Strawberry Tattoo (32 page)

“Hi,” Lex said to the general assembly, sounding as if he were arriving at a wake. Kim mumbled something and pulled up a chair.

“I didn’t realise there were going to be so many people here,” she said crossly in my ear.

“It just snowballed, you know?” I said, aiming for innocent and regretting
it halfway through. Kim would never be taken in by innocence from me. I should have tried hung-over instead.

“I know you!” Suzanne was saying to Lex. “Where have I seen you before? Must have been pretty recent.”

Lex looked panic-stricken. And for some reason I had the feeling she was playing with him. It was nothing I could put my finger on, just an instinct. But then I saw her lips purse for a moment while she watched his reaction, as if she were savouring it, and my suspicions grew. Did she know that Lex had been staying at Kate’s?

“This is Lex,” I explained, since the young man in question was too busy doing a startled fawn impression to speak for himself “Lex Thompson. And Kim—”

“Oh, right! I’m Suzanne, I work at Bergmann LaTouche. Great to meet you. I must have seen your photo in the leaflet we’ve been sending out,” she continued. “You looked so familiar.”

But even while she let him off the hook, she was observing him as carefully as if he had been a lab rat. Lex sagged with relief, completely unaware of any undercurrents.

“So how long have you been over here?” Laurence asked. “We thought you weren’t due in till next Wednesday. I’m Laurence, by the way. And this is Kevin and Java. We all work at the gallery. Apart from Sam. She just finds the bodies for us.”

“Each to their own,” I said.

“You heard about that?” Java asked Lex. “It’s so terrible. And scary.”

“Java,” Suzanne said warningly.

“Well, it is,” Java retorted unanswerably. “I mean, he’s going to have to find out about it sooner or later.”

“Lex knows,” I said, cutting in. “He’s actually been here for a few days now, staying with me and some other friends.”

Lex’s relief at my covering up for him was pathetic. He managed a smile at me and relaxed back in his chair for the first time that morning.

“Hey,” he said, recovering fast, “isn’t this a place where you can get stuff to eat? How does that work?”

Kevin handed him a menu. Kim was already looking at hers.

“You’ve been shagging, haven’t you?” I muttered to Kim.

Kim stared at me. “How d’you know?”

“My sex antennae are wobbling madly. Remember them?”

She and Lex both looked so physically relaxed that I could have bounced tennis balls off their foreheads without them noticing. Besides, there was the unmistakable nuclear-fuelled, I-had-sex-last-night glow, like the Ready Brek kids’ halo.

Kim sighed. “OK, we did it. All right?”

“Are you ready to order?”

We both started.

“Uh, yes,” Kim said, picking something more or less at random from the menu. Lex, his eyes on my margarita, ordered one to go with his brunch.

“And I’ll have what he’s having,” he said, pointing at Kevin’s plate. “With sausage.”

“You mean chorizo?” said the waitress politely.

“You what?”

“OK, we’ll put some on for you,” she said, maintaining her cool.

“You guys don’t have chorizo in London?” Laurence said disbelievingly.

“Of course we do,” I explained. “We just don’t know how to pronounce it.”

“We just drop our t’s instead,” Lex said, thoroughly relaxed by now.

“Don’t you mean h’s?” Suzanne said.

“Nah. T’s. Wha’ d’you mean? Tha’s ridiculous, inni’?” he illustrated.

The Americans tried this out for a few minutes. The spectacle of them mouthing away at what the Sunday papers called Estuary English was diverting, but eventually it palled, and I resorted to spooning up the pale green slush at the bottom of the margarita glass with a straw.

“So are you a friend of Lex’s?” Laurence said to Kim.

“Actually, I’m a really old friend of Sam’s. We knew each other at school in England.”

“You’re Kim Tallboy!” Laurence exclaimed. “I knew I’d seen you before. You must have come into the gallery for Barbara’s show, right?”

“Briefly.”

“Jon’s daughter?” Java said. “Oh right, I remember when Sam said she knew you. Boy, Barbara didn’t like that one little bit.”

Laurence and Suzanne turned as one to stare her down.

“What?” Java said. “I mean, it’s the truth, isn’t it? We all know about it.”

“Kim doesn’t,” Suzanne said.

“I bet she knows she and Barbara don’t get on,” Java retorted.

“God, who elected you as the George Washington of Bergmann La-Touche?” Laurence said sourly. “Don’t you know how dangerous it is to tell the truth these days? Watch your back!”

“What, if I don’t I could wind up dead? Is that what you’re saying?” Java suggested.

There was a terrible silence. Laurence, more shocked than anyone else, started scratching nervously at his scalp like a monkey with nits. Stale flakes of dandruff floated down onto his grey cardigan.

“I’m really sorry, Java,” he said finally. “It just came out.”

Java was the only one round the table who seemed unaffected.

“Sure,” she said. “Don’t sweat it.”

“I just don’t get it,” Kevin said, blood rising to his blond face so that his fair eyebrows and lashes vanished into the flush of red. “How could you even hint at a thing like that, man? With everything that’s happening?”

“Hey, I said I was sorry,” Laurence snapped. He was very edgy today. Dr. Sam diagnosed lack of antidepressants.

“It’s fine, Kev. Honestly,” Java said cheerfully. “It could have happened to anyone.”

“Yeah, well, it didn’t.” Kevin was still pugnacious. And his facial hair was still invisible. He speared a chip and a courgette stick and shoved them into his mouth angrily. I was willing to bet that Kevin hadn’t yet managed to make the beast with two backs with Java. He was irritable and tetchy in a way that suggested sexual frustration. And though she seemed to like him well enough, I wasn’t sure that her feelings for him went any further than that. Unless giving him dietary hints was a sign of interest.

“Are you still seeing that guy, Java? The lawyer guy?” Suzanne asked, changing the subject. I wondered if her thoughts had been running on the same lines as mine.

“Oh, no. God. He had issues, you know?” Java put down her glass of energy juice, looking serious. “I was like, quit dumping all this baggage on me. In life we have to carry our own.”

Even Laurence was nodding. Obviously Americans did not consider this gobbledegook. I tried desperately to memorise it for Hugo.

“Plus he was an alcoholic,” Java added. “I really noticed it when we went away for that skiing weekend.”

“Did he go on a binge? Were you OK?” Kevin asked, concerned.

“He would sometimes drink
three glasses of wine a night
,” Java said sadly.

Lex had frozen with his margarita glass poised on its way to his mouth.

“My God,” I said. “Three glasses of wine. Did you try to get him into AA?”

Java wasn’t stupid; she knew my words were loaded, even though she was unsure with what. She looked at me warily.

“I did give him a card, yeah. When we got back to the city.”

“Did you tell him why?” I couldn’t let this alone. “I mean, did you get him to realise that he had a problem?”

“I don’t know,” Java said. “But, you know, I gave him something to think about. Like, it’s got to be his choice if he gets help or not.”

Lex suddenly started choking on his food. Kevin, next to him, gave him a hefty pat on the back which caused him to splutter out what sounded suspiciously like a burst of laughter.

“I couldn’t be with someone who was dependent on alcohol,” Java was continuing. “I’m not being judgemental, but to me it’s a real weakness. You know? It says, I’m needy and addictive.”

Even Kim, the born-again teetotaller, looked as if she thought this was a bit much. I shot her a glance designed to indicate that this was the beginning of the slippery slope on which she found herself. Meanwhile, Lex had caught the waitress’s eye and was tapping at his margarita glass, indicating that he wanted a refill.

Behind Java’s back, I held up my own as well. It was nice to have the company. At least I wasn’t the only member of the group with as much willpower and self-control as John Belushi. And I had made a bet with myself that by the time I left New York Kim would be tippling again. Between Lex and me, I was sure we could manage it. I was modestly proud of my abilities as a bad influence.

I had been doing Lex an injustice: apparently I was the only needy, addictive person using drink as a crutch in social situations. Lex’s excuse was that he was stressed—despite having scored the night before—because he thought someone was following him.

“Well, it’s not the cops,” I said reassuringly. “They’d have hauled you in by now.”

Still, bells were ringing in my head. I remembered Lex saying this before, in Central Park. It wasn’t something he was just making up now to sound interesting, or dope paranoia. And I had thought there was someone watching me when I came out of my building the other day to go to the gallery. I put this aside to think about later. My mention of the cops had reminded me of a pressing appointment he had.

I pulled out from my pocket the card Thurber had given me. “By the way, you’ve got to go and talk to them. Ring them right now and get it over with.”

“What?” Lex jumped back from the card I was holding out as if it were Kryptonite and he was Superman. “Are you mad?”

“Lex, you’re going to have to sooner or later,” Kim pointed out reasonably. She yawned and stretched back her arms. “God, I’m stiff. Maybe I should ask if I can have a game of bocci. Loosen my shoulders up a bit.” She nodded at the group of wizened and purposeful old men in caps who were playing bowls on a stretch of sand behind our bench. The game was
hotly contested, but they were equally concentrated on hissing away any dog which strayed near them. I could understand that, from a dog’s perspective, the sand would be pretty tempting: the grass in the park was manky at best. The bocci players didn’t share this sentiment. One guy had a spare ball in his hand which he kept turning over while eyeing up every passing dog with a wistful gaze.

“Hey! You! Get that mutt outta here!” he shouted unfairly at a passing man with an exquisitely groomed little fluff of fur trotting innocently beside him.

“He is
not
a mutt,” the man retorted, theatrically wounded. “He’s a Lhasa apso. Heel, Oscar!”

“Fairy,” said the frustrated bocci player.

“
Peasant
,” the man snapped back.

“Never a dull moment in Washington Square Park,” Laurence said.

Most of the dealers had already tried their luck with us, or rather Lex. Some people just attract that kind of attention. In fact he had rolled up and was now smoking happily away.

“You couldn’t do this in London,” he had said. “Not with people passing so close by.”

“Shit, that’s nothing,” Kim said. “I’ve seen people doing lines of coke on mirrors on their laps in clubs here.”

The kindbud hadn’t helped to calm Lex down much. He was still eyeing Thurber’s card as if it would take away all his superhuman powers.

“Lex, you idiot,” I said impatiently, dropping it in his lap, “don’t you realise you’re off the hook?”

“You what?” He had been lying sprawled on the bench, legs splayed out, to Laurence’s obvious annoyance. Lex had a physical ease, a confidence in his own attractive body, which skinny, nervous Laurence would never possess. Now he drew his legs under the bench, sitting up straight. “Say that again?”

“You have an alibi for when Don was killed. Me. And the doorman. We can both say that as far as we know you didn’t leave my building.”

“Sammy to the rescue,” Kim said cheerfully. “Why don’t you call them
now, big guy? No time like the present. I’ll come with you,” she offered. “I don’t have to be at work till ten.”

“Really?” Lex brightened up. “I know I’m being a wimp. But it’s not just the cops. I tell you, I’m sure someone’s following me.”

“Who could it be?” I said doubtfully.

“Well, duh, the strangler,” Lex said crossly. “I mean, why the fuck do you think I’m so worried?”

“But Lex, if the strangler’s following you, what are they doing it for?” I pointed out. “They can’t be trying to frame you, because otherwise they wouldn’t have killed Don when you had an alibi. And they haven’t killed you yet, and there must have been plenty of opportunities.”

“The operative word being ‘yet,’” Lex said darkly. “That’s why I want someone with me. You can’t strangle two people simultaneously.”

“Maybe I should follow you,” I offered. “See if I can spot whoever’s doing it.”

“You’re not taking this seriously,” Lex complained.

“It’s not so bad to lighten up a bit,” Laurence said, reentering the conversation from his own perspective. “I just wish Suzanne could. I’ve never seen her like this. She thinks she’s some kind of avenging angel.”

“Why wouldn’t she say where she was going?” I asked him. Suzanne had left us outside the Mexican restaurant, intent on some hidden agenda of her own. Java and Kevin had peeled off too, but their attitude had spoken less of dark secrets to be tracked down than late-afternoon slacking.