I'll Take Manhattan (2 page)

“How could I have forgotten?” he marveled. “You got divorced just before you came through with a major new wardrobe from Saint Laurent.… You never were much of a seamstress, Miss Amberville—those labels you sewed on from Saks were very unprofessional. Will you never learn
that we study the European fashion lines as soon as they’re photographed?”

“Good for you, O’Casey.” Maxi gave him a solemn nod of approval. “I’ll keep it in mind. Meanwhile, could you do me a favor and check out my shoulder bag? I’m in a desperate hurry today.”

“The last time you were in a hurry it was a question of twenty bottles of Shalimar, the two-hundred-dollar size, and the time before that it was a new Patek Polo, the one you were wearing in plain sight on your wrist, thinking no doubt of the story of the purloined letter. It was carved out of solid gold and worth eight thousand dollars, no less. And then, let’s see now, it wasn’t too long ago that there was that little problem of a Fendi mink, the one dyed pink, that you told me was a fun fur from a flea market worth under three hundred dollars. Fifteen thousand bucks in Milan if I remember correctly.” He smiled, pleased with himself. There was nothing like a memory for details.

“The Shalimar was a
gift
,” Maxi objected, “for a friend. I don’t even wear perfume.”

“You’re supposed to include gifts, it says so right here on the declaration,” O’Casey said blankly.

Maxi looked up at him. There was no mercy in those Irish eyes. They were smiling, all right, but not harmlessly.

“O’Casey,” she admitted, “you’re perfectly right. I am a habitual smuggler. I have always been a smuggler and I’ll probably always be a smuggler. I don’t know why I do it and I wish I could stop. It’s a neurosis. I’m sick. I need help. I’ll
get
help, when I have a chance. But I swear to you that this time—this one single time—I haven’t got anything with me. I’m just here on business and I have to get into the city fast. I should be there now, for pity’s sake. Search my bag and let me through.” She spoke imploringly. “Please.”

O’Casey studied her intently. She was so pretty, this chance-taking dame, that he felt his toes curling right down into the soles of his shoes at the mere sight of her face. As for the rest of her, for like all customs inspectors he was trained in the meaning of body language, it betrayed nothing at the moment. God knows what she must be bringing in to be able to stand there so innocently.

“Can’t do it, Miss Amberville,” he said, shaking his head in regret. “Immigration knows about your record, he noted it right there on the declaration, and there is no way I can just wave you on. we’ll have to do a body search.”

“At least look through my bag, damn it!” Maxi demanded, no longer the supplicant.

“Obviously it wouldn’t be there. It’s got to be on you, whatever it is,” O’Casey replied. “You’ll have to wait till a female inspector comes on duty. There should be one here in an hour or two and I’ll make sure she attends to you first.”

“A body search? You’re not serious!” Maxi cried in unpremeditated astonishment. Twenty-nine years of having her own way in almost everything had created a conviction that ordinary rules just did not apply to her life. And certainly nobody did anything to Maxi Amberville without her permission. Never. Never
ever
!

“I’m perfectly serious,” O’Casey said calmly, with a hint of a grin on his lips. Maxi looked at him incredulously. He really meant it, this power-mad bastard. But every man has his price, even Joe O’Casey.

“Joe,” she said, giving a deep sigh, “we’ve known each other for years, right? And I have never been a bad citizen, have I? The United States Treasury is much richer from my fines than if I’d just paid the duty.”

“That’s what I’ve told you, every time I’ve caught you, but you just won’t listen.”

“I’ve never brought in drugs or unpasteurized cheese or a salami with foot-and-mouth disease—Joe—can we make a deal?” Her voice traipsed the range from cajolery to delicate, yet unmistakable down-and-dirty.

“I don’t take bribes,” he snapped.

“I know,” she sighed, “I know only too well. But that’s your problem, Joe. You’re neurotically honest. No, I want to make a trade.”

“What kind of nonsense are you giving me, Miss Amberville?”

“Call me Maxi. I am suggesting the straightforward, honest surrender of a body in exchange for an unnecessary body search.”

“A body?” he repeated blankly, although he had a
clear notion of her intention and the very possibility of such an extravagant bounty was enough to make him forget the uniform he wore.

“A body, my very own, duty-free, welcoming, warm, and all of it, every inch, for you, Joe O’Casey,” Maxi said, casually running one of her fingertips down between two of his fingers without taking her eyes off him. She gave him a look that Cleopatra had invented but Maxi had perfected. The man cracked. She could tell from the way he blushed so deeply that his freckles almost disappeared. “Eight tonight, at P. J. Clarke’s?” she asked, almost casually.

He nodded speechlessly. Dreamily he put a chalk mark on her bag and waved her on.

“I’m always on time,” Maxi flung over her shoulder as she took flight, “so don’t keep me waiting.”

Two minutes later she began to relax as she sat back in the long blue limousine that had been waiting for her, driven by her chauffeur Elie Franc, known as the canniest and swiftest in the city. There was no point in telling him to hurry for nothing on wheels could overtake Elie except a traffic cop and he was too smart to fall into their traps.

With a quick glance at her watch Maxi saw that, in spite of the impossible sluggishness at which airlines and arrival procedures operated, she would manage to reach her destination on time. Only yesterday morning she had been in Brittany, at Quiberon, subjecting herself to the hot seawater bubble-bath regime that was indicated after an unusually hectic summer, when she had received a telephone call from her brother Toby, telling her to get back to New York in a hurry for an unexpected board meeting of Amberville Publications.

Their father, Zachary Amberville, the founder of Amberville Publications, had died suddenly, as the result of an accident, just over a year ago. The company he had left behind was one of the giants of the American magazine business and board meetings were normally planned well in advance.

“Something about this rush makes me nervous, Goldilocks,” Toby had said. “I smell trouble. I heard about it by chance. How come we weren’t notified? Can you make it on such short notice?”

“Absolutely. As soon as I shower off the salt I can get the plane from Lorient back to Paris, spend the night and catch the Concorde while you people are still sleeping in New York. No problem,” she’d answered. And indeed, except for the hitch almost imposed by O’Casey, she would have been early rather than just barely on time.

Now for the first time since the Concorde had landed, Maxi noticed that even though the day was cool for late August it was getting warmer minute by minute. As she took off her jacket she became conscious of something rubbing against her waist, under the belt of her jeans. With a perplexed look she fished inside and drew out a thin platinum chain that she had clasped there not more than six hours before in her favorite suite at the Paris Ritz. Dangling from the chain was an immense black pearl crowned by two plumes of diamonds from Van Cleef and Arpels. Well, bless my soul, Maxi thought as she hung the jewel around her neck. It was glowingly baroque, prodigally opulent and outrageously conspicuous. How could she have forgotten it so totally? Still, a penny saved is a penny earned, she gloated with the triumphant pleasure of someone who has won by cheating at Monopoly.

Elie slammed to a stop in front of the new Amberville Building at Fifty-fourth and Madison. Maxi didn’t wait for him to come around and open the door. Again consulting her watch, she jumped out of the limo and tore through the four-story-tall glass atrium, not noticing the dozens of trees that had each cost the price of a small car, not glancing at any of the hundreds of pots of hanging orchids and ferns. Botany was not on Maxi’s mind as she commandeered the express elevator up to the executive floor and her objective, the boardroom of the empire her father had started in 1947 with one small trade magazine. She pushed the heavy doors
apart and stood stock still, surveying the assembled company with both hands on her hips, her booted legs spread two feet apart, a stance which she had often assumed since she had learned to stand upright. Frequently enough the world was up to something not entirely to Maxi’s liking to justify a basic skepticism.

“Just why are we here?” she demanded of the group of senior editors, publishers, and business managers in the instant of silence that preceded their exclamations of surprise and greeting. But they were as ignorant as she and many of them had rushed into the city from interrupted summer vacations to attend the meeting. The difference was that they had been summoned back officially while Maxi had found out accidentally. Maxi had missed many an editorial board meeting, to all of which she was routinely invited, but it was unheard of that she should not have been informed.

A tiny, exquisite, white-haired man detached himself from the others and came toward her.

“Pavka!” Maxi exclaimed in delight, embracing Pavka Mayer, Artistic Director of all of the ten Amberville magazines.

“What’s going on? Where’s my mother and Toby?”

“I wish I knew. I don’t appreciate rushed trips from Santa Fe, to say nothing of missing last night’s opera. Your mother still hasn’t arrived,” Pavka replied.

He had known and loved Maxi since her birth, understanding that her complicated life was dedicated to extracting the greatest amount of fun that could still be found on the planet Earth. He had watched her as she grew up, and she reminded him of a miner panning for gold, moving feverishly from one claim to another, here hitting an ounce or two of ore, there finding only worthless pebbles and passing quickly on, but forever searching for that vein of pure gold—pure
fun
—that major strike which, so far as he knew, still eluded her. But she believed that it existed, and Pavka Mayer was sure that if anyone were to find it, Maxi would be that person.

“I find this all very strange,” Maxi murmured.

“I too. But tell me, what have you been up to all summer, little girl?” he asked.

“Ah, all the usual—breaking hearts, cutting capers, playboy bashing, not playing by any fair rules, getting up to speed, keeping up with the golden lads. You know about them, Pavka darling; my normal summer games, sometimes winning on the swing and losing on the roundabout, a spot of seduction here and there … nothing serious.”

Pavka inspected her in one experienced art director’s glance. As well as he knew her he was always slightly amazed—and as if he had sustained a small electric shock—by her actual physical presence, for Maxi was, somehow, more real than other people, more
there
. She was only of medium height, somewhere around five feet six inches tall, and her beautifully boned body did not take up a lot of real room, yet she created a vibrating space around herself through sheer mesmerizing energy. Maxi was formed like a great courtesan of the Belle Epoque with a tiny waist, excellent deep breasts and sumptuous hips, yet she was not oppressively voluptuous and the masculine, piratical swagger of her garments only made her all the more feminine. Her surpassingly green eyes, the precise color of Imperial Jade—fresh, brilliant and pure—were unshadowed by any trouble.

Pavka knew that no photograph would ever capture the essence of Maxi because she lacked the ruthless bone structure that a woman needed for photography, but he never tired of looking at her dark straight eyebrows that were always raised in faint surprise over her wickedly undeviating gaze. Her delicately molded nose would have been classic if it hadn’t turned up slightly at the tip, giving her a look of witty alertness, and the white streak in her hair only made her forever-tousled, capriciously falling mass of short thick hair seem darker by contrast. Yet to Pavka her mouth was her most compelling feature. Her lower lip was tenderly curved into a hint of a smile and her upper lip was unabashedly, undeniably bow-shaped, with a tiny beauty spot to the left of its deeply indented center, the mouth of a trueborn sorceress, he said to himself with the well-earned judgment of a man who had successfully loved women for more than fifty years.

Pavka was still admiring Maxi when the boardroom
doors opened again and Toby Amberville walked in. Maxi ran toward him.

“Toby,” she said softly just before she reached him and he stopped in mid-stride and opened his arms to her, pulling her close. For a long, quiet minute she remained clasped to him, lifting up her face to his bent head so that they could rub
noses
. “What’s
going
on, Toby?” Maxi whispered to him.

“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to reach Mother for the last several days. It’s a mystery, but I guess we’re about to find out. You’re looking great, babe,” he added as he released her.

“Says who?” Maxi whispered.

“I do. I smell it in your hair. Your cheeks feel sunburned, high mountain sun, not Southampton. And you’ve put on weight, about three-quarters of a pound, give or take an ounce, right here on your butt. Very cozy.” He pushed her gently away and she watched from the hallway as he continued on into the room, her older brother, by barely two years, a brother who could tell more about her from touching her palms or listening to her say three words, than anyone else in the world.

Toby Amberville was a tall, seemingly tireless man with an absorbed inward-listening manner that made him look older than his thirty-one years. At first glance he didn’t have any particular physical feature in common with Maxi yet there was a similarity in the way in which they both fully occupied the space in which they found themselves. Toby’s mouth, tender and full, seemed to contradict the strength of his chin, the obstinate determination that made him intimidating to many people, in spite of his easy laugh and his robust, healthy handsomeness. He had amber-brown eyes around which lines were beginning to show, lines which, to a casual observer would have been the sign of a man who squinted, a man who was possibly nearsighted and refused, out of vanity, to wear glasses.