Free See How They Run by James Patterson Page B

policemen finally came on the run.
    Two heavy, Bronx- or Brooklyn-accented voices. Gruff. Very male and scary.
    “What’s going on here?”
    “What’s the matter with you?”
    Alix was suddenly alert and embarrassed. She was trembling uncontrollably. She understood what had happened. What was about to happen now.
    “I’m all right now,” she managed. Her mouth was incredibly parched, sticky dry. “I’m all right. Thank you.”
    Then, one of the policemen suddenly recognized who she was. “Hey!” he said to his partner. “Do you know who this is?” His voice became high-pitched as he spoke to Alix. “Are you all right? … Miss Rothschild? Are you on any drugs, Miss Rothschild?”
    Alix shook her head. She tried to stand away from the parked car. …
If they take me to Bellevue
, she began to panic.
    “Today was very bad. The horns … I’m sorry that I screamed out. I was just very afraid.”
    She didn’t know how much she was going to have to explain. Thank God, they seemed to understand.
    The two policemen brought Alix back to Fifty-ninth Street in their cruiser. They were gentle and they tried to be understanding. One of them was Kevin Stapleton, a St. John’s graduate. The other was Howie Cohen, a young fallen-away Jew from Brooklyn. They had both seen
Sara, Sara
, and they told Alix that she was a tremendous actress.
An artist
.
    In the car with them, Alix slowly regained her self-control. … She was thinking that she couldn’t allow herself to get this out of control again. She promised herself she wouldn’t let it happen ever again. No matter what.
    The officers accompanied Alix inside the gold-and-Italian-marble lobby of the Sherry Netherland. They escorted her up to the lacquered birdcage elevator bank. Doormen, bellmen, deskmen, wealthy European and Texan hotel guests stared curiously. Impossible not to. Their strange images reflected off the nearby windows of Le Petit Café.
    Patrolman Cohen made her promise to see a doctor.
    Alix promised.
    “Thank you,” she whispered, and then went upstairs to the safety of her room.

CHAPTER 26
    “The new ROTHSCHILD look. Now you can have it, too!” proclaimed the front cover of
Vogue
.
    “The ROTHSCHILD Only Her Masseur Knows,” squealed a subhead on
Cosmo
.
    ROTHSCHILD AND REDFORD bellowed a hundred-foot-long movie poster over Broadway and Forty-fifth Street, just north of Times Square.
    That year, Alix Rothschild was the living legend in America. At least Alix was as close as she wanted to being a legend.
    It had begun when she was twenty-one years old, 1964, with Alix quietly establishing herself as one of the world’s more successful commercial models. In the next few years, Alix had done everything from the latest shampoo to Russian Crown fur. Both men and women seemed to like her sensual face, her figure, the way she moved, especially her smile.
    Then Alix had segued into film acting. One of the more successful model-to-actress transitions, it turned out.
    Alix had been nominated for Critic’s Circle awards for her first two films. She’d won an Oscar for her fifth film. Alix already had her own bronze star on Hollywood Boulevard.
    Film number 6 had been a hugely successful television movie tracing Jewish Arab roots in Palestine. Number 7 had grossed in excess of ninety million dollars. So far, there had been no eighth film—just an endless stream of gossip broadcast from Chasen’s and the Polo Lounge.
    Alix and David Strauss had three important connecting points in their pasts.
    First—Alix and David were either third or fourth cousins, both of them always forgot which. From the time they were six or seven years old, they had been thrown together at a variety of bar mitzvahs, weddings, and funerals. David, in fact, had been one of the first children Alix had been able to successfully relate to after she’d come to America.
    Second—Alix and David had been teenage lovers at Scarsdale High School. They’d suffered through the traditional