The Chelsea Girl Murders (9 page)

Across the hall, the bodybuilder was watching me. What was his story? I wondered. He never seemed to go out, and I'd already seen him several times, standing in his doorway, looking into the hallway. He'd told the cops he knew nothing about the murder, but maybe he knew something about Nadia's disappearance.

I stood in front of him, but he barely acknowledged me—just a flicker of the eye as he continued lifting hand weights, one after the other. He had the kind of face you'd expect to see in news footage of soccer hooligans or skinheads, pretty beat up, with a number of scars, and his nose looked like it had been broken a few times. His eyes were a bit off, not quite crossed but leaning in that direction. Up and down his arms were a lot of tattoos of what looked like eastern mystical symbols. Behind him, what I could see of the apartment was all black. Scary guy.

“Excuse me,” I said. He didn't respond. I waved my hand in front of his face and said again, “Excuse me.”

He stared at me for a moment, and finally said, “Yes?”

“Hi. I wondered if I could ask you some questions.”

He was silent.

“Did you see anything strange or hear anything the night Gerald Woznik was killed?”

He said nothing.

“They found his body right there, across the hall from you. Maybe you saw something through the peephole, or you heard something?”

He lifted the right, hand weight. Then he lifted the left one.

“Did you see a young woman, eighteen-ish, curly blond hair?” I said. “She went missing the night the art dealer was killed. Do you know anything about that?”

“Everything worth knowing is unknowable,” he said evenly.

“Well, not everything. Knowing where this girl is, that's worth it to me.”

“The ultimate goal in life is to pass through the world and have no effect at all,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“The ultimate goal in life is to pass through the world and have no effect at all,” he said, each word squeezed out through some dense filter of fear or madness or both.

“No effect at all? Excuse me, but what would be the point of going through life then? Listen to me. Someone was killed—”

He stepped backward, two steps, into his dark room and shut the door in my face.

“Hey, that affected me!” I called out as I stomped off.

The seventh-floor neighbors either weren't home or claimed to know nothing, so I headed downstairs to the front desk. Someone in this hotel had to know something about Nadia, but I was either asking the wrong people, or the right people weren't talking. The staff was notoriously discreet and protective of its guests and tenants. Though very pleasant when they heard I was a friend of the legendary Tamayo, they knew nothing about Nadia or the murder, or so they claimed. The inscrutable Sikh manning the front desk just smiled. The assistant manager, Jerry Weinstein, had been off with the flu and had missed the mayhem. The head switchboard operator, Edna, who had piles and piles of shiny silver hair, said simply, “If I knew anything, and I don't, it would be a secret, and my secrets die with me, hon.”

If I wanted more information, they said, politely and in a variety of New York and foreign accents, I'd have to speak to Stanley Bard, the devilishly handsome man who owns and manages the hotel on behalf of the stockholders.

Bard's a legend in his own right, having seen quite a lot of luminaries who lived and worked here, and kept a lot of them alive by cajoling them to work, taking art in lieu of rent, or letting them slide on the rent for months at a time until checks came in. He has bailed artists out of jail, coaxed them into rehab, mediated their lovers' quarrels, and viewed their moods and eccentricities with an art lover's indulgence.

Mr. Bard's office was just off the lobby.

“Come in,” he barked when I knocked.

I did. Bard looked up from behind a cluttered desk in a cavernous office done up in dark wood with carved detailing and a fading fresco on the ceiling of what looked like Cupid and Psyche.

After I introduced myself, I told him about the star-crossed lovers who were supposed to meet in Tamayo's apartment, and how the murder of Gerald Woznik had interfered with their plans.

“It's a terrible thing. I've know Gerald for years,” Bard said. “First murder we've had here in twenty years. How is Tamayo?”

“She's fine, as far as I know.”

“When you speak with her, tell her we miss her here.”

“I shall. Do you know anything about this young woman, Nadia?” I asked, showing him the photograph.

“I don't; I'm sorry,” he said. “So many people come through here.”

It was hard to tell if he was being straight with me. He didn't know me, after all, except as a friend of Tamayo's, and I knew from her stories that he was very protective of his tenants.

“If you learn anything—” I began, but before I could finish, the door opened, and a young black man with a bleached-blond buzz cut stormed in.

“Stanley, you've got to do something about Old Frank,” he said in a weird way, emphatic and blasé at the same time. “Miriam had a dinner party last night and the son of a bitch stood outside Miriam's door pissing on the hallway wall and cursing at the guests. Luckily, Miriam's friends thought it was some kind of performance art.”

“No harm done then.”

“But it upsets Miriam because of her history with Frank,” Ben said. “It upsets the neighbors as well.”

“I'll talk to him, Ben.”

“Talking hasn't helped in the past.”

Mr. Bard took this opportunity to turn to me and say, “Could you excuse us? I'll call you if I find any information on … what did you say her name was?”

“Nadia,” I said.

As I closed the door, I heard Mr. Bard shouting, “What can I do? He's eighty-nine years old, he's a great painter. You want me to throw him out into the street? An eighty-nine-year-old man? I'll talk to him, Ben, I'll talk to him.”

For the next few hours, I stopped people around the hotel and asked them if they'd seen the girl in the photograph I was holding. A couple of people thought they'd maybe seen her, but weren't sure where or when.

In the course of my investigation, I met a bunch of people from the hotel: a long-haired drummer half my age; a middle-aged married couple, with a small daughter, who looked like they had money; a secretary who worked at the U.N.; a woman from Eastern Europe who worked as an engineer; a plucky filmmaker named Jan and her daughter, Chelsea, named after the hotel; and an actor who had been wandering about with a Do Not Disturb sign around his neck, muttering, trying to stay in character and evidently doing it until I disturbed him. I also talked to some tourists staying in the hotel, one from Japan, one from Hungary, and several from Ohio, who told me they always stayed at the Chelsea when they came to New York. Nobody knew anything about Nadia.

The first break I got came when I got back to the seventh floor, where I ran into Lucia, the blowsy Hispanic girl who lived on one side of Tamayo. She ushered me gleefully into her apartment and had me take a seat in the combined living room-kitchen.

Her small apartment was haphazard, but brightly so. The studio apartment was divided by a garment rack, which had colorful dresses, most of them retro postwar dresses, hanging on hangers and flung carelessly over the top of the rack. The furniture was what I would come to know as standard Chelsea Hotel issue, oak dressers and chairs, a double bed with a flowered bedspread, a beige lamp. Nothing matched of the things Lucia had added, knickknacks, objets d'art, paintings.

“Would you like a drink?” she asked.

“No thanks. Actually, I wanted to ask you about the girl staying at Tamayo's this past week, Nadia—”

There was a knock on the door.

“That's my man,” she said. “Excuse me.”

In walked a small, muscular man with a leonine mane of white hair, brushed back, the man I'd seen her yelling and throwing shoes at the day before. They embraced passionately.

“This is Carlos. He's a retired bullfighter,” she said, and introduced me to him in Spanish.

He kissed my hand, then sat down on a sofa in the combined living room-kitchen.

Lucia handed him a drink, and then handed me one, a tumbler full of whiskey, despite my protests. I took it just to make her happy.

After Lucia got herself a tumbler of whiskey, Carlos grabbed her and they cooed to each other in Spanish. He was an odd-looking character but he had a certain earthy, Castillian peasant kind of appeal. His mass of white hair was completely out of proportion to his smallish body. When Lucia laughed, his morose, jowly face lit up. Lucia was very happy. I don't think I've ever seen anyone that happy before. She was happy to a fault. She was insanely happy.

I pushed Nadia's picture across the coffee table at her.

“Have you seen this girl?”

“No, I don't think so,” Lucia said. The bullfighter said something in Spanish and Lucia translated. “He says he saw her, but not on this floor. He doesn't remember which floor.”

“Ask him to think about it.”

“Oh, he has a problem with his memory,” Lucia said. “From being a bullfighter. I'll ask him again in five minutes, after his brain rests a little.”

The bullfighter spoke English badly, so Lucia translated as we conversed. I'm not sure how good her translation was, and how much of it was her own opinion. I asked Carlos if he'd been a successful bullfighter, and he said something in Spanish, very grand sounding in a braying way, and Lucia said, shaking her head ever so slightly, “He was not a big star. He was in the middle. He's been gored twelve times! Once in the head! Poor baby. That's what damaged his memory.”

“How did a retired bullfighter end up in the Chelsea?” I asked.

“His brother, a musician, lived here. Carlos came to stay with him after the last goring. And after the brother died, Carlos stayed on,” Lucia said.

“And you?” I asked.

“My father's family pays me to stay out of Argentina,” she said brightly. “So as not to cause a scandal and harm his political ambitions. I was born out of wedlock.”

“Really? But why the Chelsea?”

“I don't know. The wind blew me to New York, and into the Chelsea one day, and I stayed. And you?”

“I came to stay at Tamayo's place because my apartment burned down—”

Carlos interrupted to say something in Spanish. He and Lucia talked back and forth and then she said to me, “He saw her when he was posing for Miriam Grundy. She paints a little. He doesn't remember what day, but I do. It was the day Gerald Woznik was killed.”

“What time was he posing for Miriam Grundy?”

“Early evening.”

“Did he see Nadia before or after his session?” Lucia asked Carlos this in Spanish.

“He doesn't remember,” she said, and smiled apologetically.

“Did you know Gerald Woznik?” I asked her.

“Oh yes. He used to live here,” she said.

“Where were you when he was killed?”

“At El Quijote, at the bar, with Edna the switchboard operator,” she answered.

“Have you heard anyone else in this place talk about the murder? Any of the neighbors?”

“Yes, everyone, but nobody knows who did it.”

“Do you know Grace Rouse?”

“Not well. She used to visit Gerald when he lived here,” Lucia said, jumping up to put a record—an LP—on her turntable. Crackling, tinny music came from the speakers. It was the kind of falsely cheerful singsongy music you hear at old-timey carnivals and carousels, and for some reason it flashed me back for a moment to Paris.

“What's the deal with the bodybuilder who stands in his doorway a lot?” I asked.

“We call him the Zenmaster,” Lucia said, settling back into Carlos's lap.

“He's scary. Doesn't talk much.”

“He's very sweet, deep down. I haven't spoken to him in weeks. The last time he spoke to me, he told me his invisible eye had been opened.”

She started to translate this to Carlos, and he kissed her, for a long time. There seemed no point asking her any more questions, what with the bullfighter's tongue down her throat.

“If you see or speak to Maggie Mason, tell her I'm looking for her,” I said, and saw myself out.

T
HE YOUNG BLACK MAN
with the blond buzz cut whom I'd seen in Mr. Bard's office turned out to be Miriam Grundy's assistant.

He welcomed me into her tenth-floor apartment with a blasé nod, an aquamarine earring in one ear sparkling as his head moved.

“Mrs. Grundy is upstairs in her studio. Follow me,” he said.

The apartment was a duplex, with a red spiral staircase leading up to a large, sunlit studio on the unofficial eleventh floor. The walls were dingy white, and the high ceilings sloped up into gabled windows facing south, to bring in the sunlight.

I didn't see tiny Mrs. Grundy, who was sitting on a stool in front of a large canvas, until she hopped off her stool and came out from behind the painting. She was dressed in a white men's shirt over slacks, her hair in a turban. Her makeup had been done and her eyebrows were penciled in, a little too darkly, making her look angry despite the slight smile on her face. I half-expected Erich Von Stroheim to appear and whisper that he was madam's second husband. Every once in a while, I still have a small-town-girl glamour moment, when the small-town girl I used to be pipes up and says, “Holy cow! I'm talking to [insert name of awesome celebrity here].” I was having one now. Here in front of me was the woman who inspired the Pulitzer prize-winning Mimi poems. Those poems would never have been written if it hadn't been for her, if years before that she hadn't inspired a young, married investment banker to ditch his society wife, reject his family's ways and wishes, give up his hated career, and follow his dream of being a writer.

“Hello, Miss Hudson,” she said graciously, sitting back down on a stool in front of a half-finished half-abstract painting of what vaguely looked like Carlos the retired bullfighter. She was a good distance away from the canvas. She could only just reach it with her brush.