Page 33

THIRTY-TWO

Raymond is already standing on the corner of Eighty-Sixth Street when Alex gets there after work, rushing to arrive for their 8 p.m. meeting time. Instead of his typical T-shirt and jeans he’s got on a dark-charcoal-colored suit. It is cut wide and boxy, a style that went out of fashion a good twenty years ago. He reminds her of the detectives in the eighties shows her mom would watch as reruns when she was little. The jacket is wrinkled and the shoulders bulge hollowly. She has a feeling from the way he shuffles back and forth that he’s been there awhile already and his feet are getting tired. He lights up when he sees her approach.

“Is this some sort of a stakeout?” Raymond’s eyes are sparkling.

“Kind of. More of a fact-finding mission,” Alex says. “I heard from someone at work that Howard had a reservation at some old hotel bar with his mistress right before Francis died. And I found a matchbook inside Francis’s desk with the same restaurant’s name on the front.”

“Ah, that is good deduction, Alexis.” He rubs his palms together. “We’re going to get to the bottom of it. And don’t you worry, because I happen to be very good at this,” Raymond assures her. Alex wonders if this was a bad idea. Behind them the lights of the Bluebird go off for the night.

“Good at what?” They turn around to find that Janice has slipped out of the diner and is standing in the doorway, a set of keys dangling from her finger.

“At getting information,” Raymond says. “We’re investigating something.”

Alex interjects: “We are just going to ask some questions. But I have no idea if anything will come of it.”

“Oh yeah? Where at?” Janice finishes locking the door.

“It’s a bar inside the Temple Hotel. The Nest, it’s called.”

“I feel like I’ve heard of it.” Raymond shakes his head.

“Oh, I know the Nest,” Janice says cryptically.

“You do?” Alex is surprised.

“Yeah, was a very popular jazz bar back in the day. Used to be filled with celebrities. I knew a guy who worked as a server there. He used to sneak my sister and me in. Got wild in there.”

“Wild?” Alex steps out into the street and raises her arm out into traffic to call a taxi.

“Oh, you know, drugs, sex, that sort of thing. Once I gave a tissue in the bathroom to a very famous actress whose boyfriend had broken up with her.” She flaps a hand as if those are the types she always used to spend time with. “Best martini in the city though, and best jazz.” She smiles at some secret memory of it. A cab screeches to a sudden stop in front of them.

“Well, good luck,” Janice says a little sadly. Raymond grunts with the effort of getting himself into the back seat of the car. Janice watches from the curb, her apron dangling out of the side of her purse. “You know, the entrance to the Nest is almost impossible to find.”

“Did you want to come with, Janice?” Alex asks. God help her. She’s barely finished the invite before Janice is stepping into the street and hustling toward the open door of the taxi. “Okay, but only because the two of you clearly need all the help you can get.”

She heaves herself into the car, slamming the door behind her. As they speed downtown a hard knot begins to form in Alex’s stomach. Howard Demetri is her boss. She isn’t sure she should be doing this at all, but the temptation to learn about Francis’s last days is too strong. She hopes that this will lead her somehow to the writer of her own threatening letter. That once she finds out who killed Francis, she will be free from the fear of it, able to move on in her work knowing that there is no connection.

“The Temple Hotel,” Raymond calls to the driver.

“Now, tell me what we are trying to find out here,” Janice says.

“We wonder if Francis caught Howard in an affair,” Raymond says.

“Maybe he lured Francis to the hotel so he could threaten her someplace away from the Herald ,” Alex speculates. “He could have told her that her career was at stake.”

“Or it could be that Francis found out that Howard was having a rendezvous at the hotel and confronted him there,” Raymond continues.

On the other side of Alex, Janice digs in her purse and pulls out a shiny gold tube of the reddest lipstick Alex has ever seen.

“Do we have any clue who this younger woman is?” Janice asks.

Alex has been afraid that saying it out loud will make it more likely, and she desperately doesn’t want it to be true. The thought of it all has been making her sick. She’s had dreams about Howard cornering her in the hallway. Dreams that may have ended in something worse for those poor girls. “Apparently, he likes the girls in the mailroom.”

“They’re isolated there,” Raymond says, shaking his head. “Easier to groom maybe.”

“And to keep people from noticing,” Janice says, blotting her lipstick on a tissue and putting it back into her bag.

“Good point,” Alex says, thinking of her interaction with Regina that morning. Would she have known about these affairs? There was something about the anger in her that makes Alex think she might suspect something.

“We’ll see what we can find,” Raymond says, looking out the window as they drive down Broadway. She realizes that these two are quite comforting in their own strange ways. She wants them there with her. She might even need them.