by Mark McNease
“Appear successful,” Kyle finished.
“Absolutely. Appearances matter. Like this morning, it appeared you had either quit or just didn’t care enough to be here on time.”
Kyle sighed. She was ribbing him, but he still didn’t like it.
“I had to talk to someone in Inwood.”
Imogene set her script down. “Inwood? Above Harlem, that Inwood? What the fuck’s in Inwood?”
Kyle frowned at her. She’d been asked several times by Lenny-san to watch her language. A few people in the office had complained.
“The wife of a woman who died a month ago, fell in front of a train.
Imogene’s eyes lit up just a bit. “Or was pushed? Is that what you’re thinking? There’s a story in being pushed in front of a train. And ‘wife of a woman’ means gay, I like that.”
“Oh my God.”
“No disrespect, Kyle, but gay has been good to me. Pride Lodge sent my ratings through the roof in Tokyo. I’m just being realistic. It adds to the story.”
“At this point there is no story. Just thinking. Connections.”
“I can use some, it’s been very dry here the last few weeks.”
“What are you reading?” Kyle asked, looking at the script on her desk.
“Bor-ing. Lenny-san wants me at one of Councilman Danhill’s townhall meetings on the Upper East. Have you ever been to one of those? It’s all old people. Not that I have anything against them, I hope to be one myself someday and get a lifetime achievement award. But we’re talking zoning shit, wheelchair accessibility shit, kill me now shit. How he thinks this kind of thing won’t tank us is beyond me.”
Kyle booted up his computer, hoping Imogene would head out to the field soon with her producer Caren. In an operation this small, producers were also camera operators, script writers, editors, and sometimes office supply buyers, although that generally fell to Kyle. (Gretchen had been an executive assistant for one senior manager or another for nearly forty years and did not order office supplies.)
“Now, a juicy strangulation in a hotel room, with a guitar string, no less, that’s a story,” she said. “But it’s a Philly story, and we’re not in Philly, are we?”
Kyle was barely listening, trying to think how the murders of Devin and Shiree could be connected. The Gallery was the most obvious answer, but how, and why?
“ … this guy Richard Morninglight, did you read about that?” Imogene said, continuing to chatter while Kyle barely paid attention. The name got through to him and made him sit up, turn to Imogene, and ask her what she had just said.
“I said it has all the elements of a great story. Gay hotel in Philadelphia, artist on the edge of fame, a hustler nobody saw come in our out, and having his head nearly taken off with a wire.”
“A wire.”
“A guitar string. You really have to pay attention, Kyle, or get your hearing checked.”
“Richard Morninglight?” Kyle was staring at her now.
“You know him?”
“No. Well, I met him, once, at the New Visions show.”
Imogene waited for him to explain.
“It’s the New Year show Kate Pride has every January, to showcase talent she thinks is on the verge. The show last January had a half dozen artists. Devin was one of them.”
“Who’s Devin?” Imogene asked.
Kyle waved her off, wanting to complete his thought. “Devin was one of them … Richard Morninglight was another … and Shiree Leone did the catalog. That’s it! The New Year New Visions show. The Pride Gallery.”
“I want an exclusive on this,” Imogene said, having no idea what ‘this’ could turn out to be, only that she wanted the rights to tell it first.
“There may not be any story here. Maybe it’s a coincidence. I mean, Brooklyn, Inwood, Philadelphia? I don’t want to see something that isn’t there. Where did you read about Richard Morninglight?”
“Where did I read about him?” Imogene said, as if Kyle had missed the assassination of the President. “Online, where the hell else? It was front page news.”
By front page, Kyle knew she meant what had once been called “above the fold” when newspapers were still in wide circulation. Now that nearly everyone got their information from the Internet, it meant stories that were seen before the reader had to start scrolling down.
“Let me read about this,” Kyle said, turning back to his monitor. “When’s your townhall?”
“Half an hour from now. I’m just waiting for Caren, then we’ll take the van. You wanna ride along?”
“I’ll skip it, thanks. The excitement might kill me.”
“Fine, I’m sure you have work to get caught up on, considering you were an hour late. But if there’s any ‘there’ there in this New York-Philly killing spree …”
“It’s not a killing spree! Not yet. Maybe never. Just let me think it through.”
“So think, Kyle, and if it’s not a coincidence, if there really is a story here, I take it to Lenny-san while everyone else is still in the dark. Deal?”
“Of course,” Kyle said.
Imogene began to quietly read her script, memorizing her introduction to the townhall segment.
Kyle turned back to his computer and immediately did a search for Richard Morninglight. He pulled up the first story he saw and began to read the sordid details of a murder in a hotel room ninety-five miles away.
Chapter 15
Margaret’s Passion
Danny found himself in a quandary. For the decade he had worked for Margaret Bowman the two of them shared a trust few people have with another. Best friends. Couples. Occasionally a boss and her assistant. A mother and son. That had always been a sensitive matter for them both, since Danny’s mother, Eleanor, was alive and well in Astoria, Queens. She was retired these past fifteen years, living comfortably in a row house on 28th Street with her husband, Big Bob Durban, also retired. Danny and Kyle had Sunday dinner with them almost every week. Eleanor, Ellie, was a strong willed woman, a good mother, but possessed of a certain jealousy when it came to her son. She didn’t like having to share him with anyone, including Kyle, and Danny had been careful all this time not to speak too much of Margaret in front of her.
He’d kept his relationship with his two mothers distinct. There were things he told Ellie, and things he told Margaret, and each of them told him everything. So it was strange for Danny to be fidgeting at work Tuesday morning wondering what Margaret was withholding from him, and how to go about asking her. He had never had to pry information from her before, and as far as he knew she had never kept a secret from him.
Something had been going on for the past several weeks. Margaret’s new lawyer Claude Petrie, while having been referred by the old gentleman he replaced, struck Danny as an odd duck. Maybe it was the way he avoided looking directly at you, or the perspiration that seemed always present on his upper lip. Shifty came to mind. And now he was bringing in two strangers to speak with Margaret. He had been mulling it over for days, not wanting to question her judgment, yet worried something might be wrong. She might be ill, or preparing in some other way to leave. He wanted her to know he and Kyle were there for her. If she needed care, there was always the spare room, though he doubted someone as proud as Margaret Bowman would submit to being looked after. He had to know what was going on.
Danny slowly climbed the staircase Margaret and Gerard had built behind the kitchen. There were only twelve apartments in the entire building, six on each of the two upper stories, including the Bowmans’, with the restaurant taking up the entire first floor. The restaurant had been their one true love, aside from each other, and they had wanted to be able to come and go easily, at any time of the day or night, without having to go outside. The staircase was no secret, except to the city, from whom they had never sought or received the proper coding to build a staircase. At this point nobody cared.
Normally Danny would call up and tell Margaret he was visiting, but he wanted an element of surprise. He
knew she would be there – she was always there, and when she went out, she used the staircase and left through the restaurant when it was open. He told Trebor he’d be back and to please seat any guests who came in. Patricia, one of three day servers, was already stocking. Lunch was still an hour away, there was no reason to think he’d be needed for the next twenty minutes, so he climbed the stairs and gently knocked.
He was startled when the door opened before his knuckles hit the door a third time.
“Come in,” Margaret said, opening the door. She was wearing a powder blue dress with a white sweater, looking much as she would were she heading to dinner with someone. She was always dressed as if company might be coming – except for the house slippers.
“No call, Danny?” she said, referring to his habit of letting her know he was coming.
“I wanted to talk to you,” he said. He followed her wave and sat at the kitchen table. A kettle, anachronistic in this age of coffee machines and iPhones, was just on the verge of whistling above a stove flame.
“Tea?” she said, shuffling in her slippers to the stove.
“Yes, please.”
Margaret set about pouring boiling water into two cups and dropping in tea bags. Neither of them said anything until she’d brought the cups to the table and taken a seat herself.
Danny looked around the kitchen. He’d seen it a thousand times, and it always reminded him of his grandmother’s kitchen. There was a permanently outdated feel to it. Not old, but out of time, as if from another era.
“Chloe tells me Claude was here again yesterday, with two men,” Danny said finally. Unlike Claude, he looked directly at Margaret. She was no-nonsense, and would not expect anything but directness.
“Investors,” she said. Just like that. “Money men. I quite liked them.”
Danny didn’t know what to make of it. Was this simply about her investments? Were they financial advisors? Why the secrecy?
“Do they handle your … estate?” he said, uncomfortable with talking about things that might bring up her death, her will, or the fact she was now in her eighties.
“No, nothing like that.” Now Margaret was the one who looked away. She was hesitant, embarrassed. Finally she turned back to him and said as plainly as possible, “I’m in trouble, Danny. I’m broke.”
He was stunned. Margaret’s Passion was a very successful restaurant in its fourth decade, in a city where restaurants came and went like tourists. He knew the numbers, he did the budget and the ordering. While his position was day manager, he really was the overall manager. He saw the receipts. The idea that Margaret was broke was like finding out someone who appeared perfectly healthy had a month to live.
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t,” she said. “You remember all the news last year about Rebecca Effron?”
“The Ponzi scheme lady? ‘Bride of Madoff’ or whatever they called her?”
“Yes, always clever, these news people. Well, she was very successful at making people believe she was successful. I was one of those people, Danny.”
He knew where she was going with this and his heart sank.
“Just over a million dollars,” she said. There was no other way to put it. She had given a thief her life savings and now it was gone.
“I see.”
“I don’t think you do, Danny. It was everything I had.”
“But the restaurant …”
“It does well, yes. The tenants are reliable for the most part. But I’m eighty years old! The margins.”
He knew she meant the profit margins, on the restaurant and the tenants. There was very little for either. The tenants essentially paid for the taxes and upkeep, with some left over, and the restaurant provided Margaret’s regular income. What she was telling Danny also let him know that it had taken Margaret and Gerard nearly fifty years to save up that money she had lost in a bad bet, probably the only bad bet she had ever made.
“I’m not a greedy woman,” Margaret said, her voice now thick with sadness. “Not even much of a needy woman. But I’m old. I may want to go somewhere warm soon, while I still can, and that takes money. And even if I stay here … well, I may not be able to keep living on my own, you understand.”
Danny felt his throat tighten. The last thing he wanted to do was cry, and he held it in check as best he could.
“The point is I’m going to need help sooner rather than later. The management company does well enough with the building,” she said, referring to the small company that collected rent and took care of the day-to-day maintenance of her property, “but I’m hardly a fit landlord anymore.”
“You don’t need to be,” he said, quickly trying to think of alternatives.
“Messieurs Tierney and Gossett, the two investors, are interested in buying the building.”
“What about the restaurant?”
“Well, Danny, the restaurant is in the building. But they’ve made me a most generous offer: the restaurant stays, and I stay, until I pass.”
There it was again, Old Man Time coming for them all.
“I don’t like it.”
“I didn’t expect you would, which is why I was waiting to tell you.”
“How can you trust them?” Danny asked.
“It’s called a contract.”
Danny stood up. He began pacing the small kitchen, from the table to the stove and back. “I don’t know, Margaret, it just feels wrong.”
“You’re letting your emotions make that determination for you. You’ll be safe as long as I am.”
“I don’t care about being safe! I don’t want to be safe. It’s not about that. It’s about your legacy. Gerard’s legacy.”
She sighed and put her teacup down. “Dead people do not care about their legacies.”
“What if I had a counter offer?” he said, stopping in front of her.
“What does that mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like, Margaret. What if I came up with a counter offer? I can’t promise a million dollars, but maybe half that, for the restaurant. You keep the building.”
She thought a moment. “I pay you well, Danny, but I don’t pay you that well.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re not the only one who can find investors.”
“I didn’t find them. They found me.”
“What?” Danny said, struck by that bit of information.
“They came to me, through Claude.”
I see, Danny thought. Young, new lawyer Claude knows Margaret has lost all her savings, and just happens to know two characters looking for a building to buy. Danny began to notice an unpleasant smell.
“Just don’t make any decisions,” he said. “Not until I do some research. You’ve trusted me for ten years, don’t stop now.”
Margaret sat staring into her tea a long moment. Finally, she said, “Okay, Danny Durban. I have trusted you since the day I met you. I don’t even remember where you were working …”
“The Lamb Rack, East 63rd Street.”
“Yes, dreadful place, it didn’t last long.”
“Which you saw coming, and you offered me a job.”
“Oh, yes, you’re right. But I really offered it to you because I was impressed. You know that, don’t make me flatter you again.”
He blushed. “I won’t. But I will ask you to please give me till the end of this week.”
“That’s when Kyle’s show is. Aren’t you busy enough with all that?”
“I’m never too busy for Margaret Bowman,” he said. “Now, speaking of busy, it’s lunch hour and I imagine people are arriving right about now.”
Danny leaned down and kissed her cheek. He had several things to think about, important things. Who were these men? Who were these men really? And how was he going to save his beloved Margaret from her own mistakes without making too many of his own?
“I’ll let myself out,” Danny said, and he headed back downstairs, quietly pulling the door closed behind him.
&n
bsp; Chapter 16
Lunch at the Stopwatch Diner
You can’t miss the Stopwatch Diner, with its colorful neon “Stopwatch Diner” sign, complete with a stopwatch in the middle, and its throw-back design that lets you know this is a diner, not some high-end, overpriced Midtown Manhattan eatery. It’s also directly across from the Seventh Avenue entrance to Penn Station and just a half block from Macy’s, which is where Linda Sikorsky was shopping and why she was late.
Kyle had been punctual, arriving at the diner’s entrance at precisely 12:30. He’d walked from the Japan TV3 studio, a short stroll on a sunny April day. Spring was in bloom and it always rekindled Kyle’s love for New York City. Once the summer heat kicked in with its humidity and its smells he would again think there were a number of places he’d rather live, but spring and fall reminded him what he loved about this place.
The restaurant was packed, as it always was for lunch. Kyle was led through the crowd to a booth and handed a menu by a hostess who seemed distracted, eyeing the customers, looking for the next empty table. No sooner had he sat down and started looking at the overstuffed menu than Linda arrived. He saw her. The two of them waved at each other and were soon hugging before Linda slid into the booth. They hadn’t been together since the Pride Lodge murders. They spoke on the phone every few weeks, and emailed every other day, but no amount of virtual communication can take the place of being physically near those with whom we share our lives.
“I like the hair,” he said, noticing immediately she’d let it grow out. He also noticed a touch of makeup, something Detective Linda had done without until recently. He made no comment on it, unsure if she would take his notice as compliment or criticism.
“It was Kirsten’s idea,” she said. “The makeup, too. Or maybe her influence. ‘Idea’ isn’t accurate.”
“I wish she would have come.”
“Me, too,” she said, holding out her hand to show Kyle the small but sparkling diamond on her finger. “It’s a friendship ring, not quite at the engaged stage. It’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about.”