Kasey Michaels: High Heels and Homicide

«Oh, brother.» Bernie looked toward the sideboard and the bottles she'd insisted Maggie not hide just because her best friend was a boozer, recently retired. «I guess it was bound to happen. I mean, Alex is a god, we both know that, and you did base Saint Just on him. But one is fiction, Mags, and one is Alex. I know you don't like that Alex is always… well, always in the thick of things whenever there's trouble. But now you're mixing them up, kiddo, the real and the fictional. You can't control Alex, so now you're trying to give twenty-first-century morals and all that crap to a guy from eighteen-sixteen. You've got to keep them separated in your mind, Maggie.»

«That… that's sometimes difficult,» Maggie said, wishing for a cigarette with all her being. Should she tell Bernie the truth? Could she? Bernie was her best friend… but Bernie was sober now, and what Maggie told her today, the woman would remember tomorrow. Forever. Forever might be a long time to go around regretting opening her big mouth.

Bernie nodded. «I guess it is. But just because you could never see Alex killing anyone doesn't mean Saint Just has to morph into frigging Alan Alda. And don't say who , because I'm not that old.»

«My God.» Maggie looked at her liverwurst sandwich again, beginning to think it looked pretty good. Like she'd had a liverwurst-and-potato-chip-on-rye epiphany. «You're right, Bernie. Saint Just is Saint Just. The whole time I was writing, I felt like I was trying to shove a square peg into a round hole. It was… I guess it was just something I had to do. As… as a writer, hokey as that sounds.»

«Okay, that's fair. But, now that you've done it, do us both a favor and don't do it again. Books of the heart are almost always just for the writer, not for public consumption. God knows I've read and rejected enough of them.

Just forget about the book for a while. Go do your penance in New Jersey with your folks, go to England, leave your laptop here in New York. Find a nice Englishman to flirt with or something.»

«Yeah, that's what I need, all right. Another Englishman,» Maggie said, wincing. And yet, she felt better. She really did. Maybe the book had been an exorcism of sorts, and now it was out of her system. Saint Just was Saint Just. Hadn't Alex told her that? «I yams what I yams,» she said, and grinned.

«What?»

«Popeye, Bernie. I yams what I yams. Doesn't anybody watch the old cartoons anymore?»

«No, some of us have a life,» Bernie said, and Maggie threw her sandwich wrapper at her friend, just as the door opened and Sterling raced into the room.

«Turn it on, turn it on! Miss Spivak is talking to Saint Just.»

«No! Oh, cripes, now what? I let him out of my sight for two minutes and—» Maggie nearly toppled off the couch, reaching for the remote control, then hit the Power button. Moments later, she saw Saint Just on the screen, Holly Spivak beside him, the Fox News van behind them.

«… truly, Miss Spivak,» Alex was saying, «the kudos all go to Mrs. Halliday, who so cleverly warned me that something nefarious was afoot. I, for my small part in the affair, merely reacted.»

Holly Spivak pulled the mike back to her own face. «And there we have it, Kevin—Mr. Blakely's modest explanation of what can only be called an act of heroism caught somewhere between Zorro and the Keystone Kops, as two of New York's Finest nearly arrested our hero, mistaking him for one of the bad guys, when he had actually just single-handedly foiled a daring daylight bank robbery.

Thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Yasimoto, again, here's all the action, caught on tape by Mr. Yasimoto, who happened to be videotaping his wife as she posed in front of the bank.»

Videotape. Of course. You couldn't walk more than five steps in any direction in Manhattan without bumping into some tourist with a videocam.

Maggie forgot to breathe as the tape rolled and she saw a woman who had to be Mrs. Yasimoto, smiling and pointing to the art deco facade of the bank. Suddenly the woman screamed, and the picture blurred, then refocused, to show Alex—with a rousing, theatrical flourish—placing the tip of his cane against the neck of one of two men sprawled on the pavement.

Maggie closed her eyes. «Ah, jeez, doesn't he ever give it a rest?»

«Look, Maggie, look!» Sterling shouted. «The constables! They're arresting Saint Just.»

Okay, it was time to open her eyes again… and there was Alex, being pushed against the wall and frisked. And his pant leg was purple. Why was his pant leg purple? And did she really want an answer to that question?

«You know,» Bernie said, munching on a tortilla chip, «at times like this, Mags, I can see why you sometimes get confused between Alex and Saint Just. He does make a pretty good hero.»

«Yeah,» Maggie said, and decided to take another bite of her sandwich. It was safer than talking to Bernie.

Saint Just was Saint Just. Sometimes, if you just sort of squinted, life was simple. Okay, she had to learn to live with it. She could live with it. Really. She could. Hoo-boy…

«You have everything? I could run back upstairs and get the kitchen sink? Maybe the drapes?»

Saint Just ignored the sarcasm and tapped his quizzing glass against his lips as he counted the multitude of luggage on the sidewalk. The viscount did not travel without all the amenities. After all, he had his reputation as a gentleman of fashion to consider. «I believe so. Thank you, Socks.»

«Hey, I'm the doorman. I do this stuff,» Argyle Jackson said, grinning. Then he held out his hand. «And you're the tenant. You tip me. It's a quaint American custom.»

«Of course, how remiss of me,» Saint Just said, removing a twenty from his money clip and passing it to Socks. «Now all we need are Maggie and our transport. You did say ten o'clock, didn't you, Socks?»

«Relax, Alex, I got it. And here it comes, one bad-ass SUV.»

«And here's Maggie,» Sterling said, pointing down the street. «Oh, dear, I don't think she and Doctor Bob had a productive session. She's scowling, Saint Just.»

«Maggie, my dear,» Saint Just said, manfully withhold-ing a smile as she came to a stomping halt in front of him. «How go the wars?»

«I don't want to talk about it.»

«You informed Doctor Bob that, now that you're no longer smoking, you have no further need of his services? That was the plan as you presented it to me so optimistically this morning, was it not?»

«I said I don't want to talk about it,» Maggie told him through gritted teeth. Then she sort of slumped in place. «We talked about this trip.»

«About your mother, you mean? So. How much longer will you be seeing the good doctor?»

«Christmas. I know I'm going to get roped into going home for Christmas, too. After that. I'm a big girl now. I don't need a shrink to hold my hand just because I'm going to see my—oh, hell, I should have asked the man if he has an unlimited-visit lifetime plan. You know, like dance lessons and gym memberships. Once you pay out the bucks for one of those things, you never go again. It could be my way out.»

«I cannot tell you how anxious I am to make your mother's acquaintance, Maggie. Sterling is of the opinion she must breathe real fire.»

«Venom. She secretes real venom, and it gets more lethal every year. I mean, she was never a happy woman, but lately? I don't want to think about it. This the rental?» she asked, pointing to the huge black SUV. «Do I need a trucker's license to drive this thing?»

«I could—»

«In your dreams, Alex. As far as I know, you're licensed to drive only high-perch phaetons in Hyde Park. In the eighteen hundreds. Oh, here comes Steve. He said he might be able to see us off.»