The Decoy

Synopsis:

First she had to pretend to fall in love.

Then she had to pretend she hadn't…

Claire Rodenburg, a young British actress, pays the rent on her New York apartment the only way she can: as a decoy for a detective agency, entrapping straying husbands. When a client is murdered in macabre circumstances, she agrees to help the police entice the dead woman's husband into revealing whether he's the killer.

But as the operation slowly ensnares its prey, Claire begins to realise she's not the only one pretending to be something she isn't. And as she pursues the shadowy figure of a serial killer across the Internet and through the dark fantasies of a nineteenth-century poet, she has to immerse herself in her role more deeply than she ever thought possible…

On the day of departure, guests are requested to vacate their rooms by noon.

By eleven o'clock the fifth floor of the Lexington Hotel has nearly emptied. This is midtown Manhattan, where even the tourists are on busy schedules of galleries and department stores and sights. Any late sleepers have been woken by the noise of the maids, chattering to each other in Spanish as they come and go from the big laundry cupboard behind the lift, preparing the rooms for another influx of guests that afternoon.

Dotted down the hallway, discarded breakfast trays show which rooms still have to be cleaned.

There's no tray outside room 507.

Each morning, a folded copy of the
New York Times
is delivered to every room, with the hotel's compliments.

In the case of room 507, the compliment has been refused. The paper lies on the mat, untouched.

Consuela Alvarez leaves 507 till last. Eventually, when all the other rooms are done, she can leave it no longer. She taps on the door with her pass key, calls 'Maid', and listens for a reply.

None comes.

The first thing Consuela notices, as she lets herself in, is the cold. An icy draught is blowing through the drapes. She clucks disapprovingly as she goes to the window and hauls on the cord. Grey light floods the room. She bangs the window closed ostentatiously.

The person in the bed doesn't stir.

'You have to wake up now, please.'

The bed clothes are pulled right up over the face, smoothing the body's contours, like something buried under layers of snow.

Consuela has a sudden sense of foreboding. Last year there was a suicide on the second floor. A bad business — a boy hanged himself in the bathroom. And the hotel had been fully booked; they'd had to clean the room and get it ready for the next occupant at five o'clock.

Consuela crosses herself. Nervously, she puts her hand on the bed covers, where a shoulder should be, and shakes it.

After a moment, a red flower blossoms on the white linen, where her hand has pressed.

Consuela knows there's something wrong now, something very bad. She touches the bed again, pressing with just a finger this time. Again, like ink spreading through blotting paper, a red anemone blossoms on the white covers.

Consuela summons all her courage and yanks the bed clothes back.

For a long moment she doesn't move. Then, instinctively, she lifts her right hand to cross herself again. But this time the hand that touches her forehead never completes the gesture: comes down, trembling, to her mouth, to stifle a scream instead.

Her friend hasn't showed.

That's what you'd think if you saw her, waiting on her own in the bar of the Royalton Hotel, trying to make her Virgin Mary last all evening: just another young professional waiting for her date. Perhaps a little prettier than most. A little more confident. A little more daringly dressed. She hasn't come straight from the office, that's for sure.

The bar is packed, and when a table finally becomes free she goes and sits at it. Across the room a young man wearing too much jewellery catches her eye and smiles. She looks away. He says something to his drinking buddies, who laugh briefly before returning to their beers.

'Excuse me?'

She looks up. A man is standing in front of her. He's wearing a suit, but one of an expensive, casual cut that suggests he's something more than the usual corporate drone, its collar lapped by hair that's just a little too long for Wall Street.

'Yes?' she says.

'I'm sorry, but… this is my table. I just went to the restroom.' He points at the glass on the table. 'I left my drink to keep my place.'

Around them, one or two heads have turned curiously in their direction. But there's going to be no confrontation, no overspill of New York stress. The woman is already standing up. She pulls her bag onto her shoulder. 'I'm sorry,' she says. 'I didn't realize—'

The heads turn away again, back to their conversations.

There's a brief shuffle as the man stands aside to let her pass and she moves in the same direction, a fleeting
pas de deux.

Of course, he asks her to stay. Who wouldn't?

'Unless you don't mind sharing,' he says, gesturing at the table.

For a moment, she seems to hesitate — but after all, the bar is crowded, and there's nowhere else to sit now. She shrugs. 'Why not?'

They both sit down again. Surreptitiously, out of the corners of their eyes, they examine each other more closely. She's wearing Donna Karan; a soft black woollen jacket which clings to her slight frame, sets off her dark hair and her pale skin, makes her eyes look more startlingly blue than they really are.

'Are you waiting on someone?' he asks, and his voice has changed subtly: a thickening of interest, of sexual attention. 'Maybe he's been held up by the snow. It's chaos out at LaGuardia. That's why I'm staying an extra night.'

And she smiles to herself, because it's really pretty neat, the way he tries to find out if this person she's waiting for is a man or a woman, while at the same time letting her know he's on his own.

'Looks like I could be here a while,' she says. 'Hey ho.'

'Hey ho,' he repeats. He isn't quite sure what she means by that. 'Let me buy you another one of those, anyway.' He beckons to the waitress. 'What are you drinking?'

'Thanks. A Bloody Mary.'

'And where are you from? I'm trying to place that accent.'

'From Idaho, originally.'

'Really? I never met a girl from Idaho before.'

Something about the way he says 'met' makes it sound provocative, almost sexual, and she smiles. 'But you
meet
a lot of girls, right?'

He grins back at her. 'A few.'

Somewhat to his surprise he finds that they're flirting now, their bodies carrying on conversations of their own as he tells her he's a lawyer, and she says no, surely he's not ugly enough to be a lawyer. In the music industry, he says, and she asks, here on business or pleasure?

Well, he says, hopefully both. He leans back and crosses his legs, smiles an expansive, confident smile. He has time for a little fun, after all.

'Before you fly back tomorrow to your wife and kids.'

For an instant the smile flickers uncertainly. 'What makes you think I'm married?'

'The good-looking ones always are,' she says.

The waitress finally brings their drinks. She's been gone five minutes, and the lawyer gives her a hard time. He's showing off, and the waitress apologizes sulkily, blaming the crowds. She turns away with a little tug at her right ear, almost as if she can pull his words out of it and flick them to the floor. Without breaking her conversation or taking her eyes off the lawyer, the girl who says she's from Idaho thinks,
I could use that.

It's put away somewhere deep, somewhere in the filing system.

The lawyer's name is Alan. He hands her a business card on which his name is written in embossed, silvery letters. She tells him her name is Claire. She apologizes for not having a card. She doesn't carry business cards, she murmurs, in her line of work. An amused smile twitches at the corners of her mouth.

He asks her what she does. 'As little as possible,' she says. She nods at the waitress, who's being harassed by another table now, and tells him she used to do that, before.

'Before what?'

'Before I realized there were easier ways to make a buck.'

Understanding appears in his eyes like a light-bulb.

He doesn't rush it, though. He tells her about some of his clients, back in Atlanta — the famous teenage idol he names who likes underage girls, and the macho heavy-metal star who's gay but doesn't dare to admit it. He tells her, with a hint of emphasis, how much money there is to be made, doing what he does, drawing up contracts for those who are temperamentally unlikely to abide by them, necessitating the services of people like him at both ends, both the commission of the contract and its eventual dissolution. And finally he suggests that, since her friend clearly isn't going to show, they could move on someplace else, to a restaurant or a club, whichever she'd prefer.

'Somewhere… expensive,' he adds, with just a hint of emphasis.

Encouraged by her silence, he says quietly, 'Or we could just get some room service. I'm staying right upstairs.'

'Well,' she says, 'room service can be pretty expensive, too.' She leaves the briefest of pauses. 'If
I'm
in the room.'

He exhales. 'I'm not the only one who's here on business, right?'

Again, that smile pulls at the corners of her mouth. 'You sure worked that one out fast, Alan.'

'I'm a lawyer, after all. It's my job to know when a witness isn't telling the truth.'

'Am I a witness?' she murmurs, and he shakes his head.

'Hopefully more of a participant.'

She watches the waitress pull a pen out of her hair so a customer can sign. Another one for the filing system.

'That trick with the table was pretty neat,' he says admiringly. 'Picking me up right under the noses of the bar staff.'

She shrugs. 'You get to learn these things.'

'So,' he says, leaning forward conspiratorially. 'Just how expensive does room service get around here?' His grin has widened. He is a lawyer, after all. The negotiations are part of the fun.

'How much is it usually?'

He frowns. 'You think I make a habit of this?'

She touches his arm. 'Let's just say you seem to know what you're doing.'

Mollified, he says, 'How does two hundred sound?'

'That's what they charge in Atlanta, is it?'

'For that', he assures her, 'you get a lot in Atlanta.'

'What's the most you've ever paid?'

'Five hundred,' he admits.

'Double it,' she says softly.

'Seven hundred?'

'For a lawyer, Alan, your math is frankly terrible.' She shakes her head in mock sorrow. 'Nice meeting you.'

'OK, OK,' he says quickly. 'We have a deal.'

'What's your room number?'

'Fourteen oh nine.'

'We'll go up in separate elevators. You can catch me up in the corridor. And I'll need half the money in advance.'

He blinks.

'I'll be right ahead of you,' she points out.

'Sure. It's just… isn't this a little public?'

'Which is why I feel safer doing it here. Just put the money on the table, like you're paying the waitress.'

He lays six bills on the table. As they get up to leave, she casually picks up five of them and drops them in her bag.

===OO=OOO=OO===

The tiny elevators leading from the lobby are packed with guests going up to their rooms. 'Fourteen, please,' she says, unable to reach. Someone presses it for her. Alan waits for the next one. He looks impatient.

The elevator stops on the third to let out some guests. She gets out with them and, immediately the doors have closed behind her, turns and presses Down. While the second elevator is coming she gets the Minicam out of her bag and hits Rewind, Play, Rewind, until she hears her own voice say, 'You can catch me up in the corridor.' Then she puts her palm over the lens and presses Record again.

She's in the next elevator now, travelling back down. A couple of models, dressed for a night of clubbing, look at her curiously as she puts the camera back in her bag. She ignores them.

By the time she steps back into the foyer Alan is going up thirteen floors in the slowest elevator in NYC.

Outside it's still snowing. The fire hydrants along the sidewalk are all wearing lopsided white toupees of snow. Claire crosses the street quickly and walks to where a stretch limo is waiting with its engine running. She pulls open the door.

She's about forty-five, Alan's wife, with the kind of jaded but expensive looks that suggest she was part of the music business herself before she started having his children and hosting his corporate dinners. She's sitting very close to Henry on the back seat, shivering despite the warm air blowing from the heaters. She looks terrified.

'Everything OK?' Henry asks.