Manhattan, present day
Tessa Van Doren looked out the window of her loft onto the
madness on the street below her. It was eleven-thirty
p.m., and the city's beautiful people were packed six deep
down the block and around the corner, behind velvet ropes,
all vying to get into her club. She sipped at her forty-
year-old cognac and spotted Flynn and his partner in their
car across the street. Her hands shook ever so slightly,
and she took a deep breath and then another sip of cognac.
Flynn had lousy manners, always looked like he needed a
haircut and a shave, and dressed in Salvation Army
castoffs, but he thrilled her in a way that made a century
of loneliness fall away.
She could have her pick of anyone. Men, dressed in
expensive Italian suits, would try to pass Jorge, her head
bouncer and guardian of the most desired velvet rope in
all of Manhattan, a cool one hundred in neatly folded
twenties, palm to palm. But Jorge, as far as she could
tell, never took the money, was never swayed. He selected
the crowd based on his own indefinable criteria. Somehow,
by the end of the night, those inside the Night Flight
Club would include the right mix of supermodels and
celebrities, beautiful women and powerful men, journalists
and sports stars, rappers and rock-and-rollers. And
occasionally, the NYPD's Flynn and Williams. Flynn always
drew stares, as if people wondered what the bouncer,
Jorge, was thinking letting this joker past the velvet
ropes โ though Williams blended in perfectly. Detective
Williams's skin was smooth and coffee-colored, and he wore
his hair cut so close to his scalp that he looked almost
royal, all cheekbones and strong jaw, with dark eyes and
lashes that women would kill for.
Tessa walked over to the oriental desk she had brought
with her years before from China and dialed the downstairs
phone. "When detectives Flynn and Williams arrive, tell
Lily to show Mr. Flynn into my office. Let Williams
mingle."
Every night at midnight, Tessa would descend in her
private glass elevator and make her way through her club
to the back room, to the select few who made it into her
inner sanctum, the VIP room, with its opulent deep-purple
velvet couches and soft lighting. There she would hold
court until nearly dawn with the big names and high
rollers.
Tessa went back to the window and looked down on the near-
mayhem below, then walked through her loft to her bedroom.
The living room was full of antiques she'd collected over
the years. She enjoyed the hunt, and could recount with
startling accuracy the origins of each piece and how she
had acquired it. On the walls hung paintings by Goya and
Chagall, and one by Picasso โ not her favorite, though โ
from his Cubist period. She loved her Rousseau most, the
solitary moon peeking over the jungle vegetation. And of
course, her tapestries from Shanghai, though she still
felt a pang sometimes when she looked at them. Other
oriental treasures sat on the mahogany custom-built
shelves โ jade figurines and porcelain vases, illuminated
by recessed lighting. They reminded her of the happiest
and saddest time of her life, her unnaturally long life.
Later, when Tessa exited the loft, the best alarm system
money could buy would protect her paintings and treasures,
as well as her vintage clothing and jewelry collection โ
and her secrets.
She entered her bedroom, which was like walking into a
vault of luxury. The bed was covered in pure silk sheets
she had brought from Hong Kong. The canopy was a rich
brocade. The carpets covering the dark hardwood floors,
knotted with hand-made craftsmanship, were from Iran,
Pakistan, China and Turkey. Her furniture was heavy
mahogany wood, late nineteenth century. Yet she mixed ruby-
red glass-and-silver candle-holders and candles and a
collection of Steuben glass, as well as a whimsical
collection of elephant statues and figurines, all with
trunks raised, a sign of good fortune. The result wasn't
stuffy or overdone, but simply spoke of great elegance and
wealth. Far from being ostentatious, the loft was
decorated with a taste and class honed over time. In
actuality, the entire room was a vault, into which she
could recede before dawn cast its first light over the
island of Manhattan, and a Wellington lock and special
alarm protected her from intruders. It was as if her
bedroom was a giant panic room.
She walked to her cavernous dressing room, the size of a
small New York City apartment. Mechanized racks rotated
her clothes so she could see her incredible collection of
vintage clothing: Dior, Chanel, Edith Head, Oleg Cassini,
as well as new but elegant fashions from her favorites,
including Dolce & Gabbana, one of the few new design teams
of which she approved. Tonight she chose an Oleg Cassini
gown, velvet, midnight-blue and strapless. Downstairs,
amid the noise and drinking and the heavy techno-beat of
the music spun by her DJ, who went by the simple moniker
of "Cool," she knew most of the women would be dressed in
miniskirts and knee-high boots โ the season's latest. But
Tessa never wavered from her vintage clothing. She always
looked, Jorge told her, like she had just stepped into the
room from another time, another place. Even if she hadn't
owned Night Flight, she would, she knew, make the crowd
part with her entrance.
Tessa zipped up her gown, expertly put on her makeup and
then sipped her cognac again, thinking of Flynn and
berating herself for this stupid infatuation. She wore her
black hair up in a French twist, and diamond earrings
dangled from her lobes. She chose a diamond brooch for the
center of her cleavage and pinned it to her dress. Next
she donned a diamond watch, a single sapphire ring that
had once adorned a queen's hand, and, as always, she wore
a gold bracelet with a small key attached.
Tessa approved herself in the triple mirror in her
dressing room. She knew certain myths about mirrors and
vampires โ the work of the overactive imagination of Bram
Stoker. She was vain enough to not leave her private
quarters unless she was perfect. She knew, correctly, that
she was always flawless, yet she never tired of that twirl
in the triple mirror. Perhaps it was the reassurance that
despite all she had lost, she still was eternally young.
Finally, she went to a small alcove off of her bedroom and
knelt at the gold statue of Buddha. The idea of
reincarnation appealed to her, as opposed to a Christian
heaven or hell, Satan or Christ. She decided that she
simply wouldn't die between reincarnations but would grow
and learn with each human lifetime she lived, until she
reached Nirvana. It was a bastardized version of Buddhism,
she realized. Buddhists were not supposed to take lives,
however evil the soul within the body was. But she chanted
briefly and spoke a silent prayer nonetheless, the chant
always taking her back to a time when she truly had been
at peace. Then she left the loft, setting the alarm and
taking the elevator down to the club.
Parked in their unmarked car, Alex Williams looked with
disdain at his partner's attire.
"Please tell me you're not walking in there wearing that
sorry-ass tie," Alex snapped at Tony Flynn as they sat
across the street from the Night Flight Club, Manhattan's
hottest night spot of the moment. "You'll make me look bad
just by being seen with you, man."
"What's wrong with my tie?"
"For one thing, it's ugly. What is that? Puke-green? For
another, it's right out of the eighties. Do you think
you're a member of Duran Duran? Just how long do you keep
these things hangin' in your closet? And three, it's a
living history of your day. Is that a mustard stain?"
Flynn looked down and rolled his eyes. "Yeah.... From
breakfast."
"I have to tell you...that's just wrong."
"I'd rather have a Sabrett's hot dog for breakfast than
one of those friggin' soy shakes you drink."
Alex patted his washboard abs. "Pays off in my beautiful
physique, man.... But you...hot dogs? And I think that
white smudge is shaving cream."
Flynn stared at a smear of white on the pointed tip of the
tie. It was shaving cream. He sighed. He hated shaving. He
was blessed and cursed with thick black curly hair and a
swarthy complexion and dark beard that three hours after
shaving looked like five o'clock shadow, as if he hadn't
shaved at all.
"And," Alex continued, "the piรจce de rรฉsistance, ladies
and gentlemen? Blue pen marks and a spot of Wite-Out. My
friend, you write on paper, not your tie."
"Fuck you, Williams," Flynn muttered as they opened their
car doors. They stood on the sidewalk a minute. "And what
do I care what my tie looks like?"
Alex, always impeccably dressed in suits tailor-made for
his former quarterback's body, shook his head. "The
caliber of ladies at Night Flight, Flynn. The caliber of
ladies. They're gonna take one look at you and run
screaming. And that reflects on me." He feigned hurt.
"I'm not here to cop a bunch of women's phone numbers, I'm
here to check out the disappearance of one low-life drug
dealer whose last known hangout was the Night Flight Club."
Alex sighed as the two men stepped from the curb and
started walking toward the club with the confident yet
slight swaggers that a combined total of twenty-eight
years on the NYPD force buys two of New York's finest.
Alex continued egging on his partner. "You can lie to your
ex-wife. You can lie to your sainted mother if you want
to, but don't lie to me. Your partner. The guy who took a
bullet for you...right here." He pointed to his shoulder.
Flynn rolled his eyes. "Enough with the bullet already. It
grazed you."
"Yeah, well, it entitles me to harass you for the rest of
our lives. And I know one thing as sure as I know you had
a microwaved hot dog for breakfast. I know you want one
phone number...the home number of Tessa. And she digs you,
too, ugly ties and all. Makes me wonder about her."
"Yeah, well, I wonder all right. She's running a dirty
club."
"Maybe. Maybe not. Look, it's a free country. She can't
control every person who enters the club. Maybe she's
legit."
"Sure, Williams. And the Carlucci family just happens to
like the place a whole lot. They're not Boy Scouts. And
she ain't no Girl Scout."
"If she was, I bet you'd buy a lot of Thin Mints." Flynn
slugged his partner in the arm. "Shut up already."
"You punched my bullet wound."
"I fuckin' give up." Flynn threw his hands in the air and
tried not to let Williams see him smile.
As they neared the club entrance, the sidewalk was packed
with women in low-rise skirts and Prada boots and men
smelling of heavy cologne. The two partners pushed and
squeezed their way through the crowd to the bouncer and
flashed their badges, unaware they were being watched.
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