“Geez, you’re late,” she said. “What did you do, take the scenic tour?”
She hooked my arm and hauled me aside.
“I saw the cops drive away,” I told her.
She nodded.
“So what’s the scoop?” I asked.
“Louis wants to talk to you,” she said.
“In a minute,” I told her. I needed to buy a few minutes and wrap my head around my surroundings. All of this was becoming sensory overload. I wanted to hide in the restroom and psych myself up for bluffing my way through the next few hours.
Heather glared at me. She didn’t strike me as much of a smiler.
I glanced around, feeling totally lost. The layout was mostly an open floor plan, with cubicles and conference tables, and glassed-in offices along the walls. I subtly looked for my name on a door somewhere but didn’t spot anything with Nick Cortland stamped on it. The agency certainly looked like someone had dropped some serious coin on a remodel within the last few years. The place looked state of the art. Everyone was dressed trendy and looked smart.
I avoided any attempt at conversation like dodging shrapnel.
“Let’s go my to my office,” I told her.
“This is serious, Nick,” she said, folding her arms over her chest. “Louis is distraught. He knows you’re here and told me to send you in the instant you showed up. So guess what? I’m sending you in.”
“My office,” I repeated. “Go. Now.”
I let her lead the way, because frankly I had no choice. I had no clue where my office was.
“You are pissing me off,” she said over her shoulder.
It was quickly apparent that Heather was my assistant. I could live with that. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to give her orders. She wore heels and a skirt, and walked through the office like she owned the world. She strutted like a woman who has always been attractive and has always known she was.
Turns out my office was one of those with a glass wall. My name was stenciled in classy white font on the glass beside the door. I followed her inside and shut the door behind me. Heather spun on her heels, and crossed her arms over her chest again.
“OK, what?” she demanded.
I wondered if she was always like this. An attitude like that had to be a lot to carry around all day. I’d find it exhausting. I was getting exhausted just staring at her frown. She clearly had a chip on her shoulder, and I wondered whether it was specifically for me, for men in general, or if that was simply the way God had made her.
My desk, like ninety-percent of everything at Burgess, Levine, and Holt, was made of glass and stainless steel. The desk chair was one of those super expensive ergonomically correct numbers. I strolled past her to the chair and sat down. I could feel her glaring at me with laser beam eyes. I didn’t care. Let her glare. I needed to buy a moment or two to collect my thoughts. There was a flat panel Mac on my desk with a cool low-profile keyboard. There was a desk phone with multiple lines. Books lined shelves behind me. Everything appeared in its place, tidy and streamlined.
“Louis is waiting,” Heather said, her impatience growing.
“He can wait. What did the police want?”
“Go in there and ask him,” she replied curtly. “He had a long conversation with them.”
“Why did they leave?”
“This conversation is wasting my time.”
“I’m your boss, I can waste your time if I want.”
“What is with you today? You sounded strange on the phone, and now you’re being a prick.”
That was probably fair.
“Like I said before, rough night.”
“Well, get a grip.”
I nodded. Heather seemed like a real delight.
“Go back to work,” I told her.
She left in a huff and left the door open.
I stood and closed the door, taking a moment to observe the activity outside. The police presence had obviously stirred up the agency’s morning routine. There were plenty of stares in my direction. I could only imagine what they were thinking.
I sat at the desk and went through the drawers and attempted to log onto the computer. No go. The books behind me were a typical mishmash of popular business tomes. Between rows of books a picture frame had been placed facedown. I turned it over. A woman with dark hair smiled back at me, and for the first time since waking up that morning, I knew exactly who she was.
Her name was Ellen and she was my girlfriend.
I pivoted around in the chair and stood the picture frame on the desktop. Sat staring at it without blinking. It was an exhilarating feeling to recognize her. It was also a heartbreaking moment because I remembered precisely why I had flipped the photo facedown on the shelf. I had done it out of anger after a fight. The details of the argument were still lost, but it had been tense and I hadn’t wanted to see her face in my office, so I had slapped it down.
Suddenly, several pieces of the puzzle fell into place and a small corner of my life began to come into focus. A lot was still hidden in shadow, but I hoped it wouldn’t stay there much longer.
I was momentarily lost in thought about Ellen, and when I looked up there was a man of about seventy standing outside my office staring in at me.
Louis Levine had clearly grown tired of waiting.
CHAPTER 6
Santiago had followed the woman for days. He knew everything about her. He knew where she lived and had even been inside her apartment a few times. Her place was very small, but that was typical of a downtown apartment. She had a roommate named Jill, but Jill was gone most of the time. Santiago knew enough about Jill to believe she wouldn’t be a problem.
He had been inside Ellen Ingram’s apartment on several occasions and taken a good look around. He had been through her drawers and touched her private things. He’d been in the bathroom and gone through the drawers. Everything had a feminine touch. No sign at all that a man might live there. He’d been in the kitchen and looked in the refrigerator. Barely anything edible in there at all. Just some veggies and yogurt. Nothing Santiago would be interested in munching on.
Ellen Ingram was a student at Columbia University. She also worked part-time at an organic food market a few blocks from her apartment. Santiago had stalked her long enough to be very familiar with both places. He had been inside the store while she was working and gone through her line at the checkout. He’d spent hours on campus, tailing her from a discreet distance, and loitering nearby while she went to class.
He also knew about her boyfriend. He was a big shot at an ad agency on Madison. Santiago had been inside Nick Cortland’s digs on more than one occasion as well. His place was two thousand square feet on Park Avenue, with a door man and a nice view of Central Park. Cortland had a dog, and that had been a concern, but Santiago had been given good advice and taken along a doggie treat. Problem solved.
This morning the routine was different. Ellen Ingram skipped class and drove her five-year-old Acura into New Jersey to meet a friend. Santiago tailed her the entire way. He had gotten used to watching her. He was enjoying himself, though he usually preferred his women just a little trashy. He parked at the curb and waited while she went inside a nail salon at a strip mall. He listened to the radio and ate cashews, turning down his visor to keep the morning sun out of his face.
Ellen wasn’t inside long. She returned to her car and Santiago slipped in behind her and watched the Acura weave in and out of traffic. Her next stop was a sketchy neighborhood filled with homes bordering on collapse. Lots of plywood over windows and missing shingles. Santiago kept the Acura in sight but was careful not to get too close.
The Acura turned through a stop sign and slowed in front of a rundown apartment building. Santiago watched her go inside. Again, it was a quick visit, but this time she came out carrying something in a plastic grocery bag. He tailed her back to the nail salon. She was in and out in less than two minutes.
The Acura then turned back for Manhattan, and Santiago
knew it was time to make his move.
CHAPTER 7
From the look in Louis’s eyes it was hard to say how much he might know. He had gestured for me to follow him. Because Heather had told me that the police had talked to Louis for nearly half an hour, I could only conclude that he already knew that a body had been found in my apartment. I had to rethink that because the cops had obviously not waited around for me to show up at work. Surely Louis had told them I would be there any minute. They could have been headed over to arrest me at my place, but it was hard to imagine that they wouldn’t have left a couple of officers behind to grab me if I happened to turn up at the office. So, really, I didn’t know what to think. It had all become a huge guessing game.
We went to his office and he shut the door. I stood with my back to the door and noticed him glance past my shoulder. His wall was glass like mine, and I’m sure that our private conversation had drawn an audience.
Louis Levine was built like a stump. He was all of five foot two and thick through the middle. His white hair sprouted from his head in a thick bushel of white curls. Whatever that photo Ellen had done to shake my memory back toward proper operating capacity, being in Louis’s presence served to continue the positive progress. Suddenly, my life had color and dimension again. The world around me had begun to slowly make sense. I at least felt like I could breathe.
Louis had hired me off the street and been my mentor. Decades ago he had partnered with Marco Burgess to start this firm, and together they built it into a powerhouse. He didn’t smile often, but when he did he lit the room. He had a wicked sense of humor, and his insight into human nature was astounding. He could cut to the heart of a topic with laser-like precision.
He leaned on his desk and faced me. I recognized his expression and was immediately uncomfortable. Louis was amazing at reading people. That’s part of what made him such a great ad man. It was also what was making me very nervous. I needed to know what he knew, if anything.
“Sounds like you had an exciting morning,” I said.
“The police were here.”
“That’s what I hear.”
“When was the last time you spoke to Terry?”
I was still fuzzy about some things, and apparently, Terry Burgess was one of them. His father was a cofounder of this agency, and so his employment here was his birthright. It seemed a pretty reasonable assumption that we were friends, but that was information that I was still temporarily not privy to.
“He called my cell at 3 a.m.,” I said.
“What did he want?”
“I was asleep. The call went to voice mail.”
“Did he leave a message?”
“No.”
“When did you speak to him before that?”
“Sometime yesterday afternoon, I guess.” And yes, that was indeed a big fat guess. “Why? Have you talked to him, Louis.”
He was quiet for a beat. His eyes seemed to be looking right through me. I could feel myself perspiring heavily under my shirt. The muscles in my back and neck were twisting into knots from the stress.
“No, I haven’t spoken to Terry since Friday because of my weekend in the Hamptons,” he said.
I nodded like that made perfect sense, because, well, it did.
“The two of you had dinner with the team from Kellogg’s last night.”
OK, news to me, but that was certainly possible.
“Right,” I answered.
“Did he seem fine to you?”
“Yes.”
“How was dinner?”
“Dinner was great.”
“Did you talk to Terry afterward?”
I wanted to tread very carefully now because I didn’t want to volunteer an untrue answer that might come back to haunt me soon. Had I spoken to Terry after dinner? I glanced at my cell and pulled up the call log. There were no calls between late afternoon and 3 a.m. That was a relief because I had no desire to fabricate a conversation that never happened.
“I don’t believe so,” I answered. “What’s going on, Louis?”
He sighed, long and deep, then stepped past me for the door. Then he turned and said, “The police were here because something has happened to Terry.”
CHAPTER 8
Santiago had everything he needed in the trunk of his car. He had come prepared. The Acura was parked in a weedy abandoned lot where a used car dealership had existed thirty years earlier before being chewed up and spit out by the ups and downs of a perilous economy. Santiago reached into the trunk and removed an aluminum baseball bat. He stood at the rear of the car and gripped the bat with both hands, enjoying the power he felt building inside him. He heard a sound and saw a stray dog watching him from the edge of the pavement where the weeds had grown particularly tall.
Santiago was a big guy with beefy arms and hair that was greased back. He was Mexican by birth but his family had crossed the border at night when he was a baby. He was undocumented and had never felt the need to become a legal American citizen. In his line of work, it was best to live with as little paperwork as possible. He was all muscle and ninety percent of his body was covered in tats. The tats were covered by a sport coat and a black T-shirt, and he wore denim jeans with Ostrich skin cowboy boots.
He left the trunk lid open and walked a dozen paces to the Acura. The driver side door was already open. He opened the passenger door and leaned inside, removing Ellen Ingram’s personal belongings, dumping her purse and a few other items into the trunk of his car. Then he returned to the Acura and went to work with the bat. He started with the driver side window. It took a single blow to smash the glass. Then he wailed on the outside of the door, majorly denting the flimsy door panel with a couple of solid licks. He was already starting to sweat but was having a great time. This was one of the funner parts of his job.
Next he took few swings at the windshield, caving the glass and leaving it a sagging, spiderwebbed mess. Over the next few minutes he went all the way around the car, making sure to destroy all the glass and to abuse the body of the car beyond repair. Sweat was running down his face by the time he dropped the bat to his side to inspect his handiwork. He couldn’t resist a smile. He loved his job.
Santiago swapped the bat for a gas can filled with two gallons of gasoline. The fuel sloshed in the plastic can as he walked back to the Acura. He looked for the dog but the mutt had vanished. He glanced around for onlookers but saw none. He was in a neighborhood in New Jersey that most people avoided at all costs. No one was going to bother him.
He set the can on the crumbling pavement and removed the cap. It took another couple of minutes to thoroughly douse the Acura. It splashed against the paint and soaked through the smashed glass, gasoline dripping to the ground and filling the air with its unmistakable stink. When the can was empty, he tossed it into the back seat and reached into the pocket of his jeans for a Zippo lighter. Then he struck a flame and tossed the lighter onto the floorboard of the car.
He hurried back to his car and closed the trunk. The Acura was already beginning to burn. Then he dropped his car into gear and rolled past the weeds to an alley and headed out of the neighborhood. A few blocks away he paused at a stop sign to watch the curl of black smoke rising above the low-slung buildings and smiled to himself at a job well done.
CHAPTER 9
It was like waking from a dream. A freaking weird dream. The blinders were gradually coming off and somehow the world was making sense again. Details about my life were returning to me, but there were still huge gaps in my memory that I couldn’t explain.
Louis had told me about his conversation with the cops. A couple of detectives had asked a bunch of questions about Terry Burgess and then left. Louis told me they hadn’t gotten into anything specific other than to say that a 911 call had been placed reporting a possible homicide at his apartment on the Upper West Side. He had tried Terry’s cell and home phone but there was no answer. I did the same and got the same results. No one in the office had heard from him since yesterday.
I took a taxi to West Seventy-Second.
There were NYPD cars on both sides of the street. The cab dropped me at the curb. I suddenly had a very bad feeling in my gut. The doorman recognized me and took me aside. My brain was still fuzzy enough that I couldn’t quite pull up a name for him.
“I’m so glad to see you, Mr. Cortland,” he said. He was about sixty, in a uniform with a hat, and had a thick Brooklyn accent.
“What’s going on up there?” I asked.
“It’s bad, Mr. Cortland.”
“Does this have anything to do with Terry Burgess?”
I could see that his eyes were glassy and red, like maybe he’d been wiping away tears. His name was pinned to his shirt. It said Herb.
Herb nodded. He was visibly shaken. “They already brought him down in a body bag.”
“How do you know it was Terry Burgess?”
“I took the police up to his apartment when they responded to the 911 call. I saw his body.”
“Are you the one who made the call?”
He shook his head. “No. I didn’t know anything was wrong until the police got here.”
“What time was that?”
“When the cops showed up?”
“Yes.”
“Early. Five o’clock.”
“And you went up with them?”
He nodded.
“What did you see?”
Herb glanced away to compose himself.
“Did you see Terry?”
He nodded without saying a word.
“Where was he, Herb?”
Herb managed to take a deep breath and steady himself.
“Mr. Burgess was in the bathtub in the master bathroom. He was underwater.”
Dead and Gone (A Thriller) Page 3