The Body In The Big Apple (20 page)

Faith had brought along a little notebook and was scribbling away. Her sandwich arrived. It could have fed an entire Russian village.

“He sounds like a romantic,” she said.

“He
was
a romantic—at least when he was young.
In the beginning. And”—Quinn actually winked—“he certainly was one as far as women were concerned.”

“I've heard that,” Faith said, taking a bite of the whitefish salad. It was smoky, but not too smoky. Delicious.

“You have no idea. The guy was golden. He'd leave one of those demonstrations with his pockets stuffed with women's phone numbers. He was like a rock star. Then the asshole had to go and shoot himself in the foot.”

And you, Faith surmised. Out loud, she said, “The holdup?”

“It wasn't much of a holdup. You understand this was the thing to do in those days—redistribution of the wealth, money to fund the revolution, that kind of thing. Maybe Nate was getting bored with his uptown dinner parties. Maybe he wanted to make a big splash.”

“Or maybe he really believed in what he was doing?” Faith suggested. She was supposed to be a student, after all. An idealistic one.

The agent laughed. “There's always that possibility. In a weird way, I think he thought he could pull the whole thing off. That he was above the law. He'd still be able to live the way he had been living. He would simply add ‘knocking off a bank' to his list of accomplishments.”

He turned to his pancakes. The sandwich had vanished. How did he stay so trim? Hours at the gym? Tapeworm?

“Anyway, he botched it. The other two guys surrendered to the authorities, did some time, and live in Jersey now with mortgages and lawns like the rest of the world there. Fox had to be dramatic and disappear. Not that it didn't help sales, at least for a while. He wrote
his biggest book—you know,
Use This
—when he was on the run.”

Faith had forgotten that Fox had had accomplices. Lorraine had mentioned the driver of the getaway car, too. Were they somehow involved in all this, bearing a grudge against him, perhaps knowing about the tell-all book? But from the sound of it, at least these two were grandfathers growing tomatoes. She filed them away for future thought. She wanted to get Quinn to talk about Lorraine.

“Mr. Quinn—”

“Please, call me Arthur. I'm not that ancient.”

“Arthur,” so be it, “was Nathan Fox ever married?”

“Not that I know of—and I'd know. For one thing, a wife would have wanted to get her hands on the royalties, and no one ever did. There's poor Lorraine, but they were never married. Too bourgeois.”

“Who was she? It could be an interesting chapter.” Faith prodded.

“Let's say interesting, but not favorable to Nate. I saw Lorraine at his service, which reminds me that I was supposed to call her. She was a cute thing years ago. Great smile, lots of energy. Didn't age well. Fox used her like a box of Kleenex.”

Faith hoped she could come up with less tired similes, then remembered she wasn't actually writing a book.

“Why do you say that?”

He sighed. “Lorraine was the eternal coffee maker. She'd do anything for Nate. Went into hiding with him and must have supported him. I always suspected she arranged for the manuscripts and occasional letters to get mailed to South America somehow. I mean, Fox couldn't exactly walk into the post office when his pic
ture was on the wall. She gave up her whole life for him and he didn't give a shit about her. Thought of her as something he was due, the handmaiden to the great man. She had a kid, not Fox's, though. I remember going to his place once, and she was living there with the baby. First thing Nate said when I came in was that the brat—I think his name was Harold, something like that—wasn't his. Lorraine was all teary and thankful that Fox was letting them be with him. She didn't realize that if he could buy a machine to cook, clean, wash, and occasionally fuck him, she'd be out the door.”

Faith concentrated on chewing. It was all she could do to keep from screaming that the woman was dead and shut up. But she had to hear—she had to hear more.

“Kid got in some kind of trouble when he was a teenager. Lorraine called me from a pay phone somewhere and told me she had to have money for a lawyer. Told me to give it to her parents in cash. They lived over in Brooklyn. This explains why the kid never turned Fox in for the reward. Fox must have had something on him. Lorraine, of course, would have died for Fox.”

Did die for Fox, Faith thought dully.

Quinn signaled for his coleslaw and more coffee. “Nate used to joke about Lorraine, compare her to all the women he was screwing—and believe me, there was a long list. In her head, they were Lenin and Krupskaya. In his, they were Lenin and, say, that lamppost over there.” He pointed out the window.

“Weren't you worried that the authorities would find out about giving her the money?”

“Not by that time. At first, everybody who'd ever had any contact with Fox was under surveillance—
phones tapped. All that stuff the feds like to do. It didn't make much sense. Nobody had gotten hurt. It wasn't like he'd killed a cop or something. He didn't even get any money, but they thought he was involved in some of the other nuttiness of the time—the bomb factories, the whole bit. He wasn't, and after a while they must have figured that out.”

“So, it was pretty safe for Fox to start living here?”

“Not as it turned out.”

Faith blushed. It had been a stupid question.

Arthur patted her hand in an avuncular way. “I know what you mean. Yeah, if he hadn't gotten himself murdered, it would have been safe. He used to say he'd been underground all his life, but that was before he really was, and I think he regretted losing his freedom.”

Faith thought about Emma's wistful remark: “Besides, he did so miss leaving the country.”

“At the service, you spoke about a book—one that he said wasn't to be published until after his death.”

“Yeah, he'd been writing to me about this one for years now. I haven't gotten it yet. I really have to get ahold of Lorraine. If Fox was in the city, then she was, too. Probably moved back home. If not, her mother will know where she is. She doesn't have to ship overseas anymore. She can just drop it off.”

Either Quinn was a consummate actor or he had no idea Lorraine wouldn't be mailing parcels of any kind in the future. Or that her mother had died.

“Why do you think Lorraine has the book?”

“It wasn't in his apartment, and crackheads usually don't take reading material. I'm his executor, and the police have given me a list of everything they took out of the apartment. It wasn't on it. They let me look
around, and it wasn't there. Ergo, Lorraine has it—not that any number of people wouldn't love to get their hands on it, from what I understand. Let's simply say he names names.” The agent rubbed his hands together in gleeful anticipation of publishers vying for this last, great book.

Faith pressed further. This remark confirmed her suspicion that Quinn knew exactly what kind of blasting powder Fox had used. “Names? What kinds of names? People in the radical movement?” She was fishing.

Quinn tipped his chair back and grinned. An audience—an attractive one.

“Karen, honey. People don't shell out fifteen dollars to read about hippies and pinkos. In his heyday, Nate traveled high, wide, and handsome in this city—and he was always a boy who kept his eyes and ears open. Plus, pardon my crudeness, his pants. I know for sure that one major figure will be heading for a fall when the book comes out.”

“Who is it?” If you don't ask, you don't get.

Quinn shook his finger playfully and laughed. “How do I know you don't work for the
Post
? Besides, I don't know myself. I have a couple of guesses from what he'd write to me, but nothing for sure. Honest—on my mother's head.”

Faith abandoned this line of questioning. Mother or no mother, he wasn't going to tell her. But at least she had a better idea of what was in the manuscript.

“You said you were his executor, so he left a will?”

“Oh, yes.”

Faith was getting more information than she had dared to hope.

Quinn continued. “Nate was very worried that his
name would be erased by the sands of time, and he left a will setting up the Nathan Fox Foundation to edit his unpublished writings, set up an archive at some institute of higher learning. He was savvy enough to know that he'd have to pay to be remembered.”

“Dessert?” Quinn asked as a wedge of cheesecake dripping with gory cherries was placed in front of him.

“Just some more coffee, please,” Faith answered. Delicious as it was, her meal was beginning to sit heavily—or maybe it was some of what Quinn had revealed that was turning her stomach.

The check arrived, and after a token protest, Faith allowed the agent to pay. Belatedly, she asked him if he'd be interested in her book. That had ostensibly been the whole point of the meeting, hadn't it?

“It's pretty sketchy at the moment—an outline,” she said.

“Sure, sure. I'd like first crack at it. Make it a nostalgia piece. That always goes over big. Don't waste time, though. His current fifteen minutes are going fast. Still, could be a Movie of the Week docudrama in it or one of those biographies on cable.”

Warhol's fifteen minutes of fame. Fox had had considerably more, but the agent was right. A year from now, few would remember and even fewer care.

 

On the way back to work, Faith's mind was filled with all the questions she should have asked. Quinn had been voluble, but was it to keep her from asking other questions? Questions about Arthur Quinn? She'd never even gotten him to speculate on who had killed Fox, although his remark about “crackheads” suggested he had bought into the robbery theory—or wanted people to think he had. To preserve her credibility as a possi
ble client, she should have asked him who else he represented, where his office was, what his percentage was. She'd call and suggest another meeting, insistent this time that it be at his office—if he had one.

There was no question that this posthumous book, incendiary or not, would sell better than recent books by Fox. Natasha's bookstore was crammed with remainders, and Faith was sure his titles weren't on the shelves at Barnes & Noble. Quinn seemed so familiar with the manuscript, maybe he already had it and was biding his time, waiting until the investigation into Fox's murder was on a back burner. Maybe Fox
had
been killed in a robbery attempt and then his agent found the manuscript in the apartment. Or maybe Quinn had gotten it from Lorraine—gotten it after turning the key in her car's ignition and closing the garage door. Faith shuddered. How did it all connect to Emma? To the blackmail? How much did Quinn really know about the life of Nathan Fox?

One thing was clear after this lunch—and it wasn't the half-sour pickles faintly starting to repeat on her. What Lorraine Fuchs had learned from Fox's book was that her idol didn't merely have feet of clay, but an entire body—with a heart of stone.

 

Chat had hired a jazz combo. “I know it's not in keeping with the theme, darling,” she told Faith, “but if I hear one more ‘Hey, nonny, nonny' madrigal, I'm going to toss my crumpets.”

The combo was setting up and Faith took one last look at the room. She'd done pyramids of red pomegranates and dried hydrangea sprayed a glittering gold, trailing heavy satin ribbons from top to bottom—all set in verdigris urns. She'd used yards more of the ribbon
on the pine swags and cones dusted with artificial snow that decorated the mantel and doorways. A table in the hall held a simple flat containing dozens of deep crimson tulips—new, pale green grass carpeting the surface of the soil. Chat had a standing order at Mädderlake, and they had outdone themselves for the party with this hint of spring, plus the wonderful overflowing vases of Christmas blooms—from large, lush amaryllis trumpets to tiny, tight snow-white ranuncules—throughout the apartment.

The buffet was Lucullan enough for any Falstaff—its centerpiece a cornucopia of clementines, lady apples, Seckel pears, and holly entwined with garlands of small gold beads. To complete the decor, Faith had filled the large room, which stretched the full width of the spacious apartment, with candles—votives, candles in candelabras, tall, thick altar-type tapers.

Up this high, there was no need for privacy, so Chat's windows were bare, framing views of the city that changed with each passing season, each passing hour. Now the night sparkled—a gleaming white crust of snow covering the park, tiny lights in the bare branches of the trees surrounding Tavern on the Green. Then there were the lights of the avenues, buildings, bridges, stretching as far as the eye could see. The Chrysler Building with its Art Deco curves and the Empire State Building still pierced the heavens, despite the manic building boom on all sides. The Empire State Building sported seasonal red and green lights—gaudy, like the trappings of the city below, always too dressed up to sleep.

The doorbell rang. The combo started playing Coltrane. The party had begun.

Chat was ecstatic. “You're a genius, my sweet. Only
twenty or so people have raised what they call my ‘defection' or, alternatively, ‘the flight to Jersey.' You've turned what could so easily have descended to bathos into a madcap celebration instead! I'm booked until next fall with weekend guests!” Faith knew her aunt had been anxious about the party and the aftermath. The apartment had been sold. There was no turning back. She loved her friends—and New York. She simply wanted to try something different.

Faith thought things were going pretty well herself. No need to mention the pâté that crumbled to pieces when they started to slice it—she had extras. No need to mention the comments made to Faith about Chat's move to New Jersey: “Surely London would be more simpatico—and convenient.”