The Man in the White Linen Suit by David Handler

Author:David Handler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

When I awoke the next morning in the middle of that king-size bed in Merilee’s lavish bedroom, my mouth tasting vaguely of library paste, I had no idea where I was. It took me a second to remember. Lulu was sprawled out next to me, fast asleep, tongue lolling from the side of her mouth, which is vastly preferable to when she sleeps on my head. You’ll just have to take my word for that. She stirred as I began to move around in the bed and seemed a bit confused herself as to why we were in Merilee’s apartment but Merilee wasn’t. Not that she was complaining. She likes her creature comforts same as I do.

Groaning from an ache in my lower back, I climbed out of bed, put on my silk target-dot dressing gown and staggered to the front door of the apartment. That morning’s newspapers awaited me in the hallway on a small table outside of the door. Just one of the perks of living in a full-service luxury building.

I scanned them as I drank my orange juice while Merilee’s shmancy espresso machine did its schmancy thing and Lulu put away her 9Lives mackerel. BOOK ’EM was the non-clever banner headline on the front page of the Daily News. The Post had opted for the even more non-clever LITERARY SPLAT. No question about it, the deaths of Sylvia James and Tommy O’Brien were major tabloid news. Huge enough for the News to bump the story of Janet Jackson appearing topless on the September cover of Rolling Stone to an inside page, and to relegate the earth-shattering Johnny Depp/Winona Ryder breakup to Page Six of the Post. The sober, proper Times featured the story on the front page of its Metro section under the sober, proper headline: DISTINGUISHED PUBLISHER VICTIM OF VEHICULAR HOMICIDE. The subheading read: Bestselling Author’s Research Assistant Found Dead from Rooftop Fall. As was typical with the Times, I had to read between the lines while I drank my first cup of espresso to grasp that there was the slightest potential connection between the two violent deaths, since both the NYPD and the Willoughby police spokesmen had taken pains to point out that there was no evidence of a connection, even though the timing and the fact that Thomas O’Brien had worked for Sylvia’s legendary father had to lead anyone who had the approximate IQ of a melted ice cube to wonder.

I toasted a baguette and slathered it with some of the blackberry jam from the wild bushes that grow on Merilee’s farm, munching on it with my second cup of espresso. The weather forecast was for a humid day in the upper 80s. There was also a 20 percent chance of widely scattered showers, which is the sort of weather forecast that I’ve always found exceptionally helpful. After I showered, I stropped Grandfather’s razor, shaved, powdered my neck with Floris No. 89 talc and dressed in the slate-gray linen suit from Strickland & Sons, a contrasting pale gray shirt and a powder-blue knit tie.

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