Hide and Seek Page 7

  The press was clever; they knew the best places to hide in wait at the courthouse. They trapped us on the way in, then they pounced.

  There was the usual barrage of insensitive questions. Microphones thrust at me—did they want me to sing? TV cameras staring with their large, unblinking eyes.

  A woman reporter with frazzled blond hair leaned in close over the restraining ropes at the side door. “Maggie! Over here, Maggie. Please?” she pleaded.

  My head rose involuntarily, my eyes went to hers.

  “What about Patrick?” she suddenly asked, a TV eye mercilessly staring behind her. “Did you murder him too? Did you, Maggie?”

  I have never spit at a human being. I don't spit. Ever … but that morning I spat at that reporter. I don't know what possessed me.

  The TV camera caught it—the incident, the shot, was on every TV news program, played over and over again. An uncontrollable temper. The real Maggie Bradford?

  What about Patrick?

  Did you murder a third man, Maggie?

  Is anybody going to be surprised if you did?

  CHAPTER 25

  “ACCOUNTANTS DON'T KNOW shit. So why in hell do we pay them a cent? Now there's some cost savings I could live with!”

  Thus spoke Patrick O'Malley, standing in the bathroom of the unfurnished Tower Suite of his unfinished, unnamed, unopened hotel on Sixty-fifth Street and Park Avenue.

  He was glaring at his accountant, his C.F.O., Maurice Freund. Freund had heard his boss's opinion of accountants before. “But we do know costs,” he said, unruffled, “and you're costing yourself an unnecessary fortune.”

  “Pears soap is necessary,” O'Malley raged. “Porthault towels are necessary. A Jacuzzi in the Tower Suite bathroom is essential.”

  Freund sighed and shrugged. “The good news is that every room is booked. The bad news is that we're losing money on every booking.”

  “We'll refigure the damn rates. When you promise the best you deliver the best, and this hotel will be the best, goddamnit, or that soap goes right up your ass.”

  “As long as it's Pears,” Freund said, grinning.

  O'Malley grunted. “The construction's on schedule?”

  “Yup. Their schedule. Eight months late at an overrun of twenty percent.”

  “That's still less than you estimated originally?”

  “Ten percent less.”

  “Then take the soap and the towels from that ten percent.”

  “No way.” Freund took O'Malley's arm and steered him out of the suite toward the makeshift elevator. “Knowing you, there'll be overruns everywhere. The rates go up.”

  If O'Malley had an opinion, he didn't express it. Rather, he said, “I know what to name the hotel.”

  Good news, Freund thought. And about time. “What?”

  “I want to call it The Cornelia.”

  “The Cornelia. Splendid!” Freund knew his boss was watching his reaction closely, but his pleasure was genuine, his smile sincere. “That's good. The perfect choice, Patrick.”

  “I don't believe a world-class hotel's ever been named after a woman.” O'Malley sounded almost shy.

  “Then it's a unique name for a unique hotel. Besides, the time is right.”

  “She was a unique woman,” O'Malley said. “That's for certain. We can finally agree on something, Maurice.”

  Freund took his hand and gravely shook it. The accountant actually seemed to have felt something. “The hotel's her testimonial. Your tribute to the one woman you loved.”

  CHAPTER 26

  FOR TWENTY YEARS, Cornelia and Patrick O'Malley were one of New York's most courted and undeniably popular couples. Seeming opposites—he, the gruff, self-made entrepreneur who had parlayed a string of motels into a grand hotel chain in the United States, Europe, and Asia; she, the society beauty who outraged her family, the Whitings, by falling in love with, and then marrying, a Catholic who had not gone to Princeton—they were actually perfectly matched. Cornelia's cool tempered his heat; Patrick's passion aroused her own; and in the richest of rich skies in which they orbited like moons, no scandal was ever attached to them. Despite innumerable temptations, he remained faithful to her, and his support gave her strength. Beneath her regal demeanor she let herself grow soft and trusting—only for him, forever for him.

  Until forever was cut short by a glioblastoma that took her life in eighteen months, her spirit long before that, and he was left, at age fifty-four, with nothing except wealth, their rebellious son, Peter, and the tremendous sympathy of friends.

  Now he was building his most magnificent hotel around the shell of an antique mansion, much as Helmsley had done with the Palace. At completion, there would be four hundred rooms, including seventy suites, some with original marble from Witherspoon House. Guests would have a pick of styles: Renaissance Italian; eighteenth-century French; ultramodern American.

  And in every room in The Cornelia—O'Malley wondered why he had not settled on the name sooner as he envisioned the hotel—there would be Pears soap and Porthault towels. It was going to be a truly Grand Hotel, the way they used to build them in the best of times, before the invention of accountants.

  He spent the entire day at the hotel, meeting with Freund in the morning, personally directing the centimeter-by-centimeter polishing of the marble columns in the lobby, checking the seating and lighting in the Gold Bar, and then, at noon, meeting with the chief architect, Michael Hart.

  Their conversation lasted through lunch. Hart went through several crucial items, most important, the gilding of the Renaissance ornamentation of the main lobby and the filigree above the windows at the entrance on Lexington.

  Alone once more, O'Malley moved into the kitchen, at last hearing the sweetly satisfying racket of hammering and drilling—the stainless steel stoves, warming ovens, and counters were finally going in after a fourteen-week wait for materials. There were already enough copper pots, O'Malley noted with pleasure, to open the largest supply store in Manhattan.

  At seven-thirty, O'Malley found himself once again passing beneath the lobby's antique clock, a timepiece that had once adorned the Winter Palace of Catherine the Great.

  At the center of the hotel atrium in the rear of the lobby, an original Bernini fountain, imported from Rome, had been restored to its matchless splendor. That afternoon, plumbing had finally been completed by Timothy Sullivan of the Bronx Local 41, who called O'Malley to announce that all systems were go.

  “All ready for lift-off,” O'Malley muttered, unlocking the knob that controlled the spigots and spray.

  The water rose in gentle bends and bows. O'Malley's face shone like a child's on Christmas Day. “Damn but that's fine,” he said aloud in the deserted garden.

  But the spray had to go higher still, he considered as he studied the fountain. He turned the knob. The water remained at its level. It would never catch the afternoon sunlight, he thought. It was like the ejaculation of a ninety-year-old man.

  That bastard Sullivan. All systems go my ass! I'll fix it so he never ejaculates again.

  Already, Patrick O'Malley had made his first mental note for the next day.

  He passed under the lobby clock again, then stopped and checked his own watch. Eight-sixteen! The lobby clock was three minutes fast!

  He felt murder in his chest. “Slow down, Pat,” he imagined Nellie's voice telling him. “Careful, careful.” He didn't give a good, flying fuck about “careful.” With incompetent kiss-asses all around him—and with Nellie gone—what good was living anyway?

  CHAPTER 27

  WHEN JENNIE WAS thirteen and it was almost time for her to go to high school, I bought a beautiful house on Greenbriar Road in Bedford, New York. It was time for both of us to have a real home. More important, I wanted Jennie settled into a good school.

  I wanted stability, and peaceful surroundings, both for Jennie and myself. We picked out the house together. Both of us loved it, the sprawling grounds, and the town of Bedford. We finally had a home again.
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  I was already infamous for being extremely selective about playing concerts and being on the road. I think I had my priorities straight, and my head screwed on as well. I'd never wanted to think of myself as a star, or live like one either. I vowed not to bring up Jennie that way.

  The years with Phillip had made me afraid of hoping for too much more than peacefulness and contentment in my life. It wasn't so bad, I kept telling myself.

  There was a wonderful school for Jennie in Bedford; we were less than an hour's drive from the city; I could have complete privacy when I needed it, and socialize if I felt like it. It seemed a perfect town for us, peaceful and enduring, the right place to erase the last vestiges of a still painful history.

  Jennie dubbed our house Shangri-la, la, la. Not to be spoken—to be sung. She had a good voice, and an even better sense of humor.

  Most nights were blissfully peaceful at our house. The noises were the singing of birds, the occasional yapping of a dog, sometimes the sound of a radio as teenagers drove by. The “cruising” cars reminded me of growing up in Newburgh, which was only thirty miles to the north.

  I was startled one evening in April to hear a pounding on the front door. I was expecting no one. As far as I knew, I was not in trouble with the police. Jennie was in her room doing her homework, and I hoped she was too young for a jilted boyfriend.

  I had been careful to keep my whereabouts unpublicized, so the intruder was almost surely neither a fan nor a rival. Someone knocking on the wrong door? Probably.

  Curious, and a little nervous, I went to the door. Through the peephole, I could see a man, his body distorted by the glass. He was in a rumpled suit but well dressed, his tie askew, his hair uncombed, his face apoplectic. I sensed he was harmless enough, and opened the door.

  “Mrs. Bradford?” he said, somehow managing to sound exasperated.

  “Yes. Can I help you? How did you know my name?”

  “There's a BRADFORD on your mailbox. A deduction.”

  “There's a bell on the door. Why not use that instead of pounding?”

  “There is?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “I guess I was so angry I didn't notice. Sorry about that.”

  His anger had evidently evaporated. There was definitely no danger in him. I invited him in. “What's this about?”

  He followed me down the foyer to the living room. “If I built hotels the way GM builds cars, I'd be crucified. Yet those shitkickers—”

  Ah. That was the explanation. “It's your car, then?”

  “A brand-new Mercedes convertible. Not a thousand miles on the useless rattletrap. And here I am, exhausted, minding my own business, happy to be off the highway, when the son of a bitch dies. I mean dies. No warning, not even a death rattle. The mother just says to me, ‘Fuck you, Pat,’ and quits. And do I have a car phone? Of course not. If I had one, I'd use it, and I like the driving time for thinking and enjoying myself in blessed peace. The only reason for a phone is in case the car has a breakdown, and is a brand-new, eighty-thousand-dollar car going to cause trouble? No way. Ha!” Suddenly he stopped and grinned. His smile reminded me of Paul Newman's—a lot. “So can I use your phone? I may be the only Irish Catholic who's a member of AAA and not AA.”

  “Sure thing,” I said, hiding a smile. He was funny, and the humor was contagious, at least it was that night. “The phone's in the den. What were you doing on Greenbriar at this time of night?”

  “I live on Greenbriar. About three miles further down. You must have passed my house a thousand times going to the village. My name's O'Malley. It's the oversized Georgian. I live in it to impress my friends.”

  I knew the house, or more accurately, the estate. It was one of the grandest on Greenbriar. “You said hotels. Then you must be—”

  “Patrick O'Malley. I'm building one on Park Avenue. The Cornelia. Do you like the name? Say yes, and you'll be its first guest as my guest.”

  This time I couldn't suppress the laugh. “Yes. I might take you up on it. Would you like a drink, Mr. O'Malley?”

  He bowed. “You're very, very kind and understanding. Scotch if you have it. Neat.”

  I showed him to the den, then went to the kitchen to fix a drink. There really was something about this poor/rich blitzed man that struck me as funny. The look on his face was classic silent-movie comedy. He had star quality.

  I didn't get a lot of visitors, besides music-business people, into my safe, comfortable, closed world. I was getting good at pretending that I liked it that way. I didn't like it at all.

  I poured a Scotch, and went back to the den, knocking gently before entering. I stepped inside the room, then stopped and began to laugh out loud. I couldn't help myself.

  Patrick O'Malley had taken off his rumpled suit jacket and hung it carefully over the back of a chair. He had removed his black cordovans and put them neatly beside the jacket.

  He lay stretched out on my old, flowered sofa, and he was fast asleep.

  CHAPTER 28

  I WOKE UP early, but Patrick was gone by the time I went downstairs. Jen and I did a three-mile run, then a power drink, and off to school for her. I went into my den and began working, lost in the lyrics of “A Lady Hard as Love.”

  Around ten-thirty, I walked to the riding stables, noticing that the day had assumed the gauzy look of life shot through a telephoto lens. I felt content. Not a great feeling, but not so bad either. Something was missing from life, but I certainly had a lot, and no complaints.

  A florist truck came bumping up the drive and a boy with spiked orange hair and Coke-bottle glasses came hurrying toward me, bearing an arrangement of freesias and decorative ribbons.

  There was a note. O'Malley, I thought, pleased for some reason.

  Dear Margaret Bradford,

  Forgive me for not having immediately recognized your name, but the only singers I've heard of are the Clancy Brothers.

  I don't know for certain if I can face you again. Not after last night. But I'm going to try. Give it my best.

  Will you please have dinner with me some evening this week? Let me try to make amends.

  You have the most beautiful blue eyes I've ever seen, and I will spend the time between now and our dinner listening to Maggie Bradford records until I've memorized your songs.

  The Mortified Sleeper (your neighbor), Patrick

  My eyes were chestnut brown, and I had a feeling that Patrick O'Malley knew it, and knew I knew he knew it.

  Dinner? Why not? I needed to meet more people in Bedford. I left a message on his machine making a date for Thursday night.

  Blue eyes—that's Sinatra, not me.

  CHAPTER 29

  THURSDAY WAS AN unexpected and unqualified hit. He made me laugh—a lot. He had stories weaved inside of stories, weaved into still more stories. He had a wonderfully warm smile, and a generous nature. I knew I'd made my first friend in Bedford, and it felt good.

  Over the next few weeks, I saw Patrick several times. I enjoyed his odd, wry, but honest sense of humor; his unique comic timing; his oversentimental but nevertheless touching stories about growing up in an Irish family of ten; his thrill at putting up his parents in the honeymoon suite of his first grand hotel.

  In deference to his globetrotting, I began to call Patrick names that amused him: Padriac, Patrice, and Patrizio. But Patrick had no silly names for me. Sometimes he called me Margaret, the first person to do that since my mother.

  “My first love,” Patrick told me, “was actually the sea. It's the one powerful image that I still have of Ireland, and when I was growing up there.”

  Patrick had a modest sailboat, and one weekday morning we took it out on the Sound. Patrick played hooky from his hotel project; I could afford one morning away from the piano, and my own rituals.

  Soon, we were out on the water, and I found that I loved it too. Since it was early on a weekday, there weren't many other boats out, even though the day was in the low seventies, with clear blue skies. I could see heavy traffic as we slid away from
shore, and watching the cars heading to work reminded me of how lucky I was.

  “There but for the grace of God,” Patrick said and saluted the commuters. “Suckers!” he shouted into the sea breeze and laughed. He wasn't being mean, just playful.

  He and Jennie had obviously conspired, since he'd smuggled some of my power drink onboard, and had made me my usual breakfast. He even joined me for the special mixture of several fruit juices and vitamins.

  “So are you finally over the bastard, Maggie?” he asked as we sipped juice. As usual, he was spontaneous and himself. I understood that he meant Phillip, who we'd talked about before, but not very much.

  “Yes and no,” I told Patrick the truth. I felt that I could.

  “I think I know what you mean.” He gave me a hug with one arm as the two of us stood staring out over the oncoming breakers.

  “Sorry I don't have any good advice for you,” he said. “I never shot any bastards, though several I know deserved it. Is it all right if I make this light—it's my way, you know.”

  I nodded. It was Patrick's style to be able to joke when things got particularly dark. He made me laugh constantly, and I liked it a lot.

  “He was a bastard, and I'm sorry I married him.”

  Patrick waved his free arm angrily. “Awww, he just took advantage. You were very young, and not so long out of your aunt's house. He did his fine officer's act, made his lofty promises, lied to you. I know, let's sail north to West Point. We'll dig up his grave, then we'll pulverize the bones.”

  I shook my head, but I was smiling. “You make me laugh.”

  “It's my job. It's what I'm good at.”

  I looked at him. “What do you think I'm good at?”

  He gestured with both hands. “Oh, everything. Everything that I've seen at least. You're closing yourself off a little—that's the only area for improvement that I can see.”

  “You're funny, and you can be very sweet.”