“You were what? Eating there, working there?” Berger pushes ahead.
“Eating there by myself. She walked in, also by herself. I had a very nice bottle of Italian wine. A nineteen-ninety-three Massolino Barolo. She was very beautiful.”
Barolo is my favorite Italian wine. The bottle he mentions is pricey. Chandonne goes on to tell his story. He was eating antipasto”Crostini di polenta con funghi trifolati e olio tart-ufato” he says in perfect Italianwhen he noticed a stunning African-American woman enter the restaurant alone. The maitre d’ treated her as if she was important and a regular customer, and seated her at a corner table. “She was well-dressed,” Chandonne says. “She obviously was not a prostitute.” He asked the maitre d’ to see if she would like to come to his table and join him, and she was very easy.
“What do you mean, very easy?’ Berger inquires.
Chandonne gives a slight shrug and reaches for his Pepsi again. He takes his time sucking on the straw. “I think I would like another.” He holds up the cup and the dark blue-sleeved armJay Talley’s armtakes it from him. Chandonne blindly feels for the pack of cigarettes, his hairy hand groping over the top of the table.
“What do you mean when you say Susan was very easy?” Berger asks again.
“She needed no coaxing to join me. She came over to my table and sat. And we had a very nice conversation.”
I don’t recognize his voice.
“What did you talk about?” Berger asks him.
Chandonne touches his bandages again and I am imagining this hideous man with his long body hair, sitting in a public place, eating fine food and drinking fine wine and picking up women. It weirdly darts through my thoughts that Chandonne might have suspected Berger would show me this videotape. Is the Italian food and wine something he mentions for my benefit? Is he taunting me? What does he know about me? Nothing, I answer myself. There is no reason he would know anything about me. Now he is telling Berger that he and Susan Pless discussed politics and music over dinner. When Berger asks him if he was aware of what Pless did for a living, he answers that she told him she worked for a television station.
“I said to her, ‘So you’re famous,’ and she laughed,” Chandonne says.
“Had you ever seen her on television?” Berger asks him.
“I don’t watch much television.” He slowly blows out smoke. “Now, of course, I don’t watch anything. I can’t see.”
“Just answer the question, sir. I didn’t ask how much television you watch but if you had ever seen Susan Pless on television.”
I strain to recognize his voice as fear tickles over my flesh and my hands begin to shake. His voice is completely unfa- miliar. It sounds nothing like the voice outside my door. Police. Ma ‘am, -we’ve gotten a call about a suspicious person on your property.
“I don’t remember seeing her on television,” Chandonne replies.
“What happened next?” Berger asks him.
“We ate. We drank the wine, and I asked her if she would like to go somewhere and have a little champagne.”
“Somewhere? Where were you staying?”
“In the Barbizon Hotel, but not under my real name. I had just gotten in from Paris and was only in New York a few days.”
“What was the name you signed in under?”
“I don’t remember.”
“How did you pay?”
“Cash.”
“And you’d come to New York for what reason?”
“I was very frightened.”
Inside my conference room, Marino shifts in his chair and blows out in disgust. He editorializes again. “Hold on to your hats, folks. Here comes the good part.”
“Frightened?” Berger’s voice sounds on the tape. “What were you frightened of?”
“These people who are after me. Your government. That’s what this whole thing is about.” Chandonne touches his bandages again, this time with one hand, then with the one holding the Camel cigarette. Smokes curls around his head. “Because they are using mehave been using meto get to my family. Because of untrue rumors about my family…”
“Hold on. Hold on a minute,” Berger interrupts.
Out of the corner of my eye I see Marino angrily shaking his head. He leans back in his chair and crosses his arms over his swollen gut. “You get what you ask for,” he mutters, and I can only assume he means that Berger should never have interviewed Chandonne. It was a mistake. The tape is going to hurt more than it will help.