The Crasher (58 page)

She’d been aching for him, longing to hear his voice on the phone, but now, with Poppy’s arrival imminent, knowing she had
something to tell her about Alex, Johnny was the last person, other than Petersh, she wanted to see.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded, full of hostility, from the landing.

Although he was trying to hide it, she knew him too well. He was still angry with her, suspicious, distrusting. If he’d come
to urge her to go to the cops about the Villeneva jewels he was still wasting his time.

She kicked the loft door shut behind her. She had to get him out before Poppy arrived. She could feel beads of perspiration
on her upper lip.

“I’ve got a surprise for you.” He waved a magazine in the air. “An advance copy of my piece.”

He was on the landing facing her now. He had to see that she was highly nervous. So what? What could he do, except call the
cops? And so far, for some reason, he hadn’t.

“I want you to leave,” she said, an unexpected sob catching her breath.

“Why? Don’t you want to see it? They liked it so much, it’s become the cover story… you look fantastic.” He shoved
Next!
under her nose. There was a full-length picture of herself on the cover with the headline, READY TO CRASH, THE READY-TO-WEAR
TRUE LIFE STORY OF GINNY WALKER.

“Can’t I come in, Ginny?”

Her heart was breaking, but she couldn’t risk it, couldn’t risk him being there when she heard what Poppy had come to tell
her about Alex.

“Not now, Johnny.”

Tomorrow, she silently pleaded, give me another chance tomorrow.

He shook his head, grim-faced again. “Expecting some-one?”

“No, no one. I’m just not ready to see you right now.”

He was leaning against the door. She could see the time on his watch. Almost six-thirty. She had to get rid of him. Poppy
could appear at any moment.

“Please, Johnny, please go.”

He flung the magazine on the floor. “Goodbye, Ginny.”

It sounded so final, so cold, she didn’t know how she let him leave, watching him trudge down the stairs, his shoulders hunched
over, beaten.

“I love you, Johnny,” she mouthed, the tears streaming down her face. “I’ll always love you.”

It wasn’t until she heard the front door bang shut that she picked up the magazine and went inside. She was in so much pain
she couldn’t even open it to read what Johnny had written about her.

She lay down on the bed, motionless like a sick person, staring up at the ceiling. She stayed that way for what seemed like
hours, but when she heard the buzzer again it was only seven-thirty; for Poppy, almost on time. She made sure it was Poppy
before she opened the front door and they collapsed into each other’s arms like long-lost sisters, both crying, wailing, holding
each other up.

“Oh, Ginny, I can’t believe what’s happened, can you? First Svank, now Alex.” Poppy threw off a red satin coat and collapsed
into a chair. Ginny tried not to wince at the color clash. Underneath the red satin, Poppy was wearing a bright pink dress
with a miniskirt, which, as she slumped back, rode up to show off her glorious legs in matching pink hose all the way
to her thighs. With a flourish she took off her oversize dark glasses.

Ginny gasped and involuntarily turned her head away, not knowing where to look. Poppy was wearing a lot of makeup, but it
still wasn’t enough to hide the black-and-blue bruising around her eyes, nor the dark marks and swelling around her cheeks.
Poppy looked as if she’d been beaten up.

“What-what happened to you?” Ginny thought quickly. “Were you in a car crash?”

Poppy laughed sardonically. “Come off it, Ginny. You don’t have to act Little Miss Innocent with me. You can guess what happened.
One of Svank’s goons, remember Hugo Humphrey?” She spat the name out. “He beat me up well and good.”

“Why, for heaven’s sake?”

“Because Svank thought blood’s thicker than water, that’s why.”

“I don’t understand. Why weren’t you with Svank at the library?”

Again Poppy gave the ugly laugh. “I was in the emergency ward getting my jaw fixed-”

“So what d’you mean? Blood being thicker than water?”

Poppy looked around nervously. “D’you live alone here?”

“Yes, of course, I do. Why?”

“Just wanted to be sure.” She got up and looked behind the rattan screen. “Can we lower the lights? I don’t want to be seen
from the street.”

“You can’t be, I promise you. Sit down, talk to me. Tell me-”

“Svank found out about my brother and Alex,” Poppy blurted out, flopping back into the chair again. “Someone was following
Alex and for once Alex didn’t know it; he wasn’t careful enough… someone told Svank everything…”

Bewildered, Ginny said, “I don’t understand… Alex and your brother… what d’you mean?”

Poppy looked at her as if she was crazy. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know Alex was gay? You gotta be kidding me. I
thought you of all people would know, although it took me a while to figure it out. What I didn’t know until too late was
how much a case he had on my kid brother. I introduced them one day and bingo, the next they were holed up together. Svank
thought I had something to do with it, that in putting one of his lieutenants”—the sarcastic way Poppy pronounced the word
showed Ginny what she thought of him—“together with my next of kin, I was double-crossing him in some way. That’s why he sent
Hugo over the first time, to teach me a lesson, the flicking animal. The second time was Hugo’s own idea-after Svank’s death-sort
of getting his own payback for me giving him so much trouble while the boss was alive.”

Ginny was unable to hide what a bombshell Poppy had just dropped, and yet the minute she’d heard it she’d known there was
no way to contest it, to protest. It was as if subconsciously she’d known all along, but why had Alex never told her?

“Have you got anything to drink?” Poppy asked abruptly.

Ginny nodded, trying to recover. There was a bottle of white wine in the fridge. How long it had been there, she couldn’t
imagine, but there wasn’t anything else.

She poured out two glasses. It looked all right. “Why are you telling me all this now?”

“Alex asked me to meet him-”

“I saw you-”

“You saw us?” Poppy’s voice showed she was nervous.

“Yes, on East Fifty-fifth Street. I chased after you, but you vanished in the crowds.” Ginny didn’t care that she was crying
again. “That was the day Alex called me, the first time after the murder. Then he came to see me the day his mother died.”

Although Ginny sounded heartbroken, Poppy was unperturbed. She looked through a vast crocodile bag for her compact and made
a face at what she saw in the mirror. “That animal,” she muttered, clicking the compact shut without adding anything to her
face.

“Why did he want to see you?” Even now Ginny was
ashamed to feel the same old resentment stirring, that Alex had confided in Poppy, and not her.

“My kid brother has AIDS, Ginny,” Poppy said in a matter-of-fact voice. “It’s in remission. Alex had been paying for all kinds
of expensive drugs. He told me that afternoon he was planning to get them both out of the country, but he was scared shitless…
said someone was after him, although he didn’t have what they wanted anymore. Now we know he was right.”

Poppy looked at her in a pitying sort of way. “He didn’t want me to tell you about Donny, that’s my kid brother, he knew you’d
get in a panic about the AIDS problem, but once he’d gotten away he wanted me to explain. Wanted me to keep an eye on you,
seemed to think you could be in danger, too. That’s why I called you.” She shook her head from side to side, her curls bobbing
vigorously around her head. “It’s weird. I call you in the morning and in the evening I hear Alex got hit.”

“Why did he think I was in danger?”

“He was just going to tell me-we were in this coffee shop on Madison-when he got into a fucking panic… sure someone was watching
him. I went to the John and when I came back he’d gone. Left me with the check, the bastard.” Poppy nodded reflectively. “Wasn’t
the first time either.”

“Did Alex kill Svank?” There, it was out There was a long silence. Ginny sat with her fingers crossed, knowing it was ridiculous,
but unwilling to uncross them.

Poppy looked around the room. “He could have…” she said finally. “He was capable of it, but I don’t know.” She jumped up to
pour herself another glass of wine, drank it down in one gulp, and to Ginny’s amazement asked, “What are you making these
days? I was sooo sorry not to wear that fab georgette number that night.”

After that Ginny couldn’t wait to get rid of her. “I can’t concentrate on designing much right now… you understand, Poppy.”

“S’pose I do.”

She finished off the wine, and with a promise to “keep in touch” smoothed down her miniskirt and left with her usual sultry
glide.

Drained, no more tears left, Ginny hoped she’d never have to see empty-headed Poppy Gan again. How she could mention clothes
in the next breath after discussing her lover’s murder was beyond her. She felt dirty, soiled by all she’d heard, no nearer
the truth, other than to have it confirmed that Alex had been one of Svank’s “loo-ten-ents,” as Poppy had put it

On the hall table was the advance copy of
Next!
magazine. How shamefully she’d treated Johnny. He, not Alex, was the man who’d given her real support and love. What had
Alex ever really given her? A lifetime of broken promises, culminating in putting her reputation in question and perhaps her
very existence in danger.

She took
Next!
back to the armchair, which was still impregnated with Poppy’s excess of Shalimar. She began to flip through the pages. Her
shame grew as she read Johnny’s story about a young girl, brimming with talent and ambition; a story also told in pictures,
showing her wearing her clothes at various events. Some of the pictures carried Oz’s byline. She sighed. The picture department
had to get them from someone, she supposed, and here were some of the best

It was a love letter in print; a public testimonial to her ability as a designer. It meant she would never again have to apologize
for being “the crasher”; and it emphasized an originality that, wrote Johnny, “we must hope will now be recognized.” If her
phone didn’t ring off the hook with offers of financial backing after this, no amount of publicity in the world could do it.

With the magazine in her hand she went over to the phone to call Johnny. The answering service picked up. A message couldn’t
convey what she had in her heart. She hung up, turning the page to find that the article concluded with two more full-length
shots, one of her wearing the blush bridesmaid dress at Esme’s wedding, the other of her in the same dress,
completely renovated, taken among the crowd at the Literary Lions gala.

As she studied the two photographs, her breath quickened. She felt dizzy. In the background of the library shot was the tiny
detail that had eluded her the night of the Lions dinner, the one incriminating piece of evidence she had seen fleetingly
at the bottom of the stairwell, but could never remember-or identify-until now.

There was no mistaking it. How could she have blocked it so completely out of her mind?

She stared at the page, seeing again what she had seen on the stairwell. Luminous even in the dim light of the single bulb,
she had seen what she was looking at now, a large bronze medallion, the insignia of a Literary Lion, worn around the neck
of a tall, dark, slim figure, the man she had mistaken for Alex, the most famous Literary Lion of them all. It was Quentin
Peet.

Johnny’s father? Johnny’s tall, dark, slim father? The shadowy figure in the upper hall, and at the bottom of the stairwell?
It wasn’t possible. Ginny threw the magazine down and walked around the loft.

Quentin Peet had long been celebrated for his knowledge of the drug world, his exposures of those at the top in Cali. She
hadn’t read his recent book,
Green Ice,
but she’d read enough about it to know he’d risked his life to write it Then there had been his most recent scoop. The story
she’d read only the other day about the California couple in drug enforcement, the wife who’d perished in a fire, now thought
to have been set by the husband, because he knew she’d learned he was getting payoffs from the drug czars.

There were millions and millions of dollars involved in the drug business, Peet had been at pains to point out. Who knew if
he wasn’t leading a double life and earning some of those millions for himself? Ginny clutched her throat. She felt she was
choking with fear, but the more she thought about it, the more certain she became.

From what Johnny had told her about his father, he was an
inveterate gambler, always living beyond his considerable means; and as Johnny had said, more than once, “capable of anything.”
Hadn’t Johnny told her only the other day that his father was planning to leave the paper and move to Europe to make a new
life?

He was planning his getaway.

Oh, God, what could she do? How could she go to Johnny and tell him what had suddenly opened her eyes, her mind, her memory?
Johnny, darling Johnny, living, his whole life hoping for his father’s approval. What could she do?

There was a rush of rain against the window, a roll of thunder. A late summer storm. It emphasized how alone, how vulnerable
she was. Johnny wasn’t home, but even if he had been, he was the last person she could call on for help.

Alex hadn’t known for sure who’d been hunting him down, but he’d known she might also be in danger. Poppy’s words came back
to haunt her: “He was scared shitless… knew somebody was after him, although he didn’t have what they wanted anymore.” That
had to mean the Villeneva jewels. And now through Johnny, Quentin Peet knew everything about her role in hiding them.

She had been the one to urge Johnny to ask for his father’s help in finding Alex. She must have confirmed his suspicion that
Alex had the jewels.

And when Peet found out Alex didn’t have them anymore, he killed him. She started to shake. Perhaps he thought she still knew
where they were. Perhaps he’d been encouraging Johnny over the last few days to distrust her, to taint her with suspicion,
so if anything happened to her, it would appear to be all part of the sinister world surrounding Svank. She was the only witness
he had left to worry about He had to be waiting for the right moment to strike.