Beauty Dies Read online

  “How well did you know Cybella?” Claire asked casually.

  Nora Brown’s head jerked back in surprise, then she fell silent. The red lips pressed together. She almost looked human. She closed her eyes, then slowly opened them again. “I knew her very well. I discovered her. I made her the face of the sixties. I introduced her to a young unknown designer who called himself St. Rome and we created the St. Rome Woman. The rest, they say, is history. History. Makes me feel old. And alone. Why do you ask?”

  “Why did she commit suicide?”

  “I don’t see what this has to do with your trying to extort money.”

  “Please, answer the question,” Claire said patiently.

  “Cybella, like all of us, made some wrong decisions when she was younger. She had trouble living with the consequences of those decisions when she was older. It’s called depression.”

  “What were some of those decisions?”

  “Giving up her daughter. Letting her parents raise Sarah. Other than that, I don’t think Cybella’s life is any of your business.”

  “According to the articles in your magazine, she was very happy to be reunited with her daughter. And she was making a comeback.”

  “Only because of Sarah. Because she was her mother. In fact the more successful Sarah became, the more Cybella seem to withdraw.”

  “Did you discover Sarah?”

  “I knew the minute she walked into my office she had the looks and the hunger.”

  “Hunger?”

  “The desire to endure as a model.”

  “Did Cybella bring her to see you?”

  “No. She came here looking for Cybella. That was about eight months ago. She had been in the city for over a year working at some little lingerie shop near the porno …” She stopped.

  “The porno district?” Claire offered.

  “She had been trying to find her mother but couldn’t. She had saved some old letters that Cybella had written. I was mentioned. Sarah saw my name on the Bonton masthead and called me.”

  “Why couldn’t she find her mother?” I asked.

  “Cybella was in a sanitarium, Shadow Hills, being treated for depression. Sarah was desperate. She didn’t have much money. She was working and trying to get modeling jobs on her own. The agents either rejected or ignored her. I’m sure that’s why she did the video. Many women in similar circumstances turn to pornography.”

  “Many women?” I echoed. “What are you talking about? A top model, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars doing a porno video?”

  “She wasn’t earning that kind of money then.”

  “How long had mother and daughter been separated?” Claire asked.

  “Since she was a baby. She grew up in Buffalo. Cybella was a beautiful nomad flying from shoot to shoot, runway to runway. She was dedicated to her career. She got pregnant just as her career was ending. She was trying to be an actress. It was a difficult time for her. She thought it was best to let her parents raise the child.”

  “Where was Sarah’s father?”

  “Her father was a French skier. He was killed in an avalanche before the baby was born. They never married.” She brushed at her shoulder as if snow had fallen on her. “I was with Cybella when Sarah was born. Now if you don’t mind, I have work to do.”

  “The tape, Miss Hill,” Claire reminded.

  I snatched it from the jaws of the VCR.

  “Oh, by the way, the young woman, Jackie, was murdered this morning.” Claire peered at Nora over clasped hands.

  “Murdered?” The skin tightened around her eyes.

  “In front of my hotel.”

  “Are the police involved?” she asked quickly.

  “Not yet. They think her death was a street crime of some kind.”

  “Maybe it was. Those girls are victims to such things.” Hope shined in her black eyes.

  “She told me she thought Cybella was murdered. And now she’s dead. Quite a coincidence. She also thought Sarah Grange might know something about it. What do you think?” Claire stood.

  Angrily, Nora got to her feet. “I told you what I think. You’re in a dirty little business.” She took a swipe at her sleeve, brushing off some of our dirt.

  “I’ll expect to hear from you and Sarah Grange,” Claire warned. “Come along, Miss Hill.”

  Back in the Bentley I said, “Nora Brown is lying.”

  “People lie for other reasons than having committed murder,” Claire observed. “The Parkfaire, Boulton.”

  “We did accomplish one thing. She thinks we’re a pair of blackmailers. You know, blackmailers get shot.”

  “Boulton will protect us. Won’t you?” Claire smiled.

  “Yes, madam.” His brown eyes appeared in the rearview mirror. I could tell by the fine lines forming around them that he was smiling. I wasn’t.

  It was that time of day that always depressed me. Twilight pushed me into a no-woman’s land between light and darkness where familiar objects, such as buildings and trees, become shadows. And the lights that people switch on in their shops and apartments are ineffectual in holding back the night.

  Seven

  FEMALE LUST. XXXSTASY. PORNO THRILL. BONDAGE. LAND OF THE DIRTY DANCE. UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT.

  Neon words shimmied and flashed on every building along Forty-second Street between Sixth and Eighth avenues. It was eleven o’clock at night. Over dinner at the hotel, Claire had filled Boulton in on what we’d learned at Bonton. Now he and I were in a cab heading toward Peep Thrills. I had changed my jacket and was wearing my blue and brown check number. I almost felt secure under my shoulder pads as I peered out the car window.

  SPANKING. LIVE DANCING MEN. FATHER AND SON SHOE STORE. LIVE GIRLS. FAMILY THEATER: BRING THE KIDS. U MUST BE 21. FLASH AND STEAK RESTAURANT. WRESTLING. SAFE AND COMFORTABLE.

  You had to be fairly literate not to stumble into the wrong fantasy. Boulton removed his black tie, folded it neatly, and placed it in his jacket pocket. He unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt. The English butler was slowly disappearing.

  The taxi pulled up in front of a shabby building with a sign that blinked and stuttered: PEEP PEEP PEEP THRILLS. Another sign steadily declared: PRIVATE FANTASY BOOTHS. There was a large, brightly lit picture of a big-breasted blonde with her fleshy legs spread open. Her nipples and pubic hair were blacked out, making her look like a masked bandit who didn’t quite know how to wear her masks.

  Men swarmed along the sidewalk, exuding almost palpable anger and hunger. A black man, wearing a black sweatshirt with the name FENDI stamped on it in big white letters, slouched against the building. A cop ran by, mumbling into a walkie-talkie. When he stumbled, it slipped from his hand. The man in the sweatshirt laughed as the cop bent over and picked it up. The cop and the men on the street all had the same haunted look in their eyes as the women at Bergdorf’s: the look of the searching lost dog.

  I felt Boulton’s hand on the small of my back as he opened the door to Peep Thrills for me. I stopped and looked at him.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “I just wanted to see if there was any irony intended in this gesture.”

  “Chivalry is dead, but why kick the corpse?”

  We stood in a brightly lit hallway paneled with cheap woodlike veneer. The floor was covered in a sunshine yellow tile, the kind my mother used to have in her kitchen. A man the size of a cab sat at a gray metal desk.

  “Four tokens for a dollar per person. Nonrefundable,” he said.

  Boulton put down two dollars. The man dealt out tokens the size of quarters as if he were counting chips in Vegas. All the time his eyes looked Boulton over.

  “Only one in a booth at a time,” he said to him. A smile displayed rotting teeth. He kept smiling, never looking at me. “Through the curtain at the end of the hall.” His mouth snapped shut.

  Boulton and I entered a large, well-lighted room that smelled of sex and Lysol just as Claire had known it would. The floor and walls were cement and painted a bureauc
ratic green. To our left stretched a corridor of metal doors that resembled large lockers. A sign declared: PRIVATE VIDEO BOOTHS. There was an enormous round booth in the center of the room. Men lingered near it, peeking through open slots as if it were a construction site. No delight or release showed on their faces. Male sexual fantasy was a serious business.

  A sign near a stairway declared: ONE-ON-ONE BOOTHS. An arrow pointed up. The second-floor room was partitioned by a wall of windows, separated on each side by a door. Women wearing panties and bras or skimpy slips sat on stools looking out from their glass display cases. Men wandered back and forth, trying to decide on the one who would best fit their needs.

  One man in a warm-up suit and brown loafers gave a curt nod to a chubby redhead and opened the door next to her window. She slid off her stool and pulled down a drape. Now, she was only his.

  Many of the men in the room looked to be in their twenties. Why weren’t they on dates? Why weren’t they taking a young girl to a movie and dinner? Why weren’t they falling in love? What were they afraid of? Maybe this was the ultimate in safe sex. Safe desire. Safe xxxtasy.

  Not one man had looked directly at me, and those who accidentally caught my eye looked quickly away. Claire was right. I could not be manipulated by their sexual needs. I was the intruder. The intruder in the male wet dream.

  Boulton approached another giant of a man. He sat near the stairs at a cardboard table. You had to pay extra for one-on-one. The man’s face was meaty, and beads of sweat, looking more like blisters, dotted the slope he used for a forehead. Three heavy gold rings, shaped like pyramids, decorated his left hand.

  “For two,” Boulton said.

  “Only one in a booth,” the man mumbled. The two slits from which he viewed the world studied me while his large flat hands counted out tokens, the size of silver dollars. I tried a smile. It didn’t work. The figure of a naked woman was printed on the tokens. In God We Trust was missing. He handed them to Boulton.

  Boulton moved me away from the bouncer and leaned close to me. I could feel his breath in my ear as he talked in a low voice.

  “Remember, in order to communicate with the girl you have to use the telephone. That’s an extra token.” He stepped back, took my hand, and dumped some tokens in it the way a father might give his child some money to go to the movies.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “We’re going into the booths?”

  He held up his hand. “Only one in a booth at a time.” A smile played on his lips.

  I looked around the room. Some of the women were mingling with the customers. “Why can’t we talk to them outside the booths?”

  He looked at the bouncer with the gold rings. “Discretion is the better part of valor. He’ll know we’re questioning them. Don’t worry, Maggie, you’ll be able to win them over. They’ll identify with you, isn’t that what you said?”

  We stared at one another. He was the only man looking directly into my eyes in the whole damn place. Except his big brown eyes were fired with challenge, not sexual need.

  “Don’t test me, Boulton.”

  “I’ll begin at that end of the partition. You start at the other.”

  He turned and sauntered toward a tall, long-legged, honey-colored woman draped in faded tiger skin. The English butler was gone from Boulton’s walk. The woman’s body grew alert as he moved closer. He nodded casually to her, closing the door behind him.

  I stood alone, all eyes avoiding me. Except the guy with the two slits in his face and the Egyptian Wonders on his hand. I took a deep breath, which I always do when I don’t know what I’m doing, and headed for the first open door. In an enclosed area about as big as a phone booth, I dropped my token into the proper receptacle. There was a creaking noise as the curtain on the glass in front of me slowly went up with all the professionalism of a child’s puppet show.

  A young Asian girl sat on a stool. Her long dark hair cascaded over her shoulders and down to her waist. Small breasts and dark nipples could be seen through a red lace bra. She didn’t move. We peered at each other, then I put another token in and picked up the telephone.

  “Hello, I’d like to ask you some questions.” Why did I sound like I was trying to save the whales?

  Tilted eyes stared.

  “Do you know Jackie? Blonde. She worked here?” I struggled to get the photograph out of my purse.

  “I like blondes named Jackie.” Her voice was heavy with innuendo.

  I could hear her clearly through the glass. What was the phone for? An instrument to communicate with your own fantasies? Another barrier between the man and the object of his desire? Or just a way to make more money? I’ll never understand men; they never take the shortest distance.

  She began to caress her breasts. “Blondes named Jackie turn me on.” Her two front teeth were chipped.

  “No, no. You don’t have to do that, please,” I said, slipping the photograph of Jackie out and holding it against the Plexiglas.

  She stopped rubbing her breasts.

  “Tell me about her.”

  “Jackie make me feel soooo good.” She spread her thin black-and-blue-marked legs, her fingers played at her crotch. She managed a moan.

  “No, no … please.”

  She stopped. Exasperation and hostility glistened in her eyes. My minute ticked away. The curtain dropped. Oh, hell.

  When I stepped out of the booth a man waiting his turn stared through me. I did not exist. I found myself not looking at anyone else as I moved to the next available booth. I paid my token and the curtain began its noisy uneven ascent.

  She was a fleshy, Rubenesque creature with pale rippled thighs and huge breasts pushed up by a black bra. The straps dug into her shoulders. A black bikini stretched across a round full stomach.

  “Get out of my booth,” she said, not bothering with the phone.

  I was flustered. “It’s my minute,” I blurted.

  “It’s my booth. You want me to signal Goldie?”

  “You mean the guy with the pyramids on his fingers?”

  She nodded.

  “Not particularly.”

  “Then say bye-bye to mama,” she cooed, shaking her breasts at me. She hit a lever and the curtain made its noisy descent.

  Wonderful. You’ll be able to talk to them, Maggie. They’ll identify with you.

  I came out of the booth and looked around for Boulton. Goldie was now on his feet checking me out, and Goldie on his feet was something to behold. A man who looked like Oswald went into the booth I had just come out of. Maybe assassins don’t die. Maybe they just end up here. Goldie took a step toward me. Before the earth shook I ducked into the next booth and shut the door. I fumbled for a token. The curtain went up.

  Black roots, like dirty fingers, seemed to clutch at her bleached hair. Lavender lace stretched over firm, high breasts. She had a small waist and long, nicely shaped legs. Her sculpted cheekbones were pockmarked. Lips that looked as if they could only form the words “fuck you” were painted baby pink.

  “You’re either a cop or a feminist,” she said, her sharp eyes scrutinizing me.

  “Neither. I need information.” I pressed the picture of Jackie against the Plexiglas. “Do you know her? She worked here.”

  “A feminist is just like a cop. Both wanna tell me how to live my life.”

  “This is a family matter.”

  “You don’t look related.”

  This time I decided to be blunt. “Jackie’s dead. Murdered.”

  She sat, motionless, on the stool. A slight flush appeared on her cheeks. After a silence that took a chunk out of my minute, she spoke: “Men are bastards.”

  “Any man in particular?”

  “Take your pick. It’s your fantasy.”

  “This is reality. How well did you know her?”

  She crossed her long legs and sat up straight, as if she were in a dress on a bar stool at the Plaza. “Your minute’s almost up.”

  “Jackie said she was the special blonde here.”
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  “Real special. Like all of us.”

  I stuffed Jackie’s picture back in my purse and took out the photo of Sarah Grange. “What about her?”

  She moved quickly off the stool, started toward me, then thought better of it and stopped. The sexual facade was gone. Her gray eyes took in the photograph.

  I could hear the curtain begin to come down. I grabbed a twenty out of my pocket and held it so she could get a good look at it.

  “Tell me what you know.”

  The curtain plunged down. Juggling the twenty and Sarah Grange’s photo, I put in another token and waited as the curtain slowly cranked itself up. She was still there but she’d regained her pose of easy sex. She undulated toward me, picked up a folded piece of paper from the floor, and slipped it through the crack between the glass and the partition. “Just put your money inside the paper,” she said.

  “You haven’t given me any information yet.”

  “Do you like women?” she asked.

  “Being one, I’m rather fond of us, yes,” I said.

  “How much do you like women?”

  Oh, hell. “Depends.”

  She pressed her body against the glass. “Do you like me?”

  “What can you tell me about Sarah?”

  “Do you like me?”

  “What about Sarah? Do you know her?”

  “I’ve seen her in Vogue, Bonton, and my dreams. Do you love me?” she asked, playing with her breasts. “Do you?” she demanded.

  It was a sexual demand as threatening as if I were being held up.

  “No.” I put the twenty and the photograph back in my purse. I couldn’t tell if she really knew anything or not. I just wanted out of the cheap titillation and the sexual tyranny. The door behind me was pulled open. I whirled around. Goldie filled the door frame. His face bore down on mine. Sweat gathered around the two slits. “You got a problem, lady?”

  Yes, I did.

  “She’s asking me questions,” the girl whined.

  “What kinda questions?” He pressed toward me. The gold rings glimmered on his slab of a hand as he reached for my arm, which had never looked so fragile, so breakable.