JM02 - Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home (13 page)

“Pull up a chair.” She pointed to the beat-up armchair in the corner. “I’m doing busywork now, so I can talk.” I turned the stereo down a notch and dragged the chair closer and sat. Nina paced back and forth before her canvas, and occasionally daubed at it, and sang along with The Subdudes as I spoke. She never interrupted and she never glanced in my direction. I told her about my trip to Pace-Loyette and my discussion with Irene Pratt, and about the long list of lawsuits and arbitration claims that Danes was involved in. When I was through, she stepped away from the easel, lit another cigarette, and leaned her hips against the utility sink.

“So, basically, you haven’t found out anything.” She said it matter-of-factly.

“I haven’t found out much. But we know that the people at Pace are worried—”

“I knew that before,” Sachs interrupted.

I nodded. “We know that someone else is looking for him—”

“But not who it is.”

“And we know that Irene Pratt is genuinely concerned about him. As far as I can tell, she’s one of the people closest to him, and she has no clue of where he went or why he hasn’t returned.”

Nina laughed nastily. “What did you think of Pratt? She’s like a frustrated librarian, isn’t she? Or the nun who secretly lusts for the priest.”

“You think she and Danes had a thing?”

Nina shook her head and chuckled. “She’s not his type. She’s smart enough, but Greg likes a jagged little pill— he likes them edgy. Pratt’s too much of a schoolgirl. But she was interested, God only knows why. No accounting for taste, I guess.”

“I guess not,” I said. “Though you must have thought he had something going for him— once upon a time.”

She snorted. “Sure I did— back when I was fresh out of art school and fighting with my parents over the dump I was living in and the shithole where I waited tables. Back then I thought Greg was a hoot. He was smart and he knew it, and he had no time for people who weren’t. And unlike most of the wannabe bohemians I hung with back then, he actually liked what he was doing, he made good money doing it, and he planned to make a lot more. Plus, he was fucking funny, too. He’d say anything to anybody, and he didn’t give a damn who he pissed off. He was a real poke in the eye back then, and so was I. Maybe I still am.”

Nina looked at her high ceiling and blew out a long cord of smoke.

“’Course, all that gets old fast when you live with it every day and he decides he’s smarter than you are and you’re just there to fetch and carry while he’s out conquering the universe.” She ran a hand through her hair and crossed her arms and looked at me. A fleck of ash floated past her ear. “You really are a nosy bastard.”

I shrugged. “Like I said, it’s part of what you’re paying for.”

She rubbed her chin with the back of her hand and puffed on her cigarette. “Yeah, well … what else do I get? What’s next?”

“Next Monday I get into his apartment. That should tell us something. Between now and then, I keep an eye out for whoever else might be looking for Danes, and I try to talk to Linda Sovitch.”

“Isn’t that risky?” Sachs said. “Talking to her is kind of … public.”

“Sure. She gets wind that he’s missing— and for how long— and it could be all over cable the same night. And there’s not much I can do to finesse it. But he did have lunch with her on the day he walked out of the office, and according to Pratt she was one of his few friends, so it’s hard to ignore her. Besides, some press coverage might not be a bad thing. If he’s near a TV, it might flush him out. And maybe he won’t find out who broke the story— or how.”

Sachs looked skeptical. “He’d be so pissed—”

“Assuming he’s in a position to be.” She squinted at me. “I want you to think about the police, Nina,” I said.

“No fucking way. I told you, I’d never hear the end of it.”

“Nina, his employers are worried, the closest thing to a friend of his that I’ve been able to find is worried, even I’m worried— and I’ve never met the guy. You should be worried too.”

She looked at me and sucked on her cigarette and shook her head slowly. “Okay, okay, talk to Sovitch— but be discreet, for chrissakes. Give me some time to think about the cops.” I wasn’t sure how much discretion was possible, but I had nodded anyway and left.

The grade eased as I neared the top of Great Hill, and I backed off my pace a little. My heart was pounding and my breathing was fast and shallow. I lengthened my stride and inhaled slowly and deeply. A well-muscled woman in Rollerblades, spandex, and a helmet like a shark fin passed me going in the opposite direction. She was pushing off smoothly, her face lit with anticipation of the downhill glide.

By the time I reached the Loch and the 100th Street entrance, I no longer felt as if my heart would explode. The North Meadow was to my left. They were laying sod there, and I could smell the mulch and the wet earth and the grass. The sky was lighter now, and sunlight touched the crenellated line of buildings along Central Park West.

I passed the 97th Street transverse and wondered if Irene Pratt was awake yet. She’d been only slightly wobbly when I’d dropped her at her door last night, but she’d been awash in an anxious silence. Today she would have a bad case of regrets.

My heart rate was steady as I came to the Reservoir. I shook out my arms and breathed deeply, and my thoughts shifted again— this time to Jane.

It was near midnight when I’d gotten back from Brooklyn, and my head had been full of Nina and Billy and Ines. There’d been lights in Jane’s windows, but I hadn’t gone to her apartment. I went to mine, instead, and poured a glass of water and stood in the kitchen. There was a travel magazine on the counter, open to an article about Venice. I turned the pages as I drank and looked at pictures of the Piazza San Marco and the Ponte di Rialto and the exquisite windows of exquisite shops near the Ponte dell’Accademia. I wondered what it would be like to go there with Jane, and walk with her on the bridges, and sit with her in the cafés into the wee hours. And then— from nowhere— I thought of my Proustian moment on Columbus Avenue, and my wondering turned to how long we might stay in Venice, and whether it was a runner’s town, and how I would get in my miles with all that water and all those crowds. A surge of annoyance rushed up my spine and I pushed the magazine away.

I went into the living room and pulled a book from the shelf and sat with it in my lap and didn’t read. I listened for half an hour to Jane’s kickboxing workout— the thump-thump-whump of her beating crap out of the heavy bag that hangs in a corner of her loft— and when the pummeling stopped I listened to my telephone ring. I sat for a while after it went quiet, and then I peeled off my clothes and got into bed. I lay there, watching the play of lights across the ceiling, listening to the rain, until about four-thirty, when I’d pulled on my running clothes.

I still didn’t know why I hadn’t called her or answered her call, or why it had taken so long for my irritation to subside, or why there was a trace of fear in its wake. I didn’t know why I couldn’t sleep.

I was covered in a skin of sweat, and my joints were loose and springy now. A lot of oxygen was bubbling around in my brain. The Museum of Natural History was on my right, bathed in yellow light. I shortened my stride and picked up the pace.

It was nearly six when I got home, and nearly seven by the time I’d stretched and showered and shaved. I came out of the bedroom and there was a note under the front door. The stationery was heavy ivory-colored stock and the printing was angular and precise, like an architect’s. It was from Jane.

Dinner? Call me.

I put the card on the kitchen counter, by the tulips that were shedding their petals. I flicked the coffee machine on and spooned yogurt into a bowl with a sliced apple and some granola. And then I thought about how I might get in touch with Linda Sovitch.

Sovitch was a star of sorts, the most recognizable of BNN’s talking heads and the host of its most successful show. As such, she would be attended by a cadre of PAs, flacks, and other assorted minders, wrapped around her like the skin of an onion and paid to keep riffraff like me at arm’s length. If I wanted to wait a few days, I could root around for some friend of a friend of a friend who might know one of Sovitch’s gatekeepers and might arrange a proper introduction. But I didn’t want to wait a few days. I wanted to talk to Sovitch soon, and that required something more direct. I called Tom Neary.

“You know anybody who deals in celebrity cell numbers?” I asked.

“And hello to you too. Somebody have a little too much coffee today?”

“Somebody hasn’t had nearly enough. Surely a fancy outfit like Brill must have a few gray-market contacts for stuff like this.”

“Surely we do. And they’re so useful we don’t waste them on free agents like you.”

“I’m not asking you to waste anything, I just want a number.”

“Whose?”

“Linda Sovitch’s.”

“From TV?”

“Is there another?”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Neary said. “I hear you had a nice visit with Dennis Turpin, by the way.”

“It had a certain entertainment value,” I said, “but I’m not sure how useful it was. I did have an interesting chat with Danes’s doorman, though.” I told Neary about it, and he was quiet for a while, thinking.

“Not cops,” he said finally.

“And not Turpin’s people, either— at least, not according to him. And I assume you’d tell me if they were yours.”

“They’re not mine,” he said.

“Then whose are they?”

“I don’t know,” Neary said. “Not without more coffee, anyway. I’ll call if I get a brainstorm, or if I can find Sovitch’s number.”

While I waited, I read through Geoffrey Tyne’s CV, in anticipation of interviewing him that afternoon. As I’d gathered from his name, Tyne was a Brit, though he’d spent much of his twenty-five-year career overseas. His background was in the right ballpark: university, some military service, a stint with a big UK security consulting firm, doing “personal security”— bodyguard— work before graduating to the corporate side of the shop. And then came a succession of jobs abroad, mainly with banks, in capacities of branch or country or regional security director. But he hadn’t stayed at any of the companies longer than a few years, and he’d never managed to secure a top spot. I was wondering why when the phone rang.

It wasn’t Neary. It was Gregory Danes’s lawyer, Toby Kahn, returning my call. He was on a cell phone, on his way to court. His voice was deep and local, and his rushed words were half swallowed by a bad connection.

“You’re who?” he asked, and I explained it to him again.

“I get paid to handle securities cases for Greg, and that’s it,” Kahn said. “I’m not qualified to do family law, and I get no brownie points for mixing it up with his ex-wife or her hired hand— which I guess is what you are. I got to go inside now— sorry I can’t …” His words grew fainter and the static grew louder, and then the line was dead. I put the phone down.

When it rang again, Neary was on the other end. He had no ideas about who else might be looking for Danes, but he did have a telephone number for me.

“It’s supposed to be her supersecret, private, family-and-close-friends-only number, so use it wisely.”

Linda Sovitch’s supersecret, private, family-and-close-friends-only number was answered by her supersecret, private, family-and-close-friends-only personal assistant, a single-minded young man named Brent.

“How the hell did you get this number?” he demanded.

I suppressed the urge to say something about a bathroom wall. “I’m a PI, Brent, I do this kind of thing for a living. And if I can get a little time with Linda to talk about a case, I’ll happily go away.”

“How the hell did you get this number?” We went on like this for a while. Finally, my patience ran dry.

“Just tell her I need to talk about Gregory Danes, okay? It won’t take more than a half hour of her life, and we can do it at a time and place of her choosing.”

“How the hell did you get—”

“Tell her, Brent.” I hung up.

I wasn’t sure when, or if, I’d hear back from Brent— much less from Sovitch— and I had a few hours until my interview with Geoffrey Tyne. I opened my laptop to research the last items on my list of Danes lawsuits. I turned on the television for background noise. It was tuned to BNN, and after twenty minutes of half-bright market commentary, Linda Sovitch came on the screen.

It was a short blurb, no more than fifteen seconds, pitching that night’s segment of Market Minds. Sovitch’s hair hung in a graceful blond bell, framing her face and long neck. Her flawless understated makeup accentuated the blue of her eyes, the curve of her high cheeks, and the fullness of her mouth. She was babbling something about her scheduled guests when my phone rang. It was Brent.

“You know the Manifesto Diner?” I didn’t. “It’s on Eleventh Avenue, between Fifty-third and Fifty-fourth. She’ll meet you there this afternoon at three-thirty— exactly— and you’ll have exactly fifteen minutes.” He hung up. It had been easier than I thought.

I changed channels and went back to my laptop and the lawsuits. I stayed there for about an hour, and then I changed into a navy suit, white shirt, and tie and caught a subway downtown. But my mind was not on the interview with Geoffrey Tyne, or even on my meeting with Linda Sovitch. Instead, I was thinking about the last of the court records that I’d read and about making another trip to Brooklyn later that night.

The offices of Klein & Sons are downtown, just off Hanover Square, a short walk from the Exchange, a slightly longer one from the Fed, and a stone’s throw from the two cramped rooms my great-grandfather had leased when he founded the firm one hundred years ago. Though it was early afternoon, the narrow street was already in shadow.

The Klein building is a minor Deco masterpiece, with elaborate chevron designs in green and gold around its base and a tower clad in stylized bronze fronds. The lobby is a vaulted cave of polished black stone, inlaid with gilded zigzags. Being there set my teeth on edge.

I didn’t visit the office much as a kid. I was bored and cranky whenever I went, and I annoyed my uncles and was in turn annoyed by them. My father, I suspect, shared many of my feelings about the place and rarely invited me down. And as an adult, I visited even less. So besides my relatives, there were few people there who recognized me. My name was a different matter.