Esther Fine spa seemed too “uptown” for a bohemian queen like Miriam Grundy, but Maggie explained that rich people and artists go hand in hand. At Miriam's high level in the Art World, she had to move as easily among wealthy conservative investment bankers as she did poor anarchist artists. At her age, why skimp on the creature comforts just to keep up some proletarian pose?

Mrs. Grundy was reclining in a chair with thick blue goop caking on her face. Her hair was tied back in a towel. A protective plastic sheet was tied around her neck.

“Maggie, Miss Hudson,” she said to us.

“Don't talk, please,” said the attendant.

“Miriam, your name has come up in connection with a delicate matter,” I said, casting a quick glance at the facial person.

“Can we be alone, Vera?” Miriam said.

“It has to set. Don't talk for ten minutes,” Vera said before leaving.

“How can I help you, girls?” asked Miriam, trying not to move her lips.

I was going to try to finesse Miriam a bit, see if anything accidentally slipped out, but before I could, Maggie blurted out, “Nadia sold you an icon the day she came to see you, didn't she? A legendary Rublev, called ‘the Baby.'”

“No,” Miriam said.

“We know it all, Miriam, with all due respect. Gerald brokered the deal for Nadia to sell you the icon. You told Robin that Nadia came alone, but Gerald came with her, didn't he? He was on his way downstairs to pay me when someone killed him …”

“NO!”

“No?” I said.

“Gerald didn't come, the girl came alone,” Miriam said, her blue masque cracking as she talked. “I don't know anything about an icon.”

“I'm sure the police would love to hear about this,” Maggie said. “With all due respect, you're better off telling me, someone who is devoted to you. A girl's life is at stake.”

Through her blue mask, Miriam's brown eyes studied us. “Are you wired? Either of you?”

“No,” we said at the same time.

“It's sensitive,” Miriam Grundy said. “It's a legendary Rublev. The Russian government, the Russian Orthodox Church, and a number of small republics would all try to claim it. It's best this goes unpublicized.”

“Where is it now?”

“I don't know,” she said.

As sheets of blue plaster flaked off her face onto the protective plastic sheeting, she told us how the icon had been for generations in the home of a wealthy Hungarian family who had collected art. The family was unaware of the icon's mystical properties, but from the style believed it was a Rublev. When the Nazis invaded, the family was arrested and deported to labor camps, where the father died. The mother and children survived the war, and made their way to America.

The Nazis, also unaware of the icon's miraculous protection, loaded it and a lot of other loot into a train and shipped it off to be stored until the war was over. En route, the train was commandeered by Hungarian democratic partisans, who took it east. The legend of the Baby had stopped there, until Nadia had filled in the blanks for Miriam. Nadia told Miriam that after the democratic partisans hijacked the train, it was hijacked from them and commandeered by Communist partisans, led by Nadia's grandfather, who claimed it and its contents as booty. It had been in Nadia's family ever since.