“Hey!” Ruth tightened her grip on Megan’s ass and pulled her closer. “Let’s just start relaxing already, okay? Come on, now. I remember you were a real sweet kisser. Let’s be friends here.”
Megan worked her arms up between the two of them and pushed with all her strength, twisting her torso as she tried to squirm free. The women’s feet tangled. Ruth stepped on her own foot and with a cry fell backward onto the floor. Megan managed to shake free and remain standing.
“Jesus Christ!” Ruth crawled onto all fours. “Honey, you’ve got a very fucked-up…” She stopped. Megan saw her eyes grow wide. “What the…fuck is that?”
She was staring at Megan’s bookshelf. Displayed one next to the other were three black-and-white framed photographs. Eight-by-ten. The first one showed a woman with a scarf of some sort knotted at her neck. Clearly dead. The woman in the second photograph-a blonde, Ruth recognized her from the newspapers-had had her slender throat cut open. The woman’s eyes were open and staring off into space.
“Oh my God.”
The third photograph was the most horrible. It didn’t appear that there even was a neck. The cheeks looked like they’d been raked by a wild animal. Ruth scrambled to her feet. Megan had not moved but stood shaking in the middle of the floor, pale as a sheet.
“What the hell are you into, little girl? Where the hell’d you get these?”
“Go.” Megan’s voice sounded hoarse.
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m changing my plans right now.” Ruth brushed past Megan, pausing at the door. “That’s not good form, honey. You want some advice, you put those pictures away, or you’re going to stay awfully lonely.”
Ruth left. Megan’s feet walked her to the door, and her hands locked it. Turning from the door, she confronted the three photographs across the room. They were swimming. Megan made it halfway across the room before she got sick.
FOR NANCY SPICER, foreperson on the Marshall Fox jury, life had been reduced to a tiny hotel room, the pine-paneled jury room, the van that shuttled her from one to the other, and to those eleven other hateful people whom Nancy didn’t especially like and who definitely did not like her. She was either too white, or too indecisive, or too religious, or too scared. Too something. Too anything. Too nothing.
Nancy Spicer decided to see what would happen if she swallowed twenty-seven barbiturates in the space of something like fifteen minutes.
Over the past several months, Nancy had come to fear that the eleven other jurors were right. The world is a brutal place. It takes courage and strength and conviction in order to maneuver, in order to survive. Nancy had none of these. There might have been a time-she could recall having a thin grasp on conviction once, though this seemed a lifetime ago-but in the large scheme, not really. Never enough. Bruce was the provider. The rock. Bruce had always filled in where Nancy came up lacking. He had the conviction and the strength and the courage. Bruce knew his place in the world, and he surely knew his purpose. He knew right from wrong, black from white, and he knew sin when it made its inevitable appearance. Nancy’s husband was clear on all matters, a man of unshakable resolve. If he were foreman of this jury, there would have been none of this contentiousness. There wouldn’t be the sniping and the hostility and the disgust. Bruce could have pulled everyone together; he was a leader of men. He saw things with a razor-sharp clarity, and he knew how to put people in their place.
Nancy was a lesser person, and she knew it. Bruce was kind, so kind to put up with her, to have admitted a cripple into his home. His rage soon after their marriage at the discovery that Nancy was barren and would be unable to deliver his children into the world had been understandable. The disappointment was mighty. If Nancy had known, she would not have married him. She never could have been that knowingly selfish. Bruce’s anger was acceptable. It was the devil who poisoned the wombs of the unworthy; it was the devil Bruce raged against. Nancy had accepted all that. She’d welcomed it. A husband who will cleanse his wife’s impurities is a treasure to cherish. Bruce was so good to her. He was magnificent in his disappointment. He was full where she was empty. The world had no idea what a precious messenger of Truth it had in Bruce Spicer. God bless him, Nancy thought as she cupped her first handful of pills. Take care of him. I have failed in every aspect of my life. I am too weak. I can’t face those other people anymore. Their eyes. Their disgust. I am too confused now. How can I sit in judgment? The devil has put me here, and he is enjoying my misery. He is enjoying the mess I am making of things. Bruce has told me so. But…but I will not be his agent. I will crush his enjoyment. Bruce will understand. He will not be angry, but he’ll rejoice in this one selfless act that I have managed to perform in my entire life. My entire crippled, useless life.
The lights of Times Square outside Nancy Spicer’s window had never looked so remarkable, like an array of colored stars in a close-up universe. They blurred and merged. Angels, Nancy thought woozily. Angels forming my bed. Her arms were covered with tears. She wondered if she had ever been so happy. Bruce will be proud. He’ll be so proud. The bed of lights was swimming. Swinging. Like a hammock. Nancy made a sound that was intended to be a laugh. It came out as a sob. Followed by another. Then came the pain. The devil clamped his red fists onto her abdomen, and his barbed fingers dug into her useless womb. An agony like none she had ever experienced or could have ever imagined rose up in her belly, and she was struck with unspeakable fear. She fell back from the window and began beating her fists against her belly, trying to make the pain stop. She began to convulse. Her last conscious thought was the horror of seeing, right there in her belly, the devil’s gnarled hand digging and twisting and probing. On his vile hand was the wedding ring. Shiny and gold. One she knew very, very well.
32
PETER ELLIOTT PHONED ME with the news in the morning.
“My foreperson is in a coma,” he said. “Life doth suck.”
I met Peter out in front of Saint Vincent’s. The media was well represented. So was the NYPD. Vehicles parked every which way. I spotted Kelly Cole standing on the corner of Twelfth and Seventh, speaking into her cell phone. When she saw me, she raised a manicured finger, mouthing for me to hang tight.
A dark car had just pulled up to a fire hydrant. “Are you sure it’s not the pope they’ve got in there?” I said to Peter. Lewis Gottlieb was climbing out of the back.
“Lewis and I have to get inside,” Peter said. “Bruce Spicer is in there threatening to explode. This whole thing is headed for the toilet.”
“I’ll catch up to you.”
Kelly Cole flipped her phone closed and stepped over to me. The coat itself must have cost a few thousand bucks. It was long and tan and cut like something for a Russian czarina.
“Did you get the flowers I sent to you in the hospital?” she asked.
I told her I hadn’t.
“That’s because I didn’t send any.” She laughed. “I did try to call you, though.”
“I got that. I called you back, but you weren’t in. I didn’t feel like leaving a message.”
“So tell me, who dumped you into the river?”
“You know what? The gentleman never stopped to give me his name.”
“But he’s a suspect in Zachary’s murder, isn’t he?”
“Come on, Kelly. I chase bad guys for lunch.”
“The short way to say that is ‘No comment.’”
“‘No comment’ is shorthand for ‘yes.’”
“So is he a suspect?”
“Nice coat, Kelly. Is that wool or synthetic?”