Never Too Rich (26 page)

The small room was uncomfortable, but the man didn’t
care. It wasn’t as if be or anyone else lived here. He came only
once a week or so, and never stayed long.

Making certain that the door was locked behind him,
he put down the shopping bag he carried. His rectangular little
room was almost empty. Against the far end were a single chair and
a vanity complete with stool and mirrors. Lined up on it, a series
of white, faceless Styrofoam wig stands stood sentinel. That was
all.

First he undressed completely, neatly folding each
item of his clothing and stacking it in the far corner. The
concrete floor felt ice cold and hard under his bare feet, but he
didn’t seem to notice.

Naked, he took a seat on the stool and opened the
drawers of the vanity. They were filled with enough cosmetics to
open a booth on the first floor of Macy’s.

Carefully he arranged the bottles and brushes and
tubes and jars and compacts and eyelash boxes on the vanity,
putting the base makeup on the left, eye makeup in the middle, and
blushers, rouges, and lipsticks on the right. He arranged the
packages of glamour-length Lee Press-on Nails along the front. He
had a collection of all colors, from frosty white to
blackish-red.

Slowly he reached into the shopping bag he’d brought
and took out a white plastic garbage bag that was slightly inflated
with air. He undid the twist tie and took out the length of long
ash-blond hair. Carefully he arranged it on the left-most of the
wig stands. Then be took out a facial cutout of Vienna Farrow,
which this month graced the cover of Vogue, and pinned it onto the
wig stand.

His excitement was almost more than he could
bear.

He thought: Now I will become her. I will be Vienna
Farrow!

Solemnly be covered his head with a skin-tone cap so
that be looked entirely bald. Then he began the painstaking process
of making himself up. It began with the skin-tone base, shading,
eyelashes, and lipstick. Then the scarlet fingernails.

He stared into the mirror. It was Vienna’s hairless
face, grotesque but beautiful.

His penis throbbed. The blood rushed madly through
his veins.

Now for the crowning touch.

He reached for the wig stand, reverently lifted
Vienna’s scalp off it, and carefully set it atop his own head. He
had shampooed it several times, but under the smell of soap he
could still detect the odor of decayed flesh. That didn’t bother
him in the least.

Now he was Vienna Farrow.

This—this was what he’d always wanted. To become a
cover girl. To be Miss Bitch.

A tortured gasp escaped his lips, and in a frenzy be
grabbed a tube of blood-red lipstick and slashed it across
his—Vienna’s—face.

The lipstick became his knife and blood both.
Violently be slashed gashes across himself, bloodying himself
unrecognizably, until his face was a mass of scarlet. Without his
even touching himself the juices leapt from his penis and burst
through the air.

He slumped, his body shaking with spasms of tortured
pleasure. In the moment of death he had come truly alive.

Cleaning up, without the benefit of water, using
only cold cream, Kleenex tissues, and cotton balls, took a lot
longer than his preparations. Everything was put back where it
belonged, the makeup in the drawers and Vienna’s hair on the wig
stand, framing her cutout face. He would leave it here for the next
time.

When he left, carefully locking the door behind him,
he took the garbage bag containing the used tissues and cotton
balls with him. He would toss it into a trashcan somewhere along
the way.

His excitement was still almost feverish. He had
scalped Vienna Farrow and become her.

There was a whole city of gorgeous women out
there—thousands of Vienna Farrows. Thousands of female identities
for Miss Bitch to choose from.

He had killed before. In Chicago, Seattle, Los
Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, and Kansas City. He had even slashed
some of them. But never had he scalped and taken their hair for
himself. This was new.

And never before had he killed in this, his own
city. Until now, the old adage had always held true: he didn’t shit
where he ate.

But he didn’t let that stop him any longer. He’d
never been caught before, so why should he fear it now?

Miss Bitch was invincible.

Suddenly he felt like a child let loose in a candy
store. He hummed happily to himself

Next time, Miss Bitch would be a brunette.

Part Two

Over the Rainbow

April-September
1989

Chapter 27

“ ‘
Oh! poverty is a weary thing,
‘tis full of grief and pain,’ “ Edwina quoted with a melancholy
sigh. “I don’t remember how the rest of the verse goes, but it’s
right on the mark, my sweet, right on the mark.”

Hallelujah watched her mother worriedly as Edwina
eyed the lavish display of larcenously expensive clothes in the
window of Ungaro on Madison Avenue.

“
Oh, to be able to go in and buy
that little red number without compunction,” Edwina said wistfully,
‘it sings to me, Hal. It really does.”

“
Ma,” Hallelujah scoffed, “clothes
don’t
sing.”

Edwina gave Hallelujah a compassionate and, above
all, pitying look. “Don’t they, my sweet?”

“
No, Ma, they don’t. You don’t have
to spend money to enjoy yourself, y’know? There’re lots of freebie
pleasures in life.”

“
Name one.”

“
Well . . . it’s
spring,
Ma!
The trees are green and the sky is blue—”

“
Are they?” Edwina murmured
absently, her head tilted as she regarded the little red dress
longingly.

“
You’ve got your
health.”

“
Have I?”

“
And there’s always
window-shopping!”

“
That does it!” Edwina said in
disgust. “I’m going right in and buying that dress.” She marched up
to the door, and it was all Hallelujah could do to pull her back.
“Ma, we can’t afford it!” she cried. “Get hold of
yourself!”

“
Hal, dammit! Can’t you see that I
can’t afford not to buy it? I’m going to go absolutely bonkers,
certifiably stark raving mad if I can’t buy something right away.
Clothes are my weakness! My bread and water. My oxygen!”

“
Ma, like I don’t know what’s
gotten into you. You’re getting like totally tragic. Like one of
those ancient Greek women. You know, Phaedra or Medea?”

Edwina turned to her daughter slowly. “Since when,”
she asked in a faint monotone, “does a punk kid like you know so
much about the Greek classics?”

“
Since Les told me all about them,
that’s when. He’s a real bookworm.”

“
Books . . .” Edwina sighed
dreamily. “It seems
ages
since I’ve splurged on a stack of
frivolous slick oversize art books. But they cost so damn
much!”

“
Nobody’s twisting your arm to buy
‘em at Rizzoli, Ma. You could go downtown and try the used
bookstores. C’mon! Why don’t you go right now?”

Edwina shuddered and made a face of pure terror.
“All that dust! All those dog-eared pages! Those mouse-chewed
spines! Hal, you
know
how my allergies will revolt! Besides,
there’s something else your poor penniless Ma has to do today.”
Shake the money tree, she didn’t say. A tree which, so far, had
proved depressingly barren and totally fruitless.

“
No, my sweet, my pet, the love of
my life,” Edwina continued miserably, “what your poor, poor Ma
needs desperately is not to rummage through stacks of remainders,
but to find herself a money-producing job so she can buy all the
nonessential essentials she so desperately
needs.
Oh, why
the hell doesn’t Geoffrey Beene or Oscar de la Renta or Bill Blass
need a new, experienced, loyal right hand? Can you tell me
that?”

“ ‘
Cause,” Hallelujah answered with
incisive reasonableness, “nobody who’s got one of those plum jobs
is about to throw it out the window. ‘Cept for
my
ma. And
now she’s goin’ around tearing out her hair and acting positively
mental.
Is it normal? I ask you.”

“
Sweetie, are you certain spring
recess isn’t over?”

“
You’re becoming impossible to be
around, Ma. You should hear yourself! All you ever do is moan and
groan and complain about money! I mean, enough is
enough.”

“
Money makes the world go round,
kiddo.”

“
You’ve got to control yourself.
You’re obsessed! You gotta learn to relax.”

“
Hal, sweet Hal, why do you think
we’re doing Madison Avenue?” Edwina asked in her most patient sweet
voice. “This is urban relaxation.”

“
Unh-unh.” Hallelujah shook her
head. “Not for you, it isn’t. It’s an exercise in
masochism.”

“
Hal! Where on earth do you pick up
words like that at your tender age?”

Hallelujah prodded her and slid her mother a
meaningful sideways look. “I think we’d better get a move on, Ma,”
she suggested in a low voice. “We’ve been standing out here too
long, and some of the salespeople are starting to stare at us. You
think maybe they think we’re like casing the joint or
something?”

“
Yes, sweetie, you’re right,”
Edwina said with resignation. “They are staring. I suppose maybe we
should get a move on. If I stand here and have to look at that
little red dress for one more minute, I might be severely tempted
to do something utterly rash.”

Hallelujah looked alarmed. “Then let’s go!” Gently
she put a protective arm around Edwina’s waist and led her
away.

From the Ungaro boutique they drifted aimlessly
uptown along ten more blocks of that thieves’ paradise where the
tiniest shops rented for sixteen thousand dollars a month and up,
and were chock-full of nonessential luxuries. Normally, strolling
along this golden stretch of Madison Avenue was to Edwina what
psychotherapy was to people with troubled minds. For her, nothing
under the sun could quite compare with the thrill of
discovery—except the thrill of acquisition.

But today, she thought morosely, Hal was right.
Doing Madison Avenue was an exercise in masochism. Never before had
so many tempting goodies met her hungry eyes. Pansies and
butterflies fashioned of diamonds and sapphires at Fred Leighton;
extravagant majolica cachepots at Linda Horn; luxurious smooth
cotton sheets embroidered with silk thread at Pratesi. And clothes!
Madison Avenue was the world’s showcase for her single greatest
weakness: Givenchy, St. Laurent, Sonia Rykiel . . . Just the sight
of all those glorious, unattainable clothes was enough to make her
knees go weak.

“
Money,” Edwina, almost on the
verge of tears, sighed painfully. “I could have anything my little
heart desires. All it takes is gobs and gobs of money! Never say I
didn’t warn you, Hal! Happiness
can
be bought and don’t you
ever believe differently!” Then she collapsed against Hallelujah
and sought comfort by hugging her daughter. “Oh, sweetie!” she
moaned. “How are we going to pull through this horrid dry
spell?”

“
I dunno,” Hallelujah said with a
disgusted sigh, “but it sure better be
soon!
I don’t know if
I can put up with you much longer.”

It was glorious in Central Park. The trees were
decked out with new green finery, and overhead, crisp starched
white clouds raced across a china-blue sky. On the other side of
Fifty-ninth Street, the Plaza Hotel rose in wedding-cake
splendor.

The model was too busy to appreciate the weather or
the view. Hands in her skirt pockets, she posed fluidly beside the
hansom cab and its tired, droopy-headed old nag. A powerful
electric fan hooked up to a big portable generator was blowing her
waist-long hair high into the air, like the towering flame from a
funeral pyre. This photo shoot, for July’s
Vogue,
was her
third job this week. The wide-shouldered ten-thousand-dollar beaded
bolero jacket on her back, worn with washed-out Levi’s, was from
Lacroix’s fall collection. Olympia had negotiated a six-page
spread.

“
That’s right, baby! Keep moving!”
Alfredo Toscani shouted approvingly as he crouched in front of
Billie Dawn, his Leica clicking rapidly. “Keep those shoulders
moving from left to right . . .”

The crowd of curious onlookers that had gathered to
watch were kept at a ten-foot distance by the fashion coordinator,
Alfredo’s camera-loading assistant, the dresser, the hairdresser,
the makeup artist, and Olympia Arpel, whose sharp eyes, looking
over the Ben Franklins at the tip of her nose, were shrewdly
calculating and missed nothing. In the nearby rented trailer,
watched over by a mounted policeman who hoped to be called upon to
be in some of the shots, were racks of more clothing and piles of
props. The stench of horse droppings from the row of hansom cabs
waiting for customers was strong along this stretch of Central Park
South. It was all Billie Dawn could do to keep from wrinkling her
nose in disgust. The fan blew the odor of manure right up into her
face. At first she had tried taking shallow breaths through her
mouth, but Alfredo wanted her to pose with her lips closed, so she
was forced to breathe through her nose. The odor assailed her,
churning her stomach round and round.

To the people who had gathered to watch, her
unself-conscious poses and striking beauty elicited pangs of envy.
Obviously she was one of God’s chosen few. She had talent, looks,
and surely a sky-high income. Little could they imagine how
precious little glamour was involved. How, even while she posed
superbly, seemingly without a care in the world, it was all she
could do to stifle her nausea.