19

I had worked hard to keep myself out of the tabloids in the last year and a half. I’m not one of those boldface mentions you read about in the columns being squired around by actors and moguls. When I get into the columns, it’s usually because I’ve done something embarrassing. But even during the death series fiasco, I had managed to keep it quiet, keep it out of the “TV Ticker” column of the New York Post. I’d been lucky for a long time.

But in the morning, there, on the front of the News-Journal, was my face, with the big black words, FEMME FATALE?

Below, it asked: DID YOU DATE THIS WOMAN?

They hated me at the News-Journal.

It was almost all there in the story. Kanengiser, Reb, Fennell, Pinks, Anya. A gynecologist, a dominatrix, an attempted mother-killer, and two famous television personalities. Two dead, one wounded, the other scared shitless, et cetera, and all, the paper said, because of their contact with me. It was made for the tabloids.

Who had leaked all this?

“We decided to make all of this public,” Detective Richard Bigger was quoted as saying, “in hopes of saving the lives of other men who may have been in contact, even innocently, with Ms. Hudson.”

They also dredged up the old Griff murder case, as well as my live, on-air belch and a few other incidents I really wanted to put behind me.

Was I ever going to escape my past?

By the afternoon, men all over the city had publicly disassociated themselves from me. There were jokes on Democracy Wall and in the Rumor File, and someone at ANN graphics had run up T-shirts with DON’T SHOOT … on the front and I NEVER DATED ROBIN HUDSON on the back. I saw four or five people wearing them just in the cafeteria. Admittedly, they were pretty funny T-shirts. Har har.

Well, I would probably never get another date as long as this nut was loose. The problem with nuts is, they’re so unpredictable and can be so hard to detect. I mean, there are guys like Hank, who stalks Dillon Flinder backward, who are obviously nutty. Then there are those nice quiet types who live next door for years and end up having a freezer full of dead drifters.

Around three p.m., a press release was issued by Max Guffy, which someone thoughtfully, and anonymously, faxed to me.

“Not only did I not date Robin Hudson,” he wrote. “I found her grossly offensive.”

That was rather overstating it, I thought.

No, I hadn’t dated Max Guffy. I had, however, thought about dating him when we met for our pre-interview, before I blew it all with a slip of the tongue.

There’s always that one question I should never ask, that one anecdote I shouldn’t tell, that one comment I shouldn’t make, but I can’t seem to stop myself, like the cannibalism question I asked the plane-crash survivor a couple of years ago.

With Max Guffy, avant-garde undertaker, I never should have told the Lazarus-sex story.

The notorious Romanian Lazarus-sex story, which ran on one of the European wire services, never made our air, although it was probably the most widely reported story within the network for a week or so. It was one of those stories that isn’t suitable, as anchorman Sawyer Lash would mis-say, “for any members of your family.”

As the story goes, a funeral home attendant had sex with a young female corpse, freshly dead, and the shock of it brought her back to life.

Imagine the attendant’s horror. He’s having sex with a dead woman who suddenly opens her eyes.

Now, imagine her horror. She wakes up after being unconscious to find a strange man is having sex with her on an examining table in a strange room.

(“Imagine that guy’s ego now, standing around the bar, bragging,” my neighbor Sally had said. “‘I can bring dead women back to life.’”)

In any event, the girl’s family didn’t press charges, despite the vileness of the crime, because they got their Olga back. That’s what I call a blessing in disguise.

(“The Lord moves in mysterious ways,” said my piggish boss Jerry Spurdle when he heard this tale.)

I asked Guffy what he thought about that, if it was possible to bring someone back to life that way. People at ANN were torn over that story, and it was endlessly discussed as some sort of extreme metaphor for the gender wars. A few argued the moral implications, as if it wasn’t completely black and white and they could actually build a defense, the “might be okay if it’s a matter of life and death” necrophilia defense. The rest of us argued the veracity, since the story came from Romania, a country so far into its id it brought us vampires, torchlight mobs, and Nicolae Ceausescu. But some people swore by it, so I figured I’d settle a few bar bets by asking an authority like Max Guffy. Remember, Guffy and I had had a little vodka, he’d told some morbid jokes, and I was feeling very comfortable by this point.

But Max Guffy got very defensive and angry, launching a rant about stereotypes, rigorous screening and supervision, double-teaming so the bodies were never alone, how such sensationalist crap preyed on the public’s fears and helped make people uncomfortable with death.

Then, red-faced, spitting mad, he asked me to leave.

Before you rush to judge me, consider that Max Guffy specialized in offbeat funerals, funerals as performance art, as comedy, as a reflection of the individuality of the dead guy. In his spare time, he also authored pseudonymous humor books about death.

Understand also that the man was proud of the New Yorker article that had said he was giving death a raucous eroticism. I was just a little blunter. It’s not like I asked him if he ever did it with a dead person. I mean, hey, anyone who can stage a Mummenschanz funeral with a straight face and then write a humor book called 101 Uses for a Dead Clown can take a story about necrophilia.

(Make that 102 uses.)

In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have told a necrophilia story to a mortician, but how often does one get the chance to tell a necrophilia story with a happy ending?

People called me all day. My ex-husband Burke called from Washington, where he was now a big-shot reporter at the State Department.

“Holden,” he said, using one of his nicer pet names for me. “Take care of yourself. I assume you’re armed to the teeth with corkscrews and electrolysis needles …”

“A hot glue gun and pepper spray,” I said.

“And you still grow the poison ivy in your window boxes.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But I’m not really in any danger. Men who’ve been involved with me are in danger.”

“That’s always been true of you,” he said. He was not properly sympathetic. What had once been a passionate love affair between me and Burke had dwindled down to an occasional phone call, an occasional dinner, a few shared memories, some joshing. We were like war buddies who get together every year to recall the battles they shared.

He laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Don’t tell me your legendary sense of humor in the face of everything has deserted you? I was laughing thinking how funny it would be if this stalker actually met you and discovered he didn’t like you.”

“You’ve always known how to flatter me, Burke.”

“You take care of yourself, seriously. I’m laughing, Holden, but this guy has killed people, so be careful. I mean it. You have some protection, security?”

“Yes, I’ve got our top security men looking after me,” I said. I was being sarcastic. Hector and Franco did not make me feel safer. I was sure they could both be lured away from their posts by a fast-talker on a snipe hunt.

“You be careful too, Burke.”

“I will.” Burke is smart and good-looking and has a lot of obsessed women fans. He receives Fabioesque quantities of fan mail.

Dillon called. “I’d take a bullet for you any day,” he said.

“That’s sweet. Kind of,” I said.

Even Eric E-mailed me from Moscow. “Don’t take any unnecessary chances,” he said. “Keep your sweet head down.”

I had a steady stream of visitors as well. Jerry, thank God, was in meetings, which took precedence over li’l ol’ me, so he would have to wait to harass me about this. But Dave Kona came in to express his concern. I couldn’t help noticing the way he sized up my office.

Louis brought me some funny stories, and Phil the janitor brought me a flower.

“You’re a lot like me, Robin,” Phil said. “Life throws you into craziness. But you’re too silly to die too, I think.”

Ferber called me twice. Once to tell me he couldn’t find Howard Gollis, and once to tell me ballistics had matched the bullet Mike recovered.

Then Mike came in.

“I’ll be happy to stay at your place tonight,” he said. “Just to keep you company.”

“Thank you, but it’s really not that big a deal. This isn’t someone who wants to hurt me, just men who are seen with me,” I said. “Don’t put yourself at risk. Be careful. This guy might take another shot.”

“Girl, I’ve been in much tougher spots than this one,” he said.

After he left, Tamayo came in. “You’ve seen the latest papers?” she said, sympathetically, and put the evening papers down on my desk.

“I’m doomed,” I said. “This was the last thing I needed right now, what with the reshuffle and the cutbacks and some nut out there shooting at any man who whistles my way … and my Aunt Maureen is in town, she’s bound to see the papers and …”

“Oh, someone called about your aunt,” Tamayo said.

“Who?”

“Where did I put that message? Just a second.”

She came back a moment later. It was a message from Aunt Mo’s roommate, Mrs. Sadler.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Mrs. Sadler said when I called her back. “But your aunt didn’t come back to the hotel yesterday. I woke up this morning and her bed was made. Did she stay over at your home?”

“No. Are you sure she didn’t come in after you were sleeping and then get up early to pray or something?”

“I don’t think so. She was acting very strange when she left last night.”

“Did she say where she was going?”

“I’m not sure. She got a call and said she had to go out. But she’d been reading your diary …”

My diary is kept on my home computer. To read my diary, she would have to break into my apartment, boot up my computer, access the software, load the relevant floppy disk, and find the relevant files, of which there are many, all locked. Then she would have to guess all the passwords, not an easy task, some of them in obscure languages, some of them made-up words, or she would have to find my secret password file in a separate subdirectory and then guess the password for the locked password file, tushnob, a Pushtu word for toilet I learned from Mike.

That’s a hell of an accident for a woman who can’t set the clock on her VCR.

“Diary?”

“I think it was your diary …”

“My Filofax,” I said.

She began to cry. “Oh dear, I never should have let her go out yesterday.”

“Why did she?”

“Your boyfriend called her and she went to see him.”

“Hold on,” I said. “I’ll be right over.”

I collected Hector and we went over together. I had to take Hector with me since it would have been impossible to sneak out of the office without him seeing me. Even if he hadn’t been parked right outside the door of Special Reports, guarding me like I was a vault full of money, someone would have seen me on the vast network of in-house video cameras.

On the way, I called Ferber from the car phone.

When we got to the Gotham Manor Hotel, which is owned by Paul Mangecet Hotels, Inc., the lobby was full of smiling Christians, milling about after some sort of symposium. I could tell they were Christians because they smiled so much and because they all had adhesive name tags with crosses on them.

Just as I was about to raise my hand to knock on Mrs. Sadler’s door, it opened. I guessed she’d been watching for me through the peephole.

“Thank heavens you’re here,” she said, ushering me into the chintzy, twin-bedded room.

“Tell me about the diary,” I began.

“One of your neighbors ran into a man outside your building who gave her the diary,” she said.

“That would be Joey Pinks,” I said. “He gave it to Mrs. Ramirez and she gave it to Aunt Maureen?” I was thinking out loud.

“That sounds right.”

“What did the man tell Mrs. Ramirez, my neighbor? Did Aunt Mo say?”

“No.”

Not that it mattered. Mrs. Ramirez put her own spin on things. For that matter, she made stuff up out of whole cloth.

“Did she say anything about this ex-boyfriend?”

“Oh, I am sure she said ‘boyfriend,’ not ‘ex-boyfriend.’ And other than that, she said nothing.”

“It doesn’t sound like Aunt Maureen to be so reticent,” I said.

“Well, we didn’t speak much … we weren’t …”

I watched her struggling for the Christian thing to say.

“You weren’t friends,” I helped.

“No, we weren’t.”

“How did you come to be roommates?”

“Well, er, I … nobody else wanted … oh dear.”

“Nobody else wanted to room with Aunt Maureen.”

“Well, yes,” said Mrs. Sadler, apparently the group martyr.

Boy, even the other right-wing Christians didn’t like being around Aunt Maureen very much. Poor Aunt Mo. It was like being the last kid chosen for softball, in a way.

Poor Aunt Mo. I had no doubt the shooter had her. I didn’t hold out much hope for her. A madman alone in a room with a gun and my bigmouthed Aunt Maureen? It would be awful hard not to kill her.

If only I’d seen her. Maybe she would have given me the Filofax and we could have given it to the cops and the shooter wouldn’t have come after her …

As traumatic a figure as she cut in my life, she was my aunt and blood is thicker … and stickier … than water. And, to be fair, there had been times when I was glad she was my aunt. Now that she was missing, I started remembering other times, other events. Episodes flashed before me all day and well into the night as I lay in my bed, inconsolable by rain forest singers or purring cats. Like the time I was cornered by a group of menacing older boys in the playground, and Aunt Mo saw out her kitchen window and came out with God’s Little Helper. She just went nuts with those boys, like a samurai, swatting them every which way until they scattered.

After Dad died, it was Aunt Mo who came to stay with us, and took care of us in those crucial first weeks without him. It was Aunt Mo who insisted I have a tenth birthday party, three months after my Dad died, and, because my mother was too shell-shocked to handle it, Aunt Mo came to town and threw a pretty good party for me. That day was the first happy one I had after Dad died. In high school, when I didn’t have enough money for a new dress for the junior prom, it was Aunt Mo who sent me a nice check, unasked. Sure it came with a long letter about the sin of vanity and scriptural prohibitions against fornication, but it’s the check that counts.

It could even be said that, in her inimitable way, Aunt Mo had been a positive influence in my life. For example, her attempts to get custody of me had made me work hard to keep it together for me and Mom and keep Aunt Mo at bay. I learned to cook, and at age ten I was cooking all our meals and doing all the housework, making sure Mom signed the checks for the bills and took her medication. Now, I rarely cook and I hate to clean. I did enough of that crap by age twenty-one to last me my entire life, and when my Aunt Minnie was widowed and moved in with us, I took the opportunity to ditch Chuck Turner and get out of Ferrous, Minnesota.

But the point is, rebelling against Aunt Mo made me a lot more independent. Granted, my life wasn’t anywhere near perfect, but I made my own living. I could take care of myself.

Poor Aunt Mo. Alone in this big, wicked city, with nobody to take care of her. Was she even still alive? It was impossible to sleep, waiting for the phone to ring or the buzzer to sound, expecting, fearing the voice that said, “We found your aunt’s body at a Staten Island landfill,” hoping and praying for the voice that said, “We found your aunt and she’s alive.”

I needed a drink. Shortly after midnight I called down to Sally, asked her if I could borrow a cup of vodka to help me sleep. She not only had a premium vodka at hand, she brought it up to me and did a tarot, which foretold wonderful things in my future. Before she left, she promised to burn a candle for me and assured me I had every reason to be optimistic. My aunt was missing, my job was in jeopardy, and someone was shooting at men who went out with me. Yeah, I was feeling really optimistic.

Who was this guy? Was it Joey Pinks’s half-brother Vern? Had Joey done forgery work for him? What would he need forged? What kind of things did people get forged, anyway, stuff like Social Security cards, green cards, maybe letters of reference? I wasn’t sure.

Green cards. Why did that stick with me? I knew a few people with green cards. Mike had one, because he’d been married to an American. Tamayo, she had dual citizenship, so she probably had an American passport. Phil was British …

Phil would have to have one to work at ANN. Or a work visa. It bothered me, because Phil had been in the freight elevator the evening Kanengiser was killed. He’d gone up to a floor in the twenties. Could have been twenty-seven. It would have been easy for him to steal my handbag … and then steal a few more to cover it up. Who would suspect him, a cheerful, philosophical senior citizen?

But no, that’s not right, I thought. The vodka was addling me. I mean, what was I thinking? That I was being stalked by a seventy-ish British handyman? He was too old to be Joey Pinks’s half-brother. Besides, Phil had been out with the flu that day. If he’d lied about the flu and come back to the building to kill Kanengiser, he’d hardly strike up a conversation with Hymie from the newsstand.

But he was on that tape.

However, the tapes, while time-coded, were not date-coded. Someone must have replaced the right tape with a tape from another day …

Maybe it was someone who had worked in U.S. Army Intelligence, who was able to sneak in somehow and change the tapes. Someone like Reb Ryan.

Reb Ryan wasn’t his real name. He’d changed it years before, Mike said. Maybe his real name was Vern.

Reb was clearly nuts. He knew how to take a beating, he had a masochistic desire to be in war zones, and he enjoyed drinking his own urine.

Yeah, I had dated Reb. But so had the younger, prettier, beestung-lipped Bianca. I had to be realistic here. If I were Reb, would I be obsessed with me, or with Bianca? As attractive as I think I am, Bianca was indisputably one of the most beautiful women to grace ANN’s air.

Maybe he was upset that Bianca had ditched him for Pete. Maybe he had picked a fight with Dillon at Keggers because Dillon had gone to Bianca’s table and shamelessly flirted with her, not because Dillon had walked out with me.

After talking to Pete and tracking a promo the night of the bar fight, Reb would have had plenty of time to get over to Dillon’s building and take a shot.

My mind was racing. Or maybe it wasn’t Reb.

Someone in security could have replaced that tape.

Pete controlled security and he could switch the tapes. How much did we know about him anyway? Some second-rate celebrity bodyguard who had won Jack Jackson’s trust during a drunken moment. Maybe he was brother Vern, with forged identification as Pete Huculak. There were probably a lot of men who would whip themselves silly just to hear Bianca say their names through those acclaimed lips. Pete could be one of them. He was known to be jealous. They practically lived together, so he would know her schedule, and if she didn’t tell him about the guys she dated, he could have picked it up from the company grapevine.

My Filofax, though …

Well, we hadn’t seen the thing. It might not be my Filofax. It could be Kanengiser’s mythical black book after all …

Now I had a new theory. Joey Pinks had come to me because he knew me from interviewing Anya and he didn’t know Bianca at all, or he couldn’t get close to Bianca because he’d risk running into Pete, or Pete’s deputy Hector. To warn her, he had tried to go through me.

Maybe I’m not so irresistible, I thought.

Aunt Maureen must have seen something, or Pete must have seen her …

My phone rang. It was Hector calling from the car phone downstairs, where he and Franco were “guarding” me.

“We found your aunt. She’s alive. Wanna go see her?”

I didn’t even bother to get dressed. I grabbed my purse, threw a coat on over my pajamas, and rushed downstairs to the company car.

“Okay, let’s go,” I said chirpily, sliding into the front seat.

There was a flash of white over my face, I heard a loud pop, and everything went dark.