Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

Drag enough folding money through the lobby of a pricey hotel, Marlene found, and you can get your two-hundred-pound drooling mastiff into your suite. She ensconced herself, hung up her clothes, had the concierge take her crystal jacket and other drunked-over garments out for cleaning and repair, made an appointment at Danilo's for hair and at Lamy's for a complete overhaul, killed time until the appointments by playing with the dog and watching cable, and did not drink even one of the charming little bottles in the minibar. At three she kissed the dog good-bye and walked over to Lamy's on Madison and Sixty-third, where she got boiled, seared, stripped of exfoliations, mud-packed, massaged, oiled, plucked, waxed, and manicured. She felt pretty good until her hostess told her she shouldn't wait too long before beginning plastic surgery. Mildly depressed by this news, she went over by limo to Fiftyseventh, where Danilo gave her a $300 haircut so skillful that after it her hair looked just as it had when she went in. Then she shopped some, an evening bag and some perfume, and a few things for the office, to assure herself that she was going back to the office, someday, and then back to the hotel.

At around six-thirty she called home.

"It's me," she said when Karp answered.

"Where are you?"

"At the Plaza."

"Uh-huh. What're you doing?"

"Having a vacation from my life."

"Drinking much?"

"I might. Are you going to send a spy to find out if I do?" she asked, and immediately regretted it.

After a silence, Karp said coolly, "Well, do what you need to do, Marlene. You'll keep in touch, yes?"

"You're pissed off at me."

"Yeah, I guess I am. I kind of thought we were a family. One of us has a problem, we're supposed to duke it out, not run away."

"You'd be happy if I was in a twenty-eight-day program with Dr. Eichmann though, wouldn't you?"

"Einkorn. Frankly? Yeah, I would. But you're not going to do that, so why should I even mention it?" A long pause. "So… what are you doing?"

"Right now? I'm getting ready to go to a rich people's party over at the Regency."

"A party, huh? Wear some of those clothes you bought."

"I guess. Look, Butch, this is not a permanent thing. I mean I love you. I just need to be away for a while. When I have to be around, you know, people I care about, I just want to die, I'm so ashamed. I know you're not like that, but I am. I can't bear the idea that I'm draining energy from everyone making everyone miserable. I want to crawl into a hole until I'm better."

And more of this. Marlene was not entirely sure if it was true, the words were just coming out without much reflection. It was unbearable to see him and the kids, but it was also unbearable to be alone. She did not say that, however, and the conversation rattled to a close, as such conversations will, on square wheels.

Once off the phone, Marlene went to the minibar and drank down two Baileys, to line her stomach, and then, remembering Dottie, ate a banana from the fruit basket the hotel had provided. The valet service knocked, and there were her things, the crystal jacket shorn of a few inches but otherwise perfect. Then she dressed in her white Valentino outfit, strapped white Manolo spikes on her feet, spritzed herself with Chanel, snatched up her new bag, a confection of silver and bronze links over black silk, threw the jacket over her shoulders, and after a quick doggy kiss, left the room.

The do for the New York Foundation for the Arts was familiar ground for Marlene. People who provide security for the rich log a lot of hours at such affairs, and she had been to many, but as security rather than as a guest. There was a discreet table where one gave in one's invitation and passed over one's hefty check; Marlene stopped there, gave and passed, got a smile from a couple of old face-lifts, and moved on. She spotted a number of familiar people as she entered the ballroom, for it was the usual gang: old money, media moguls, a scattering of bored-looking art makers, New York movers and shakers, a sprinkle of Eurotrash, a few pretty-boy crashers who owned dinner suits and little else, half a dozen people who had achieved the nirvana of first-name identifiability, with their retinues, and a small group of nouveaux being allowed to buy entry into the good side of the red velvet rope. Of whom Marlene imagined she was now one.

She snagged a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, drank it down, and cast her eye across the crowd. Who cast back, for Marlene in full rig was a spectacular sight. Everyone was wearing crystals that season, but Marlene, being a parvenue from Queens, had more crystals than anyone else. Everyone in the place was to some degree well-known, but Marlene was notorious-not exactly the same thing. People came up to her, anorexic women with rigid golden hair helmets and couture gowns, men of moderate size spraying ego from their tanned or pig-pink faces, blank-eyed supermodels on the arms of debauched stockbrokers, they were all dying to meet her, a heroine, someone who had actually killed people. How did it feel? Were you scared? Are you carrying a gun now? To which she answered: It made me vomit. Yes. No. And every time the waiter came by, a glass of Krug. That made three, her limit this evening.

She wandered over to a table of little yummies, but was repelled by the creamed crustaceans, the tapenades, the caviar, and salmon mousse. But there was a large cornucopia made of pastry, from which spilled a mass of real fruit, and she selected a banana to go with her fifth champagne.

She felt a presence close at her side and turned. A young man, red-haired, thin, good-looking in the way she happened to like, with clever blue eyes.

"That's quite a jacket," he remarked.

"Yes, it is. I feel like I should be stationed in front of an auto dealership on Linden Boulevard, slowly rotating."

He laughed. "You won't get far with this crowd if you make fun of expensive clothes. Eating a banana is also not the done thing, although I love the way you do it."

She chomped another section of the fruit, chewed, said, "Is that right? You're an expert?"

"No, just another working stiff like you, but with less money. A private dick, too." He held out his hand. "Peter Walsh."

She took it, squeezed, warm and dry, good, and he didn't try to hang on to it, which she always hated. "Marlene Ciampi. But you know that."

"I did. In fact, I spotted you when you came in, and I've been working up my courage to come over and slip in and talk to you. In between the beautiful people in my rented tux."

"Really. About what?"

"Oh, a job, I guess. I'd like to protect the famous and get stock options."

Marlene looked him up and down while she drained her glass. Miraculously, a tray and waiter appeared, and she replaced the empty with a full. "You don't look like a private dick, Walsh. You're too pretty."

"You're pretty."

"Yes, but I'm hard as nails. Are you hard as nails?"

"Hard enough, in the right circumstances." He had moved closer. She wanted to sag against him, sag against something, but she held back. A good thing she had kept the champagne down to four hits.

"You're not an ex-cop, though, are you?"

"No. I'm an actor. But I played a cop once."

"Anything I would've seen?"

"Not unless you're a connoisseur of New Jersey community theater. If you watch TV real late, you can sometimes catch me demonstrating the amazing multiwrench."

"An unusual background for a PI. Most of them are ex-cops, ex-military. Sometimes ex-DA, like me. Where did you learn how to investigate?"

"Oh, off a matchbook. Good jobs at high pay. No, what they hire me for is hanging out, blending in with a crowd, seeing what you can pick up."

"Impersonation."

"Not necessarily. If you show up at a place in the right clothes, with the right look and speech, people assume you belong there. In a factory, they assume you're a worker. In a DA's office they assume you're a DA. At a function like this, they assume you're a rich art lover. People say things, do things, they wouldn't ordinarily do in front of an outsider."