like that? I’ve never met a Faith before. Funny, though, it seems to suit you.”
Faith told him the family story and they moved on to discuss an article about the eighties he was finishing up for the Times magazine section.
“This could get depressing,” Faith remarked. “I keep thinking of people like Mark Chapman and John Hinckley. And the Ayatollah putting a price on Salman Rushdie’s head. So much craziness.”
“The Challenger tragedy, the savings and loan cri-sis, Black Monday . . .”
Faith began to chant, “Nancy Reagan’s china, Beemers, ‘Whoever Dies with the Most Toys Wins,’
Malcolm Forbes’s two-million-dollar Moroccan birthday bash . . .”
“But there were also all those KILL YOUR TELEVISION
bumper stickers, and we weren’t involved in any major wars during the entire decade, although there’s still time.”
“Not much. I read a wonderful quote from that British novelist Angela Carter the other day commenting on the heavy pronouncements we’ve been reading almost all year: ‘The fin is coming early this siècle. ’ ” They both laughed.
“I’ll track it down and use it. It would make a terrific title.”
The only dessert Faith ever wanted at Tex-Mex places was flan. It was the perfect counterpoint to the spicy main dishes, and she recalled that Santa Fe’s was perfect—rich, creamy, yet not cloying. They both ordered coffee. Richard didn’t seem to be in any rush to get back to his article, and though Faith was tired, it was pleasant to linger. Besides, she realized, she’d been having such a good time, she’d forgotten to work 73
Fox’s murder into the conversation and see if she could get any further information. She had to act fast before the evening ended.
“How about the murder of Nathan Fox? Do you intend to use it in your article?”
“It’s worth a mention. A lot of what’s happened in the eighties—the excesses—was what people like Fox were predicting in the sixties. It hasn’t simply been a case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. That’s always been true. But in the eighties, the rich got much richer. Even after the 1987 crash. Last year, in ’88, Milken made five hundred and fifty million dollars—ironically fifty million more than the Gambino family, crime apparently not paying as much as it used to, or their kind anyway—and I am using that. Fox and his cohort believed that the widening gap between rich and poor would lead to revolution. Well, it hasn’t. At least not yet, and I don’t see it happening anywhere in the near future, but the seeds of the eighties were sowed in the sixties. Ironically, Fox liked nothing better than schmoozing with wealthy New York intellectuals and socialites. He was a regular at certain dinner parties, delighting the guests by telling them what decadent leeches they were. That all the finger bowls in the world wouldn’t be enough to cleanse the blood of the workers from their effete, uncalloused hands—that, or something very similar, was one of his lines.”
Faith thought again that Fox wouldn’t have lasted long at Aunt Chat’s Madison Avenue ad agency if the tired, trite slogans she’d been hearing were any indication of his acumen.
“So you haven’t really heard anything. But why murdered? Why now? What’s the ‘bottom line’?” She 74
injected the eighties buzzword to keep things light—
and keep the conversation going.
Richard thought for a moment. “There has been some talk that Fox’s murder was tied to his politics—
that it wasn’t just a robbery by some cokehead—but I haven’t been able to come up with an angle. Unless he’s been keeping some pretty heavy stuff under wraps all these years. Maybe about someone else in the movement. Or let’s say he was about to get a pardon and write a tell-all book. If Reagan could get a seven-million-dollar advance, Fox could certainly have hoped for half that—or more in hush money! But I jest.
He wasn’t into material goods. More to the point, he’s not the pardonable type. Wrong haircut. Besides the politics theory, there are a lot of rumors about where he’s been all these years, and maybe there’s a motive there. Someone he crossed. A woman? And from all accounts, in Fox’s case there were always lots of ladies.”
“Where do people say he was?”
Richard signaled the waiter for more coffee. “If Fox was everywhere I’ve heard he’s been, he would have racked up enough frequent flyer coupons to last through the next millennium. California, the Pacific Northwest, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Maine, Florida—
oh, and Cuba, to name a few. Apparently, he was all set to spend his golden years with Fidel, but Nate got kicked out when he said, ‘Thank you for not smoking’
to the big guy.”
“And what about the murder weapon? According to the papers, he was shot at close range and the weapon hasn’t been found.”
Richard rubbed his chin. He was in slight, very slight need of a shave.
75
“It would have been pretty stupid to leave the murder weapon behind as a calling card. If it was your average B and E, they’d have further use for it. If it wasn’t, but, rather, someone Fox knew and let into the apartment, then all the more reason to get rid of it, say in that big Dumpster known as the East River.”
“The papers haven’t said what kind of gun it was.
The police would know from the bullet. Have you heard anything?”
Morgan shook his head and then looked sharply at Faith. “Why so much interest in Fox? He wasn’t a well-known food connoisseur, to my knowledge.
Don’t tell me—your parents were in the Weather Underground and you’re actually a red-diaper baby.”
“Sorry, my father never even remembers to carry an umbrella and my diapers were as snowy white as the diaper service could make them. Mother has always believed some things are best done by others. Now come on—that business with Fox in Cuba, you were making that up.”
“I kid you not.”
Faith made a face and, terrierlike, held on to the subject. “Why do you think he wasn’t caught?”
“At first, probably because no one squealed on him, and it’s not so easy as you might think to find someone who doesn’t want to be found, even if you’re the feds.
Especially when he disappeared. Pre–cyber spying.
Then later, they had more important things to do. Better ways to spend taxpayers’ money. They probably un-loaded a bunch of dusty file folders on all those Weathermen, Yippies, pinkos, et cetera, on one poor slob and he’d make a few calls every once in a while.
Check the taps on their parents’, siblings’, old lovers’
phones. Reel somebody in by chance now and again.” 76
“Then Fox wasn’t taking much of a risk moving into the city.”
“Well, it did get him killed.”
“So you do think his murder is tied to his past?”
“Isn’t everything?”
77
Four
Almost everybody was wearing black at Nathan Fox’s memorial service, which was exactly what Faith had expected. It was not from a deep sense of propriety, but because this was New York City and everybody, especially women, wore black most of the time. It wasn’t timidity; it was the acknowledgment of a universal truth. You always looked good in black—and in style.
Fox was going out in style. Going out on the Upper East Side at Frank E. Campbell’s, where anybody who was anybody had his or her service. Faith walked in under the marquee and quickly went into the building.