The Chelsea Girl Murders (26 page)

Six months later, someone would find a dog chewing on my femur in the Brooklyn dunes, and police dogs would sniff out the handcuffed remains of the other dead nuns. A mental patient would confess to these crimes too, and issue a manifesto talking about his regular visits preceding the crime, from the Archangel Gabriel, who appeared in the form of a mild-mannered hardware clerk talking in code at the local ServiStar.

Pavli of the bad toupee said something sharply in Plotzonian.

“You think we're being followed? Who is following us?” Nadia asked, thoughtfully translating into English for the benefit of the rest of us.

More Plotzonian jangled through the air.

“The Knights of St. Michael the Martyr!” Nadia said. “How did they find us?”

Pavli said something, including, in English, “Long Island Expressway.”

“You thought you lost them on the Long Island Expressway on your way to the convent to meet Rocky?” Nadia repeated. “You fool. You know what will happen if they get their hands on me and Rocky? And the icon? Lose them!”

Pavli stepped on the gas, and Nadia screamed, “You fool! You want to attract the police and get a speeding ticket?”

Pavli began switching lanes, cutting from one into another, throwing us from side to side with every swerve, and taking a hard left onto a very bumpy road, so that the nuns and I bounced up and down on our bums. Three more hard lefts followed, until we were back on smooth highway. Pavli chuckled. We must have lost the Knights.

We rumbled over some kind of metal bridge, and slowed down. Through the back window of the van, which the Mother Superior, another nun, and I were facing, it looked like we were in Manhattan. Within ten minutes, we had pulled to a stop.

“Now what, Rocky?” Nadia asked.

“We'll go inside, and try to convince this woman to return the icon. Pavli will stay here. When we have the icon, we'll—” And he slipped back into Plotzonian again.

“Using the nuns as protection is a good idea, Rocky, in case we run into the Knights or the police. But why do we have to take a boat AND a ship AND an airplane to get home?” Nadia asked.

“Because that is what is decided,” Rocky said.

Yeah, with a gun you can control your woman, I thought. Even with a gun, he wasn't manly. He was sullen and childish. If he succeeded in dragging Nadia back to Plotzonia, and marrying her, I gave the whole thing six months. If Nadia held on, it would only be until such time as her husband actually took power, and then he'd be found poisoned in the john while his wife engineered a coup Catherine the Great style. Or the common people she disparaged would overthrow them and display their dismembered heads on pikes high atop the palace walls.

Nadia would, I hoped, say something to Miriam Grundy that would tip her off that something was amiss, and Miriam Grundy would call the cops.

Next to me, the Mother Superior gave me a look. I wasn't sure what it meant, just that it was supposed to mean something. She looked down at her feet, and I noticed she had wiggled her foot half out of her shoe, which was really more of a slipper.

When Rocky and Nadia crawled out between our linked arms and jumped out of the van, the Mother Superior's foot pushed forward, so the toe of her slipper was caught between the van doors, preventing the latch from fully catching. Quietly, and with as little movement as possible, she pushed the shoe upward and wiggled it until the latch loosened and the van door, with a soft click, opened the barest smidgen. She pulled the slipper back.

The Mother Superior tugged lightly on my arm, and at the arm of the woman next to her, who spread the tug around the circle until it came back to me and we inched ever so slightly toward the door, then stopped. We waited a moment—had to do this carefully so as not to alarm Pavli—and then moved forward another half inch or so.

We were mere inches from the door when Pavli erupted in what sounded like some pretty ripe Plotzonian cussing. He turned the engine back on and shifted into gear. As he did this, we bumped quickly toward the door, but were not able to get out until he suddenly pulled out, the van doors flew open, and we went tumbling in a pile on the pavement.

It took a moment to hoist ourselves to our feet, and there was no time to get untied, so with Mother Superior in the lead, and me at her right hand, the nuns and I began moving as one down the block, toward the Chelsea Hotel about fifty feet away. Pavli was in traffic now, and behind him was the car that had followed us on the way in, which slammed into the space Pavli had just vacated. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Pavli jump out of the van in the middle of traffic and head our way on foot.

Remember, we were still gagged, so we couldn't shout out anything such as “Call the cops” when we went into the Chelsea Hotel, a knot of gagged nuns. Here, where a scene from
Aida
was once filmed with live lions and the composer George Kleinsinger used to walk his alligator in the hallway, where Sarah Bernhardt had slept in a coffin and William Burroughs wrote
Naked Lunch
, where Robert Oppenheimer pondered the implications of his bomb, and painters of every major school of the twentieth century had worked, lived, loved, and passed out in the hallways, it was natural to assume five nuns and an incongruous redhead, tied together in a circle and gagged, were some sort of performance art or surrealist statement.

I tried to mime “Take the gags off” to our fellow elevator passengers, who unfortunately were three Mary Sue women, including the uptight one who looked like Marilyn Quayle, back presumably from a day learning how to rip off windows, orphans, and unemployed homeowners. Frantically, I waved my face at them, trying to communicate with my eyes that I wanted the gag off, but they just backed into a corner, forming their own little knot, while one pushed the seventh-floor button repeatedly, as if this might make the elevator go faster or make us vanish. The nun knot jumped over so I could lean down to the panel and punch 10 with my nose. As soon as I pressed it, the uptight woman who kind of looked like Marilyn Quayle screamed and sprayed me with pepper spray, missing my eyes and nose, but getting my cheek.

It stung like a sonofabitch. Unable to scream or gesticulate, I started writhing and twitching in pain, causing the nuns in the circle to bump awkwardly against each other, like buoys tied together in rough waters. This was the last straw for the uptight woman, who fainted just moments before the elevator stopped on seven. The other two pastel women each grabbed an arm of their fainted friend. They didn't even take the time to try to help her to her feet. They half-ran out, dragging her down the hallway behind them.

The elevator doors closed and we lurched upward. Half my face stung and one eye was watering. At ten, we got off and, with me in the lead, shuffled quickly toward Miriam Grundy's apartment.

Mother Superior pushed the doorbell with her nose, my face being a tad tender, and a butler, painted all blue and naked except for a blue loincloth, answered. We shoved past him, into the apartment, through the hallway to the spiral staircase up to her studio. The spiral staircase was a challenge for the six of us, but we managed to get up it. All the while, I was listening for the next doorbell, the one that might be Pavli, or the Knights of St. Michael the Martyr.

There was a real variety of humanity in this room, from men in black tie and women in formal dress to men with pompadours and zoot suits and women in pink leopard print and feather boas. That was in addition to several “living statues,” actors painted chalk white, posing very still in various positions, the Swinging Miriams female impersonators, some very, very short waiters, and a couple of tall people here just to mingle. Miriam was nowhere in sight.

As the gagged nuns and I moved as one among the guests, some man shouted, “Bravo! Bravo!” and started clapping, inciting others to applaud and cheer for us. The applause brought Miriam out from a room off the studio.

“What is going on?” she asked.

Behind her, Rocky appeared. When he saw us, he pulled out his gun and put it to Miriam's head.

“Nobody move,” he said.

The guests laughed and clapped some more.

“I want the icon now,” he demanded.

“I told you I don't have it,” Miriam said. To her guests, she screamed, “This is not art!”

“Where is it?” Rocky asked.

“I don't know. This is not art!” said Miriam.

“Shut up,” said Rocky.

“This is a challenging piece,” said a woman behind me.

At this point, Pavli appeared, waving his gun in the air as he made his way through the crowd. I looked at the Mother Superior, trying to catch some hint that she knew what to do. But she looked as baffled as me. She shrugged. I shrugged. We began to shuffle toward Pavli, pushing some of the crowd ahead of us toward him, when the latest complication arrived, the Knights of St. Michael the Martyr, one of whom shot his gun into the air, silencing the crowd at last.

But the guests were only quiet for a moment, and then spontaneously burst into more laughter and applause.

When the Knights saw Rocky with his gun, they each grabbed a hostage, a Living Statue and a Swinging Miriam. There was some shouting in Plotzonian, and Ben appeared, holding up the icon.

“Ben, no,” Miriam said.

Rocky let go of Miriam and grabbed the icon. Pavli grabbed Miriam Grundy. One of the Knights pointed his gun at Rocky, and Rocky then pointed his gun at the icon of the baby Jesus and yelled something in Plotzonian.

The Knights dropped their guns and released their hostages.

“Nadia?” Rocky called. “Nadia? NADIA?”

Nadia had vanished.

Holding the icon hostage, Rocky stormed across the room, fell to the floor, and crawled between me and the nuns, reemerging in the center of the nun knot. With the icon in one hand, and a gun in the other—pointed at my head—he pushed us out of the studio and down the spiral staircase. I could hear Miriam Grundy behind us—“This is not art! This is not art!” and “Stop pulling my hair.”

When we got out the door, Pavli let Miriam go, and ran ahead of us to push the elevator button. There was no time to wait for it. We were pushed toward the wrought-iron stairwell that runs up the center of the building. It was just a matter of time before one of us tripped and we went rolling down.

That's when I thought, I might as well take the bullet. It's a far, far better thing I do, etc. etc., and it could prevent something worse, the deaths of all the nuns. What did I have to live for after all, now that I knew Pierre loved another? But first I needed to cripple Rocky to help give the other nuns the advantage, and so I could get a little revenge before I left this vale of tears.

My hands were cuffed, but my fingers were free. Suddenly, I reached back and grabbed the little gangster where he lived, yanking hard, really hard. I had a lot of pent-up anger. I grabbed him so hard that instead of shooting me, he shot above my head, into a painting on the wall. The nun knot bounced against the wall, and the gun flew out of Rocky's hand and rattled down the stairs. Now he was unarmed, surrounded by six really pissed-off women with cuffed hands but free fingers.

What we had here was a Man Trap.

Pavli went to retrieve the gun. Behind us, the Knights, having retrieved their weapons and their living statue hostages, were shouting in their harsh language. We were caught between them, Rocky and the icon between us. At the tenth-floor stairwell railing, Miriam's guests were watching, amused, a couple taking pictures, still not getting the message that this was not art. Below us, other residents had come out to see what was going on, including Lucia and Carlos, and were staring up the stairwell.

It was a stand-off, and we were in the crossfire if anyone started shooting.

Someone did, one of the Knights, but he missed us and hit Pavli in the chest. Pavli crumpled onto the delicate and beautiful wrought-iron railing, and fell over it, plunging all the way down to the first floor.

The party guests oohed and ahed as he was falling down, and stopped, and stared, as it dawned on them that this was not all part of the performance. Then they started screaming.

Amid the loud, Plotzonian shouting and the screaming of the party guests came a clear New York voice. It was Detective Burns of the NYPD.

“Put down your guns,” he shouted. “Police. You're surrounded.”

He was standing on the tenth floor. Behind him, blue uniforms spilled out of the elevator, while other cops ran up the stairs toward us. The cavalry had arrived.

chapter seventeen

“I knew a little about the icon,” Ben admitted. “And I knew I hadn't hired nuns and gunmen for Miriam's party, so naturally, when I saw them, I did the logical thing. I called the police.”

We'd all of us been taken to Manhattan South to give formal statements, and Ben and his lawyer were with a cop at the desk next to me. That cop got the logical explanation.

Detective Burns, who was interviewing me, asked, “The Knights of St. Michael the Martyr grabbed the Living Statue and the Swinging Miriam before or after the Plotzonian princess escaped?”

“I don't know,” I said. “In all the commotion I didn't see Nadia leave.”

“And the gagged nuns were—” The phone rang, and he stopped to pick it up.

My face hurt like hell. In addition to the residual sting of the pepper spray, the duct tape hurt when it was ripped off, leaving a big red rectangle of irritated skin behind. Nuns, Living Statues, Swinging Miriams, the real Miriam Grundy, selected party guests, and a few of their lawyers were giving statements at other desks. The nuns all had red marks from the duct tape and were all rapidly fingering their rosaries.

After Burns got off the phone, he said, “That was the police station in Fowler, Long Island. Everyone at the convent is alive and well.”

Across the room, another detective called out, “State Department is here about the Plotzonians.”

“This one is going to put diplomatic immunity to the test,” Burns said. “You think one of these guys killed Woznik? I'd sure like a murder rap to help fight State on this one.”