Never Too Rich (9 page)

Now she needed a last-minute lunch partner. Le
Cirque wasn’t the kind of restaurant where one dined alone, and
even if it were, she still wouldn’t show up alone: Doris would know
instantly that Anouk had come expressly to intercept her. No, it
had to appear to be a casual, accidental encounter.

Logistics, logistics. Staying atop the social heap
required the strategies of a military tactician.

Phone call number five.

Dafydd Cumberland. Her very own “walker,” who
escorted her to events whenever Antonio was too busy. He was also
Klas Claussen’s lover.

Charming, handsome, witty Dafydd, who liked to
collect weirdos almost as much as he liked to collect art. Always
so wicked, and sooo amusing. As adept a bitch as she. Together they
were like a pair of finely orchestrated Benihana knives—experts at
shredding reputations and converting enemies to mincemeat.

Anouk punched the seven digits and waited through
three rings. Then: “Dafydd!
Darling!”
How he loved to be
greeted extravagantly. “Are you doing anything? . . . Yes, now. . .
. Well, something simply tragic has come up, and I simply must go
to Le Cirque!” A cloud wafted across her beautiful face as she
listened to his squawking voice. “You were supposed to be where?”
She listened for a moment. “Oh, I see.” She sounded suitably
dejected. “Of course it’s an emergency, dear heart! . . . ‘Dire’
doesn’t begin to describe it! Would I have called at the last
minute otherwise?” The clouds instantly cleared from her face and
the sun shone brightly on her lips and in her eyes. “You
are
a dear ... I quite agree. I’ll pick you up in an hour and a
quarter. And remember, I owe you one, darling.”

Smiling, she replaced the receiver. Now there was
another social IOU outstanding—better currency than cash any day,
at least in the rarefied social heights where money was more
plentiful than Sahara sand.

Two more calls to make. The battleax was next.

She dialed her husband’s office, but not his private
line.

“
Mr. de Riscal’s office,” Liz
Schreck rasped shortly.

Anouk went on full alert. Did she detect a more
snappish tone than usual? With Liz it was hard to tell. Even on the
best of days, she was acid and bullets.

“
Liz, dear. It’s Anouk!”

A longer-than-usual pause, followed by a stiff “Yes,
Mrs. de Riscal?”

Oh-oh, Anouk thought. Better tone down some. The
bitch is definitely snappier than usual.

“
I’m calling about Rubio’s memorial
service,” Anouk cooed smoothly. “It
is
at
three-thirty?”

“
Unless someone changed it without
telling me,” Liz said tartly.

Anouk had to smile. Liz must have gotten quite an
eyeful!

“
Good,” she said. “I was just
checking. I’ll see you there, then. Oh, and Liz . . .”

Liz sighed heavily. “Yes, Mrs. de Riscal?”

“
If you could perhaps come a little
early? There’s something I’d like to discuss with you.”

There was a long pause. “Oh, all right,” Liz said
testily, “I’ll try.”

“
I really do appreci—”

The line had already gone dead.

Anouk banged the receiver down and shuddered. What a
dreadful woman!

Phone call number six.

Lydia Claussen Zehme.

“
L.Z. Design Lab, good morning,” a
secretary’s voice answered chirpily.

“
Good morning. This is Anouk de
Riscal. Is Lydia in?”

“
One moment, please.” There was a
click, and Muzak filled a long pause. Anouk held the receiver away
from her ear and glanced over at her Egyptian-style Cartier alarm
clock. She had better start moving soon if she was going to
intercept Doris at Le Cirque. It was nearly eleven
already.

There was a click and: “Anouk, darling!” Like her
brother Klas, Lydia hadn’t lost her Icelandic accent. “I was just
going to call you to confirm. Rest assured, we’re on for this
afternoon. Don’t ask me how, but we managed to get the sketch
boards and swatches for your new living room done. Barely, but we
burned the midnight oil and they are fantabulous, if I say so
myself. Just as you asked, delivered in record time!”

“
Oh, Lydia,” Anouk moaned, “you’re
going to kill me! I know you moved heaven and earth to get
everything finished by today, and I
know
I wanted it all
done yesterday, but. . . could we possibly postpone it until
Monday? Something . . .” She let her voice trail off.

“
Well, if it’s inconvenient ...”
Lydia began a little sharply.

“
Oh, you are so sweet,” Anouk
gushed. “Sometimes I really don’t know why you put up with me.” Of
course I do. Because the de Riscals are a feather in your
decorating cap. Because from my new living room you’ll get twenty
copycats who want the same thing. “Are you absolutely sure it isn’t
inconvenient?”

“
I’m sure, Anouk,” Lydia said
somewhat wearily.

“
You are a dear, Lydia. Monday,
then? Same time?”

“
Monday is fine.”

“
Good. I’ll see you tonight,
anyway. Ciao, darling!”

The phone calls out of the way, Anouk got busy with
her makeup. She combed her hair back into a chignon, studded it
with diamond-headed pins, and rubbed her face with collagen lotion.
She brushed translucent pink-tinted loose powder over it and made
her cheeks a pink-toned mauve. Brushed her eyebrows. Applied
under-eye lightener. Used a plum eyeliner pencil. Finally, with an
oversize brush, she “finished” her face with more of the loose
powder and put on berry-bright lipstick and clear moist gloss.

She worked quickly and expertly, and within twenty
minutes she was finished. Her face was a palette, and glowed like a
painting. Her emphasized eyes challenged, her lips promised. She
was a dazzling, brilliant, glossy woman—one in a million. She was
Manhattan chic at its finest.

Moving her head this way and that, she inspected her
reflection closely. Perfect.

Finally she got up and began to dress.

To kill, naturally. What other way was there?

_Chapter
9

The portable light and siren of the dark blue sedan
flashed and wailed as Detectives Koscina and Toledo screeched to a
halt. In front of them, three hastily parked blue-and-whites,
turret lights still whirling and spurts of radio talk still
crackling, already blocked the one-way street. The station wagon
from forensics was backed up on the sidewalk, and uniformed police
officers had cordoned off the immediate area in front of the town
house with lengths of yellow crime-scene tape to keep back curious
onlookers, dog walkers, and members of the press.

“
Shit detail,” Koscina murmured to
his partner, and sighed. “All right. Let’s get it over
with.”

Toledo, who had been driving, nodded absently and
slid out from behind the wheel. They both looked up and down the
affluent tree-lined block of town houses. The kind of street, just
off Fifth, that gave an illusion of small-town peace.

“
Hey, Fred! Whatcha got?” a
reporter from the
Daily News
called out as Koscina and
Toledo approached the building.

“
No comment, Bernie, no comment,”
Koscina called back lazily, ducking under the crime-scene ribbon
and ignoring the reporter.

Detective First Grade Fred Koscina had put in
twenty-one years on the force, the first eight spent walking a
beat. NYPD blood ran in his veins. His father had been a New York
City cop, and the Koscinas of the Lower East Side just like the
Koscinas of Zagreb, Yugoslavia, were a fearless, methodical, and
old-fashioned lot. Too old-fashioned to let pimps, prostitutes,
thieves, rapists, and murderers get the better of them.

In his first eight years, Fred Koscina’s
old-fashioned police methods had brought him infamy and
respect—depending upon whether you were the general public or a
fellow cop. He was known to shoot first and ask questions later—a
talent that two of his partners, long since resting six feet under,
hadn’t mastered.

The police commissioner had eventually kicked him
upstairs into the envied ranks of the homicide detectives, figuring
that sleuthing would keep the young Koscina off the streets and
away from anymore OK Corral shoot-outs.

Koscina took his promotion seriously: he excelled as
a detective. But a beauty he wasn’t.

Koscina used to be hard and chunky, but he was now
going to mashed potatoes. His hair was a stiff white flat-top
brush. A hearty appetite and a Yugoslav thirst for slivovitz left
their mark in burst capillaries on his W.C. Fields schnoz and his
meaty cheeks. His pale blue eyes, under the sharp angles of his
bristly white brows, always glared accusingly out at the world.

Other than his wife, he had only one friend who
genuinely liked and trusted him. That was his partner.

She was a thirty-four-year-old Hispanic who could
have been cute, but fought it every inch of the way: her black hair
was cropped to within an inch of its roots, her shiny dark eyes
were cold and fiercely challenging, and even her button of a nose
didn’t help. A perpetual scowl hid very white, very perfect Chiclet
teeth.

She stood five feet, seven inches tall, weighed one
hundred and thirty pounds, and was built like a steel whip; she had
the wiry muscles of a female weight lifter and the bull-dyke stance
of a trucker.

But looks can deceive. She had been happily married
for eleven years, had five children, and was, to those most likely
to know, a perfect mother and a perfect wife.

Her name was Detective Sergeant Carmen Toledo.

In the four years they had been partners, Detectives
Koscina and Toledo had solved more murder cases than any other
eight NYPD detectives.

Now, at 11:03 A.M. on December 14, the two of them
hurried indoors, the collars of their coats turned up.

“
Upstairs,” a rookie told them as
they flashed their leather shield cases at the front door. “Third
floor.”

Koscina stomped heavily up the stairs, Toledo right
behind him.

On the third floor, an NYPD locksmith was installing
a police lock above the other locks on the door of apartment 3B.
Directly across the hall, a neighbor’s door was open as far as the
safety chain would allow, and a curious ancient lady holding a tiny
hairless dog peered out.

Koscina brushed his way past the locksmith, Toledo
staying close behind.

The living room was twenty feet by twelve, with a
kitchen counter across one end and two windows with matchstick
blinds at the other. One wall was exposed brick, with a Victorian
white marble mantel. A giant round paper lantern hung from the
center of the ceiling. Soft modular furniture in pastel colors made
a seating group around a Navajo rug and an oak-and-glass coffee
table. Four bentwood chairs surrounded a round oak dining table. A
blue parakeet fluttered in a suspended cage. Piles of clothing,
sorted as though for the laundry, were heaped in the corners. Large
glossy photographs, obviously pouty model shots, stared down from
the walls.

It was a nice place. Homey and comfortable. A refuge
from the mean city.

But the city had intruded.

The crime-scene crew, all wearing plastic gloves,
was busy searching for physical evidence and dusting for prints.
Hair, skin, blood samples, the contents of an ashtray, and two
highball glasses had already been slid into labeled glassine
evidence bags.

Shouldering their way past the men, Koscina and
Toledo went down a narrow hall and into the bedroom.

They both recoiled.

“
Holy Jesus!” Toledo gulped. “Aw,
shit—” Clapping a hand over her mouth, she staggered around to find
the bathroom and spent the next two minutes hunched over the
toilet. Even Koscina, long inured to corpses, felt himself breaking
out in a cold sweat. His stomach lurched.

A naked woman was sprawled across the
blood-encrusted sheets, arms and legs painfully splayed in the
contortions of a hideous death. She had no face. No nose. No eyes.
From the neck up, she’d been unrecognizably slashed—like a carcass
of bloody meat.

This does it, Koscina promised himself. From now on
it’s vegetarian the whole way. Can’t stomach the sight of red meat.
Not after this.

“
Her hair—” His mouth gaped
open.

Christ! And he thought he’d seen everything.

The girl had been scalped clean.

“
Scalp’s entirely gone,” Joe
Rocchi, one of the crime-scene men, agreed. “Every last hair. Joker
cut it clean off and must’ve taken it with ‘im, skin and all. Think
there’s a homicidal hairdresser on the loose?”

“
What we got on her?” Koscina
snapped crisply, tearing his eyes away from the slaughter and
fighting the bile rising in his throat.

“
Vienna Farrow,” Joe Rocchi said.
“At least, that’s the name she went by. Model.” He poked a thumb at
the framed photographs that lined the bedroom wall. “Sure was a
looker, huh?”

Koscina glanced around and nodded. Vienna Farrow had
been stunning, to say the very least. A blend of Cindy Crawford,
Christie Brinkley, and Paulina Porizkova. All ash-blond hair,
flawless skin, and smooth features.

Koscina frowned. “She looks familiar. Should I know
her?”

“
Sure you should,” Rocchi replied.
“She’s a cover girl. On this month’s
Vogue.”

Koscina grinned humorlessly. “What, you into fashion
now?”

“
Naw. There’s a new stack of slicks
on the bedside table. Next month’s.” Rocchi pointed his thumb at
the nightstand.