Noel’s chariot sped me north through the glossy blur of a crisp New York night. In what seemed like a few seconds we stopped in front of an older, figurative-style high-rise apartment building on Central Park West. A doorman dressed like an admiral opened the front door and, without my asking, directed me to the elevator to the penthouse. The polished brass elevator had a throne-like chair in it, which I only mustered the courage to sit on when we were almost there. A valet waiting in the hallway took my shabby jacket, and I could hear a lively party raging. As though by invisible radar, Noel intercepted me at the door. He wore a tuxedo and held an empty champagne glass. I realized that I was embarrassingly underdressed for the occasion.
“You should have told me this was formal,” I reproached him.
“Nonsense, you look great,” he replied. As a waitress passed with champagne, Noel handed over his empty flute and took two fresh glasses, handing me one.
It was hardly the classic eight-room apartment. In fact this place was unlike any residence I’d ever seen in the five boroughs. House music played from a large and distant room. Noel led us toward the tasteful sounds. Soon we were in a space entirely enclosed in glass, lit by a fuzzy, white sheen from the rising moon. Everyone but me seemed to be wearing clothes designed by Edith Head. It was as if we were all on a 1940s film noir set. According to Noel, the massive living room was domed with a series of glass panels, operated by cranks and levers and resembling a miniature version of England’s historic Crystal Palace. At least half the space was convertible, he explained. During the warm months the top was opened, so the apartment became al fresco.
I quickly downed the expensive bubbly and Noel lifted two more glasses from yet another roving tray.
I gulped down my second glass and asked, “So who lives here anyway?”
“Miriam Williams, the producer.”
I remembered now, and Maggie had been impressed by the name. As I looked around the room, I spotted quite a few celebrities, including the latest rap sensation, Slimdonk, and WB’s hottest teenage star, Ji. Floating above the crowd in long delicate steps, she looked like a vertebra that had been dipped in tanned flesh-colored paint, then slithered into a strapless silk stocking. As she levitated around the room, I could only wonder where she kept her vital organs.
Everybody knew Noel Holden, and he introduced me to everyone. Between countless air kisses and tiny hummingbird hand waves, Noel explained that most of the beautiful faces were actors or models, while most of the “real-looking people” were behind-the-scenes types.
“What scenes are they behind?” I asked. After all, this wasn’t Hollywood.
“Here’s the face to ask,” Noel said as a middle-aged man with oily skin approached.
“Gladyss, this is my all-seeing, all-knowing agent, Igor Moore. Gladyss wants to know what I do for money.”
The agent grinned impishly, as though he might not utter a single word without a commission, but then he spoke. “In addition to playing constantly challenging roles that plumb the crisis of human existence, Noel Holden is in great demand as himself. Every luxurious product needs a trusted celebrity spokesmodel to assure its usefulness to the discriminating and sophisticated masses. Noel Holden’s glorious form is under contract to several major clothing designers. Furthermore, his voice is licensed to a world-class car manufacturer as well as to a highly reliable maker of double-A batteries.”
“Speaking of which, where the fuck is that indigo Dino?” Noel interrupted. Igor said he was talking to a member of the press and pointed across the room. Dino turned out to be Noel’s press agent, an African American.
“It’s only a fortnight till fashion week,” the agent shouted as we moved off. That was when Noel was doing his publicity walk for Fashion Dogs. “Party! Party! Party!’ he chanted at us.
“What was all that about?” I asked.
“Igor’s always pushing me to get out there more. Get my face on magazine covers and my name in columns. Frankly, that’s the part of this job that I hate.” Noel seized two more glasses from a passing tray and handed one to me. “Constantly hustling for endless endorsements . . . I mean, what the hell happened to the art?”
“Oh my God!” A tray-toting caterer suddenly screeched. Behind her false eyelashes I recognized my neighbor, Maggie.
“Noel Holden, this is my dear friend and neighbor Maggie Bernardo,” I introduced.
He delicately kissed the knuckles of her forefingers. Although I suspected that Maggie had moved heaven and earth to get the gig, and intrude on my date, I was still glad to see her there.
“Enchanté,” he greeted her.
“Enchanté back,” she echoed awkwardly, apparently paralyzed by his presence.
I explained that Maggie was an actress struggling to get a break. Noel listened sympathetically.
Perhaps because of the bubbliness of the champagne, I’d forgotten for a moment that this party consisted of other movie stars too. Jodie Foster scurried past; Madonna was just leaving; someone who looked a lot like Tom Cruise seemed to zip right between everyone’s legs like a soccer ball with great hair. The Lilliputian mafia seemed to run Hollywood and, clannishly, they seemed to pick their own stubby stars.
“What’s good here?” Noel asked Maggie, looking at her tray of appetizers.
“Good here?” she asked as though he was asking about her.
“Yeah, you know, foodwise?”
Before she could respond, a goateed food handler came up from behind and said to Maggie, “They’re asking for you in the kitchen.”
“Oh shit,” she awakened to the moment. “I’m going to get fired!”
She dashed off. Now I realized why just a few days earlier she had asked me if I would introduce her to Noel should the occasion ever arise. She must’ve already known she’d be working this little soirée.
“This is Seymour Phelps,” Noel abruptly introduced me to a middle-aged man with pores as big as a sponge. He explained that Phelps had just produced Screwed Bigtime! an over-touted reality show featuring Venezia Ramada and some other rich kid celebrity.
As the producer babbled on, it occurred to me that movie stars were little more than children wandering around in a playground of filmic possibilities: inside were hypothetical swing sets and topical seesaws that these people assembled and disassembled as quickly as the Army Corp of Engineers. Each one had a sandbox filled with agents, lawyers and financial consultants, in which these eternal juveniles tried to divine which of the little projects had a jungle gym that offered them a climb to the top.
“So what exactly is it that you do?” Phelps finally turned the spotlight away from himself.
“I’m a big game hunter,” I kidded slightly drunk, “but to pay for the bullets I work as a cop.”
When the producer politely chuckled, Noel perked up. “She’s not kidding, show him your pistol.”
I took out the silver derringer-cigarette lighter that Noel had just given me.
“Oh, you got my gift!” Noel exclaimed clapping his hands together. “I hope you like it.”
“It’s wonderful.” I pecked his cheek without thinking. After a little more cajoling, since I left my gun at home, Noel had me flash my shiny badge.
“I hope I’m not out of line in saying that not since Angie Dickinson have I seen such a beguiling and clever police lady.” Seymour Phelps addressed this remark more to Noel than to me.
“That’s exactly how I’d typecast her,” Noel said, with talk-show suavity.
“You wouldn’t be interested in auditioning for an upcoming show I’m putting together, would you?” the producer asked me.
“What is it?” Noel asked.
“Fatigues Conceptual, my latest reality TV show. I’m going out with it next week. Fatigues are the clothes that soldiers wear.”
“I know,” I said, “but you know who’d be perfect for it?” I scanned the mobile mosaic of moving faces until I spotted her, chatting with the cute goateed waiter, and waved.
“Since September 11th,” Seymour explained, “public sympathy toward first responders has gone through the roof.”
“I’m not an actor,” I said. As Maggie struggled to make her way toward us, hungry carnivores picked at her fresh tray like piranhas going after a deer fording an equatorial stream. “But I have a friend who’s a very talented actress . . .”
“I got actors popping out of my ass like hemorrhoids. I’m trying to find someone real . . .”
“. . . Maggie,” I said, “she’s more real than real.”
“What’s going on?” Maggie popped up, balancing a tray that had been packed with skewers of marinated squab.
“Oh, perfect,” Seymour said, relieving her of her last remaining sticks. “I’m famished.”
At just that moment the entire crowd seemed to hold its collective breath. Flashes popped as Crispin Marachino and Venezia Ramada entered, then the talking resumed and grew louder. The heiress’s hair was overly teased, and her make-up was nineteenth-century goth. Her decolletage barely hangared her saline-filled zeppelins. A feathery outfit that looked spot welded to her belly, thighs, and nipples flowed down to her feet where it seemed to be hemmed with bubble-wrap. It was as if she were perpetually stepping out of the frothy ocean.
“I’m a little confused as to which of you dated Venezia first.”
“Dating is such a harsh word,” he replied.
“So neither of you is jealous of the other?”
“Jealous of her, no. But in fairness, I started dating Venezia as payback, so I guess he was dating her first.”
“Payback for what?”
“When Crispin and I first started hanging out ten years ago, he had just done his first feature. He was the hot young director, whereas my star was still rising. I was dating Rima Bergman at the time.”
“Was she in Pals?” It was a TV show that didn’t outlive its third season.
“Yeah. Anyway Crispin took me aside one day and claimed she was giving him serious vibes. I said I thought that was highly doubtful, so he asked if I wanted him to test her loyalty.”
“What does that mean?”
“He offered to wait till he was alone with her, and then make a move.”
“What kind of a move?”
“The usual: say he might have a role for her, then see what happened. I mean, he made a persuasive argument. He said if she cheated on me with him, she could cheat on me with anyone.”
“And you agreed to that?”
“Well, look at him. He’s not very good looking and—call me old fashioned, but I really thought Rima loved me. She was a star and I figured she wouldn’t be taken in by some goofy-ass director. I mean, she was higher up on the acting pyramid than either of us. Also I didn’t think he was serious, so I said something like, I’d like to see you try.”
“He took her on a date?”
“All I know is he called me the following week and told me, shall we say, intimate details of her anatomy and proclivities. Things that painfully indicated intimacy.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Wish I was. I wept like a baby.”
“Don’t you think you at least owed her the opportunity to explain?”
“Oh I did. She confessed to all of it.”
“So you turned around and did the same thing to him.”
“Not at all. What happened was, we were on a film set years later, and he asked if I was still pissed about his doing Rima. I said it was long forgotten. He told me that if he were in a similar situation, he’d want a friend to do the same for him. So when I found myself alone with his fiancée, and she was fawning all over me. I just sort of let it happen.”
“And you don’t think he’s pissed about you sleeping with Venezia?”
“Look at them. Do they look broken up? The man’s impervious to jealousy. Sex to him is kind of a long, wet handshake, nothing more.”
“So you all secretly hate each other?” I asked softly, just as they approached.
“What a beautiful couple you two make,” the director greeted us. He and his swollen blond accessory looked tipsy already.
“Now Vanessa”—Noel spoke slowly to her as though talking to a child—“You remember Officer Chronou from the other day, don’t you?”
“Wow, when you said you were inviting her to this, I thought you were kidding,” Venezia responded, Then she floated away to the bar, as if to get away from me.
“So,” Crispin asked. “Any new developments in your big murder case?”
“No.”
“I’ve played a cop in four films,” Noel said, “so I always feel like such a phony when I meet a real one.”
“Actually,” Crispin kidded, “I need to shoot a female cop soon.”
“Maybe she should shoot you,” Noel replied.
“No, for my next movie. You remember, a cop gets killed.”
“Oh, cut it out.”
“I’m absolutely serious. It’s called Times Squared.” He ran his eyes over my body and added, “You’d be great.”
“And casting her would piss Venezia off no end,” Noel uttered.
“If someone saw me getting killed as a cop in a movie, I’d be up on disciplinary charges so quick . . . ,” I replied. “Luckily though, I have a gorgeous neighbor who happens to be here at this very party.” I called out her name, and Maggie suddenly popped up like a cork right beside me.
“Why would I want to use your goddamn neighbor, when I can get a real cop?” Crispin whined. Maggie sighed, and Crispin looked at her, adding, “But maybe I can use you somewhere.”
“Thanks!”
Looking at my glasses, the director asked, “Are those prescription?”
“Unfortunately they are,” I said. “My contacts start to irritate my eyes when I wear them too long.”
“I find eyeglasses so sexy,” Noel said. “They’re so intellectual.”
“Yeah,” Crispin said. “Lawyers are always throwing them on murderers they’re defending when they’re about to go in for sentencing.”
“I’m scheduled for Lasik eye surgery, so I’ll be free of them soon.”
When Maggie reappeared carrying a fresh tray of sushi hors d’oeuvres, I gave her a proper introduction to the director.
“Nice to eat you,” he said, grabbing a handful of inside-out rolls.
“I’ve seen all of your films,” she replied eagerly.
“Well I hope you’ll check out Fashion Dogs, which is opening very soon,” he said, rubbing a roll into a bulge of wasabi.
“Absolutely.”
“’Cause if it doesn’t hit at least thirty million on that first weekend he’s never making another film again,” Noel added.
“So,” Crispin inquired, “what are the chances that you’d be catering at a big celebrity party that your neighbor is attending. That’s one for the books, huh?”
“Well coincidences do happen,” she replied sweetly. They kept talking as Noel steered me across the beautiful tiled floor toward an attractive, elegantly dressed woman in her mid-forties. “Gladyss, this is Miriam, our hostess. Miriam, this is the friend I told you about, Police Officer Gladyss Chronou.”
Miriam was a tall, angular Waspy woman with silver streaks in her short, straight hair. She wore a shimmering evening gown. If she’d had a tiara and a torch, she could’ve passed for a size two Lady Liberty.
“Officer Chronou!” the hostess shrieked, as though I were a celebrity. “I’m so glad to meet you!”
“Why?” I asked before I could catch myself.
“Because you are one of New York’s Finest,” Noel began. “And Miriam has a mystery for you to solve.”
“What mystery is that?” I assumed he was just kidding.
“One that can wait until the party is over,” she said, focusing on a commotion at the door. A lanky man who looked like Jim Carrey had just entered and launched into comic capers.
“What’s this mystery?” I asked Noel.
“It’s some nutty internet thing.”
“Miriam looks familiar.”
“She tries for that Marilyn Monroe look. Only she’s tall and skinny, so it doesn’t really work.”
“Then why does she try for it?”
“Her first big project was a Marilyn biopic that she wrote and directed. Strictly made for TV. But she fell in love with Marilyn. She even started one of the first fan web sites for her.”
On three occasions people asked either for Noel’s autograph or for a photo with him. He always consented. It was exhilarating just being with him. Strangers were kind. Servants were eager. Everyone wanted his love and approval. And he seemed only to want mine. For the first time, life seemed to be the way I had always thought it would be when I was a child. I was particularly proud that I had displayed some self-restraint, only downing three glasses of champagne. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had so much fun. Soon Noel and I were dancing up a storm, until a large wrinkly hand reached out of the noisy crowd and tapped me in mid-hop.
It was a butler. Noel leaned in and we heard him say, “Ms. Williams asked if you and Mr. Holden could join her immediately in the study. It’s a matter of some urgency.”
I followed Noel as he followed the butler through a series of ever-unfolding rooms to the other side of her museum-like home. Eventually we entered a study that was bigger than my entire apartment.
Miriam was nervously puffing on a fancy-looking cigarette and staring out of a huge bay window with an intimate view of Central Park. From here it looked like her own private garden. When she saw me, she tensely rubbed out her cigarette and apologized for the hasty summons.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t planning on bothering you until after the affair, but my personal assistant just called me and I saw it.”
“Saw what?”
On her desk was a huge flat screen hooked up to a tiny, shiny laptop. She clicked the Internet icon and in a moment we were on her Marilyn Monroe web site.
“Did Noel tell you anything?”
“He mentioned you managed a web site.”
“Yes. Well, just in the past few days I’ve been getting these poetically threatening emails.”
“Poetically threatening?” The phrase sounded oxymoronic.
“I can’t think of another way to describe them, really. So I called Noel, only because he played a police detective so convincingly.”
“So someone is threatening you?”
“Actually they were addressed to Marilyn.”
“Okay,” I said with a slight grin. Since Marilyn Monroe had been dead for over forty years, the whole thing sounded ludicrous. I tried to think of some consoling response.
“The thing is, the threat seems to be escalating. My assistant just found these awful pictures. That’s why I pulled you out of the party.”
“Violent pictures?”
“Well that’s the thing, I’m not sure if they’re real or if they’re pranks. Knowing how far special effects have evolved, I fear this whole thing might just be some macabre joke. And I certainly don’t want to waste the police’s time.” She smiled awkwardly.
“You’re such a dear,” I said, expecting to see a couple of jpegs that some pimple-faced geek probably downloaded from an internet F/X magazine web site.
In a few seconds the first picture appeared on the screen: it showed a woman with curly blonde hair lying on her back—alive, but drowsy looking. She wore bright red lipstick and little else. In the second picture, I could just make out a pair of gloved hands around her neck. The woman’s eyes were focused in terror and her mouth was wide open. gasping. In the third photo, her eyelids were semi-closed, her mouth hung loose, drool was visible. She appeared to be dead. In the fourth photo, the gloved hands were shoving a long fish knife into her right breast. In the fifth, they were cutting off her left breast, severing it from the body. By the sixth photo I could feel my heart beating: both breasts had been cleanly amputated. I let out a gasp when I saw the next picture. The woman’s limbs had clearly been taped together and pointed upward. It was definitely our guy. The final photo was a close-up: the pointy tip of his long knife was carving a line into one of the vic’s soft white limbs—it was the number 1.
“I think the girl is supposed to be Marilyn Monroe,” Miriam broke the silence.
“God.” I felt nauseous and sucked in a deep breath. The long day had finally caught up with me. “Show me those email threats you got.”
Miriam explained that they weren’t quite threats. They had been posted on her web site’s “poetry page” over a period of days. Each of the poems was more violent and weirder than the last. She was about to show them to me, but before she could start typing, I stopped her and asked if there was any danger of deleting anything.
“No,” she said: the images were saved both to her hard drive and a zip disk. As she typed some commands into her computer, she explained, “It started a week ago. And though I really didn’t care for their tone, I’m not a control freak. But then as they started getting uglier I removed them from the site, I saved copies in a separate file, though. Then my assistant, Bryce, saw that we had just received these awful pictures, and they came from the same email address.
“When did Bryce discover these latest pictures?” I asked.
“About twenty minutes ago.”
“And what’s the sender’s email address?”
“Cathy something. I didn’t recognize it.”
“Have you ever gotten into a fight with a Cathy about Marilyn.” She immediately started shaking her head no, so I kept adding on questions, “Is there anyone you can think of who knows you and is nuts, or violent, or perhaps just an ex-con?”
“The only felons I know are tax cheats,” she said just as the first poem popped up on the screen:
Eminem thinks he’s got ma grief,
least his stinkin ma didn’t cut & leave,
Marmalyn claimed I was a spleenectomy,
yet her suicide
was a wreck to me,
Now it’s my turn to cleave,
& yours to be bereaved.
“What do you think this spleenectomy refers to?” I asked Miriam. A slim, sandy haired lad was standing behind her, the aforementioned personal assistant Bryce.
“Marilyn had a spleenectomy,” she replied. “Actually a jpeg came with that poem too.” She pressed some keys and an image was displayed.
When it did, I gasped. It was the mug shot photo of Denise Giantonni—victim number two. It was the photo that had run in the papers when she died, but the image had been defaced. Colored markers had been used on the black-and white photo to give her big red lips and turn her short curly hair yellow. She had been Marilynized.
“Do you know her?” Miriam asked.
“She was one of our victims,” I answered curtly. With Noel behind me, I didn’t even want to talk about the case.
Underneath the photo was another poem:
GLAD IT’S US
Marmalyn, you left me to die,
Just like she did you,
Why oh why?
Boo hoo! Boo hoo!
Cruel world, bye, bye.
Underneath was the email address: CathyofAlexandria@Eureka.com.
I felt a chill crawl down my spine as I read the title: Gladyss was my name, after all. As if sensing my fear, Miriam hastily said, “Marilyn Monroe’s mother’s name was Gladys—she was psychotic, and died some time in the 1980s.”
“I’m relieved to hear it.”
“Here’s the first poem that actually suggested violence,” Miriam remarked, scrolling downward:
On this e-altar, this cyber tomb,
I leave my sacrifices
to your cold womb,
There might be no pardoning for what I do,
but who will, or ever can, forgive you?
It was also from CathyofAlexandria.
“The whole thing might be a hoax,” repeated Miriam.
I had my doubts. The mug shot of victim number two, Denise Giantonni, was definitely real, and the latest photo of the blonde-haired vic with the dissected chest was more than enough.
Even though he was probably passed out at some bar, I called Bernie on his cell. The phone rang six times then went to his voice mail. I called a second and then a third time before he finally picked up with the salutation: “What the fuck now?”
“Did I wake you?”
“No,” he grumbled, “I didn’t want to pick up ’cause I’m driving to a crime scene in midtown. Our boy struck again.”
“Are the vic’s breasts severed but her head’s still attached?”
“How the fuck did you know that!”
“I’m at a party just off the park. The hostess has a web site and somebody posted the photos on it. They’re of the murder as it was happening.”
“Then that’s part of the crime scene. Your job is to protect it till we get there.”
“It’s a web site on the internet,” I explained. “But she said she’d backed it up onto her hard drive.”
“Just stay with that computer until I get some uniforms there to take it to the precinct. Write out a precise description of the item and give her a voucher. Tell her we’re going to need it for the investigation.”
“Will do.”
“Also, if she can print up whatever pictures and stuff you got and bring it in, that’ll help.”
“Gotcha.”
“And tell the hostess she can’t use the site with any computer until the techies have checked it out. We don’t want any contamination.”
“Okeydoke.”
“In fact when the uniforms get there, join me at the new crime scene.”
“Where?”
“The Ticonderoga.” He gave me the address.
“So he finally made his move,” I said, “and it wasn’t at either of the two hotels you staked out.”
“Rub it in, why don’t ya. The good news is, it looks like we finally have his fucking face on tape. The Ticonderoga has a surveillance camera in the lobby.”
When I hung up, I explained to Miriam that another murder had just been reported and it looked like the victim might be the girl in her photos.
“You mean this is real!”
“Afraid so.”
She was stunned. I added that unfortunately we were going to have to take her computer as evidence. She pursed her lips tensely and said she understood, but asked if she could copy some files from it first. She swore they weren’t related to the site; they were for her upcoming trip to Europe. I told her that was fine. When she was done, she was about to unplug the laptop when I asked her if she could first print up the poems and pictures she had shown me.
Using her color printer, she made a hard copy of everything and slipped it into a manila envelope for me. She then went to a nearby closet and retrieved the box the computer had come in, along with the Styrofoam packing.
“The password to the web site is ‘Jean Norma’,” she said as she unplugged various cables from the laptop and carefully loaded it into the manufacturer’s box. “It’s the reverse of Marilyn’s real name, Norma Jean.”
“You understand that you mustn’t access the web site until one of our technicians has checked it out and given you the all clear,” I clarified.
“Of course.”
I wrote down my name and the extension of the homicide squad handling this case. “If you need anything . . .”
“If you have any questions for me,” she replied, “please call me in the next two days. I’m leaving for the Florence Film Festival on Thursday.”
I thanked her, and she returned to her fabulous party. Assuming he might be worried about me, I called O’Ryan on her phone.
“You’re home early.” He sounded bored. His TV was on in the background.
“I’m still at the party, but there’s been another murder.”
“Which means I was right. It isn’t Noel Holden.”
“Well, I’m still going to check him out.”
Before we could talk any further, one of the butlers escorted a pair of uniformed cops into the study. I pointed to the packed box, which they picked up. I wanted to grab a ride with them, but I’d lost Noel in the crowd and didn’t feel right leaving without saying goodbye, so I told the uniforms to go ahead. No sooner had they gone then Noel reappeared.
“There’s been another murder.”
“No!”
“Yeah, I have to leave immediately.” I said. Noel walked me through the party, into the elevator, and down to the lobby, where he had the doorman hail a cab that he put me in.
“If it’s still early when you’re done, give me a call.”
I told him I would and thanked him for a great time. He gave me a peck on the cheek and the cab sped downtown.