Girl Watcher's Funeral by Hugh Pentecost Read Free Book Online

Stein, the photographer. Morrie is always somewhere, clicking pictures. You could be—well—making love to someone and think you were locked away in a private world, and suddenly you’ll hear the click of Morrie’s camera, taking shots of you from all angles.”
    I took a moment to light a cigarette. “These people were all close to Nikos, you say. Why would any of them want to shift his pills so he would die?”
    That little-girl frown creased her forehead. “When you were In with Nikos, you were really on top of the world,” she said slowly. “If you wanted to buy something, you bought it, no matter what the figures in your own bank account looked like. You asked and you got. But if Nikos turned on you for some reason and you were suddenly Out, it would be like your feet are in a barrel of cement and you’re dropped in the river. I mean it would be like Deadsville. Cross Nikos, betray him in some way, and you were a cooked goose without Christmas to go with it. If any of us who were In thought of lining up with another team—well, Nikos had better be dead before you made the move.”
    â€œWho was thinking of lining up with another team?”
    She didn’t get to answer that. The room was suddenly flooded with the sounds of the next-door brawl—voices, laughter, the percussion beat. Then it was shut off and I found myself looking at a man in a brown silk suit, Italian cut, a coffee-colored turtle neck, brown suede shoes. His hair was brown, with a distinguished sprinkle of gray at the temples, worn longish but beautifully shaped by someone like Jerry, the Madison Avenue hair stylist. He had the gorgeous perpetual tan that comes from sunshine and sun lamps. He acted as if I was the invisible man.
    â€œSorry to have kept you waiting, Doll,” he said. He moved with a combination athletic-ballroom grace, and folded Jan in his arms. His wide lips were parted as he kissed her on the mouth and didn’t let her go for a long moment. There was nothing brotherly about it. When he did let go of her, he turned to look at me. I found myself being evaluated by the coldest gray eyes I can ever remember seeing.
    â€œThis is Mark Haskell, the Beaumont’s PR man,” Jan said to the brown man. She sounded breathless.
    â€œMichael Faraday,” the brown man said, and held out his hand. I braced myself for a crusher and got it. I knew the kind. He would take pleasure in crippling the unprepared. He turned away from me as though that ended me. “Things are pretty hysterical next door,” he said to Jan. “Like it must have been when the Titanic was sinking. End of the world. I had to stay with Max and some of the others to convince them it was business as usual. That’s how Nikos operated. Every eventuality prepared for in advance. The ship isn’t sinking at all. Only the captain died.”
    A brown hand slipped up inside one of Jan’s kimono sleeves. The gray eyes turned my way again, hostile.
    â€œIf your business with Jan is finished, I’d appreciate your going back to the party,” he said. “We have some rather personal matters to discuss.”
    â€œSee you around,” I said to Jan.
    She didn’t answer or look at me. She was leaning against Faraday, as if the touch of his brown hand inside her sleeve had turned her on. She looked hypnotized.
    I stepped through the door to Nikos’s bedroom and into Bedlam. The man on the red drums in the room beyond had gone orgiastic, aided by an electric guitar tuned to a decibel maximum. People had to shout at each other to be heard.
    Suzie Sands still held court on the bed, with her Tommy tucked in beside her. But the courtiers were new. Zach Chambers had taken his beads and his Merle Oberon story somewhere else. A dark little man in black skintight slacks and a navy turtle neck was taking pictures with a tiny camera of Suzie and her law student. They seemed accustomed to him.