Richard Hawke - Cold Day in Hell

THE TUESDAY AFTER the Hamptons weekend, Robin swore to herself that she was not remaining home after work simply because she had told Marshall Fox that she had the night free. Michelle had called up suggesting that the two meet up in the Union Square area for drinks, but Robin had begged off, claiming she was tired and looking for an early night.

“It’s not Fox, is it?” Michelle said. “He hasn’t actually called you, has he?”

Michelle didn’t believe for a minute that Marshall Fox had been serious. Robin agreed with her. He’d been drinking, she reminded herself, plus God knows what else. Robin couldn’t claim to be up on all the drugs of the moment, but she had seen enough bizarre behavior during the Hamptons party to know that there had been more consumed than just the cocktails she’d spent all night circulating. She had already played over and over in her mind her encounters with Fox and determined that she’d been taken in-almost taken in-by the celebrity’s prodigious charm and his serial flirting. It’s absurd, she told herself. The man goes out with supermodels and Hollywood actresses. I was the hired help . Get a grip.

In fact, Fox hadn’t called. Not the Sunday after the party, not Monday, and not Tuesday. Of course he hadn’t. It was absurd. For all Robin knew, Fox had patched things up with Kelly Cole, and the two of them had shared a good laugh about the crazy martini-throwing incident, and that was that. Robin had stayed up and watched his show Monday night just to see-she told herself-if Fox made any mention of the event in the Hamptons. He didn’t, though he had made a joke that sounded to Robin like it might have been an oblique reference to the striking blond newswoman and the drink-throwing incident. But maybe not. Robin had caught sight of herself in the mirror on the wall next to the television set and told herself to snap out of it already.

To her regret, Robin had talked about the party at work, letting slip the fact that Marshall Fox had flirted with her and had sort of asked her out. Denise from Graphics was a huge Marshall Fox fan.

“Has he called yet?” The question came on what seemed to be a half-hourly basis. On Tuesday Denise was nearly beside herself. “Has he called? You are checking your machine, aren’t you?” Denise had even offered to check Robin’s home answering machine for her. “Look. When he does call, you do not erase that message. I’m serious. I swear, I’ll pay you to let me record it. You have to promise me. Oh my God. Marshall Fox .”

But he hadn’t called. By two o’clock, Robin had made a particular point about not calling home anymore to check her machine. At the end of the day, Denise had demanded that Robin call one more time.

“He starts taping the show at five. He might’ve called right before.”

There’d been no messages. Good, Robin told herself. That’s that.

LATER THAT NIGHT, her chin pressed hard against her pillow, Robin had panicked. What was she doing? This was insane. As she twisted her head to look over her shoulder, what her eye fell on first was the television set atop her dresser across the room. The set was muted, and Marshall Fox was signing off. He placed his hand over his heart.

Robin shifted on her elbows and tried to bring her hands together to form a T, for “timeout.” She sputtered, “I…please…stop… please .”

Marshall Fox took a grip on her shoulder and squeezed. “Shhhh. Come on, New Hope. Just relax, baby. Go with it.”

And he didn’t stop. Quite the opposite. Robin closed her eyes against the flickering light on her bedroom wall and did as she was told. No need to panic, she told herself. He’s right, just go with it. It’s not really so bad. In fact…

As her cheek moved along the pillow, she had a fleeting thought of Denise. Oh my God, if she could see me now. This was followed by another thought, and it made her laugh out loud. He’s the fox; I’m the chicken house.

Behind her, Fox continued to croon. “That’s right, New Hope. Thatta girl. You’re getting it…”

PETER ELLIOTT CALLED ME at home around ten. I was sitting in my perfectly ratty armchair, eating wasabi peas and thumbing through a copy of The Horse’s Mouth , trying to get into it. A Margo recommendation. It seemed like it might be good if I could actually focus on it. But the going was tough. The ringing phone got me off the hook. Which is a pun, if you think about it.

“There’s been another phone threat.”

I set down the book and sat up in the chair. “You’re kidding.”

“Word for word, exactly like the other ones. I just got a call from Joe Gallo.”

I asked, “Who got it?”

“That’s the thing, Fritz. This one doesn’t make any sense. At least not yet. It’s a total blank. The person has no connection with Marshall Fox whatsoever. I mean zero. She doesn’t even watch the show.”

My radiator began clanging. It does that when it’s pressed into action for too long. It sounds like someone is swinging at it with a ball peen hammer. I switched ears. “So what’re the details?”

“There aren’t many. It’s a woman who lives on East Eighteenth Street. Thirty-four. Single, with a boyfriend. She and the boyfriend were off on a ski trip this past week, but they didn’t miss any of the news. Woman says her boyfriend is a real news junkie, so they had CNN on all the time when they weren’t out skiing.”

“Sounds romantic,” I said.

“The point is, they caught a couple of the replays of Riddick playing that damn tape at his press conference. CNN must think it’s the audio holy grail, they’ve been playing it so often. You just wait, it’s going to find its way into a music mix of some sort. That’s the world we live in these days.”

Music mix. I vaguely knew what he was talking about.

Peter continued, “Anyway, this woman heard it a couple of times when they were out in Colorado Springs or wherever it was. She told Gallo that Robin’s murder already had her sort of freaked out. She and Burrell are the same age, and according to Gallo, the two look a little bit alike. Not that it makes any difference. My eighty-three-year-old grandmother is freaked out by what’s going on, and she’s long past her girlish beauty. But it’s out there. I’m sure you can feel it, right? People are on edge. It wasn’t helped by the Post publishing that damn photo.”

“Jesus. Don’t get Joe Gallo started on the Post .”

“Started?” Peter laughed. “That would mean he actually stopped.”

“So let’s hear what happened.”

“What happened was that they got back to the city this afternoon, and the boyfriend dropped her off. She lives in Chelsea. The woman told Gallo that when she takes a vacation, she doesn’t call in and check her machine. Cell phones these days, I wouldn’t want to be in the answering machine business. So she gets home and checks her messages, and there it was. ‘ Can you taste the blood yet? Whore .’ The whole thing. It could practically be a prerecorded message. The woman lets out a scream that you could probably hear halfway down the block.”

I thought a minute, biting down on a few wasabi peas to help stimulate things. “You said it was so much like the other messages that it could have been a recording. Maybe it was a recording. Maybe it was a prank from some not-so-funny friend.”

“Right. Gallo thought of that, too. But it was recorded on her machine the same day that Robin Burrell was killed, and Riddick didn’t broadcast Rosemary Fox’s tape until the day after Burrell was killed. Gallo’s people are running tests on the answering machine just to triple-check everything, but Joe has already told me he can tell it’s not a recording being played back. It was live. The same loony who left the message for Robin Burrell and Rosemary Fox left one for this woman on the same day.”