The Crasher Page 18

  “How so?”

  “Sometimes with Poppy, sometimes without, I give the hosts the benefit of my unique solo fashion presentation.” Ginny paused, she hoped provocatively. “Whether they’ve had the sense to invite me in the first place or not.”

  “You mean you crash?”

  Ginny nodded. “You could call it that. I consider it doing the host a favor.”

  Alex’s sanguine face slowly opened up with a beam of approval. “Atta girl,” he said again.

  Ginny suppressed the urge to giggle. Alex was such a chameleon. He always picked up the accents and words of those surrounding him. Now, she reckoned, he must be seeing a lot of Texans.

  “I think that’s smart, Ginny, providing you do it with a lot of class. I mean I hope you’re being really choosey. You only go to—crash, that is—the parties that will do your business or you some good, right?” He tilted up her chin, the pointy chin that had, through his obstinacy, led her into the modeling agony. “Don’t turn into a party junkie, will you, and start trying to crash the opening of an envelope.”

  Ginny laughed at the concerned look on his face. “No way. My time’s too precious.”

  “Good. You’re just as smart as I always thought you were. It’s the best training in the world for your future in the Seventh Avenue jungle and I can help you, too.” He stared at her reflectively. “If I don’t have to leave tomorrow I may have time to tell you about some special parties coming up, parties that are not written about, receptions, fund-raisers in private homes, where the real money is.” He sipped his wine, still studying her face. “I can take you myself and help you recognize who’s who and who isn’t, the influential ones, what they wear, that sort of thing, you know what I mean.”

  She wasn’t sure she did, but she reveled in grabbing Alex’s attention.

  Before he dropped her off at the loft, he reiterated, “Don’t overdo it. You have natural poise, a great fashion talent for looking good with just a couple of dollars, and I don’t doubt that your father’s conceit and your mother’s manners will get you through most doors.” He chucked her under the chin again. “Just remember, stay cool under fire and whatever you do, never lose your temper if cornered. It’s a total giveaway.”

  Not long after Alex’s departure, Ginny had reason to remember his parting words of advice.

  At a reception honoring Philip Miller, the czar of the Saks group, she was already late, dropping her stole as she rushed up the stairs in an old Gosman she’d reworked with shimmering paillettes.

  Retrieving it, she collided with someone rushing down. It was none other than the dreaded Mauve, the Gosman tailor.

  “What are you doing here?” His eyes flicked over her dress. “In number 715, if I remember correctly?” He laughed, but from his expression Ginny could see his feelings about her hadn’t changed.

  “What a surprise,” she said lamely. “I’ll see you inside.”

  “Who’re you with?”

  She mumbled Poppy Gan’s name as usual, although she very much doubted Poppy would turn up. “I’m late, see you.”

  When she reached the next floor she ducked inside the ladies’ room. Seeing Mauve had shaken her up. She took several deep breaths to recover, peeping round the door to see if by any horrible chance he was lurking outside to waylay her. He wasn’t there, but the curtains to the reception room were closed, and a large, official-looking woman blocked her path.

  “Ticket, miss. The guest of honor’s speaking. You can’t go in now. You’ll have to wait. What table number? Ticket, please.”

  She hadn’t been faced with this since her debacle at the Calvin Klein show so long ago. Now she was unusually flustered because of her encounter with Mauve.

  Be nice, Ginny. Be courteous. Whatever you do, Ginny, don’t be haughty or lose your temper.

  She dug her nails in her hand as she said with a small smile, “Oh, sorry, I’ve been in before. I just had to go to the ladies’ room.” She looked down at the floor shyly. “That time of the month, you know.” Then, “I’m with Saks. If I don’t hear the chairman’s speech, I’ll be in big trouble.” She bit her lip and tried to smile. “Please,” she repeated timidly, “I’m not far from the door. I promise I won’t make any noise.”

  The woman put a finger to her mouth as if to say “sshssh,” then moved the curtain slightly aside, allowing Ginny to slip in.

  Regularly receiving Poppy’s agenda (although, so far, no more invitations to accompany her), in the space of only a month Ginny discovered that what had been her liability as a wannabe model—her “facelessness,” her lack of a distinct “look”—was a major asset when crashing.

  Because of the way she dressed, because of her posture, she easily merged with the fashionable crowd; she looked vaguely familiar, she fitted in, so crashing wasn’t anything like as difficult as she’d imagined it would be, particularly events and benefits held in major hotels or stores, where rarely was anyone at the actual door checking names or tickets. Instead, partygoers checked in at a desk or table often a room or corridor away for their table numbers or seat assignments.

  At an Oscar de la Renta fashion show benefit, held at the Plaza Hotel, however, there was a forbidding guard at the entrance. Ginny tried the “I’ve already been in before” line, this time to no avail.

  “Over there, miss.” The guard pointed to a check-in table down the hall, where she noted a number of de la Renta-clad women clamoring for their seat assignments.

  This was infuriating. She particularly wanted to see this show and be seen, hoping at the end, perhaps, even to meet the great man himself.

  She’d made a point of knowing where all the ladies’ rooms were in the major hotels—bolt holes in times of trouble—and she was on her way to one to plot her next move, when she saw waiters going in and out of a small door behind a screen. She quickly looked around to see she wasn’t spotted, then darted behind the screen to follow them.

  As she’d hoped, she found herself in a corridor leading to the hotel kitchen, where surely there would be another entrance, if not several, into the ballroom itself.

  “Where are you going, miss?”

  A preppy young man in horn-rimmed glasses and holding an intercom stood in front of her.

  “To the fashion show, sir. I work at the hotel—in marketing. I’m looking for my boss.” She sighed plaintively. “There’s such a mob scene out there, this is a shortcut. I thought I’d use it.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Ginny Walker.”

  She put her hand in her new tweed purse, which looked like a small muff, so the man wouldn’t see it tremble.

  His intercom beeped. He listened intently. “Okay, okay, on the double.”

  He looked her up and down suspiciously, then snapped, “You should have been told, Ms. Walker, no shortcuts today. You’ll get in big trouble. Here—” He took her by the shoulder and hustled her between two huge soup urns. “This way and don’t come back.”

  She found herself exactly where she wanted to be, inside the ballroom, beside the stage. Horn-rims was staring after her. She smiled and gave him an appreciative little wave, then rushed ahead, looking for her “boss.” After a few minutes she looked back. Thankfully, he was gone, to deal with his “on the double” business.

  She spent the next twenty minutes sauntering around the rows of little gilt chairs, being photographed in her new shiny “tweed” skirt (actually made from nine-dollars-a-yard oilcloth, printed with a tweed design, that she’d found in a local hardware store) and her “new” Harris tweed jacket, remodeled, after being purloined by her mother from her father’s wardrobe. An act of revenge, Ginny was sure, as right after Labor Day her mother had once again pulled up stakes and followed her father to Miami, where he was “opening the first branch of the new Walker School.”

  Across the runway, in the front row, Ginny saw to her surprise the beautiful Dolores Relato Peet. She knew her name now, a name she might not be using for much longer, because in Suzy’s colum
n only the night before, she’d read a Suzy scoop: the Peets were getting “an amicable divorce.” Whatever that meant.

  Certainly, from the look of her today, it meant Dolores wasn’t grieving. Animated, laughing, throwing her elegant head back so that a cloud of dark hair continually brushed her shoulders, Dolores appeared ecstatic.

  How could a woman whose divorce had just been announced show off so soon in public her happiness, her relief? It was such a slap in the face to her about-to-be-ex-husband. Or perhaps that was what an “amicable divorce” was all about? Perhaps Mr. Peet junior, who she read from time to time in Next! magazine, was somewhere at this moment having an equally good time? Ginny felt hopelessly naive. What did she know? Only that Dolores was wearing a suit she’d give her all for, in broadtail, the delicate, incredibly expensive fur from baby lambs which looked and felt like silk.

  With the Peets in and out of her mind, it was only when the de la Renta show was over (seen from a fourth-row seat marked “guest”) that Ginny learned what hot water she could have been in.

  When the lights went up came an announcement which stunned her: “Will everyone kindly remain in their seats until the First Lady has left the ballroom.” Ginny hadn’t even known that Hillary Clinton was in the packed audience. Thank goodness horn-rim’s intercom had gone off. He must have been a Secret Service agent.

  Dolores had been at the Waldorf and now at the Plaza. Ginny decided she had to be her lucky omen, for at both places she’d gotten away with murder.

  Murder, it had to have been murder, Johnny thought, although the Los Angeles police still persisted in calling it a tragic accident

  Why didn’t someone challenge the police? Why didn’t someone remind the world that Rosemary Abbott had been risking her life for years, working as Rosa Brueckner for the Drug Enforcement Administration? Why didn’t someone in the DEA admit the enemy had obviously decided they were tired of having her around?

  Her husband, her parents—they were professionals, used to sudden death, but for Godsakes, this was their own beloved wife and daughter, who’d burned to a cinder in her own home. They couldn’t have swallowed the electrical fault story? And yet ever since he’d first heard about Rosemary’s gruesome death, there hadn’t been one word about foul play, not even in Timemagazine, which had broken her story back in ‘93.

  Not much more than a year and a half had passed since that piece extolling her courage, yet now where had Time run the story of Rosa-Rosemary’s death? In Milestones, the page that contained their mini-obituaries, where they’d gone along, no questions asked, with the official “accident” verdict and her official job description, “retired.”

  Johnny stared at the backs of the people sitting with bowed heads in the front pew, one almost bald, a gray-haired woman, a pepper-and-salt tousle-haired man.

  They all knew Rosemary was no more “retired” than Clinton. She’d been on the front line right up to the day somebody had shut her in her basement and torched the place down.

  Before flying to the Coast for the memorial service, Johnny had called Rosemary’s husband, Ben Abbott, to try to arrange a meeting. He hadn’t been able to reach him and her parents had been “unavailable,” too.

  Today, no matter what, at the buffet lunch for out-of-town mourners at her parents’ house in Santa Monica, he intended to tell them all, husband, mother and father, that if they weren’t prepared to make a lot of noise about the true facts behind Rosemary’s death, he was going to, in his own column in Next! and at each and every TV opportunity that presented itself. There were more and more these days. Johnny shut his eyes, trying to concentrate on the eulogies.

  He felt old, beaten. As if finding out that all his suspicions about Dolores were true hadn’t been enough for one year. Even now he felt ill, knowing she’d been two-timing him with the same obscenely oil-rich, much-married man, not only all through their marriage, but even since his Albany days.

  It was good riddance, there was no doubt about that. Her body had attracted him in a way no other woman’s ever had, but even before he’d caught her in the act, the deadwood in her brain had been getting more and more in the way.

  He’d had to live through his father saying “I told you so” in as many diabolically clever ways as he could think to say it, but he’d never have to hear it again. Never. He’d learned his lesson about women. He’d never make the same mistake.

  Thank God, his father couldn’t say the same thing about his job. His job had saved his sanity. His father would never admit it, but Next! was soaring in popularity and so was his much quoted and talked about “unpredictable” column.

  There were dozens of photographs of Rosemary to be seen in her parents’ comfortable home, as a gap-toothed, freckle-nosed kid, as a scrawny beanstalk of a teenager, as a radiant bride. How could they live with the knowledge they would never see their brilliant, courageous daughter again? But then, while she was alive, how could they have lived every day with the knowledge she was out there somewhere, putting her life on the line for her job?

  Since their February meeting, Johnny had seen Rosemary only once more, in New York, following another well-publicized, multimillion-dollar heist in the summer from a heavily guarded Southampton estate.

  On a tip from Freddy Forrester, Johnny had learned that if a bomb hadn’t exploded, arousing the neighborhood, the robbery might not ever have been reported. There was some question as to who really owned the estate and Peter Licton, the alleged owner, disappeared two days after filing the stunning list of art treasures and jewelry missing.

  One of Dolores’s birdbrains had been to a couple of wild weekend parties at the estate, and Johnny, remembering Dolores’s gossip, had passed along the names of some of the partygoers, believed to be involved with the Mafia. Was Licton a card-carrying member, too? It didn’t make sense if the Mafia were behind the heist, as the FBI, the police, and the DEA seemed to think. There were too many similarities between the Southampton job and the Stimson Court Place robbery to ignore.

  He’d immediately called Rosemary on the Coast, asking her to get in touch with him. He felt ashamed now, remembering how irked he’d been to discover she was already in New York.

  He hadn’t asked her why she hadn’t let him know, but he’d felt peevish and probably had sounded it, too. She’d told him she’d been following up leads on Licton for some time and was now ready to prove he wasn’t the charming investment banker people who’d enjoyed his hospitality believed him to be. He was the American- and British-educated Pietro Licone, a member of the Comorra organized crime family of Naples, heavily involved in the cocaine business in Europe.

  So why would one group of criminals burglarize another? Gang warfare? Revenge?

  Rosemary had told him it all figured. “Thievery has become an increasingly competitive business, because the most experienced thieves know the serious buyers are from the drug cartels, who have more money than some countries do. Pietro, I’m sure, was sent here last year to open a lucrative branch for the family… and blood brothers or not, the American Mafia finally decided it was time to discourage him.”

  It was a good story that nobody else had, but it was too early. More would come and hopefully, like Rosemary, with patience, one day when the time was right, he’d be able to expose and cripple some major players in the drug business himself.

  She’d returned to Los Angeles without finding Licton—or Licone, as she was sure he really was. “He’s probably back in Italy, trying to recover his ego,” she said bitterly. “But he’ll try again. Those kind of people never like to lose.”

  “Shall I keep in touch?” he’d asked like an eager rookie, inspired as he always was by her tirelessness in fighting for a better drug-free world.

  “Oh, please, Johnny, please, but promise me you’ll be careful,” she’d replied. He had been careful; she hadn’t been careful enough.

  He saw Ben Abbott go into the garden into the sunshine. Following him, feeling the golden warmth on his face, Johnny thought of th
e wind and gray he’d just left behind in New York, an early announcement of the winter ahead.

  Soon he’d be a free man. Perhaps he should base his column in California for a few months, getting to know these people, earning their trust as he’d earned Rosemary’s? Above all, getting the real story behind her death. It wasn’t because of the story either, although with what he already knew, it would surely be the kind of cover piece Next! wanted from him. No, he would write it to vindicate her death.

  “Ben…” Johnny put out his hand. “John Peet. I’ve tried to reach you…”

  He was startled to see the man’s eyes full of tears. He felt his own begin to prick. “I’m… I’m so sorry, Ben.”

  Abbott’s handshake was hard, almost brutal, as if he needed someone to stop him falling down.

  “Thanks, John.” The tears were gone and in the brilliant sunlight, Johnny saw that Abbott’s eyes were as blue and as piercing as an acetylene torch.

  “Can we talk?”

  “What’s there to talk about? I’ve got to go on with my life…”

  “But it wasn’t an accident, you know that. For two years they must have been planning—”

  Ben Abbott interrupted him harshly. “Who’s been planning? You’re treading on dangerous ground, sonny. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Johnny could feel himself flush. He was twenty-nine years old. Ben Abbott may be fifteen or twenty years his senior, but only his father had the right to call him sonny, and he didn’t like it from him, either.

  He controlled his anger. “Ben, don’t you know I was in contact with Rosemary? About the Stimson Court Place robbery last Christmas, then the Licton job this summer and its link to organized crime, the Comorra family and Cali—”

  The blue eyes flashed, then, “Stay away, sonny,” Abbott snapped. “Stay away from my business. If that piece hadn’t appeared in Time and then your fucking follow-up on Joan of Arc heroines,” he spat on the ground, “Rosemary wouldn’t have been burned alive; she’d be here right now, making you one of her fucking famous margaritas.”