Son of Rosemary by Ira Levin

Author:Ira Levin [Levin, Ira]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
ISBN: 9781453217559
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2011-11-08T13:00:00+00:00

13

NEW YORK City’s newspaper readers, and its citizens who only glance at newsstands, relish those rare and delightful days when the two major tabloids headline the same headline. Tuesday, December 21st, was such a day, its twin front pages a true collector’s item.

Not only were the identical headlines typical of the “feisty, irreverent” style that had enabled both journals to survive right up to the rim of the new century, but also each of the two pages tucked fire and flood into a pair of those little boxes up top in the same order. Different wording there, but hey, you can’t expect miracles, can you?

A hideous crime, madman’s work, the poor woman savaged in a way so bizarrely theatrical; and the setting, that building, that boutique!—a tabloid editor’s dream. The headline had offered itself on a silver platter: BLOOD FEST AT TIFFANY’S!

Big, black, stacked in three lines.

The reports in the two papers differed not much less. One said the dogs that smelled the still-warm blood were Weimaraners belonging to the owner of one of the upper-floor apartments; the other said they were wolfhounds belonging to the building’s owner.

Both papers had the victim lying naked on the boutique’s central counter, her arms at her sides—likened by one to a patient on an operating table, by the other to a sacrifice to a primitive god.

They agreed on the seven steak knives and the icepick. One said that other pieces of cutlery had been placed on and around the body; the other gave specifics. One mentioned minor looting—a few bracelets and watches, a punch bowl.

Both papers featured the same wire-service telephoto in the same tepid newsprint colors: a side view of the victim, blurred where you expected, lying on the glass counter filled with touched-up sparkling riches, festooned with ribbons of reddish blood. The silver handles of the icepick and three knives were circled in white; a few spoons and forks could be seen, and in the background, holly branches.

According to both papers, the luckless victim remained unidentified as of press time. She appeared to be in her late twenties and a Hindu; the icepick had been driven through the dime-size red dot on her forehead.

Luckless all right.

Jinxed, you might even say.

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