JM02 - Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home

by Peter Spiegelman

  “Mrs. K would never approve,” I said. Ned smiled and nodded and rose to refill his glass. He started to say something, but his phone chimed and Mrs. K’s disembodied voice filled the room.

  “Your three o’clock is early, Mr. March. They’re in the lobby.”

  Ned grimaced. “Shit,” he said softly. The lines deepened around his small mouth and he looked ten years older again. “Sorry to waste your time with this Tyne guy. I’ll make sure the other two are vetted better than he was.” I nodded. “We appreciate your help with this, Johnny— it’s great working with you on it.” I nodded again. “See you Saturday, right?”

  “Saturday,” I said, and left.

  The conference room doors were open and I looked inside. It was empty and, but for the faint bouquet of an air freshener, you’d never know that Tyne had been there. I passed Mrs. K’s desk on my way out. She made another clicking noise and eyed me warily.

  8

  I took a window seat at the Manifesto Diner, looking out on Eleventh Avenue and the trucks that rumbled by, northbound and south. Directly across the street was a block of low brick tenements with an adult video store, a locksmith, and a plumbing supply shop at sidewalk level. Diagonally across, to the south, was a corner of DeWitt Clinton Park. I saw some flowerless rosebushes and a pair of shirtless handball players bounding around on a concrete court. I’d ditched my jacket and tie, but I was still overdressed for the Manifesto and for the neighborhood.

  Eleventh Avenue between 53rd and 54th streets is the north end of Clinton— or Hell’s Kitchen, as it used to be known. The neighborhood has a sordid and much romanticized past, full of grog houses, luckless sailors, and ravening street gangs. Its present is more prosaic. These days, Clinton is in the later stages of a remorseless gentrification, its old tenement buildings and factories giving way to residential high-rises and dramatic eateries, its population of working-class immigrants and aspiring actors squeezed ever tighter or squeezed out altogether. But despite the assault, the area’s gritty industrial roots are stubborn and still plain to see.

  I didn’t know how far back the Manifesto’s history went, but it was not a newcomer. It was long and narrow, clad in metal on the outside and in chipped green Formica inside. There was a long counter with worn green vinyl stools, a row of green vinyl booths along the front window, and another set of booths in a nook at one end of the counter. The ceiling fans were still, and the place smelled of grease, ammonia, and burnt coffee.

  There were two Asian women in quiet conversation at the counter, and an old guy speaking Spanish into the pay phone, and the only other people in the place at three-twenty were the counterman and the cook. A black town car was circling the block. I’d counted four trips around when it stopped out front at three-thirty.

  A skinny young man in khaki pants and a dark blue button-down shirt got out of the back and stepped into the diner. He was balding and he wore his remaining hair very short— shorter even than his narrow goatee. There was an annoyed, impatient look on his face as he scanned the room. His eyes stopped at me. He walked over.

  “You March?” he asked softly. I recognized the voice— Brent. I nodded. “How about moving to the back?” he said. I slid out of the booth and picked up my coffee cup. I looked at the counterman and gestured toward the back. He shrugged.

  “Just a sec,” Brent said. He went out to the car. A big bald white guy in a black suit got out of the front passenger seat. Brent opened the rear door and Linda Sovitch stepped out. She took a last drag on a cigarette and tossed it in the gutter, and the three of them crossed the pavement and came inside. The big guy looked around and then stared at me. He had a face like a ham and skin the color of a turnip and he was wearing black wraparound shades. I ignored him. He and Brent sat at the counter. Sovitch came to my booth and took off her sunglasses.

  She was smaller than I expected, about five-foot-two, and her features were somehow more intense out in the real world, but otherwise Linda Sovitch looked much as she did on television. She was wearing the same cream-colored jacket and the same sea-green blouse she’d worn on TV that morning; the same strand of pearls rested on her delicate clavicles. Her pale hair still fell in an artful curve, down to the base of her neck. Her lips looked, if anything, fuller, and her eyes even bluer. Besides the jacket and blouse, she wore torn faded jeans and black clogs, and a musky, flowery perfume— Shalimar, maybe. Her hands were small, with sharp pink nails, and she wore a big yellow diamond on one finger, above a platinum wedding band. I knew she was in her middle thirties, but she looked younger.

  She slipped into the seat opposite me and checked her watch. “You wanted to talk about Greg?” she asked. Her voice was high but without accent, and there was nothing girlish about it. She looked me squarely in the eye.

  “When’s the last time you spoke with Mr. Danes?” Might as well cut to the chase. She tilted her head a little and thought about things.

  “Five weeks ago, maybe. We had lunch. Why?”

  “His wife— his ex-wife— is having a little trouble getting in touch with him.”

  Sovitch tilted her head again. “Has she tried his office?”

  “He’s on vacation and hasn’t come back yet.”

  “Don’t they know how to reach him at Pace?”

  “Apparently not. I was given to understand that you two were friends. I thought maybe you had heard from him or that you might have some idea of where he’s gone.”

  Sovitch looked puzzled and shook her head slowly. “I haven’t seen much of Greg lately. That lunch was the first time in a long time.”

  “He didn’t mention vacation plans?”

  She shook her head. “Not to me. You sure he’s not just avoiding her?”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Sovitch shrugged. “I don’t know, to piss her off maybe. They don’t exactly get along, you know.”

  I nodded. “What did you two talk about at lunch?”

  Sovitch’s mouth closed and her eyes narrowed. “Why does that matter?”

  “I’m not sure it does, but I won’t know for certain until you tell me about it.”

  She scowled and shook her head. “That sounds like bullshit to me, March.”

  “I’m curious about what was on his mind. If he talked a lot about music, for example, then maybe he went off to hear some music.”

  Sovitch looked impatient. “He didn’t talk about music,” she said. She checked her watch again and glanced at the counter. I was losing her.

  “I heard he hasn’t been in such a good mood lately. Did he mention that at all?”

  Sovitch fixed her eyes on me again. “If you’re getting at something, March, get at it. Otherwise, stop dicking around.” It was a legitimate request. The problem was, I didn’t quite know what I was getting at. I was fishing.

  “I’m not trying to dick around, and I don’t want to turn this into a guessing game either. I just want to know how Danes seemed the last time you saw him: what his mood was, what you talked about, that kind of thing. It may seem irrelevant to you— it may seem like gratuitous prying— but I’ve been at this long enough to know that useful things don’t usually come with a label attached. They may not even be useful at first; they may only become significant later on, when you put them alongside five other things. Sometimes you just have to put stuff in a bag and shake.”

  Her mouth took on a skeptical twist. I continued.

  “Look, I appreciate your time, Ms. Sovitch, and I don’t want to bother you more than I have to, but what’s the big deal about this lunch?”

  Sovitch’s eyes flashed and she gave me a hard look. After a while, she nodded to herself and took a deep breath. “There’s no big deal. It just wasn’t … particularly pleasant, that’s all.” She picked up her sunglasses and fiddled with the nosepieces. “I told you I hadn’t seen Greg in a while. That’s because he’s been a little unhappy with me lately— with most things, really. When he called about lunch, I took it to mean we’d gotten past all that. But I gu
ess not.”

  “What was he unhappy about?”

  Sovitch’s laugh was ironic. “Haven’t you caught the news the last few years? It’s been a little bumpy on Wall Street, in case you haven’t noticed. Greg’s got investor complaints up the ass, and his reputation has taken a serious whipping.”

  “I know that part. I meant, why was he unhappy with you?”

  She looked at the tabletop. “He’s angry— hurt, I guess— about some of the stories we ran on analysts. He thinks they were one-sided. I’ve told him a lot of people thought our coverage was pretty one-sided in the other direction, back when the Dow was at eleven thousand, but he doesn’t want to hear that. And I’ve told him he should just forget it and move on— between nine-eleven and war, it’s old news anyway— but that just makes him crazier.”

  “Is that what you talked about at lunch?”

  “Yeah. And if I’d known that was going to be the topic, I’d have skipped the whole thing. But like I said, I thought we were done with that. It turned out Greg just had a different approach; he had an idea to pitch to me. A special segment of Market Minds—‘An Analyst’s Perspective,’ he wanted to call it— with himself as the only guest.”

  She shook her head in disbelief, and an indignant tone came into her voice.

  “You like that— an hour of Greg Danes telling his side of the story? Maybe we could get some harp music in the background and big blowups of his baby pictures. Can you believe I actually had to explain to him why that would never fly? Jesus, he could be so tone deaf about some things.

  “And then he had the nerve to get all pissed off at me. He started in with how he felt used, how we treated him like a trained seal or a circus geek— something to sell tickets with— really fucking abusive. I finally got fed up listening to him and left.” Sovitch straightened and tossed her hair back. It occurred to me that Danes might’ve had a point about selling tickets, but I kept it to myself.

  “That was the last you heard from him?”

  “The last I heard, and the last I hope to hear. Greg’s a smart guy, but he’s a fucking nut, too, and times have changed. He’s just not worth the trouble anymore.” She looked at her watch.

  I nodded. “One last thing, Ms. Sovitch. Has anyone else called to ask you about Danes?”

  She shook her head. “Lucky me, you’re the only one.” She glanced at Brent and cocked an eyebrow. He and the big guy got up and stood by the door. Sovitch turned back to me. “You got twenty minutes out of me, March.”

  “And I’m grateful for it. I’ll try not to ask for more.”

  Sovitch smiled coolly. “Ask as much as you like,” she said. “You won’t get another damn minute.” She slipped her sunglasses on and left, her minders close behind.

  I walked home from there. There was a chill in the air, and faint traces of yellow and orange in the sky over New Jersey. I thought about what a great pal Linda Sovitch was, and about the little she had told me. Her story was consistent with the others I’d heard: that Danes was angry and bitter, fixated on his lawsuits and bad press and on the raw deal he thought he’d gotten.

  But more interesting than what she’d said was what she hadn’t said— or asked. For someone who called herself a journalist, Sovitch had been remarkably incurious about Danes being missing. Other reporters I knew would’ve been crawling through my socks and picking my pockets the instant they’d heard, and they certainly wouldn’t have answered my questions without asking some of their own in return. But not Sovitch. All the way back to 16th Street, I wondered about her lack of curiosity and about why she’d agreed to see me in the first place.

  It was after five when I got home, and there were messages. The first was from Simone Gautier, out in Queens. Danes’s car wasn’t at the airports and his body wasn’t in the local morgues. Written reports and bills to follow.

  The second message was from Danes’s vacationing doorman. His voice was gravelly and full of Brooklyn. There were other voices in the background and what sounded like a ballgame on TV.

  “This is Gargosian; you left a message with my wife. I’ll try you later, or when I get home— be about ten days.” Shit. I called his home on City Island and left another message with Mrs. Gargosian. I made a note of it on my pad and saw my earlier entry there, to call Anthony Frye, late of the Pace-Loyette equity research department. I flicked on my laptop and picked up the phone again.

  It didn’t take long to find a residential listing for Frye, and he answered on the first ring. He spoke with an upper-class English accent, and his voice was young and ironical. I explained who I was and what I wanted, and nothing that I said seemed to surprise him very much.

  “I heard about Greg storming out,” he said. “But I understood he’d decided to take some sort of impromptu sabbatical.”

  “Maybe, but his ex-wife and his son would like to get in touch with him. Were you there when he left?”

  “No. I’d resigned the week before, and Pace likes deserters off the premises straightaway.”

  “Was that the last time you saw Danes— the day you resigned?”

  “Yes,” Frye said. “Though I barely saw him then, they had me out the door so fast.” A doorbell chimed on his end and he called out. “Come ahead— it’s open.” There was a swell of voices and laughter on the line, and it became difficult to hear.

  “It sounds like this is a bad time to talk.”

  Frye laughed. “Yes, an excellent time to drink, but a bad time to talk. How about tomorrow?” We agreed on a time and place and he rang off, to the sounds of reggae and clinking glasses.

  I looked at my watch and took a deep breath. It was time to call Nina.

  “We’ve got things to talk about,” I said. “Can I come over this evening?”

  “You found something?”

  “Not Danes, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Then what?”

  “Something we need to discuss in person. Is this evening okay?”

  “Very mysterious. But sure, come on over. Shit, you’re becoming a regular here, March. Better watch it, people might start to wonder.” She laughed and hung up.

  I drank some water from a pitcher in the fridge and looked at Jane’s tulips. The stalks hung bare and limp in their vase; the petals were turning brown on the counter. I hung up my suit and pulled on a pair of jeans and sat down at my laptop. I opened the file I had saved this morning and reread the details of Sachs v. Danes.

  9

  It was past seven when I got to Sachs’s place. The temperature had continued to drop and the wind had teeth as it whipped between the old factory buildings. Across the East River, the downtown office towers were lit and limned with the last colors of sunset. There were lights in the windows of the I-2 gallery, too. I looked in and saw Ines’s skinny hipsters rearranging the partitions around a new set of crates, but I saw no sign of Ines.

  She was upstairs. She answered my knock, and tension washed through the doorway with the cigarette smoke and paint smell and too-loud music and raised voices. Ines was still and quiet in the tide.

  “I don’t care what the fucking guidance counselor says, I’m not staying in that shithole another fucking year!” Billy’s voice came from the far end of the apartment. It was raw and hoarse. Ines didn’t react.

  “She’s expecting me,” I said. Ines nodded.

  “Now may not be the best time, detective,” she said softly. I heard Nina’s voice. I couldn’t make out the words, but the anger and frustration in them were clear. Billy answered at full volume.

  “I don’t care how good you say it is, you don’t have to go there. You don’t have to deal with those fucking assholes every day!” A door slammed.

  “Fine!” Nina yelled. “Go to public school then! See how you like it when the fucking assholes have guns!”

  “You think they don’t have ’em at my school?” Billy yelled back. “You don’t know shit.”

  There were fast footsteps and Nina Sachs crossed the apartment, an angry cloud of smoke swi
rling behind her. She glanced at me, snorted, and went into her studio without a pause. Ines and I looked at each other.

  “Is he here to see me?” Nina called. “Might as well send him in. Things can’t get much more fucked-up tonight.” She laughed bitterly. Ines nodded slightly and I stepped inside. The piles of clothes were a little smaller than they had been last time and the half-eaten meals were gone. Ines was in the midst of cleaning. She disappeared into the kitchen and I made my way to Nina’s studio.

  Nina was at the drafting table, wearing jeans and a man’s blue shirt with the sleeves cut off. Her auburn hair was tied back. A new cigarette was dangling from her mouth and there was a glass tumbler full of red wine on the cart beside her. She was sketching furiously. I went to the little stereo and turned The Ramones down a few notches. Nina gave me a dirty look.

  “Don’t fuck with my music.” She sounded like Billy when she said it. I ignored her.

  “Have you given any more thought to the cops?” I asked. She shook her head.

  “No time. Maybe you noticed: I have my hands full here.” She looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You have something to tell me?”

  I nodded. “I spoke to Linda Sovitch this afternoon,” I said, and told her about my meeting at the Manifesto. When I was through, Nina Sachs pursed her lips and stared at her sketching.

  “You think she’s going to put this on the news— about Greg?”

  “I don’t think so— though I couldn’t tell you why not.”

  She smiled a little. “It seems like Greg was having a bad fucking day, doesn’t it?” she said. It was the happiest she’d sounded since I came in.

  “A bad day that got worse when he met with Turpin, later that afternoon. And Sovitch is just one more person— one more friend— who has no idea of where he’s gone. Are you worried yet?” Nina didn’t answer. We heard muffled voices, and Ines appeared in the doorway.

  “I am going down to the gallery, and Guillermo is coming with me,” she told Nina.