Death in The Life (23 page)

Doctor Callahan answered before her service could pick up the call.

“1 may not be able to keep my appointment, Doctor. I didn’t know in time or I’d have called you.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Only it’s important.”

“Do you want me to call the police?”

“No. It’s all right… I think. It
is
all right. Only crazy.”

“Naturally.”

“Could I call you later today?”

“Call me at two.”

When Romano returned he said blithely, “A psychiatrist.”

“Yes.”

“And a woman.” He had listened in and did not mind Julie’s knowing it. “If you didn’t want me to hear you, you would not have said I could stay, now would you? Is she capable?”

“For some people.”

Romano smiled puckishly. “Or is it that you wouldn’t recommend me as a patient.”

“Well, Mr. Romano, that isn’t how it goes generally.”

“I suppose not. I was joking. I am much too well adjusted to take the chance of upsetting the balance.” He maneuvered a chair closer to Julie’s and sat down. “I do sometimes think that the greatest charitable contribution I might make would be to give myself to science.”

“You can,” Julie said.

“I meant while I am still alive. Do you know”—and he examined his hands while he spoke—“these hands have not touched another human being in twenty years?”

Julie could think of nothing to say except, “How interesting.”

He tucked them into his sleeves again. “I am the ultimate voyeur.”

This time Julie didn’t say anything.

“Will your doctor call the police?”

“No.”

She’s very sensitive to your voice. Or was there a signal in what you said?”

“She’s very sensitive.”

“It would be a needless gesture. I have only the best of motives. And the police are helpless. In this case, entirely inadequate.”

“You mean in Pete’s death?”

He nodded.

“They’re trying,” Julie said.

“Are they? No one has come to see me.”

“Do you know who killed him?”

“Oh, yes. I’m quite certain of it.”

“Then why don’t you go to them?”

“As you said about recommending me to your doctor, Mrs. Hayes, that isn’t how it goes.”

“Were you and Pete friends, Mr. Romano?”

“You might say I was his silent patron.”

“Would you mind talking to me about him?”

“My dear girl, isn’t that why you are here? I’ve been expecting you ever since your visit to The Guardian Angel.”

“You certainly keep well informed,” Julie said.

“It is one more of the little luxuries I can afford. I could play you a tape of your conversation with that young clown Rudy. The Little King… that did amuse me.”

“What about the rest of the things Rudy said?”

“Equally amusing, but more out of his style than mine.”

Julie thought about it. “I don’t follow.”

“Couldn’t you tell that he was in love with Peter?”

“I guess it crossed my mind,” Julie said. “Who was Pete in love with?”

Her host smiled, the saddest smile in the world. “Laura Gibson. But then, so was I.”

That was the stunner. Romano sat back and watched her. Recovery came slowly and she had no way of disguising her surprise. “I guess I’ve been on the wrong track,” she said quietly.

“When you get over the shock, you will want to know who Laura Gibson was in love with, and I can only say it was not me. So I have spent half a lifetime in adoration and vicarious pursuit I backed every play she was ever in and I even followed her around the streets of New York.”

Oh, boy. “Was she worth it?” The question was out before Julie weighed it. “I mean from certain impressions I’ve gotten, I don’t think I’d have liked her much.”

“Yes, for me it was worth it. I have become a connoisseur of the unattainable.” He was staring at—or through—the Vuillard.

“It seems to me you’ve attained a lot,” Julie said.

“Of the
otherwise
unattainable,” he amended.

“You mean Miss Gibson,” Julie said, not at all sure he did mean her at the moment.

“It’s hard to understand, isn’t it?”

“She’s hard to understand. I mean living at the Algonquin, then at the Willoughby. All the old ladies there adored her. It’s a seedy place, really.”

“When all this could have been hers?” Mr. Romano chortled.

“All right.”

“She didn’t want it. She would have turned to stone. She wanted exactly the life she lived, and where she lived it. And so, by the way, did our young friend Mallory.”

“That I understand,” Julie said. “Did Pete know about you, I mean the way you felt about Miss Gibson? What was the whip business that Rudy told me about?”

“That disgusting young man missed the point entirely: That gesture was ritualistic—out of ancient Sicily, in fact. It was Mallory’s ultimatum to me, keep out, and if I am right, it made him her lover before the night was over. At least, that is the way I have lived it.”

“Okay,” Julie said.

“I don’t know what is okay and what is not. Something else this Rudy missed was the significance in that scene of John Maccarello, one of my bodyguards, at the time. I suppose you know him as Mack the pimp.”

“Let’s talk about him,” Julie said.

“He’s not worth it, but if you wish. He has not been in my service for many months now. It was all too much.” He made a gesture of distaste.

“He liked Pete—is that how it goes?”

Romano nodded.

“When I began to put things together,” Julie said, “maybe the wrong things in the right places, one of the big scenes was at St. Jude’s Hospital… where they seem to think of you as Mr. Big.”

“They should. I would have bought that hospital to see that Laura’s last days were the best possible. I came out myself in order to make sure. I was afraid Mallory wouldn’t have sufficient… ah…”

Julie provided the word, “Clout.”

“Exactly.”

“But he paid the bill.”

“Oh, yes. Neither of them would have it any other way. So I created a project. Instant money.”

“Pete made a porn film for you.”

“If you say so.”

“Three days of shooting in Boston. The two of them wrote the script or whatever.”

“You
are
informed.”

“Why Boston, Mr. Romano?”

“I prefer not to be seen in any of the local—let’s use the word
studios.”

“I see,” Julie said, but she didn’t actually.

“What puzzles you? That I was present?”

“Maybe. But what I really don’t dig was what Pete could do. I mean Pete used photography a lot in his stage design, but a porn film—that’s a different art form. It has to be.”

“Oh, yes, and you are quite right, it is an art form. Mallory was on camera throughout, the male lead. My identification was with him, not Laura.”

“Okay,” Julie said. The ultimate voyeur. Yeah.

“You are naïve,” he said solicitously.

“I guess I am.”

“Now. What did you want to ask me about Maccarello?”

“The big question, Mr. Romano: did he kill Pete?”

“Do you think so?”

“Yes, but I couldn’t prove it.”

“That’s always a problem isn’t it? Especially for the police. Shall I tell you how my reconstruction goes? You understand, it is entirely the product of my imagination. This child-whore must have ingratiated herself with Mallory—but that is of no concern to me—except that if Maccarello, in his obscene, brutal habit, chose to abuse her in the presence of Mallory, that young Quixote would not have tolerated it for a moment. And knowing Maccarello as I do, I can say without doubt, he did it to the very purpose of angering Mallory, of provoking him to bodily combat. That would have given him exquisite satisfaction. Having said that, I leave the rest to your imagination. You do have
some
imagination?”

That thrust of contempt from any other source would have destroyed her. Any minute he was going to turn her out. Exquisitely. Okay. “But Pete was killed with a knife.”

“There are many kinds of knives—a long thin blade, according to the
Times.
A stiletto perhaps? It is an ancient weapon.”

“And what was Rita doing all this time?”

Romano stood up. “Well, she wasn’t screaming for help, was she?”

Nor had she returned to give testimony. Julie was as willing to depart as he was to have her go. “You’ll have to show me how to get out of here, Mr. Romano.”

He nodded, but stood where he was a moment longer. “Are the police looking for him at least?”

“For Mack? I think so.”

“And do you think they’ll find him?”

Julie met the cold blue eyes. It was a chilling moment. “No.”

He smiled. “I apologize for underestimating your imagination.”

J
ULIE DECLINED THE SERVICES
of Romano’s limousine. Nor did she intend to front a luncheon at Sardi’s. As soon as she got out on the street, her legs began to tremble. She could hardly make it into a cab. The doorman at Doctor’s building told her that Doctor Callahan had left the office. She would return in time for her next appointment. Julie had the cabbie wait while she left the envelope containing a copy of her updated letter to Jeff at Doctor’s vestibule door. Then she went home to Seventeenth Street. This time it was home, oh, yes, it was home.

She picked up the morning paper in the vestibule. No letter from Jeff. She had just had one… when? The days and nights had run into one another. She called Mr. Bourke and told him she was home safe. There was nothing about Pete’s death in the paper. She went through it twice. Not a word… fit to print. It was almost noon. There was such stillness throughout the house. Like the deadly quiet of the early hours on Forty-fourth Street when the rats could be heard frolicking in the walls and upstairs Juanita had suddenly started to cry as though awakened from a terrible dream. She had cried and cried almost beyond Julie’s endurance so that she had found herself cradling an invisible child in her arms and rocking it until, upstairs, the real one fell asleep again. Across the Seventeenth Street garden, where a single tree was squeezing out spring leaves, the sewing machines were hooded. Spring came in winter over there; even summer had passed.

She bathed and set the alarm for a little before two and then stretched out on the library couch. She would not have called it sleep, but she wasn’t awake either when the phone rang.

“I’ve been trying your office all morning, Julie. This is Helen Mallory… Pete’s sister?”

Julie tried to wake up. “Yes, of course. How are you, Helen?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really know. What I called for, to thank you. Father Doyle told me about the memorial Mass. That’s real nice of you. I wish I could attend myself, but I just couldn’t stand all the publicity.”

“Maybe there won’t be so much.”

“Did they find—her?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Everybody here is talking about it. Her family gave her up for dead, not hearing in all these years. Mr. Moran died two years ago. I don’t understand Pete. But then I never did.”

“Moran,” Julie repeated.

“Betty Moran. The police know all that now.”

“I’ve been out of touch with them,” Julie said.

“The person it’s hardest on is her brother. He’s just started in business, a bicycle shop. They had the grand opening last week.”

“She intended to come home,” Julie said.

“So did Pete. But he never did. I’m not going to keep you on the phone. I just wanted to thank you. It’s nice to know there’s someone human left in the world.”

“Don’t go yet. Or let me call you back.”

“I don’t know what else there is to say.”

“Pete was great, you know. He really was. I’m pretty sure he did everything he could to try and help this… Betty Moran to make it home. I wouldn’t be surprised if he even offered to marry her. Remember?”

“Oh, I do remember. I surely do. All these years, I’d been begging him to come home, or to let me come out and make a home for him—like he did for me when I couldn’t take care of myself.” Suddenly she went out of control, her voice high and shaking: “All the love he said he had for me, and what was he going to do? He was going to marry a prostitute and bring her home to live with me. In
my
house. I thought he was teasing me about being engaged. He wasn’t teasing, he was testing. He meant it.”

“He probably did,” Julie said. “Only Rita wouldn’t have any part of it. It had to be on her own or not at all.”

“I don’t care what Father Doyle says, I can’t grieve for my brother. Maybe I should, but I haven’t got it in me.”

Maybe I have now, Julie thought.

The woman on the other end of the phone began to sob. “I can’t talk anymore… I’m so miserable.”

Julie wanted off the phone, and yet she could not bring herself to cut the woman off. She was Pete’s sister. “I don’t know what to say, Helen. Pete must have loved you.”

“He always said he did, he always promised. Only last week, we were planning such a wonderful reunion. He was going to meet me at the airport and I was going to see those beautiful plays. I’ve read every word of them.”

Julie got the feeling that this was the way every conversation between Pete and his sister went, from tears to promises, from love to hate, and back to love again, or whatever kind of facsimile you could transmit over a telephone.

“I wished we hadn’t quarreled. I hate him most for that. He didn’t have to leave me that way…”

But he did. There wasn’t any other way. Before Julie could think of anything else to say, the unhappy woman hung up.

Those beautiful plays… pride knocking with thin knuckles on the heart.

Julie dressed as she would going to see Doctor Callahan. She wasn’t sure where she was going, but she turned off the alarm and watched the hands of the clock. At exactly two she phoned the analyst. Doctor’s advice was firm: she must go to the police with the story of her encounter with Romano. Not to do so would be to accept the gangster’s assessment of police capabilities. It would be capricious, wrong, and dangerous not to go to them. Doctor had all the words. She was at bottom on the side of law and order. Toward which Julie felt a strong inclination herself at the moment. Doctor promised to read her log over the weekend.