The Charlie Parker Collection 2

by John Connolly

  I was buzzed in. A little charm goes a long way.

  Sekula’s secretary was spectacularly good looking, albeit in a vaguely threatening way. Her hair was long and black, and tied loosely at the back with a red ribbon. Her eyes were blue and her skin was pale enough to make the hints of red at her cheeks look like twin sunsets, while her lips would have kept a whole Freudian symposium going for a month. She wore a dark blouse that wasn’t quite transparent yet still managed to hint at what appeared to be very expensive black lace lingerie. For a moment, I wondered if she was scarred in some way, because it seemed like there were irregular patterns visible on her skin where the blouse pressed against it. Her gray skirt ended just above the knee, and her stockings were thick and black. She looked like the kind of woman who would promise a man a night of ecstasy unlike anything he had ever previously imagined, but only as long as she could kill him slowly immediately afterward. The right man might even consider that a good deal. Judging by the expression on her face, I didn’t think she was about to make me that kind of offer, not unless she could bypass the ecstasy part and get straight to the slow torture. I wondered if Sekula was married. If I had suggested to Rachel that I needed a secretary who looked like this woman, she would only have agreed if I signed up for temporary chemical castration beforehand, with the threat of a more permanent solution always on the horizon if I ever felt tempted to stray.

  The reception area, carpeted in gray, took up the entire front room, with a black leather couch beneath the bay window and a very modern coffee table made from a single slab of black glass in front of it. There were matching easy chairs at either side of the table, and the walls were decorated, if that was the right word, with the kind of art that suggested someone suffering from severe depression had stood in front of a blank canvas for a very long time, then made a random stroke with a black paintbrush before slapping a hefty price tag on the result and entering lifelong therapy. All things considered, minimalism seemed to be the order of the day. Even the secretary’s desk was untroubled by anything resembling a file or a piece of stray paper. Maybe Sekula wasn’t very busy, or perhaps he just spent his days staring dreamily at his secretary.

  I showed her my license. She didn’t look impressed.

  “I’d like a few minutes of Mr. Sekula’s time.”

  “Mr. Sekula is busy.”

  I thought I could hear the low drone of one side of a telephone conversation coming from behind a pair of black doors to my right.

  “Hard to imagine,” I said, taking in the spotless reception area once again. “I hope he’s firing his decorator in there.”

  “What is this about?” said the secretary. She didn’t deign to use my name.

  “Mr. Sekula appears to be responsible for a property in Williamsburg. I wanted to ask him about it.”

  “Mr. Sekula is involved with a lot of properties.”

  “This one is pretty distinctive. It seems to have a lot of dead people in it.”

  Sekula’s secretary didn’t even blink at the mention of what had occurred in Williamsburg.

  “Mr. Sekula has been over that with the police,” she said.

  “Then it should all be fresh in his mind. I’ll just take a seat and wait until he’s done in there.”

  I sat down in one of the chairs. It was uncomfortable in the way that only very expensive furniture can be. After two minutes, the base of my spine was aching. After five minutes, the rest of my spine was aching too, and other parts of my body were crying out in sympathy. I was considering lying on the floor instead when the black doors opened and a man in a charcoal gray pinstripe suit stepped into the reception area. His hair was light brown and trimmed as carefully as potentially prizewinning topiary, so that not a single strand was out of place. He had the bland good looks of a part-time model, his features without a single flaw or hint of individuality that might have lent them character or distinction.

  “Mr. Parker,” he said. “I’m David Sekula. I’m sorry you had to wait. We’re busier than we might appear.”

  Clearly, Sekula had heard everything that was said in the reception room. Perhaps the secretary had simply left the room-to-room intercom open. Either way, it made me curious as to whom Sekula had been talking with on the phone. It might have been nothing to do with me, in which case I would have to face the possibility that the world didn’t revolve around me. I wasn’t sure that I was ready to take that step yet.

  I shook Sekula’s hand. It was soft and dry, like an unused sponge.

  “I hope you’ve recovered from your ordeal,” he said, ushering me toward his office. “What happened in that place was terrible.”

  The cops had probably explained my involvement to Sekula when they interviewed him. Clearly, they’d forgotten to include his secretary in the loop, or maybe they’d tried to tell her but she couldn’t understand them through their drool.

  Sekula paused by his secretary’s desk.

  “No calls, please, Hope,” he told her.

  Hope? It was hard to believe.

  “I understand, Mr. Sekula,” she replied.

  “Nice name,” I told her. “It suits you.”

  I smiled at her. We were all friends now. Maybe they’d invite me to go away with them on a trip. We could drink, laugh, reminisce about how awkward that first encounter between us had been before we all got to know one another and realized how swell each of us truly was.

  Hope didn’t smile back. It looked like the trip was off.

  Sekula closed the doors behind us and waved me to an upright chair in front of his desk. The chair faced the window, but the drapes were drawn so I couldn’t see what lay beyond them. Compared to the reception area, his office looked like a bomb had hit it, but it was still neater than any lawyer’s office I had ever been in before. There were files on the desk, but they were neatly stacked and housed in nice clean folders, each marked with a printed label. The trash can was empty, and it looked like the filing cabinets were hidden behind the false oak fronts that lined two walls, or simply didn’t exist at all. The art on Sekula’s walls was also a lot less disturbing than the paintings in the reception area: there was a large Picasso print of a faun playing a lute, signed no less, and a big canvas that resembled a cave drawing of horses rendered in layered oils, the horses literally carved into the paint: the past re-created in the present. It too was signed by the artist, Alison Rieder. Sekula saw me looking at it.

  “Do you collect?” he said.

  I wondered if he was being funny, but he seemed serious. Sekula must have paid his investigators way above the going rate.

  “I don’t know enough about it to collect,” I said.

  “But you have art on your walls?”

  I frowned. I wasn’t sure where this was going.

  “Some, I guess.”

  “Good,” he said. “A man should appreciate beauty, in all its forms.”

  He inclined his chin toward the office door, behind which lay the increasingly less enticing form of his secretary, and grinned. I was pretty certain that if he did that in front of the lady in question she’d cut off his head and stick it on a railing in Central Park.

  Sekula offered me a drink from a cabinet against the wall, or coffee if I preferred. I told him I was fine as I was. He took his seat at his desk, steepled his fingers, and looked grave.

  “You’re unhurt after the incident?” he said. “Apart from —”

  He touched his fingers to his left cheek. I had some cuts on my face from the splinters, and there was blood in my left eye.

  “You should see the other guy,” I said.

  Sekula tried to figure out if I was joking. I didn’t tell him that the image of Garcia slumped against the wall was still fresh in my mind, his blood soaking the dusty, paint-spattered sheets, his lips moving in prayer to whatever deity permitted him to collude in the killing of women yet still offered hope and succor to those who prayed to it. I didn’t tell him of the metallic smell of the dying man’s blood, which had infected what l
ittle food I had consumed throughout the day. I didn’t tell him of the stench that rose from him as he died, or the way his eyes glazed over with his last breath.

  And I did not mention the sound of that final breath, or the manner in which it was released from him: a long, slow exhalation, both reluctant and relieved. It had always seemed somehow apt that words connected with freedom and escape should be used to describe the moment when dullness replaced brightness, and life became death. To be close to another human being at that instant was enough to convince one, however briefly, that something beyond understanding passed from the body with that final sigh, that some essence began its journey from this world to another.

  “I can’t imagine what it must be like to kill a man,” said Sekula, as though all that I had just considered had been revealed to him through my eyes.

  “Why would you even want to imagine it?” I said.

  He seemed to give the question some serious thought.

  “I suppose there have been times when I’ve wanted to kill someone,” he said. “It was a fleeting thing, but it was there. I thought, though, that I could never live with the consequences; not just the legal consequences, but the moral and psychological ones. Then again, I have never been placed in the situation where I was seriously forced to consider taking the life of another. Perhaps, under such circumstances, it would be within my capabilities to kill.”

  “Have you ever defended someone accused of a killing?”

  “No. I deal mainly in business affairs, which brings us to the matter in hand. I can only tell you what I told the police. The warehouse was once a storehouse for the Rheingold brewing company. It closed in 1974, and the warehouse was sold. It was acquired by a gentleman named August Welsh, who subsequently became one of my clients. When he died, some legal difficulties arose over the disposal of his estate. Take my advice, Mr. Parker: make a will. Even if you have to write it on the back of a napkin, do it. Mr. Welsh was not so farsighted. Despite repeated entreaties on my part, he refused to commit his intentions to paper. I think he felt that making a will would in some way be an acknowledgment of the imminence of his mortality. Wills, in his view, were for people who were dying. I tried to tell him that everyone was dying: him, me, even his children and his grandchildren. It was to no avail. He died intestate, and his children began to bicker among themselves, as is often the case in such situations. I tried to manage his estate as best I could in the interim. I ensured that his portfolio remained watertight, that any funds accruing were immediately reinvested or lodged to an independent account, and I endeavored to produce the best results from his various properties. Unfortunately, the Rheingold warehouse was not one of his better investments. Property values in the area are improving, but I could find no one who was willing to commit sufficient funds to the redevelopment of the building. I left the matter in the hands of Ambassade Realty, and largely forgot about it until this week.”

  “Were you aware that Ambassade went out of business?”

  “I’m sure that I must have been informed, but passing on responsibility for the leasing of the building was probably not a priority at the time.”

  “So this man, Garcia, had signed no lease with either Ambassade or your firm.”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Yet some work had been done on the top floor of the warehouse. There was power, and water. Someone was paying the utilities.”

  “Ambassade, I assume.”

  “And now there’s nobody at Ambassade left to ask.”

  “No, I’m afraid not. I wish I could be of more help.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  Sekula composed his features into an expression of regret. It didn’t quite take, though. Like most professionals, he wasn’t fond of those outside his field casting doubts upon any aspect of his business. He stood, making it clear to me that our meeting was now over.

  “If I think of anything that might be of help to you, I’ll try to let you know,” he said. “I’ll have to tell the police first, of course, but under the circumstances I would have no objection to keeping you informed as well, as long as the police confirmed that to do so would not interfere with the progress of their investigation.”

  I tried to interpret what Sekula had just said, and came to the conclusion that I had learned all that I was going to from him. I thanked him, and left him with my card. He walked me to the office door, shook my hand once again, then closed the door behind me. I tried one last time to chip away at his secretary’s permafrost exterior by expressing my gratitude for all that she’d done, but she was impervious to insincerity. If Sekula was keeping her company at night, then I didn’t envy him. Anyone sleeping with her would need to wrap up against the cold first, and maybe wear a warm hat.

  My next call was to Sheridan Avenue in the Bronx, where Eddie Tager had his office. There was a lot of competition for business, and the streets east of Yankee Stadium, and near the courthouse, were lined with bondsmen. Most were at least bilingual in their advertising, and the ones that could afford neon usually made sure that the word fianzas was at least as conspicuous as “bail” in their windows.

  There was a time when the bail industry was the preserve of pretty nasty characters. They still existed, but they were strictly minor players. Most of the bigger bail bondsmen were backed by the major insurance firms, including Hal Buncombe. According to Louis, he was the bondsman that Alice was supposed to call if she ever found herself in trouble. The fact that she hadn’t called him indicated the animosity she felt for Louis, even when she was in the most desperate of situations. I met Buncombe in a little pizzeria on 161st, where he was eating the first of two slices from a paper plate. He was about to wipe his fingers on a napkin in order to shake hands, but I told him not to worry about it. I ordered a soda and a slice, and joined him at his table. Buncombe was a small wiry man in his fifties. He radiated the mixture of inner calm and absolute self-belief that is the preserve of those who have seen it all and who have learned enough from their past mistakes to ensure that they no longer repeated them too often.

  “How’s business?” I asked.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Could be better. We’ve taken some skips already this month, which isn’t good. We figure we gave up two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the state last year, which means we’re playing catch-up from the start of this one. I’ll have to stop being nice to people. In fact, I’ve already stopped.”

  He raised his right hand. I noticed that his knuckles were bruised, the skin broken in places.

  “I pulled a guy off the streets earlier today. Just had a bad feeling about him. If he skipped, he’d cost us fifty thou, and I wasn’t prepared to take that chance.”

  “I take it he objected.”

  “He took a couple of swings,” Buncombe conceded. “We hauled him out to Rikers but they aren’t taking bodies, and the judge who set bail is on the West Coast until tomorrow, so I have him in a room in back of the office. He claims he has an out-of-state asset that he can offer as collateral — a house in some crack alley in Chicago — but we can’t take out-of-state or out-of-country property, so we’ll just have to hold him overnight, try to get him locked up safe in the morning.”

  He finished his first slice, and started in on his second.

  “Tough way to make money,” I said.

  “Not really.” He shrugged. “We’re good at our job, my partners and me. Like Joe Namath said, it’s only bragging if you can’t do it.”

  “What can you tell me about Eddie Tager?” I asked. “Is he good at his job too?”

  “Tager’s bad news. Real low-end. He’s so desperate he works mostly Queens, Manhattan, and they’re hard, real hard. The Bronx and Brooklyn are picnic boroughs by comparison, but beggars can’t be choosers. Tager deals with small-time beefs: not just bonds, but fines too. I hear most of the hookers don’t like turning to him if they’re in trouble — he likes them to give up a little extra as a show of thanks, if you catch my drift — which i
s why I was surprised when I heard that he supplied the cut slip for Alice. She would have been warned about him.”

  He stopped eating, as though he had suddenly lost his appetite, and dropped the remains of the slice onto the plate before dumping it in the trash.

  “I feel bad about what happened. I was trying to deal with paperwork over here, and doing what I could over the phone. Someone told me in passing that the cops had pulled Alice in on a drug trawl, but I figured I had a couple of hours and that she could just sit tight until I picked up a few more bonds to make it worth my while heading over there to check up on her. It’s a pain in the ass waiting for Corrections to release one inmate. Makes more sense to build up four or five, then wait for them all to be cut loose. By the time I got over there, she was already gone. I saw the slip and figured that she decided to go with Tager. I knew she had a problem with our ‘mutual friend,’ so I didn’t take it personally. You know, she was a mess by the end. Last time I saw her, she wasn’t looking good, but she didn’t deserve what happened to her. Nobody deserves that.”

  “Have you seen Tager lately?”

  “Our paths don’t cross so much anymore, but I asked around. Looks like he’s gone to ground. It could be that he’s running scared. Maybe it got back to him that the girl had connections, and that certain people were going to take a dim view of his involvement once she didn’t reappear.”

  Buncombe gave me directions to Tager’s office. He even offered to come along with me, but I declined. I didn’t believe that I’d need help making Eddie Tager talk. Right then, words were the only currency he had with which to buy his life.

  Eddie Tager was so low-rent that he lived and worked out of the back of a fire-damaged bodega that had closed for renovations sometime during Watergate and never reopened. I found the place without too much trouble, but there was no answer when I tried the bell. I went around back and tried hammering on the rear door. It came ajar slightly under the impact of my fist.