The Chelsea Girl Murders (13 page)

And so on, culminating with this last, brutal tactic to undermine a man and make him want you even more: Refer to the man as a “friend,” as in, “I like you. You're a real friend,” even though by chapter three you've gone out with him at least several times.

This was inhumane. I had half a mind to do a special on this underground classic, “out” it to the world, let men know what millions of women were up to. But at the moment, I wasn't too enamored of men as a demographic, either. Maybe the bodybuilder, the Zenmaster as Lucia called him, was partly right. Sometimes it is better to have no effect. Any man stupid enough to fall for this crap probably deserved it.

At the end of this chapter, I fell asleep. I never did hear Maggie Mason come home that night.

chapter eight

Grace Rouse was happy to speak with me—in person, with her attorney present—especially when she learned I was the woman Gerald had died on. She was out on bail by noon the next day and agreed to meet me at her gallery “after the paparazzi leave.”

Paparazzi were no problem. All I had to do was call up this paparazzo I knew from the
News-Journal
, David Fowler, and tell him I'd heard a hot rumor that Courtney Love was holed up at the Metro Grand Hotel with Ben Affleck. Later, I'd have to apologize for being wrong and send him a case of Black Bush whiskey, but that was a small price to pay for privacy, and in any event, I'd just expense it as “miscellaneous promotion.”

It worked, and when I got to Rouse's gallery, the photogs had taken all their shots and fled uptown.

In the weirdly lit office of her gallery in Soho, Spencer Roo introduced me to Grace Rouse.

“Did you see who killed him?” she asked. “Or hear anything?”

“No. I mean, I heard a thump at the door, and then he fell on me. He said, ‘Bye,' and then he died. I didn't see you.…”

“I didn't kill Gerald—” she began, stopping to weep a little, blowing her nose gracefully and quickly composing herself.

Roo gratuitously patted her arm sympathetically.

She appeared to be grieving. She was dressed in proper black—a black sweater, black sunglasses, black denim jeans, and black boots. But her auburn hair was neatly slicked back, her makeup was immaculate, her nails had been done in the last few days. This was remarkable to me, because me and my friends, when we're grieving, tend to be red-nosed, rat-haired messes. Her weeping produced no tears or mascara stains and was over quickly. It seemed a tad cold-hearted, though that may have had something to do with the swimming pool-blue light coming through the glass brick wall of the office, which made her natural paleness seem somewhere between ethereal and embalmed and made me feel as if I was inside a very quiet aquarium.

At this point, I did a quick sexism check, asking, Would I find this lack of messy grief as disturbing in a man? Deciding that I wouldn't, that I would have seen it as strength and emotional restraint, I cut her some slack.

“I believe Gerald was at the Chelsea to meet with Maggie Mason when he was killed,” she told me.

“When they met in the elevator I was riding in, it looked like an accidental meeting to me,” I said.

“Maybe they were faking that for your benefit.”

“Back up a second,” I said. “Why did you lie to the police about your alibi if you didn't kill him?”

“I lied to the police because I knew it would look bad—his murder, my having been there. I didn't think they could check it out, but someone saw me leaving down the fire escape,” she said.

She looked at Roo. He nodded slightly. He was letting her do the talking, which was unusual for Roo. Either he believed she was innocent or wanted it to appear he did. To emphasize his casual attitude, he picked up a copy of
aRt Magazine
with a cover article on Scandinavian surrealist Odd Nerdrum and read it as Grace and I talked.

“The police tricked me,” she said. “They let me lie to them about where I was at the time before they told me someone had seen me leaving.”

“Who saw you?”

“There's a wino who panhandles the stretch between the S&M restaurant and the synagogue on Twenty-third Street. He saw me, but I didn't see him. They didn't tell me the witness was the wino until after I admitted I was there. If they had, I would have said the man was a drunken fool. They tricked me, and now I'm in all this trouble.”

“Why were you at the Chelsea?”

“Gerald told me he was going out to meet a collector about an art deal. I followed him there because I thought he was going to meet a lover. Not just a lover. A pregnant lover. I thought it was Maggie Mason.”

“Is Maggie pregnant?”

“I don't know,” she said. “That's what I was trying to find out.”

About a week before the murder, Rouse claimed, she'd “happened to see” an E-mail on Woznik's computer while he was away from his desk. It had been sent by [email protected] Grace Rouse had only been able to read one line before Woznik returned: “The baby is on its way. Is money arranged?”

The day before the murder, she'd just “happened to pick up the extension” while Woznik was on the phone, talking to Maggie Mason. All she managed to hear was Maggie saying, “Bring the money tomorrow and don't be late.”

It was creepy talking about Woznik because there were big pictures of him staring down at us in the office, big photos of Gerald Woznik, and Grace Rouse with him, along with a large oil painting of the dead man alone. That look I'd seen in the elevator, that incongruous mixture of Christlike empathy and manly desire emanated from each one. I'd gotten such a buzz off that look in the elevator, but seeing it now made me realize it was a generic look, not specific to me, and it gave me a creepy chill.

“The cops say Maggie Mason has an alibi,” I said.

“It's a false alibi. I'd bet my gallery on it,” Rouse said. “She had an affair with him, but she wasn't in love with him. She got pregnant to get his money and his name. She's fooling you. She's devious and vindictive. And her work is crass and derivative.”

“Has she done anything to you before?”

“I think she's the one who put a personal ad with the gallery number in the back of a
Star Trek
fan magazine—'Luscious heiress seeks mild-mannered loner who's a dominant Klingon behind closed doors.' The ad was paid for with my credit card info. I filed a complaint about that but the police couldn't find the guilty party. We had to change the gallery number, and the occasional Klingon still wanders in.”

“But murder is a much bigger kind of vindictiveness. You think Maggie killed Gerald, the father of her alleged baby?”

“Why not? She's a psycho, and she holds a grudge longer than the Balkans. Perhaps Gerald went there to talk to her, but not to tell her what she wanted to hear. I didn't think she was a threat to me. She was just a fling to him, but she schemed to get pregnant and use that to bring him to her, or else she made up a pregnancy.”

“What happened at the Chelsea? Did you see Gerald there? Or Maggie?”

“No, when I got there, I hid on the fire escape,” she said matter-of-factly, as if listening in on a man's phone calls, reading his E-mail, following him, and hiding out on a fire escape to spy on him were perfectly normal things for a woman in love to do. “I didn't want to be seen entering the building, so I climbed up the side fire escape. I thought it was the seventh floor, but I forgot that the Chelsea's floor-numbering system starts with ground, European style, not one, American style. I was on the eighth-floor fire escape.”

“How long were you there?”

“Until I overheard some of the eighth-floor residents talking about Gerald being killed on the floor below, and I took off.”

“You told the cops all this stuff about Maggie?”

“Yes. But I can't prove any of it. Yet. Gerald always deleted his private E-mail the day after he got it. I've been through his personal papers and can't find anything incriminating to give the police. I thought maybe you could try to coax some information out of Maggie, seeing as you're staying next door to her, in Tamayo's apartment. Maggie is very friendly with Tamayo.”

“I'm sure the police would do a better job of getting information out of Maggie.”

“Well, you might hear things the police won't,” she said.

She started to weep in her controlled, no-drip way. “It's insane to think I'd kill him. I loved him. I miss him.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Why? Well … it's one of those things you can't understand unless you're in it. We were soul mates, underneath all the—”

“Cheating, lying, emotional abuse, suspicion?” I filled in helpfully.

“I know how it looks. The man could not control his penis. But he couldn't help it. It was like trying to wrestle an out-of-control fire hose. Poor guy.” She sounded angry, but angry at me for asking, not so much at him for doing it, it seemed.

I must have had a skeptical look on my face, because she said, “Are you one of those dreamers who think men and women can be friends, and open up to each other, have equality in a relationship? Forget it, sister. Men have to be trained and kept on a short leash. Sorry to say it, but that's the way it is.”

“And Gerald Woznik was worth all this?”

“Beneath that sick man was a special man, a misunderstood genius,” she said. “Haven't you ever loved a man in spite of yourself? You knew all his faults, but you just couldn't help loving him?”

At this, she flashed a few frames of what appeared to be genuine sadness. It moved me.

“I get your drift,” I said, dodging the question. I've loved men who played around a little and had the usual minor faults. I had loved a man who had the blood of twenty-seven Pakistani dogs on his soul, who had broken hearts from Hoboken to Hong Kong. But not one of those guys used women, or screwed around so cavalierly, or (allegedly) ripped off artists.

“What about all these artists he screwed over?” I asked.

“According to his books, he didn't rip off anyone.”

The books could be cooked.

“Were you supporting him?” I asked.

“No. Is that what you think? He loved me for my money?” The words shot out of her red-lipsticked mouth like bullets.

“No, I was just asking if—”

“He lived with me, I picked up a few bills, that's all,” she said.

The phone rang and she said, “Excuse me,” and picked up.

“Grace Rouse. WHAT? What do you mean he isn't going to have that painting done in time? I'm flying in collectors from Europe for that! What? Oh, his boyfriend left him, boo hoo hoo. My lover was murdered! And I was arrested for it! Look, get hold of his shrink, his drug counselor, and find his boyfriend! His what? His psychic? A case of Dr Pepper? Get him Dr Pepper then. Get hold of whatever and whomever he needs, call his bloody masseuse and manicurist. If that doesn't work, threaten to call his mother. I know he hates his mother; don't call her, just threaten to. And call me when you have better news.”

She hung up and said, “Painters!” She clenched her fists and her jaw for a moment, took a deep breath, and quickly composed herself. It no longer looked like strength and emotional restraint. “I have some other business to attend to, you'll have to excuse me.”

It was then I pulled out the photo of Nadia. I wanted to be kind of casual about it. If Rouse had killed Gerald and bumped off Nadia because the girl saw something, I didn't want to tip her off that I was suspicious. I also didn't want Grace Rouse making a big deal out of it or blabbing about this to the cops.

“Do you know this girl?”

“No … wait. She looks familiar,” she said. “I may have met her.”

“When?”

“I don't know. Not recently. Sometime in the last year. How would I know her?”

“She's a friend of Tamayo's.”

“Should I know this girl?”

“Not necessarily. I was supposed to meet her, and we missed each other,” I explained. “I'm asking all Tamayo's friends about her.”

“I hope you find her. Tell Tamayo hello for me,” Grace Rouse said. “And check into Maggie's alibi. It isn't legitimate.”

“I shall.”

Her lip quivered ever so slightly and she choked out another sob, just one, with no inadvertent spitting or any mess at all.

Spencer Roo walked me out.

“Did she do it?” I asked him.

“Of course not.”

“Yeah, that's what you said about the guy who killed his wife with thirty or so blows to the head with a hammer.”

“That was a suicide,” Roo said with a straight face. “I got him off.”

“On a technicality.”

Roo shrugged. I hated that he got people like that off, but at the same time, if I am ever arrested, he's the man I want in my corner.

What a piece of work Grace Rouse was. On paper, she was the number one suspect. But she'd met with me and spoken so openly that despite her bizarre way of expressing her grief and despite her bitchiness, I was inclined to believe she was innocent of the murder. On the other hand, she could be a master manipulator, faking openness to win trust and cooperation. That she loved Gerald Woznik, or thought she did, was no defense. It never ceases to amaze, how often sex and love lead to murder and hatred.

What a shame Woznik hadn't said something grander before he died, instead of just “Bye.” Rouse, I bet, wanted to hear something validating, i.e., “Tell Grace I loved her and only her.” Her interest in that seemed legit, her motive romantic. But maybe I was wrong. Maybe she wanted to know if he'd said anything that might lead to her, if she was the killer.

Before I left, I turned my reversible coat—dark rose on one side, pale lime green on the other—inside out, and tucked my hair under a scarf, then poked my head out and looked both ways, to make sure I wasn't being followed.

At Houston Street, I grabbed a cab back to the Chelsea, where I hoped to corner Maggie Mason.