The Craigslist Murders - Brenda Cullerton [3]
“That’s short for hedge fund, dear,” the guy had said with a wink when she sat down next to him at some interminable private school auction last year.
“Wow!” Charlotte had replied, her eyes as round as saucers. “I think I’ve heard of those.”
Half her clients were married to hedge fund guys. Where did this moron think she’d been for the past ten years? As she recalled, the auction highlights included a $22,000 winning bid for “A Bedtime Story and Tuck In” by one of the school’s kindergarten teachers and a $42,000 bid for a cute patchwork quilt made by second graders. She couldn’t wait to get home. Christ! And there he was again tonight, bobbing up and down in the crowd, saluting her. What was with the saluting?
“Hi there!” Lunging in to plant a wet kiss on her cheek, the guy spilled half a glass of wine on his pants. “Remember me?”
“The hedgie,” Charlotte replied, politely passing him a cocktail napkin. “Short for hedge fund, right?”
“You got it, baby!” he said, blotting his thigh with one hand while grabbing another glass from a passing waiter. “Name’s Judd.”
For the next fifteen minutes, Judd tore off on a verbal “test drive” in his brand-new, fully-loaded $350,000 Maybach 57s. Charlotte had only seen these pimped out chauffeur-driven sedans double-parked on the street. She didn’t even have a driver’s license. So by the time, he’d revved his way through twelve cylinder power packs, maximum torque of 1000 nm (whatever the fuck that was), rear aprons, and anthracite Alcantra, she’d felt like a piece of roadkill. He then switched to the subject of his fortieth birthday party.
“Did I tell you I paid for the Stones, Charlotte?” (Yes, about ninety times, she’d muttered to herself.)
“Eight million, but I got to sing with Mick!”
“What a treat for Mick,” she said.
“Who says you can’t get no satisfaction, huh?” he added, poking her playfully in the ribs, as she turned to speak with the plump “too-tan-from-a-can-man” sidling in on her left.
“I wouldn’t eat that if I were you,” the man said, snidely, pointing to the slender stalk of spring asparagus on the tip of her toothpick.
“Why not?” she was fool enough to ask. “I love asparagus!”
“Well, I happen to import 80% of America’s asparagus from Peru.”
Do you, now? Charlotte whispered to herself. How absolutely fascinating.
“We fumigate the shit out of it with bleach and fungicide before we ship it. It’s not great for the prostate,” he chuckled, eyeing his private parts.
“Guess I’m glad I don’t have a prostate,” Charlotte answered, swallowing the stalk in a single bite.
Now where the hell was Philip? People were being corralled toward the tables at the back of the atrium. Ah! Finally. Standing on tiptoes, she watched as a sleek silver-haired man slithered his way through the crowd towards her. How I pity your wife, Charlotte thought to herself. Philip, known to all but his wife, Vicky, as “Phil Phil” (the “Philandering Philanthropist”) was heir to one of the city’s biggest real estate fortunes. Charlotte had managed to keep him at arm’s length for years and had come tonight only as favor to his wife.
Vicky, her oldest friend, was off in Aspen, dealing with last minute contract changes for the third condo. That was the other weird thing about the really rich: Money was as meaningless to them as death, or physical death, anyway, was to terrorists. Most of her clients, for instance, didn’t even bother to pay for health insurance. (Who needed the hassle of health insurance with billions in the bank?) But she’d never met a single one who didn’t need just a tiny bit more.
“Un poquito mas! Un poquito mas!” she heard the hedge fund guy shouting over and over again to the befuddled waiter, attempting to nudge his way past with a trayful of empty glasses. The kid wasn’t even Hispanic. “Hielo! Hielo!” he repeated, rattling the ice cubes in his glass. But yeah … Whether it was ice cubes, condos, cows, (beg your pardon, cattle), shoes, or money, they always needed just a little more.
“God!