THE DISENCHANTED DIVA
CHAPTER ONE

It was when Rick Ramsey heard about the cat posse at 950 Park Avenue that he began to take seriously the often quoted biblical prediction that the end of the world would happen in the year 2000 (when he would only be fifty-two). To gear up for this spectacular finish to human consciousness, Rick whispered his favorite mantra, "Nam Myho Renge Kyo," which had been responsible for two jogging buddies getting film deals. His actor pals had sworn that chanting as they trimmed down fat was responsible for Hollywood's recent bid for their talents.

It was 6:30 A.M., Monday, too early to think about success in this life. Instead, Rick was thinking about Aunt Amanda who lived in a nine-room penthouse with her collections. Muses by Matisse. Prints by Picasso. Rare editions. Aunt's late husband, Eric Lord, had served in the United States Senate and had dared to marry Amanda when she was thought quite unmanageable in the eyes of the civilized world. Uncle Eric had taught his wife about the pursuit of money and she had reciprocated by disciplining him in the pursuit of living. After Uncle died of a sudden heart attack, Aunt was unable to personally grant his dying wish to scatter his ashes on a favorite mountaintop located in Afghanistan. The site, unfortunately, was in a state of seige in one of those local wars threatening the peace of the universe. Aunt arranged for the CIA to do it. She still had friends in that agency.

During this sad year, Rick visited Mandy (his nickname for Aunt) often. At fifty-eight, she was a rare beauty. There were no wrinkles on her face due to her enormous collection of strange creams culled from tiny villages throughout the Third World. This former radical, whose Sunday brunches had set the international scene ablaze with rumor (generally invented by her), had become reclusive. Now, her only companions were Grooms, an aged butler, and two dozen tiger cats.

The cats had gotten Mandy into legal trouble when several strayed out into the halls of her posh art deco building and somehow found their way into the basement. Now, there were several cat dynasties in residence and Mandy's tenants (she owned the building) were threatening a cat posse. The sober residents shuddered at the thought of hordes of cats copulating in the building's lower depths. The elevator was evidence of this and complaints about its feline scents were causing panic in the New York City Health Department.

When Mandy was served with a summons, she'd phoned Rick about the crisis.

"You'll see," she said when he'd arrived at 6 A.M. as requested, "those cats won't leave."

Rick felt his wife, Rosie Caesare, reminded him of Mandy and wondered, since logic and reason did not work on Rosie, would it work on Mandy? He resolved to try.

"Mandy, this situation has cost enormous amounts of your money and time. We've got to get rid of the cats. Uncle Eric would want it this way."

"Sonny, they want to form a cat posse. Imagine! Lynching cats. I thought they stopped that after Caesar lost the Roman Empire. I thought the world was civilized. It's 1988 after all. Time to stop all this anticat nonsense."

"Let's take a look."

Mandy tugged at her elegant burgundy dressing gown.

"Alright," she agreed.

In the elevator Rick hummed his mantra because the cat stench was overpowering. By the time they reached the basement, Rick was chanting super loud. When the doors opened, he flashed on his flashlight immediately. The sight was dismaying. The basement was stocked with heavy steamer trunks behind which shiny eyes stared out. Rick wished he had a weapon but Mandy insisted cats were nonviolent.

Slowly, they crept in and out, the torch revealing more and more cat existence.

At the far end of the basement, Rick stumbled.

"What the . .

"What is it, Sonny?"

Rick squinted. Punk skinheads had obviously found their way into this cat house because directly ahead were leather belts with bulletheads, shiny sequined masks, several leather whips, leather and silver cuffs for wrists and ankles, and thick heavy chains. This gear was common in SoHo, where Rick lived, but not on upper Park Avenue.

"Mandy, go back upstairs."

"Sonny, I have to free the cats. If I don't, they'll be lynched."

A Wagnerian chorus of meows suddenly filled the basement. A tiger cat with slanted green eyes slinked up to Rick, rubbing his soft fur against Rick's ankles. Rick retreated, having no real fondness for cats. The other cats sensed Rick's dread of felines and grouped. Tails flying high, the group encircled Rick and Mandy. The group got tighter and tighter, until Rick and Mandy could not move without stepping on a cat.

"Poor babies," Mandy whispered. Then suddenly she said, "Sonny, the cats want us to leave."

"How do you know that?"

"Look."

Haughtily, tails high, the cats created a path leading to the elevator. But Rick's flashlight picked up a strange silhouette behind the cats. Quickly, he snapped the light off.

"Mandy, wait for me in the elevator please."

"Alright, Sonny. Don't be long."

He turned on the flashlight again. "Nam Myho Renge Kyo," Rick chanted loudly hoping this powerful chant would erase the silhouette before him.

"Sonny, are you coming?"

In the elevator Mandy peered at Rick closely. "Sonny, you don't look very well." Upstairs, Rick asked Mandy for fresh orange juice, knowing it would take several minutes for her to find Grooms, the aged butler, and several minutes more for Grooms to under-stand this request. When she disappeared into the maze of rooms, Rick went into the study and dialed the East Fifth Street Police Station.

"Lieutenant Kushel, please."

"Who's this?"

"He knows me."

"What's your name, buddy."

"Rick Ramsey."

"Oh, Rick Ramsey." The cop laughed.

"Yeah, Rick Ramsey. Could I have Lieutenant Kushel, please," Rick asked again.

"You can have anything you want, buddy," the cop said. "Didn't you make a bundle on the Mafia murder?"

Before Rick could answer, he was switched to another extension.

"This is Ryan, find any severed hands lately?"

"Is Lieutenant Kushel there?"

"How about heads? Have you found any heads lying about SoHo?"

"No. But I just found a girl's body. And she's d-e-a-d."

"You kidding?"

"Nope."

Ryan swore.

"Hey, Kushel, that guy, Ramsey, is on the phone. Yeah, the one who made all that cash on the severed hands book. Yeah. Well, now he says he's found a girl's body. What? I don't know whether she has hands or not. You wanna pick up the phone?"

Kushel's voice sounded grim.

"Ramsey. What is this about?"

"Lieutenant Kushel. I found a dead body in the basement of my aunt's house. It's a girl. She's about seventeen."

"What's the address?"

"Nine-fifty Park Avenue.

"What are you doing up there? I thought you never left SoHo?"

"My aunt lives up here. In the penthouse."

"Is your crazy wife with you?"

"Nope. She's on the movie set."

"That damned movie is driving us nuts. Those guys are in and out of here all the time, interfering with business. They say they got to get authentic stuff. Imagine! The Mayor loves the movies so we don't get paid extra for being nice to those California types."

"Too bad."

"So, who's this body?"

"Don't know."

"What's it look like?" Kushel paused. "You said it has hands. Does it have feet?"

"I think so."

"What do you mean, you think so? Don't you know?"

"Well, it looks pretty grim. I mean, the girl is badly mutilated."

"Mutilated. What do you mean?"

"She has marks all over her body from beatings or some-thing like that."

Rick felt queasy.

"Yeah, what else?" the detective asked without a pause.

"They took her breasts."

"Would you repeat that?"

"She has no breasts."

"No what?" he roared into the phone.

"Her breasts are missing."

"Christ, Ramsey. Can't you ever find a whole body? First it was those severed hands. Now it's severed breasts. What are you going to call this book, The Severed Breasts? You're going to make more money and your father-in-law, that crazy Italian dude, is going to bug me to death. Don't touch anything. I'll send a car up right away."

Rick placed the phone back on the receiver when Mandy appeared, carrying a glass of juice.

"Here, Sonny. Freshly squeezed."

"I've got to do a run.

"But Sonny, shouldn't we call the ASPCA about whatever you saw in the basement that upset you so. It was a cat, wasn't it? Was it a dead cat?"

"Mandy, darling, the police are going to be here soon and I'm going for a run. But I'll be back."

"But Sonny . . . what's wrong?"

"I've got to go, Mandy. A Lieutenant Kushel should be with the police."

"Kushel. What kind of a name is that?"

"He's Lithuanian and Rosie's father hates him."

"Achoooo," Mandy sneezed. "What does that Italian have to do with this?"

"Don't think of Mario. You know what Italians do to your allergies."

"Achooo . . . Achooo . . . Achooo," she sneezed.

"I guess I should warn you.

"Warn me about what? Achooo."

"I found the body of a young girl in the basement."

"Oh, Sonny. How horrid of you."

"More horrid for the poor girl."

"Is there anything we can do for her?"

"I'm afraid she's dead, darling."

"Sonny," she stuttered. "Does she have her hands?"

Hands. Hands. Hands. Rick thought he was going to flip. Those severed hands would not leave his consciousness, much as he chanted. His sweet wife was right now doing rewrites on the film based on The Severed Hands that they co-wrote. And even before the film, entitled SoHo Vice (Hollywood always changed book titles) premiered, he'd found a new body. And this time, the body had no breasts.

"Yes," he answered his aunt's question. "She has both hands. You're not to worry. Lieutenant Kushel will take care of everything when he gets here."

He jogged to the door.

"Where are you going, Sonny?"

"Into another consciousness," he answered.

"I hear it's lovely there! Have a wonderful time," she called as she headed into the living room.

Amanda thought she might be going mad. Policemen in her penthouse? Horrors. The last time she'd spoken to a policeman was during the Paris Riots and only because she'd been arrested. After that time, she'd been able to ignore most of the world's problems, basing her life on the idea of organic symmetry. If events fell into place with the patterned precision of a morality play, then why should she argue with fate and try to change anything.

But why a murder now? And the murder of a poor child?

She sat on the dark tea-rose chaise longue she'd purchased from a Morrocan bordello. Amanda remembered its sensuous history had kept Eric hopping. Smiling, she touched the silk velvet and felt warmed by the memories of happier times.

Life was confusing. Though she was bonded to Eric for most of her adult life, she didn't understand men at all. After she'd fled to Europe and begun her flamboyant rebellion against the strictures of her puritan girlhood, she'd met Eric. Then, he was an oppressive member of the U.S. Senate who told her that all women were created to be wives and that he'd like to set up housekeeping on Park Avenue with her. At first, she refused, but Eric's dark eyes bore right through her wild heart and she submitted. After she began living full-time with a man for the first time in her life, when friends asked her profession, she preferred to say courtesan rather than mannequin.

She'd worked as an aristocratic mannequin in Paris when they met. Her reputation was that she was a gay girl (in those days the word meant fun-loving person), who added an elegance to the social landscape wherever she was. And she was everywhere. London. Paris. Rome. Eric's love resulted in Amanda's dividing her time. Half of her life was spent hidden away with him on Park Avenue; the other half circling the globe.

She was a pioneer of the avant-garde and most of what she and her pals occupied their time with shocked prudish Americans like Eric Lord. They visited nudist colonies in Sweden, caught all the fashion openings in Paris, sat around in Scotland trying to decipher the question of mortality, and attended every party given in Monte Carlo, no matter what season. She seemed most at home in all-night clubs, but would say to Eric that what she really wanted out of life was a nice home. Sanity strained, she would retreat back to their Park Avenue family hearth as a self-renewal movement. Finally, she agreed to marry him. en her wedding day she burst into passionate reveries about the fact that living with a man was a burden. She never changed her mind about that. As time went by, her husband instilled a sense of duty in Amanda which changed all her aristocratic habits. In protest, she ran away from him over two dozen times but she always returned.

"Madame," Grooms's voice broke into her slumbering memories, "the police are here."

Before Amanda stood two young policemen. She viewed their overburdened, clumsy uniforms and thought she could probably design something sensational for the New York City policemen to wear.

"Mrs. Lord," the red-haired, freckled-faced one said to her, "could you tell us what happened?"

"Are you Kushel?" she asked.

"Naw. The detectives will be here later. We got a radio call. Now, could you tell us what happened?"

She glanced at his partner. Of darker skin, his swaggering hips told Amanda he was probably Jamaican.

"I'll tell you what happened, young man," she began, "we were looking for cats. Actually, we were going to round them up to save them from the cat posse when . . ."

"The what?" the dark-skinned policeman interrupted her.

"Don't interrupt me, please," she snapped at him. Then she waved Grooms away to bring coffee immediately. "You see, Sonny, my nephew, was with me. Sonny came to help me with the cats."

"Does this Sonny have a name?" the freckled-face asked.

"Rick Ramsey. Well, you see, we were going through the basement . . ."

"The man who found the handless bodies in the Mafia rooftop murders last year?"

Amanda sneezed, for though the police hadn't mentioned Rosie's name, Amanda's glands reacted as if they had.

"Yes," she said finally. "I believe Rick did discover the Italian hands. Achooo."

"Madame," Grooms added, struggling with the breakfast tray, "may I add that Mr. Rick also discovered the murderer in that caper."

"And wrote a book and got rich," the Jamaican added.

"He was always rich," Amanda corrected.

"Smart guy. Does he go around discovering bodies as a rule?"

"I think this is the first body Sonny has discovered," Amanda insisted. "After all, hands aren't bodies, are they?"