Hotel No Tell Read online

  We were silent for a moment as the colossal colleague lumbered toward the bathroom at the far side of the lounge with his book, which I now saw was The Fountainhead. He stopped and turned back to us.

  “Don’t start, Rousakis,” Delta warned. “Leave the woman alone.”

  Rousakis ignored him. “Have you ever heard of Ayn Rand?” he asked me, and I nodded, trying to hide my surprise. “She changed my life. That’s all I wanted to say,” he told Delta defensively, and continued on his way.

  “Sorry,” Delta said.

  “If only all proselytizing were that painless.”

  He ran his arm along the back of the couch and tugged gently on my earlobe.

  “Hey, so I have a question,” I said quietly.

  “Yes, my real name is Delta.”

  “That’s not my question, or, I mean, at one point it was a question, so thanks.”

  He grinned at my confusion.

  I tried again. “Remember when I asked whether you wanted kids?”

  “How could I forget? That’s what I mean by different.”

  “Do you?”

  “Want kids?” He sighed, conceding that we had fully left the kissing arena. “No, actually, I don’t want kids.”

  “Why not?”

  He brought the corners of his lips down in an upside-down smile. “Look at my job. I don’t want to make orphans.”

  “What about widows?”

  “Are you proposing?”

  “Just asking. Most firefighters and cops seem to come equipped with wives and kids.”

  “I’m different.”

  “So we have that in common.”

  “I’ve been married, Zephyr. I don’t think I’ll try it again.” He ran two fingers down my neck. “What’s with this kid thing?”

  I shrugged. What did it say that our shared disinterest in procreating didn’t crash open any floodgate of affection for Delta? Here was a guy: sexy, funny enough, smart, and without the land mines I had with Gregory. And yet the sparks fizzled rather than flared with that realization. This was not the man with whom I wanted to be strolling up First Avenue in fifty years discussing hearing aids.

  The Brobdingnagian objectivist passed through again, and this time he merely nodded at us.

  “You want kids,” Delta guessed, “and the guy who showed up again this week doesn’t.”

  “Wrong. Sexist assumption.”

  Delta raised his eyebrows. “Interesting.”

  “Not really. Tragic and painful, in fact.”

  He kicked his feet onto the coffee table. “Zephyr, let’s either have some fun or let’s say goodbye. I don’t want to do therapy.”

  I sucked in my breath. “You’re big on ultimatums.”

  “I told you. I’m almost forty.”

  I stood up and smiled helplessly at him.

  “Don’t be mad,” he said kindly.

  “I’m not.” And I wasn’t. But hanging out in a grungy room above a couple dozen swashbuckling carnivores was no longer where I wanted to be.

  In the pocket of my fleece, my cellphone rang: Macy. I sent it to voice mail, wondering why she was calling during her date with the dermatologist. I hoped he hadn’t stood her up. Talk about therapy.

  “I’m really not mad,” I assured him. “Just disappointed. In myself.”

  Delta hauled himself off the couch. “I’ll walk you downstairs; otherwise you’ll never make it out of here alive.”

  “Why, is this place a firetrap?” I said as my phone rang again.

  “Don’t quit your day job,” he said. “Whatever it may be.”

  I flipped open my phone as I followed him out past the kitchen.

  “Mace, what’s up?” I said. “I’m kind of in the middle of something here—”

  “Zephyr!” she wailed, and in the background I heard sirens. “He’s dead!”

  Chapter 16

  Macy hunched over her empty coffee cup, staring with hollow eyes at the King Charles spaniel attempting to hump a foamy-mouthed Newfie. I glanced at my watch, anxious about my impending surveillance of the Summa Institute but equally anxious about Macy’s mental health. Even though I’d spent the better part of the weekend at her side, I’d felt compelled to keep our dog-park date. She had begun pining for her parents’ couch again, recalling it with outsize tenderness.

  “The man went volcano boarding in Nicaragua,” she groaned for the umpteenth time. “Not a burn. Not even a bruise. But one date with me. Dead. Dead!” She smashed her cup and began to cry again.

  The date had begun with great promise. Macy and the dermatologist—Rudy Feinstein, by name—lingered over their bolognese at Tanti Baci and shared an entire bottle of wine. They had a lot in common—a love of camping, anything with garlic, Virginia Woolf—and he was making her laugh. An understated humor, her favorite kind. They had both been eager to continue the date, so they wandered for a while and then hopped the F train to Chinatown so that Macy could introduce Rudy to what she felt was the best bubble tea on the East Coast. It was there, inside a closet-size, brightly lit tea parlor on Baxter Street, that Dr. Feinstein met his end. A clump of high-velocity tapioca bubbles shot through his straw and into his throat, where it lodged, resistant to all ensuing Heimlich maneuvers by staff, paramedics, and even Macy herself.

  “Can you possibly look me in the eye, Zephyr, and tell me I’m not cursed?” she said, after her tears had subsided into staccato sniffles.

  I shook my head, finally convinced.

  She nodded with dull satisfaction.

  “Do I go to his funeral?” she asked. “What’s the fucking etiquette on that one?” She released her hair from its ponytail and dug her fingers into her scalp, letting flaming sheets of red cascade around her face.

  “Macy, what do you have going on today? What are you gonna do to keep yourself busy? Talk to me.” I peeked at my watch again. I had to stop by the office to get wired with a camera and mike and make it to Summa by ten. But I was determined to steer her back to the land of the living. Literally.

  She laughed harshly. “I’m supposed to meet my divorcing bride for lunch at Elephant and Castle.”

  “Excuse me?” The Newfie loped off to the far end of the run, while the spaniel leaped in circles around him.

  “One of the couples where the bride didn’t die? They’re getting a divorce.”

  “Why is that your problem?”

  “Because they’re getting divorced for stupid reasons,” she spat. “He’s convinced a child should only be raised in Park Slope, like he was, and she insists Upper West is best. This boy is the Elgin Marbles of offspring.”

  “And you think you can talk her out of it?” I asked, aghast.

  “I do. I did. Now I don’t give a shit. Maybe I’ll tell them to go on a cruise like Lenore, work things out.”

  To our amazement, in the space of four days, Lucy had not only persuaded Leonard that she—that they—were in dire need of an immediate break from Lenore, but she had found a recession-achy cruise liner that was more than happy to take her money and her in-laws on short notice for a two-week sail around the Seychelles Islands. The trip had been billed as an apology for being subjected to an evening with Zephyr the Godless.

  “Why don’t you go on a cruise?” I suggested.

  “And sink the whole goddamn ship? I’m already a murderer, Zephyr. I don’t need to add ‘mass murderer’ to my résumé.”

  A woman in a bright purple jacket on the bench near us was pretending to read, but I saw her eyes go round.

  “Okay, what else are you going to do?” I needed some reassurance she wouldn’t be headed for New Hampshire by sundown.

  “Sit here and hope none of these dogs drops dead.”

  The woman gathered her newspaper and moved to another bench.

  “Well, that’s a good plan,” I said, momentarily distracted as the mayor of the dog run approached the newspaper reader. Acquiescing to the overnight arrival of cooler weather, he had traded in his orange Lycra bike shorts for a billo
wing black leather coat, and it wasn’t by any means a given that he had clothes on beneath it.

  “Excuse me, Miss. Miss?”

  The woman looked at us first, keeping the murderer in her sights, then realized the voice was coming from the bald Matrix wannabe.

  “Your doggie did a poopy over there. Were you planning on cleaning it up?”

  She glanced over his shoulder, searching for evidence.

  “That’s not mine. I mean, that’s not my dog’s.”

  “You have the husky, do you not?”

  “Yes, but that’s not his poop.”

  “Oh, but it is. I saw him make it. You were busy reading. We remind doggie caregivers that this is not a library. You need to pay attention.”

  The woman blinked at him. “Who’s ‘we’?”

  The mayor held up his palms to her. “Don’t even.”

  I was about to catch Macy’s eye, hoping this sideshow might be palliative, when she suddenly streaked past me. I clutched at her sleeve, but she shook me off.

  “Leave her alone!” she shrieked, her voice cracking. “Life is too fucking short, so stop harassing people! Stop making everyone’s day just a little more unpleasant. Hand out dog treats or poop bags or volunteer at the pound or even just shut up. Just shut the fuck up!”

  The woman sat stock-still, shifting her gaze from Macy to the mayor, who were now locked in each other’s livid glares. She carefully placed her newspaper on the bench and rose slowly, as if to avoid being noticed. Ten seconds later, she and her empty-boweled husky were gone.

  The mayor’s shoulders shifted beneath his coat. He inhaled through his nose, his nostrils turning white and rigid.

  “Do you think,” he snarled, “that I have not noticed your state of doglessness? Do you think that salient fact has escaped me all these months? Do you not wonder why it is that you and your equally dogless friend are permitted to remain on the premises?” His forehead was turning an alarming shade of pink.

  Macy took a step closer. I envisioned cop cars, ambulances, tearful confessions of temporary insanity—none of which I had time for.

  “Why do you let us stay here?” she asked with genuine curiosity, her voice dropping suddenly into a strangely normal register. I held my breath, wondering if the mysterious truth that had been kept from us for so long, that had been flavoring our visits with a pinch of uncertainty, would finally be revealed.

  The mayor looked nonplussed. “Because I’m a charitable fucking person, you java-swilling breeder.”

  * * *

  Eventually, after dragging her across six lanes of traffic and all the way to Seventh Avenue, I got Macy to swear she would meet me at Mercedes’s and Dover’s non-Oscar party that evening. I reminded her that Lucy was escaping Hillsville and motherhood for the occasion and that her level of enthusiasm was bordering on psychotic. Even as she teetered at the lip of her personal abyss, Macy would not leave me to handle Lucy by myself under such circumstances.

  I tried to shake her at the entrance of the Christopher Street station, but she started down the stairs behind me.

  “Macy,” I said, stopping. She crashed into me. “You need to go home.”

  “Can’t I come with you?” she asked, her voice wavering. “I’ll just sit in your office. I’ll read a magazine. I won’t bother anyone. They can shoot me if I do.”

  I started to laugh, but she looked so forlorn that I stopped. “I would let you. I really would. But I’m not going to my office,” I admitted.

  “Well, where are you going?”

  I was reminded of the stalker stance she had assumed with Lucy when I’d first met her a few years earlier.

  “Well, I’m stopping at the S.I.C., but then I have to interview someone.”

  “I won’t say a word, I promise.”

  “C’mon, Macy. You know I can’t have you there.”

  “No, I don’t know that. Pretend I’m your assistant.”

  “It’s not that,” I said, pressing my back against the railing as a mother hefted an occupied stroller past us.

  “You’re scared of me, aren’t you?” she whispered.

  “Oh, for God’s sake, no. I just …” I glared at the sky, trying to think of a way to get rid of her without hurting her feelings. I only had time for the truth. “Macy, I’m undercover. Some other day, I promise, you can come sit in my cubicle.”

  I did enjoy the rare satisfaction of being on the receiving end of dumbfounded admiration.

  “Seriously?” she shrieked.

  “It’s not a big deal,” I lied. “It’s a nothing case.” Just a hit woman and death threats and hundreds of thousands of dollars in play.

  The truth worked. An hour and a half later, Macy was nowhere in the vicinity of me or my thoughts. Pippa let me off on the corner of Watts and Washington Streets in Tribeca and I walked as calmly as I could toward Desbrosses Street. A sizable camera had been glued to my collarbone, camouflaged as a heavy jade pendant and purfled with fake diamonds that hid a microphone. The knowledge that every grunt and sigh was entertaining both Pippa and Tommy O. was immeasurably helpful in keeping my breathing under control.

  To his great delight, Tommy had been brought in on the case out of concern for my safety, but it seemed to me that I would be paying for that security with my sanity.

  “So you’re in,” I’d said to him when he pulled the car around Hanover Square.

  “I’m in, baby, I am in. Not that you broads have much in the way of, ya know, information, but I’m in.” He bared his teeth in a crazy man’s grin.

  “Did he really just say ‘broads’?” I asked Pippa as Tommy slid over and she got in behind the wheel.

  “Did he really just get cheeky with a superior?” Pippa wondered back.

  Tommy immediately looked contrite. “Commish, I was just joshin’—I didn’t mean nuthin’—”

  “Quite finished, O’Hara?”

  Tommy pressed his lips together and nodded, though he wasn’t even close to finished. He ran his mouth the entire short drive over to Summa, telling a true story (he claimed) about a porn producer, a weights-and-measures inspector, and a ferret named Rhubarb. I didn’t realize how grateful I was for the distraction until it came time to set out, alone, for 25 Desbrosses Street. I had only the walk around the corner to start sweating.

  I’m a prospective egg donor, I reminded myself, touching the necklace nervously. Shopping around. For this mission, I had forgone the smoky grad-student garb and instead donned jeans, a V-neck T-shirt, my thigh-length sweater to hide the Glock, and hiking boots, which was more along the lines of what Zelda had been wearing (minus, presumably, the firearm). Since I had exactly no one with whom I could consult for this particular date, she’d served as my unwitting fashion plate.

  The building was a five-story brick affair on an industrial-turning-condo block whose metamorphosis had been halted by the recession. Grimy scaffolding encased half a dozen façades, with no signs of activity. I took a deep breath, exhaled, and rang the buzzer.

  “Abigail, dear?” crackled a voice in response. Again I wondered at my inability to invent a name out of whole cloth. At least this time I’d used a Sterling Girl on the West Coast rather than an ex-boyfriend. Non-ex. Yes, ex. Yes. Ex, for sure.

  “Abigail Greenfield?” the voice repeated. Okay, I could have at least used a different last name.

  “Yes,” I croaked. “This is she.”

  “Love it! You’re our girl!” I was buzzed into a tiny foyer, making it the first time in my life I’d gained entry to a place by virtue of my good grammar. Never mind that Tommy would crucify me. I closed the door and was thrust directly onto a creaky, curving staircase.

  “Right this way!” sang the voice, and for a moment I had a presentiment of being tortured in a Tribeca death trap. An executioner wearing black would blend right in in this neighborhood.

  On the landing was a bright-eyed, dark-featured spark of a woman. She was slightly shorter than I was and bursting with an energy that was coiled in her
legs, her arms, her shoulders. Her nose was sharp, but everything else about her was fleshy, warm, inviting. She was dressed in a beautiful but convoluted style whose dictates I could never decode—things were draped and wrapped, and there was a scarf and a knee-length jacket/sweater thing involved. She was exactly the kind of woman who could talk you into handing over an ovum or two.

  She ushered me through the open door, past stenciled douche swooshes I recognized from the website, and into a sedate, carpeted office lined with bookshelves and dotted with plants. As I passed her, she grabbed me by my shoulders and kissed me on each cheek.

  “I am Paulina!” she declared joyfully. “I am so happy you have found the Summa Institute! Sit, sit. Can I get you a tea? Pellegrino?” I caught the merest touch of an Eastern European accent.

  “Coffee would be great,” I said, settling myself on the edge of a burgundy suede sofa and wondering how this one-room operation tucked behind the entrance to the Holland Tunnel constituted an institute.

  “Uh-uh.” She wagged a finger at me. “Only decaf, right?”

  “Righto,” I said brightly. While Paulina busied herself at a small galley at the far end of the room, I pivoted my torso slowly, getting a panoramic shot. A Dalí print, a replica (I assumed) of a Fabergé egg, and an uncluttered cherry desk that gleamed under the recessed lighting, bearing only a printer, a fax machine, and a laptop.

  I bent forward at the waist to pan the coffee table in front of me, which held a neat pile of brochures bearing the “Investigating Intelligence” slogan. I skimmed the first page and a number jumped out at me, a dollar figure that was a galaxy away from the dollar figure on Ova Easy’s website. Before I could fully register the glaring difference, a single-page insert slipped out of the brochure. It was printed on heavy purple stock and resembled a menu of spa services. In flowery script, it read:

  Truman $2,000 extra

  Marshall $3,000 extra

  Rhodes $5,000 extra

  Documentation required

  “So.” Paulina carefully set a tray in front of me bearing coffee, a crystal pitcher of milk, and an ivory bowl of sugar. “You know we are doing this the backward way? I usually interview after I review the application, but we do so love Zelda. I made an exception.” She held my gaze and I understood that I was to express gratitude.