Thursday, May 16
XENIA DELANCEY, WEARING HER Sunday white hat and gloves and walking with small, hesitant steps, pushed through a glass door on the fifth floor of United Nations Tower.
The man sitting behind the kidney-shaped desk smiled without friendliness at her. “May I help you?”
Xenia told him her name. “Senator Guardella said she might be able to see me.”
“Please have a seat.”
Xenia took a seat on a leather sofa beside a row of potted cactuses. Through a glass wall she could see pigeons wheeling aimlessly over the East River. For thirty minutes she leafed through old magazines and senatorial newsletters. During that half hour a dozen people passed through the reception area. None of them was challenged, none of them was asked to wait.
Xenia went again to the kidney-shaped desk. “I hate to trouble the senator, but my lunch hour will be up in twelve minutes.”
“Would you care to reschedule for a week from next Thursday? The senator is heavily booked today.”
“No. But could you tell her I’m waiting?”
“She knows.”
Forty minutes later one of the senator’s aides led Xenia Delancey along a carpeted hallway. Warm yellow lights glowed. The aide knocked on a half-open door. “Senator—Xenia Delancey to see you.”
The senator, tall and crisp and smiling in a gray cotton suit that matched her hair, came across the office with a hand extended. “Hello, hello, Xenia Delancey.”
“I’m very sorry to be an annoyance,” Xenia said.
“Not at all. Let’s sit over here.” The senator steered Xenia toward the sofa. She shifted Bergdorf’s and Saks shopping bags to the floor.
“That’s my store.” Xenia pointed at the Marsh and Bonner’s parcel in the senator’s hand. “I work there—in the Ingrid Hansen Boutique.”
“Really.”
“Ask for me next time—I can get you a discount.”
“How very kind. Sit, Xenia. Tell me what brings you here?”
Xenia sat. She began crying.
The senator came and sat beside her. “Could you use a hot cup of tea, Xenia?”
“No, thank you. I’m sorry.” Xenia took a hankie from her pocketbook and dried her eyes. “We had a murder in the store last week.”
“I heard about it. What a shame.”
“My boy didn’t do it. But he’s on parole and the police are treating him like a murderer. They’ve questioned him at work, in front of customers. They’ve questioned his co-workers, they’ve questioned his employer. People see the police coming back again and again and they start thinking, There must be something to it, maybe Jim Delancey did kill Mrs. Aldrich.”
The senator looked at Xenia Delancey for a long, considering moment. “Now, Xenia, let me play devil’s advocate. The police have to follow every possible lead—even the remote ones.”
Xenia Delancey opened her pocketbook again. She took out a plastic envelope of neatly trimmed newspaper clippings. “Have you seen the headlines and the gossip columns? They’re lynching my boy.”
Senator Guardella accepted the clippings. “We’re dealing with human nature, which, as you know, is not always a beautiful thing. A case like the Aldrich killing is going to be played out in the media. And rightly or wrongly Jim Delancey is identified in the public mind with the death of that young girl—”
“Nita Kohler. But that was an accident. My boy didn’t kill her. He didn’t kill anyone.”
A quick, almost startled movement brought Senator Guardella’s eyes around again to Xenia Delancey. The senator seemed about to say something. And then she seemed to reconsider.
“I’m frightened,” Xenia said. “Don’t let them take my boy away again.”
Nancy Guardella saw that Xenia Delancey was hurting. She ached for this little gray-haired lady with her dignified posture and her spotless white gloves. She wished she could help, but she didn’t have the power to twist reality around.
Or do I? she asked herself. It was as though a bell in her head was suddenly humming a high, pure note. She rose and crossed to a handsome teakwood desk covered in paperwork. She found a scratch pad, scribbled, and ripped the top sheet off.
“Here’s my home phone. And here’s what I’d like you to do. Keep a log. Make a note every time the police talk to your son. Note who questions him, where they question him, how long the questioning goes on. Names, dates, times, places. If it emerges that there’s a pattern of harassment, maybe there’s something I can do under the federal discrimination statutes.”
Xenia Delancey slipped the number into her purse. Steadying herself on the arm of the sofa, she brought herself to standing. “God bless you, Senator.”
Nancy Guardella watched the old woman leave, and then she poured herself a cup of herbal tea and stirred in three packets of Sweet’n Low. She emptied the cup in three gulps. She opened the door to her secretary’s office. “Who do we know in the New York Police Department who owes us?”
“Would you settle for the commissioner?”
“Absolutely not. All this is, is a middle-management mix-up.” Nancy Guardella was thoughtful a moment. “Who’s that guy in Internal Affairs who’s a real ass-kicker? The macho with the mustache that doesn’t hide his harelip?”
“Lawrence Zawac.”
“Captain, right? Get him on the phone for me.”
The secretary spent a moment spinning through her Rolodex. She dialed a number and after a moment signaled Nancy Guardella to pick up. The senator hurried back to the blinking phone on her desk.
“Larry—it’s Nancy, Nancy Guardella. How’ve you been?” She stared out the window at light Ping-Ponging between forty-story glass facades. She let him go on a little bit about golf and his left wrist.
“Larry, I hate to bother you, but I can’t think of anyone else who has the balls, frankly, to cut through the red tape.
What’s happening is, the police are harassing one of my constituents.”
IT WAS A COMPLICATED SHOT: The camera had to swoop down on a crane and catch Leigh as she came out of the lamp shop, then follow her to the corner. Three dozen technicians and crew and makeup and costume people had to stay out of camera range while two dozen pedestrians had to do all those things New York extras do in New York movies.
The traffic light had to change at the exact moment that Leigh stepped into Bleecker Street, which was actually no trouble since the electrician had rewired it. And the taxi had to be approaching at just the right speed to almost run Leigh down.
The director shot and reshot all afternoon, and by the time the taxi was getting it right, Leigh was getting it wrong.
“Leigh, honey”—her director sighed—“we want to see under the surface. We want to see where the struggling, doubting, self-accusatory child lives.”
“You want to see that in my walk?”
“You had it on the third take, where did it go?”
“I’m a little tired. I could use a cup of coffee.”
“Okay. Take five, everyone.”
Leigh went in search of the caterer’s truck.
Normal life on the block had been totally disrupted. Traffic had been rerouted. Company men turned pedestrians away, asking them to please take another street. Lighting men angled reflectors and aimed ten-thousand-watt kliegs. Uniformed police officers stood at the edges of the crowd, looking embarrassed.
Leigh found a coffee-and-snack smorgasbord set up outside the Winnebago with the logo of the catering company, Splendiferous Eats. She joined the line waiting at the twenty-gallon samovar.
The woman ahead of her, one of the extras, was wearing a dress that clung to her body like a damp see-through Victorian curtain. For some reason that lace coffee-colored chemise struck Leigh as familiar.
“That’s a fantastic dress,” Leigh said.
The woman turned. She was a tall, striking, young, pale-skinned black. Her gaze held Leigh’s an extra telltale second. “Why, thank you. Actually this dress was designed by my brother. I’m sneaking it into the movie for a free plug.”
Leigh’s heart gave a lurch. She realized it wasn’t just the dress that she recognized: it was the woman wearing it. “You were in the Ingrid Hansen Boutique at Marsh and Bonner’s. And you were wearing that same dress.”
“I’m surprised you remember.” The woman held out a hand. “Tamany Dillworth. It’s nice to meet you, Miss Baker. You’re the only star I know of, besides Vanessa, who mixes with the help. How do you like your coffee?”
“What? Oh, a little milk, thanks.”
Tamany Dillworth handed her a cup and then filled one for herself.
“Have the police spoken to you?” Leigh said.
The implications of the question seemed to amuse Miss Dillworth. “The police and I have had words from time to time.”
“Have they talked to you about that day in Marsh and Bonner’s?”
“No, they haven’t. What about it?”
“They had that killing.”
Tamany Dillworth brought a hand to her mouth. “Omigod. That was the day that poor woman got killed?”
“Do you remember that man with the boom box?”
“Who could forget him.”
“The lieutenant in charge has a theory—that maybe you knew him? And came to the boutique with him?”
Tamany Dillworth’s eyes widened. “No way.”
For some reason Leigh felt vindicated. “You’d save the lieutenant a lot of wasted effort if you’d just explain things to him.”
“I’d be glad to. What’s his name?”