The Commodore

A few years later, I dreamed about the Commodore.

I'd been coming off an investigation of a man who murdered and dismembered the young mistress of his recently deceased father. Since he hadn't been named in his dad's will, the guy had done the murdering and dismembering to lodge a complaint and make a point. Squeamish, Nora begged off the case when the lover's severed head was discovered. I continued, making sure I got my man, as I always did.

Long story short, in my dream, my memory, we were clinking glasses to celebrate the guy's arrest among a small crowd in a fancy two-bedroom overlooking Riverside Drive, the West Side Highway, and the Hudson River. There a flotilla of tall ships was parading.

It wasn't Nora's and my place. It belonged to a college chum of hers from Smith, a gal whose great-great-great-granddad had come over on his own tall ship and not to Ellis Island, like my clan. Nora's friends were of the Buffy and Muffy variety. I was just scruffy. They weren't thrilled about having a detective in their midst, but if Nora was crazy about me—and she was, almost as crazy as I about her—they had the good breeding to not admit it.

"Is that a schooner?" one pointed at a ship.

"Look at that rigger!"

"How about that sloop?"

"Which ship is your favorite?" Nora asked me, mischievously.

"My only sailing experience was in the bathtub," I said, "and that was a few years back."

"Hee hee. How about a Slow Screw?"

"With you?"

"Who else?"

"Okay."

Nora went off to get some. She meant, of course, Screwdrivers with Sloe Gin instead of Vodka, a new fad.

It was July 4th, 1976, America's Bicentennial. Operation Sail had been five years in the making at a cost of 70 million bucks. There were 225 vessels from 35 nations. People had lined up on the shores of New Jersey, Staten Island, Brooklyn, and the entire West Side of Manhattan to watch.

There was hope in the air. Was the country coming back? More importantly, was the city? Today, it felt like it. And it gave me an idea.

"Bottoms up," Nora said, carrying the drinks.

"I have an idea what we should do next."

"What?"

She couldn't hear me over the rich people cheering the latest Windjammer or Yawl.

"I said, I think I know what we should do next."

"Already? We just nailed that perp."

I was amused by Nora's use of police slang but didn't say it.

"Let's get married," I said.

Nora's face lit up as if I'd suggested doing the most fun thing possible. She didn't even agree, just addressed the crowd.

"Hey, everybody!" she called. "There's going to be another anniversary on July 4th!"

I finished the Slow Screw as she explained. Nora didn't use the word "independence," given how we lived and would continue to live, even after getting hitched. She didn't have to. This time, the cheers were for both the US and us.

"I love you, Nick," she said.

"I love you, too, Nora."

 

Nora and I dawdled for a week as she got her parents' blessing. Then we went to City Hall. To be exact, we rolled into City Hall after pre-celebrating all night at Jim Brady's, a financial district watering hole that had dragged down piece by piece the mahogany bar from the old, shuttered Stork Club in midtown. It felt good to crook, then lean our elbows on it. Hungover, we'd treated two new friends we made there to breakfast at the Pearl Diner before asking Rod and Siobhan—or Tod and Siobhan, I can't remember—to be our witnesses. They said, why not?

"Hey," Rod or Tod said, after we kissed to clinch the deal. "Nick and Nora Charles. Kind of like in the Thin Man movies."

"Kind of," I said.

Our honeymoon was spent at the Plaza Hotel. The place was still fancy-pantsy, to use a technical term, yet in recent years had seen everything from a hostage-taking by armed men to a bomb scare supposedly by Palestinian terrorists (really a house painter looking to open a restaurant) and hookers mugging a politician outside. In fact, its strip on Central Park South was now nick-named Prostitutes' Promenade, though not by me.

For days, Nora and I hid in our room behind drawn blinds and a "Do Not Disturb" sign. We only came up for air to get dinner at the Russian Tea Room, where we sprang for the Dom Perignon '69 (a princely 45 bucks) to wash down my Cotelette a la Kiev (cutlet to you slobs) and Nora's shrimp plate with Russian dressing (of course). Afterwards...

"Let's go dancing," Nora said.

"Okay," I said.

She meant at Regine's, the high-class disco blocks away on Park and 59th.

"I can't do those dances," I said.

"Which dances?"

"The Hustle, for one."

"I know. I just wanted to hear you say it."

"Hilarious."

"Don't worry, the place is covered in mirrors, so you can see what you're doing wrong."

"Great."

"Would this perk you up?"

In the back of a cab, Nora took out some Black Beauties.

"It wouldn't hurt," I said, swallowing one without water as Nora suggestively stroked my throat to grease its way down. "But I still don't want to go."

"Party poop," Nora said, as her own pill cleared her teeth.

I gave the cabbie another address. We landed on top of Rockefeller Center, where the Rainbow Room was stuck in time, stubbornly hosting Cy Oliver's band playing old standards. Nora and I swayed in a waltz among, as they say down South, alter-kockers.

"Is this what it's like when you're dead?" Nora asked, suppressing a phony yawn.

"Why are you asking me?"

"I thought you'd know."

Soon, aided by the Black Beauties and the need to embarrass her new, older husband, Nora let loose for the Cha-Cha and Rumba. That meant it was time to go home or at least back to the hotel.

A few hours later, someone tried to break into our room.

That's what it sounded like: scratching, fiddling, and pushing at the lock. I'd heard of another recent incident at the Plaza, in which a rich doctor opened his door to a "knife-wielding assailant," as the paper put it.

Nora and I had passed out on the living room couch, the result of splitting another bottle—Moet-Chandon, 20 bucks, bad enough—after dancing home from the Rainbow Room. But I had always been a light sleeper.

"Nora?" I whispered. "Do you hear that?"

Nora could sleep anywhere, even standing up like a horse, a beautiful young horse but a horse. So, I tiptoed in my stockinged feet on plush, noise-killing carpet, as the clawing and scrabbling grew more frenzied. Then I yanked open the door.

A young man came stumbling in. He fell over my extended leg, as I'd planned. He also winced from the knife-hand chop I landed at the base of his throat, the carotid sinus by name. This move can cause unconsciousness and luckily did. His collapse to the floor woke Nora up.

"Who's he?" she asked, foggily.

"I thought he was a friend of yours," I said.

"I don't think so."

From the couch, Nora squinted to make sure, before I put out the light from the hall by closing the door. It had been open long enough for me to see the room key clutched in the guy's hand.

"I think he came in peace," I said.

"Really? That's nice." Nora made the great effort to stand.

"In peace and his cups."

I indicated the flask sticking out of his corduroy back pocket. Then I stooped and delicately picked the key from his weak grip and read it.

"One digit off," I said.

"A good try."

A wallet expertly pilfered from his other back pocket ended one mystery and began another.

"Who's Ames Williams?" I asked.

"I said I don't know him."

"I mean, he's got a SAG card." I showed it to Nora. "Is he a star? The Plaza's not the Chelsea Hotel."

"You've never seen Five Kids Too Many?"

This was asked by our guest, who'd sat up, hoarsely clearing his carotid sinus.

"No," I said. "What's that?"

"A hit sitcom." Ames Williams rubbed his shoulder, seeming disgusted by both our ignorance and the show itself.

"We don't watch enough TV," Nora said.

"We watch just enough," I said. "Almost none."

"She's a widow, he's a widower," Ames said, "and together they have tons of young kids, including me."

"How young?" Nora asked, suspiciously. I was proud, having taught her.

"Pushing thirty," Ames admitted, his contempt now directed at himself. "But sometimes I get to play the guitar and sing. That's something."

The near-dark cast in silhouette Ames' nimbus of curly blonde hair. While wounded, he was a pleasing sight to Nora, I could tell—maybe especially while wounded—honeymoon or no honeymoon. And if his breath stunk of booze, so did ours.

"Sorry to barge in," he said.

"Don't mention it," I said.

Seeming blue, he fished out his flask and guzzled. I gave him a hand to stand.

"Need any help finding your room?" Nora asked.

"No, I'm..." Ames' eyes had grown used to the dark, where Nora was. He took her in. "Well, uh, maybe."

He cast a cautious eye in my direction. But I had already headed back to the couch.

"Don't stay out too late, kids," I said, curling up.

Hours later, right before check-out, Nora breezed in.

"Thanks for showing up," I said, already shaved and pomaded, not really angry since I never was with her.

"Sorry," Nora said, kissing me as she blew by.

We hadn't brought much more than a toothbrush, so soon we were in the elevator, going down.

"How was he?" I asked.

"Who?"

"Abner McClintock. Anson McMasters. What was his..."

"Ames Williams."

"Right."

"Too bombed."

"Too bad."

"But we're going to the convention together," Nora said, by now in a cab.

"What convention?"

"The Democratic one, silly."

"Oh. Right."

It had already started, I remembered, at Madison Square Garden, the first one here since 1924, more positive excitement for the city. Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale were going to be nominated.

Nora's family was rich enough to participate in democracy. I still had the whiff of the pushcart about me, so I paid rent, not for access to politicians. In other words, she followed elections, not me. Nora got a few perks as thanks, in this case a badge for the upcoming hoop-dee-doodle.

"What's his angle? Ames? At the convention?" I asked, now in our humble home, first time as man and wife. Our building was on East 52nd Street, a new skyscraper the landlord was so desperate to rent, given the sad state of the city, he'd given us two months for free. We lived next door to Kissinger and across the street from Garbo.

"He's got no angle. He wants to be taken more seriously, that's all. He wants off Five Kids Too Many."

"Right. And being photographed next to politicians will do that?"

"Yes. He's going to play guitar and sing 'This Land is Your Land' from the stage."

I tried to sound sincere. "Well, they're going to nominate him instead. There'll be a contested convention, a brutal floor fight, and total chaos. He better think twice about this. I'm not kidding."

"He's a very good singer."

I could see, for a second, anyway, Nora was smitten enough to take the actor—the actor/singer, sorry—seriously. So, I tabled my smart-assery.

"Okay," I said. "God bless America. And you."

"Thanks!"

For the next few days, I considered a new case. A local restaurateur suspected his partner of embezzlement and was too crooked himself to go to the cops. Even though it was so unsexy it wouldn't interest Nora, lacking another offer, I was about to accept.

Then someone came knocking on our door. Banging, I mean.

That night, Nora had come home from the convention bushed yet exhilarated. She still proudly wore her ID card on a chain proclaiming her a "Hall of Fame" passholder with VIP Lounge access.

"How was the bar in the lounge?" I asked. "Open?"

"Completely," she said. "But the best part was the gay rights demonstration, which broke out on the floor. Very exciting."

"I bet."

I was touched by her idealism. It had been exciting enough for her that Nora soon passed out, leaving me to respond to the banging on the door hours later.

"Nora!" a desperate, muffled voice cried, "Help me!"

And it was I who opened the door to a sober yet beaten and bleeding Ames Williams. One eye was red and swollen, and blood had dropped and dried on his white Arrow shirt.

"Is she here?" he said.

I nodded. "But sleeping."

The singer/actor stood there, staring at me, shocked, as if he'd remembered Nora was married, and what did that mean?

"That's right. You're Nick. A detective." He decided. "Good! I need your help."

"Keep your voice down and come in, for Chrissake."

The neighbors didn't need to know everything. As I closed the door behind him, I sensed this case would be a lot better than any embezzlement.

"So, here's what happened, Nick," Ames said, hopped up on adrenalin and indifferent to the hour. "I was so thrilled by performing at the convention..."

"'This Land is Your Land'?" I asked.

"...where I did a great song and got a standing ovation..."

"Wasn't everyone already standing?"

"...that I'm thinking of doing a whole album of protest songs. It'll be just me and my guitar, like pre-Newport Dylan, you know?"

"I do. And I hope you'll just keep thinking about it."

"Afterwards, I was so high, naturally, I couldn't come down. Nora left, and I didn't want to just go back to my lonely room at the Plaza. So, I wound up at Regine's..."

"Good choice."

"...which was ten bucks to enter and five per drink, but worth every penny."

"Nice to know."

"And I met these girls..."

"Plural?"

"...these two girls who, of course, knew me from Five Kids. But tonight, I needed them to know there was more to me. I was Woody Guthrie, too."

"I can see where this is going."

"So, I took them back to the hotel..."

"That was where."

"...and, well, my performance there also..."

"Got a standing ovation?"

"Will you let him finish a sentence?"

Nora had emerged from the bedroom in a bathrobe, squinting and closing the curtains against the risen sun.

"Oops," I said, caught having fun, "sorry."

"'This Man is Your Man.' That was the song I could have sung to them, because of my complete commitment in the rack. Then we three were dead to the world and slept for hours."

"I'm making coffee," Nora said. "Anyone want?"

"Light and sweet, please," Ames said.

"No, we're both fine," I said. Nora wasn't his maid.

After she exited, it was just the two of us again. I leaned in, man to man, man to actor, I should say. "And how'd you wake up?" I asked.

"Alone." Ames seemed younger, suddenly.

"Uh, huh."

"Well, not alone, exactly. But the girls were gone."

"And who was there?"

"A man I didn't know."

"I see."

"Though I recognized him from room service. He looked like the little guy in Frankenstein."

"Igor?"

"No. He eats flies."

"Renfield. From Dracula."

"It's Frankenstein. That's okay. Not everyone's a reader."

"He was creepy."

"Yes. And he said, during the night, he'd come in with a pass key and took pictures of all of us asleep. And he threatened the girls—who woke up, I didn't—and one was underage, which I never knew, she never said—and they ran. And he said he wanted money or the pictures would go to the papers, and I'd be ruined just when I was about to..."

I didn't interrupt, not because Nora had asked me to stop. Ames seemed pitiable now, even if he implied his downfall would be that of a man on the verge of greatness instead of a horny actor caught in a threesome with jailbait after a party. He was shaken, so I couldn't kid him.

"Anyway, I got into a scrap with the blackmailing bastard. But I'm a lover not a fighter, as you can see. Now I've got three days to get 500 grand. I won't see that much money until we go into syndication."

He spoke as if "syndication" was the sleaziest cat house this side of hell. I almost smiled but restrained myself.

"You don't know the guy's name?" I asked.

"Igor's?"

"Renfield's."

"No, I don't."

"What about the girls?"

A sheepish silence was his only reply.

"Right," I said.

Nora came back with coffee whether we wanted it or not. The kitchen was close enough for her to have heard it all.

"Nick's going to help you," she said.

"I am?" I asked.

"Yes," Nora said. "You are."

"Great!" Ames said.

Relieved, Ames went to use our phone—long-distance, I learned later, to a European music producer, to suggest his great album idea. Nora and I did our best imitation of bickering.

"Would I be doing this for you?" I whispered.

"We'd be doing it."

"For?"

"For... what's that thing? 'Truth, Justice and the American Way.' Also, for money. And for him."

I got the feeling Nora's fling with Ames—or whatever it had been—had either cooled or never gone that far in the first place. It felt like she was just doing a favor for an old, half-forgotten friend. Of course, I didn't ask.

"I mean," she said, "look at the guy."

I looked. Ames was murmuring self-interestedly on the phone. Still, from the side I could see his bloodstains.

"And," Nora suddenly knew another reason, "think of what it will do to Carter's reputation if this gets out."

"And Woody Guthrie's?"

"His, too."

From the second Ames showed up beaten up, I knew I'd wanted in. Yet I pretended to be the saint I never was.

"Okay," I sighed. "I'll put one foot in the water. But only one."

"Great!"

Nora kissed me, not hearing or not buying my mixed feelings.

"And he can stay here, right?" she asked just as, conveniently, Ames hung up the phone. "In the guest room?"

"What? Here? Why?"

"Well, he can't very well go back to the Plaza. Not with that maniac working there."

"It's not the only hotel in New York. We mentioned the Chelsea. Now that he's a famous folk singer, he'll fit right in."

"Shh."

She pointed to the wounded troubadour, who had approached. Having Ames down the hall from her either meant Nora could be easily accessible or completely indifferent to him. Again, I didn't ask.

"Our first case as a married couple," she whispered.

Nora took my hand. We'd forgotten to get rings.

"Everything cool?" Ames asked.

"I guess," I said.

"You bet!" Nora said.

"Terrific."

Ames was so relieved and bruised, he collapsed onto our floor.

 

While Nora tended to Ames, I tended to business. If the actor couldn't go back to the Plaza, I could.

I knew Mort Trailman, the hotel dick—sorry, Director of Security—before he had a steady job, when he was just another competitor in my field. I'd also known his wife, Marjorie, and still did on occasion. In fact, by now I'd known Marjorie longer than Mort, because they'd gotten divorced. If Mort had ever been aware or cared about us, he didn't hold a grudge.

"Look who's here," he said. "A blast from the past."

"Nice rags," I said, fingering the lapel of his light blue leisure suit. "And do I smell Hai Karate?"

Mort yanked back his fabric. "Some of us work for a living now."

I said the Jewish prayer for the dead. Then I explained the situation, leaving out Ames' names. Mort retorted by snorting.

"That was Cecil Hinkley," he said of the waiter/photographer. "That Goddamn guy. We had to hire someone fast after the car crash."

In February at 2:00 AM, a driver had lost control and jumped the curb near the Plaza, killing four people, including a hotel kitchen worker. "Nothing unimportant ever happens at the Plaza," the old ad said, and unfortunately it was still true.

"The guy's a junkie or a pothead." To Mort, a traditionalist, it was the same thing. "We fired his ass this morning."

"You have an address or a phone number?"

"You can have it, but the one he gave us is his sister Agnes'. She's a piece of work, too, nuts and loud. Anyway, the Commodore had canned him earlier, for the same reason, even before they sold that dump to Trump and he let everybody go. Like I said, it all happened fast. But you're welcome to it, and him."

He checked a Rolodex, scribbled numbers on a sheet of memo paper, and slid it to me.

"Great," I said.

"By the way," Mort held my arm a little too hard after the hand-off, "could you marry Marjorie? The alimony's killing me."

I might have said it wasn't like that with me and Marjorie, but another fact took precedence.

"I'm already married," I said.

This loosened Mort's grip.

"You?" he said.

"Yes."

"Good luck!"

"Thanks."

"Not you, her."

"We're both already lucky," I said.

Mort didn't want to hear it. With a sigh of disgust, he went back to work. He smelled of respectability and sweat his cologne could not conceal.

 

"I told you people, the little bastard doesn't live here!"

This was Cecil Hinkley's sister, or at least her voice coming from behind her window. I was on a busy block in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, and had rung her bell in the tenement. She could be heard from the third floor and hadn't even poked her head past the fire escape.

"Can I come up?" I called, with the same lack of self-consciousness.

"No!"

"I just want to ask you a few questions!"

The window came slamming down, announcing our interview was over. Passers-by laughed, and I had no choice but join them. I hoped Agnes and her brother were actually estranged, and Cecil wasn't hiding in the apartment, coaching her how to ditch me. I hoped her rage was real.

I had left before Nora woke up. Now she wouldn't take no for an answer when I said I was going to the Commodore Hotel to get answers.

"I'm coming with," I heard her say in the vandalized phone booth near Agnes'.

"What about your little pal?"

"He passed out. The door to the guest room's been closed all day."

"So you're lonely?"

"Yes. And bored."

"All right," I said. "Show up."

It was secretly why I'd called in the first place: I was lonely, too.

"109 E. 42nd," I said.

Nora got there first, being in the same borough as the hotel. What was left of it. As Mort mentioned, the Commodore had been sold and was under construction. Closed in May, it was born as a hotel in 1919, built by the Central Railroad Company for travelers from Grand Central Station next door. It had become a pit. Three months ago, the massage parlor in the lobby had even been booted as a "sex palace." The city had given obnoxious young go-getter Donald Trump a big tax break to buy, refurbish, and hand it to Hyatt to run. So now workers moved in and out, smoke drifted from drilling on the upper floors... and a dead body lay under a sheet on the sidewalk outside. It was surrounded by cops and also by Nora, who'd made a few new friends.

"A mugging?" I asked.

"No," Nora said, meaning that was all she knew, so far.

It was enough. I took the ball. Some bullet-headed homicide detective who hated my guts was bound to be on his way. I moved in on a patrolman I knew liked, shall we say, loose change fallen from my pocket.

"Who he?" I asked, pointing to the stiff.

"A squatter in the building." He spoke like he wasn't speaking.

"For how long?"

"Not long."

"He fell off a rafter?"

"Had his head bashed in."

"By who?"

"Some other bum, probably."

"Any ID?"

"No."

"Stuff?"

"His crap was in one of the rooms being demolished. Most of it was trashed. We found works, needles. It was all stomped. Even his camera."

I watched another cop carry out evidence bags, which no amount of money was going to get me near. I'd learned what I needed, though.

"Who was it?" Nora asked, as we took off.

"Who else?" I said. "Cecil."

 

Our apartment was in walking distance, and Nora and I were quiet most of the way. Maybe she was thoughtful about Ames Williams. I was aware of someone behind us.

It was always hard to tell if you were being followed in New York. The streets were so jammed, and a certain percentage of people were always miscreants. But a heavyset youngish guy in a tight T-shirt and jeans struggled to keep us with us, pushing people to the side to make up the distance. I could see him from the peripheral vision I'd perfected with experience and paranoia.

The guy didn't look down-and-out enough to be a pickpocket or crazy enough to be a psycho. He had the well-laundered and crew-cutted look of an ex-military man or a moonlighting cop. Did I mentioned he had a crew cut? He did.

"Let's take the subway," I said, suddenly, as I saw him get a hand-reach away in my rearview mirror.

"Why?" Nora said. "We're almost home."

It was true: the train entrance was at 51st, and unless you were unimaginably lazy, you could have walked it. Also, the next stop would be past our place.

"I want to go to Bloomingdale's," I said, "and get you a wedding present."

I hadn't yet, by the way. Neither had Nora, for that matter. And you know about the gift horse.

"Okay!" Nora said.

After we lost the guy—he hot-footed it down the subway stairs after us and missed the train just pulling in, which we didn't—I ended up out a token and 20 bucks for a silk blouse. Still, the relief I felt and the smile on Nora's face were worth a million.

"Who was following us?" she asked as we came home.

Nor hadn't missed a trick and taken the gift anyway, no fool.

"Maybe he can tell us," I said.

"Me tell you what?" Ames asked, using our coffee, eggs, and bread in the kitchen. He sounded more like the guy in the magazine, Alfred E. Neumann, than Woody Guthrie.

Nora took over and made eggs for him while I did grilling of a different kind.

"You have a late night?" I asked.

"I was here," Ames said, answering a question he wasn't asked.

"The whole time?"

"Absolutely."

"So, you didn't sneak out and kill the guy blackmailing you? Because somebody did. In the closed hotel where he was squatting, the Commodore."

If Ames had already been drinking coffee, he would have done a spit take. As it was, he lurched forward, mouth open, with no liquid expelled. Then he hyperventilated. He was a much better actor than critics gave him credit for.

"What?!" he managed to say.

Nora slapped a scrambled plate before him, less sympathetically than I would have expected. Push had come to shove for her, I guessed.

"Where were you?" I asked.

Ames forked up and wolfed down his food, needing energy to keep lying, I guessed. Then he went from gagging to crying, a virtuoso display.

"All right!" he yelled. "I went out!"

"Right."

"But not to kill anyone. What, are you crazy!?"

"Then where?" This was Nora, I was happy to hear.

Ames contorted in pain, as if one of the world's oppressed, the subject of a folk song, not the singer.

"One of the girls from the hotel left a message on my service. I know her name now—Abby. Not the underage one, she promised me! I went to meet her, to do my own detective work. I thought you'd be happy!"

Ames shouted the last sentence like one betrayed. This guy couldn't conceal a lousy liaison with a female fan, let alone the brutal killing of a blackmailer. In my head, I cleared him.

"You don't want to know what I found out?" he asked, selling incredulity, a new "color" for him, as actors say. "Well, never mind then!"

Ames stomped away to our bathroom and slammed the door behind him. I looked at Nora, who shrugged, took a few sips of coffee, and checked my watch. When enough time had passed, we walked to the john. I knocked.

"Ames?"

No answer. No lock, either. We found the actor on the floor, barely conscious, probably wondering why we were waiting so long. There came a terrible realization.

"He took all our Valium!" Nora said.

"Goddamit!" I said.

And we had to pay for the stomach pump.

Nora and I got Ames admitted to a hospital under a pseudonym. Within a day or so, his dramatic action over, he was good as new. He never offered to pay us back. In fact, on the day he checked out, Ames announced he was leaving town and would stiff us for our investigative work, as well.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"The guy's dead," he said.

"And you wouldn't have known without us."

"True." This stopped him only for a second. "But where's the film? He's dead and no film. You blew it."

I had a sudden urge to put Ames back in the hospital. Sensing this, Nora held my arm. We watched as, in the doorway, fully dressed and packed, Ames rose from his bed in our guest room.

"We didn't have a contract," he said.

"It was a gentleman's agree..."

Nora's grip became tighter. In Hollywood, there were no gentlemen and no such agreements.

"Look, if you find the film," he said, "call me."

Then Ames was gone, as if making an exit in a play he hadn't been trained to perform. Nora sank onto the bed, leaped up, having forgotten who'd been sleeping there. Then she sank down again, despondently.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"For what?"

"For getting you into this."

"You did the right thing." I sat beside her.

"Dinner's on me," Nora said. "And... would you like some cufflinks?"

"It's not the money," I said, my arm around her.

"Then what? You look gloomy."

I shrugged, finding it hard to reply.

"The case wasn't solved," I said. "I want to know whodunit. And I want to be the one who found out. The ones, I should say. I want to get my man."

Nora nodded. She came to a decision.

"Leave it to me," she said and kissed me on the mouth.

Two mornings later, Nora placed a film roll from an Instamatic camera on the breakfast table.

"Ta da," she said.

"Wow." I lowered the paper (just the funnies). "This is it?"

"Straight from Cecil Hinkley's pocket. So he said."

"So who said?"

Nora bought time by adding jam to her buttered toast. Then the answer was almost lost in her crunchy eating. "Trump."

As she swallowed bread, I swallowed the information.

"My father knows him," she said, in the clear.

"I'm not surprised."

"And, well... I've known him, too."

"Really? How well?"

I had blurted it out. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have asked. It told me something, I wasn't sure what.

"Never as well as he wanted," she said. "He's not my type. Trust me."

I did, relieved, I couldn't help it.

"You went to see him?" I asked.

"Yes. And here's what he said. His bodyguard, Seb Tonka, was in charge of clearing the Commodore of squatters. Usually, it was a simple procedure of booting. But one fought back, and Seb went overboard."

"Right."

"What he didn't break of Cecil's stuff, he took, including his ID and roll of film. He gave it all to his boss."

"Seb's the one who followed us?"

"Would you please let me tell it?"

"Sorry."

"Seb's the one who followed us."

"Wow. No kidding. He seemed young for an ex-cop."

"He was a wash-out from the Academy."

"Ah."

"After I explained the situation to Donald, he gave me the film. He hadn't developed it. He said he would have if he'd known what was in it."

"That figures. What was the deal?"

"Sorry?"

"What did he want in return?"

"What do you think?"

"Oh."

"But I told you. Not my type."

"So, he was satisfied with just doing you a favor? Being a good Samaritan?"

"Of course not."

"Then what..."

"I promised we wouldn't pursue it."

For a second, I wasn't sure what she meant. Then I was.

"Seb goes free?"

"Right."

"And Trump gets away with it?"

"Yes."

"Oh." I waited a second. "As a better actor than Ames Williams might ask, what's my motivation for doing this?"

"You get to know whodunit. Ames gets the film. We get the fee. And everyone moves on."

In the world in which Nora had been raised, was everything transactional? Was there simply acceptance of compromise and corruption, means and ends? Not that poor people were so great. They just couldn't get away with as much. If they could, they would, right? Anyway, I was acting a little myself when I said, "Thanks. You did swell."

I could tell Nora was pleased by her achievement.

"I didn't want you getting followed again," she said. "Us. Next time, we might have been under the subway, not on it. That would have been no fun at all."

I was over-thinking. Nora had done it because she loved me, loved us, and wanted us to survive. She had succeeded. If I loved her, I had to go along.

I kissed her but pulled away too fast. Nora yanked me back. Her tongue tasted of strawberry jam.

"I changed the sheets in the guest room," she said.

After a second, letting it all go... "Okay," I said and followed.

 

Later, Ames Williams received the film and sent us a check. During his sitcom's hiatus, he was cast in a German children's movie. It wasn't the profound creative departure he wanted, but it was a profound payday. It was assumed an unknown squatter killed Cecil Hinkley, and the case was closed. Carter was nominated and won the election. Trump, of course, continued: the Commodore reopened in 1980 as the Grand Hyatt.

Before any of it, that night, Nora and I went to Regine's. I discovered the steps of the Hustle weren't hard to master. All I had to do was avoid the mirrors.