As I glared at the blue-and-white patrol car at the edge of the circular drive in front of my building, I turned back to Mike.
“Will you help me with one more thing?”
“Sure, what?”
“When I see Battaglia on Monday, I intend to ask him to call off the baby-sitters for me. I wasn’t the target for this, Mike, don’t you agree? Whoever did this was there to kill Isabella Lascar, isn’t that pretty clear at this point?”
“Yeah, I’m sure you’re right. It was the middle of the week and like you said, anyone could have checked that you were at work. The shooting was too methodical and accurate to have been accidental. And there are at least a few characters we’re aware of with reasons to hate her.
We’ve probably only scratched the surface on that front yet. Cute as you are, blondie, I don’t think anyone who got a good look at that head before he fired could have confused it with yours. Somebody wanted Isabella dead.“
”Well, will you tell your boss to tell my boss to call off the dogs? Battaglia will want to speak with you, too, on Monday. You know he’ll want an independent opinion not just what I think.“
‘I’ll be there. Now go get some rest, you got a big day tomorrow. Get plenty of beauty sleep.“
I reached over and kissed Mike on his forehead.
“Thanks.”
As he drove out I waved good night to my bodyguards, greeted the doormen who handed me my dry cleaning and mail, and rode up on the elevator with my keys in my hand. I put down my things, made sure I had a Lean Cuisine Lasagna in the freezer, and went into my bedroom to undress and shower.
Six messages. Two girlfriends Nina and Joan; two hang-ups; the reporter Ellen Goldman to confirm Monday’s interview; and Rod Squires, my supervisor, just to reassure me that it had been a quiet day.
Nina Baum was right about me. It was a good thing I had no children and no pets to take care of. Most days it was a struggle for me to keep green plants alive, and tonight I didn’t even have the strength to water them. Zap that lasagna, chat with the girls, early to bed, and, if I could force the day’s events out of my brain, maybe even sweet dreams about tomorrow.
I fell into a sound sleep, and was startled bolt upright by the abrupt ring of the telephone. It was after midnight, as I could tell by the iridescent dial on the alarm. My heart pounded as I grabbed the receiver, praying I would hear Jed’s voice on the line, excusing himself for calling at that hour and blaming his timing on the six hours’ difference between New York and Paris.
“Hello? Hello?”
No voice, no heavy breathing, no background noise.
“Who are you, dammit?” I tried not to sound frantic, and assumed I would remember on Monday to order the caller ID service the telephone company had been advertising lately.
I slammed the phone back into place and stepped out of bed, walking in the darkened room to the window and looking out at the clear night. Usually, when I sat at my office desk or the courtroom counsel table, I had the false but comforting sensation that I could control or at least pay back the evil spirits that crept around this city after dusk. But now, as I stared down at the empty sidewalks and quiet streets, I had no idea where I could turn for safe haven.
By morning long after I finally put myself back into bed and thought of more pleasant things than my hang-up calls – I convinced myself that for the first time all week, I had a bad night’s sleep for a good reason. Jed would be home with me by the end of the day and I was excited about the thought of being with, him.
I tossed and turned until nine o’clock, distracting myself with visions of how Jed would caress me and baby me when he arrived from the airport later in the day. When I had played out several varieties of that theme, I went to the door and brought in the Times to work on the puzzle while I had my first two cups of coffee at the dining-room table. The Saturday crossword was the only one I bothered with all week it was the toughest, and for years I used to race against my father to see who could complete it the fastest. When I got stuck in the bottom corner on 57 Across, descendant of Old Norse, I was too restless to struggle over the missing letters so I gave up and headed back to the bedroom to get dressed.
There are almost no forms of exercise that interest me, except that I have had a lifelong passion for ballet. I had started to take lessons when I was four years old, and didn’t abandon my dreams to be Natalia Makarova’s successor until about the time I entered college. But throughout my days in law school and whenever my erratic trial schedule permitted, I still took ballet classes to stay in shape and to relieve some of the enormous tension of the job.
The patrol car with two officers from the day shift at the Nineteenth Precinct was in the driveway of the building as I walked out the door with my ballet slippers in hand and a raincoat covering the black leotard and tights. Both cops two rookie women sat up in their seats as they saw me coming toward them.
“Hi, I’m Alexandra Cooper,” I said, although it was obvious they knew that when they spotted me.
“Sorry you’re stuck with this duty, but I think it’ll be over in a couple of days. In the meantime, do you mind running me over to West Sixty-fourth Street for an hour?”
“No problem.”
I got in and we drove to the studio on the West Side. It was near Lincoln Center, where one of the retired dancers from American Ballet Theatre gave lessons which I tried to attend on Saturday mornings and occasional weekday evenings, whenever my unpredictable schedule allowed it.
William and his six other students were surprised to see me when I arrived a few minutes into the barre exercises for the ten-thirty class, but the necessary silence of the participants during the workout was one of the extra benefits of ballet. I never needed to explain my personal circumstances or my trial results or the day’s dealings with the cases they had read about in the daily tabloids.
For close to an hour, as I stretched and plied and glissaded across the smooth wooden floor to the familiar music of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, the demands of concentration needed to perform the required steps pushed all other business from my mind. I sweated and ached like the other women who surrounded me in the class and was unhappy only when the recording stopped and William bowed to the group with his customary “Thank you, ladies.”
I exchanged greetings with the other exhausted dancers and cooled down before going out to the radio car for my escorts to get me back home. They let me out in front of Grace’s Marketplace, a fabulous emporium of gourmet foods, so that I could buy dinner for Jed and me. There is a section of elegantly prepared dishes which I relied on regularly complete meals that need only to be reheated and served and I knew that he would be too exhausted from the long day’s travel to want to go out again that evening. Veal francese roasted new potatoes, string beans, and a salad, and I was on the express checkout, back in the car, and dropped off at my front door minutes later. “That’s it for the day, ladies. I’m not going out again. My boyfriend will be here later that’s all the action you’re going to get today. Thanks.” I left the pair at their steady post in the driveway and went upstairs to put away my packages and get into the shower.
The only message on my machine was from Nina, phoning from her car on one of the freeways on her way to Isabella’s funeral.
“I’ll call back, after the show.
Don’t forget to watch C-SPAN is carrying the service.
Word in the biz is that there’ll be a lot of crocodile tears Sharon, Demi, Nicole all the girls who want to scoop up her scripts and incomplete projects will be front and center, in their deepest black, feigning grief. Later.“
It was almost one o’clock, so I settled into my sofa in the den to watch Isabella’s memorial service, broadcast from Forest Lawn. The commentator came on first, describing the arrival of the movie stars as if it were Oscar night at the Chandler Pavilion. Among the hundreds of celebrity mourners I was able to spot Nina and her husband, Jerry Baum – a literary critic and screenwriter, whom she had met and married when we were still at Wellesley.
The service consisted of a series of speakers who gave their favorite memories of Isabella. There was lots of talk about her great beauty and her screen talent, but very little was said that made one think she had ever done a kind thing or had a generous thought about another human being. I sat forward, scouring the crowd as I imagined Luther Waldron would have done at a Mafia don’s funeral looking for the furtive glance of a killer or the inappropriate smirk on the face of an ex-lover.
