“Come on, Jack,” Hogan said the next day over a drink at MercBar. “Help me out.”
We were sitting in a corner near the room divider made of woven deer antlers. The dark space, lit by a glowing kayak suspended over the bar, was packed with lounge cruisers having their first drinks and plotting their night. I remembered the place fondly, from my own predatory times.
“Use your annual junket, just this once,” Hogan prodded, “for something other than just harvesting money and getting laid.”
“Why,” I asked, “should I take financial advice from a guy whose annual income wouldn’t pay my dry cleaning bills?”
“Yeah, laugh. But if I were you, buddy, if I had no scruples detectable to the naked eye, I’d take this chance to do some good.”
“Like how?”
“Like finding out all you can about this dreamboat Paul Morse. What do you know?”
“Not much,” I admitted. “He performs once in a while in rat-hole galleries and warehouse spaces—in Dumbo or wherever. He shoots video constantly. Some of the footage he airs on late-night cable TV. No one really likes him. Girls think he’s hot.”
“And not liking him doesn’t put them off?”
“Not in the short run, which is probably all Morse cares about.”
“That’s a break for him. Especially given the local consensus. Everyone I talked to at Amanda’s memorial said he’s a slimeball.”
“You can’t please everyone.”
“Seems like you’d have to go some, though, to earn a sleazy reputation in this SoHo crowd of yours. You’d have to work pretty hard.”
“Unless it comes naturally.”
“Anyway, it’s your call. Just ask around on your travels this summer. Or would you rather see Philip go down for murder?”
Hogan knew the answer to that. We finished our drinks and wished each other luck.
Little did I guess that the key to the case, the whole fatal charade, would come to me in Switzerland—from my own dear gallery director. I might have known. Nothing happens in the art world that Laura doesn’t hear about quickly. Women trust her, and men just want to keep talking to stay in her presence.
The second week of June, we went to do the Basel art fair. Laura, arriving first, oversaw the installation of our booth—a double space in a premium center-aisle spot—while I trailed by a couple days. My first night in town, we attended a reception and then had dinner with some dismal European collectors. Afterwards, Laura and I adjourned, alone, to a cocktail lounge.
I looked around at the plush seating groups and the knee-high little tables, each with a candle encased in red glass. Behind the bar was a mirrored wall lined with shelves holding a hierarchy of bottles. The barman was washing glasses, wiping each slowly with a white cotton cloth. I felt oddly at home. It was one of those nameless lounges in one of those placeless hotels. A Michael Bolton tune played on the sound system, mercifully subdued. I had to remind myself what country we were in—not that it mattered much really.
“What do you know about Amanda’s boyfriend?” I asked.
“Paul Morse? Just enough to be disgusted.”
“Why’s that?”
“He wears those awful three-quarters-length pants. And a baseball cap, backwards.”
“Anything more serious?”
“Ask your Icelandic artist friend, the one with the cute little daughter.”
“The Viking? Don’t tell me Paul acted funny with his little girl.”
“All I saw was a grown man flirting with a child.” Laura paused. “Nauseating.”
“Maybe they were just kidding around.”
“Your Viking didn’t think so. Paul was making a video of his Madison Square Park project. Little Anna got a big part in it.”
“Anything wrong with that?”
“It’s the way Paul treated her. Like the whole thing was a date. Fortunately, the Viking is a good father—in his big awkward way. He stayed close. If things had gone any further, I don’t think Paul Morse would still be so pretty.”
As I listened, something stirred in me like a sickness taking hold. I thought of a day years ago, when I went with Philip to pick up his daughter from a play date in Washington Square Park. Melissa was with a schoolmate, watching some Jamaican acrobats perform in the dry circular basin of the fountain, when she spied Philip and came tearing toward him.
“Daddy, Daddy, can my friend Cindy stay over tonight? She’s like really cool and she’ll bring some Disney tapes with her and it’d be super fun. I promise I’ll do my homework first.”
“Oh, all right, princess,” her father said. “If you promise.”
The girl was in his arms before the reply was half finished, kissing his neck—and peeking over his shoulder to say a polite “Hi, Uncle Jack.”
Philip had no choice, of course. Melissa owned him more certainly, more completely, than he owned Oliver Technologies.
“Go, kumquat,” he said. “Go get Cindy and Emmanuelle.”
The girl squealed and ran back toward the fountain, swerving around skateboarders and NYU kids with guitars, goths in chain-draped black jeans, and gay hunks with single earrings and bright pocket handkerchiefs advertising their preferences—top or bottom, water sports or S&M.
“Adorable girl,” I said. “You breed well.”
“She’s my great hope.”
When Melissa started in our direction again, she and Cindy were holding Emmanuelle’s hands. The French nanny, about nineteen and dressed in sultry disarray, made a small sensation as she passed through the crowd.
“Isn’t it amazing?” Philip said.
“What, Emmanuelle’s wardrobe?”
“No, what girls do to your head. Until they’re a certain age, all you can think about is how you want to protect them, save them from everything bad in the world. But suddenly they change, they start to grow into women, and then all you can think about—if you’re not related by blood—is how you want to screw them stupid.”
“Is that why you hired Emmanuelle?”
“No,” he said, “I hired her because she’s extremely good at her work and speaks wonderful French, which Melissa desperately wants to learn. The two are crazy about each other.”
“Very conscientious of you.”
“Isn’t it, though? I’m quite a devoted father, Jack. The wild nanny sex is just a bonus.”
I watched the au pair leading the two girls back toward us through the park. Emmanuelle held their hands tightly, making a straight path through the crowd. The girls—one blond, one dark-haired—jumped and dodged and chattered away, at elbow height. As the threesome came closer, Emmanuelle smiled. She was still some way off, but even at this distance her ripe lips could stir an instinctual response. It was the kind of smile you might encounter on a corner of the Boulevard de Clichy at nightfall.
“And after you sleep with them,” I said to Philip, “all you want to do is get rid of them.”
“Of course. To make room for the next. It’s a biological thing.”
“Renewing the species, I suppose. Like looking for breakout artists at an MFA show.”
“Sure. We all do our best.”