The Man Who Lived by Night (20 page)

“Explain yourself.”

“I didn’t want to be a bother.”

“Try again. Martyrdom is not your style.”

“You’re right. Okay. I didn’t ask you because I knew you’d say no and I’d give in to you, because I love you. Okay?”

She sorted her way through that one quietly for a moment. “Well … I suppose there’s a kernel of honesty in there somewhere. Which is more than I can say for someone else I know. Or should I say used to know”

“Meaning?”

“The marriage is quite dead. We drove the stake through it over dinner.”

My heart rate definitely picked up. “What happened?”

She sighed. “Nothing happened. I’m simply fed up with him blaming me for his problems, and with me blaming me. Not that I’m totally blameless, but at least I work at it. I try. He won’t. He’d much rather look for excuses and villains. He can look elsewhere from now on. He’s flying back to New York tomorrow. He’s agreed to move out of the apartment immediately.”

“Where is he now?”

“He checked into a hotel for tonight.”

“Not Blakes, I hope.”

“It hurts, darling. Something awful.”

“I won’t be a total hypocrite and say I’m sorry it didn’t work out for you two. But I am sorry you’re suffering.”

“I came home from dinner in tears. All I wanted to do was hold my poor wounded sweetness.”

“I needed her too. Sorry. Bad timing.”

“When can I have her back?”

“Depends on the terms.”

She was silent a moment. “I’m considering a package deal.”

“Well, well. I guess this means I’m going to have to buy you a Christmas present.”

“It most certainly does. Hoagy, darling?”

“Yes, Merilee?”

“Can we … can we make it work this time?”

“Of course we can. We’re gifted, remember? We can do anything.”

I hung up and settled back in the pillows with a contented sigh. Then I patted Lulu and reached for my book. Before I could open it I heard a rustling out in the hallway.

Lady Vi was going out early for her spanking.

When I heard her door shut I followed her to the top of the stairs and listened after her, just to make sure she wasn’t scampering down to the kitchen for some warm milk and coming right back up. Silence. She’d gone outside by way of the pantry door. Good. Now was my chance.

I’d learned that she kept the door to the blue room locked when she wasn’t in it. I’d also learned that Pamela kept copies of all of the room keys in a drawer in the kitchen. I had liberated the blue room key while Pamela was busy fixing Lulu’s kippers. It was a big old-fashioned skeleton key. The lock was the kind you peep through. I let myself in.

The blue room wasn’t exactly your typical room. For one thing, it wasn’t blue—Violet bad covered the walls and ceiling with roll upon roll of aluminum foil. A nice decor statement if you want to feel like a Perdue oven stuffer-roaster. For another thing, there was very little in the way of furniture. A mattress placed directly on the floor minus box spring and frame. A dancer’s bar bolted to one wall. A dressing table with a three-way mirror on it. There was nothing else. I headed for the dressing table.

She kept her loot in the bottom drawer. Here I found various wallets she’d stolen—one belonged to some Lord who owned a record company, another to the lawyer, Jay Weintraub, complete with credit cards and photos of his racehorses and two ugly kids. Violet had a thing for gold. Gold cigarette lighters, rings, bracelets, and coke spoons were heaped in the drawer. There was also a particularly lovely eighteen-carat gold Waterman fountain pen that I considered pocketing and returning to its rightful owner—me. But I thought better of it. I didn’t want her to know I’d been in here.

Underneath all of this, I found what I was looking for—snapshots. Tulip’s snapshots. The ones Violet had made off with that time Tulip caught her messing around in her photo album.

The odds were not great that the photo that Tulip’s killer had come for hadn’t been in the album, that it had been right here. It was a long shot. But those are the ones to play—that’s where the big payoffs are.

There was a snapshot of Tris and Rory sitting at a nightclub table with Brian Jones and Keith Richard—drinking, smoking, all of them looking incredibly young and arrogant. On the back Tulip had scrawled “Ad Lib Club, Oct. ’65.” There was one marked “Bournemouth, Aug. ’66.” Tris and Rory were on the beach, shirtless, comically flexing their puny biceps at the camera. Another, dated July ’67, was of Tris, Rory and Derek feeding the bears in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens. And then there was another that …

There was another that was
it—
the photo I’d been looking for. The photo Tulip’s killer had been looking for. The one that pulled it all together. Yes, it all fit now. Horrifyingly. So horrifyingly that I almost couldn’t believe what I was looking at. But there it was, plain as can be. The truth.

The trick was going to be proving it.

I
’LL GIVE T. S.
this—when he went social there was nothing small or shabby about it.

Delivery vans came and went for days before his party, crammed with cases of liquor, produce, meats, cheeses—enough to stock the QE2. Pamela directed the traffic, signed the slips, barked out orders, bartered. The last thing to arrive was a two-story-high spruce Christmas tree that rolled up to the front door on its own truck bed. It took a half dozen workmen to get it inside the mammoth grand ballroom and hoist it up. Tris’s bodyguards were the ones who decorated it, twisting around on top of extension ladders as freely as their balance and their shoulder holsters allowed.

Everyone came. Bingo was there with his wife Barbara Bach. So were the McCartneys, Paul and Linda. Paul had gotten so cherubic he’d have made a fine Santa Claus. George Harrison, meanwhile, was starting to resemble Christopher Lee, the cadaverous British horror movie star. Keith Richard came with Patti Hansen, speaking of horror movies. Roger Daltrey came with short hair. Rod Stewart and Kelly Emberg were there. So were Steve and Eugenia Winwood, John McEnroe and Tatum O’Neal, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Ron Wood, Stevie Nicks, David Bowie, Michael Caine, Joan Collins, Pelé. Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall were not there. Andy and Fergie were. The press were kept out.

It was all quite civilized. The women wore shimmering gowns, the men raffish dinner clothes. The rough boys and girls had grown up. At least they had on the surface. Greeting them at the door were their host and hostess, T. S. and Violet. Tris was unusually charming and animated. He’d obviously had some chemical help. Vi was in a flirty, mischievous mood, which didn’t bode well for Jack’s evening. Neither did her outfit. She had on a black leather miniskirt, black boots, and a black leather vest. The vest was unbuttoned, and there was not a thing under it, unless you count the snake tattoo decal on her stomach. T. S., in contrast, was all in white—white suit, white shirt, white tie, white shoes.

I stuck with my basic tux. I never mess with a good thing.

“You don’t do this sort of thing badly,” I told T. S., when there was a brief lull in the arrivals.

“Thank you, Hogarth,” he replied brightly. “Feels good to party again. Too much quiet is bad for a rocker’s soul.”

“You were right—all you had to do was pick up the phone.”

He grinned at me, his eyes beady. Speed? Very likely. “Indeed,” he said, “Indeed.”

A stage had been set up in the colossal ballroom next to the big tree. On it a piano, organ, guitars and drums waited to be played. On long tables there were hams, turkeys, roasts, salads, puddings waiting to be devoured. I noticed a small shadow under the table where the bowl of jumbo shrimp was. Lulu was guarding it. Anytime someone approached it she would growl softly at them from under the table. The guest would frown, look around warily and then move on. No one had dared to touch the shrimp yet.

Jack was behind the bar in a red vest and green-and-red bow tie, dispensing punch and champagne, and keeping a protective eye on his feral young lady love.

Derek Gregg arrived with his companion, Jeffrey, both of them in maroon velvet dinner jackets. Jeffrey headed off to get them punch, leaving the former Us bassist alone with me for a moment.

“Quite a little coming-out party,” Derek observed drily. “And such a cozy room.”

“Something of a departure for him, it would seem.”

“That’s your influence,” Derek said.

“My influence?”

“Yes. You’ve helped pull Mr. Cigar out of his shell. He’s no longer afraid to show himself to people. You really ought to think about psychiatry, Mr. Hoag. As a career, I mean. You do amazing work.” Derek shot a glance across the room. “Oh, dear, my Jeffrey’s getting jealous. Will you excuse me?”

Marco Bartucci, the human teapot, came with two Middle Eastern gentlemen in dark blue suits, neither of whom he bothered to introduce me to. “Surprised to see me here, Mr. Hoag?” he asked, shaking my hand wetly

“A little.”

“It’s as I told you—we are all mates now. Life goes on.”

“For some of us.”

Marco mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. “Yes. The lucky ones.”

“Meaning the ones who don’t get caught?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “I’m afraid I still don’t much care for you, Mr. Hoag.”

“Give me time. I’m an acquired taste, like raw oysters.”

“Raw oysters make me quite ill. Slimy things.”

“Funny, I should think you’d take right to them.”

He bristled and stormed off. I really was going to have to work harder on my party chatter.

The guests provided the entertainment. Nothing formal. Just impromptu sessions among friends. Winwood, Clapton, Derek Gregg and Ringo fooled around up there for a while with “Louie, Louie,” capping it off with an inspired rendition of Winwood’s old Spencer Davis hit, “Gimme Some Lovin’.” McCartney straggled up there after Derek relinquished the bass. Then George Harrison was up there, too, chopping off some guitar chords. I peered closely at the stage and counted heads twice. No mistake—the three surviving members of the Beatles were performing “Twist and Shout” in Tristam Scarr’s ballroom.

I don’t usually like big parties, but this one wasn’t terrible.

Merilee drove out in a borrowed car with a friend. They got there late, since they’d both been on stage that night. Merilee wore a new strapless black dress and her pearls. Her hair was piled atop her head in a Victorian-style bun, accentuating the strong beauty of her neck and bare shoulders. The friend was done up head to toe just like a twenties flappers. She didn’t look even a bit silly.

“Hoagy darling, this is my friend Diana,” Merilee said! “She’s doing that Sondheim musical, and it turns out we have the same leg waxer and hate the same people.”

Diana’s hand was strong and cold, her smile radiant. I smiled back and said absolutely nothing, which I’d learned was the best way to avoid making a fool of myself whenever Merilee introduced me to an actress I’d had an adolescent crush on. It was hard to believe it had been more than twenty years since Diana Rigg played Emma Peel on
The Avengers.
She looked the same. I lie. She looked better.

I got them champagne from Jack, who was so distracted he didn’t even notice me—Vi was on the dance floor hanging all over Steve Stevens, Billy Idol’s guitarist. Poor Jack. I turned away, ran smack into Chris Reeve. Poor me. I had to listen, at length, to how he’d been puzzling over Superman’s motivation in a scene they’d filmed that day.

“Superman has no motivation,” I finally broke in. “He’s a comic book character.”

He weighed this a second. Then he thanked me profusely and charged off, nodding excitedly to himself.

Maybe I
was
getting better at party chatter. “Show me the maze, darling,” Merilee begged me when I returned. Diana had wandered off. I found something useful to do with her champagne. “Don’t you want to meet T. S. first?”

“Later.”

“We’ll get lost,” I warned.

“We’ll take Lulu—the vet said she should be exercising.”

“Don’t be mean.

“Who’s being mean?”

I found Merilee’s mink and my trench, and dragged Lulu away from the shrimp bowl, limping and protesting mightily. It was cold and crisp outside. Lulu trailed way behind us as we crossed the lawn, grousing vocally I had to urge her on with promises of unlimited shrimp, crab legs, lobster bisque. Floodlights ringed the maze entrance. I pulled up there.

“You’re sure you want to go through with this?”

“Absolutely,” Merilee replied.

We headed in, her hand on my arm, Lulu limping along behind. After two turns we’d all been swallowed up by it.

“Have you bought my present yet, darling?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Goody. Can I have it tonight?”

“It’s not Christmas yet.”

I thought I heard a rustling sound in the hedge next to us.

“But this is a Christmas party,” she argued. “Kind of”

It
was
a rustling sound. We were not alone. Someone was in the maze with us. Lulu heard it, too. She growled softly, moved up closer behind us. Merilee seemed not to have noticed. I took her hand, in case we needed to make a dash for it.

“Then tell me what you got me,” she pressed.

“No.”

“Please?”

“Merilee, I’ve never known anyone as kidlike about Christmas as you are.” I glanced over at her. “You get anything for me yet?”

“We adults don’t discuss such things,” she replied, sticking her tongue out at me.

I heard it again. Louder. Next to us. This time Lulu charged, teeth bared, growling ferociously. It was a bunny wabbit. She chased it down the gravel path, limping not one bit, until it disappeared under the hedge. She barked a couple of times for good measure, then strutted back toward us, immensely pleased with herself. As soon as she got within ten feet of us she put the limp back on.

“Why, that little faker,” marveled Merilee.

“I think she’s been around the theater world too much,” I observed.

“This is nice in here, isn’t it? Let’s buy a country place when we get back and plant one just like it.”

“Consider it planted.”

We continued strolling. As far as I was concerned we were seriously lost now.