the other hand, saw Jed’s tightened jaw set in place and his two fingers locked onto his expensive Cohiba cigar, creasing its very costly skin.
Warmack glared back at Jed. I knew he was too white bread to enjoy a public display of anybody’s dirty laundry.
“Why don’t you go along and clear up this business, whatever it is. I’m in no rush to go anywhere, as long as they see fit to keep some brandy in my glass.”
Jed excused himself and led us out of the room, around the corner to the elevator, and up to the library, without any one of us uttering a word.
The library was a strikingly elegant room. Dark-paneled and comfortably furnished, it featured second-story galleries reached by spiral wooden ladders and housed an eclectic selection of books, both commercial and rare. I used to love the evenings I had to wait for Jed to finish a negotiation downstairs, while I sat and browsed through some first-edition poetry volume from the thirties, interrupted only by staring at a section of the vaulted ceiling, painted with maps and mythological figures that showed me a new aspect every time I settled in a different chair.
This time, there was no looking at the ceiling. I walked to one of the long, narrow reading tables and sat down, pointing to the men to join me.
“Do I have to interrogate you, Jed, or do you think you can be honest with me for a change?”
“I must say I’m rather surprised at this Gestapo-like approach, Alex. I assume you and I can talk out our problems without any interlopers present.” Jed refused even to glance at Mike Chapman, who was sitting on my side of the table, across from him. His dark eyebrows were drawn together and wrinkled over his nose, as he seemed to try to puzzle why my mood had snapped so radically in the brief time since I had kissed him good night at the Plaza.
“I thought so, too, but apparently I was wrong. I didn’t even know we had problems. Why don’t you tell me what was going on between you and Isabella?”
“What’s gotten into you, Alex? I don’t understand what’s happened to you in the last hour, darling.” This time he nodded in Chapman’s direction, suggesting we could on talk more intimately if we were alone.
“Why don’t you and I? ”This has gone beyond “you and I.” Just start explaining everything to Detective Chapman.“
”Take it easy. I can’t figure out what has you in such a rage.“ ”It’s one thing to take advantage of me, Jed, but don’t play me for stupid on top of that. Tell us about your relationship with Isabella Lascar.“
“Ah, this is about jealousy, is it? You’re the one who introduced me to her and encouraged me to help her.
What suddenly makes you think anything else was going on? It’s not like you to be so insecure.“
“Try me. When did you decide to go with Isabella to my house on the Vineyard?”
How could I lie in bed beside you Saturday night and believe the things you whispered to me as well as the responses you evoked from me, is what I really wanted to say out loud.
“Now hold on right there, Alex. That’s insane. I never went to your house-‘ My hand slammed down hard on the solid table, piercing the silence of the cavernous room. I was almost as mad at I myself as I was with Jed. I prided myself on my ability to cross-examine witnesses, and I wasn’t even doing an amateur job at it. There was no subtlety to my technique, no clever buildup of incontrovertible facts. I just wanted to crash my way through to the only thing that mattered.
Why had he double-crossed me with Isabella Lascar? Our relationship wasn’t so entrenched that he couldn’t have ended it and moved on to be with her or anyone else he chose. Why did he have to humiliate me so openly?
“Don’t play with me anymore. This is not about jealousy or my feelings or anything as trivial as that. This is about – ‘ Mike was ready to try a more competent approach.
“What do you drink, Mr. Segal?”
“Oh, are we ready to be civilized now? Shall I order us up something from the bar?” Jed actually turned to look for a house phone before Mike made him realize the question was not a social one.
“We’re not interested in drinking with you now. I asked you what you drink.”
I knew the answer to the question. I’d heard Jed order it dozens of times, usually having to explain to the bartender except in his regular joints exactly what it was.
“Booker’s, Mr. Chapman. I like Booker’s.” I mouthed the next phrase along with him, knowing he would feel the need to describe it to Mike.
“It’s a single malt Bourbon, from Kentucky. Quite pricey. I’ve always had a preference for Kentucky Bourbons over Tennessee. I’m sure there’s a reason you need to know this.”
“And when the barkeep runs dry on Booker’s, what’s your second choice?”
“It doesn’t much matter then. Something comparable from Kentucky, before I cross over the border into Tennessee.”
Nice start, Mikey, although I had been slow to catch up with you. Mike was thinking back to the arrangement of the bottles in my liquor cabinet on the Vineyard, when he had noticed that the Stoli and the Jack Daniel’s were in front of the Dewar’s. I never associated the Jack Daniel’s with Jed because he had never ordered any in all our time together.
But that Tennessee sour mash was the only Bourbon I had in my house, and he had obviously had to settle for it when he and Isabella were drinking together.
“Where’d you buy me that perfume, Jed?” I wanted to get back in the game.
“Paris, Alex. Are we at the point where I have to produce receipts for gifts I brought you?” In the typical fashion of a guilty defendant, Jed hadn’t even asked us what all these questions were about. Someone who was really in the dark would be more outraged and demanding explanations for our conduct.
Instead, he seemed to think that we were bluffing and as long as he was smarter than we were a woman and a blue-collar civil servant he could simply hold his course and continue to mislead us.
“What store, Jed? You so rarely go shopping I’m sure you remember which store in Paris you nipped into to buy the perfume.”
He took what he assumed was the safest way out of that one. This is a no-brainer, you dumb broad, he was probably thinking as he smiled smugly at me.
“Chanel. Chanel 22 direct from the salon on Avenue Montaigne.”
I had been hoping he might have even tried to say the duty-free shop, as I had joked at my apartment on Saturday ‘ evening. But no, he was determined for some reason to make me think I had been in his consciousness in Paris. The irony was that Chanel 22 is the only one of their perfumes that is made in America. It isn’t sold in a single place in France, not even in the company’s own stores.
“Make a note to check with American Express for his charges, Mike. See where and when he bought it.”
“Look, I agreed to come up here with you two because I wanted to resolve what I assumed were some petty issues that had arisen in your work. I didn’t know you were so damn paranoid, Alex, and this is a pretty ugly way to find it out. But if you think you can make these absurd allegations about me because I agreed to help your friend Isabella sort out her financial difficulties, you’re both out of your very unprofessional minds. I’ve never been to Martha’s Vineyard, I’ve never been involved with Isabella in any other way, and I’m not going to let you derail my plans by breaking up this evening for Warmack. Alex, if there’s an explanation for any of this, maybe we can talk about it by ourselves tomorrow.”
“You’ll have time for that after you finish at my office, tomorrow at four,” Mike said, drawing a business card out of his wallet and handing it to Jed. “We’ll need to do a set of fingerprints for elimination purposes, and we’ll have to get the medical examiner in to draw a vial of blood. I guess Alex has explained the potential for DNA evidence here. And bring your airline tickets and boarding passes for the flight to Paris, too. We’ll need a copy of them for the file.“
Jed exploded as Mike went from liquor and perfume discussions to submission to evidentiary tests for a murder investigation.
“This is a goddamn insult. You’re just trying to embarrass me for whatever it is you think I’ve done to hurt you. Have you gone mad? Does Battaglia know you’re playing these games with real people, not some bum you picked up in a homeless shelter? You want evidence from me you better call my lawyer or get a warrant.”
“You watch too much television, Jed. Why don’t you just give it up?”
