While My Pretty One Sleeps Page 9

  • • •

  How many people had Bigmouth Ethel told that she thought he was helping himself to the money she hid around the apartment? It was a question that haunted Doug Wednesday morning after he arrived at his desk in the lobby of the Cosmic Oil Building. Automatically he verified appointments, wrote names, doled out plastic visitors’ cards and collected them back again as people departed. Several times, Linda, the seventh-floor receptionist, stopped by to chat with him. Today he was a little cool to her, which she seemed to find intriguing. What would she think if she knew that he was going to inherit a bundle of money? Where had Ethel made all that loot?

  There was only one answer. Ethel had told him that she’d taken Seamus for his eyeteeth when he wanted out of the marriage. Besides the alimony, she’d come off with a hefty settlement and had probably been smart enough to invest it. Then that book she wrote five or six years ago had sold well. Ethel, for all her scatterbrained act, had always been pretty shrewd. It was that thought that caused Doug to feel queasy with apprehension. She had known that he was helping himself to money. How many people had she told?

  After wrestling with the problem until noon, he made his decision. There were just about enough supercheck funds available in his checking account to take out four hundred dollars. Impatiently he waited on the interminable line at the bank and got the money in hundred-dollar bills. He’d stash them in some of Ethel’s hiding places, the ones she didn’t use most of the time. That way, if anybody searched, the money would be there. Somewhat reassured, he stopped for a hot dog at a food cart and went back to work.

  At six-thirty, as Doug was rounding the corner from Broadway to Eighty-second Street, he saw Seamus hurrying down the steps from Ethel’s building. He almost laughed out loud. Of course! It was the fifth of the month, and Seamus the wimp was there, right on the button with his alimony check. What a sad sack he was in that shabby coat! Regretfully, Doug realized that it would be a while before he himself could buy any more new clothes. He’d have to be very, very careful from now on.

  He’d been collecting the mail every day with the key Ethel kept in a box on top of her desk. The envelope from Seamus was jammed into the box, still sticking out a little. Other than that there was mostly junk mail. Ethel’s bills went directly to her accountant. He flipped through the envelopes, then dropped them on the desk. All except the unstamped one, the contribution from Seamus. It hadn’t been sealed properly. There was a note inside, and the outline of the check was clearly visible.

  It would be easy to open and reseal it. Doug’s hand lingered on the flap, then, taking care not to cause a tear, he opened the envelope. The check fell out. Boy, he’d like to have the handwriting on it analyzed. If ever stress showed like a road map, it was in the slanted squiggle that was Seamus’ penmanship.

  Doug laid the check down, opened the note, read it, reread it and felt his mouth drop in amazement. What the hell . . . Carefully he reinserted the note and the check in the envelope, licked the glued area and pressed the flap firmly down. An image of Seamus with his hands hunched in his pockets, almost running as he crossed the street, loomed like a freeze-time in Doug’s mind. Seamus was up to something. What kind of game was he playing, writing to say that Ethel had agreed not to take any more alimony and then including the check?

  In a pig’s eye she let you off the hook, Doug thought. A chill came over him. Had that note been intended for his eyes, not Ethel’s?

  • • •

  When Neeve arrived home, she found to her delight that Myles had done a massive grocery shopping. “You even went to Zabar’s,” she said happily. “I was trying to figure how early I could leave the shop tomorrow. Now I can get everything started tonight.” She had warned him that she’d be doing paperwork in the shop after closing hours. She uttered a silent prayer of gratitude that he did not think to ask her how she had gotten across town.

  Myles had cooked a small leg of lamb, steamed fresh green beans and made a tomato-and-onion vinaigrette salad. He’d set the small table in the den and had a bottle of burgundy open nearby. Neeve rushed to change into slacks and a sweater, then with a sigh of relief settled into a chair and reached for the wine. “This is very kind of you, Commish,” she said.

  “Well, since you’re feeding the aging Musketeers from the Bronx tomorrow night, I figured one good turn deserves another.” Myles began to carve the roast.

  Neeve observed him silently. His skin tone was good. His eyes no longer had that sick, heavy look. “I hate to compliment you, but you do realize you look darn healthy,” she told him.

  “I feel okay.” Myles placed the perfectly done slices of lamb on Neeve’s plate. “I hope I didn’t use too much garlic.”

  Neeve sampled the first bite. “Great. You have to be feeling better to cook this well.”

  Myles sipped the burgundy. “Good wine, if I say so myself.” His eyes clouded.

  Some depression, the doctor had told her. “The heart attack, giving up his job, the bypass . . .”

  “And always worrying about me,” Neeve had injected.

  “Always worrying about you because he can’t forgive himself for not worrying about your mother.”

  “How do I make him stop?”

  “Keep Nicky Sepetti in jail. If that’s not possible, by spring urge your father to get busy on some project. Right now his guts are torn, Neeve. He’d be lost without you, but he hates himself for depending on you emotionally. He’s a proud guy. And something else. Stop babying him.”

  That had been six months ago. It was spring now. Neeve knew she had made a real attempt to treat Myles in their old way. They used to have vigorous debates about everything from Neeve’s acceptance of the loan from Sal to politics on every level. “You’re the first Kearny in ninety years to vote Republican,” Myles had exploded.

  “It’s not quite the same as losing the faith.”

  “It’s getting warm.”

  And now just when he’s on the right track, he’s all upset about Nicky Sepetti, she thought, and that could go on forever.

  Unconsciously shaking her head, she glanced around, deciding as always that the den was her favorite room in the apartment. The worn Oriental carpeting was in shades of red and blue; the leather couch and the matching chairs were handsome and inviting. Pictures covered the wall. Myles receiving innumerable plaques and honors. Myles with the Mayor, the Governor, the Republican President. The windows overlooking the Hudson. The tie-back draperies were the ones Renata had hung. Victorian-era, they were a deep warm blue and crimson, a subtle stripe that shimmered in the reflection of the crystal sconces on the wall. Between the sconces were Renata’s pictures. The very first one her own father had taken when she was the ten-year-old child who had saved Myles and now looked at him adoringly as he lay, his head bandaged, propped on pillows. Renata with Neeve as a baby, with Neeve as a toddler. Renata and Neeve and Myles snorkeling off Maui. That was the year before Renata died.

  Myles asked about the menu for the next night’s dinner. “I didn’t know what you’d want, so I bought everything,” he said.

  “Sal told me he doesn’t want to eat your diet. The Bishop wants pesto.”

  Myles grunted. “I can remember when Sal thought a hero sandwich was a rare treat and when Devin’s mother sent him to the deli for nickel fish cakes and a can of Heinz spaghetti.”

  Neeve had coffee in the kitchen as she began to organize the dinner party. Renata’s cookbooks were on the shelf over the sink. She reached for her favorite, an old family relic with northern-Italian recipes.

  After Renata’s death, Myles had sent Neeve to a private tutor to keep up her conversational Italian. Every summer growing up she’d spent a month in Venice with her grandparents, and she’d taken her junior year in college in Perugia. For years she’d avoided the cookbooks, unwilling to see the notations in Renata’s bold, curlicued hand. “More pepper. Bake only twenty minutes. Hold the oil.” She could see Renata singing to herself as she cooked, letting Neeve stir or mix or
measure, exploding, “Cara, this is either a misprint or the chef was drunk. Who could put so much oil in this dressing? Better to drink the Dead Sea.”

  Sometimes Renata had drawn quick sketches of Neeve on the margins of the pages, sketches that were charming, beautifully drawn miniatures: Neeve dressed as a princess sitting at the table, Neeve hovering over a large mixing bowl, Neeve in a Gibson Girl dress sampling a cookie. Dozens of sketches, each one evoking a sense of profound loss. Even now Neeve could not allow herself to do more than skim her eyes over the sketches. The memories they recalled were too painful. She felt sudden moisture in her eyes.

  “I used to tell her she should take art lessons,” Myles said.

  She had not realized he was looking over her shoulder. “Mother liked what she did.”

  “Selling clothes to bored women.”

  Neeve bit her tongue. “Exactly how you’d classify me, I guess.”

  Myles looked conciliatory. “Oh, Neeve, I’m sorry. I’m on edge. I admit it.”

  “You’re on edge, but you also meant it. Now get out of my kitchen.”

  Deliberately she slammed pots as she measured, poured, cut, sautéed, simmered and baked. Face it. Myles was the world’s leading male chauvinist. If Renata had pursued art, if she’d developed into a mediocre painter of watercolors, he would have considered it a ladylike hobby. He simply couldn’t understand that helping women select becoming clothing could make a big difference for those women in their social and business lives.

  I’ve been written up in Vogue, Town and Country, The New York Times and God knows where else, Neeve thought, but that doesn’t cut any ice with him. It’s as though I’m stealing from people when I charge them for expensive clothes.

  She remembered how annoyed Myles had been when, during their Christmas party, he found Ethel Lambston in the kitchen browsing through Renata’s cookbooks. “Are you interested in cooking?” he’d asked her icily.

  Naturally Ethel hadn’t noticed his annoyance. “Not at all,” she’d told him airily. “I read Italian and happened to notice the books. Queste desegni sono stupendi.”

  She’d been holding the book with the sketches. Myles had taken it from her hand. “My wife was Italian. I don’t speak the language.”

  That was the point at which Ethel realized Myles was an unattached widower and latched onto him for the evening.

  Finally everything was prepared. Neeve put the dishes into the refrigerator, tidied up and set the table in the dining room. She studiously ignored Myles, who was watching television in the den. As she finished placing the serving dishes on the sideboard, the eleven-o’clock news came on.

  Myles held out a snifter of brandy to her. “Your mother used to bang the pots and pans when she was mad at me, too.” His smile was boyish. It was his apology.

  Neeve accepted the brandy. “Too bad she didn’t throw them at you.”

  They laughed together as the phone rang. Myles picked it up. His genial “Hello” was quickly replaced by rapidfire questions. Neeve watched as his mouth tightened. When he replaced the receiver, he said tonelessly, “That was Herb Schwartz. One of our guys had been planted in Nicky Sepetti’s inner circle. He was just found in a garbage dump. Still alive, and there’s a chance he’ll make it.”

  Neeve listened, her mouth going dry. Myles’s face was contorted, but she didn’t know what she was seeing in it. “His name is Tony Vitale,” Myles said. “He’s thirty-one years old. They knew him as Carmen Machado. They shot him four times. He should be dead, but somehow he hung on. There was something he wanted us to know.”

  “What was it?” Neeve whispered.

  “Herb was there in the emergency room. Tony told him, ‘No contract, Nicky, Neeve Kearny.’” Myles put his hand over his face as though trying to hide the expression on it.

  Neeve stared at his anguished face. “You didn’t seriously think there would be one?”

  “Oh yes I did.” Myles’s voice rose. “Oh yes I did. And now for the first time in seventeen years, I can sleep at night.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Neeve, they went to question Nicky. Our guys. And they got there just in time to watch him die. The stinking sonofabitch had a heart attack. He’s dead. Neeve, Nicky Sepetti is dead!”

  He put his arms around her. She could feel the wild beating of his heart.

  “Then let his death free you, Dad,” she begged. Unconsciously she cupped his face in her palms, and remembered that that was Renata’s familiar caress. Deliberately she imitated Renata’s accent. “Caro Milo, leesten to me.”

  They both managed shaky smiles as Myles said, “I’ll try. I promise.” Undercover detective Anthony Vitale, known to the Sepetti crime family as Carmen Machado, lay in the intensive-care unit of St. Vincent’s Hospital. The bullets had lodged in his lung, split the ribs protecting his chest cavity and shattered his left shoulder. Miraculously he was still alive. Tubes invaded his body, dripping antibiotics and glucose into his veins. A respirator had taken over the function of breathing.

  In the moments of consciousness that came to him from time to time, Tony could perceive the distraught faces of his parents. I’m tough. I’ll try to make it, he wanted to reassure them.

  If only he could talk. Had he been able to say anything when they found him? He had tried to tell them about the contract, but it hadn’t come out the way he meant it.

  Nicky Sepetti and his gang hadn’t put a contract on Neeve Kearny. Someone else had. Tony knew he’d been shot on Tuesday night. How long had he been in the hospital? Dimly he remembered fragments of what they’d told Nicky about the contract: You can’t call off a contract. The ex-Commissioner will be planning another funeral.

  Tony tried to pull himself up. He had to warn them.

  “Easy does it,” a soft voice murmured.

  He felt a prick in his arm and a few moments later slid into a quiet, dreamless sleep.

  7|

  Thursday morning at eight o’clock, Neeve and Tse-Tse were in a taxi across the street from Ethel Lambston’s apartment. On Tuesday, Ethel’s nephew had left for work at eight-twenty. Today they wanted to be certain to avoid him. The cabdriver’s protest, “I don’t get rich on waiting time,” was mollified by Neeve’s promise of a ten-dollar tip.

  It was Tse-Tse who at eight-fifteen spotted Doug. “Look.”

  Neeve watched as he locked the door of the apartment, glanced around and headed for Broadway. The morning was cool, and he wore a belted trench coat. “That’s a real Burberry,” she said. “He must get paid awfully well for a receptionist.”

  The apartment was surprisingly tidy. Sheets and a quilt were stacked under a pillow at the end of the couch. The pillow sham was wrinkled. Clearly it had been slept on. There was no sign of a used ashtray, but Neeve was sure she detected the faint odor of cigarette smoke in the air. “He’s been smoking but doesn’t want to be caught at it,” she observed. “I wonder why.”

  The bedroom was a model of neatness. The bed was made. Doug’s suitcase was on the chaise; hangers with suits, slacks and jackets were laid across it. His note to Ethel was propped against the mirror on the dressing table.

  “Who’s kidding who?” Tse-Tse asked. “What made him write that and stop using her bedroom?”

  Neeve knew that Tse-Tse had an excellent eye for detail. “All right,” she said. “Let’s start with that note. Has he ever left one for her before?”

  Tse-Tse was wearing her Swedish-maid outfit. The coil of braids shook vigorously as she said, “Never.”

  Neeve walked to the closet and opened the door. Hanger by hanger, she examined Ethel’s wardrobe to see whether she had missed any of her coats. But they were all there: the sable, the stone marten, the cashmere, the wraparound, the Burberry, the leather, the cape. At Tse-Tse’s puzzled expression, she explained what she was doing.

  Tse-Tse reinforced her suspicions. “Ethel always tells me that she’s given up being an impulse buyer since you took over dressing her. You’re right. There’s no other coat.”

 
; Neeve closed the closet door. “I’m not happy snooping around like this, but I have to. Ethel always carries a daily calendar in her purse, but I’m pretty sure she has a ledger-sized one as well.”

  “Yes she does,” Tse-Tse said. “It’s on her desk.”

  The appointment book was lying next to a pile of mail. Neeve opened it. It consisted of a full eleven-by-fourteen page for each day of the month, including December of the previous year. She flipped the pages until she reached March 31. In a bold scrawl, Ethel had written: “Have Doug pick up clothes at Neeve’s Place.” The slot for three o’clock was circled. The notation next to it was “Doug at the apartment.”

  Tse-Tse was looking over Neeve’s shoulder. “So he’s not lying about that,” Tse-Tse said. The morning sun had started to pour brightly into the room. Suddenly it vanished behind a cloud. Tse-Tse shivered. “Honest to God, Neeve, this place is starting to spook me.”

  Without answering, Neeve flipped through the month of April. There were scattered appointments, cocktail parties, lunches. All the pages had a line drawn through. On April first, Ethel had written, “Research/Writing Book.”

  “She canceled everything. She was planning to go away or at least hole up somewhere and write,” Neeve murmured.

  “Then maybe she left a day early?” Tse-Tse suggested.

  “It’s possible.” Neeve began to turn the pages backward. The last week of March was crammed with the names of prominent designers: Nina Cochran, Gordon Steuber, Victor Costa, Ronald Altern, Regina Mavis, Anthony della Salva, Kara Potter. “She can’t have seen all these people,” Neeve said. “I think that she phones to verify quotes just before she turns an article in.” She pointed to an entry on Thursday, March 30: “Deadline for Contemporary Woman article.”