Deadly Rich (56 page)

In the hour since sunset all Zack’s hopes and plans had dissolved in a kind of slow motion and now, suddenly, they weren’t part of him anymore. It was obvious that Gloria Spahn was not going to keep their date.

When he lifted his gaze to the silvergray skyline, he saw a city that was no longer worth owning.

He lifted a half-empty bottle of Stolichnaya from the terrace floor.

We could have been enjoying this Stoli.

He took a long, stinging belt of vodka from the bottle. He rose unsteadily from the chair and crossed the terrace. Inside the house he stepped into a bedroom decorated in muted tones of brown and red. He stared at the canopied bed.

We could have been enjoying that bed.

In the little bathroom, silver-backed brushes and mirrors and combs had been laid out on the little counter by the sink.

From his pocket he brought out the jeweler’s box. He set it on the sink. He felt his pockets again and brought out a pillbox of uncut Bolivian flake.

We could have been enjoying this coke.

He dipped a coke spoon into the white powder. He fed one nostril, dipped the spoon again and fed the other. While his head orbited, he braced himself against the tiled wall and took a long, messy piss.

A dish of lemon-shaped soaps sat on top of the commode, scenting the air. He took one of the soaps and washed his hands. As he put the soap back he accidentally knocked the jeweler’s box. It clattered to the floor.

Zack stood swaying, thinking about bending over and picking the box up. As he ran all the steps through his mind, he felt an exhaustion greater than any he had ever known.

No, he decided. He wouldn’t bend. He wouldn’t stoop. Leave it there. He’d done enough for her.

AT QUARTER PAST ELEVEN
, the question Gloria Spahn was trying to resolve was this: Can the same eighteen-thousand-dollar cocktail dress attend a
thé dansant
in Cleveland at four-thirty in the afternoon, enjoy a presymphony lunch in Chicago at twelve-thirty the next day, and reach San Francisco in time for eight o’clock dinner at the Bohemian Club?

The answer, if the girl fielding phone calls for United Airlines weren’t such a bimbo, would have been and should have been
yes.

“I’m still entitled to forty-four-hundred miles on my frequent-flyer discount,” Gloria told the girl.

“I understand, ma’am.” The girl had a strong Texas accent that almost
smelled
of barbecue. “But that’s a personal frequent-flyer account you’re quoting.”

“It’s a company frequent-flyer account. I never fly
anywhere
personally.”

“I’m sorry, but unless you yourself are flying we cannot prepay this booking on that account.”

Gloria was speaking into the cellular phone. It allowed her to go from room to room, shutting off lights. “I’m not getting off this phone till you give me a confirmation number for this reservation.”

“Then you’re going to have to give me the number and expiration date of a valid major credit card
and
the name of the person who will be flying.”

“I don’t
know
who’ll be flying.” Gloria repinned a linen jacket sleeve on a tailor’s dummy. “It’ll be someone from my office.”

“FAA regulations do not permit us to reserve seats on flights without the passenger’s name.”

Gloria had ordered in a
timbale de légumes,
a cold half of applewood-smoked chicken and a split of Piper. She rewrapped the uneaten portion of the chicken and slipped it into the refrigerator. “They’ve allowed it for the eight years that I’ve been flying my messengers United.”

“Would you care to open a messenger account with us?”

Gloria rinsed the empty Piper bottle and put it in the rack beside the sink to drain. “I would care to speak with your supervisor.”

A Texas sigh came across the line. The phone began serenading her with Muzak.

While Gloria waited she neatened her desk. The employees had gone home at six, and she was the last to leave today. She often worked best in the evening, when she could work uninterrupted.

A voice cut into “Begin the Beguine.”

“May I help you?”

Thank God—a man. “I know you could and I wish you would. This is Gloria Spahn, of Gloria Spahn Designs, Ltd.? I’d like a confirmation number on a reservation.”

One minute and eighteen seconds later Gloria laid the phone in the recharging unit on her desk. She had her confirmation number, and the dress was set to fly Monday with a frequent-flyer discount.

She took one last look around the office to make sure she hadn’t left anything running that shouldn’t be. She crossed the showroom, tapped her code into the burglar alarm, turned off the lights, and let herself out.

In the hallway she pushed the elevator button. There were two elevators, and neither of them came. She pushed again, leaning hard on the button this time. Elevators were like people: It didn’t pay to treat them subtly. Somewhere down the shaft she heard a buzz.

Two other businesses—Saul MacGuire Skin Care and Marianna Cosmetics—shared the floor with Gloria Spahn Designs, Ltd. There were no lights under either of their doors. Gloria checked her watch. The little platinum watch hands formed a tilted right angle that spelled eleven-twenty.

Gloria felt proud of herself. She hadn’t wasted a thought on Groton, or Stanley, or the ex-Mrs. Siff, for more than four hours.

She leaned an ear against the door of the north elevator. The machinery could have died and gone to heaven. Not even a hum.

She listened at the door of the south elevator. The loudest sound was her own heartbeat.

She pushed the button and waited, waited and pushed the button.

What the shit is wrong with these elevators
?
With the service fees we pay the contractor, they can’t both have crapped out at once …

But obviously they had done exactly that.

Gloria considered her options. No one was going to come to her rescue at this hour. She was the last person on the floor, possibly the last person in the building. From the ninth floor to street level was a walk down eight flights of stairs.

“Fuck.”

She went around the bend in the corridor to the service stairwell. A sign on the door warned:

EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. WARNING. ALARM WILL SOUND. NO REENTRY FROM STAIRWELL ALL DOORS ARE LOCKED EXCEPT GROUND STORY.

She pushed through the door. The alarm activated. It made a deafening sound, like the gargling of an electronic mouth.

With one hand holding the door open, she peered over the iron banister down the well.

The lights were out on one of the floors below.

Do I really want to do this
? she wondered.

She thought about having the bed to herself all night.

I really want to do this.

She let the edge of the door slide off her fingers. It shut with a soft, air-braked slam. The alarm stopped. Silence fell like the drop of a blade.

Muggy, foul-smelling air stagnated around her.

She began walking. Her shoes clicked on each steel step, sending out a little tap that triggered an avalanche of echoing taps.

Halfway down the flight she wobbled. Two-inch heels, she realized, were not the best equipment for this hike. She attached a hand to the railing.

She passed the eighth-story landing.

Then the seventh. The sixth.

As she approached the fifth she saw that it was here that the lights were out. She looked over the banister and saw that there was no light below her.

That struck her as wrong. When she had looked down a moment ago, hadn’t the lights been out on only one floor?

With slow, echoing taps she passed from light into twilight. She gripped the banister tighter. As her steps took her deeper into darkness, she had more and more trouble seeing her feet and estimating how far down
down
was.

Her left foot completely missed the next step, swinging out into emptiness. The rest of her followed in a sickening lurch. She grabbed for the handrail.

She landed hard on her left assbone. A pain shot through her butt that was like a flash of blue in front of her eyes.

She tried to pull herself up. First problem: Where was the rest of her? A throb in her right ankle told her that her leg was somewhere in front of her, twisted very, very wrong.

Using the banister as a crutch, she pulled herself to half standing.

As she put weight on her ankle she saw red flashes. The pain was so much worse than anything she’d expected that she wanted to scream.

Shit. Double shit.

She realized she actually had screamed.

Shit … shit … shit
… The syllable bounced like a pebble ricocheting off the walls of the dark well, pursued by
Double shit … double shit
…
double shit …

She lowered herself to the step. Both hands explored slowly down the leg. When they reached the ankle they found a hard, stinging edge of cartilage where she had never felt a hard, stinging edge of anything before.

She sighed.

“All right, God, you made your point. I should have gone to Groton.”

After a few minutes she levered herself forward, bracing with the left leg. When she was far enough out, she lowered her butt to the next step. She sat catching her breath. Her mouth was parched and her heart was pounding.

She levered herself out again, down to the next step.

This
, she realized,
is going to take all fucking night.

Somewhere in the darkness above her an air brake exhaled.

She looked around. A door thudded softly.

“Who’s there? Is someone there?”

The word
there … there … there …
echoed around her.

Nothing moved.

She lowered herself another step. She thought she heard the tap of a footstep.

“Hello,” she sang out. “Is there a Good Samaritan somewhere around here?”

New dimensions in wishful thinking,
she reflected.

She lowered herself two more steps. And another two. And then she rested, trying to catch her breath.

Something slid into her mind, just beneath the threshold of awareness. She tried to bring it up into consciousness.

Her eyes circled the darkness.

What
? she wondered.
What’s wrong
?

Her instincts were flashing her a warning.

What am I hearing
?

She turned her head and squinted. The darkness seemed to be waiting for her, holding its breath …

The breathing
, she realized.
That’s not me. I’m holding my breath.

Someone else was breathing.

Her ears strained to localize the sound. It seemed to be coming from no more than six feet away, up the stairs behind her.

The breathing stopped.

The seconds ticked by, crawling like cockroaches over her skin.

She heard three distinct taps. Three distinct footsteps. Each one closer, each one setting off a cascade of fading echoes.

“Please,” she said. “Don’t hurt me.”

Two more taps.

Now he was standing on the step directly above her. She could feel his body pushing out a heat that was different from the heat of the stairwell.

“I have money,” she said. “I’ll pay you. Let me go.”

A man’s voice said two words. “Stupid bitch.”

Something stranglingly powerful went around her and jerked her upward, up to her feet and then up higher. A
whoosh
came through the air, stinging hotly across her throat, and then a second
whoosh
, another sting.

Out of nowhere hot water gushed down the front of her dress.

That’s impossible
, she thought, her mind flailing in denial.
This isn’t happening. There’s no hot water here.

But each
whoosh
cut deeper, and with each unbearable sting she realized that it truly was happening, and
she
was the hot water.

“BUT WHEN YOU TAKE A LOOK AROUND
,” Tori said, “you have to know the city is in trouble.”

“But darling,” Kristi Blackwell said, “that’s only part of the story. Why not get people’s minds off all the mess?”

Tori shook her head. “That’s like putting Scotch tape over the cracks in a crumbling building.”

They had come, finally, to the end of an all-right meal at what struck Tori as a barely all-right new TriBeCa restaurant. She was on automatic pilot, trying to keep conversation going and at the same time swiveling in her seat and trying to signal the waiter for the check. All evening long she had felt Zack’s unexplained absence like a nagging ache.

“New York may be crumbling,” Kristi Blackwell said. “But this restaurant certainly is not. It’s thriving. And everyone here tonight is thriving. Look around you. I see the two top decorators in Manhattan sitting three tables away. The Eastern Seaboard’s most important philanthropist is entertaining eleven over there. Three top couturiers are here tonight, Bunny Dexter is over there with Claus von Bulow—and isn’t that Julia and Marty? Have they reconciled? This is, to put it bluntly,
the
hot spot. And it’s just as real and just as important as any slum or abortion clinic or crackhouse in this city.”

“But it’s not,” Tori said. “The slums and the crackhouses in this city could wind up destroying us.”

“And if I saw the prices on that menu correctly,” Kristi Blackwell said, “so could this restaurant!”

Kristi’s husband Wystan burst out laughing. “Touché, Kristi—touché!”

The waiter finally brought the check, snugly hidden inside a handsome Florentine leather folder. He set it on the table at Tori’s right hand.

The protocols of cool forbade Tori’s opening the folder and seeing how much was to be paid. In this age, in this social set, you simply slapped a charge card down and signed whatever came back. Anything else suggested that you doubted the restaurant’s addition or your own credit.

But she had expected Zack to be here to pay for tonight’s meal, and she tried to recall which of her cards left her the greatest leeway. American Express had no limit—on the other hand, that was the magazine’s card, and the magazine was three months behind on its accounts payable.