I laughed when I came to the shot he was referring to.
The movie star was still showing her back to the camera mind you, her good side in semi-profile to her pursuer, as though she was saying. “If you insist on doing this, you might as well have the angle I prefer.” But now, for the first time, a man’s arm was stretched out across Isabella’s back and appeared to be waving at the photographer to stop shooting.
“See what I mean?” Mike joked.“Do a sketch of a giant hand and hang it in post offices all over the country. You’ll have nuts calling in from Alaska to Mississippi before the ink is dry: Detective Chapman, I’d know that hand anywhere.“ “Chief Flanders, my dog once bit a hand that looked a lot like that hand.”
“Agent Waldron, I’ve shaken a hand that reminds me very much of that hand.” We’ll break this wide open in no time.“
Mike babbled on but I was fixated on the photo that stared up at me from the coffee table. My focus was not Isabella, nor was it the man’s hand that showed itself for the first time. My thoughts were tripping over each other as they competed for my full attention.
“Oh my God.”
Mike ignored me the first time, or perhaps my mutterings started under my breath and were inaudible to anyone except me. In my brain they were pounding louder than thunder.
“Oh my God. It’s not possible.”
“What?”
“Paul Stuart,” I managed to say out loud.
“Who’s that? Are you telling me you know-‘ ”It’s not a who,“ I interrupted him, ’it’s a what.” My stomach rolled with nausea as my thought processes reached my gut before I could even articulate what I was thinking.
“Paul Stuart is one of the best men’s stores in New York, Mike. Madison Avenue and Forty-fifth Street,” I rambled on. The pale blue-and-green plaid of the shirt that covered the man’s arm in the photograph Isabella’s protector screamed at me from the detail of the photograph which sat before me.
“I bought that fucking shirt at Paul Stuart the week before Labor Day. Sea Island cotton, a hundred and forty-seven fucking dollars. Call off your APB, Detective Chapman, that rotten, lowlife piece of human excrement standing next to the screen goddess on her way to my home is Jed Segal.” I picked up the photograph and winged it at full force across the room like a Frisbee, so that it ricocheted off my huge armoire and came to rest under the sideboard that held my favorite assortment of silver-framed snapshots of family and friends. Then I sank back into the deep pillows of my oversized sofa to wallow in the revelation that Jed and Isabella had betrayed me in the most profound way two humans could torment a third. “Jesus, Alex, calm down a minute.You can’t tell from one of these pictures who this guy is,” Mike said as he went to retrieve the telltale photograph and study it again.
“That store must have sold dozens of shirts like that one, and stores all over the country sold hundreds more. There’s no way you can say who that arm belongs to on the basis of an inch of plaid material in a blown-up photograph. Don’t start with the self-pitying martyr bullshit you can’t jump to any con-‘
”Maybe you’re too fucking stupid to make conclusions at this point, Mikey, but don’t bet the farm against me on pieces of fabric and clothing. That’s like you and the Mamelukes. I have been stabbed in the back no, in the heart by that miserable bastard. It’s not just the shirt, it’s everything else that’s falling into place.“
“Please don’t start crying on me again tonight, Cooper. Let’s look at this very care-‘ I interrupted him again, amazed he couldn’t see that there should have been smoke coming out of my ears by this point.
“Cry? Cry?” I was practically shrieking at him now.
“Do you actually think I’m going to waste any more of my very short supply of emotion on that man? You must really have a very low opinion of me after all this time. Don’t worry, no more tears.” I stood up and reached across the tab let’s grab the picture out of Mike’s hand.
The section of the photo containing the man’s hand and sleeved-arm represented about three inches of surface in the enlargement. I looked at it again, hoping that the distinctive fabric I had found so attractive the day I had gone shopping had changed to stripes or polka dots or pink elephants.
Instead, the second glance confirmed all my fears. I lowered myself back onto the sofa as I inspected Jed’s fingers on the film fingers that had caressed my breasts, stroked my thighs, and knew exactly how to make me respond excitedly to their pressure and touch.
“It’s not just the shirt, Mike.” I didn’t have to tell him out loud about Jed’s fingers. He would know what I meant just as well as I did.
“Take this away from me before I tear it in shreds,” I said, handing the painful image back to Mike.
“I could kick myself for missing all the little clues. You should have seen the way his mouth dropped open when he got off the elevator on Saturday and saw me standing here wearing those silk pajamas Iz had given me you know, like the pair we saw in my bedroom when we packed up her stuff. He must have thought he was seeing a ghost.” Of course, the one thing Isabella wanted that I had provided for her: a respectable man.
“I could kill him with my bare hands.”
I was out of control and Mike didn’t know how to bring me back.
“Calm down, Alex. You’ll wake the neighbors.” A light seemed to go off in his head when he said the word ‘neighbors.“
”Hey, you think maybe your shrink friend is still awake at this hour? Maybe he could come in and help-’
“Help what? There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m just angry and pissed off and mad and miserable and-‘ ”And maybe he should like tranquilize you or something. I don’t know. I don’t want you to hurt yourself over this. I can’t leave here with you in this condition.“
“Leave David out of this. There’s nothing wrong with me. No wonder I couldn’t reach Jed at the Ritz the first time I called there on Thursday. He probably hadn’t even gotten to Paris yet of course he couldn’t get back here till Saturday. That whole trip must have been just a sham to cover his rendezvous with Isabella.” I stood up and started pacing around the living room to calm myself down. Mike and most of my other colleagues had seen the Cooper temper in a flare-up, and most tried to avoid it. It finally occurred to me to move toward the bar and fix myself a drink.
“Not a prayer, blondie. No drinking. C’mon, let’s deal with this rationally. I should have known, too. Anybody who drank bottled water with fried clams had to be a yuppie and an asshole. What a fucking phony.”
“Oh, jeez, Mike. Worse thought. Do you think I should phone Battaglia and wake him up at this hour? He hates to be the last to know. Oh, I think I’m going to be sick – no kidding.” I sat in one of the armchairs and doubled over with my head pounding against my hands.
“That’s your call, Alex. You have to answer to him, I don’t. I suppose if you get to the office at the crack of dawn and tell him then nobody’s gonna find out before that. I mean, I think the chief has to know tonight, but-‘
I snapped my head up to protest that idea. “Why does the chief have to know anything about this? Suddenly my aborted love life is going to be fodder for the department? No way, Mike, no way. No way.“
Chapman squatted down directly in front of me, put his hand on my knee, and tried to force me to look him directly in the eye.
“You don’t get it yet, kid, do you? If that sleeve really does belong to Jed Segal and that’s the very first thing we have to find out for sure then this is not just about someone cheating on you with one of your friends. If you’re right about Jed, then we’ve got to look at him as a suspect in Isabella’s murder.“
My head started shaking back and forth slowly in disagreement with what Mike had just announced. I hadn’t thought of that at all, as busy as my mind was with its own unhappiness, but I could not accept or absorb that concept when it emerged from his lips.