A Date You Can't Refuse Read online

  Tiffany & Co. was at Two Rodeo, a tiny and exclusive piece of real estate designed to look like a tiny and exclusive European street, complete with cobblestones, fountains, and costumed valet guys. Tiffany's was the jewel in the crown, although it shared the crown with other luminaries like Valentino and Cartier. It brought to mind a bank vault, built in matte-finished steel. The main floor featured relatively affordable baubles, and it was packed, mainly with camera-toting tourists. So packed, in fact, that I immediately lost Felix.

  I looked around for ten minutes, baffled. I asked where the restrooms were, and went so far as to ask a man in customer service to scout out the men's room for me. No Felix. I took the beautiful Deco elevators down to the basement level, where the fine jewelry lived. Here there were few customers, and none with cameras. No Felix.

  I began a pattern of going from floor to floor, convinced that he was simply looking for me at the same time that I was looking for him and we would have to bump into each other eventually, according to the laws of physics. I turned on my phone, even knowing that Felix didn't have my number and didn't have a cell phone himself. I picked up a single message— from my brother, asking—okay, demanding—that I bring him a copy of Superstrings and the Search for the Theory of Everything. Speaking of physics.

  After twenty minutes of floor patrol, I was in a panic. On the top level, near the restrooms, a wall was lined with mahogany cabinets the size of gym lockers. I had no idea of their function, but I began to wonder if Felix could be dead and his body parts stuffed there.

  Finally, I approached a salesperson. I chose one from fine jewelry, in the basement, because no one on the main floor in affordable baubles looked like they had time for missing persons. Sharon, on the other hand, looked both available and gratifyingly human.

  “I've lost my friend,” I told her. “It's been half an hour. I can't find him anywhere.”

  “Is he—a young person?”

  “A child, you mean? No, but he is an odd person. A foreign person. He may have wandered somewhere off the beaten path. There are just the three floors, right?”

  “Yes.” She eyed my clothes, then picked up a phone behind the counter. “Let me check with security.”

  I felt a stab of fear. Might they arrest Felix? Was he up to something arrest-worthy? Unless Sharon was suspicious of me. She seemed friendly enough, but I did need dry-cleaning. Although they could hardly arrest me—or even evict me from the store—for that. At least my clothes were expensive. No, I was taking on the team paranoia. Act like a super-heroine, I told myself, throwing my shoulders back. I could hardly be the first person in the world to browse Tiffany's an hour after having sex at Neiman Marcus.

  A moment later, Sharon hung up. “Your friend, Mr. Seriodkin, is having tea with our head of security.” She smiled. “He apologizes for alarming you and will be with you shortly. Is there something I could show you in the meantime?”

  I shook my head, relieved, then remembered Donatella's ring. “My God, I can't believe I forgot this. It's the whole reason we're here.” I handed Sharon the receipt.

  “Oh, I love this ring! I sold this to Mrs. Milos.” She picked up the phone again and called the repair department. She was positively twinkling at me now; it seemed that any friend—or servant—of Donatella's was persona grata at Tiffany's. “And we got a fax from Kimberly the other Mrs. Milos, saying you'd be in today. Could I trouble you for a look at your driver's license?”

  “No problem.” I reached into my purse. “Do you remember all your sales?”

  “Well, this one's memorable. So is Mrs. Milos. All the Mrs. Miloses. The ring's an antique, a pear-shaped blue diamond, graded fancy intense blue, in a bezel setting. Loads of tiny pavé diamonds surrounding it. One of them got loose,” she said, reading the repair order.

  “What's it worth?” I asked. “Do you remember?”

  “Somewhere in the neighborhood of four hundred, I think.”

  I gulped. “Four hundred—”

  “—thousand, yes.” Sharon laughed at my reaction. “Crazy, isn't it? But it was a trade. Right after her divorce, she brought back her engagement ring, which she'd also gotten here, and walked away with this one. I'm not being indiscreet, just so you know. Town and Country did a feature article on Mrs. Milos, everything I just told you. Oh, this must be your friend.”

  Felix was getting off the elevator alongside a man in a suit, who introduced himself to me as the head of security, then bid Felix a friendly farewell. Minutes later we took possession of Donatella's blindingly expensive ring.

  “It's like being entrusted with the Hope Diamond,” I said to Sharon.

  “You know what I'd do?” she said, leaning over the counter, winking. “I'd wear it. Until you hand it over to Mrs. Milos.”

  This seemed crazy, like asking to be mugged, until it occurred to me that carrying a small Tiffany's shopping bag was also an invitation to assault, perhaps more than wearing a diamond ring that looked too big to be real. I decided to go for it, but turned the stone around, to the inside.

  Once outside the store, I questioned Felix about the lost half hour in our lives.

  “Oh, this was nothing,” he said with a wave of the hand. “I get lost with ease. I ask this nice man where am I, and we talk of Jesus and he gives me tea.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I wonder if I'm supposed to write that in my report to Yuri.”

  “What?” Felix came to a sudden stop, causing a pedestrian behind him to bump into him with a Michael Kors shopping bag. “So sorry,” he said, turning to her, and then back to me. “No, please. Yuri will not want to know this.”

  “Sure he will,” I said. “Making friends is what public relations is all about, isn't it?”

  “No, really, Wollie, I would like not to mention this, please.”

  “Okay,” I said, pulling him along. It's not like I didn't understand the desire for secrecy. I wasn't going to put my own afternoon activities into my report either.

  I led Felix up Rodeo Drive, on the lookout for potential muggers until I realized half the people we passed probably wore far more than $400,000 on their bodies.

  We'd just reached the Suburban when I remembered that I was to take Felix on a lunch date. I fed the meter and dragged him off to the nearest restaurant. Provençale.

  Felix's table manners were just fine. In fact, his knowledge of salad forks versus dessert forks surpassed mine, which made sense once he reminded me that he'd been a devoted eater before Jesus made him skinny.

  “I didn't realize you'd been a foodie, though,” I said. “Here in America, we're more likely to binge on Hostess cupcakes than tiramisu.”

  Not Felix. “For me, say czar,” he told the waitress. “No bread balls, cheese, and fish, and a bowl of oil.” I reinterpreted this for the befuddled server as a Caesar salad with oil and vinegar on the side, minus croutons, Parmesan, and anchovies, also known as a bowl of romaine lettuce. In the interest of solidarity, I ordered the same. I then explained to Felix the concept of Ladies First, a polite, if not feminist, policy in many social situations. Felix was an enthusiastic learner, confiding to me that he hoped that one day God would deliver unto him a mate. Especially now that he was to be, as he put it, a stud. This led to a discussion of what Dr. Rosen would be doing to Felix's excess skin, the offspring of his twenty-year relationship with desserts. Felix pulled out of his back pocket a wad of notepaper and set it on the table. Dr. Rosen, not content with the before-and-after shots in the brochure, had also drawn maps and diagrams of Felix's body. As a graphic artist, I found these interesting. As a diner, I did not. When Felix excused himself to go to the bathroom, the artist in me won out and I flipped idly through the pages until I came across one that was not like the others.

  It was a hand-drawn diagram of Tiffany's.

  In particular, the security system. Notations of hidden cameras, emergency exits, uniformed guards and the positions they occupied.

  Dear God.

  Did he plan a robbery, a jewel heist?
At Tiffany's, of all places? Felix, of all people?

  “Miss Shelley?” A voice, practically a purr, interrupted this train wreck of thought.

  I looked up and gasped. Standing over me was a woman with ice-blond hair, wickedly beautiful, both underfed and overdressed. I knew her by name only, and the place she occupied in my imagination.

  Lucrezia.

  THIRTY-ONE

  “Hello,” I said.

  “May I sit?” she asked.

  I nodded, and she took the chair Felix had been occupying.

  “You know me?” she asked.

  “Yes.” I'd met her once, six months earlier. She'd been with Simon, draped on his arm, if memory served. Of course, memory didn't always serve. Sometimes memory tyrannized, making one miserable. “You are Lucrezia.”

  “And you are Simon's lover.” She was the kind of woman who said the word “lover” with perfect ease. She probably said “darling” a lot too, which would befit a woman at home in fur coats and French twists. But why didn't she call him Daniel Lavosh?

  “Is there something I can do for you?” I asked, trying to mask my surprise.

  “I've followed you this afternoon.”

  “How—peculiar of you.” My face was heating up. Had she been on the Neiman Marcus roof? “Any particular reason?”

  “I want you to stop seeing him. There are things you don't know about Simon.”

  The audacity of the statement stopped me in my verbal tracks. “Like?”

  “He's an FBI agent,” she said. “I presume you know this.”

  Should I admit to that? He was undercover, for God's sake. Maybe she was here fishing, hoping to verify that. “Go on.”

  “He's on the take.”

  The room began swimming. My stomach turned. Had I eaten something bad? No, I hadn't eaten, period. I heard myself say, “I don't believe you.”

  “I was right, then. You didn't know.”

  I swallowed. “About what?”

  “My brother was of the opinion that you knew. But I can tell when a woman understands something about men and when she doesn't. Simon would never expose this part of himself to you.”

  “Could you be more specific?” I asked. “And maybe less offensive?”

  Lucrezia sat back and crossed her legs. She wore a white wraparound jersey dress, tight and unforgiving. On her, there was nothing to forgive. “He works for the government. But he also takes money from the people he investigates. Not always, but sometimes. He's now investigating my company. My brother gives him money and he takes it. Quite a lot of money. In cash. Simon was specific about that.”

  “Why would I believe any of this?”

  “Have you seen his penthouse? His clothes?”

  Yes, and yes. The belt I'd unbuckled earlier in the afternoon had been Prada. I didn't even want to think about how much it had cost. “Family money,” I said. Simon had never said it in so many words, but I'd assumed it.

  “Yes, that's the story he's given the FBI too. Amazingly, they are as credulous as you. There was family money, in fact. He went through it rather quickly.”

  “Have you any proof of this?”

  “Ask yourself. Does a good agent let someone know they are being investigated? Or reveal his real name when he has an alias, like ‘Daniel Lavosh’?”

  Yes, my thoughts exactly. I took a sip of water, stalling for time until my brain could come up with a rebuttal. “He told you this?”

  “He told me. And my brother. None of Simon's colleagues knows that we know.”

  “Why on earth are you telling me this?”

  “Because I don't like to share the men I sleep with.”

  I felt the blood drain out of my face. I stared at her. Even when Felix came up behind her, I couldn't stop looking at her.

  She turned, sensing Felix. “Hello,” she said, standing.

  “Hello, I'm Felix,” he said, beaming. “Please, sit.”

  “Only for a moment.” She sat back down as Felix went to find an extra chair.

  I leaned in and whispered, “What makes you think I won't ask Simon about this?”

  She leaned in too. “I expect you will. He will deny it. And you will ask yourself—” She looked up at Felix and stretched her lips into a smile. “Have you room to squeeze in? Good.” She turned back to me. “You will ask, Is this the truth? Is this a man I trust? Have I known him years and years? Have I met his family? His friends?”

  “Length of friendship is not the only criterion for trust,” I said with a glance at Felix, who was preoccupied with his chair.

  “No, that is evident.” Lucrezia smiled. She too glanced at Felix, but apparently decided he was of no consequence. “I'm sure your ‘friendship’ has been marked by many hours together, perhaps days and weeks in one another's company, long vacations, endless conversation, all the things that make for strong relationships.”

  I was blushing again. Damn it. How did she know that the one thing Simon and I lacked was time? Opportunity for endless conversation. We'd never had it in the six months we'd known each other. Not talking was the central feature of our affair.

  “Of course,” Lucrezia added, “you could go to his employer and share your concerns, but with nothing to show them, would you get past the gatekeepers?” Lucrezia picked up Felix's glass of water and turned to him with raised eyebrows, speaking the international language of “May I?”

  “Please,” Felix said, obviously delighted to be of service.

  “Or,” Lucrezia said, “would you speak with some lackey who would pretend to listen but perhaps look upon you as a scorned … . friend … and give you little respect or credence? But perhaps you have no problem looking spiteful. And foolish.” Here she looked me up and down, as much as possible, given the fact that I was seated.

  I pictured myself telling Bennett Graham that Simon was crooked. Ha. It would never happen. Of course, I didn't at all believe that Simon was crooked, but if Lucrezia thought he was, then it was because he wanted her to think he was. So how could I best encourage her in that belief?

  “Maybe I don't go to the employer,” I said. “Maybe I decide that it doesn't matter, that there are certain advantages to my … alliance … that outweigh this liability. Nobody's perfect. You don't seem repelled by this. Maybe I'm not either. What if I just don't care?”

  A slow smile came over her face. “Oh, you care. Women like you have ‘conventional morality’ written all over them. Even if it were not the case, you are risk averse. There is danger in this game that you haven't the stomach for. I have.” She let that sink in, then gathered her purse. Prada too, I now saw. Like Simon's belt. “Well, thank you for your time,” she said, standing. Felix stood too, once more showing himself to have excellent manners. “And thank you, Felipe, for your water.”

  “It's Felix,” I snapped. “And Lucrezia? What if I ignore the report? What if the outcome of this conversation does not live up to your expectation, what if you and I continue to share the same interest?”

  “Then it's likely another report will surface, perhaps concerning you, to be given to the other party. I believe the other party would see the wisdom of severing the connection, given certain information. Good day.”

  And off she slithered. Felix watched her go. So did I. That kind of walk was in the genes, along with small bones and a twenty-three-inch waist. I would never achieve it, even if I began life over as a European royal and studied at the Sorbonne.

  And what, exactly, did Lucrezia have on me that would appall Simon?

  Felix returned to his own chair, picked up the water that Lucrezia had just sipped, and set it on another table. “So,” he said, “what does this bitch blackmail you about?”

  THIRTY-TWO

  By the time we were halfway to Calabasas, Felix had worn me down with sympathy and a willingness to listen. I talked nonstop while he turned from client into romantic adviser, pulling out of me the salient facts of my affair with Simon, which I managed to divulge without spilling government secrets or blowing
anyone's cover, including my own.

  “The question is,” Felix said, “this Simon, does he have honor?”

  “Well, that's the thing. An hour ago, I'd have said yes, absolutely. Now I don't know. I mean, yes. Professionally. Yes. But …”

  “This woman makes you to doubt him.”

  “She's doing her best. But that's because she wants him herself.”

  “You should pray to God. Is this God's plan for you? Do you belong with this man?”

  “If it's between me and Lucrezia, no question. She's too short for him. She wears fur.”

  “And also, she is a bitch. Wollie, if God does not plan him for you, then you cannot make this happen. But if it is God's will, then no earthly power will keep you from him.”

  No earthly power. How about superpowers? If I could construct a superheroine who could plant bugs in chandeliers, why not one who could out-seduce Lucrezia? “Felix, how about asking for divine intervention to make me sexier?”

  “No, you miss the point.”

  “Oh.” Why was I seeking spiritual advice anyway from a man planning to rip off Tiffany & Co.? “And you, Felix. Do you have secrets?”

  “My secret is this,” he said. “I work for God. God is the boss of me.”

  “That's not a big secret for anyone who's spent five minutes with you. But tell me, would God ever ask you to—I don't know, rob a bank? Or something?”

  “Wollie, this is the question you have already said. You are obsessed with this.”

  “No, I—” He was right. I was growing too transparent. The nosey parker factor.

  “Human laws,” Felix said, “they are not divine laws. In my country, the law can change each month, or each week. Shall I obey it then? Which one? Last month? This month? I follow Jesus. In His church, I am a sheep. In the streets, I am a lion. The laws of the state, if they do not follow divine laws, then I break them, yes.”

  Uh-oh. This was not reassuring. “And what about trade laws?” I asked. “Like, I don't know, the laws that govern … exports.”