Some of the speakers had familiar names. Most had worked with Isabella on one project or another- producers, directors, her agent, a couple of co-stars. Then Richard Burrell introduced himself and began to talk about the private Lascar. I tried to make something of the fact that he wasn’t emotional enough about the death of a woman he loved, but it was clear that she hadn’t been easy to love, and emotion was visibly lacking from the entire ceremony.
The last salute was what the crowd had been waiting for. I couldn’t stop myself from breaking into a huge grin as Kirk Douglas moved up to the podium. I was tempted to pick up the phone and call Mike at home, but figured he must have been watching, too. As a serious movie buff, Douglas was one of his favorites. Mike could imitate him in almost any role, from The Vikings to Spartacus to last year’s remake of Blue Lotus, in which Douglas played Isabella’s father and won another Oscar nomination for supporting actor.
If there wasn’t any warmth to add to the portrait of the deceased, at least Kirk Douglas closed with the histrionic conviction that the fans wanted to hear. He conjured up every celluloid image of the young star in each of the roles she had played, and invested her professional life with the dignity of his unique voice. ‘… And the final irony, the fatal one, is that Isabella a name which means “beautiful little island” met her death in just such a place, a beautiful little island, where she went for solitude, for safe haven…“
Yeah, Kirk, that’s the bullshit she gave me, too.
A final prayer and the recessional, with six Johnny Gorilla lookalikes carrying out the coffin and probably having good cause to be sadder than anyone else in the chapel and I clicked off the television.
Joan Stafford called a minute later, still stunned by the spectacle.
“It’s hard to believe Isabella’s dead, isn’t it? She was so vibrant, so magnificent. It’s oh well, what do you think, Alexandra? Who did it? Could have been anyone in the first two rows, from the looks on their faces.”
I caught her up on yesterday’s trip to the Vineyard, told her about my plans for the evening with Jed, made a dinner date with her for later in the week and, hung up the phone.
Then I called Air France and learned that the flight from Paris had been delayed two hours at takeoff because of weather en route. Jed would arrive closer to six o’clock.
I tried to escape into the new le Carre novel that I had just bought a week ago but my thoughts raced back and forth between trying to solve the real murder that had presented itself in my life and fantasizing about making love to Jed.
I didn’t get very far on either course.
I picked up the receiver again and dialed the number for Special Victims at the Twentieth Precinct.
“Squad.”
“This is Alexandra Cooper. Who’s this?”
“Hey, Alex. It’s Frank Barber. Whaddya need?”
“I was just looking for Mercer, to see if there’s anything new on the pattern the Con Ed rapist.”
“Mercer swung out yesterday at four. Doesn’t come back until Monday afternoon. But I got the sheet in front of me.
All quiet on that case no developments, no new hits.“
“Anything I should know about, Frank?” Strange business, I acknowledged to myself. I’m looking for news of a good rape case to serve as a distraction from a murder investigation and my own love life.
“Two things, but nothing we were gonna bother you about at home. I got bad news and I got good news. Give you the bad first, okay?”
“Ready.”
“Got a 61 last night…” Frank started, referring to the police complaint report made in every case, which gets its name from the designated number of the police document, a Uniformed Force Number 61. “Twenty-third Precinct. Victim is sixty-eight years old. Lives in an old railroad flat with four bedrooms. She’s a widow, rents out rooms to boarders. Guy she’s been renting to for a couple of months comes home loaded last night. Mrs. Zalina goes down the hall to the bathroom and this scumbag drags her into his room and tells her to suck his dick. ”She says no, so he punches her in the mouth. She still says no, so he hits her again. He’s got her on her knees, trying to make her do it when another renter hears the commotion and tries to help old Mrs. Zalina. The perp has the good sense to run out and never come back.“
“How’s Mrs. Zalina, Frank?”
“Patrol responded. Took her to Mount Sinai. Say she’s fine. We logged it as an attempted sodomy and an assault.
Shook her up pretty good but she was tough as nails.
Doctors gave her a head-to-toe exam, and the rape crisis counselors spent time with her and took her home. She told them she didn’t need counseling about nothing if the late Anthony Zalina didn’t ever make her do “that disgusting thing” in forty-two years of marriage, she wasn’t about to do it for some drunken garage mechanic.“
“Good for her. I take it we know who the guy is, right?”
“Yeah. We found a lot of papers in his room with his name on it. Worked in a body shop in the Bronx, only he didn’t show up this morning. It’s just a matter of time, Alex we’ll drop him.”
“Okay. I’ll assign it to someone in the unit on Monday, so we’ll be ready when you pick him up.”
“You’ll like Mrs. Zalina. She wants to go all the way with this. Says she could recognize his penis anywhere – ”looks just like a teeny-weeny, crooked little sausage.“
Cops put that right in the original report with the rest of the description.
“Ought to be an interesting line-up, Frank. Maybe we should hold it in a butcher shop instead of the precinct.
If that’s it on the bad news, what’s the good news?“
“This could be a new one for you, Alex. I had a call today from a young lady who wants to remain anonymous for now. She was raped a week ago by her ex-boyfriend.
They both work at Merrill Lynch, went out for drinks, reminisced, and then she brought him home with her.
Wants to know how long she can wait before she reports it and still has a case. But her big question was about the evidence. Seems she kept a washcloth that he wiped himself off with, put it in a baggie, and then stuck it in her freezer so she’ll have his semen to prove he did it. Wants to know how long she can keep it and still have the police lab be able to use it.“
“Are you serious? What did you tell her?”
“I told her it depended on whether she had it stored with the frozen peas or with the ice cream…”
“Frank, that’s revolting.”
“And I told her that I absolutely refused to go to her house for dinner until she got that stuff to the lab. Anyway, what I really told her was to call your office next week and one of the lawyers could answer all her questions about prosecuting.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“For the moment, that’s all we’ve got, Alex. You’ll be the first to know if we need you.”
I hung up and decided to busy myself in getting ready for Jed’s arrival: setting the table, straightening up the apartment, and removing the tags from Isabella’s slinky birthday present to dress up for the occasion. The Four Tops were singing to me as I tried to lighten my mood for the night ahead, urging me to reach out for them if my life was filled with confusion. I put the list of people with motives to kill Isabella, which I had started to scratch out during the funeral, in a drawer, closed the file which contained the motion and bill of particulars that I had to respond to by Thursday for the Vargas case, and finally settled down unable to concentrate on anything else with a two-month-old copy of Architectural Digest.
“Mr. Segal on the way up, ma’am,” the doorman announced on the house phone when Jed finally arrived from the airport.
I checked myself again in the bathroom mirror and got to the front door just as I heard the elevator opening. Jed stepped out, carrying his suitcase, and did a double-take when he saw me in the doorway of my apartment at the end of the hallway wearing my sexy silk outfit. It was a radical departure from my usual lounging uniform: an oversized man-tailored shirt and a pair of leggings.
“You’re in the right place, darling. Welcome home.”
“You may have found the perfect antidote for my jet lag, Alexandra,” he said with a smile as he pinned me
