'Speaking of sheets,' she giggles, 'I hear you want me to pose on mine.'
'Only if it makes you comfortable.'
'I'm always comfortable in my skin.' She beams at Jurgen. 'Ain't I, sweetpea?'
'Dove's always comfortable, ' Jurgen affirms.
He pours each of us a flute of champagne, then the three of us sit on the glove-black leather couch, chatting and listening to Ella while watching the sun set and all color drain from the view. Finally we go silent, awed by the noir vision before us – Calista as night city, towers twinkling, river black as oil, traffic in the streets becoming ribbons of flowing amber light.
A half hour later, we're in the bedroom – Dove sprawled naked on her rumpled sheets, Jurgen seated in an easy chair beside the bed, I perched on a stool facing her and my portable easel, outlining her sprawled nude form in the manner of Matisse, trying to depict her as a twenty-first-century odalisque.
Dove does a line of coke, while Jurgen and I continue to sip champagne. Occasionally we nibble from a platter of cold hors d'oeuvres he's brought over from his restaurant cooler.
I enjoy drawing Dove. She makes for a gorgeous subject, and the wrinkled, white bedding surrounding her chocolate body sets up delicious contrasts between furrowed and smooth, light and dark.
'The other day I heard a surprising thing about Waldo Channing,' I tell Jurgen, as I draw the undulating curve of Dove's back. 'I heard Waldo and Maritz had a blackmail racket going. Did you know about that?'
'I think Jack mentioned it a couple of times. Like I told you before, he had no use for Maritz. He liked Waldo well enough since Waldo always mentioned The Elms in his column.'
'Why would Waldo, with so much going for him, have to stoop so low?'
Jurgen smiles. 'That he didn't have to was probably why he did. He wrote all that gossip about the Happy Few, but I think he really hated them. Jack, on the other hand, truly liked those people. They were fun and spent a lot of money at his club. But what do I know? I was just maitre d'.'
'Maitre d' at The Elms – that would've been a good position to observe.'
'Yeah,' Dove drawls, 'don't put yourself down, sweetpea. Maitre d's and whores, we know folks' secrets like servants always do. We know all about them, but they don't know batshit about us.'
Jurgen blows her a kiss.
'So tell me, Jurgen, from the maitre d's point of view, what was it between Cody and Barbara Fulraine besides sex?'
Jurgen raises and eyebrow. 'Isn’t it always sex?'
'For me it always is,' Dove says.
I draw the sweet crevice between her buttocks.
'There must have been more to it. People say Cody was stringing her along about her daughter the same way you told me Maritz did.'
'Not true!'
Jurgen's annoyed. I've discovered something interesting about him: that he's still such a loyal acolyte of Jack's that the slightest hint that Jack was less than admirable spurs him to tell me things he'd probably prefer to keep to himself.
'That's what the cops say.'
'They don't know anything. Mrs. Fulraine believed her daughter was still alive. Jack knew better. Still he wanted to find out who took her. If he could find one of those people, he'd beat the truth out of him, then track down the rest of them and administer his own kind of justice.'
'Kill them?'
'In the Legion we called it execution prejudicelle.'
'So in the end what did Jack find out?'
'He developed some leads. He was sure it was a child porno ring. The nanny had performed in porn so she knew those kinds of fucks. Jack figured they put her up to the snatch, then something went wrong, the kid died on them, they got scared, killed the au pair, cut her up, and tossed her torso in Delamere Lake.'
Now that I've got Dove's body down, I start on a more elaborate rendering of her face.
'I've heard that theory,' I tell him. 'It's also the police theory. But the cops never got anywhere with it.'
'They didn’t have Jack's connections. He had ways of finding out who made those kinds of films.'
'You're saying that for the two and a half years of the affair, Cody was trying to track those people down?'
'He was financing it. It was an expensive project, not an easy one either. People who do that stuff operate undercover. ‘I'm finally getting close to the fucks, Jurg,’ he told me that summer. He hated people who'd kill a kid. He couldn't wait to get his hands on them, make then wish they'd never been born.'
'Okay if we take a break?' Dove asks.
We break, she gathers herself into a soft white robe, and withdraws to her bathroom for a while. When she comes out, her eyes flash brilliantly and there's sassiness in her gait.
'Kitten's gettin' hungry,' she says, reassuming her position on the bed. 'Daddy Cat want to feed his bitch?'
I smile at the mixed metaphors while Jurgen fetches the platter of hors d'oeuvres, brings it to the bed, dangles food above her mouth, then feigns fear when she grins, snaps her jaws, lasciviously chews and swallows.
'She snaps like an alligator,' he says.
'Alley cat,' she corrects.
Hunger assuaged, she resumes posing. I'm pleased with my drawing, think it's going to be one of my best. I also think Jurgen owes me more for it than he's given. I decide to provoke him by making another slighting remark about Jack.
'Cody knew a lot of gossip. I suspect from time to time he tipped Waldo off.'
'So what? They liked to gab.'
'Was Cody in on Waldo's blackmail deals? Did he get a cut?'
'You got him all wrong!' Jurgen's angry again. 'Jack was a stand-up guy. Compared with him, Waldo was a creep and Maritz was just something you piss on.'
'How did Rakoubian fit in?'
'Max took the pictures, Maritz squeezed the people.'
'So it was a three-way deal?'
Jurgen nods. 'Say Waldo found out a couple, both married to other people, were having an affair. He'd tell Maritz, Maritz would follow them, get the goods, then bring in Max to take pictures. Then Maritz would sell the pictures to the lovers and split his take with Waldo.'
'Did Mrs. Fulraine know about this?'
'She might have. Jack might have told her.'
'Or Max?'
'Yeah, Max might have mentioned it to her. They were pretty tight there for a while.'
'When Waldo spoke to the police after the killings, he said some pretty mean things about Mrs. Fulraine. Did you hear anything about them having a fight?'
'Can't remember, but that sounds about right.'
I'm rapidly finishing up the drawing, sketching the sheeting, going for a classic drapery effect.
'Something I forgot to mention the other day,' Jurgen says. 'Another reason I know Jack didn't order those killings.'
'What?'
'I think Jack knew Mrs. Fulraine was having an affair with the teacher. I think he even approved. Don't know why.' Jurgen shakes his head. 'There was something going on there I didn't get.'
Interesting.
I finish the drawing. Dove relaxes, slips again into her white robe, and joins Jurgen at my easel to take a look.
'Oh, real good!' she coos. She slips her arm around Jurgen. 'think so, sweetpea?
'It's excellent,' Jurgen agrees.
