And Sometimes I Wonder About You (8 page)

W
e caught a taxi on Broadway and cruised down to the Thirties and the Tesla Building. A middle-aged doorman I didn’t recognize was sitting behind the high Art Deco reception desk. He was a bronze-colored man with light caramel eyes.

“Can I help you?” he asked in the slightest of Spanish accents.

His question was not an offer. This made me wonder how serious the break-in was.

“Leonid McGill,” I said.

“Oh,” he said, derailed by a name. “Um, uh…There’s been a, a break-in…Somebody was hurt.”

“You stay here, Pop,” I said to my father. Even then it wasn’t lost on me that I called him what Twill called me.

I headed for the elevators.

“You can’t go up there,” the doorman commanded.

I pressed the elevator button with my left hand and felt for the pistol in my pocket with the right.

My father came up beside me and when I looked at him he nodded. He’d seen me retrieve the .45 from my office drawer.

“I’m with ya, Trot.”

“You can’t go up there,” the guard said again. His voice was filled with threat.

I took the gun out of my coat pocket and let it hang at my side; he calmed right down.

When we got to my office the door was gone and Rich Berenson, what stood for a third of the nighttime security force for the building, was standing in the gap.

It was no mean feat breaking down my office door. It was reinforced with titanium bars. There was a burned scent in the air and so I suspected an explosive of some type.

What kind of trouble could I have been in, to be invaded by professionals with bombs?

“LT,” Rich said.

When I approached the door the guard’s posture stiffened, telling me that it was probably worse than I imagined.

Rich is a tall white guy, bald on top with a graying ponytail down past his shoulders in back. He’d once been a policeman in Ohio somewhere, then retired at fifty and came to New York to be a security guard. There was a divorce and a married woman in the mix of his decision but all of that was over and done by the time we’d met.

I’d put the pistol back in my pocket in the elevator but the downstairs guard had probably warned Rich, his boss.

“Step aside, Mr. Berenson,” I said.

“The police are in there,” he replied as an explanation of his refusal.

“My office,” I said. “My cops.”

“Let him in,” a voice I knew declared.

Rich stepped aside and I entered Mardi’s reception area trying to make sense of the quiescent detritus left by the carnage that had hit the room.

The first thing I saw was the man-sized hole in the wall next to my impregnable inner-office door. I had always known that it would be possible to break down the plaster and wood wall, but I thought that I’d be on the other side with weapons ready if that were ever to happen.

The man who allowed me into my own space was the uniformed Sergeant Jess Dalton of the NYPD. He was glaring at me and my father. Behind him another policeman came out through the wounded wall. Just seeing that enraged me. I might have said something but I kept my peace in deference to the dead man stretched out in front of Mardi’s desk. He’d been shot and then bled quite a bit before his heart gave out.

“McGill,” Sergeant Dalton said—it was not a greeting. “What do you know about this?”

“You kiddin’ me, right, Sergeant? I mean I hope you don’t think I broke down my own damn door and killed Hector Laritas because I wanted to get rich on the insurance claim.”

I knew the dead man. He was another third of nighttime security at the Tesla. Young when I’d last seen him and always with a smile, he was Twill’s age and my anger was growing.

“You got it all worked out, huh?” Dalton said with a grin that clawed at the single shred of civility I had left.

Dalton was tall, his first mistake with me, and bulky from the wrong kind of exercise. He was forty years old, no more, and the color of a white napkin stained with olive oil.

“You better back up, man,” I said to the cop. “Back up or back it up.”

Buddha had departed the building, and all that he left was rage. My office, my door, my wall, my guard, my
father…Dalton’s
hand moved toward his firearm. His younger partner looked a little confused. I was absolutely sure of what I’d do. I didn’t have to draw out my gun—just reach in the pocket and shoot them both through my coat.

“What’s happening in here?” my
archenemy/guardian
angel said.

Carson Kitteridge came in behind me. It wasn’t the first time that his mere presence saved someone’s life.

“Break-in, Captain,” Sergeant Dalton said, suddenly compliant. “We got a call from Seko Security System about this office. By the time we got here it’s like you see it.”

“Seko called you too, LT?” Kit asked. He was standing on my fallen front door and so had a couple of inches on me.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t they tell you to wait for the police to call?”

“Would you?”

A glimmer of a smile crossed the veteran cop’s lips and then he looked down on the dead stare of Hector. The humor dissipated and Kit’s dreamy eyes were suddenly awake.

“What were they after?” he asked me.

“I can’t tell you,” I said. “Everybody so far’s been body-blockin’ me.”

“Let him in the office,” the captain said to the sergeant.

The uniforms moved to the side and I took a step toward the hole in the wall.

“Who are you?” Kit asked.

I turned and saw that the question was addressed to Tolstoy. He had almost successfully become a shadow in the corner of the office, but when I moved he made to follow.

“Bill Williams,” he said, not extending a hand. “I’m an old friend of Trot’s father. We were having a drink when the call came through.”

Carson Kitteridge is a human lie detector and all his antennae were up. But since most of what my father said was mostly true, the captain did not pounce.

“This is an active crime scene, Mr. Williams,” Carson did say. “You’ll have to leave.”

My father looked like the man I once knew for a moment there. He was an outlaw at heart, like every true revolutionary. The rules did not apply as far as he was concerned. But he could see that Carson was a man to be reckoned with.

“Yes sir,” he said to my own personal cop. “See you later, Trot.”

He turned and walked out through the broken doorway.

I watched him go, wondering how many decades it would be before I saw him again.

F
rom the hole end of the long aisle I could see that my office door was closed, the way I’d left it earlier that evening; there was no way to tell if it was still locked. I walked down there, checking the cubicles as I went. Twill’s space wasn’t visibly desecrated. Only the cubicle that held the office computer system seemed to be out of the normal. There were papers on the floor and one of our heavy-duty USB memory devices connected to its side.

Before checking out the mainframe specially built for me by Bug Bateman, I went to test my office door. It was still locked but somebody had used some kind of lever, probably a crowbar, trying to pop the mechanism there. My personal door was almost as tough as the one they
circumnavigated
getting into the inner sanctum, and they’d most likely used all the explosives—or maybe they were trying to make a space for more fireworks.

Looking back down the aisle at the captain and his pickup army of cops, I imagined the chain of events. Men, most likely three or four of them, came and blew out the front door to the suite then went right to work on the wall. Two or three of them came through, leaving one standing guard, probably just inside the hole they made. One of the men went to the computer and the others went to work on my office door. But Hector was on his rounds. Maybe he heard the explosion or the pounding; maybe Seko did their job right and called Rich Berenson after alerting me. When Hector walked in, the guardian shot him, yelled for his accomplices, and then they all ran.

Maybe they went down the stairs or hijacked the freight elevator.

“Let’s see what happened,” Kit said to me.

For a moment I thought he wanted to look inside my head but then I remembered.

It took me and Sergeant Dalton to pull the warped office door open. We all got behind my desk and I turned on the monitor system in the bottom drawer of my desk. Whenever someone enters the front door of the reception area three cameras come on for ninety seconds. The first few frames were smoke-filled but then the three intruders appeared through the haze. They wore face masks, of course, and gloves. Before the minute and a half was up they’d started beating on the wall with two oversized sledgehammers.

“They knew what they were doing,” Kit said. “They knew you pretty good, LT.”

I didn’t reply because whatever I said would have only been redundant.

“What did they want?” Dalton asked.

“Information,” Kit and I said together.

“They tried to download the computer files.” I was gesturing at the big memory stick they’d attached to my Bug-special computer.

“Is that your device?” Kit asked.

“Yeah. Yeah. Hector probably came in and the sentry shot him. The office door was givin’ ’em problems and the system wouldn’t cooperate. They knew a lot but they didn’t know that my files are downloaded every night, erasing whatever was held in the temporary files. They realized it was useless and just ran, just ran.”

“Who was it?” Kit asked me.

“You saw ’em, man. They had masks and shit. How’m I gonna know who it was?” I was that taciturn teenager living on the street again.

“What are you working on?”

“I don’t have a job right now.”

“You still say that wasn’t you smashing Alexander Lett’s head into that wall?” Kit suggested.

“It ain’t him.”

“He checked himself out of the hospital.”

I looked Kit in the eye so that his wetware lie detector had full access.

I said very clearly, “It ain’t him.”

“What about Twill?” Kit asked.

“He’s out workin’ with some girl he knew in high school. Her boyfriend changed his phone number and he’s lookin’ for the new one,” I said but I was wondering about Twill too.

“It’s a murder,” Kit told me. “We’ve got to do this by the numbers.”

“I know.”

My father and I got to the Tesla just after midnight. It was 4:00 in the morning before the police finished their questions. They didn’t take me down to some precinct because I hadn’t witnessed the crime firsthand. I answered their battery of questions four or five times, all the while Kit staring at me, searching for the lie. But I passed and the coroner’s men came. Hector was taken to the morgue and Rich Berenson was saddled with the unenviable task of calling the young man’s wife. Better him than the cops.

While all of this was happening the forensics team came through dusting and vacuuming, photographing, crawling through, and in other ways examining the crime scene.

They left admonishing me not to touch anything before forensics came in later.

After that I lifted the front door and wedged it into the hole, went down to my office, and sat.

When the phone rang I knew it was Aura.

“Are you all right?” she asked me.

“Fine.”

“Do you need me to come down?”

“No.”

“Are you okay, Leonid?”

“Not quite right yet but I intend to be.”

It wasn’t until about 6:00 that I signed on to my personal computer. The first thing I looked up was the inmate list for the supermax Indiana prison where my brother was slated to spend the greater portion of the rest of his life. Most systems couldn’t get that kind of information but Bug had hacked every important database in the United States and then some. He let me use his access because I was the man, with Iran Shelfly’s help, who had turned him from a blob into an Adonis.

My father said that Nikita was no longer in prison. My computer couldn’t tell me who decided to break down my doors but at least I could see where my brother had gone.

But there I failed too.

There was no record of Nikita McGill ever being incarcerated there or anywhere else in the federal system of prisons. When I looked deeply enough I found a death certificate that was issued a year
before
the last time my brother and I had talked. He died in Columbus, Ohio, the obituary said.

A homeless man identified as Nikita Angus McGill died of coronary complications at Sutter Street Homeless Center leaving no family.

“Coincidence” is a word that had been removed from the detective’s lexicon. Maybe Marella was just a lucky happenstance. Maybe my father ringing the doorbell when I was on the phone with her was a mere fluke. But when a convicted criminal disappears from prison records and a dead man decorates my front hall—that had to mean something, but for the life of me I couldn’t think what that something was.

It wasn’t until after 7:00, after Mardi called on my cell phone and I went out to reception to let her in, it wasn’t until then that I remembered Hiram Stent.

I
started by using another of Bug’s programs. The unproclaimed genius had created an entire virtual world for himself. He even had programs set with updatable key words that
read
the papers and websites for him in the morning, delivering edited versions of the news before he dove in for himself.

All I had to do was type in the name “Hiram Stent” and I got six hits on his death.

He was found at around midnight, not long after someone had used a bomb to break down my office door, in an alley off a side street half a block from Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn. Hiram had been stabbed multiple times in the torso, neck, and face; his pockets had been torn out. His wallet had probably been taken but the canny indigent had hidden his identification (and probably a few bucks) in his shoe. The authorities suspected a mugging. There were no witnesses and the investigation was ongoing. Anyone with information was to call Crimestoppers.

While reading the articles about Hiram I decided to take his case. I had failed the sad man in life but maybe I could make up for some of that.

While dedicating myself to a dead man’s quest, a name popped into my head—Twitcher. That was what the voice I’d overheard on the phone had called my son: Twitcher.

That’s how my brain works: a question, maybe not even articulated, goes down through my mind and I stew on it until an answer comes, or not. Sometimes I simmer over a question for years and suddenly one day the answer just appears like Athena from her father’s brow.

“Mr. McGill?” Mardi said. She was carrying a cardboard box from the upscale coffee shop on the first floor. Therein were a large black coffee, two apple-fritter doughnuts, and a real apple—this last item because she felt that I should eat at least one healthy thing each day.

After laying the box on my desk she said, “I called Mr. Domini about the door. He said that he’ll come fix it by end of day. Seko Security said that a temporary security system will be installed before the end of the day and that they’ll have a permanent solution by the middle of next week.”

I had good insurance on my office and my systems. It’s not if something will go wrong, it’s when.

I spent the rest of the morning searching the Net, and elsewhere, for two women: Celia Landis and Lois Stent.

Hiram’s wife was easy. She was born Lois Miriam Bowman to Lawrence Frank and Melissa Marie Bowman in Tampa, Florida, in 1983. She married Hiram in 2003, had Lisa in ’04 and William in ’06. The separation came in ’11. In that same year divorce papers were served but that hadn’t gone very far. Hiram’s lawyer was a man named Tracey Tremont.

I called Melissa Marie Bowman because her husband, Larry, had died of a heart attack three years earlier.

“Hello?” she said on the first ring.

“Ms. Melissa Bowman?” I asked.

“Yes?”

“My name is McGill. I’m calling in place of Mr. Tremont, Hiram Stent’s lawyer.”

“What?”

“I have information about Mr. Stent that I believe your daughter would be interested in.”

“Information,” she said. “What kind of information?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I can only share that with your daughter.”

“Lois doesn’t want to talk to Hiram.”

“I can assure you, ma’am, that I will not put them in touch.”

“I can’t give you her number.” The woman sounded hesitant. Maybe she liked Hiram or disliked the handyman.

“Let me give you my number,” I said. “If she decides to call then she can. If not there’s nothing lost.”

“Okay. Can I tell her what this is about?”

“Sorry.”

While waiting for Lois to call back, or not, I started looking for Celia Landis. There was too much information there. There were dozens of women with that name across the nation. It was impossible for me to find out if any of these women were the right age, related to Hiram, or the subject of a search by a law firm in San Francisco called Briscoe/Thyme.

I called information in SF asking for the number for the lawyers but was told that there was no such law firm with those names under any possible spelling.

I decided to call all of the women within fifty miles of the city with that name. That tree wasn’t likely to bear fruit but I had to do it—for my client.

Before I could make the first call, Mardi interrupted.

“A Terry Colter on three, sir.”

“Who?”

“He said his name like he thought you should know it.”

“Leonid McGill,” I said into the line.

“Who are you?” an angry male voice asked.

“Can I do something for you?”

“Why are you calling my wife?”

“That depends, who’s your wife?”

“Don’t get smart with me,” the angry man replied.

“I can’t help my IQ, brother. Maybe you should put somebody smarter on the phone.”

“Maybe I should come up there and kick your ass.”

“I’ll be here from nine to five most days. You’re welcome to come up and try.” I was serious as a hangover.

My caller understood this and took a minute to reorganize his approach.

“I’m Lois Bowman’s husband,” the man calling himself Terry Colter said.

“For how long?”

“What business is that of yours?”

“Well,” I reasoned, “if it was before yesterday your wife is going to prison for bigamy.”

Another few moments and a woman’s voice said, “Hello? Who is this?”

“Leonid McGill.”

“And you represent Hiram’s lawyer?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “I’m calling you with information that his lawyer would have given you if he knew what I knew and he knew how to call you.”

“What are you saying?”

“Hiram Stent was murdered last night.”

Lois Stent gasped. There was a knock against her receiver and another sound that was very human and probably sincere.

“What?” she cried after making other wordless laments.

“He was stabbed in the face, neck, and torso,” I said. “You can get the full details on the Internet editions of any New York paper.”

“Who are you?”

“Hiram came to me yesterday wanting to find a woman named Celia Landis. He said that if he found her he’d make enough money to fly down Florida way and reclaim his wife and children.”

“He said that?”

“Almost word for word.”

“And so, so you’re calling to blame me for his death?”

“Through sickness and health,” I said, “poverty and wealth.”

“I…”

“He was living in a rooming house, Mrs. Stent. He was trying to leverage a million dollars out of a case over a missing woman named Celia Landis. Have you ever heard of her?”

“No.” She was crying.

“Had he told you anything about what he was doing?”

“We haven’t talked for a long time.”

“You should call the Brooklyn police and ask about him,” I said. “Somebody needs to come up here and put him in the ground.”

“I didn’t know,” she said miserably.

“No,” I agreed. “You didn’t.”

I wasn’t being fair. I had no insight into what went on between husband and wife. She had a right to live any life she wanted. But Hiram Stent was my client.
I
had let him down. He died on my watch and I wanted somebody, anybody, to pay.

“What else did he say?” Lois asked.

“He came in here with holes in his shoes,” I said, wishing I could stop. “He asked me to find this mystery woman and I kicked him out because he was poor and he smelled like the earth turned on a fresh grave. He said he kept a PO box so that Lisa and William could send him a letter if they needed to.”

The sob that came from Lois Stent’s throat a thousand miles away stopped my tirade.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said. “I’ll make a deal with you. You come up to bury him and I’ll bury the people that did this.”

A red light started blinking on my phone. That meant someone else had called.

“I never meant for him to die,” she moaned.

“It’s not your fault,” I said. “It’s whoever it is stabbed him.”

With a blunt index finger I pressed the button to break the connection. I had no help for her. Maybe Terry Colter could soothe her guilt.

I didn’t even put down the receiver, just hit the intercom button and said, “Who was it?”

“Is it,” Mardi corrected, “he’s still on the line. A guy named Josh Farth. He says he wants to hire you.”

I wanted to do a search on Bernard Shonefeld but something made me stop my blundering and say, “Put him on.”

“Hello,” a strong male voice said.

“Mr. Farth? This is Leonid McGill. How can I help you?”

“I hear that you do missing persons cases,” he said.

“Hear from whom?”

“Around.”

“Around where?”

“I have a friend in the NYPD that says you do a good job because you dig deep.”

“What’s this friend’s name?” I asked.

“Well”—Josh
hesitated—“he’s
more like an acquaintance. His name is Peter Morton. He’s a sergeant in Queens.”

I jotted down the name and asked, “Who’s missing?”

“A young woman.”

“When can you come in, Mr. Farth?”

“I could be there in less than an hour.”

“I’ll be waiting for you.”