City of Endless Night (Pendergast #17)(14)
“I’d love one,” Harriman said. “A double, straight up, with a twist. Hendricks, if you have it.”
He could already see her face brightening. “I’ll have the same.”
The tall, stooped, lugubrious butler who’d been waiting for their order responded with a grave nod and a “Yes, Mrs. Ozmian,” before rotating with a distinct creaking noise and disappearing into the recesses of the fantastically vulgar and overfurnished apartment.
Harriman felt a distinct advantage over this woman, and he was going to press it for all it was worth. She was a type he understood, someone pretending to be a member of the upper classes and making a hilarious mess of it. Everything about her, from her dyed hair, to her excessive makeup, to her very real diamond jewelry—in which the diamonds were too large to be elegant—made him want to shake his head. These people never would get it. They never would understand that vulgar diamonds, stretch limos, Botoxed faces, English butlers, and giant houses in the Hamptons were the social equivalent of wearing a sandwich board on which was written:
I AM A NOUVEAU RICHE
TRYING TO APE MY BETTERS
AND I DON’T
HAVE A CLUE
Bryce himself was not nouveau riche. He didn’t need diamonds, cars, houses, and butlers to announce that fact. All he needed was his last name: Harriman. Those who knew, knew; and those who didn’t weren’t worth bothering about.
He had started his journalism career at the New York Times, where he worked his way up through sheer talent from the copy desk to the city desk; but a small contretemps involving his reporting of an incident that came to be known as the subway massacre, along with being outreported and outmaneuvered on the story by the late, great, and insufferable William Smithback, had led to his unceremonious dismissal from the Times. That had been the most painful period in his life. Tail between his legs, he had slunk over to the New York Post. In the end, the move proved to be the best thing to happen to him. The ever-vigilant, ever-restraining editorial hand that had muzzled him at the Times was far more relaxed at the Post. No longer was someone always looking over his shoulder, cramping his style. There was a sort of a slumming chicness attached to the Post’s brand of journalism that, he found, had not hurt him with his people. During his ten years at the paper, he’d risen through the ranks to being a star reporter at the city desk.
But ten years was a long time in the newspaper business, and his career had been sputtering of late. For all his feelings of condescension as he looked at this woman, he was still aware of a certain frisson of desperation. He hadn’t broken a big story in a long time, and he was starting to feel the hot breath of his younger colleagues on his neck. He needed something big—and he needed it now. And this, he felt, might just be it. He had the knack of sniffing out a certain kind of story, talking his way into seeing a certain kind of people. And that included the woman sitting across from him: Izolda Ozmian, former “fashion” model, social clawer-upper, gold digger par excellence, ex-trophy-wife to the great Anton Ozmian, who in her nine months of connubial bliss had earned herself ninety million dollars in a famous divorce trial. That, Bryce noted privately, came out to $10 million a month, or $333,000 a fuck, assuming they made the beast with two backs once daily, which was a generous estimate, considering Ozmian was one of those dot-com workaholics who practically slept in the office.
Bryce knew his instincts for a story were sharp, and this had all the makings of a good one. But these days he had to worry about his compatriots at the Post, those hungry young Turks who would like nothing more than to see him dethroned. He’d had no luck getting in to see Ozmian—which he’d expected—and the cops were being unusually tight-lipped. But he’d had no trouble getting in to see Izolda. Ozmian’s second wife was famously bitter and vindictive, and he had a strong sense that here was the mother lode, all tied up in a vicious and beautiful package, waiting to unload a bargeful of trash.
“Well, Mr. Harriman,” said Izolda, with a coquettish smile, “how can I help you?”
Harriman started off slow and easy. “I’m looking for a little background on Mr. Ozmian and his daughter. You know, just to help paint a picture of them as human beings—after the tragic murder, I mean.”
“Human beings?” Izolda repeated, an edge to her voice.
Oh, this is going to be good.
“Yes.”
A pause. “Well, I wouldn’t exactly characterize them that way.”
“I’m sorry?” Bryce asked, feigning dumb ignorance. “What way?”
“As human beings.”
Bryce pretended to take a note, giving her time to go on.
“I was such a naive little girl, an innocent model from Ukraine, when I met Ozmian.” Her voice had taken on a whiny, self-pitying note. “He swept me off my feet, boy did he ever, with dinners, private jets, five-star hotels, the works.” She gave a snort. Her accent had a pleasing susurrus of Slavic overlain with an ugly Queens drawl.
Harriman knew she hadn’t just been a fashion model: her graphically nude pictures were still circulating on the web and probably would be until the end of time.
“Oh what a fool I was!” she said, her voice trembling.
At that moment the butler arrived carrying two immense martinis on a silver tray, placing one in front of her and one by Harriman. She seized hers like someone dying of thirst and sucked down half a swimming pool’s worth before placing the glass daintily down.