Fifth Ave 02.5 - From Manhattan With Love (16 page)

But when they called his La Jolla estate, there was no answer.

CHAPTER SIX

Wolfhagen danced.

He arrived in New York just as the lights of Manhattan were beginning to shine, took a cab from LaGuardia, rented a room at The Plaza, snorted four lines of meth and had wine sent to his room.
 

He twirled.
 

No one knew he was here and that’s how he wanted it.
 
He came to play and to cause a little trouble, and he wanted to do so as quietly as he could for as long as he could.
 

This was an important trip.

He poured himself another glass of wine--his third--sipped it and tripped into the bathroom.
 
He was high, blissfully high, the drug threading like needles through his system.
 
Earlier, he lit candles, several scented candles, and the bathroom now glowed with the rich smells of vanilla and jasmine.
 

He put the glass down on the marble vanity and began to undress.
 
He reached for the phone next to the toilet, tapped out Carra’s personal number and slammed down the receiver when she answered.
 
He looked at his reflection in the wide spotless mirror and marveled at the shadows stealing like thieves across his arms and chest.
 

He opened his leather shaving kit and exposed the glimmering gold blade.
 
He wiggled out of his pants and swung his veiny rope of a penis from side to side--smack, smack, smack.
 
He flexed his muscles and knew at this moment that his body was indeed beautiful.

He wouldn’t look at his face.

He drank more wine and did a jig in front of the mirror.
 
He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, his mind spinning out and grasping the memory of the little nothing shit who came to his home in La Jolla that morning to tell him in her stupid lilting star-struck voice:
 
“Your wife has decided to sell, Mr. Wolfhagen.
 
We’d like to show the estate at noon.”
 

He’d shut the door in her face and called Carra, who told him in that fucking controlled voice of hers that if he dropped this ridiculous alimony suit of his, he could have the damned house and everything in it.
 
“But you’ll never get a cent of my father’s money, Max.
 
Not a penny.
 
I won’t let it happen.
 
He made his fortune without your help, he willed it to me and it’s staying with me.”

And so Wolfhagen danced.
 

He picked up the phone and dialed again.
 
This time the line rang longer, but it was Carra who answered, her voice quick, all business.
 
“What is it, Max?”

“I’ll tell them everything,” he said.
 
“I’ll go to all the papers and tell everyone.
 
I don’t care.
 
I’m in New York now.
 
I have nothing to lose.
 
Don’t you fucking dare sell my home.
 
Don’t you fucking dare try it.
 
I’ll ruin--”

“You’re in New York?”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to smash that fucking face of yours.”

The line went dead.
 
Wolfhagen hit the redial button but this time Carra didn’t answer.
 
The line rang and rang and rang--and his rage grew.

He dropped the phone to the marble tile and tripped back into the bedroom.
 
He grabbed the can of shaving cream from his open suitcase, tossed it high in the air, reached out blind hands to grasp it, and laughed, laughed, laughed when it struck his bare shoulder, hit the carpet and rolled toward the television, where CNN played without sound.
 

Wolfhagen turned up the sound.
 

He picked up the can of cream and tip-toed back into the bathroom.
 
The high was evening out, but he was determined to maintain it, determined to make it last.
 
He danced and he danced, moving his arms and swinging his head, rolling his eyes and baring his crowded teeth.
 
The shadows on the walls moved with him in wild, jumbled rhythms.
 

But it was fruitless.
 
He was losing it.
 
He swung his hips harder and turned in complete circles, glimpsing his face once, twice, three times in the mirror.
 
And that killed it.
 
The illusion snapped.
 
He stopped to stare at his face.
 
That face.
 
God, how he hated it.
 
The hooked nose, the crooked teeth, the slanting eyes.
 
This wasn’t him!
 
It was wrong!
 
He was better than that face!
 

Before he showered, he would shave.

The shaving cream went on easily.
 
He smoothed it on his arms, chest and stomach, rubbed it over his buttocks, through the stubble at his groin and down the length of his legs.
 
He was fastidious in his application.
 
His hands moved slowly and carefully, covering the two-day’s growth with broad, foamy sweeps.
 
Five days ago, he had his back waxed.
 
It would be another week before he needed to go there again.

He rinsed his hands in the sink and left the water running.
 
He took the gold straight razor and went to work, scraping away the hair he hated.
 

How could he have been born this way?
 
Why had God done this to him?
 
When he was thirteen, he had been taunted in the school showers by the other boys.
 
He was made fun of because of the dense black hair that crawled up his back, covered his forearms and stomach, flourished with the stubborn determination of weeds in the peaks and valleys of his chest.
 
His legs were sheathed with it.
 

At the time, Wolfhagen’s parents were poor and couldn’t afford a doctor to tell them that their son suffered from an acute imbalance of testosterone.
 
They were uneducated and couldn’t know the psychological scars already carved into their child’s mind.
 
But they were not insensitive.
 
They weren’t blind to the faults of nature.
 
And so in the summer of his fourteenth year, only days before he started a new school year, Wolfhagen’s mother began a ritual that lasted a lifetime--with soap and water, she shaved him.

“It hurts, Mama.
 
Stop!”

“Stand still.”

“But I’m bleeding!”

“It’s either this, or you’ll catch it from those little bastards at school.”

As he matured, his skin toughened along with his soul.
 
While the hair may have vanished, the jeers from his classmates didn’t.
 
They knew he shaved.
 
They could see the stubble on his arms and legs in gym class, could smell it on him as though it were an odor, reeking and awful.
 
They called him a freak to his face.
 
Some spit on him in the halls.
 

At lunchtime, anonymous arms swung out to strike, while anonymous hands reached out to slap.
 
Through it all, Max learned more than any of them.
 
He learned the darkness of the human heart and just how deeply a person could hate.
 

His escape became books and literature.
 
He found sanity in the lives of fiction’s characters.
 
He graduated second in his class, earning a four-year scholarship to Yale School of Management, where he redefined himself and became so much more.

He needed to call Carra again.
 
He knew she was having a party tonight and he was going.
 
All it would take was one threat.
 
One potent little threat.
 
Then he could revel in all the shocked faces that greeted him while he humiliated her.

He was slicing away the hair on his chest, maneuvering carefully around the peak of his left nipple, when he heard on the television the news of Gerald Hayes’ death.

Wolfhagen stepped out of the bathroom, his body dripping a mixture of hair and shaving cream onto the Oriental rug.
  
He moved to the center of the bedroom and stared at the television.
 

Hayes was dead, a possible suicide.
 
There was an eye-witness, Maria Martinez, who was in the opposite building when Hayes fell past her window.
 
The police were questioning Martinez and would make a statement by morning.
 
They were not ruling out murder.

Neither was Wolfhagen.

He reached behind him for a chair and instead caught a glimpse of himself in the full-length mirror on the wall to his right.
 
A thin river of blood was running from his chest down the length of his muscled stomach, stopping to pool in the foam at his groin before dripping from the head of his penis to the carpet.
 

He looked down at his bare feet and saw that they were speckled with blood and shaving cream.
 
The sight startled him.
 
He usually was so careful.
 
He couldn’t remember a time when he had last cut himself.
 
As he stood there, watching, he felt a sudden, deep rush of shame and embarrassment.
 

He put his free hand over his slippery, bloody penis and the shame turned to rage.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Spocatti paced.

He walked past the window, walked past Carmen, walked back to the window, paused and looked across at Hayes’ office.
 
In silence, he watched the police rifle through the man’s desk, bag folders, make notes, say little.
 
He saw one of the detectives pick up the marble paperweight on the edge of the desk and wondered again just how carefully Carmen had cleaned it.

He stepped away from the window and looked at her.
 
She was seated cross-legged in the center of the room, his MacBook humming in her lap, her face glowing in the bluish black.
 
She wouldn’t look at him.
 
She knew better.
 
Her fingers raced over keys he couldn’t see.

“What’s the number, Carmen?”

“Almost there.”

“You said that a minute ago.”

“The wireless in this place is shit.”

She typed faster, stopped, leaned toward the screen and read off the number.

Spocatti removed his cell and dialed his contact at the First Precinct.
 
It was late.
 
Chances were she wouldn’t be in.

But the woman answered.
 
“This is Rice,” the detective said.

Spocatti smiled.
 
“Brenda,” he said.
 
“And I thought you’d be home in bed, fast asleep in the arms of your lover.”

Silence.

“You know who this is?”
 

“Of course.”

“Can you talk?”