JM02 - Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home (2 page)

By comparison with the rest of the place, Nina’s studio was immaculate. The supplies on the shelves and trolleys were organized and tidy. The floor was bare and clean. The sink was empty but for a half-dozen brushes drying in a precise row at its edge.

Some pencil sketches were taped to the Sheetrock on my right: two of a female nude draped in an armchair, a third of the same figure kneeling, with head inclined, and two more of something that looked like the Flatiron Building, set on a bluff over a churning sea. They were nicely done, with a sure delicate touch. There was a canvas on one of the easels, and I walked around to take a look.

I’d done a little online homework before my meeting with Nina and knew she had enjoyed some success as an artist. She’d had exhibitions in New York and Boston and London that were— insofar as I could decrypt the reviews— well received. Her work had been acquired by some notable private and corporate collections, and recently she’d been picked up by museums in Chicago and Dallas and LA. But I’d not actually seen any of her paintings, and I didn’t know what to expect.

It was striking. The canvas was about three feet high by two feet wide, and the painting was in oil, with blues and grays predominant. I recognized the subjects from the sketches on the wall. The triangular building was at the right of the picture, set back, and the angry sea swirled in the foreground and to the left. The bowed kneeling figure appeared in a window, halfway up the side of the building.

But the final renderings were very different from the sketches. On canvas, the building was taller but more delicate and somehow resembled an ocean liner. The sea was more muscular and aggressive, and it merged without horizon into an empty, icy sky. The sea took on another aspect as well, of a roiling complex of city streets into which the building might at once sink and crumble. The kneeling figure was different too, more sinuous and sexual, and something— in the set of her shoulders or the angle of her head or the fall of her hair— left you certain she was crying.

Nor could the sketches hint at what Nina did with color and light. Her ocean was as threatening as a funnel cloud, and her sky as desolate as winter twilight. The yellow corona around the kneeling figure was as bleak and forlorn as a bare lightbulb.

“You find what you were looking for? Or you want to go through my underwear drawer too.” I hadn’t heard Nina come in. She was standing by the drafting table, her cell phone in one hand, a smoldering cigarette in the other. She was stiff and angry.

“This is nice,” I said, gesturing toward the painting.

“Great. Swell. Next time, wait for an invitation. I’ll be off the phone in a second— now get the fuck out of here.” She did not wait for a reply but returned quickly to the kitchen and her conversation.

“I’ll say it again: I don’t do the installation shit. You got questions, talk to Nes, not me, okay?” Nina watched me as I walked into the living room. I stood by the windows. “I don’t know— I’m not the answering service, either. Call the gallery and leave a message.”

She snapped the phone shut and tossed it on the counter. She took a drag and looked at me through the smoke.

“You’re a nosy bastard, aren’t you?”

“It’s part of what you’re paying for,” I said. “But maybe we should rethink that.” Nina stared at me for a while, and then the tightness went out of her jaw.

“Okay, I was a little raggy. Sorry. All right?”

I looked at her for a couple of beats and nodded. Nina smiled. She came back into the living room and sat on the sofa.

“Armed truce,” she said. She saw my puzzlement and smirked. “You asked me before what kind of relationship I’ve got with Greg, so I’m telling you: It’s an armed truce.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning we deal with each other when we have to but neither of us likes it. You know what I think of him; well, he feels pretty much the same way about me. He doesn’t like the way I live or the people I hang out with. He doesn’t like me. But we deal with each other anyway— for the kid.”

“You have joint custody?”

Nina took another drag and cast about for an ashtray. “Basically,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

Nina scowled and looked like she was going to bite, but she shook it off. “We have an informal kind of deal. Technically, I’ve got custody and he’s entitled to monthly visitation. But we arrange things between us and he ends up seeing Billy more than that— when he doesn’t cancel.”

“He pay child support?” Nina nodded. “Alimony?” Another nod. “Everything current?”

“Until about a week ago, when the check didn’t show.”

“If he’s in violation of your settlement agreements, you can take that to court. They might even help you find him.”

Nina’s mouth puckered and she shook her head. “You sound like my lawyer, for chrissakes. But trust me, court battles are definitely not the way to deal with Greg.”

I nodded and thought for a while. “You said he doesn’t have many friends. How about enemies? Does he have any of those?”

She laughed out loud. “Only a zillion or so. Being as fair as I can, John, I got to say that Greg is just not a likable guy. Smart, yes— even funny, in a nasty sort of way— but not likable. And besides the people who know him and don’t like him, there are all those people who followed his stock advice. I don’t expect they’re too happy with Greg either.”

Nina had a point, and I laughed a little too.

“Maggie told me you had good references,” she said. I nodded. “She said she didn’t know you personally but everyone she talked to gave you high marks for smart and persistent.” I didn’t disagree. Nina went on. “I hired a PI once before, you know, in the divorce. He was about twice your age and twice your size, and I had to talk real slow around him and use small words.”

“What did he do for you?”

“Pictures, credit card receipts— the usual divorce stuff. He did his

job.”

“So why didn’t you call him for this?”

“Because I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. Plus, his liver’s probably given out by now.” She stubbed out her cigarette and looked at me. “So how about it— are you going to do this for me?”

I looked back at her. “Why haven’t you talked to the cops?”

“The cops?” Nina Sachs looked appalled. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“Because they have a whole bunch of people who have nothing to do but work missing persons cases, and they have resources and access that I don’t. If you really think something bad has happened to Greg, the cops are the way to go.”

Nina shook her head vigorously and dug in her pocket for another smoke. “No fucking way. Cops— that’s all I need. You know what Greg would say if I brought them into his business, snooping around? As torqued up as he is about his reputation? Jesus— he’d go ballistic.”

I held up a hand. “You may not have much choice in the matter. His employers could file a report— if they haven’t already— or a friend or neighbor could. Or the press might get hold of it. On a slow news day, they’d love a story like this.

“If something has happened to him, he might be grateful that you called the cavalry. Either that or he’ll be beyond caring. And so what if he gets pissed at you for calling the cops; what do you care? You don’t seem to like the guy much anyway.”

Nina fired up another cigarette and shook her head some more. “I may not like him, but I’ve got to deal with him, for chrissakes. He’d make my life miserable over something like that— mine and Billy’s both— trust me. If the cops get into this, let it be on account of somebody else, not me.” Nina looked at me, waiting for an argument, but I wasn’t going to give her one.

While I’d meant what I said about the police, I also knew what they were likely to tell Nina, or anyone else who filed a report: that there was nothing illegal in a grown man going missing, and nothing particularly unusual about it either; it happened every day, all across the country, and only rarely was foul play involved. They would take down the facts, and, as the guy had a history of disappearing for weeks at a time and there seemed no reason to suspect wrongdoing, the case would join a lot of others on a very big pile. There were many things the cops could do that I couldn’t— at least not as easily, or legally— but there was something I could do that they wouldn’t: make finding Gregory Danes my highest priority.

“So, how about it?” Nina asked again. “You going to do this or what?” I looked at her and nodded, and she gave me a quick, crooked smile.

I had a few background questions for Nina and she answered them and I was about to wrap up when we heard a key in the lock. The front door swung open and a dark-haired woman and a boy came in.

The woman was five-ten and supple, with cat-black hair precisely cut to shoulder length. It was parted on the side and fell in a glossy wing across her forehead. She had a long face, olive skin, and large almond eyes that were dark and vigilant. Her nose was straight and strong, and there were lines around her wide mouth and in the gap between her brows. I put her age south of forty, but not far south. I thought she might be Latin or Asian or both.

She wore a green silk suit with a simple cut and a thick gold chain on her neck. She fingered the chain absently as she looked around the apartment. She smiled at Nina, and the somber traces went out of her face. The smile disappeared when she looked at me.

The boy, I knew, must be Billy. He was small— five foot zero— and slight. His hair was very short and auburn, like his mother’s, and he had her thin face too, though not her pallor. His eyes were watery blue and smudged-looking like his father’s, and his mouth was thin-lipped. But there was none of Gregory Danes’s mocking superiority in his son’s face, at least not yet. Instead there was petulance and anger.

He wore sneakers that looked like bowling shoes and baggy jeans and a navy-blue parka, too heavy for a warm spring day. He shrugged it off and left it where it fell. Underneath, he wore a black T-shirt, too large for him, with part of a song lyric printed in white across the chest. Like sittin’ on pins and needles
Things fall apart, it’s scientific.p>

It was unattributed, but I recognized it: Talking Heads, “Wild, Wild Life.” Everything old is new again. Billy’s gaze skated across his mother and me and never paused. He headed for the kitchen, his skinny freckled arms stiff.

Nina stood and looked at the dark woman, who closed the door and returned a heavy key ring to her green leather handbag.

“The doctor see him?” Nina asked.

The dark woman glanced at me and nodded. “She saw him and said he is fine. She said he had no fever; it may be a virus that is going around.” The woman’s voice had a nice timbre, and her English was quick and exact but heavily accented. Spanish. “He is fine to go to school— even this afternoon if he likes.” Her dark eyes flicked toward the kitchen.

“He doesn’t like,” Billy said, in a reedy voice. His head was buried in the refrigerator. The dark woman raised an eloquent brow. Nina jammed her cigarette into an ashtray. Billy leaned on the open door of the fridge and stared inside. Nina put an awkward hand in his short hair.

“C’mon, honey, Nes will fix you something— or we can order in— and then I’ll run you over to school. You don’t want to miss another day.”

Billy twisted away from her, his shoulders hunched. “I don’t want anything and I’m not going to school,” he whined. “I still feel like shit.” He took a last disgusted look in the refrigerator and disappeared into the bedrooms. Nina closed the refrigerator door and looked after him. The dark woman sighed heavily.

“He is just—,” she began, but Nina cut her off.

“Don’t say it, Nes. I know what he’s just— he’s just a moody son of a bitch.” She shook her head and followed after Billy. I heard doors opening and closing and tight, muffled voices.

I turned to the dark woman, who was looking around the room. She stared at the mess on the ebony desk and pursed her lips. She put her green bag down and took off her suit jacket and somehow found a spot for it on the coatrack. Her ivory blouse was sleeveless and her arms were sinewy. She sniffed the air and wrinkled her nose. She flicked a wall switch; somewhere a big fan whirred and air began to move and freshen in the loft.

She picked up the desk drawer, slid it halfway into the desk, and swept the pile on the desktop inside. She knelt and scooped up the paper clips and envelopes and matchbooks, tossed them into the drawer, and closed it. Then she turned to the coatrack.

Her movements were quick and efficient and practiced. Clothes were plucked from the floor and the furniture and folded or hung. Journals were stacked on a shelf. Tables were cleared, counters were cleaned, and dishes scraped, rinsed, and put in the dishwasher. Her heels made hard sounds as she moved about the loft. She spoke not a word and paid me less attention than the furniture.

With her advent and Billy’s, I felt as if I’d suddenly become audience to a piece of theater— something contemporary and far-off-Broadway— staged not so much for my benefit as for that of the actors themselves. My business with Nina was done for the moment and I could simply have left, but I didn’t. I was curious; I wanted to see it play out. I got up and gathered a few full ashtrays and carried them into the kitchen. The dark woman was at the sink and looked at me.

“Garbage?” I asked.

She looked at me some more and finally pointed. “Under there,” she said.

I emptied the ashtrays in the trash and went out to get some more. When I returned, the dark woman was drying her hands on a dish towel.

“I was rude. I apologize. It was a very hectic morning.” She put out a hand. “I am Ines Icasa. You are the detective, no?” Ines— Nes.

“John March,” I said.

Her grip was firm. “Come, sit,” she said, and I followed her into the living room. She retrieved her purse and we sat on the sofa. She took a gold lighter and a blue package of Gitanes from her bag and dug in the package for a cigarette. It was empty.

“Mierda,” she said softly, and crumpled the pack. There was a fresh box of B&Hs on the coffee table, and Ines slit it open with a sharp well-tended thumbnail. She drew out a cigarette, tamped it down, pinched off the filter, and fired up the ragged end.