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

He climbed on the headboard behind them and—click! He lay on his stomach on the floor and aimed up at them—click! He stood on a brocaded chair and aimed down at them—click! And people swirled all around him and the scene. I noticed everyone seemed to be getting pretty damn drunk. The photographer, who must be Jan’s Morrie Stein, seemed to be part of the scenery to all of them. Suzie fondled her law student’s hand, her velvet thigh pressed against his velvet thigh. Lying together on the bed, they looked as if they were floating downstream on a medieval love barge.
    I was trying to explain to myself why I was doing a slow burn over Michael Faraday’s appearance in Jan’s room. His possessiveness toward her had triggered something in me. I didn’t resent being treated like a room service waiter. These people were all old friends and I was an outsider. It was the way she’d responded. Maybe most men react as I did when a man comes on the scene whose maleness seems to glow like a neon sign. The minute Faraday had walked into the room I’d disappeared, evaporated, dissolved as far as Jan was concerned. I had been emasculated in one second’s exposure to his particular excitement thing. I found I had the rather insane notion of introducing myself to Dodo Faraday in the next room and turning on my own charm—just to show him.
    I looked down at my empty martini glass. I must be bombed, I told myself. I started toward the next room and the bar—and Dodo. I didn’t make it.
    A tawny blonde, messy-haired, in a tweed suit with a very short pleated skirt bore down on me. She had that clean, healthy, sporty look that suggested she could swim, and ski, and dance all night and still look great. She was about thirty, I thought; a good age for an old man of thirty-five like me.
    â€œHi, Haskell,” she said. “I’ve been looking all over for you. I’m Rosemary Lewis, if you don’t know. Rosey to you.”
    This was the fashion writer Gallivan had mentioned who was riding the Lazar train to glory.
    â€œI was just heading for the martini faucet,” I said. “Join me?”
    â€œAfter I ask you a private question in a far corner,” she said. She slipped her arm through mine and started to steer me toward the bathroom. “Safest place,” she said. “Even these people won’t barge in on you in the john.”
    I was in the white tiled bathroom and she had locked the door. She parted the mauve shower curtain and looked into the tub, as if she expected someone might be hiding there. When she turned to me, her sociable, chummy smile was gone.
    â€œWhat’s all this chatter about Nikos being poisoned?” she asked me.
    So the word was out that there was something non-kosher about Nikos’s death.
    â€œDon’t give me that innocent look,” Rosey said. “If there’s a whispering thing going on in this beehive, Pierre Chambrun knows about it. I know his reputation. I suspect that explains your being here, Haskell, to look at girlish thighs with only a casual interest. I suspect you’re male enough to respond a little more openly unless you had something on your mind.”
    I sat down on the john seat and fumbled for a cigarette. The last person in the world Chambrun would want me to talk to was a lady reporter.
    â€œThere’s a hole in your head I can see through,” Rosey said. “You’re a secret agent for Chambrun. You’re not supposed to talk to anyone, especially not me. Well, you better talk to me, buster, or I’ll spill the rumors I’ve heard in tomorrow’s column and you’ll have the whole world of communications down on your backs. Convince me I shouldn’t scoop the town on this and maybe I’ll play ball.” Then she smiled that nice, healthy smile. “And give me a cigarette.”
    I gave her one and held my lighter for her. She had me over a barrel and