Nevertheless, his brother was going to have an awful lot to explain to his fiancée, Nicole. (Of course, Nicole’s own brother was not innocent either. Eric had been among the men who, separately, had disappeared into some dark corner of the house with the blonde for God knew what sort of carnal satisfactions.) He wondered if their engagement would survive this. He wondered if his own marriage would survive this. He told himself it would because Kristin’s heart was forgiving and big, and they had over a decade and a half together—because, pure and simple, they loved each other—but he had screwed up. All the men had. And, when he thought about the reactions of grown women such as Kristin and Nicole, his mind couldn’t help but wander to Melissa’s response. How in the world was he ever going to explain this to his nine-year-old daughter? He and Kristin had sometimes joked about how politicians described their sexual misconduct to their children. If you were Bill Clinton, how did you justify Monica Lewinsky to Chelsea? What did you say about the cigar and the beret and the little blue dress? If you were Anthony Weiner, how in the world did you explain to your daughter your apparently insatiable need to text pictures of your junk to strange women?
“You’re welcome,” Patricia said. Then: “What do you do for a living? Someone said banker.”
“Investment banker, yes. Franklin McCoy.”
“And your brother?”
“Hotelier.”
She raised an eyebrow good-naturedly at the pretentiousness of the word.
“He’s a manager at the Cravat. The rooms executive.”
“Hip place in Chelsea?”
“That’s the one.”
She folded her arms across her chest and sighed. “You seem like a nice enough guy,” she began. “I’m sure you never expected this level of madness in your living room.”
“Nope. Never did.”
“It really is—pardon my French—a shitstorm. Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“You ever hang with girls like this before?”
Girls like this. He tried to decide what the detective meant. He couldn’t, so he said simply, “No.”
“Don’t go to strip clubs after work?”
“I don’t.”
“Good for you.”
“Thank you. I guess.”
“Lots of men do.”
He nodded. He knew his brother did.
“And—not judging, just asking—no escort service under some secret code in your phone?”
“Again, no.”
She glanced at the spot on the floor where a few hours ago a buffed Russian pimp had bled out. “Where were you when the first dude was stabbed?”
He pointed at the nailhead chest—a polished mahogany—where Kristin often placed a vase with flowers. Resting atop it now were yet more open liquor bottles, dirty glasses, and a bowl of old guacamole that looked like baby poop. Someone had extinguished a cigarette in it. Spencer, he guessed. When he looked a little more closely, he saw there were actually a couple of cigarette butts in it.
“What did you do when you saw the girl had a knife?”
“It happened so fast, there really was nothing to do. One second she was stabbing him, and the next she was in the hallway.”
“She. The blond one?”
“Yes.”
“Then what.”
“As I told your associates at the police station, we heard the gunshots.”
“Two?”
“That’s right. Seriously, I’ve answered all these questions.”
“I appreciate that. We all do,” she said. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You’re doing me personally a solid by answering a few more. Making my life a little easier.” She smiled. “So one of the girls stabbed the first pimp, and the other girl shot the second one.”
“I don’t know that for sure. The blonde left the living room and was with her…friend…in the hallway when we heard the shots. So it could have been either girl, I guess. But I think it was the blonde.”
“Why?”
“She seemed a little more…wild.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I mean, I guess it could have been either.”
“Gotcha. Now I’m not a prosecutor, Mr. Chapman, but two people were murdered in your house. You and your friends and your brother were engaging in sex with girls who—”
Reflexively he cut her off. “I didn’t.”
“I was told you went upstairs with one.”
“But we didn’t have sex.”
“Fine. But this”—and she waved her arm across the carnage as if she were a game show host—“will be all over the Internet. In the newspapers. On TV. Franklin McCoy? It seems to me you have a reputation to protect. And based on whose bodies are in the morgue right now and the statements of some of your guests, there is a chance that the little eye candy you had dancing around your living room were not prostitutes. They were underage sex slaves. Big difference.”
He wasn’t sure whether it was the word underage or the term sex slaves that caused his legs to buckle, but suddenly he had collapsed onto the faux antique divan. It was supposed to look French. Think a king named Louis and some roman numerals. It was from the Ethan Allen showroom in Hartsdale. He remembered the day when he and Kristin had bought it. It was a Sunday, maybe a week after they had moved out to Bronxville. Melissa had been a toddler on a play date. He and Kristin had had a lovely, intimate brunch, their world alive with promise. He closed his eyes, and the day came back to him, even the sun on his face when he’d climbed into the car and they’d started back to their new home. They were young, and he felt impossibly rich for a guy in his early thirties. He would soon be a managing director. Someday, if he stayed on this track, he would be a managing director and head of mergers and acquisitions. He felt—and this was a word too saccharine in his opinion to figure with any regularity in his mind—blessed.
When he finally opened his eyes and looked up, Patricia was handing him a glass of water.
“I thought we might lose you there for a minute,” she said.
He took a sip. “They were in their twenties,” he told her adamantly, though he honestly wasn’t sure. The one in his bedroom? Alexandra? She might have been sixteen or seventeen. It was possible. She was just so…so tiny. He thought of the goose bumps on her thighs. The pink nail polish. “Maybe early twenties,” he added. “But they weren’t children.”