The message light was flashing on my phone when I got into my bedroom and started to undress. One solicitation to change phone companies and reach out to friends all over the U.S.A. for pennies less than whichever system I was using, one hang-up getting to be a bit too commonplace lately and two terse messages from Jed that had come in during the last ten minutes. The first was short and angry in tone, berating me for creating that ridiculous scene with my ‘pet cop’; the second was short and conciliatory in tone, urging me to meet with him alone tomorrow, and to believe in him. The Easter bunny, the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, and Jed Segal – I had believed in each of them and they had proven to be among life’s great disappointments. Jed would never get the honor of rising to the level of those others.
I toyed with the idea of ringing David’s doorbell and asking his advice, but I was afraid to find out that he, too, would admit some previously unacknowledged connection to Isabella. Instead, I climbed into bed and picked up the phone to call Nina Baum. Not even eleven o’clock in Los Angeles yet, so I knew I wasn’t likely to find her at home.
“We can’t come to the phone now…” the message droned on, so I waited for the beep and left her an update. I vented on all my pain about Jed’s faithlessness, and concluded with Mike’s concern that Jed was actually a suspect in the murder. A best friend was better than a shrink any day, in my book. I knew Nina would call back first thing tomorrow, suggesting ways to put these events in perspective with the rest of my life and loves. I switched off the light, rolled over onto my stomach, and tried to fall asleep. Whatever pleasant thoughts I attempted to balance in my mind danced there for only brief seconds before being pushed off center stage by the reality of the last few hours. I lay in the dark reliving all of my days and evenings and nights with Jed, wondering whether particular moments together had been artificial or genuine, whether they had occurred before or after his first contact with Iz, whether there had been someone else before her.
Sleep was impossible. I sat up and turned on the light, got out of bed, and slipped into the least sexy, snuggest bathrobe I owned. I had instantly reverted into that end of-relationship funk in which I knew I would never need sexy robes or underwear for the rest of my life. Never would I expose myself again in my most fetching lingerie to any other untrustworthy man who crossed my path. I traipsed from room to room, illuminating all of them as I looked for some diversion to keep me occupied until, as I hoped, drowsiness would overcome me.
I went into the kitchen and made myself a cup of hot chocolate. The October evening was much too mild for that, but I remembered some vague childhood thing about my mother and warm milk as a soporific, so I figured I’d give it a try. On to the dining-room table to do the Monday Times crossword, but it was so ridiculously simple that I knocked it off in less than fifteen minutes. It was a bad reminder that the week still had four days to go.
Finally, I moved through the living room and perched in the den where my television and stereo were set up. I reclined in an armchair with my feet on the ottoman and turned on the tube to see what old black-and-white rerun might lull me into a little nap. It was the first stroke of luck I’d had in days, even though that meant I wouldn’t close my eyes for a minute. One of the cable channels was playing Notorious, which is my favorite movie ever made.
It had started at two-thirty so I had missed the first few scenes, but I could practically recite the lines from memory for all the times I had seen it.
There was the splendidly youthful Ingrid Bergman and the dashing Gary Grant. They were already in Rio and she had agreed to the perilous plan to seduce the evil Claude Rains, and ultimately to move into the palatial home he shared with his monstrous mother. Ingrid and Gary were daring to have her debriefings in the most public of places, the park in the middle of the city where they pretended to meet by chance on horseback.
I lost myself in the Hitchcockian brilliance of the double crossings and treacherous dealings, the principled spies and the demonic Nazis. I marveled at Ingrid’s willingness to accept Gary’s dare and actually marry the enemy, though she ached for Gary to love her. I tensed as I always did at the champagne reception and the riveting scene in the wine cellar with the missing key and the broken bottle.
And as the very large, bright moon outside my window threatened to disappear into daylight, I wanted to be saved just as the deceived Ingrid had been: by Gary, sweeping me into his arms and down the grand staircase and out of all danger. Just what I needed an escape from my troubles into a cinema life of intrigue and romance and lovers not knowing whether they could trust each other. Worked like a tonic.
Now I was wired. It was almost 5 A.M. and I clicked the dial past an endless array of gadgets like Veg-O-Matics and Ginzo knives and tummy-slimmers. Nothing engaged me on any channel and I was resigning myself to the fact that this was going to be an allnighter – I was much too edgy to sleep.
I leafed through the current New Yorker, hoping for a long piece on the most current Washington scandal, but finding instead a dull treatise on ozone levels in the Brazilian rain forest.
The buzz of the intercom in my kitchen, connected to the phone of the building’s doormen in the lobby, nearly lifted me out of my chair when it shattered my quiet daze a few minutes later. It would be Jed. Should I let him in when I was alone? The ringing kept up interminably, but I held my resolve not to pick up the phone and acknowledge his presence. I was annoyed that the doormen had ignored my instruction not to admit him if he showed up, and I assumed he had greased their ever-open palms with some large bills.
I had stopped counting rings at sixty-five, and was now toying with the idea of calling 911 to have the cops usher him away. That would be a terrible waste of police resources, as I knew better than anyone, so I let it ring on instead.
Then I heard the elevator doors open in the hallway. He was actually upstairs and was going to try to get in to me.
What if Mike Chapman was right that Jed’s greatest fault had not been his infidelity, but that he was, indeed, a murderer? Maybe he was coming to kill me, to silence me because I had implicated him in Isabella’s death? My mind didn’t seem to work. I simply didn’t know what to do next but I had clearly waited too long to call the police. There were voices in the hallway now. That meant he had come back with at least one other person and I was terrified that he had found some thug to do his dirty work for him. I stepped over to the bar next to the television set and picked up the wine-bottle opener which lay on top the ‘screw-pull’ version with the wickedly sharp-pointed tip that projects into the cork. I had no idea what I would do with it but its mean metal point felt good in the palm of my hand as I tiptoed closer to the front door.
“Coop, Coop? It’s Mike. Open up, I got a surprise for you.”
Lucky I didn’t have a gun because I probably would have blasted it through the door at Chapman at precisely that point, for freaking me out and heightening my growing sense of paranoia. I looked out the peephole for a confirmatory sighting, threw back the bolt, and turned the lock to open the door.
I was fuming, again.
“Do you have any idea-‘ That’s when I saw Mercer Wallace standing next to him, holding three pints of Haagen-Dazs ice cream the most direct way to my heart stacked up in a pile as his deep bass hummed the melody of ”What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?“ while Mike laughed.
“Great music, Mercer. But I can’t dance to it tonight.”
“This shit’s gonna melt all over your hall carpet if you don’t let us in, Alex. Move it.” Chapman pushed past me and the two of them headed straight for the kitchen to dish up the portions.