JM02 - Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home (18 page)

It was midafternoon and raining when I crossed the GW, and traffic was heavy near the tolls. So I had plenty of time to gaze upon the tangle of highways where the toll plaza morphed into the New Jersey Turnpike and several other routes, and to study the thicket of indecipherable road signs posted there. Despite this contemplation, I had only the vaguest notion of where I was supposed to go. New Jersey does that to me.

I steered my rented Toyota to an off-ramp. The local streets were pitted and gray, and the local drivers had little patience with uncertainty, but I paid them no heed and eventually found my way to Lincoln Avenue.

It hadn’t been difficult to come up with an address for Richard Gilpin’s firm, Morgan & Lynch, though the one I’d found was not the one listed on the company’s Web site— that address belonged to a commercial mail drop in one of Fort Lee’s many strip malls. I’d plugged the Morgan & Lynch telephone number into a reverse directory, and out had popped a listing for something called Ekaterinberg Holdings, with an address on Lincoln.

It was a small office building, with a façade of white brick that was going brown and narrow metal-framed windows. The windows were dirty and most of them were dark. The building had only four stories, but it loomed above its neighbors on the block, which included a Korean restaurant, decked out in mirrored glass and white stucco, a travel agency with a torn red awning, a two-level municipal parking lot, and a surgical supply company with barred windows and a sign proclaiming the area’s largest selection of latex gloves. Office space must’ve been tight down in the Caymans.

I drove past the building and pulled the Toyota into a space a block and a half down, in front of a bar called Roxy’s. Rain was falling harder now, and slanting in the wind. A wet shoe box flip-flopped across the street, following a plastic grocery bag that drifted like a ghost. I turned up the collar of my field jacket and opened my umbrella.

The lobby was a little larger than a broom closet, and done in algae-green tiles and fluorescent lights. There was a dusty plastic plant to the right as I came in, and a building directory on the wall to my left, behind a cracked pane of glass. I consulted it but learned little, as the only plastic letters left there had been arranged to spell the word SHAT. The elevator was to the rear, and taped on the wall next to it, in red ink on cardboard, was a handwritten note to the mailman. From this I learned that anything for Ekaterinberg Holdings or EK Industries or Gromyko Construction was to go to the fourth floor. I figured that included me, and I wedged myself into the tiny car.

The elevator smelled like a taxi, only not as fresh, and the short hallway it opened onto smelled even worse: cigarettes, beer, old pizza, mildew, and piss, not necessarily in that order. The strawberry air freshener that someone had sprayed recently was hopelessly overmatched. The walls were paneled in fake wood, like a basement playroom, and murky light came from a glass fixture overhead. The carpet was brown and squishy, like moss, and I was glad it was a short walk to the only door there was. It was blank but for a mail slot, and it had no bell. I went in without knocking.

I was in a room not much bigger than the elevator. It was windowless and pictureless, paneled and carpeted like the hallway. The only other door was on the opposite wall, and it was closed. The only furnishings were a dented metal desk to the left, a plastic swivel chair behind it, and a black canvas director’s chair in front. The desk was small, and the telephone and TV on top occupied nearly its entire surface. The director’s chair was empty. The swivel chair was not.

She was sprawled in it, her legs stretched out before her and crossed at the ankles. She looked fourteen, going on forty. Her hair was white-blond on top and black at the roots. It was short in back and long on the sides, and an uneven fringe ran across her forehead. Her features were fine and childlike: a tiny red mouth, a small rounded nose, thin brows, narrow slightly tilted gray eyes, ears barely large enough for their half-dozen piercings and the hardware that hung from them. Her face was round and downy, the bones still hiding beneath a layer of baby fat, and her skin was a flawless white, but for the tattoos.

There was one at the corner of her right eye that looked like a little red teardrop, and another along the side of her neck that spelled the word pain in elaborate black print. The same fancy lettering appeared on her knuckles, spelling the word white on her left hand, and bitch on her right. A green snake wound around the length of her skinny right arm and flicked its red ink tongue at her wrist.

She wore jeans and a tight gray T-shirt, and the hard-looking store-bought breasts underneath seemed to belong to a much larger woman. They jutted from her body like a stone mantel, and made a convenient shelf for her ashtray. She took a cigarette from it, puffed, and raised her head to look at me. Her little eyes were vacant and flat. She stared at me for a moment and then went back to her TV show, something about women whose husbands loved sheep. When the advertisements came, she took the ashtray off her breasts and put it on the desk and sat up. Her gray eyes got smaller.

“You want something?” She had a heavy accent, and pronounced her w as a v. Eastern European. There was no hostility in her voice, or even suspicion, just a mild curiosity that someone had turned up at her door. I thought for a moment. I wasn’t sure what name Gilpin went by here— assuming he was here at all.

“Richards around?” I asked. One of her brows went up, and something like a smirk crossed her young face.

“Dick?” She said it so it rhymed with seek. I nodded. Her gaze flicked back to the TV as the commercials ended. “In there,” she said. She flicked a thumb at the door, perched the ashtray on her bosom again, and went back into her slouch. I opened the door and went in.

It was a rectangular room with windows along one side that looked out on Lincoln Avenue and the rain. And it was full of cigarette smoke and testosterone.

The men sat at tables arranged end-on-end, in three rows that ran the length of the room, and they peered into their monitors and spoke into telephone headsets. It was a mostly young bunch— twenty-somethings— and mostly unappealing, like a group of spring-break drunks spoiling for a fight. There were a lot of neck chains in the room, and wrist chains, and expensive watches too. There was a lot of hair gel, and a storm front of clashing colognes. The dress code ranged from jeans to leather to silk tracksuits and rumpled Armani. Besides ashtrays, coffee cups, and beer bottles, skin magazines were the most common desk accessories. A lot of heads turned as I walked in, but they soon turned back to their monitors and telephones. They had work to do.

They were dialing for dollars. Some of them read from scripts and some were winging it; some of them whispered into their headsets and some were shouting; some pleaded, others cajoled, and a few all but threatened— but ultimately it was the same pitch, over and over again: the opportunity of a lifetime, don’t miss out, guaranteed returns, fully hedged, risk free, a sure thing. Send money now. The Morgan & Lynch sales force at work.

The guy closest to the door had a thick neck, shiny blond hair, and a red polo shirt that threatened to rip around his biceps. I stepped behind his chair.

“Where’s Richards?” I asked. He clamped his hand over his headset mike and twisted in his seat to give me an ugly look. Then he turned back around and started whispering.

“I’m telling you, Mr. Strelski— can I call you Gerald?— it’s all set to go. And when it does, it’ll go like a rocket.”

The guy next to him tapped my arm and pointed to the other end of the room, to a doorway partly blocked by one of the tables. I nodded and went over. The door was ajar and someone was talking on the other side of it. I recognized the deep, deeply sincere voice of Richard Gilpin.

He was on the phone and only glanced up when I came in. He was caught up in the rhythm of his pitch.

“… We’re pursuing some very exciting opportunities in the Latin American markets, Mrs. Trillo— some deeply undervalued companies… .”

I tuned him out and looked around. The office was no bigger than the reception area and it was furnished along the same lines, though Gilpin had a fancier phone and, instead of a TV and fake breasts, he had a computer and a big Styrofoam cup of coffee. There was a metal filing cabinet in the corner, next to a trash can and a swivel chair. I wheeled the chair over and sat and watched Gilpin.

He was a broad guy in his late thirties, with big arms and shoulders and a block-shaped head atop a heavy neck. He had wavy well-barbered brown hair that he wore in a modified Prince Valiant. It hung low over his forehead and nearly brushed his pale brows. His dark eyes were narrow and set deep in his beefy face, and they were gathered too closely around his wedge-shaped nose. His mouth was small and thin, and his cleft chin had begun to dissolve into a blurring jawline. His tan was very dark and looked machine-made.

Gilpin wore khaki pants and a blue button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up over his hairless arms. He looked more like the football coach at a Sun Belt high school than a fund manager. In fact, he was neither. He stared off into infinity as he worked his mark, and his big hands carved the air as he spoke. He was wrapping up now.

“Absolutely think about it, Mrs. Trillo— but you need to know that the fund is almost closed at this point. The window is small and getting smaller.” Gilpin listened and nodded. “Overnight is no problem, Mrs. Trillo, absolutely none at all. I’ll call you first thing in the morning.” Gilpin punched a button on his phone console, pulled the headset off, and sighed heavily. He rubbed the back of his neck and turned his head from side to side. Finally, he looked at me.

“What do you want?”

I was quiet for a moment, searching his face for some resemblance to Gregory Danes. I found none. “I want to talk about your brother.”

Gilpin winced and hunched his shoulders. “Fuck … you’re the guy on the phone. What the hell are you doing here?” His voice was still deep, but the smoothness was suddenly gone.

“You wouldn’t take my calls, Richard, and I had an afternoon to kill.” Gilpin wrinkled his brow and looked behind me, through the open door. He lowered his voice.

“You a cop?”

“Not lately.”

“Private?” I nodded, and Gilpin relaxed minutely. “Working for who?”

I smiled at him and shook my head.

“I don’t know what your business is,” Gilpin said, “but I can tell you this isn’t the place to do it. The office isn’t open to the public, and management gets real nervous about visitors. From what I heard, the last guy who came sniffing around was lucky to get out with all his fingers attached. If I were you I’d hit the road, Jack.”

“And where is your management today, down in the Caymans or down the block getting takeout? By the way, do I call you Gilford around the office, or Richard, or just plain Dick?”

Gilpin blanched behind his tan. He got up, shut the door, and retreated behind his desk again. He moved quickly for a big man.

“You’re hysterical, buddy, a fucking riot. I figure you got about ten minutes before you’re laughing out your asshole, so make the most of them.”

I poked at the carpet with the tip of my umbrella. “I don’t need long, Richard. Just tell me when you last heard from your brother.”

“From Greg?” He snorted. “I never hear from that little prick, unless I call him— and I gave up on that a while ago.” Gilpin picked up his coffee cup and took a sip. He made a sour face and put it down. “And he’s my half brother.”

“So the last time you spoke to him was when?”

Gilpin’s mouth puckered with something worse than the taste of his coffee. “A year ago— no, fourteen months it was.”

“And?”

“And nothing. That’s the last time we talked. Full stop.” Gilpin looked at the door.

“What did you talk about?”

He wrinkled his brow some more, and anger began to vie with nervousness in his small deep eyes. “What the fuck business is it of yours?”

“I said I didn’t need long, Richard, but you’re slowing things down.”

Gilpin’s thin mouth twisted. He pointed a stubby tan finger at me. “Screw you, buddy. You’re nothing. I don’t have to tell you shit.”

I shrugged. “Of course you don’t, Richard, it’s your choice entirely. Just like it’s my choice to call your pals down at the SEC— in the enforcement division, maybe— and tell them where they can forward your Christmas card this year. I’m sure they’d be fascinated to hear what you and your associates are up to.”

Gilpin blanched again. “Hey, I don’t know those guys from Adam,” he said, pointing toward the door. “I don’t know what the hell they do out there, and I don’t ask; we just share the office.” But even he wasn’t convinced. He put his hands up and shook his head a little. “All right, all right: the last time I talked to Greg … I called him fourteen months ago, about some money, a loan I needed. My big brother ran true to form and told me to fuck off. I told him to screw himself, and that was the end. Conversation didn’t last ten minutes.”

“That the way it usually goes between you two?”

Gilpin made a mocking smile. “You’re real perceptive, pal. You must be a pro.”

“You know any of his friends? Anybody he’s close to?”

He barked a nasty laugh. “You think I know shit about his life? You think he’s had a goddamn thing to do with me since he went off to college? Christ, he barely had the time of day for me before then. Talk to his buddies on Wall Street if you want to know about him; talk to his dyke wife; talk to anybody but me.” Gilpin took another swallow of his coffee and made another wretched face.

“So you don’t know where he might go on vacation?”

The nasty laugh again. “I told you— I don’t know about Greg’s life, and I don’t want to. I got my own problems.” He gestured around the room and snorted. “I got my own fucking vacation to worry about, right here.” Gilpin picked up his coffee cup and arced it into the trash can in the corner. Coffee splashed on the wall and ran down the paneling; Gilpin didn’t seem to mind. He looked at me again.

“Greg’s missing?” he asked. “Is that what this is about?” Before I could answer, he screwed his eyes shut and rubbed his thick hands over his face. “Fuck it, I don’t want to know. Just do me a favor and get the hell out of here, will you?”