SoHo Sins (8 page)

“Thank you, yes. But I choose solitude often.”

“A pity.”

“No. I have, of course, many admirers—always. But not so many are kind gentlemen like you. Or like Philip.”

“So tell me why you want this lonely life.”

“It is not so lonely, since Philip. For the work, yes, it’s necessary to be alone. This is what I do, who I am.”

Hogan dipped his head an inch or two. “At least you know what you need,” he said. “And how to get it.”

With that, they seemed suddenly to remember themselves—and me. Hogan nodded and Claudia led him back through the archway. By the time they returned to the kitchen, I half expected the two of them to be bathed in love sweat. Hogan slid Claudia’s chair from the table and stood waiting. As soon as she settled into her seat, he took his place across from her. She refilled his glass. They looked at each other and drank without speaking.

In the midst of this flirty rigmarole, they both turned to me. I had to say something.

“You must have some idea,” I said to Claudia. “Some idea who would want Mandy dead.”

“Oh, yes, I have thought. Philip’s ex-wife, for one—the mother. She hated Amanda always. Or those awful men around him—the company liars—they could perhaps wish it, so they get more control.”

“Why his first wife?”

“Because, with Amanda dead, half of everything Philip owns goes back to his child. To a thrust, for when the girl turns twenty-one.”

“The word is ‘trust.’ ”

“Is it? Good, I learn: a trust.”

“And if Philip died, too?” I asked.

“Then everything. It is one of the many things we discussed. One of the plans he had to make before he could divorce again.”

“You talked about his death? Philip looks awfully healthy to me.”

“You are not a doctor. The special ones, at the big ugly hospital, they say his head will kill his body very soon.”

“Would anything change if the two of you got married?”

“Then the young girl, Melissa, would get only a half.”

“That’s still a fortune.”

“Still, yes. Philip felt much badness about how he once treated Angela and the baby—when he left to go to Amanda years ago.”

“And what about other girlfriends?” Hogan asked. “Any around who might resent Philip’s new plans with you?”

“You don’t know Philip. He is not the kind of man to cheat on his lover.”

“Just his wife.”

“This is normal.”

I ate an olive and placed the pit in a little saucer by the empty wine bottle. “Claudia, my dear, you should write a lonely hearts column,” I said.

She tilted the second bottle in the direction of my glass. I covered the top with my hand.

“
Prego
,” she said. “Take, enjoy.”

I gave in and accepted another half-glass. As Claudia poured, I worked hard to keep my concentration. Her abundant, self-proclaiming body demanded full notice, and usually got it. Everything about her was bountiful, generous, flowing. No matter what she did, no matter how she moved, you were aware first of her breasts, her white skin, her thighs. You could easily see how a man of Philip’s age, or any age, would be intensely drawn to her scented flesh and tender care, to long slow hours in these casually welcoming rooms. There was about her a sense of arrival, of journey’s end. Fortunately, I was no longer susceptible to such treacherous myths.

“But Amanda, for one,” I reminded our hostess, “might not have agreed with your view.”

“No, she did not. She said she was going to take away the one thing Philip loved truly. His company.”

“Did he tell his top brass about the threat?” Hogan asked.

“Top brass? What is ‘top brass’?”

“Those men around him—his false
consiglieri
, as you call them.”

“Of course. They had to prepare, to protect. Like a war. They were making ready a big lawyer fight.”

“You seem to know a lot about Philip’s business.”

“No, nothing. I am too much like my father.”

She laughed bitterly, but the humor was clearly lost on Hogan. He didn’t know what it meant for an old-fashioned museum director, especially a European intellectual like Enrico Silva, to face the transition to market-driven arts management.

“My father calls himself a ‘displaced person,’ ” Claudia told Hogan. “You know what this means? Like a refugee. A man without a home or a future.”

“Because he’s lousy at business?”

“It is too cruel. When he was my age, Papa wrote a book on Fra Angelico. Three hundred pages. Such beautiful pictures, such beautiful words.”

“And now?”

“He only raises money. Without rest.”

“Like most people, one way or another.”

“He is not like most people. He should spend his time to think, to write, to make fine shows of the very best works—to be a man of culture. Isn’t that why they hired him?”

I shook my head. “No, Claudia, they hired him for the semblance of those things. In order to attract trustees and big-money sponsors to the museum.”

“It’s not fair. They want him to make a new building, to think a budget for ten years ahead, to be a ‘pro-active manager.’ You know what this is, this ‘pro-active manager’?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s something Enrico will never be.”

Hogan leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “If you married Philip Oliver, it would make your father’s life a lot easier,” he suggested. “He could be a man of culture again.”

Claudia drew back slightly. “What do you say by this?”

“How much longer until Papa is due to retire?” Hogan asked.

“Seven years.”

“A quick answer. You must have given his situation some thought.”

“Now you talk like a stranger, like a policeman,” she replied. “It’s a pity.”

Hogan laughed to himself. “I’m not suspicious by nature,” he said. “Just by experience.”

“There, you see, Hogan is more European than he knows,” I joked awkwardly. I had that anxiety you get when you’re caught, a third party, in the middle of an old lovers’ spat. “Let’s just finish the wine,” I said, and poured all around.

Claudia looked hard at Hogan. “You can ‘check me out’ all you want,” she offered. “Come back here whenever you like. Talk to everyone who knows me. In the end, you will decide I tell truths. I love my father, and I love Philip Oliver. Those are my crimes. Of everything else I am not guilty.”

“I’m glad,” he answered.

“Are you? Somehow I doubt.”

“No, it’s true. It’s my fondest wish to find you, to find anyone, truly innocent.” Hogan forced a mild laugh. “At least it would break the monotony.” He raised his glass, waiting for us to join him. “
Buono, salute.
To the health of our friends.”

“And the death of our enemies,” Claudia added.

“I like this girl,” Hogan said, turning toward me. “She reminds me of my Marine drill instructor.”

We drank down the last of the wine.

A couple days later, Hogan and I went to see Philip at his office on 55th Street. The building lobby was two stories high and clad in green marble. A girl at the solid mahogany reception desk sent us up the express elevator to the forty-fifth floor. The doors opened onto another counter and another sleek business-suited woman. She smiled up at us from beneath an enormous Oliver Technologies wall logo, its stylized “OT” glistening in hand-polished brass.

The greeter, her brown hair pulled smartly back, told us we were expected, and to please follow her into a conference room. She made it a pleasure to comply.

“Coffee, gentlemen?”

“Black,” Hogan said. “A guy could get drowsy in the hush of this place.”

The girl smiled. “No danger of that once Mr. Andrews arrives.” She went to the head of the room’s long wooden table and pushed a button. “You’ll be meeting with the executive staff.”

“We don’t want to bother anyone,” Hogan said. “We just came to talk to Mr. Oliver for a few minutes in private.”

“I’m sure Mr. Andrews will take your wishes into account.”

A cart appeared at the door, maneuvered by a young man in a gray smock and dress slacks. He drew coffee for us from a towering silver urn perched on the white-skirted cart. Without a single word, without eye contact, he left.

A moment later, a man wearing steel-rimmed spectacles and a dark pinstripe suit walked swiftly into the room and seized first my hand and then Hogan’s.

“Bob Andrews,” he said. “Comptroller and deputy chief executive officer. How are you?”

His hair, thin and black, was gelled straight back close to his skull, pushing his blunt features into prominence. The severe style seemed to emphasize the swell of his oversized forehead. Whenever he turned his face, the light glinted sharply off his lenses and frames.

“Mr. Wyeth, Mr. Hogan, thank you for coming.” He motioned us to two facing seats at the end of the table. He sat down between us, at the head. “I’m aware, of course, of the reason for your visit. An awful turn of events. Mrs. Oliver was well-known to us all here, and universally liked.”

“So I hear,” Hogan said.

“That’s why I want to assure you that you’ll have the full cooperation of Oliver Technologies in your investigation.”

“A smart decision.”

“We expect, of course, nothing less than a full exoneration of Philip.”

“I’ll see what we can do. But there is the small problem of his confession.”

“Phil is not a well man,” Andrews countered quickly. “Trauma, fatigue, self-blame have all, understandably, disoriented him.”

“It happens a lot in this town.”

Andrews nodded gravely, his lenses flashing like semaphore lamps. “And as you know, Philip has been suffering from Wolfsheim’s Syndrome for the past several years.”

“How exactly does that work again?” I asked.

“Insidiously. Phil retains his analytic and decision-making functions, but his memory is deteriorating rapidly. He tends to remember only those parts of his experience that he enjoyed at the time. The doctors sometimes describe it as ‘obliteration by bliss.’ ”

“That must cut down on his bar bills,” Hogan said.

Andrews looked at him blankly, as though he had just spoken in Chinese.

“At the same time,” the comptroller continued, “Phil is consumed by guilt over his wife’s death—and unable to censor his own conversations.”

“But he still runs the company?”

“No one here, or anywhere in the world, has noticed any decline in Philip’s business acumen.”

“So the stockholders are happy?”

“Oliver Technologies has increased its global revenues at a rate of eighteen percent annually for the last five years. The stockholders are very pleased. Glowing.”

“I imagine that Phil, you, and the other top staff members here all have a healthy portion of those shares.”

“The portion set by the board’s compensation committee. In line with industry norms. It’s how we hire and retain a talented staff.”

We all nodded amiably to each other.

“The thing is,” Hogan said, “we’re actually here to see Mr. Oliver. We have an appointment for eleven o’clock.”

“Of course,” Andrews replied. “Phil will be joining us shortly for lunch.”

“It was a personal appointment. You know, for some reason folks tend to clam up with an investigator when their coworkers and friends are around. Maybe it’s a group-dynamics thing.”

Andrews—a squash player, I’d wager—returned the shot deftly. “Surely you don’t expect someone like Phil, a grieving spouse with a brain disease, to submit to your questions without his lawyer present?”

“I work for his lawyer,” Hogan said. “Which means I work for Philip, indirectly. So you guys and me, we’re all colleagues, in a way. And we’ve got a big problem to solve. Philip, our boss, waltzed into a police station a few days ago, dripping wet, and indicted himself for murder. Bernstein pulled him out of the fire that night. But if we can’t do a proper follow-up now, the cops are going to take Philip at his word. I guess you’ve heard how his statement begins.”

Andrews grew rigid in his seat. “I really don’t think, as deputy CEO, that I can allow our company’s founder, chief stockholder, and managerial head to be interrogated alone.”

“It’s an interesting point, Philip’s position here and all,” Hogan said, “especially since his father died. When was it—four years ago? That left Philip suddenly in charge of everything, didn’t it? Not just O-Tech but all of Oliver Industries.”

“That’s correct.”

“Could be pretty overwhelming, don’t you think? A lone guy, under so much new stress. He’d probably want to reach out to his most trusted advisers.”

Distractedly, Hogan was toying with a sugar cube on the table.

“You see,” he said, “right now I’m just thinking of this as a nice simple homicide case. Woman gets shot in her apartment. She had some marital problems—who doesn’t?—but she was also in line for a very big inheritance from Philip, her mysteriously sick husband.”

Without looking down, Hogan crushed the cube slowly between his thumb and index finger.

“Now, with Amanda dead, that huge stash goes somewhere else—at least half to Philip’s daughter. All of it, if Philip dies soon. So there’s his first wife to think about. A woman scorned and all that—one who might like to secure her child’s future, along with her own. Also, closer at hand, we have Philip’s impatient young girlfriend, a struggling artist who could certainly use some cash.”

“Yes, she certainly could.”

“Then there’s always the chance that the lady was killed by an intruder who just wanted to rip off some very valuable art.”

“An abundance of leads, as you call them,” Andrews said.

“Not leads yet exactly. Just banal, everyday facts. The kind that make my job almost dull. But eventually, put together the right way, they might result in a break.”

“What can we do to help you?” Andrews asked.

“You can tell me what you think of Claudia Silva.”

The executive’s big gleaming head turned away. “I try not to think about her at all.”

“Easier said than done.”

“Not for those of us at O-Tech. She has no relationship with the firm.”

“Unless, now that Mandy’s dead, she becomes the new Mrs. Philip Oliver.”

“That won’t happen.”

“Says who?”

Something—a wince, perhaps—darted across Andrews’s face. “Just a surmise,” he said.