Hotel No Tell Page 20

  “Thank you so much,” I obliged.

  “You are most welcome.” She sat down and folded her hands in her lap. “Now, tell me, how do you young ladies know each other?”

  I had given this question some thought. College and childhood were out, since Paulina obviously knew Zelda better than I did. I poured some milk in my coffee and hoped I sounded at ease.

  “We’re just acquaintances. We met in the Loehmann’s dressing room the last time she was in town. We both reached for the same pants.” I hid behind my coffee cup and watched her reaction. She broke out in a big smile.

  “Fabulous! I love it! What a town, no?”

  I nodded.

  “So.” She extracted a folder from a drawer in the coffee table. “I will leave you to do all the paperwork in a moment, but, first, tell me about yourself. We are like a family here and I like to know my girls.”

  It reminded me of the way Roxana referred to her former brothel employees. I shook off the thought.

  “Well,” I began carefully, “I’m twenty-four.” I waited. Just a happy nod. Hooray! I was still officially young! Or I could still pass! Or something! “And I’m healthy.”

  “Of course. The blood work will confirm that. And you went to school …?”

  “Uh, yes.”

  She laughed, and her laugh was surprisingly sharp, an unpleasant contrast to the rest of her mien. “Well, of course, you did. Where?”

  And then I remembered the remarks about the Rhodes scholarship and the slogan and the list of rarefied fellowships on the purple menu and it occurred to me to lie.

  “Princeton?”

  “Brilliant. Magna cum laude? Summa?”

  Ah, as in the Summa Institute. I decided not to push my luck.

  “Magna.”

  “Ah, well, that is fine.”

  “Can I ask you …?” I began.

  “Anything, dear. Ask me anything.”

  Are you the one who hired Samantha Kimiko Hodges to kill Jeremy Wedge?

  “I see the fees here are twice what other fertility clinics offer. How do you manage to do that?”

  A frown flickered across her brow. “Well, as you know, dear, we are very much not a fertility clinic.”

  I very much did not know that. My insides solidified and sank. “Of course, I didn’t mean to use that term. What I meant was …” I had no idea what I meant. I was just glad I had a gun.

  Paulina’s face softened a bit. “I understand. So many of the girls have been looking around at the clinics before they hear about us. They forget. We have grants, dear; that’s how we pay fifteen thousand when the fertility clinics typically pay eight thousand. So many grants. The Institute of National Health, for instance, is using some of our data for a study right now. And then many of our girls do wonderful things with the money they get from us and feel so grateful to us that they give back. We are a big happy family.” She nodded at the brochure I was still holding. “After Sarah Palin was saying those terrible things about the polar bears, one alumna began a rescue mission for them and now she herself is greatly funded.”

  “Polar bears?” I repeated, willing myself not to laugh or panic.

  “Polar bears. People very much want to save them.”

  “They are cute.” I was pretty sure I could hear Tommy roaring with laughter in the vast silence that followed. “Um, why is there extra for these?” I waved the purple insert.

  “For the INH study, specifically. It is for the link between intelligence and genetics.”

  “Isn’t that eugenics?” I asked, alarmed.

  “How’s that, dear?”

  “Nazis?”

  “Oh.” Paulina waved away the comparison and chuckled. “It is marvelous how you girls think so much. No, no, nothing like that, dear. Look, Abigail. It is win–win. You girls, you get lots more money to do your wonderful projects, plus the peace of mind—you need not have strangers making babies out of your eggs. Right? No unknown progeny running around. It is our way of rewarding the brightest minds in the country.”

  I tried to digest this. It actually sounded like a pretty good deal. “Who else works here?” Paulina’s eyes went slightly dark, so I added, “I mean, you said, ‘our way of rewarding.’ ”

  She pointed to a door behind the one I’d entered, which I hadn’t noticed. Did two rooms make an institute? Didn’t an institute require white lab coats, rooms with red lights above the doors, and at least one elevated walkway?

  “Imogene is our lab technician. It all happens back there.”

  “So it’s just you and her. I guess that keeps costs down.”

  Paulina drummed her fingers on the folder and straightened her back. “I have a business partner, but he is out sick at the moment.” She gave a brief, exaggerated grimace. “Hopefully he will grow better soon. Let’s get you started on your paperwork. It takes a long while. Or would you prefer to do your bloods first?”

  “That would be great!” I said too eagerly. “I mean, needles make me nervous, so if I could get it over with …”

  She stood up briskly, and I had the uneasy sense that she wasn’t completely pleased with me. Still, she knocked on the door and opened it.

  “Imogene,” she sang, “we have another lovely candidate. This is Abigail Greenfield. Abigail, Imogene. I’ll be right out here, Abigail, if you need anything.” She sailed out, her various flowy garments billowing behind her.

  It was a standard physician’s examining room, with fluorescent lights, padded table, sink, labeled drawers. A stout sixtyish woman with a pillowy face and eyebrows that didn’t line up put down her Martha Stewart Living and peered up at me from her swivel stool.

  “Hello, deah, welcome to Summa,” she said in the unhurried, heavy rhythms of deepest Queens. My shoulders backed off slightly from their embrace of my ears. She rolled out fresh paper and patted the examining table. “How are you feelin’ today?”

  “Good.” I sat down.

  “Nervous?”

  “No. Yes. Why? Should I be nervous?”

  “No, deah, not at awl. I’m just gonna draw blood. If all your credentials check out, you’ll schedule a full checkup and then you can begin the injections.”

  My relief at not having to undergo a pelvic exam while wearing a camera made me guffaw out loud. Imogene gave me a strange look. She was probably under orders to assess mental states, I reminded myself.

  “So,” I said, “about how long altogether until I could begin giving eggs?”

  “Depending on your cycle, it could be as soon as a month.”

  “And you do the checkup?”

  “Everything but. I do bloods and extraction. A doctor does the exam. Are you right-handed or left-handed?”

  “They care about that?” I asked incredulously.

  “For the blood,” she reminded me, tapping my wrists. “Which arm would you like to use?”

  I held out my right arm and tried to sound casual. “So, after you take out the eggs, what happens? Who picks them up?”

  She swiveled over to the counter and began unwrapping a needle.

  “The other owner. Jeremy’s the scientist. Paulina’s the business.”

  I breathed in as quietly as I could through my nose. It was the first solid confirmation of Jeremy’s connection to Summa.

  “Oh yeah, my friend mentioned there was another guy who worked here.” Imogene turned her head to look at me for a moment. I gave her an innocent smile. She turned back to her needle. “What’s his last name again?”

  She hesitated. “Wedge. Jeremy Wedge.”

  “That’s right, that sounds familiar. So he takes the eggs. The places studying them never pick them up?”

  “Honey, I just do my job. Roll up your sleeve, please, and make a fist.”

  I gave her my forearm while my mind reeled with new possibilities of dirty money and motivation. All I knew was that a woman had given Samantha her killing orders. Samantha didn’t know her name, which didn’t give me much to go on. Would I now have to pursue witnesses a
t the Institute of National Health? I squeezed my eyes shut against the needle. Forget witnesses; would I have to investigate the highly questionable ethics behind a study by a federally funded entity into genetics and intelligence? First deal with the hit woman, I reminded myself. Still, I couldn’t resist indulging in a quick fantasy: me being congratulated by Barack and Michelle at a private ceremony in the West Wing. No, I didn’t even need that, maybe just tea in the Oval Office. Or a club soda squeezed in between his other appointments. That would be fine.

  In one move, Imogene pulled out the needle, placed my left hand over the bandage, and bent my right arm.

  “Put pressure on it,” she instructed me. Then she sat back and froze her face in a bizarre fake smile, teeth bared.

  “What … what’s wrong? What are you doing?”

  “Smiling for the camera.”

  I felt my own face freeze in a garish smile. This was not happening, not again. Made by two grandmas in less than a week. I licked my lips and willed my voice not to abandon me.

  “What are you talking about?” I finally squeaked in a falsetto fit for a boy’s choir.

  She shrugged and pointed at my necklace. “I wasn’t born yesterday.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I protested. But I was already off the exam table, my sleeve rolled down, one hand on the doorknob.

  “Look, deah, I don’t care what you’re up to. I like this job. It’s easy. It’s pleasant. It pays good. I wanna keep it.”

  “I really don’t—”

  “Oh, stop it,” she said, not unkindly. “Jeremy never comes when the girls are here. I don’t know why and, like I said, I don’t care. But your friend never met him, that I know. If you had some lover’s quarrel with him, that’s not my business. Just don’t mess with my job.”

  I threw pretense to the wind. “Believe me, he’s no lover of mine.”

  Imogene laughed easily and stuck my blood in a centrifuge. “Don’t be too hard on him, deah. He’s a nervous boy. Needs more fiber.”

  At any moment Paulina could come charging through the doors to kick me out, or worse. “It’s just …,” I persisted desperately. “Are you sure you’ve never seen any paperwork, anything, from the INH or anyplace that takes the eggs? A name? A folder? Anything?”

  She shook her head at me and started the centrifuge. I couldn’t tell if it was a refusal or a statement of genuine ignorance.

  “Okay, well, thank you.”

  “I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing you again,” she mused, turning to the machine.

  “Uh,” I said, unsure of anything but how much I needed to get away from the Summa Institute. “Yeah, no, I’ll be back,” I croaked unconvincingly.

  “Rechurch.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Her back was to me. “I see a lot of that name on the papers. Rechurch. Never seen anything else, in fact.”

  “Rechurch?”

  “Rechurch.”

  “Thank you,” I breathed.

  “You tell whoever’s watching that this better not cost me my retirement.”

  Paulina was tapping at her computer when I bolted from the exam room. I told her I was feeling light-headed from the blood draw—no breakfast, I apologized—and assured her I’d return with the completed paperwork the very next day. I fled the office, the pounding in my ears drowning out her concerned queries.

  I raced around the corner and flung myself into the backseat of Pippa’s car, where, predictably, Tommy’s honking laughter greeted me.

  “Oh shit, Zepha, you suck at undercovah! Pardon my French, Commish.”

  “Oh yeah, what would you have done differently?” I snapped, approaching hyperventilation.

  “She made you so fast, man!” he howled.

  “Maybe the techs should have used a necklace that was smaller than a fucking planet!”

  “Dooohh, look out, Zepha’s maaad.”

  I slapped my palms against the leather seat.

  “Are you two finished?” Pippa asked from the driver’s seat. She refused to let anyone drive her around the way every other city official did. Not appearance of impropriety, she liked to say. Actual impropriety.

  Rechurch. Rechurch? Was there a megachurch involved? Were there megachurches in New York City? Where was there room for a megachurch? “Do you think this is some evangelical thing, some God racket?” I wondered aloud. Maybe it really was a eugenics project. How many more spinoffs to this case could there be before I saw any kind of resolution? “What in God’s name is ‘Rechurch’?”

  “Sistah Michael Bernard taught me that at Our Lady of Smack Me Silly,” Tommy said, “but she beat the crap out of me every day, so I fuhgot it all.”

  “Yeah, blame it on the nuns,” I said reflexively, looking out the window onto Watts Street.

  Pippa started the car, then turned. I straightened up in an attempt to lose the air of sulking adolescent.

  “You did fine, Zephyr. It’s too bad you got made, but we need to move really quickly now.”

  “I’m moving as fast as I can,” I protested.

  “Faster.”

  Chapter 17

  Certainly, when Pippa said “faster,” she didn’t mean racing west on Perry Street at seven that evening so that I’d beat my cursed, depressed friend to a non-Oscar party. In my defense, I’d spent the entire afternoon glued to my computer, surfing every database and search engine Pippa, Tommy, and I could dream up, trying to find a Rechurch, trying to make that fit with the Summa–Jeremy–Samantha–poison-lemonade–money-transfer pieces. Pippa had called her fellow Lucite collector and confirmed that Jeremy was still alive and well and being held against his will at Bellevue. I checked in at the nursing home and was told that Samantha was making enemies right and left but was still in residence.

  I needed a break. My plan was to fill up on hors d’oeuvres, hear a couple of speeches, ogle the guests, and go back to the office. I’d work all night, but I needed a break.

  Mercedes answered the intercom.

  “ ’Tis I!” I announced, giddy with exhaustion and remnants of fear. In the silk-lined elevator, I tried to switch mental gears. Out with the murderous, in with the glamorous.

  I stepped out onto the twelfth floor and into an oasis of hushed, elegant activity. Where Lucy had insisted on college-era decor for her twin apartment across the street, Mercedes and Dover had a legitimately adult home. Low sofas, muted carpets, and sleek brass floor lamps created three cozy nooks scattered in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows. Along the interior wall was a series of nearly life-size bold composer portraits, some by Avedon, some by Platon. Mercedes’s practice area was in a far corner of the apartment, her music stand arranged so that she faced the river as she played.

  Tonight there were scores of tealight candles on every surface that wasn’t covered with platters of basil-encrusted, arugula-garnished, grass-fed, locally grown victuals. Waiters bustled about importantly, trying unsuccessfully to hide their delight at their evening’s assignment.

  “I’m really glad you guys are here,” murmured Mercedes, in a departure from her genetically unflappable self.

  “Even Macy?”

  “Even Lucy.”

  “I thought you’d gotten used to all this,” I said. I started to take off my sweater, then remembered I was still wearing my gun. Damn! I hadn’t had time to go home to change and lock it up. Given that the Hollywood crowd paid top dollar to look like slobs, I wasn’t too informal, but I was going to roast.

  “I have gotten used to it, sort of, but this is a bit much. Even for me.” She glanced out at the crowd from the shelter of the entryway.

  Dover Carter had captured the hearts and libidos of women young and old, as much for the fact that he was a confirmed nice guy as for his resemblance to Cary Grant. Regular appearances in front of United Nations humanitarian commissions at the behest of numerous oppressed peoples, fearless stumping for worthy liberal candidates, and a willingness to gain weight for roles (confirming, in his fans’ min
ds, an absence of vanity) made his bachelorhood all the more mysterious and tantalizing.

  At the age of forty, he fell head over heels in love with one of my best friends, so much so that when she expressed grave doubts about the yawning chasm between their lifestyles and social circles—he regularly topped Sexiest Man of the Year lists, while she could spend an entire afternoon in the basement of Avery Fisher Hall discussing rosin—he had voluntarily entered semiretirement. And there he had stayed for the three years they’d been together, making only one film a year. He was blissed out living among us mortals, but it didn’t change the fact that his best friend was Ben Plank, with whom he’d costarred in all three Cans of Gravy films. Ben was married to Aphrodite Jones, the philanthropic sexpot, and while I had been mostly at ease ordering in Chinese with them one evening—a petri dish attempt by Dover and Mercedes to merge their friends the way other couples merged libraries—it was still hard not to be disproportionately titillated when Phrodie (as her friends called her) cajoled me into a game of hide-and-seek with two of their three adopted children.

  “Wow, that’s really De Niro over there?” I asked.

  “Yeah, and that’s Streep and Connelly and Moore, except I’m supposed to call them Meryl and Jen and Julie with a straight face. Give me your sweater, Zephyr, I’ll toss it in the bedroom.” She sounded strange.

  “Are you mad about something?”

  She fluttered her eyes closed for a moment. “No,” she said, trying to convince herself. “I knew what I was getting into when I married him. And he’s still my Dover, my guy. And it’s just one night and then tomorrow I can sit and do battle with Shostakovich’s Fifth all by myself all day long.” She looked longingly to where one of her violas sat, displayed in its teak stand at the far end of the apartment. Ed Norton was admiring it. “Give me your sweater,” she repeated.

  “Nah, it’s okay, I’ll keep it.”

  “You’ll roast!”