Body in the Big Apple

‘Did I hear the girls were going to Europe by themselves this summer?’ ‘Has Faith decided on a career yet, like Hope?’ You get the picture.”

“Yeah, might make a good article. Don’t worry,” Richard said, seeing Faith’s look of alarm, “another PK. I don’t take advantage of my friends—or try not to, anyway.”

If one of them was sitting on a story as big as the one she was, Faith was sure Richard’s scruples would vanish before you could say “Pulitzer Prize.” They were waiting for their main course—they’d both ordered a pork dish with green chili. It would make splitting the bill easier, but Faith wouldn’t be 70

able to find out how comfortable he was about sharing food. She firmly believed “Do you promise to share what’s on your plate?” should be worked into the traditional marriage vows. Forget sickness, health, love, honor, and especially obey. Most divorces could be avoided by a simple test. Order something you don’t particularly want in a restaurant and urge him to get something you adore. Ask for a taste and take careful notes. A cousin of Faith’s reported her fiance’s reac-tion: “If you wanted it, why didn’t you order it?” Faith advised caution, was not heeded, and they were splitsville less than a year after the honeymoon. But tonight she was really in the mood for the pork. Maybe next time?

Inevitably, the conversation turned to food, which then led to travel. Richard had been all over the world and even expressed a desire to hop aboard a space shuttle should the chance arise. Faith was drawn to space travel in theory—the extraordinary sight of earth from far, far away, that big blue marble. Yet, lurking beneath her adventurous spirit was a tiny voice insistently whimpering, But what if you couldn’t get back?

For the moment, she wasn’t taking a number. She definitely did want to go to the Far East, and she listened intently—and enviously—as Richard described his journeys. The margaritas were drained and they ordered dark Dos Equis beer to go with the rest of dinner. Faith was feeling more relaxed than she had been all week.

“But you haven’t told me any secrets,” he said suddenly.

“You haven’t told me any, either,” she countered.

Two could play at this game.

“All right. I’m secretly writing a book that is going 71

to blow a certain southern town sky-high. A best-seller for sure.”

Faith looked at him scornfully. “Every other person in this city—and probably the rest of the country—is writing some kind of explosive book. That’s not a real secret.”

He leaned forward. He really was good-looking.

Deep brown eyes and lighter brown hair—wavy, not curly. He was thin, but not skinny; his chin and cheekbones well defined. Kate Hepburn’s cousin, without the voice.

“While I was doing a story on something else, I stumbled across a mystery. I met the principals and haven’t been able to stay away. It’s one of those situa-tions in life where nothing you could dream up as fiction could match the bizarre and byzantine nature of this reality.”

Faith was with him there. She found herself nodding. Nothing one could imagine . . .

“So what’s yours?”

She came to with a jolt.

“I stole a ceramic animal from the gift shop at the Museum of Natural History when I was nine years old, never told my parents, and kept it.” She didn’t add that she had felt so guilty, she was unable to look at the little lion. Too afraid of the questions that might arise if it was discovered in the trash, she had stashed it in a shoe box in her closet until two years ago, when she donated it to a local thrift shop as a collectible.

“So, keep your secrets. My nose for news, and experience with sources, tells me you’re a complicated woman and one extremely capable at keeping things hidden, Faith. And how did you end up with a name 72

like that? I’ve never met a Faith before. Funny, though, it seems to suit you.”

Faith told him the family story and they moved on to discuss an article about the eighties he was finishing up for the Times magazine section.

“This could get depressing,” Faith remarked. “I keep thinking of people like Mark Chapman and John Hinckley. And the Ayatollah putting a price on Salman Rushdie’s head. So much craziness.”

“The Challenger tragedy, the savings and loan cri-sis, Black Monday . . .”

Faith began to chant, “Nancy Reagan’s china, Beemers, ‘Whoever Dies with the Most Toys Wins,’

Malcolm Forbes’s two-million-dollar Moroccan birthday bash . . .”

“But there were also all those KILL YOUR TELEVISION

bumper stickers, and we weren’t involved in any major wars during the entire decade, although there’s still time.”

“Not much. I read a wonderful quote from that British novelist Angela Carter the other day commenting on the heavy pronouncements we’ve been reading almost all year: ‘The fin is coming early this siecle. ’ ” They both laughed.

“I’ll track it down and use it. It would make a terrific title.”

The only dessert Faith ever wanted at Tex-Mex places was flan. It was the perfect counterpoint to the spicy main dishes, and she recalled that Santa Fe’s was perfect—rich, creamy, yet not cloying. They both ordered coffee. Richard didn’t seem to be in any rush to get back to his article, and though Faith was tired, it was pleasant to linger. Besides, she realized, she’d been having such a good time, she’d forgotten to work 73

Fox’s murder into the conversation and see if she could get any further information. She had to act fast before the evening ended.

“How about the murder of Nathan Fox? Do you intend to use it in your article?”

“It’s worth a mention. A lot of what’s happened in the eighties—the excesses—was what people like Fox were predicting in the sixties. It hasn’t simply been a case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. That’s always been true. But in the eighties, the rich got much richer. Even after the 1987 crash. Last year, in ’88, Milken made five hundred and fifty million dollars—ironically fifty million more than the Gambino family, crime apparently not paying as much as it used to, or their kind anyway—and I am using that. Fox and his cohort believed that the widening gap between rich and poor would lead to revolution. Well, it hasn’t. At least not yet, and I don’t see it happening anywhere in the near future, but the seeds of the eighties were sowed in the sixties. Ironically, Fox liked nothing better than schmoozing with wealthy New York intellectuals and socialites. He was a regular at certain dinner parties, delighting the guests by telling them what decadent leeches they were. That all the finger bowls in the world wouldn’t be enough to cleanse the blood of the workers from their effete, uncalloused hands—that, or something very similar, was one of his lines.”

Faith thought again that Fox wouldn’t have lasted long at Aunt Chat’s Madison Avenue ad agency if the tired, trite slogans she’d been hearing were any indication of his acumen.

“So you haven’t really heard anything. But why murdered? Why now? What’s the ‘bottom line’?” She 74

injected the eighties buzzword to keep things light—

and keep the conversation going.

Richard thought for a moment. “There has been some talk that Fox’s murder was tied to his politics—

that it wasn’t just a robbery by some cokehead—but I haven’t been able to come up with an angle. Unless he’s been keeping some pretty heavy stuff under wraps all these years. Maybe about someone else in the movement. Or let’s say he was about to get a pardon and write a tell-all book. If Reagan could get a seven-million- dollar advance, Fox could certainly have hoped for half that—or more in hush money! But I jest.

He wasn’t into material goods. More to the point, he’s not the pardonable type. Wrong haircut. Besides the politics theory, there are a lot of rumors about where he’s been all these years, and maybe there’s a motive there. Someone he crossed. A woman? And from all accounts, in Fox’s case there were always lots of ladies.”