Psycho Killer (26 page)

Dan had never been anywhere this exciting. He joined the long line, already feeling like a murderer in his shabby corduroys, too small hoodie, and dirty sneakers, surrounded by pretty, tall girls wearing shiny lip gloss and expensive-looking high-heeled shoes. The damp sidewalk actually smelled like perfume.

An hour passed before he reached the enormous bouncer at the door. The bouncer wore a puffy black leather jacket and looked like he could bench press two hundred pounds using only his neck. The beat from that Rolling Stones song Dan’s dad liked thrummed loudly from inside the bar.

“
Uh-ah uh-ah-ah uh-ah-ah-ah

You will be mine, you will be mine, all mine
.”

Dan stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his hoodie, doing his best to conceal the meat cleaver. He was Serena’s knight in shining armor, he reminded himself. Coming to her emotional rescue.

“Hello,” he greeted the bouncer nervously.

“Can I see your ID, please?” the bouncer replied.

Dan was prepared. He handed the bouncer his Riverside Prep ID card.

The bouncer handed it back. “You’re only seventeen. Get the fuck out of here.”

“But I don’t want to drink anything. I’m here to see Chuck
Bass.” Dan’s tongue was basted with bitter bile as he said the words. “He’s a friend.”

The bouncer just stood there, huge and unmovable. “Get the fuck out of here,” he said again.

Dan stepped out of line, his hand clutching the meat cleaver in its kitchen towel bunting. He could just kill the bouncer. His eyes roved down the line of gorgeous, happy bargoers. He could just kill them all. But he wasn’t insane. He didn’t even wish them ill. Chuck Bass was the one he had it in for. He turned and started for the hotel’s main entrance.

The ambulance was still parked outside, lights flashing, its back doors slightly ajar. Inside Dan could just make out the tips of two wildly annoying pigskin shoes, bespoke-cobbled in England by dapper elves for none other than the mighty wanker himself: Chuck Bass.

Dan’s heart soared. Chuck was lying on a stretcher. Was he already dead, having been pecked to death by those big scavenging birds that seemed to be everywhere these days for the simple reason that he was a custom-made-pigskin-shoe-wearing scumbag?

Dan could only hope.

He turned away from the hotel and flagged down a cab, relieved of his duties as an assassin, at least for tonight.

Blair was just getting started.

The Remi brothers were happy to meet her at their gallery.

“I’m Serena’s best friend. We grew up together,” Blair told their gallerist over the phone. “Serena wants to do our portraits together. You know, like with both of us in one picture?”

The Remi brothers were wearing matching navy blue silk
Hugo Boss suits with matching navy blue silk skinny ties and matching matchstick-thin black mustaches. Their hair was shaved to a short black fuzz. One of the brothers, the shorter and gayer one, actually clapped when Blair arrived at the gallery. She hadn’t even bothered to put on clothes—she’d simply thrown her coat on over her body paint and pink satin bathrobe. “I absolutely
adore
your little figure,” he said. “All that body paint. It’s so modern. So buon giorno!”

And you, my dear sir, are so arrivederci.

The gallery was on the ground floor, huge and white, with ceiling-high windows facing the deserted Chelsea street. The walls were hung with the enormous perforated rosebud “portraits” of the Remis’ “Behind the Scene” show. Blair recognized Serena’s right away, displayed on its own, opposite the gallery’s entrance. While Blair pretended to be waiting for Serena, the Remis popped open a bottle of champagne and made a toast.

“To beautiful girls!” they cried in twinly unison.

They were on their second bottle when Blair pretended to receive a text from Serena.

“She says she’s in a cab and she’ll be here in five minutes.” She rolled her eyes dramatically. “Serena’s always late.”

She excused herself to go to the restroom.

“Ah yes,” one of the Remis said. “We always ask that our subjects freshen up before we photograph them.”

Next door to the ladies’ room Blair discovered a closet. In the closet were all sorts of art-hanging supplies and hardware. She found just what she needed to do what she needed to do.

She always does.

The Remi brothers were fiddling with their tripods and
cameras and lights in a small anteroom—their studio—where they photographed their subjects.

“Do you mind removing your clothes so we can adjust the lighting?” one of the Remis asked.

Blair polished off her champagne and smiled obligingly. She made as if to untie her bathrobe, instead reaching in the pocket for the coil of picture wire she had hidden there.

“Wait, do I have something in my teeth?” she asked, walking toward the Polaroid camera on its tripod and jutting out her chin.

The Remis leaned their heads in close to look.

“It doesn’t matter,” the less gay one said. “We’re not photographing your face.”

“I’m aware of that.”

Blair unfurled the coil of wire and wrapped it tightly around both the Remi brothers’ skinny necks. In her deft, perfectly manicured hands the wire became a garrote, crushing their delicate windpipes and choking them in unison. The perky black dashes of their mustaches withered as they gasped their last gasps.

As they died, Blair admired their dedication to wearing only navy blue. She thought she might try it out herself in the spring, variations on a sailor theme from A.P.C., Agnès B, J.Crew, and Armani, with a pair of cute white Christian Louboutin ankle booties to match.

The Remis fell in a lifeless heap at her feet. Their necks still wrapped in wire, Blair dragged them over to the far wall of the gallery and strung them up from the same nail on which Serena’s portrait hung. She turned their dead heads to face each other, their twin bodies dangling—a diptych—over their masterpiece: Serena’s nostril or navel or whatever orifice it was.

Blair stood back to admire her work, a masterpiece in itself. She was pleased she’d stuck with her tennis and was fit enough to kill two grown men at the same time with her bare hands.

And she was only just warming up.

Just before midnight, the taxi pulled up at 994 Fifth Avenue. Across the street, the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art were deserted, glowing eerily white in the light of the streetlamps. Serena stepped out of the cab and waved to Roland, the old night doorman, who was dozing just inside the lobby. One of the cast iron and glass double doors to the apartment building opened, but it wasn’t Roland who opened it. It was Nate, wearing only a pair of boxers and some weird black paint on his face and chest, and looking sort of freaked out.

“Nate!” Serena squealed, genuinely surprised. “Hey, silly. Could you loan me five bucks? I haven’t got enough cash. Usually the doorman helps me out, but I guess he’s asleep.”

Nate gave his credit card number to the bemused taxi driver. He put his finger to his lips and crept up to the front door of the building. Then he knocked loudly on the glass door. “Hello?” he shouted.

“Oh Nate.” Serena laughed. “You are so mean!”

Roland snapped his eyes open and nearly fell off his chair. Then he opened the door for them, and Serena and Nate ran inside and rode the elevator up to Serena’s apartment.

Serena led the way to her room and sat down heavily on the bed. “Did you get my message?” she yawned, pulling off her boots. “I thought you’d come out tonight.”

“I couldn’t.” Nate picked up the little glass ballerina perched on top of Serena’s mahogany jewelry chest. She had the tiniest toes, like little pinpoints. He’d forgotten about her.

“Well, it wasn’t worth it anyway,” Serena sighed.

She lay down on the bed, wondering if Chuck had gone to the hospital with his missing eyelid or if—fortuitously—he’d staggered into the road and gotten hit by a speeding limo.

“I’m so tired. And really drunk.” She patted the bed next to her and slid over to give Nate room. “Come lie down and tell me why you’re not wearing any clothes.”

Nate put the ballerina down and swallowed. Breathing in the scent of Serena’s room with Serena in it made his heart hurt. He lay down next to her, their bodies touching. Nate put his arm around her and she snuggled close and kissed his paint-smeared cheek.

“I was just over at Blair’s,” Nate said.

Serena didn’t answer. She was breathing noisily. Maybe she was already asleep.

Nate lay still, his eyes wide open, his mind racing. He wondered if he and Blair were officially broken up now. He wondered if he kissed Serena right now, full on the lips, and told her he loved her, how she’d respond. He wondered if he’d just gone ahead and had sex with Blair if everything would have been all right. He wondered if this frigging body paint was ever going to wash off his skin and if those creepy vultures were ever going to stop following him.

He cast his eyes around the room, taking in all the familiar
well-loved objects that he’d grown up seeing and had forgotten all about. The kilt-wearing teddy bear from Scotland that sat aristocratically on Serena’s little dressing table. The big mahogany armoire with its drawers half-open and all her clothes spilling out. The little brown burn mark he’d made in ninth grade on the white eyelet canopy hanging from her bed.

On the floor by the door was Serena’s red velvet bag. The contents had spilled out of it. A blue pack of Gauloises cigarettes. A one-hundred-dollar bill. Her BlackBerry. And a cream-colored cashmere scarf with the letters
C.B
. stitched on it in gold, covered in blood and vomit.

Why had she needed to borrow money from him when she had one hundred dollars with her? Nate wondered. And what the hell was she doing with Chuck’s bloody, vomit-soaked scarf?

Nate turned over on his side and Serena moaned softly as her head sank into the pillow. He studied her critically. She was so beautiful, but so full of surprises. It was sort of easy to believe some of the things people said about her.

She slid her arms around Nate’s neck, pulling him toward her. “Come on,” she murmured, her eyes still closed. “Sleep with me.”

Nate’s whole body tensed. He didn’t know if Serena meant just go to sleep, or
sleep with her
, but he was definitely aroused. Any boy in his right mind would be, which is exactly what turned Nate off.

There was something so careless about the way she’d said it. Nate suddenly had no trouble imagining her doing everything he’d heard she’d done. Sex. Murder. Cults. Drugs. With Serena, anything was possible.

A glint of chrome on the floor caught his eye. The clasps of a black violin case. Since when did Serena play the violin?

Nate rolled off the bed and opened the case. An expensive-looking hunting knife lay on the plush blue velvet interior. Dried blood mottled the blade. Beside the hunting knife was a bone-handled switchblade, the kind made it Italy, custom fit for a small hand.

He shuddered. Were the so-called lies and vicious rumors about Serena all true? At least the vultures were scavengers, preying on the already dead. Serena was… Nate didn’t know exactly what she was, but he knew he didn’t like it.

He snapped the violin case shut, stood up, and tossed Chuck’s stained scarf on the pillow beside Serena’s sleeping head. Then, without even looking at her again, he left, slamming the door behind him.

At the sound of the door closing Serena opened her eyes and breathed in the scent of her own barf. Gagging, she threw the covers back and ran to the bathroom. She clutched the rim of her white porcelain sink and heaved into it, her sides aching with the effort. Nothing came out. Serena turned on the shower as hot as it would go and ripped off the clammy multicolored Pucci dress. All she needed was a good hot shower with her favorite Biotherm Aquathermale Spa body scrub, followed by a rubdown with Decléor Aromessence Baume Spa Relax. Tomorrow she’d be good as new.

And ready to kill again.

BREAKING NEWS

The Remi bothers—those French, navy blue–wearing pretty boy geniuses of the art world—were found hanging by their necks in mute argument over one of their masterpieces in their gallery in Chelsea early this morning, where their latest show, “Behind the Scene,” has been all the rage. It is unclear whether the artists’ deaths were caused by suicide or murder. One thing is certain—the Remi brothers join Keats and Basquiat in the sad fate of doomed young brilliance: They will be even more famous now that they are dead.