Third Degree (12 page)

I got in my car and saw that Max was calling.

“You don’t take what I do seriously,” she said.

“Yes I do,” I said as patiently as I could. This was a conversation that we had every so often and that usually ended up with me sitting in a Crime TV conference room watching the pilot of the latest reality show that Max had conjured up.

“No you don’t.” Her voice was more high-pitched than usual. “Fred just told me what you call my new show.”

Uh-oh. “He did?”

“Yeah. ‘Dicks with Tits’? Ring a bell?” she asked. “Nice.”

I needed to have a word with Crawford. I had told him that in complete confidentiality. I know he thought it was funny but he had used supremely bad judgment if he believed that telling Fred was a good idea. Didn’t he know that pillow talk was not to be repeated? “I was just kidding, Max.”

“I don’t make fun of what you do.”

How could you? Being a college professor really doesn’t lend itself to comedy. But being the head of a cable television station that airs such scintillating and highbrow programs as
Juliet McKeever: Paranormal Crime Solver
and
The Ten Most Sexually Depraved Court Cases
did. I did feel bad that I had upset her. Which is how I ended up sitting in a white, unmarked production van across from a very expensive high-rise apartment building on the West Side of Manhattan, watching some Hooters waitresses case the joint. The inside of the van smelled like stale coffee and body odor, both of which I attributed to the remote-camera guy, Jerry, who was the only other person in the van besides me and Max. I had drawn the short straw, so to speak, and had to sit closest to Jerry, who kept his eyes on the monitor on which I could see three young women strutting their stuff up and down the street in front of the building.

“Shouldn’t they be more undercover?” I asked, taking in the tank tops that were stretched thin across the three young ladies’ ample bosoms.

“Do I tell you how to teach?” Max asked. She swiveled in her chair and checked out another monitor that was trained on the inside of the building. “Jerry! There he is,” she said.

A tall, distinguished-looking man of about sixty strode from the elevators toward the doorman’s desk and outside onto the street. The three Hooters waitresses—excuse me, “private investigators”—snapped to attention and got into various stances that indicated their readiness to take down this unassuming-looking man who had not a clue that he was about to be pounced on by three young women.

“I’ve got him, Max,” Jerry said, fiddling with the knobs on his console.

I tried to yawn with my mouth closed but was unsuccessful. Max shot me a look. “Are we keeping you up?”

“No,” I said. “It’s just that I have a lot of work to do when I get home.”

“Let’s just get this scene and then I’ll release you to your precious work,” Max said, her gaze focused on the events playing out on the street next to the van. Jerry turned up the sound and I listened as one of the Hooters waitresses, a tall, athletically built African-American woman in a blond wig, approached the man and asked him where he was going.

“Not Hooters,” he replied.

That was enough to send the Hooters waitresses into a tizzy. They accused him of cheating on his wife, threw out some details about his mistress and her location, and detailed his most recent assignation in graphic detail. I put my hands over my ears when they got to the most salacious parts. I watched as the man’s face went pale under his spray tan.

The “cheater,” as Max referred to him, got a little mouthy with one of the Hooters waitresses and the one with the blond wig took umbrage. It wasn’t long before she had the man pinned to the ground and was whispering something in his ear that none of us could hear. I looked at Max. “Are they supposed to do that?”

“Do what?”

“Manhandle the cheaters?”

Max looked at me, solemn. “They are to do whatever it takes to make these men realize that what they’re doing is immoral and wrong.”

“And get ratings?”

She gave me a look that told me she didn’t appreciate my take on the situation. “Get a tight shot on Queen,” she said to Jerry.

I assumed that Queen was the waitress in the blond wig. The name rang a bell but I couldn’t come up with why. She pulled the man to his feet by his collar, sending him on his way down the street. That was one strong Hooters waitress.

“And cut!” Max called to no one in particular. She clapped her hands together, apparently in a good mood now that they had gotten what they had set out to shoot. It was a reality show and I was naïve enough to think that there were no scenes to be shot and that we had just happened upon this sordid scene. I now knew that I was wrong on that count. Although the target didn’t know that they were going to confront him, Max’s team had done “recon,” as she called it, knowing his every move so that the waitresses could be in position when the moment was right. They knew he’d be leaving his apartment at exactly that time that evening, and hence they’d been able to pull off this entire, elaborate setup. It wasn’t exactly staged, and it wasn’t exactly scripted, but close enough. Max told Jerry to let the girls know that they were done for the evening; the girls were wearing earpieces and Jerry communicated this information to them. They took off in different directions down the street, disappearing without a word as if nothing had transpired in front of the building.

Max asked me if I’d like to get a bite to eat, but having been cooped up in a van with Jerry and having witnessed a rather lurid situation unfold, I told her the truth: I had no appetite. Plus, I had already eaten. Even though that usually didn’t stop me from eating again. She seemed to have forgotten that she had been mad at me and that was a good thing. A mad Max is a scary thing indeed, but like everything else in her life, her mood changes so swiftly that if you just wait it out, she’ll come back around. I got out of the van and took in a deep breath of New York City air, which smelled mountaintop fresh after my having breathed in eau de Jerry for the past two hours.

Seek help before IT IS TOO LATE!

We can help you get out, and more important, GET UP again.

“Get up again?”
I asked. Had I been on the ground and not realized it? I decided that I would hash this out with Crawford once I heard from him about any Kevin developments. I sat on the bed and looked around. My buttinsky cleaning lady, Magda, had been here and the room and its adjacent bathroom were spotless. My underwear had also been rearranged in such a complex pattern of panties, bras, and panty hose that I was sure that Magda had spent a good deal of her time in that drawer looking for what I had no idea. I had eaten dinner. I had no schoolwork. There was nothing to do but wait until it was an acceptable time to go to bed, and checking my bedside clock—which said 8:34—now was not that time.

Time on my hands is never a good thing. I realized when my feet started tapping the ground that I needed to change and get out of the house, if only to walk Trixie for the second time in an hour. Who knew where that would bring me?

Apparently, to the boat slip at the river, that’s where.

Trixie and I often meander and we often end up by the river. It’s beautiful, close to my house, and affords her all kinds of access to things she shouldn’t have but instinctively is inclined to prey upon: birds and fish primarily. Despite the
NO DOGS ALLOWED
! signs that dotted every fifth or so piling along the docks, we haven’t been caught yet, so we continue our illicit evening walks when the mood strikes us. Seeing all of the boats lined up in their individual slips and the beauty of the Palisades on the opposite side of the river at dusk convinced me that we needed to get down to the dock area more often even if that made us scofflaws. My French was good enough so that I could always pull the “je ne sais pas” defense when presented with one of their signs. Trixie was thrilled; nothing better than the smell of murky Hudson water and the idea that gulls might be around to pique her interest.

At the very least, maybe a walk along this tranquil pier would clear my head about everything and give me some insight into where Kevin might have gone. Without telling me. In the middle of the night.

The days were getting shorter, signifying the beginning of school and end of summer, always a bittersweet time for me. Trixie and I walked along the wooden dock in the twilight, my feet making no noise in my sneakers, her nails making their usual rhythmic clicking noise in time to my footfalls. I’m accustomed to carrying a flashlight on my nighttime walks with Trixie, and tonight I had it stuffed into the pocket of my jeans knowing I would need it to navigate our way home. In the dying light, I looked at the names of each boat, admiring their amenities until I settled on one almost at the end of the dock.

The Lydia.

How quaint. And how predictable. I should have guessed that Carter Wilmott’s boat would be named
The Lydia
. When I happened upon it, I stopped, remembering his white foot and the tan line that started a few inches above it; until this moment, I had forgotten that he was an avid boater and kept his boat docked right here. As I took in the craft, I noticed that it was swaying more than slightly in its slip, unlike every other boat, which sat almost stock-still in the very calm Hudson on this humid end-of-August evening. The rocking gave me pause, but as usual, not enough pause to stop me from approaching it, looking out for other sailors in the area. A few boats were missing from their slips, their owners out and about on this nice evening, but being as it was a weeknight, most of the boats were safely fastened to their moorings.

I didn’t know anything about boats, but it was clearly a sailboat with a big motor and an impressive-looking one at that, despite its relatively conservative size compared to the other hulking behemoths in other slips. It was well appointed with a mahogany steering wheel and some really comfortable-looking padded seats. Trixie and I decided that it wouldn’t hurt anyone to step onto the boat and take a load off for a few minutes. I took a deep breath, stepping over the side of the boat, careful not to look at the water, still curious as to why the boat was swaying ever so slightly. Carter was dead. Was Lydia here? I looked down at the water again. Water always makes me nervous. After stepping gingerly onto the deck and taking a quick look around, I sat down, but not before I ran my fingers around the steering wheel, which was stained dark and very shiny and which was very smooth to the touch. Trixie made herself right at home and jumped up onto one of the padded seats and threw herself into a lounging position, head hanging off the side of the bench, tongue almost meeting the floor.

“Make yourself at home,” I whispered to her. She picked her head up and gave me her doggy smile, the one that never failed to make me happy. After I had finished touching every luxurious piece of leather, expensive wood, and shiny granite that was on the boat—and then wiping everything I had touched with the edge of my shirt, realizing, too late, that putting my hands all over everything was a supreme error in judgment—I started down into the sleeping quarters, mainly out of curiosity to see how many people the boat could sleep but mostly to see how the other half lived. As I descended the stairs, I heard a sound from deep within the sleeping quarters and froze. I looked back at Trixie, and while she lifted and cocked her head, she didn’t make a sound, as paralyzed with fear as I was. Or completely uninterested. It’s hard to tell with her.

The door to the sleeping quarters was solid so I couldn’t even peer through a porthole or a little window to see who might be inside. And I didn’t want to. I started back up the stairs, backward, keeping an eye on the door and hoping to make a getaway before whoever it was made their presence known and maybe killed me. I had just reached the top step, my eye trained on the door handle, when I saw it turn slowly. I didn’t waste any more time, grabbing Trixie’s collar and pulling her down, her right claw leaving a giant gash in the seat. The sight of it, stuffing spilling out and creating little puffs in the air, sent me into a mini fugue state and I stood stock-still at the end of the banquette, as close to the edge of the boat as I could get without falling over. When I heard the sleeping area’s door open and bang against the wall of the boat, rocking it back and forth violently, I came to.

Ginny Miller burst from the sleeping quarters and ran up the stairs, seemingly intending to run past me and into the now dark night. One mystery solved. Now if I could just figure out the other various mysteries of life, like why Magda washes white shirts with black socks, I’d be all set. I grabbed the back of Ginny’s tank top and heard it rip, the force of her momentum matching the force of my grip, the whole thing coming off in my hand. She turned to me, red-faced, and bared her teeth. Trixie stood next to me and let out a low growl, which, loosely translated, said, “Back off, lady.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked, genuinely curious.

Ginny had no intention of answering me. Rather, in an action that first surprised and later angered me, she took advantage of the rocking boat and pushed me over the side and into the murky Hudson, where I plunged deep into the water. Me. The nonswimmer. I was fortunate that the boat next to me was out on the river and the gap between Carter’s boat and the one next to it just wide enough so that I didn’t hit my head on the way down. The water was colder than I would have thought, and muddy, something that its glassy surface belied. I held my breath and kept my mouth shut, kicking violently to get to the top. I finally broke through after furious arm and leg activity and swallowed in a gulp of humid air, seeing a blur of red running pants wrapped around an ample behind and pistonlike legs charging down the dock, a golden ball of fur closing in on its prey. I had almost regained my breath and was trying to remember how to tread water when I heard a yelp. I saw Trixie in front of me, a piece of red nylon in her mouth, which she dropped on the dock. Convinced that I was engaged in some kind of fun swimming activity, she launched her body and did a belly flop into the Hudson, emerging slowly and starting a vigorous doggy paddle that made my swimming attempts look ridiculous at best.

My parents had schooled me in a lot of useful endeavors, but swimming was not one of them. I cursed both of them at this moment in French, Spanish, and Mandarin, three languages that they insisted I take as electives in high school.

Ginny was gone by the time I reached the dock; the splashing had attracted a fair amount of attention from the few boaters who were on their docked crafts and I was surrounded by concerned yachtsmen and women of various ages in no time. Two men pulled me onto the dock. One of the younger, stronger men helped me get Trixie out of the water by grabbing her back legs while I struggled to get purchase on her slippery front legs. Once on the dock, she paced excitedly, obviously thrilled that she had given chase and then had the opportunity to take a refreshing swim.

Ginny Miller was in the wind. Whatever regimen she had begun in the wake of those unflattering pictures being posted on DF Matters, it was working. That woman was fast and strong. As the crowd asked after my well-being following my precipitous dip, all I could think about was this strange woman and her relation to the Wilmott family.

I managed to extricate myself from the crowd, whose number had grown to about ten by the time I left. Thankfully, there was nobody among them who recognized me, but they all learned that I was a sad, almost B cup based on my involuntary participation in the wet T-shirt contest. I walked home along streets that were now cast into complete darkness, my flashlight held in my bandaged left hand, Trixie’s leash in my right, a pathetic sight indeed in my sagging, drenched jeans. I thought about Ginny Miller, yet another resident of my quaint village, whom until two days ago I had never laid eyes on. What was she doing on Carter Wilmott’s boat? And why did we keep running into each other? I knew Trixie wouldn’t know the answer to those questions, so there was no point in asking. But there was nothing that I couldn’t figure out while staring into the icy depths of a dry martini in a frozen glass, wrapped in my terry-cloth bathrobe.