One Fifth Avenue - Candace Bushnell [143]
“I do indeed,” Billy said evenly.
“That’s wonderful,” David said. “Could you arrange a small dinner? Nothing too fancy, maybe at Twenty-One. And Billy?” he added. “If you don’t mind, could you keep the purpose of the dinner quiet? You know how people get if they suspect you’re going to ask them for money.”
“Of course,” Billy said. “It’s just between us.” He hung up the phone in a panic. The taxi felt like a prison cell. He began hyperventilating. “Could you stop the cab, please?” he asked, tapping on the partition.
He stumbled out onto the sidewalk, looking for the nearest coffee shop. Finding one on the corner, he sat down at the counter, trying to catch his breath while ordering a ginger ale. How much did David Porshie know, and how had he found out? Billy swallowed a Xanax, and while he waited for the pill to take effect, tried to think logically. Was it possible David only wanted to meet the Brewers for the reason he’d stated? Billy thought not. The Metropolitan Museum was the last bastion of old money, although recently, they’d had to redefine “old” as meaning twenty years instead of a hundred.
“Connie, what have you done?” Billy asked when he got to the Brewers’ apartment. “Where’s the cross?”
Following her to the inner chamber, he regarded the framed cross with horror. “How many people have seen this?” he asked.
“Oh, Billy, don’t worry,” she said. “Only Sandy. And the maids. And Annalisa Rice.”
“And the framer,” Billy pointed out. “Whom did you take it to?” Connie named the man. “My God,” Billy said, sitting on the edge of the chaise. “He’ll tell everyone.”
“But how does he even know what it is?” Connie asked. “I didn’t tell him.”
“Did you tell him how you came to have it?” Billy asked.
“Of course not,” Connie assured him. “I haven’t told anyone.”
“Listen, Connie. You have to put it away. Take it off your wall and put it in a safe. I told you, if anyone finds out about this, we could all go to jail.”
“People like us don’t go to jail,” Connie countered.
“Yes, we do. It happens all the time these days.” Billy sighed.
Connie took the cross off the wall. “Look,” she said, taking it to her closet, “I’m putting it away.”
“Promise me you’ll put it in a vault. It’s too valuable to be left in a closet.”
“It’s too valuable to be hidden,” Connie objected. “If I can’t look at it, what’s the point?”
“We’ll discuss that later,” Billy said. “After you put it away.” It was possible, Billy thought with a glimmer of hope, that David Porshie didn’t know about the cross—if he did, Billy reasoned, he’d be sending detectives, not arranging dinner parties. Nevertheless, Billy would have to make sure the dinner took place. If he didn’t, it would further raise David’s suspicions. “We’re going to have dinner with David Porshie from the Met,” Billy said. “And you’re not to say a word about the cross—neither you nor Sandy. Even if he asks you point-blank.”
“We’ve never heard of it,” Connie said.
Billy passed his hand over the top of his bald head. Despite all his efforts to stay in New York, he saw his future. As soon as the three million dollars were available, he would have to leave the country. He’d be forced to settle in a place like Buenos Aires, where there were no extradition laws. Billy shuddered. Involuntarily, he said aloud, “I hate palm trees.”
“What?” Connie said, thinking she’d missed a part of the conversation.
“Nothing, my dear,” Billy said quickly. “I have a lot on my mind.”
Coming out of Connie’s building on Seventy-eighth Street, he got into a taxi and instructed the driver to take Fifth Avenue downtown. The traffic was backed up at Sixty-sixth Street, but Billy didn’t mind. The taxi was one of the brand-new SUV types and smelled of fresh plastic; from the mouth of the driver came a musical patter as he conversed on his cell phone. If only, Billy thought, he could stay in this taxi forever, inching down Fifth Avenue past all the familiar landmarks: the castle in Central Park, the Sherry-Netherland, where he’d lunched at Cipriani nearly every day