by Norman Green
“All right.” Mrs. West nodded, then went back to examining her manicure. “Such a mess. You won’t understand Jake, or my relationship to him, unless I tell you the whole story. My husband, Thomas, had a partner, they were in the financial services business. Thomas was simply brilliant, he was the brains of the firm. His partner, Barrington Arthur Tipton IV, was the salesperson.” She looked at Al and grimaced. It was almost a twitch, a facial tic, there for a second and gone. “To say that they did well for themselves and their customers would be an understatement.” She glanced at her watch. “Ten years ago Thomas was in a horrible automobile accident. He was driving up the FDR late at night and, well, no one is completely sure what happened, but his car went off the road. He was killed instantly.”
“I’m so sorry,” Sarah said.
“Were there any witnesses to the accident?” Al said.
That strange look passed over Mrs. West’s face again and was gone. “One person driving a taxi southbound said he saw my husband’s Mercedes and another car going northbound at a high rate of speed and then there was a loud noise. The police theorized that the two cars were racing, and . . . Well. Whether there was contact between the two vehicles or some sort of mechanical failure or if Thomas simply lost control, the only person who would be able to shed any light on that would be the other driver, and unfortunately he or she never came forward.” She pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at an eye. “He always found speed . . . intoxicating.”
“It must have been a horrible shock,” Sarah said.
“Well, yes,” Mrs. West said. “But I’m afraid it gets worse. Two months later Tipton disappeared. The firm’s trust fund was looted to the tune of twenty-eight million dollars. Tipton left a note behind saying that he’d lost the money and that he could no longer live with himself, but his body was never found. So of course the insurance companies never paid. The business was left in a horrible state, with lawyers crawling over the wreckage like a pack of wild dogs. Tipton’s family was ruined. Thomas had better lawyers when he wrote his will, but still, the bulk of his assets were frozen. Not that I care, truthfully. I’m well off by any rational standard. And I won’t survive long enough to see the outcome of all the lawsuits, but Jacob might. More likely, I would think, his children will inherit someday.”
“I’m sure there was a police investigation,” Al said. “What conclusions did they come to?”
“The police were all too willing to close the case. Money gone, two men dead, end of story. Their experts claim that Tipton did write the suicide note. I hired an investigator, someone not unlike yourselves, and he traced Tipton to the Dominican Republic. Someone matching Tipton’s description stayed at an oceanfront villa for three weeks before moving on.”
“Wow, you’re kidding. So you think Tipton . . .”
“It is impossible for me to be objective about this, Ms. Martillo, but if you’re asking me what I think, in my heart of hearts I believe Tipton stole the money and ran off. I think he knew he’d never be able to liquidate that much cash or move it successfully with Thomas looking over his shoulder, so he had to deal with Thomas first. I have absolutely no proof other than what my heart tells me, but on my bad days I’m completely sure Tipton murdered Thomas and then disappeared.”
“Any trace of Tipton since then? Ten years is a long time to stay missing. Most people slip up, they get careless or homesick or overconfident . . .”
“My investigator traced him to Monaco, and from there to Liechtenstein, but after that the trail went cold. I couldn’t afford to continue paying the man if there was no reasonable chance for a resolution, Ms. Martillo, so I had to let it go. It almost destroyed me to do it, but I had no choice. And it wasn’t about the money, either. I had dreams of clearing my husband’s name, and I wanted to see Tipton punished for what he’d done.”
“And now?”
“I don’t think about it much anymore. I suppose I have accepted everything, finally. The insurance company involved pursued matters in their own way, but they did not choose to share their findings with me.” She raised her head high. “Grief will not be denied, Ms. Martillo, it presses in, it wears one down. It dissolves absolutely everything if you let it, until all you have left is your sorrow. I stopped looking for Tipton years ago. I prefer to believe that he will pay for what he’s done, but in a fashion and at a time of God’s choosing. I have to live my own life, such as it is. Of course, I regret deeply that Thomas’s name and reputation were sullied, but that is nothing, nothing at all, compared to the loss of the man himself.”
Al let the silence hang in the room for a moment. “So I take it,” she finally said, “that you are not interested in having us look for Tipton.”
West seemed to think about that for a second. “No,” she said. She dismissed Tipton with a gesture, a tiny wave of one hand. “He’s gone.”
“Twenty-eight million is a lot of money.”
“I never made the sort of money Thomas did, Alessandra, but I have done well enough.” She regarded her manicure again.
“So?”
“Six months ago I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. If I submit to chemotherapy and radiation, I might have a year. If I refuse, I might have twelve months.”
“Wow. That’s tough.”
“Yes, well.” Mrs. West shrugged. “I’ve had some time to get used to the idea. I feel fine right now, today, so I’m going with that. The thing is, after Thomas died, his sons blamed me.”
“Why? That makes no sense.”
Mrs. West sighed. “Oh, but it does, Alessandra. It’s perfectly understandable. They needed to blame someone and I was the only available candidate. Isaac died in a boating accident some time after Thomas’s passing, and Jake has chosen to cut me out of his life. I understand, really I do, and I have no desire to force the issue, but in view of the circumstances . . .” Her control finally slipped, and she pulled a monogrammed handkerchief out of her bag and held it to her face. Al glanced at Sarah, who held out one hand, palm out, telling Al to wait.
A moment later Mrs. West wiped her eyes and blew her nose before stowing the handkerchief. She cleared her throat. “In light of the diagnosis,” she said. “Jake is all that is left of his father. Of my husband. There are certain things, things that belonged to Thomas, as well as certain facts about the aftermath . . . I’ll feel better if I know I’ve left them in his hands. What he chooses to do with all of it, if anything, is his business. And there’s my own personal estate as well. There’s my apartment, my weekend house on the island, and some money. Not twenty-eight million, but a reasonable amount. One would certainly cross the street to pick it up. I’ve left a little something to my maid and to my chauffeur, but I would really . . . I don’t care what Jake thinks of me, Al, I’m doing this for myself, not for him. I just think it will be easier for me to let go if I’ve given what I can to Thomas’s only surviving family. I don’t want to let the courts take it . . .”
“I understand,” Al said.
“Do you?” Mrs. West swallowed. “If you succeed in locating Jake, please help him understand that I am not trying to inflict myself upon him. It’s just, you know, he looked so much like Thomas . . .”
She lost it.
Sarah got up and went to her. I got this, she mouthed to Al, who decided to go for coffee.
Al stuck her nose into the steam coming out of the Styrofoam cup. Dunkin’ Donuts, she thought. Can’t beat it. “Okay, killer,” she said. “What do you think?”
“Such a shame,” Sarah said. “Ovarian cancer, God, it seems so unfair. She’s so young.”
“Really? Fifty, I thought,” Al said.
Sarah shook her head. “Early forties,” she said. “But with a lot of miles on her. Can you imagine? Your husband is killed, his kids think it’s your fault, his money is gone, you’re all alone, and then cancer? That’s horrible. My God. I feel so sorry for her.”
“Tough break,” Al agreed. “What do you think really happened? You buying her story? You think Tipton
took the money and ran?”
Sarah shrugged. “I would guess that it had to be a high-profile case. With that much money missing, I would bet that the police would want to be careful, particularly since there were insurance companies involved. How bad would the NYPD look if they took the suicide note at face value and then some wrinkled-suit gumshoe working for the insurance company finds Bats sunning his buns on the beach in Rio or something?”
“Bats?”
“Barfington Alistair Tipton whoever.”
“Oh. Bats.”
“Yeah. So, I mean, who knows, but if I had to lay money on this, I’d go with the NYPD, and according to her, they thought the suicide note was legit. Bats probably hired someone to off Thomas West, then killed himself. Case closed.”
“What do you make of the Dominican Republic angle?”
“You mean the reports of some guy that looked like Bats down there? Sunning his buns?”
“Yeah. And then in Monaco or wherever.”
“Al, this lady’s got a chauffeur, bald guy, I talked to the him when I walked her downstairs.”
“A chauffeur? You serious? He wear a uniform? And one of those little hats?”
“He wears a suit. And he didn’t get it from no Sears and Roebuck, neither, let me tell you. You wanna know how her mind works, she’s got a Bentley, she got tired of the thing being in the shop all the time so she went to the dealer where she bought it and she hired their chief mechanic. Haig, his name is, he’s the guy driving her. He told me, she wouldn’t take no for an answer, she just kept raising her offer until he took it.”
“Wow. Okay, I guess she’s got the bucks.”
“And a maid, so she says. Owns her apartment, from the way she talked, got a house on Long Island, and she’s got enough cash laying around to wonder who to leave it all to. She’s a doctor, works in some Madison Avenue firm, might even be a partner. She’s not exactly hand-to-mouth, you know what I’m saying? So she thinks that Bats killed her husband and ripped her off, she hires some stooge to go look for him, but after a while she has to call him off because she’s not seeing any real results. What I think, this detective, whoever he was, he had to be soaking her good. I mean, he had to be hitting her pretty hard. What if the guy just decided to take a nice Caribbean holiday on her dime? Be pretty easy to find some tourist looks sort of like Bats, at least from a distance. Take a couple of grainy, out-of-focus shots, tell her you nearly got him but he dragged ass and split. I think it would be easy to string Mrs. West along, get some more money and a European tour out of her, too. I mean, you ever notice, people that spend all their lives in school getting to be doctors or lawyers or whatever, a lot of the time they got no goddam sense. Plus, I think she loved her husband. I think she definitely believes he got set up. But suppose she came to someone like Marty with this? He’d see dollar bills floating in the air. Unless I see something telling me otherwise, I think she got used.”
Al dabbed at the corner of her eye. “Why, Sarah,” she said. “I’m so proud of you . . .”
“Oh, shut up.”
“Admit it. When you started here, you never would have sniffed that out.”
“No. I’d be all worked up trying to think of a way to convince you to help me find Bats and smoke him out of his hole.”
“And now?”
Sarah shrugged again. “She just wants us to find the kid.”
“Think you can do it?”
“I’d like to try,” Sarah said. “Should be mostly on-line anyhow. I’ll keep track of how much time I spend on him, and if you think it takes too long we’ll cut Mrs. West a discount. How about it?”
“Sounds fair. What’s your angle?”
“Well, Mrs. West is gonna phone me with what she’s got. She has an old address, and she’s got his Social Security number, so I’ll start with the credit bureaus. If they got nothing I can check with Seton Hall, that’s where he graduated, and you know colleges like to bleed their alums for donations, he ought to be on one of their lists. Then there’s court records and whatever. If this kid has gotten married, divorced, bought or sold real estate, went to jail, died or got a traffic ticket, I’ll get him.”
“Good girl. You okay with this?”
“Yeah. Why shouldn’t I be?”
“I dunno. You looked kind of bummed this morning.”
“Did I?” She chewed on that for a moment. “My ex dropped by last night.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“He come by the house?”
“No. Not exactly. I mean, I got an order of protection, he’s supposed to stay away, so he was waiting for me in the street. Up the block.”
“Why did you have to get an order of protection? He get physical?”
“You mean last night? No, we just talked for a while. He used to, you know . . .” She trailed off.
“Nah, I don’t know, Sarah. You’re probably gonna have to tell me.”
Sarah gave her a look, thought about it. “Well, he would get pushy. I mean, he never hit me or nothing like that, but you know, when he wanted his way . . .”
“He raped you, you mean.”
“No!” She sounded outraged, just a little. “I mean, not really. It’s not like I didn’t wanna . . .” She looked at Al. “We were married.”
“That make it okay?”
“No. I don’t know. I never thought about it that way. I mean . . .” She looked around, checked the closed office door. “I didn’t like being forced or anything, Al, but I miss . . .” She swallowed. “I haven’t been with anyone since Frankie. I’m not an old maid yet. I miss, you know . . .”
“That’s a separate issue, Sarah. You want a nice firm filet mignon, guys are a dime a dozen.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“Sarah, stop. You gotta be kidding me. You telling me you don’t see the guys that come sniffing after you? What about that piano player in the bar from when we worked the Hyatt last week?”
Sarah colored. “Yeah, I remember, but you can’t just . . .”
“Why the hell not? Sarah, honey, if you’re in the mood for a couple nice cheeseburgers, there’s no law says you got to buy the whole fucking bull.”
Sarah’s face got redder. “No.”
“You in the market for undying love, till death do you part, sickness and health, all that shit?”
She shook her head. “Not at this time.”
“Okay. So this is still America the beautiful, babe, and that means you’re in the driver’s seat. No excuse for not getting what you need.”
“Maybe not.”
“Not an old maid yet.”
“No.”
“There you go. So you want me to scare Frankie away?”
“Alessandra, Frank is a great big sonuvabitch. He used to . . .”
“Sarah. Honey. You’re on the team now. You understand what that means? Means you’re with me. I’m with you. You want this gorilla to avoid your block like the plague, we can probably engage him in a little aversion therapy.”
They stared at each other for a moment. “Thank you,” Sarah finally said, and looked down. “But he’s not really a gorilla.”
“No? He just likes pushing you around.”
“No, well, you know. All right, I’m probably making excuses for the guy, which I know is stupid, but it’s just that . . . I was in love with him, Al. We were high school sweethearts. He’s the only guy I ever had, almost. Even after everything, you know, I still got a soft spot for him, I can’t help it.”
“That soft spot, it ain’t in the middle of your skull, is it?”
“Maybe it is. Frankie is a nice guy, Al, really, as long as he ain’t with the guys. He’s got these guys he hangs around with, and they talk him into things. It’s the neighborhood, you know what I mean? Listen, in case you ain’t figured it out, I’m Italian, okay, so I know what I’m talking about. Every kid from south Brooklyn got a vowel at the end of his name thinks he could be a wiseguy if he wanted. Frankie goes around with all the
se pretend gangsters, these loser jerks from the block, can’t keep a job, always looking for an angle. They like Frankie because he is a tough guy for real, he’s just not always real smart about it. If he would just stay away from those jokers . . .”
“If he’d grow up and be a man, you mean. I hope you ain’t holding your breath waiting for that.”
“No. Hey, listen, I did divorce the guy. But when he’s not getting suckered into some stupid hairball scheme with Vinny the brick and Tony and Mick and Jones Beach Joey, he can be a nice guy.”
Al snorted. “Jesus Christ.”
“I know, I know.”
“Women. God, I will never understand us. What makes us so willing to put up with this kind of bullshit? Can you tell me? Why do we hook up with these losers when there ought to be some grown-up individuals out there with normal lives who don’t live with their mothers? Will you tell me that?”
“Oh. Oh, I get it. What about you? What about . . .”
“Never mind me. Listen, Sarah, this guy bothers you, I’m not kidding, we ain’t having this.”
“It won’t come to that.”
“I’m not kidding, Sarah.”
“I know you’re not. If I need help, I’ll ask. I promise.”
Four
TJ Conrad looked ten years older than he had the last time Alessandra had seen him. They sat on a park bench on The Promenade, a small city park that stretched for the space of four blocks over the top of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. You could see the whole Upper New York Bay from there, from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge up to the Statue of Liberty, Jersey City away in the hazy distance, the southern tip of Manhattan in the foreground. “I heard you on the radio,” she said.
He brightened a bit. “Did you? You heard the BandX single? I heard it was getting a couple of spins, here and there.”
“No, no that, the other one.” Conrad had contributed a guitar solo to a song recorded by the pop diva Shine, who was known within the music business as “God.”
He deflated again. “Oh, yeah. My seven seconds of fame.”
“Come on,” Al said. “Don’t sell yourself short, it was a nice lick. Besides, there was two more seconds right at the end.”