Monday evening
“DUDE, WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE NOT GOING?”
Nate was stretched out on Ben’s bunk bed. “It’s too demeaning. The asshole plants drugs on me but I’m so hard up, I show up at his party?”
“Don’t give me this ‘demeaning’ crap. You’re a party whore. Live with it.”
Half an hour later they got off the subway at Columbus Circle and walked east on Central Park South. At the Ross Maharaja, a doorman wearing a purple Nehru jacket and a turban with a fake jewel asked to see Chaps I.D., then said, “Go past the bronze statue of an elephant—you can’t miss it. Take the elevator straight to the penthouse.”
Monday night parties were rare, and it looked like half the high school had shown up for this one, a mixed-bag crowd that cut across all lines—jocks, artsy drama kids, prepsters in pink Lacostes with the collars up in back, stoners, a few rah-rah student leaders.
“Hey, over here, you guys!” Katie Spielkopf shouted, holding up a beer bottle and waving it at them. She was standing beside Chris Butler, whose arm was draped around a life-size statue of Elliot’s father that was scarily real looking—the hair, the eyeballs, the teeth, the clothes. Somebody, Chris probably, had stuck a BoSox cap on its head and a joint in its mouth.
“Say hello to our host,” Chris said.
“Quel zoo,” Katie shouted over the blasting music. She was in one of her early Stevie Nicks get-ups, long flowing skirt, cowboy boots, straw cowboy hat, dangly earrings.
“They have three floors. But get this,” Chris said. “No kitchen. They just order room service.”
Ben arched a skeptical eyebrow.
“I love when you do that! Teach me how!” Katie tugged at Ben’s elbow.
Chris tilted back his beer and drifted off. Nate did too, seeing that Ben was already moving in on Katie, his arm raised and pressed against the wall, hemming her in.
On the terrace a bunch of kids sat circling the rim of a stone fountain, passing around a joint. Fifty-something floors below, the rectangle of Central Park stretched northward, edged all around by tall buildings. From this high up all he could make out were glowing dots from streetlamps and curving roadways lit by moving traffic.
He felt a tap on his shoulder.
“Hey. I was hoping you’d show up.”
As always his heart started thrumming wildly. Olivia was wearing a pair of old jeans with a ripped knee, a plain white tee shirt, and a belt that looked like it was made out of a bungee cord. She moved beside him and leaned over the terrace railing, pointing down in the general area of the ice skating rink. “Wollman’s is gonna be open soon. I can’t wait.”
“I hate ice skating. I suck at it.”
“I’m really good.” She pretend-skated. “You should try it again.”
“Nah. They don’t make skates with double runners in my size.”
Olivia smiled that beautiful off-kilter smile. Then she said, “Nate, lookit. I need to talk…. Can I trust you?”
He said sure although a sick feeling slithered in his stomach. Trust and lust, they rhymed, but they sure didn’t go together. He bet no woman ever said she trusted Lord Byron.
They moved away from the kids by the fountain. Her voice, always low, dropped to a whisper. “Promise you won’t tell anybody…. It’s about my brother—it’s him in the News photo.” She told him why Grant happened to be at Chaps last Monday evening. “Grant didn’t know who was in the office with Tut. But it sounded serious. He heard Tut go something like, ‘You have a lot of explaining to do.’”
“Do the cops know?”
“Only me—and now you. I want Grant to go to the cops, but he’s scared they won’t believe him.”
Nate listened, scowling. Why the fuck did Alice have to hook up with Grant? The guy was bad news, end of story.
“Remember what I told you about Lily, how weird she was acting when I was at her house watching TV?”
“You mean when you were watching ‘Crime Blotter’?”
“Yeah. I still think the Lilys made Elliot do something, something to Tut. Maybe, maybe if we like go upstairs and look around in Elliot’s room, we’ll find something.”
Snooping around the Rosses’ apartment sounded pretty flaky to him, like Olivia wanted to play a real-life game of “Clue.” What did she expect to find? A bottle labeled “Extra GHB from when I killed Tut”? But upstairs, in Elliot’s room, alone with Olivia? Just call him Colonel Mustard.
“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Let’s go.”