Slugfest

It was hard to believe she’d just leave. Did she decide she looked hideous in her stained dress and go home to change? Women have done crazier things. I’ve changed my clothes in elevators on my way out. Maybe she was still in the lounge talking to one of those “big pencils.” But even then, wouldn’t she drag the buyer back to her booth to close the sale?

“She did this on purpose,” Russ said. “She’s always complaining that she does it all. I do plenty. She knew I needed to be somewhere tonight, but she resents my trying to leave the business. She saw me here and knew I wouldn’t leave the booth deserted. She let me do all the work out of spite.”

“I don’t think so. She was very excited about this evening. You might want to call security to make sure she’s okay. Someone had an accident on an escalator here the other day.”

After a brief, testy exchange on the phone, Russ sucked it up and resurrected his charm, but only when someone was within ten feet of Nikki’s booth. He was effective when he wasn’t fuming and glaring at his cell, willing it to ring. What did I know? I was rusty in the relationship department. Maybe she had seen him and stayed away. Between the Anzalones and this couple I was feeling good about being single.

Two browsers, well dressed and drinking, were gently spinning one of Primo’s wind devices, so I excused myself and turned on my smile. “May I tell you about the artist?”

Over the course of the next two hours, floor lamps, tufa troughs, urns, four of Primo’s smaller pieces— including the wind device—and countless pinecone nightlights were taken away or tagged with sold stickers. Only the mini Niagara fountains remained untouched.

At 7:45 P.M., an announcement came over the public address system that the reception was ending. I crouched down and pulled aside the blue polyester drape Velcroed to the folding table to retrieve Garland Bleimeister’s bag.

It was gone.

David, Aaron, and I scoured the area, but the kid’s bag was nowhere to be found. “Maybe someone moved it.”

“Who’d move it?” David said. “You know how neurotic some of these people are. And the cleaning staff knows better than to touch anything.”

Just the same I looked underneath the tables on both sides of the booth and behind the backdrop curtain. No bag, just knocked-down cardboard boxes and two cases of Trader Joe’s water.

“Afraid we’ll have a dry spell?” Aaron asked.

“Go ahead, laugh. I can’t bring myself to spend five dollars for a bottle of water, even when someone else is paying for it. It threatens my self-delusion that we’re living in a rational world.”

“Wow. Glad I asked.”

“Here. Hydrate.” I pulled two bottles from the opened case and tossed them to David and Aaron.

“Do you think he picked it up when you weren’t here?”

“Like when? I’ve been here every hour the show’s been open.”

“Which leaves the hours the show hasn’t been open. Maybe that’s why the ornaments were out of place,” David said. “Sorry—artwork.”

They looked so cheerful, I hated to blurt it out and ruin the moment.

“I’m pretty sure the owner is dead.”

David stared. “Dead as in you’ll no longer have anything to do with him?”

“No. Dead as in pushing up daisies. Taking the big dirt nap.”

The overhead lights were flashing when a ripple of news spread through the crowd, finally reaching us.

A woman’s body had been found in the members’ lounge.

Thirty-three

Days before the show had opened, exhibitors and staff had been informed that in the event of police or medical emergencies, we should notify convention center security of the Big Apple Flower Show office and not dial 911, which we’d been told would slow down response time. But everyone’s first instinct was to call 911, and that’s what Lauryn Peete had done when she’d gone to freshen up in the members’ lounge ladies’ room and seen a lifeless arm sticking out from under one of the doors. She pushed the door open with her foot and saw Nikki Bingham facedown in the stall.

Nikki was unconscious. Her panty hose had giant holes, her knees were skinned, and she had a lump on her forehead the size and color of a damson plum. After the police and convention center security had been alerted, Rolanda Knox called me.

“An anonymous caller to the BAFS emergency line said they heard a fight between a man and a woman in the lounge. But the call was right before the blackout,” she said. “No one did anything and no one remembered until afterward.”

Rolanda didn’t know Nikki’s condition. She had been stabilized—or collared and boarded, as the hired EMT staff person had put it. It looked gruesome—and serious—but it was standard procedure for anyone with a head injury even if it turned out to be nothing. Then she’d been taken to St. Athanasius’s Hospital in Greenwich Village.

Rolanda and I stayed on the phone until I reached the members’ lounge, where she’d agreed to wait for me. By the time I got there, most of the onlookers had gone.

“Maybe there really is a Javits Curse,” I said. I hit Call End and shoved my phone in my too small clutch purse. I don’t know at what point I decided to tell Rolanda what I knew about Jamal and the jacket, but I had. Somewhere between the news of Garland Bleimeister’s death and Nikki’s what … accident? Assault? Domestic violence incident? I needed a reality check from someone who knew about this stuff, even if it was only through show gossip and eavesdropping on the police radio.

Rolanda looked tired. “Damn. This may just have trumped the shenanigans at the cat show.”

“Interested in a drink?” I asked.

“With you in that dress and me looking like a prison guard? Wait until I change and then, hell, yes.”

I sat on a low, gray settee outside the staff locker room. Exhibitors and workers were still trickling out, and the extra police hovered discreetly, probably wondering what I was doing sitting on a bench in the darkened convention center as if I were waiting for a bus.

When Rolanda finally emerged, she looked totally different. Tight jeans, a black leather jacket, and big earrings made her look not just more attractive but younger. And she had unleashed her hair from its tight bun at the nape of her neck.

“What are you looking at? You’ve seen me in street clothes before, haven’t you?”

I hadn’t. “Nothing. You look nice, that’s all.”

“Damn skippy. I’m going for a drink with a white girl in a red dress, the least I’m going to do is put on makeup and some jewelry, otherwise someone might think I’m your date. Or worse. Your pimp.”

She took me to a bar called El Quixote that was close by and apparently the place where everyone knew Rolanda’s name. They’d known Otis Randolph, too. A small framed picture was behind the bar, wedged in near the cash register. A popcorn bucket held donations for flowers. When we entered, the bartender said nothing but looked me over and, recognizing Rolanda, chucked his chin at us as a greeting. Without looking left or right Rolanda headed straight for a table in the back, which she slipped into like a comfortable pair of shoes. She ordered a rum and Coke and I asked for a beer.

“See, I had you pegged for a chardonnay,” she said.

“Always a mistake to assume. My cop friends tell me that.”

“You have cop friends?”

“In Connecticut.”

“And what do they do? Catch bad guys who park illegally in the handicapped spot? Oh, no that’s right, you said you found some bodies. I’d like to hear about them one day.”

The bartender brought the drinks himself, apparently a first, and I put my hand over the glass to prevent him from pouring my beer.

“Brian, stop pretending this is a fine dining establishment when all you really want to do is ogle this woman’s