Nice Place for a Murder (10 page)

Which he wasn’t. He
was
the number two guy in a decent-size communications conglomerate, a player in publishing, broadcasting, telecommunications and God-knows-what else.

He stood in front of his desk with his hand out to shake mine, drawing me toward him. When I finally got there, his grip was resolute and dry, firm without being overbearing. Presidential. My reaction in about a second and a half. “You’re good to come in. I know you don’t like to travel to the city,” he said.

I didn’t protest, because it was true and we both knew it. Better to forget the niceties and get to the essential stuff. “Tell me why you wanted to see me.”

He went behind his big desk and sat, and I took one of the three chairs facing him. I must have been ten feet away, looking across at him. “I know about Sosenko and the Newalis drowning and the shooting at your house. This man Sosenko has a vendetta against Julian Communications for the time he spent in prison. And I’m on his list — what do they say? his hit list. He’s been after me.”

“Tell me,” I said. “Where and when did you see him? And how do you know it was Sosenko?”

“I noticed him yesterday in the lobby downstairs. He seemed to take a great interest in me when I came out of the elevator. I didn’t know it was Sosenko, but I thought he was out of place around here. Dirty clothes and hair, unshaven, tattoos. A frightening look about the man. You don’t see that in this building.” Brody plucked a pencil from the cup on his desk and began writing on the pad as he spoke.

“So why do you think it was Sosenko?”

He set his pencil down and pointed to the folder in my lap. “That’s the file Hector put together for you? Look inside. There’s an employee identification photo of the man.”

I did, and there was. Younger than he looked now, but no prettier.

Brody started writing again. “Once Hector showed me the photo, I thought to myself it was the same person I’d seen in the lobby.”

“Did you tell Hector?”

“No. At that point I wasn’t certain. I didn’t see the picture until later.” Still writing, which was beginning to annoy me.

“Forgive me, but I just have to ask this,” I said. “How are you able to talk and write at the same time.”

He looked up and smiled, the first flicker of warmth I’d seen from him. Then he went back to his writing. “It’s something I’ve always been able to do, listen and talk with half my brain, and write with the other half. Everything important, I make notes as I go. Helps me to focus. And to remember. People I work with have learned to indulge me this practice. Right now I’m setting down the key points of our discussion. Does it bother you?”

“It does, actually,” I told him, but he didn’t stop. “So, after you saw this photo, you thought the man in the lobby was the same guy. Were you sure?’

“Absolutely sure? I suppose not. Reasonably certain? Yes. But then I saw him again, twice. Then I was sure it was him, and he was following me. He was outside on Park Avenue at six-thirty last night when the limo picked me up to drive me to my apartment. He walked right up to the car while I was getting in.”

“Did he say anything? Threaten you?”

“No. He just stood there, closer than you are now, and he watched me till the car drove off.” He set his pencil to the side of the desk and took a fresh one.

“You saw him twice, you said.”

“Last night, again. My sister in New Jersey invited me for a late dinner. I took my own car out of my building’s parking garage and headed for the Lincoln Tunnel. I only went a few blocks when I had to stop for a red light. I saw him pull up right next to me. He was driving some old, beat-up truck. I thought I saw a gun, a rifle, in his hands. I didn’t wait to find out. I ran the light. So did he. I could see him in the mirror. I went through the tunnel, and he was maybe six or seven cars behind me. In the end, I finally lost him on the Garden State Parkway. It was quite an adventure.”

“Adventure? Mr. Brody, you have to put down the pencil and look at me,” I said. He did. “We know how dangerous Sosenko is. We can’t play games with this situation, or more people are going to get killed. And you seem to be right up there at the top of the list. We have to call the police and they have to catch this guy.”

“No, Mr. Seidenberg,” he said “You have to catch this guy. Quietly. I know you understand why.”

“I can’t believe your attitude toward this situation, you and Ingo Julian and Hector. There’s a brutal son-of-a-bitch with a gun who’s out to kill everybody, and all you can think about is your stock offering.”

“Six hundred million dollars, Mr. Seidenberg. Many people have risked their lives for a lot less. In any case, Hector’s told us how good you are. We think you can do it.” 

“Hector doesn’t know how good I am. He knows how good I used to be,” I said. “I’ve gone to fat, and I have a heart problem and I can’t run very fast any more. Are you willing to bet your life that I can get your bad guy for you?”

Arthur Brody folded his hands on the desk in front of him. “Yes. You can and you will. I know you’re only involved in this because Roger Teague has pressured you to do it. The best you’ll get from Teague is that he pays up what he owes you. I think it’s only fair that we, how do they say? sweeten the pot for you. You, personally, that is, not Empire Security.” He opened a drawer in his desk, took out an envelope and pushed it across to me. “This is fifty thousand dollars. All cash. It’s a partial payment on your fee of one hundred thousand dollars for special security consulting. You’ll receive the fifty thousand balance when Sosenko is caught. Or killed, if that’s the way it turns out.”

“Killed? You expect me to kill Sosenko for you?”

“Of course not. But, as you say, he’s a brutal son-of-a-bitch with a gun. And you are armed too, are you not?”

“And push could come to shove, is that it?”

“There’s always that possibility.”

“I don’t think I want to do this,” I said. “Got the feeling I’ll end up in jail, or very cold on a gurney. Anyway, I’m an investigator — retired — not an assassin.”

“You might want to think this through a bit more clearly, Mr. Seidenberg.”

“Oh?”

“Just consider, if you abandon the case, Julian Communications fires Empire as its security agency, and then Teague writes you off. So you lose. But if you bring this case to a quiet conclusion, Empire stays, Teague pays you what he owes you, and we give you an  extra fifty thousand that Teague knows nothing about. You win.” He came around the desk and stood there in front of me, perfectly composed, every hair in place. “Take the envelope.
"

“Only if you understand I’m not going to hunt Sosenko down and kill him for you. My line is security, that’s all.”

“Understood.” With the forefinger of one hand, he carefully pushed the envelope to the edge of the desk, closer to me. I took it and tucked it into my breast pocket.

I grew uneasy having Brody look down at me, so I stood to face him. “Does Ingo Julian know about this?”

“Why do you ask?” he said.

“Word is you two don’t talk much anymore. If you have a problem with each other, I don’t want to be in the middle of it.”

“We have some serious differences of opinion. But not on this. We’re agreed that this IPO has to happen. It will make Ingo very, very rich.”

“And you?”

“It will only make me very rich.” He held out his hand and I shook it. “Stay connected to Hector,” he said. “Let him know everything.”

I stepped into the corridor wondering whether to somehow start tracking Sosenko or to grab a taxi to JFK airport and get on a plane for Sri Lanka. In just a few days I’d gone from contented fisherman to the object of a no-way-out manipulation, squeezed first by Roger Teague and now by Arthur Brody. Teague was on his way to meet me at the library right now, to buy me a hot dog and pump me for information. Should I tell him about Brody?

I had very little time to ponder these issues. Because I spied Sosenko’s  dirty jeans as soon as I entered the waiting area. He was sitting near the elevators, the only person in an island of leather chairs and glass coffee tables. I couldn’t see his face or upper body because he held a newspaper up in front of himself, but you couldn’t miss the tattoos. Tilted against the chair in which he sat was a large black portfolio case.

Big enough to hold a rifle, I thought.

I approached him slowly, feeling under my jacket for the gun at my hip. He sensed me coming.  He looked over the top of his paper, then threw it aside and rose in an instant. He grabbed the portfolio case, ran to the exit sign at the far end of the waiting area, opened the fire door and disappeared through it, all before I could free my gun from its holster.

I made an awkward run after him and pulled the door open. He was gone from my view, but I could hear his footsteps echoing down the stairwell.

Couldn’t stop now. My heart threatening to make trouble. And thirty-five floors to the street.

CHAPTER X

It took me only two labored flights of stairs to confirm that a fifty-six-year-old with angina didn’t have a chance of catching a forty-one-year-old who was fit, determined and mean. There was no question who would win this sprint down to the ground floor. Already Sosenko’s clattering on the stairs grew fainter as he pulled away from me. In another minute it would be a runaway for him.

What I needed most was help, somebody waiting in the lobby to grab him when he finally appeared. But there was no help. It was just me chasing Sosenko in a high building, as in a bad dream. With the instant clarity that comes with desperation, I saw that my only chance to nail him was to make it to the lobby before he did. If he got there first, he’d be out the door onto Park, or maybe Forty-Eighth.

That meant my taking the elevator, and trying to get to the bottom while he was still dashing down the stairs. I had no way of knowing whether he’d short circuit me by taking the elevator route, too, but he hadn’t yet, because I continued to hear him in the stairwell below me.

OK, new game plan. A poor chance, but better than none. Not that I really had a choice any more. Every breath was a struggle, and continuing the chase on foot was no longer an option.

The sign on the stairwell door said I was at the thirty-second floor. I pulled the door open and stepped from the dim light into a multi-colored expanse of Tokyo that had somehow been transplanted into midtown Manhattan. There was neon everywhere, reflected in polished chrome panels. The largest spelled out Doi Electronics in blue and white. An adjacent wall was made up entirely of TV monitors, floor to ceiling, with images of electronic devices and abstract shapes shifting in changing patterns to music. This waiting area was beyond dazzling, but the men waiting in it couldn’t have been drearier, all in their dark suits, with attaché cases close at hand, staring patiently ahead. All were Asian, Japanese, I thought. Two more Japanese men stood waiting for an elevator, scanning the floor indicators above the six sets of doors.

I suspected the gun in my hand might be misunderstood, so I tucked it away. I hurried toward the bank of elevators, while my heart continued to issue serious warnings, and joined the two men who were waiting.  I saw that both the up and the down call buttons were lit, and said a silent prayer that the down elevator would come first. 

Which it did. An elevator arrived and the down button went dark. All three of us stepped inside, making me wonder, if we were all going down, who had pushed the up button?  Instantly one of my elevator companions, a short man with a narrow, doleful face, began hammering with his closed hand on the destination button for the forty-first  floor. The door to our car closed, then opened, then closed again. And the car began to rise.

The short man’s face wrinkled into an unattractive smile. The little shit was beaming because he’d outwitted the control system, and made a down elevator go up, instead. I felt a strong inclination to take out my gun and stick it in his nose, but I knew that while it would make me feel better, it wouldn’t get me to the ground floor any faster. Instead, I made my angriest face and said, “I have to go down. Down, not up.”

The man smiled again and said something in Japanese. The other man stepped in to translate. “He says thank you for being patient. He must get to important meeting.”

“Tell him to go fuck himself.”

The translator was horrified. “I cannot tell him that.”

“Why not? You didn’t want to go up, either, did you?” The frustration wasn’t doing my arteries any good.

“That is not a reason to be impolite,” he said. “One must have patience.”

Yeah, right. Patience is my middle name. What floor was Sosenko passing now, I wondered as the door to our car opened on forty-one and the little shit got out, then turned and made a barely perceptible bow toward us.

“You see,” the translator said, as the door closed and we began to descend, “he honors us for helping him.”

“In that case, you did right by not telling him to go fuck himself,” I said. I massaged my chest and took a deep breath, hoping I could somehow coax my circulatory system back to some shade of normal before we got to the ground floor. The process didn’t seem to work.