JM02 - Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home (27 page)

The door opened and Ned came in, my brother David trailing behind.

“They want twenty percent,” David said, “but I think they’ll go for—”

Ned cut him off. “We’re overpaying as it is. If they’re trying to hold us up, then I say wish them luck and show them the door.” Ned’s voice was tired and impatient. He went behind his desk and scrolled through his e-mail. David stopped in the center of the room and looked irritable. Then he saw me, and his irritability became scorn.

“Sorry I’m late, Johnny,” Ned said. He looked over Liz. “Am I late for you too?”

“I’m early,” she said.

He nodded and went to his wall of shelves and produced a glass of ice water from somewhere. “Want some?” he asked us. I raised my hand and Ned brought me a glass. Then he sat next to Liz and looked at me. “How did it go?”

“Yes, do tell,” David said, perching on the edge of Ned’s desk. “I hear such interesting things about your interviews.” His eyes sparkled meanly. Ned frowned.

I drank some water. “Bradley looks better on paper, and you’d probably feel more comfortable with him at first, but Hoyt will do a better job for you.” Ned’s brow was creased and he pursed his lips. I reached over and handed him the two résumés, and we were quiet while he scanned them. David interrupted.

“How can that be?” he said. “I looked at those CVs. Bradley has just the kind of experience we want.”

“Bradley’s an empty suit,” I said, too quickly.

Ned looked up, his face blank. “Is that why you assume I’d be more comfortable with him?” he said. David grinned nastily. Shit.

I shook my head. “No, that’s why I think he appeals to David. But the reality is that Bradley’s cut from more or less the same cloth as a lot of the people around here.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” David said.

“I’m not going to debate that with you. But one thing it doesn’t mean is that he’s the best person for this job.”

Ned looked at the résumés some more. “And you don’t think he is?”

“In my view, he’s strictly a hands-off guy. Most of his Wall Street experience seems to be in self-promotion and empire building; it sounded to me like he delegated everything else. I didn’t think that’s what you were after.” I looked at David. “Of course, I could be wrong.”

“And Hoyt?”

“She’s less buttoned down— a little rougher around the edges— but she’s a whole lot more hands-on. She’s run a detective squad, she’s run high-profile cases, and she’s run task forces too. And after twenty-plus years in the NYPD, I think you’ll find her political skills are up to snuff.”

“But she’s never done this kind of job before,” David said.

“Neither have I, but you were ready to give me a shot.” Liz snorted behind her papers, and I thought I saw Ned smile.

David colored and looked at me. “He was ready; I didn’t get a vote.”

My eyes were hot and I was suddenly very tired. I got up and pulled on my jacket and headed for the door. “You have my opinion,” I said to the room. “Do what you want with it. Hire Bradley; I’m sure he’ll work out fine. Better yet, hire that Tyne guy. With him you get a floor show.”

“Johnny … ,” Ned said, but I didn’t stop. I closed the door behind me and didn’t glance at Mrs. K on my way out.

“It sounds to me like she gave you her reasons for calling it off,” Jane Lu said. “You just didn’t like them.” She walked across my bed and sat cross-legged next to me and didn’t spill a drop of what she carried on the tray. There were two mugs of coffee, a bowl of quartered oranges, croissants, and a crock of jam. Jane was wearing one of my sweatshirts and nothing else. It was Saturday morning and it was pouring rain outside. I rolled over and rested my cheek against her thigh. It was warm and smooth and I would’ve been happy to spend the day there, but it was not to be. Jane was going into the office.

“It’s not a question of like,” I said to her thigh, “it’s that her reasons don’t make sense.”

“Not wanting to spend more money isn’t an unreasonable thing,” Jane said, biting into an orange slice.

“If that’s what she’s worried about she could go to the cops; they do this work for free.”

“You didn’t like her explanation for wanting to steer clear of them?”

“That it would piss Danes off? I don’t know. I’ve learned never to underestimate just how twisted things can get between exes, but even so …”

I ran my palm across the sole of Jane’s foot. She laughed and tore a croissant in half and spread some jam on it.

“Even so, what? What’s the problem?” The smell of coffee merged with Jane’s perfume and made me hungry. I nibbled gently at her thigh and she giggled.

“The problem is, she could’ve decided this a while ago and saved herself a lot of money. So why pull the plug now, right after I find out about Sovitch and about Danes’s phone calls? Why stop when I’ve finally found things that could be substantial?” I moved my mouth up to Jane’s hip, and she shifted on the bed. I slid my hand along the inside of her thigh. She laughed and brushed it away.

“I guess this opens up your schedule a little,” she said.

I propped myself on my elbow and looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you don’t have a case right now, and you have time on your hands— time to go somewhere, maybe.” Her eyes held mine, and after a while her smile began to fade.

“I guess so,” I said, and sat up. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

“No?”

“Besides, Sachs is volatile. There’s a chance she’ll cool off over the weekend and rethink things.”

Jane swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat on the edge. Her back was stiff and perfectly straight. Her voice was soft and full of sarcasm. “Hope springs eternal,” she said, and she went into the bathroom and shut the door.

It was past noon when I awoke again, and I was alone. The breakfast tray was on the floor and breakfast was still on it. It was dark outside, and rain fell against the tall windows in a hectic clatter. It slid down the glass in sheets and cast twisting shadows on the walls. I rolled on my back and watched them and tried not to think about Jane.

A gust of wind rattled the glass. I pulled on my shorts and stood at the window. Low clouds scrambled across the sky and caught on the jagged edges of the cityscape. I looked down and saw the tops of many umbrellas, bumping at each other like clumsy fat men. I rubbed my hands over my face and got into the shower.

I owed Nina Sachs a final report, to go with my invoice, and I poured a cup of coffee and opened my laptop to write it. After forty-five minutes I pushed back from the table and read over my work. The INVESTIGATION section was a straightforward chronology of what I’d done, where I’d gone, and whom I’d spoken with, and the FINDINGS section was a recitation of everything relevant that I’d learned. It was depressingly short. I drank off the last of my coffee and went to the kitchen to brew a fresh pot.

Despite my best efforts, I’d been unable to wrestle my worry about Danes into anything like a theory, and the CONCLUSIONS section of my report was still unwritten. Maybe I should keep it simple: Something bad has happened. I put the paper cone in the coffee machine and spooned coffee in and thought again about Billy. I could still hear his nearly whispered question: You know where he is yet? I flicked the switch on the machine and the phone rang.

“You fucking bastard!” she said. She was nearly breathless with anger, and it took me a moment to place the voice. “You fucking son of a bitch! I trusted you— I talked to you— I spilled my goddamn guts— and you do this?”

“Calm down, Irene, and tell me what it is you think I’ve done.”

Irene Pratt huffed at the other end of the line. “Don’t give me that crap. You’re the one who was looking for him. You’re the one who was sniffing around his office. You know what you did, you lying shit.”

I thought for a moment and listened to the coffee trickle into the carafe. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Irene, so why don’t you take a deep breath and tell me what’s going on?”

Pratt started to speak and stopped herself a couple of times and settled into a furious silence. When she finally spoke the edge was off her voice, and something tentative had replaced it. “You’re serious?”

“I’m serious that I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

“You’re serious you didn’t do it?”

“Didn’t do what?”

She seemed not to hear the question. “But if it wasn’t you, then … who did it?”

I clenched my teeth. “Who did what, Irene?”

It took her a long while to answer. “Who broke into my office … and into Greg’s?”

19

I met Irene Pratt in the lobby bar of the Warwick Hotel. There were lots of plump armchairs in there, and big windows that looked out on Sixth Avenue, and soft incandescent lighting that gave the place a snug feel against the rain. Irene Pratt wore jeans and sneakers and a school-bus-yellow rain slicker, and she looked young and scared. She was perched at the edge of a bar stool, nursing a Coke and fidgeting with a bowl of peanuts, when I came in. She looked up and looked ready to bolt.

“Tell me again how you had nothing to do with this,” she said. Her voice was low and taut. She pushed a strand of wet hair away from her face.

I shook the water from my shoulders and hung my jacket on the back of a bar stool. “I told you, Irene, I haven’t been near your office since you saw me there with Turpin. This isn’t me.” The bartender came by and laid a small napkin in front of me. I ordered a cranberry juice and club soda and turned back to Pratt. “What happened?”

She took a swig of her soda. “I came in just before noon and my office door was unlocked and I knew something was wrong.”

“Because of the door?” I asked. Pratt nodded. “You’re sure it was locked when you left last night?”

“Last night and every night,” she said. “And then I looked at my desk, and I knew that things were … different. Not obviously different, but … neater than I leave things. A little more squared off.” Her shoulders were rigid beneath the yellow slicker, and she kept shifting in her seat.

“The cleaners couldn’t have straightened things up a little and maybe forgotten to lock the door?”

Pratt shook her head. “They don’t have keys to our offices, and they don’t clean them unless we’re there. I was still working when they came last night. They just emptied the trash, vacuumed, and left.” She took a peanut from the bowl and chewed it nervously.

“What else besides the door and the desktop?”

“My credenza— behind my desk— it’s got a set of file drawers in it and they were opened.”

“Unlocked or actually pulled open?”

“The lock was still locked, but it wasn’t latched on to anything, and you could just pull all the drawers open.”

“And you’re sure—”

“I always lock it. Always.”

“Anything missing?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Your PCs were okay?”

“As far as I could tell.” A big group of tourists came into the bar. They were loud and took up a lot of space, and they seemed to make Irene Pratt even jumpier. I leaned toward her.

“And what about Danes’s office?”

“It was locked, but the knob was loose in my hand, and the little metal thing— in the doorjamb— was dented. And when I put the key in the lock, it didn’t turn at first.”

“It’s always locked?”

“Always, when Greg’s not there.”

“You know who’s got keys?”

“I’ve got one; our assistant, Giselle, has another; and security’s got one. I think that’s it.”

“What did you find inside?”

“It was neat as a pin in there, just like always: desk clean, everything very orderly… .” She took off her glasses and wiped them with a bar napkin and put them on again. Her dark eyes moved back and forth across the crowd behind me. “But he has the same credenza as I do, and it was opened just like mine.”

“When’s the last time you were in there?”

“Wednesday or Thursday, to get a file. And don’t even ask if the drawers were locked then, because they were— and there was nothing wrong with his door either.”

“Who has keys to his credenza?”

“As far as I know, just me,” Pratt said, and she chewed another peanut into dust.

I drank my drink and thought for a while. “You’re pretty careful about keeping things locked up.”

“Everyone is, in this business. An advance copy of a research report, or even of a draft, could be worth a lot to some people. It’s like betting on the Sunday football games when you’ve already read the Monday papers. So— yeah— we’re pretty careful.”

“Has Pace had that kind of trouble before?”

“Leaked reports? God, no— that’s all we need.”

“What made you go into Danes’s office today?” Her eyes fixed on mine for a moment and then flicked away.

“I … I don’t know,” she said. “When I thought someone had been in my office, I guess I just got worried.” She looked at me, and there was color in her pale face. “The first thing I thought of was that it must’ve been you.”

“I’m flattered.” I laughed. “But why me?”

She looked down at her knees. “You’d called me, and come around the office and had that scene with Tampon, and then you showed up at my place. Who else was I supposed to think of?”

“Am I the only one who’s been asking about Danes?”

Pratt was quiet for a while. “You’re the only one who’s come to the office or come to see me,” she said.

“But am I the only one who’s been asking?”

“A lot of people call us,” she said. “Some of them ask about Greg.”

“People like who?”

“People we do business with,” she said, looking around the room. “Industry contacts, fund managers, people from the companies we cover— the same people who called before he went away.”

“Anyone who’s been calling more often lately?”

She looked intently into her glass and swirled the crushed ice around. “No one I can think of,” she said finally. “I told you, a lot of people call us; I don’t keep track of them all. But I know you’re the only one who’s come around.”

“Until now,” I said. The bartender came by and offered Pratt a refill on her soda. She nodded. “When you thought this was me, what did you think I was looking for?” I asked.

Pratt shook her head. “I don’t know … nothing specific. Something to help you find Greg, I guess.”