“Greg, the super says there were shower curtains in all the unsold apartments—clear plastic with a white border. The shower curtain in six is gone. What do you think?”
Monteleone looked up from his pre-World War II Underwood. He had rolled a virgin five into the carriage. “I think exactly what you think I think. The killer wrapped the leg in it.”
“There was no spill. How did he tie it?”
Monteleone shrugged. “Rope.”
“There weren’t any fibers in the bedroom.”
“Wire.”
“There weren’t any scratches on the polyurethane. And if he used the curtain, why’d we find the garbage bag fragments?”
“He spread the curtain to do the messy work, then used the bags to clean up, then got rid of the leg and the curtain.” Monteleone held out a bitten buttered bagel.
“Thanks, I ate.” The furrows on Cardozo’s brow deepened. “I found scratches on the shower curtain rod. There used to be rings. They’re gone too. Metal, not plastic. Who uses metal rings nowadays?”
“My grandmother-in-law. No one else.”
“You ever tried to unhook those things? Why would he bother?”
“I don’t think he would, Vince. Anyone using a shower curtain to dispose of a human leg would pull the curtain off the rings. But if the rings are gone, it’s something else. Maybe the building agents were showing one of the other apartments, a shower curtain got torn, so they replaced it from six.”
“The shower in the other bathroom would already have curtain rings. They’d just take the curtain.”
Monteleone scratched his moustache. “What does the super say?”
“He says the last time he checked there was a curtain in six, but he doesn’t remember when the last time he checked was.”
“I don’t think it connects to the killing.”
“Somebody still took it.”
“Petty larceny.”
10
BARON BILLI VON KLEIST had taken up his favorite position: observer. Leaning against the mantelpiece, he shrugged one broad shoulder, adjusting the hang of his dinner jacket. His gaze continued to sweep the party.
Ash Canfield’s livingroom was thronged with the people who controlled the look, as opposed to the power, of New York. Waiters circulated unobtrusively with trays of champagne. The mayor was seated at the Boesendorfer, rippling out Cole Porter for one of Alan Jay Lerner’s widows.
“Hey, circulate. You’re one of my stars.” Ash Canfield was wearing her blond-rinsed hair upswept and wide on her head; long black lashes half-veiled her gaze. “Just introduce yourself to anyone you don’t know.”
“My dear Ash,” Baron Billi smiled, “not only do I know ninety-nine percent of the people here, I know half the clothing—intimately.” He had counted over a dozen of his designs being worn tonight. The gowns sent a massively mixed message—See my body, want my body—and Drop dead, you could never afford me. Tough swank—the look that Billi had pioneered after assuming control of Babethings—had not only reversed the company’s sweetness-and-light image, it had tripled earnings.
“Do you know Irina, princess of Serbia?” Ash said.
“Oh, please, is that a threat?”
Billi saw Lewis Monserat, dealer, talking with Dina Alstetter, the sister of the hostess. They were standing in one of the open terrace doorways, their diet-slim bodies glowing in the light of a Lalique lamp.
Billi made his way across the room.
“Well, handsome Billi,” Dina said. She touched a hand to her crisply waved auburn hair.
“Lovely, lovely Dina. So tan and lean. The evening shows promise—at last.” Billi took Dina Alstetter’s hand and ceremoniously lifted the long, manicured fingers to his lips. “And when may we look forward to your debriefing on Barbados?”
“Barbados was glorious. Karim’s yacht is unbelievable. You’ve got to patch up with him. Three stewards, and my own maid.”
“New York must be quite a comedown.”
“In more ways than one.” Dina was wearing gray silk and she kept touching the rose quartz and gold dividers of her pearl necklace. “I see my baby sister has assembled her usual collection of trend-setters and fashion terrorists—all busily dripping pearls, ashes, and borrowed bons mots.”
“Watch out for your own glass house.” Lewis Monserat flicked flame from a gold lighter and held it to Dina’s cigarette. He’d combed his gleaming black hair straight back, rather than over his forehead, and somehow the effect was to make his eye sockets look far more hollow than usual.
“Tell me,” Billi said, “is that woman in the very bad fake Fortuny Princess Irina of Serbia? Don’t turn too obviously—just behind you to the left.”
Dina turned and her blue-gray eyes made no pretense of not staring.
Lewis Monserat looked and said the woman was one of the new curators of the fashion collection of the Metropolitan Museum, just hired away from Dallas—“Doesn’t that make you want to salaam?”—and then he began pointing out the other stars in Ash’s new crop of instant celebrities.
“You can always count on Ash’s network,” Dina sighed. “Whether you need a broker or an abortionist, a friendly judge or a caterer, Ash always knows someone who knows someone. Only do you notice there’s someone very important missing?”
Billi looked around the room. “Who?”
“The host.” Dina ran her hand through her hair with a look of iced merriment. “Will you two excuse me? I’m ravenous.”
Dina pried her way through conversational groupings. Guests were throwing their heads back with the open-mouthed hilarity of television youth. From outside came the sound of dance music.
Taking one of Ash’s Lowestoft plates in hand, Dina surveyed the buffet table.
There were candle-warmed tureens of eggs scrambled to a froth and slivered with white truffle; chargers heaped with chilled Mediterranean langoustes; mousse de crevettes; assorted crudité’s with a Pernod dip; ice swans of gray Iranian caviar that could only have been procured from the commissary at the U.N.; cold filet de veau in port jelly sliced paper-thin, with miraculously smooth béarnaise to dollop over it; boiled quails’ eggs sumptuously marinated in Polish buffalo grass vodka; wine aspics; and at the dessert end of the table towers of freshly imported exotic fruit, creamy ices, and tangy sherbets in frosted crystal cups.
Rising from bunches of grapes, gazing down on the cold stuffed lobster like an embalmed maître d’, was a 17th-century French marble bust of Socrates.
Ash Canfield reached into the picture, switching a cluster of white grapes with a cluster of red. She stood back, judging the effect.
“Hi, Sis,” Dina said. “Quite the royal spread.”
Ash smiled a little uneasily. “Help yourself.”
“The mousse looks yummy. When’s the host arriving?”
Ash blinked and stood frozen in a sudden cave of silence.
Dina gave her sister’s hand a mischievous little pat. “Chin up. The show must go on.”
“Excuse me,” Ash said. “The bandleader’s played that tune three times.” She quickly joined the tide flowing through the open French windows out onto the terrace.
A dance floor of polished oak had been laid down. Men in black tie and women in new summer gowns whirled to the music of a nine-piece orchestra. Beyond them the city pushed up a steel and glass skyline that burned with the hard glow of diamonds on a bed of black velvet.
Ash found Gordon Dobbs by the bandstand, whispering with a sax player, jotting something in his notebook.
“Ash my dear, only you could have gotten this crowd together.” As Gordon Dobbs slid his notebook back into his dinner jacket, diamond shirt studs sparkled in his boiled shirt. “I know for a fact that Jackie deFonseca sent last-minute regrets to the vicomtesse de Chambord so she could come here. Tomorrow morning all New York will be talking of nothing but.”
Gordon Dobbs wrote a column for New York magazine. Ash viewed him as a sort of protector in a fierce and flammable world. He did not pretend to be other than what he was, and he had a reliable talent for cutting enemies down to gossip-size nuggets.