Feast of Murder

1


IT WAS TWILIGHT OF a day at the end of August, one of those times when light and dark wrap themselves around each other like tresses in a braid. For Donald McAdam, standing on the corner of Fiftieth and Park, waiting for the light to change so he could go uptown, it was—oddly enough—the best hour of the best day of the best year he had ever had. The oddness came from the kind of year it had been, full of judges and grand juries, subpoenas and district attorneys. Not much more than a year ago, Donald McAdam had been nothing but another Wall Street suit. He’d had an office downtown and this apartment uptown and small branches in Philadelphia and Boston. He’d had a closet full of J. Press suits and a shoe rack full of custom productions from John Lobb and five Rolex watches. When he got his name in the papers it was always in Liz Smith’s column, as the faceless escort of some aging society queen who had just underwritten the Peppermint and Wintergreen Ball for the American Multiple Cancer Homeless Advocacy Association.

The light changed and McAdam crossed the street, moving carefully, catering to his only real fear. That his fear was real was evidenced by how much it made him forget. Here he was moving into the intersection, and for the first time since he had run into Fritzie Baird downtown, he could not feel the heavy weight of the mason jar in his pocket. The mason jar was full of something called melon rind marmalade, made by Fritzie herself with her precious postdebutante hands. McAdam hadn’t known what to do with it when she thrust it into his hands, so he’d simply stuffed it into his jacket, not bothering to worry about the bulge. Now he didn’t worry about it because he’d forgotten it. From the day he had first come to New York City, forty years ago, he had been secretly convinced that he was going to die by being struck by a car. In the years since, he’d developed a positive genius for arriving at intersections seconds after they became accident scenes. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d put his feet into puddles of blood. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d gone home to be sick about it, either. Today nothing like that seemed to be happening. There was no danger. He thought he could relax. He didn’t even have anyone else on the street to worry about. The street was empty.

Getting to the opposite curb, he began to move quickly, swinging his arms a little as he went. He was, he knew, the perfect picture of Park Avenue, a silver-haired man in expensive clothes exuding an air of confidence and command. He had been just the same thing a year ago, but then, if someone had spotted him, he wouldn’t have been recognized. Now he still wouldn’t have been recognized, most places—tract house mothers in Levittown and black boys with ghetto blasters in Central Park didn’t read the financial news—but on this street and among the people who lived here, he was famous. He was Donald McAdam, the man who had paid the Feds a $400 million fine and still been left with enough money to live the life. He was Donald McAdam, the man who had gone wired into clandestine business meetings in three states. He was Donald McAdam, who might not have been the most successful man of his generation or the most socially prominent one—but who was going to be the one who sent the rest of them to jail.

He had managed to cross Fifty-first Street without incident. He had only two more blocks to go before he reached his apartment. He picked up his pace, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet. It had been a bad August, hot and still and thick with humidity, but over the last few days it had been getting better. Now there was a breeze coming in from the river. Every time McAdam got to an intersection, he could feel it pressing against the trousers of his suit. Above him, what he could see of the sky was pink and black. Around him, the streetlights had just begun to glow.

He got to Fifty-second Street just as the walk light went green. He crossed and made his way to Fifty-third. On Park Avenue, it was easy to imagine that New York was a normal city. There were trees in the divider in the middle of the street and flowers in the boxes next to the front doors of the apartment buildings. The doormen were all in uniform and about as alert as sleeping puppies. While McAdam waited for the last of his lights, he saw a woman coming out of the apartment house directly across the avenue from his own. She was an older woman in a longish dress and pearl earrings, much too unfashionable to be one of the older women he knew. Still, McAdam thought, she might be someone who would recognize him. She might turn toward him and look up and start, as if she’d heard a shot. She might even come up to him and try to start a conversation, the way so very many of them wanted to do. Instead, she turned in the opposite direction and began to go swiftly uptown, a woman with a mission.