Base Notes, page 20
I called back. Voice mail again. If it was on Do Not Disturb and I called a third time, her phone would let me through. I bit the inside of my cheek, put my dirty bowl in the sink, and wished for a slug of Scotch to add to my burnt coffee.
Everything was closed, or would be closing soon. I had bread and eggs and milk and could survive the next two days, but I was already chafing with boredom. And now there was no distraction as I waited for Jane’s call, if it would even come.
I could tinker, I supposed. Not on Eisner’s scent directly—I had none of the ingredients. Though I had already proved that what needed to be done could be, Eisner’s original idea still held some temptation. Jane had solved the problem of my commission. She had not solved the challenge it initially presented. With time on my hands now, I could pick up that thread and begin to untangle it. If it could be untangled. But where would I even begin?
Lost in thought, I came to staring at the clump of damp cornflakes in the drain when my phone went off.
“Jane,” I said, breathless, without bothering to check the number.
“And what am I?” asked Beau. “Chopped liver? I just heard her phone go off twice and checked it, saw your number. Who calls twice in a row? Slow your roll.”
“It’s important.”
“She’s in the shower. But you can chat with me until she’s out. Did you see that article I sent you? Crazy, right?”
Was he yanking my chain, happy to chat, or covering for nerves? I honestly couldn’t tell, and wondered if his expression kept pace. If so, he’d be a terror at the poker table.
“What do your next couple of days look like?” I asked.
“Pretty chill. I’m going to run a sample sale on the second, I think. Like, kick off the new year with new looks, you know? But until then, not a lot going on. Why?”
There was the first inflection of doubt, the first wavering in the smooth surface of his calm.
“Because I have a lot to do before I come check out your sample sale,” I said. “And I’m going to need your help with it.”
“Right,” he said. Then, after a steadying breath: “Right. Yeah.”
“How soon can you bring in Conrad Yates?”
“Jesus,” he said. “Not today. Not tomorrow either. Maybe like . . . maybe the twenty-sixth? Like, late, though. It will depend.”
“On what?”
“His schedule. My charm. Fucking Mercury in retrograde. I don’t know.” His tone got sharp. Then: “Sorry. I really don’t know. I can find out, though.”
“Do that,” I said. “Please.”
We sat in awkward silence for a moment before he said, with palpable relief, “Oh, here’s Jane.”
“Thanks.” And like a chump I added, “Merry Christmas.”
“You too,” he replied. He sounded like he meant it. Muffled, I heard him say my name, and the bumps and static of the cell phone changing hands.
“What?” asked Jane, and even scent-blind I could still picture her: wet hair wrapped in a towel, wearing Beau’s flannel robe. The way it gapped at the chest. I filled in blanks: coconut lotion, peppermint soap. Beau frying eggs and flipping toast in a cast-iron skillet.
Maybe these were little lies I told myself, but I could see and smell it all so clearly. If I shut my eyes I could nearly put myself in that scene instead of in my chilly studio, which only smelled like mold.
I imagined a perfume that would preserve this imagined moment. But that would mean sacrificing Jane and Beau. Unlike my oboist, whose appeal had been somewhat limited in scope, I preferred these two living and breathing and making more moments like this one.
“Hi,” I said. “I—”
“Is Giovanni in?” she asked, and I realized she had moved to cut off an apology I had not known I was about to offer.
“Yes.” The last cold dregs of my coffee tasted like penance, and I hoped the caffeine would sharpen my edges a little. She didn’t want to hear me say I was sorry. She wanted me on my game. So I would be. “Yes, he is.”
“Okay,” she said. “Fine. Then we are too.”
If you ever have to kill someone, I recommend the six days between Christmas and the New Year. Quite seriously. No one is following up on business deals or faults you for not answering your phone. Half the nine-to-five workforce is on vacation. The service industry is so slammed that none of the waiters or delivery guys or baristas have half a moment to spare worrying over a regular who hasn’t come in. Or things are so slow, it isn’t a surprise if they don’t see a familiar face.
Perhaps the object of your designs promised to come to a New Year’s Eve outing. Or two. But once the champagne pops and people start kissing, who will remember the no-shows?
In short, it will take at least a week for anyone to realize your victim has gone missing, and longer still for any authorities to take notice. Think of the backlog that must build over the holidays. Think of the gray, miserable game of catch-up the homicide detectives and the missing persons squad must start to play on January second.
It gives you a lot of room to maneuver.
Not that I was doing a lot of maneuvering. I felt like a field general must, anxiously awaiting each movement of my troops: wary of the outcomes, hoping for victory but bracing for defeat.
It felt strange. Almost as if I had delegated a part of my creative process. I know I said I didn’t enjoy the killing, but it was certainly an unavoidable part of making these perfumes. I had never outsourced it before.
I tried not to nag. I didn’t want to distract my deputies. Besides, the less we all knew about what the others were doing at any given time, the better. Especially for me, who had the most to lose.
So I spent my Christmas Eve rereading The Diary of a Nose and The Debt to Pleasure, and my Christmas Day drinking the bottle of passable gin I had bought for Jane. In between books and bad cocktails, I started to arrange my workspace. Iolanda had gone to spend the holidays with family in Santo Domingo, which gave me an extra measure of safety. It had been some time since I’d received a special commission, and everything needed scrubbing down. The mildew got everywhere, and so did the dust and dead spiders.
I cleared a path from the basement’s front door to the very back of the room, near the cellar doors that let out into the backyard. There was an old claw-foot tub there, which I had owned for years. I don’t think Iolanda knew I had ever moved it in—the delivery had been scheduled for a weekend she was out of town.
Likewise the claw-foot tub’s two new fellows, which I had bought from my favorite salvage shop and paid for in cash I imagined would never be reported to the IRS. The delivery happened the day after Iolanda left, so once again, she was none the wiser.
All three tubs had been bears to bring down, but with some spit and soap and prayers I had taken possession and set them up in a dusty corner near the sump pump. The new tubs were just inserts rudely pried from their bathrooms—you paid a premium for cast iron and claw-feet. But I needed height, so I had put them up on cinder blocks, in the shadows behind their fancier fellow.
By the time the gin was gone, my tools and tubs were sparkling clean. Hidden underneath a tarp, they joined me in my interminable wait. I fell asleep listening to a podcast about the importance of the customer life cycle, which, like many things to which I should have paid more attention, failed to hold my interest for very long. I woke in the middle of the night with a mouth like a dirty sponge. A quick swish with some mouthwash and I fell back into bed. The podcast was still playing, by now having passed into a new season.
The host laughed at some jargon-filled piece of advice from the guest and said this had helped her increase customer conversion from social media engagement by forty-five percent.
“Wow,” said the guest. “You’re going to put me out of business!”
I fell asleep before I heard the host’s reply.
All in all, it was no worse than most of my Christmases, and certainly better than some.
20
Notes de Tête: Tennessee Whiskey
Notes de Cœur: Asphalt and Ambergris
Notes de Fond: Shit and Fear Accord
At three thirty in the morning on December twenty-eighth, Beau double-parked outside my door in a car he had borrowed from a friend, which he had driven down the block with its lights off.
“Hey,” he said when I came up. A painfully loud stage whisper. I held a finger to my lips, but his “Sorry!” wasn’t much quieter. He bounced on the balls of his feet, shifted his weight from one side to another, rubbed his upper arms with restless hands.
First reiterating my symbol for silence, I aimed a thumb at the trunk of his borrowed car.
“Sorry,” he said again, this time truly under his breath. With some effort, he stilled his jitters. Nervous energy, barely contained, still sang in every movement that he made, and he fumbled the key fob more than once. His breath gave him away as well, coming in shallow, panicked puffs of white.
He looked over his shoulder, down the silent stretch of trees and blacktop, then paused. His deep, preparatory breath went in silent but clouded on the exhale. A streetlight lit the plume of steam from behind so it briefly obscured his expression. Before the air cleared, Beau stepped up and popped the trunk.
He had hidden Yates inside a garment bag. It did nothing to disguise the fact of the corpse, but it certainly added an ironic savor to the proceedings.
The load was awkward and stiff with rigor mortis, but we wrestled him from the trunk in less time than it took me to do such things on my own. Once he was on the pavement, Beau shut the trunk slowly, quiet as he could. The clouds of his breath were still coming fast.
Deadweights are always heavier than you expect, just accounting for their size. I had a trolley I used when I was on my own, but it was quicker and quieter for the two of us simply to lift him and stagger over the curb.
I kept a weathered two-by-eight just inside the basement door, and we used it to guide him down the icy steps. Beau giggled when I set it up and said, “It’s like a slide.” I shushed him again, conscious of all the apartments looking out onto the street, of New Yorkers’ habit of cracking their windows even in winter to relieve the sweltering steam heat.
Beau managed to bang into just about everything in the basement, cursing all the while. I’m sure he thought he was being quiet, but every thump or rattle or scrape of metal on concrete made my heart contract painfully behind my ribs. With Iolanda out of town, I didn’t trust the other tenants not to come downstairs investigating strange noises.
And, of course, he kept apologizing. Bless his pea-pickin’ heart.
Yates fit into one of the tubs, just, with his knees bent against his chest. We had talked about this and, despite his initial squeamishness over the empty-stomach dictate, Beau had followed my further instructions well. Because you tend to get cadaveric spasm with violent death, I’ve found that some judicious restraints applied antemortem will lock up the body in the preferred position for tincturing. Conveniently, it also makes the corpse compact for transportation.
After I pulled a tarp over the tub, and over Yates, Beau wiped his forehead. Despite the cold, he was sweating. “Jesus. Can I get a drink?”
“No,” I said. He looked crestfallen, but I said, “You’re double-parked in a strange car in front of my house at four o’clock in the morning.” It had taken us some time to move Yates from the bottom of the stairs to the tub. “Besides, you don’t want to get pulled over on the way home.”
“Vic,” he said, almost a whine.
“How about I owe you one?”
We shook on that. To my surprise—I should not have been surprised by this anymore, but the circumstances seemed like they might have precluded it—he pulled me forward for an accustomed kiss on the cheek. This one was less effusive or affectionate than it was . . . freaked out. Duct tape slapped across a sudden failure of social convention. After, he laid his heavy head on top of mine and let out a long sigh. I could feel it come in and go out as his chest expanded against mine. My mouth was pressed into the folds of his scarf, and I smelled his beard oil and his asphalt perfume.
“Shit,” he said. Then, with the faint rattle of chattering teeth and the instability of laughter: “Holy shit.” A shuddering breath made him shake, and stiffness climbed his limbs after it, spreading like the rigor mortis that had locked up Yates’s corpse.
I stepped back and reached up, took his face between my hands. It was dark in the basement, except for a little light from my studio, where I had left the bedside lamp on. I could not see his expression well, except the gleam of his wide eyes. But I could hear his breathing—fast—and feel the pump of his heartbeat beneath my hands. Layers of winter clothes kept his scent close to his body, but I caught a faint and musty stink of fear.
“Beau,” I said and, when he didn’t look at me, repeated it. His gaze skittered across my face, searching the dark corners behind me. He wouldn’t like what he saw there, if he could make it out. If he understood it.
He had begun to curse, over and over, barely audible. Not the manic, performative profanity of stubbed toes and an awkward bundle, but a reflexive chant not unlike the recitation of a rosary. This would never do.
Imitating Jane, I grabbed a fistful of his wild hair on each side. He stopped cursing, at least, to draw a sharp breath in. I pulled him down for a real kiss, to ground him like a current. To pull all his nervous energy out and through myself, who could handle it.
How did Jane do this? I was at the limit of my patience. Perhaps I should have felt admiration for her, but I felt pity. Maybe condescension. I wanted to tell him: get your shit together. But I knew he would only apologize.
His mouth was dry and sour. When I pulled away he was finally looking straight at me, lips still parted slightly, eyes glassy but focused. Feet back on the earth, or almost.
“You did a good job,” I told him, letting my grip on his scalp go loose. He sagged, as if I had been holding him up. “Now it’s time to go home.”
Of course, I wasn’t present for the actual murder. I can’t tell you exactly how its particulars played out. But I know what I told Beau to do, and I think I have enough of a grasp on his character, and Conrad Yates’s, to make a good guess at what might have happened.
Yates had been enough of a thorn in Beau’s side, and Reg’s suits such an irritant to Conrad, that it only made sense for Beau to be the bigger man, to invite Conrad for a face-to-face before the relationships soured irretrievably.
Beau called up Conrad, offered to meet for drinks, chat it out. One thing led to another and it just became convenient for Yates to drop by the atelier one evening. Late, of course, though not too late. Union Square was still crowded and well lit, but people tend to look away from strange things faster after the sun goes down.
There were no security cameras in Beau’s building. There was a service elevator, and a parking lot. I was reasonably familiar with the neighborhood and helped him see it with my more experienced eyes. Who would question a man rolling a rack of garment bags, its bottom heavy with a plastic storage container? Or a canvas laundry bin, piled high with linens? Who would second-guess him as he loaded these things into the back of a car or a van?
As you can see, I have a clear conception of his journey from atelier to parking lot, and from the parking lot uptown. I helped to plan them. As for what happened in the atelier proper . . .
You’ve been there. You’ve seen it. It’s not a large space, but it’s cozy. If you’re the kind of person who appreciates fine clothes, interesting films, good liquor, and excellent music, it will put you at ease immediately.
Yates Sr. probably appreciated only one of these things. Luckily, Beau knew to be liberal with it. So let’s imagine Yates drunk. Red-faced, sloppy. Full of noblesse oblige.
“We both know my son’s a little headstrong,” he says. “His mother didn’t think he ought to rise so high in the company so young: too cocksure. But I thought, no better way to teach him responsibility, make him a man.”
Beau smiles, nods, pours another drink. What’s playing on the turntable? Something twangy? No, Otis Spann. That’s better. Masculine and melancholy.
“Sometimes I wonder.” Yates stares into his whiskey—let’s say Beau is serving him Johnnie Walker. Burnt caramel, heavy on the vanillin. “I wonder if . . . but he’ll learn. I think he’s learning.” He blinks moistly up at Beau. “These things he’s asking for—they’re fashionable, aren’t they? I’ve told him over and over, keep it classic. We’re not in the razzle-dazzle business. Our clients need to trust us.”
Beau nods and nods, knowing “classic” can be as wild as a Prince of Wales plaid. He putters around his worktable, picking up pins and chalk pencils, looping his tape measure casually around one wrist. Yates natters on, apologizing sincerely for any trouble he’s caused, but he’s just trying to teach his boy a lesson, and Beau can understand that, can’t he?
Of course, of course he can. His dad always wanted the best for him.
“Exactly,” says Yates. “You understand. A father wants his son to succeed! You’re a hardworking, self-made entrepreneur. A real American success story, right? Wouldn’t you want that for your son?”
Beau smiles, and Yates smiles back, blissfully ignorant. But you know Beau by now. His true smiles are wide and full of teeth. A little dangerous, like he’s about to bite into a bloody porterhouse steak. He even smiles when he’s nervous, and those make him look like he’s waiting for a blow to fall and hoping to forestall it with an obsequious grin.
This smile isn’t dangerous or pathetic. It doesn’t sit well on his face, because it’s so much more like mine. The expression I offer to people who have displeased me, when for various reasons I cannot offer them the flat of my hand or a few choice words.
Yes, you know the one. I don’t know where he picked it up.
“I don’t think Jane wants kids,” he says. That isn’t what he’s angry about.
“That’s a shame.” Yates polishes off his second glass of whiskey. He hasn’t eaten dinner yet—good job, Beau—and it’s working fast. “Don’t you?”
