A SWELL STYLE OF MURDER
CHAPTER ONE

Rick Ramsey was jogging on West Broadway, the Fifth Avenue of SoHo, which gave a wide berth to tourists, taxis, and other appendages of success. But on this day there was not enough room for Rick, so he turned right on Prince Street and ran until he reached Mercer, a narrow back street fine to jog on. Hesitantly, he checked the pavement. Though the street offered more privacy, the pavement was a mess. For years, large trailer trucks had squeezed into the narrow space to deliver goods to the factories located there. 

Now the street was in the midst of a real-estate boom. Rick slowed down, cursing the pot holes and carefully sidestepping the bricks that had fallen from a co-op development, which covered practically the entire block. The sight of it made Rick sad. In 1964, when his family moved to SoHo, the hum of factory machines had driven them wild. They couldn't talk to one another until 4:30 P.M., when the factory day ended officially. Whenever he was in a nostalgic mood, those days seemed fun to Rick. But when someone else said, "Those were the days," Rick would shake his head and mutter, "Uh-uh, like it better now, no noise," just to be difficult. His wife, Rosie, said he liked being a minority of one.

Most artists hated SoHo as it was now and fought hard to keep the past alive. They'd taken to the streets, painting angry signs on buildings like the Mercer Street Development, where thirty artists had been tossed out on the street to make room for a wealthy record producer. On one side of the building, Rick spotted a huge sign from that struggle. It was still visible, probably to remain so until the entire facade was sprayed. Nothing else could remove it, for rumor was that the sign was painted in blood. SOHO IS FOR ART AND NOT GREED, it read. It sounded to Rick like a late Sixties slogan, a period he had nicely avoided by playing football. Remembering the roar of his fans, Rick ran swiftly, like a deer, marking a pace not sensible for this SoHo street. He tripped and fell, face first, landing on the brick pavement, his nose wedged into a pile of bricks. When he opened his eyes, he thought he saw a hand. It was bloody and badly mangled. Rick let out a screech and shut his eyes. Then he opened his eyes and looked again. Yes, it was definitely a hand. A woman's hand. He knew that for sure because the long fingernails were manicured and painted blood red, matching the thick blood that was smeared from its mangled wrist. Four of the five fingers were covered with real jewels. Rick thought logically: This is not a robbery. Chilled, he realized that the hand must belong to someone who was dead. His body shuddered. He burst into a strange sweat. He'd bruised his lips on the bricks and a trickle of blood escaped from the cut, warming his chin. If I'm bleeding, then I'm alive, he thought, so he put his hands firmly on the concrete and pushed upwards. Miraculously, his body followed and he was able to rise to his knees. Unfortunately, he stole another look at the hand, causing his knees to buckle, leaving him flat on the concrete again. He tried to rise, but couldn't. Nothing was functioning. His well-trained body was failing him in a crisis. Rick couldn't understand that. He'd been trained since the age of ten to be a great athlete, which he was.

It was his father's idea. Major Ramsey had been a disciplined career soldier. When he'd retired from the U. S. Army, he became a sculptor, dragging Mrs. Ramsey from their immaculate house in Connecticut to a dirty industrial loft in SoHo to live illegally. The major grew a long beard and began sculpting larger-than-life statues out of old hardware. Because he believed in strong physiques, the major sent Rick to the Suki Hota Karate School. At age fifteen, Rick could lick any schoolboy. But Suki had also taught him Oriental philosophy. "It is the strength of the heart, not the muscles, that finally endures," he would often mutter while smoking an opium pipe. Rick took his master's word to heart and never fought with the Italian kids who called him Mophead because his hair was long. Instead, he ignored them, which made them furious. Often he'd arrive home with bruises and the major would go nuts. The beatings continued until he was sixteen, when he met fourteen-year-old Rosie Caesare. After that, the Italian boys were polite because Mario Caesare said they had to be. Rosie Caesare was now his wife.

Rick wished Mario was here on Mercer Street so he could tell Rick what to do. Rick felt sick. "No, I won't puke," he muttered. But he always felt queasy when watching a Steve McQueen film and now he was facing a dead hand. Suddenly, Rick screamed. Several passers-by looked his way and shrugged their shoulders, knowing that in SoHo, anything was possible. Few took the trouble to wonder why Rick was lying face down in the street, unable to move. As he lay there, he realized that the hand must have fallen from the roof. Maybe the body was still up there. Rick reached toward the hand and pushed it closer to him. It had been severed neatly. A professional job. Rick quickly pushed it back under the bricks, turned over, and vomited.

"You okay, fella?"

A trucker dressed in overalls was looking down at him Rick did not want to attract too much attention at this moment.

"Too much jogging," he said, forcing a laugh.

"A way to go," the man said. He jogged on down the street and Rick realized he was not a trucker, but an artist in overalls. Maybe the hand belonged to an artist. Someone who wanted to make a point about art. Rick stole another look. blood had clotted. No, this was not a fake dead hand. It real. What should he do? He knew what Rosie would say. "Get the hell out of there fast!" So he did.

He jogged past the Alright Gallery, where minimalist art making its last stand. Then he turned at the Fortunato Antique House, which was reintroducing the Marie Antoinette look, and ran quickly past the Sin Club, a new discotheque. Though it was early afternoon, strange types were already congregating on the long lifeline the Sin Club seemed to attract. He turned south, then stopped, slightly confused. A crowd of tourists was headed his way with a leader holding a horn. Rick resumed in a northern direction, heading for Houston and Broadway, where home was. He jogged slowly. Should he? Shouldn't he? Should he tell the police? Should he right into the station in his jogging suit and say, "Look, , I found a dead hand?" Or should he return and check the d again? Was it really there? Why had he left the hand there anyhow? Shouldn't he have done something? He wasn't a guilty type. His police record was clean except for the two traffic accidents he'd had after his parents were killed in that plane crash. But he'd been in shock that day.

No, he'd done nothing. Rosie was probably right about His trust fund had ruined him. He lived in a strange world of his own making. Jogging to the health club every day. Loving his wife. That was his own sweet world. What did he have to do with a dead hand? No, he'd push it right out is mind.

When he reached the pink building he called home, Rick sighed. Inside, the elevator car was waiting. He stepped into car, put his key into the lock, and pressed the button. It the kind of elevator where a finger had to be kept on the button to direct the car. But Rick's hands kept slipping off from too much sweat, and the car stopped and started abruptly several times. Finally, it reached the third floor and quickly unlocked the loft door, which swung open right the center of the loft. Rosie was standing there, dressed in a conservative skirt and blouse outfit. It was black, which meant they had company and it was family.

"Mom's here," Rosie said, quickly touching her security symbol, a red necklace that she'd spun about her neck several times. "And Aunt Irene's here, too."

Irene Caesare Campton, Rosie's aunt, was their landlady. She was a formidable woman. While Celia, Rosie's mother, was petite, Irene was chubby. Irene believed that the larger a woman's fortune was, the larger she should be. Irene was rich. She'd invested her late husband's profits from a small candy store into SoHo real estate. Now she was bleeding the artistic community and they hated her for it. Aunt Irene simply had no heart, claiming that living in Southampton had changed her perspective on life. Probably retired admiral Charlie Campton, her new husband, who had agreed to marry Irene and let her support him in her best manner, had something to do with her greed.

"Ricky, baby, how are you?"

Aunt Irene turned a fat cheek to Rick and he dutifully kissed her, retching from the taste of her thick rouge. Then he politely turned to his mother-in-law and bent to kiss her. "Hi, Mom," he said. Celia watched nervously as Rick jogged down to the kitchen area. The loft was large and open, and Celia could see all his moves from where she was sitting.

To the right of the elevator was a greenhouse where Rosie had planted strange herbs and plants, giving the loft a beautiful countrified air. In front of the elevator was a large space for sitting and talking. Rosie had placed three Victorian couches there, all velvet, because they reminded her of Bloomsbury. She'd mixed her favorite literary era, Bloomsbury, with her favorite film, Casablanca, by mixing the couches with cane-backed chairs. In the center of the potpourri was a round oak table cut from a large tree on the Ramsey property in Maine. On it were stacks of art books and parlor games. Off to the side was a large white grand piano the dealer had sworn once belonged to Lorenz Hart, Rosie's favorite lyricist. "A pure poet," she rhapsodized whenever she played his records. Rosie played the piano, but only when she was very happy. She'd taken lessons weekly because Mario had insisted on it, and had learned to love both Verdi and Lorenz Hart. On a wall next to the piano was a large poster of the jacket of Rosie's last book, Sweet Dreamdust.

Past the center space was a large kitchen area where an art deco half-moon counter with nine bar stools dominated, Rosie's idea of intimacy. To the rear was a large area with a dining table, which seated a dozen people. Rosie's family dined there whenever they came over, but the space wasn't adequate. There were always more Caesares than any seating plan could handle. They just kept arriving.

The dining area was very Italian. Reproductions of the Sistine Chapel were the wall motif. On the ceiling was a huge chandelier reputed to be from the Vatican itself. Rick knew the dealer had lied because he discovered a Chinese symbol on its inside. But he never told Rosie. Bordering the dining area were wide glass closets, specially built to display the various china sets that had been their wedding gifts. Though the Caesares had barely forgiven Rick for having married Sharon Neiman first, they could ignore that marriage because it hadn't been Catholic. When Rosie and Rick were dutifully married by Father Castora, crates of china and glassware arrived in their SoHo loft from the nine sisters and brothers who were the Caesare mainstream, and the various cousins, in-laws, nieces, and nephews who were secondary family. When it was all over, Rosie and Rick found they owned dinner service for one hundred people. Not knowing what to do with it, they'd hired a glass sculptor to design wall-to-wall cabinets to display china and glassware in a museum-like setting across one long wall.

At the other end of the loft was their bedroom. The door was shut tightly to deter any visitors.

Rick returned from the kitchen area, carrying a Coke for Rosie. He gave it to her and she smiled gratefully.

"What's the matter?" his mother-in-law said. She had small, intense, birdlike eyes which saw everything. Rick felt as if he were always being examined under a microscope when Celia was looking at him. He tried to be casual.

"Nothing, Mom."

"Ricky, I know you since you were young." She sat erect, pointing her finger at him. "Something's wrong. What's my daughter done to you now?"

Rosie shot her mother a fierce, angry look. These two did not get along.

"Nope, nothing." Rick hoped to avoid a family fight. He wouldn't be able to handle it, not today.

"You happy?" Aunt Irene chimed in. The women gave each other private signals. Like harpies, they began to encroach on Rick's private life.

"I'm happy. I love Rosie. Everything is fine." He tried to cover all bases, knowing Italians.

"So, why don't you have a baby?" Aunt Irene asked.

Rosie began playing with her thick red necklace and drinking Coke simultaneously. Rick knew he'd better put an end to this conversation fast or trouble was ahead.

"Uh. . ." he began.

"Mind your own business," Rosie declared contemptously. She'd established her avant-garde identity years ago when she'd left her family home to live in sin with Rick and when she'd begun publishing novels with lots of four-letter words. But now that she was properly married, the women in her family constantly forgot that she was an independent woman. Instead, marriage had made her, again, an Italian-American daughter who could be questioned at whim. But Rosie kept fighting them.

Rick left the women and went back into the kitchen area, where he took a jam glass and poured straight vodka into it.

"Rick? What are you doing?"

His attentive mother-in-law jumped up, ran to one of the glass cabinets, took out a crystal stemware glass, and poured the vodka into it.

"Here," she said, "use this."

"My hands are sweaty. I might drop it."

"No, you won't," she smiled, commanding him.

Trembling badly, Rick gulped the vodka down. He'd begun thinking about the hand again and the vodka might help. Celia eyed him suspiciously, then shrugged her shoulders and went back to the other women. Rosie wore a stubborn look on her face, so Celia began on Irene.

"They did a good job," she said proudly, gesturing around the loft. Though they'd been here many times before, each time Irene and Celia would mention every new thing that the happy couple had added to the menagerie.

"I could have gotten two hundred thou for this," Aunt Irene exclaimed, her chubby fingers nuzzling the chocolate-covered cherries she'd brought. Irene had finished most of the box, her appetizer before a late lunch. "But your daughter was always my favorite niece," she continued.

Rosie tightened her hold on the red beads, so Rick sat next to her and took her hand. They'd heard this story many times. Aunt Irene had sold the loft to them for fifty thousand dollars, to be paid off in ten years with no interest attached to the deal. It had been generous and she never let them forget it. Rick squeezed Rosie's hand.

"I'm waiting though," Aunt Irene continued. She finished the last of the chocolates, threw the box aside, reached into her genuine lizard bag, and brought forth a linen handkerchief, wiping all remnants of chocolate from her chubby fingers. Then she delicately wiped the tips of her cherub lips. As she moved, her silk dress hiked up and her knees became visible, revealing dimples, which she patted with great pleasure.

"I'm waiting for that little baby girl who's going to be my godchild and carry my name," she announced, looking defiantly at Celia, knowing it was common custom to name the first daughter after grandmothers, not great-aunts.

Rosie made a strange noise and Celia, knowing her daughter well, decided to end the conversation with a truce.

"We'll see," Celia said to Irene. "But now, we've got to go."

Irene nodded. She picked up the lizard bag, which matched the tiny hat perched high upon her chubby head. Though it was early afternoon, Irene always dressed as if she were going to a cocktail party in 1946. Seemingly stuck in that era, she struggled up on her high platform heels, smoothed down her silk dress, and toddled toward the happy couple, looking as much like Joan Crawford as she could.

Rick and Rosie immediately rose to attention.

"Ricky," Irene said benignly. "Pull yourself together."

She kissed him quickly. When she turned to Rosie, her niece stared, challenging, but that did not deter Irene.

"Rosie, get pregnant quick."

Rosie pulled away from Irene's moist kisses, but her aunt pretended not to notice. Her edicts uttered, she rang the elevator bell. Behind her, Celia gestured to the couple not to mind Aunt Irene and blew them a kiss. As she stood alongside the plumper Irene, Celia looked tres chic, being appropriately thin, and dressed in soft gray Chanel-type suits with low Gucci pumps and bag, a contrast to Irene's glitter style.

When the elevator car arrived, it was operated by Max, the Abstract Expressionist painter who lived on the floor above. He hated Irene. When she stared at his unclean trousers, he smirked.

"Max? Are you going down?" Rick asked timidly, knowing that all the neighbors despised their landlady, Irene.

"Sure."

"Would you take along my guests?"

"Nope."

Celia smiled. "How are you, Max? How's your wife?" She gave him a maternal smile that would melt a rhinoceros. Max melted.

"Come on, then."

Irene waddled into the car with Celia following. After they disappeared, Rick locked the door with the double bolt. Then he slumped down on the couch and screamed.

"Jesus Christ!!"

Rosie tore all her clothes off at once, standing finally in a hot-red bikini bra and matching panties. Rick eyed her.

"Baby, let's . . ." he muttered.

"Not now. I've got an appointment."

She raced over to the closet, opened the sliding doors, reached in, and began throwing clothes all over the place.

"Ugh," she said. "I've got to get some new duds."

"Baby . . ." he began again.

"I don't know why I do it. Those black clothes."

"You do it because she won't charge us interest if we keep her happy."

She nodded. "Good reason.

He grabbed her.

"Not now, Ricky."

"Rosie . .

"Hey, what's wrong? You're trembling." She stopped scampering about.

"I just saw ..." He couldn't say it.

"Hmmmmm?" Her eyes looked confused.

"A hand. I found a dead hand.

"A dead hand?"

"Yes, a dead hand."

Puzzled, she felt his head quickly. Then she took his glass and smelled it.

"Rick? Have you been doing drugs again? I thought that was over when you left Sharon."

"On Mercer Street. It was a woman's hand. And it had lots of rings on it."

"You're not serious."

"Yes, I am. Do you think I'd make up something like this?"

She pursed her lips. "No."

"I don't know what to do."

"Don't do anything, for heaven's sake."

Rick looked at her. At this moment, he could happily strangle his beloved. Sometimes she took silly things very seriously. And sometimes, she took serious things too lightly. Like now. She was trying to act macho, the way her father had taught her. Mario had informed Rick on the eve of his wedding to Rosie that he'd brought up his daughter to be courageous. "Like a man," he'd explained. "She's been taught to fend for herself." Rick had the feeling that Mario had decided to teach Rosie to act like a man after he'd realized that she was hopelessly in love with Rick. "It's not that you're not a nice kid, Ricky," his father-in-law often said, patting his stomach after a Sunday feast that included pasta, meat, mushrooms, brussel sprouts, salad, and lots of red wine. "It's simply that you weren't brought up to fight life. We Italians fight life from the day we are born. We know that life has to be defeated. That's why we are sexy and crazy." He paused a minute, his cheeks glowing. "We're really very simple." Then he pinched his wife and winked at her, making it obvious to all present that he found Celia sexual at all times. Rosie never had to wonder whether her parents were making it in the bedroom. They were. Rick thought that gave her an advantage over the rest of the world, all of whom, like himself, wondered how Mother received Father in bed. His father was military. Did he give commands? His mother never referred to sex and Rick wondered whether she knew about it. Often he thought about what his late parents would say about his decision to spend his life with an Italian-American Princess.

Rick jogged to the kitchen area, his running suit baggy from the pounds he'd lost. His Nikes squeaked on the polished floor as he stopped and searched the shelves for a nosh. Salted crackers? Did he want a heart attack? Health-store potato chips with no salt, flour, and no potatoes were his choice. He bit into one and coughed it up immediately. Health food tasted grim, but the chips were only ten calories each. Rick bit into another, opened the frig, poured apple juice into his mouth from the container's opening. Rosie wouldn't like that. She'd say it proved he was still living with his first wife.

Sometimes Rick would forget that he wasn't, but not when Rosie was in the room. Just the sight of Rosie in her orangy nightie turned him into a wild man. Under it, her nipples would shine through the silk. Her friendly, wide smile would reflect her dedicated camaraderie to the rest of the human race. Her green eyes would glow, especially in the dark when he pleased her in bed. At those times, she would forget about her firm decision that life must be endured with heroic stoicism. She believed that Freud was right when he wrote that life was all work and genital love. Rosie's own edict was that men and women were really brothers and sisters under the skin, not suited to mate, and that there was no point in expecting any kind of commitment from anyone. Whenever she sounded out her theories, Rick would feel a gnawing in his groin, an impossible desire filling his heart.

He would feel heartsick.

The problem was that Rosie wasn't heartsick. Tennessee Williams said it best in one of his plays: "You can't get heartsick, if you have no heart." Rosie claimed she'd lost hers in the eight years they'd been separated, while Rick was married to Sharon. Where a heart had firmly been lodged in her chest, somewhere between her magnificent Italian breasts, a replacement computer now existed. This computer balanced out what was good and what was bad, what was positive and what was not, how to deal with troubles, and most of all, how to be a success in this world of new women like Rosie, who somehow had forgotten all about romance and how to deal with new men like Rick, who were pushovers for it.

It was that kind of time. Everything had changed and there were no rules any longer. When Rick whispered to Rosie, "Let's make a baby," her gorgeous eyes would stare at him as she murmured, "Let's not." Part of Rick wanted to resist her charms, to hold out and state, "Stop taking that damn pill that makes most women crazy or I won't make love to you." But the other part, the bear that John Irving was always telling Rick about, took Rosie whenever and wherever he could. His wife was always ready. Every part of her would turn wet and soft. Her lips would part into a great sea of hunger. Then she'd part her legs with that same urgency, which made Rick immediately respond.

Rosie did not like foreplay. Whenever Rick tried to obey the latest women 5 sex manuals and make love to her slowly, she'd whisper, "No, too long. I want it right now. And fast, please." Rick forgot all the stuff about how to make love to the new woman and reverted back to Henry Miller, whispering "Do it!" as Rosie orgasmed loudly. Her favorite operas were by Verdi and, like this genius, Rosie did everything in great Italian chorus. Sometimes Rick did not appreciate this tendency, especially when lectured about the new marriage, the new couple, and the new woman. But in bed, her chorus fueled his fantasies. After making love to Rosie, Rick would sit patiently through one of her lectures, all of which he'd already memorized for his next life as a woman. And whenever he had too much, guilt kept him her prisoner.

He tried reality now.

"Rosie," he said, when he joined her on the couch, "you don't seem to understand. Down on Mercer Street, there is a woman's hand. A woman who used to be alive."

She jumped up from the couch and began pacing.

Exasperated, he got up from the couch and walked over to one of the china closets, opened the door, then fiddled under a gravy boat for his stash. The blue Gauloise container was slightly smashed, but Rick managed to retrieve one whole cigarette. He put it between his parched lips, went back into the kitchen, turned on the gas range, and bent his head, managing to singe his hair in the process. While patting the burnt hair, he quickly puffed on the cigarette, the smell of stale French tobacco filling the air. When he turned around, his wife was livid.

"Stop that," she commanded, hands on her lovely hips.

"It was a hand, Rosie. Try to get that word processor in your head to work. A real hand. You're for women's rights. How about women's hands?"

"Put that damn thing out." She stamped her adorable foot. But he puffed defiantly.

"We've got to go back there and get that hand," he said, narrowing his lips like Bogie. But he began coughing and the inside of his mouth felt like it had received several electric shocks by a KGB agent in a darkened cell. "No, no," he screamed. "I'll talk. You don't have to do that. I'm afraid of the dark. I'll tell you everything you want to know."

"You're really going nuts," Rosie commented.

Rick tried to answer, but his mouth refused to form words. He had a difficult time for a minute. She took advantage of his silence, pacing up and down in front of him, her arms crossed over her adorable bra. Whenever she swung about, Rick reacted to the lilting movement of her trim buttocks. What a bear he was. His erection grew. John Irving was right. Men are animals. Suddenly, he was struck with a sudden sharp pain and his vision shimmered with a variety of lightning bolts. Their intensity dazzled him and Rick knew he was hallucinating. He put the Gauloise out into a potted plant, one of Rosie's babies.

"Don't you dare, you ugly person. Take that thing and flush it down the toilet."

Rick couldn't move. Instead, he sat down on the sofa, feeling decadent and depressed. It was simply one of those days. He'd found a dead hand and he'd broken his two-year fast on smoking. He'd kept the Galouise in the gravy boat for an emergency~ He knew Rosie would think him a weakling for that. Rosie didn't understand weakness.

She sat next to him and put her arms around him.

"Honey, honey, honey," she murmured and Rick remembered when he used the same technique on Sharon. What was Rosie lying about, he wondered.

"Look, darling. This is New York City. Things like this happen all the time."

"You're taking this too calmly. Don't you understand the hand was dead?"

She gave him a Mona Lisa look.

"Dearest, darling, Ricky, that's why I love you. You're a softie. With all those strong muscles, you collapse at the sight of a hand."

"You'd collapse too, if you saw it. It was all bloody and . . ." Suddenly, the vision of the hand became real again. "Rosie, get a . . ." He tried to quell the upchuck that kept insisting it move from the pit of his stomach to his mouth. He didn't want to vomit on their new used Persian rug, but then he had no strength and his best intentions faded. Suddenly, breakfast was on the rug and he discovered that wheat germ did not mix well with Persian red.

"Oh, you poor baby," she said, kissing him.

Then she disappeared. Without her, he began shaking, but she came to his rescue, carrying a cold towel.

"Here, darling." She held it to his head.

He curled up, then put his head on her lap, where he felt safe. He never wanted to move from this place. He could feel the distant beat of her vagina, softly humming through her lovely panties. The feeling comforted him. Rosie tenderly soothed his forehead, cleaning his face with the towel. He was ready to die now. He was happy.

"We've got to go back and look for it." He remembered his duty too soon.

"No, we don't," she said.

"Rosie. Poor hand. What did it do to be cut off?"

"Rick. You don't want to get mixed up with this."

"With what?"

"With those kind of people."

"With what kind?"

Slowly, she reached for the New York Post, which Aunt Irene had left next to the empty box of chocolates.

"We were talking about it when you walked in."

"About what?"

"Read the headlines."

He picked up the paper and saw that, as usual, the Post had bold-type headlines announcing something sensational. He read: TWO BODIES FOUND ON SOHO ROOFTOP. The smaller type told him that the poor victims, a man and a woman, were found dead, minus their right hands. Rick put the paper down and looked at Rosie.

"So," she said grimly, "you've found one of the hands. I wonder," she added guilelessly, "where the other one is."