The First Wives Club Read Free Page B

checked out the scene and immediately gave up hope of a score. Some matron from Connecticut. No one anyone ever heard of.
    Typical. He’d been running low on luck for weeks.
    He spent a little while bullshitting with Bob Collechio, who ran the catering.
    He didn’t want it to be too obvious that he was scarfing up the pastries like an animal and trying to stay in out of the rain. His press pass expired at the end of June, and if he didn’t get some shots soon, he’d not only be penniless but undocumented. It never ceased to amaze him that things really could always get worse, and usually did.
    “So, anything new?” he asked Bob.
    “Well, this one was a cute job. She offed herself. A cutter. The spic maid found her a couple of nights later, emptied out in the bathtub. Didn’t need to drain her before they embalmed her, but I hope the big shot bastid ex-husband don’t expect no discount. It was a rush job. Brought her in yesterday and they’re sinkin’ her today.”
    Larry internally winced at spic and at his own image of the sanguine bathtub.
    Larry was visual. He saw things that other people described. Which helped him make his living as a photographer and film editor, he admitted, but made his internal world almost too graphic. He needed cooperation from Bob, but felt like a worm dealing with him.
    “So why the rush?”
    “Ah, she’s the first wife of some big deal Wall Street guy, ya know, and now he’s got the new one stashed on Park Avenue, so I guess he don’t want no muss, no fuss, know what I mean?” He winked at Larry.
    “It ain’t good for business when you lose the ladies’ sympathy vote, ya know.” He laughed, a tinny sound that seesawed unpleasantly.
    “So what’s her name?” Okay, it was a long shot, but maybe there was something in it.
    “Griffin.”
    “As in Gil Griffin? Gil Griffin’s first wife?” This could be news.
    Everyone knew Gilbert Griffin. He was the barracuda of hostile takeovers, one of the big players at the big players’ table. And he was class. Not like Boesky or Milken. Discreet. Well, he had been until the scandal broke over his office romance with that blond M.B.A he was mentoring, the one with the slightly horsey face and the unbelievable body. He’d denied it for months in the press, talked about his home and wife, but then when the pressure was off him, he divorced the first one and married the M.B.A. After a brief new flare-up the Boardroom Sex Scandal headlines had died down. Now Larry couldn’t even remember the M.B.A’s name, or the name of Gil’s first wife either.
    He was real bad with names, but great with faces. What do you expect from a photographer? He looked up on the bulletin board over Bob’s head. Cynthia. Cynthia Griffin. “Listen, thanks for the tip. I think I’ll stick around.”
    The tip paid off when, a few minutes later, a big black Mercedes limo pulled up and Elise Elliot Atchison stepped out. Of course, Larry recognized her immediately. He’d know those bones anywhere, the shape of her unforgettable face. She was wearing a deep navy suit with a creamy white blouse, and her long, long legs were sheathed in silky stockings that matched her simple beige high-heeled pumps. Her hair, a dozen shades of blond, was pulled back into a French braid, and her eyes were hidden by enormous sunglasses, her head swathed in a dark blue chiffon scarf.
    Only last week, Larry had seen one of her old films, a favorite of his, Walking in the Dark. Now he lifted his camera for a shot, but he had taken so long to make his move that he missed her. That hadn’t happened in a long time.
    He realized he was actually excited. And it wasn’t because he could sell the photograph, which he was sure he could do. It was because he actually was impressed. He, Larry Cochran, New York newshound and filmmaker-to-be was impressed. She must be, what, fifty-five?
    Sixty?
    She’d come along right after Grace Kelly, had been promoted as her successor. Well, however old