“Maybe I’m the kind of person who can learn only by doing.”
“And you’ve suffered for lack of a practice dummy?”
“Oh, I would never do something like that. That’s pretty weird. Sad, too.”
Felicia appeared in the doorway and leaned against the jamb, arms over chest, ankles crossed. She was wearing a bright green skirt and matching pumps. Jadish earrings and necklace with fat blocks of green rock dangling from her lobes and graceful neck.
“Have you found the missing lady?” asked Melody Moy.
“Not yet.”
“Do you want me to make some discrete inquiries? My cousin’s wife works for TSA. … Maybe she could pull some manifests.”
I didn’t think that would amount to a hill of beans, but she didn’t know what I knew.
“Hey, you don’t have to,” I said.
“Not what I asked, Ragman.”
“Sure. That would be terrific. Every little bit helps.”
I said good-bye and hung up the phone. Felicia hung by the door. She didn’t say anything.
“That was Melody Moy,” I said.
“I know.”
“The real estate lady.”
“She has a name like a cartoon character. One of Batman’s girlfriends or a gangster’s moll.”
“There’s a pattern I’ve noticed,” I said. “Girls I’ve kissed. All their names end in a y. Tiffany, Melody, even Carly.”
“Who is Carly?”
“An eighth grader.”
“Jesus Christ, Ruzak.”
“No, I mean I kissed her in the eighth grade.”
“What about Amanda? That’s an a.”
“I’m not counting her.”
“How come?”
“It was more like she kissed me. Okay. So the pattern is names that end in a vowel.”
“And that girl from your first case—what was her name?”
“Susan.” How did she know I’d kissed Susan? “Okay. Names with at least two syllables.”
“You know what you do? Cherry-pick facts to fit your premises.”
“Everybody does that.”
“What did Detective Black say?”
“Not much they can do without evidence.”
“Huh. Never holds you back.”
“Is there a reason for this?” I asked. “Really.”
“Why so tense today, Ruzak?”
“No reason. I’m losing my dog, my business, and possibly my mind. Other than that, I’m good.”
She stepped into the room, and for the first time I saw the slip of paper in her hand. She dropped it on top of the yellow pad.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“The number for Katrina Bates’s father.”
“She hates him though.”
“According to …”
“The suspect.”
She tapped the end of her nose.
“You may be distantly related,” I said.
“Who?”
“You and Melody Moy. Both your noses crinkle when you smile or laugh. That’s got to be genetic.”
“I don’t like the idea of you hitting on my cousin, Ruzak.”
“She didn’t like it much, either.”
The outer door swung open and Walter Hinton stepped into the room, a uniformed cop in tow. He walked straight to my desk without so much as a nod in Felicia’s direction and planted himself in my visitor’s chair, balancing his briefcase on his thighs. Felicia didn’t move. I didn’t move. The cop by the door didn’t move. And now, planted, Hinton didn’t move.
“Mr. Ruzak, I have a subpoena.”
“Surprise, surprise,” Felicia murmured in a pretty good imitation of Gomer Pyle. Hinton ignored her. He was staring at me. Felicia was staring at him. I was staring at Hinton, and the cop was staring at nothing.
“Every file. Every scrap of paper. Every hard drive and computer disc and CD and portable media.”
“Okay,” I said. “Anything else?”
“Yes. The contents of your desk. And your secretary’s desk.”
“Down to the staples? What do the staples prove?”
“We’ve gone out of business,” Felicia said.
“We have?” I asked.
“There are no files,” she said pleasantly. “No files, no discs, no flash drives. You’re welcome to the hard drive, but the only things on there are my mother’s peanut butter pie recipe and some pictures of Ruzak’s dog.”
“Where are the files?” he growled.
“Destroyed,” she answered. “You caught us in the middle of mopping up.”
“I’m taking the computer and the check register. You haven’t destroyed that, have you?”
“I would have if I could have. Ruzak took it home to balance it and the dog ate it.”
“The dog ate his homework?”
“He’s an adoptee,” I explained. “There’re lingering behavioral issues.”
In the outer room, the cop stifled a laugh.
“I’ll go to the bank,” Hinton vowed.
“For what?” asked Felicia. “What will that establish?”
“You’re taking people’s money illegally!”
“Oh, Jesus, Hinton,” she said. “It’s not like Ruzak was transplanting hearts without a medical license or something. Let’s keep it in perspective.”
“None of this matters,” Hinton said.
“Then why are you here?” Felicia asked.
“I’ll have you locked down so tight, you won’t be able to swing a dead cat in this town without my knowing about it,” he said to me.
“That’s ugly,” she said.
Hinton stood up. I stood up. Felicia and the cop didn’t stand up because they were already standing up.
“You may stay during the confiscation,” he said. “Up to you. We don’t want any trouble, but we are authorized to use force if necessary.”
Felicia took a step toward him. I raised my hand. She stopped. Now everybody was looking at me: Felicia, Hinton, the cop.
“That won’t be necessary,” I said. “You’re just trying to do the right thing, Walter, same as I am.”
“I’m not the same as you,” he snarled.
“Same, only different.”
“I think you may just be the stupidest man I’ve ever met, Mr. Ruzak.”
I eased the piece of paper with the phone number on it from the desktop to my pocket. Hinton was too upset to notice. I didn’t doubt if there weren’t witnesses present, he would have taken his briefcase upside my head. It may sound weird, but at that moment I actually felt sorry for Walter Hinton. Evil may thwart our empathy, but madness doth our pity loose.
SCENE FOURTEEN
Pent house Suite
Two Days Later
An attractive woman who was probably born within five years of me opened the door wearing tennis gear and holding a bottle of Fiji water. Her eyes were an interesting gray, her hair a boring blond, cut shoulder-length and pulled into a ponytail that bounced when she walked. She was tall, close to six feet, I guessed, trim, long-legged, and she smelled of sunscreen. Her vibe was more West Coast than East, but this was New York City, the white-hot center of the melting pot.
She led me into a study tastefully decorated with an old-world flavor, not too mod but also not too staid. The furniture was light on the knickknacks, the walls easy on the artwork, and the chairs were comfortable. There were no pictures of family.
She said her name was Anna. I said my name was Teddy.
“Would you like a drink, Teddy?” she asked.
“Love one,” I said. “One of those Fijis would be great, if you got another.”
She said she did, and left to get it. I stood by the window and admired the view. She came back and handed me the water, and I admired her smile.
“How was your flight?” she asked. She sounded genuinely interested, not like she was making conversation.
“Hit some turbulence near the end,” I said. “I made the mistake of ordering coffee and it ended up all over the guy in f
ront of me.”
“Oh no!” She laughed politely.
“He was very understanding.”
“And you learned a lesson.”
“The hard way.”
“Often the best way.”
“Often the Ruzak way.”
“What is that name? Russian?”
“Polish.”
“A Polish PI.”
“Sounds like the beginning of a joke,” I said.
“I think that’s so horrible. Ethnic jokes.”
“Things have tightened up on them, but sometimes the best humor is rooted in pain.”
“Is that a quote or something?”
“Something.”
An older man came into the room, maybe a couple inches taller than Anna. I was guessing seventy, based on his daughter’s age, but a fantastic seventy, a lion-in-winter kind of guy, with just the hint of a paunch and a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, gelled and fashionably long, combed back from his finely formed forehead. His eyes were a glittering emerald green, his voice soft, his handshake hard.
“Alistair Lynch,” he said.
“Theodore Ruzak,” I said.
“Ruzak. That Ukrainian?”
“Polish.”
“Polish! And you’re from Knoxville.”
“Born here, though.”
“New York?”
“Queens.”
“Not Chicago? Lot of Poles in Chicago.”
“I might have a cousin or two that way.”
“What do you think of the Cubs’ chances this year?”
“Pitching’s the issue.”
“Pitching is always the issue. You’ve met Anna.”
“She brought me this water.”
“How did you get from Queens to Knoxville?”
“In my dad’s car and a U-Haul trailer. He was a salesman and moved around a lot.”
“What did he sell?”
“Name it.”
“You didn’t follow in his footsteps.”
“Neither one of us wanted me to.”
“You take after your mother’s side.”
“Afraid so.”
“Why afraid?”
“Most of that side died of cancer at an early age.”
“It’s all about risk factors. Do you smoke?”
“Once, in the seventh grade. Peer pressure.”
“Weight’s the biggest. You should lose about twenty pounds.”
“Working on that.”
“Really?”
“No. Not really. I’ve got a six-year plan.”
“What’s your plan?”
“Cold turkey on the fried foods in six years.”
“Anna, could you get me a drink? Have a seat, Ruzak. How was your flight?”
“Just a minor spill over Virginia.”
“That reminds me of a joke.”
I waited for him to tell it. Nothing. Was he waiting for me to say “Love to hear it”? Finally, I gave up and got down to brass tacks.
“Thanks for agreeing to see me,” I said.
“Katrina is my only child.”
As if on cue, the woman who was young enough to be his child came back with his drink.
“I’m off,” she told him. “Dinner with the Trumps to night at seven. Don’t forget.” She kissed him on the cheek. Said she was delighted to have met me. I thanked her for the water.
She left. I watched her leave. He watched me watch her leave.
“Trumps, as in the Trumps?” I asked.
“More her connection than mine. I’m becoming less and less sociable as I get older.”
“That’s pretty common.”
“Do you think so?”
“Maybe it’s a function of diminishing energy.”
“In my case, it may be a function of my being an irascible ass.”
“Well,” I said. “Everybody’s different.”
“Some more than others.”
“Most more than others.”
He laughed, for some reason. “You’re not my idea of a private eye at all.”
“That’s sort of an auxiliary mission of mine: blasting stereotypes.”
“The primary one being catching the bad guy.”
“Right. Or I wouldn’t be a private eye.”
“And you honestly think Tom did something to her.”
“I do.”
He nodded, sipped his drink, eyes green as a cat’s on me.
“What do the authorities think?” he asked.
“They’re reading the same book, but they’re a chapter or two behind.”
“He’s a very clever man.”
“And he knows it.”
“You’re hoping that will undo him.”
“Goes before a fall.”
“To the ancient Greeks, you know, it was the greatest sin.”
“Worse than murder?”
“When you think about it, it’s a kind of suicide.”
I thought I could think about it for a hundred years and wouldn’t arrive within a thousand miles of that conclusion, but I didn’t say anything.
“I never liked him,” Alistair Lynch said. “A brutally selfish man, not at all like his father. His father and I were friends. Not close friends, but we belonged to some of the same organizations. Brilliant—I mean Tom—but pushy, and operatically arrogant. And of course his struggles with monogamy—unforgivable,” he said with a straight face.
“But they stayed married for twenty years.”
“The first ten owing entirely to my daughter’s inestimable will. The last ten to inertia. And, I’ll confess, to certain deficiencies in Katrina’s psychology.”
“Picking open old scabs.”
“Not a pleasant analogy, but yes, I was not faithful to the girl’s mother.”
“Tom said she caught you in bed with the nanny.”
“She wasn’t the nanny. She was Katrina’s violin teacher. Katrina was twelve. Afterward, we traded the tutor for a therapist.”
“For you or for her?”
“Ah, Mr. Ruzak, really. It was a very long time ago.”
“Ever see him lose his temper?”
“Once. He threw a chair through a window.”
“Why?”
“I can’t recall all the details—it’s been fifteen years at least—but I believe it had something to do with a colleague receiving some honor that Tom thought was his just due. The fit didn’t last long. No more than five minutes, and he was quite calm and collected afterward. Apologized. I do recall Katrina being a bit shaken by it.”
“Because it came out of the blue?”
“He never struck me as a violent man.”
“And he never struck her?”
“Not that I’m aware of. I doubt she would have told me if he had.”
“Is it plausible to you, him hurting her, say, after being pushed to the wall by something?”
“I can imagine it, if his ego was sufficiently threatened, as in the incident with the chair.”
“More than a threat to divorce him and take all his money?”
“Oh, that was a threat laid down early and often, repeated so much, he hardly took it seriously.”
“What if he found out she was having an affair?”
He nodded. “That might do it.”
“He explodes and throws the metaphorical chair through the window.”
If it bothered him that I had just compared his only daughter to a piece of furniture, he didn’t show it.
“He said the two of you haven’t spoken in years,” I said.
“Yes. So I was surprised when you called. Why did you think the girl would contact me?”
“It was more a hope than a thought.”
“That he was lying about our estrangement?”
“That she was alive.”
“She cut off all contact when I married Anna.”
“The final straw?”
“Anna is six years younger than Katrina.”
“And the tutor was six years older.”
A nod. “The circle comes round.”
I didn’t get it. I kept saying things, not completely on purpose, that would offend most people, but this Alistair Lynch reacted as if we were still discussing the Cubbies. On the one hand, I admired his self-possession. On the other, I felt the need to take a long, hot shower, as if I had come in contact with something fetid.
“We could have covered all this on the phone yesterday,” I said. “Why did you ask me to fly up here, Mr. Lynch?”
“I wanted to show you this.”
He went to the mantel and picked up a manila envelope. Handed it to me.
“Last fall, after eight years of total silence, this.”
Inside the envelope were two things: a note written on Katrina’s stationery (KLB was printed on the top in fancy script) and a small square-headed key. The note read “Alistair, keep this for me. K.”
“She never called me ‘Dad,’ ” he said.
“What’s the key to?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you never asked her about it? After eight years of nothing, she sends you a key and a cryptic note, and you don’t ask?”
“I suppose I assumed one day she would ask for it.”
“You suppose you assumed?”
“I find drama distasteful, Mr. Ruzak. And Katrina was not merely dramatic; she was melodramatic. I was surprised when she chose law school over a career in acting. She had the gift, you know. She played the role of Regina in her high school production of The Little Foxes, and she was, in my biased opinion, brilliant.”
I dropped the key and the note back into the envelope.
“Can I keep this?” I asked.
“It’s why I invited you up here.”
My bottle was empty. His glass was dry. He rose. I rose. He walked me to the door.
“Speaking of the theater, are you familiar with Hamlet, Mr. Ruzak?” he asked. “She may have been hoist with her own petard.”
“How so?”
“Her penchant for the grand gesture, the attention-seeking melodramatics. If he has done something to her, she has come to his aid. She’s laid the groundwork for him. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s taken off into the blue like a child running away from home so Daddy will come looking.”
At the door, he turned to me, and I looked for some kind of emotion in his eyes—concern, anger, guilt, sorrow, something, anything. There was nothing.
“It was children more than the affairs,” he said.
“What was?”
“Or the lack thereof. Tom wanted them, particularly a son, and she refused. Absolutely refused.”
The Highly Effective Detective Plays the Fool Page 13