Документ Microsoft Word

by Konstantin

  A long shower and a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich revived me enough to get some work done. I dug through my coat pockets for the notes from my meeting with Victor Sossa and I picked up the telephone.

  Victor knew his properties and their owners, and he’d told me enough about the apartments on the fourth floor of the building on Lispenard Street for me to identify which one David had visited: 4-C, the only one-bedroom on the floor.

  The apartment was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Martin Litella, who had bought the place for their daughter, Jill. According to Victor, the daughter was an actress, a petite blond who went by the name Jill Nolan, and who was fortunate enough to have steady employment in the road company of a popular musical comedy about the Spanish Inquisition. Nolan had started touring four months ago, Victor said, and she had another three months left on the road. She returned to New York only infrequently— once every six weeks or so— and stayed for just a night or two. He didn’t recall her being back at all in November, and thought she was currently in Seattle. Best of all, he had her cell phone number. She answered on the third ring; I said my name was Fitch.

  Jill Nolan told me I’d caught her during her no-fat, no-whip, extra-hot decaf mocha break, right between spinning class and her Bikram yoga session. Usually she was able to fit a box-ercise class in too on Tuesday afternoons, but not that Tuesday, because Mandy, the girl she was rooming with— the little redhead who plays the part of the rabbi’s daughter from Salamanca who dies at the start of act two— had her boyfriend in from Cincinnati, and to give the two of them space Jill stayed the night with Brittany from the chorus, who forgot to set the alarm and so they were late getting up and it threw off the whole effing day, from breakfast right through to picking up the dry cleaning and returning the boots she’d bought last week. It all came out of her in an endless rushing breath, in an almost hypnotic, singsong voice that rose and fell and tumbled and frothed, and seemed to fill my head with suds.

  Finally, she inhaled. “You got my phone number from Victor?” she asked.

  “I did,” I said, and I repeated my tale about the accident and the search for a witness who’d seen it all from a fourth-floor window. She seemed to take the story more seriously than Victor had.

  “Was it a bad accident? Was it with one of those effing bicycle messenger guys? The way they ride, I swear it’s a wonder more people aren’t killed. Can you believe I actually dated one for a while? That was a trip, let me tell you.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “He called himself Storm, like he was a superhero or something. Can you believe it?”

  “I’m struggling. Were you by any chance at home on the eighteenth?”

  “November eighteenth, you said?”

  “November eighteenth.”

  “No, I wasn’t home at all that month.”

  “Could anyone else have been in your apartment then?”

  “Anyone like who?”

  I tried not to sigh. “That’s what I was hoping you’d tell me.”

  “Well, I don’t know. My parents have keys and they use the place sometimes, but usually they mention it, and anyway they’ve been in Palm Beach since Halloween. They won’t be back till March.”

  “There’s no one else?”

  “No one else…?”

  “No one else with a key.”

  Jill Nolan thought about that, which must have been even more trying for her than it was for me. It went on for a while, but eventually she finished. “Well…there’s Victor, I guess— but you already talked to him. And there’s Holly. She has a key, but it’s only for emergencies— like if something happens when I’m out of town and my parents are away too.”

  “Away, like in Florida?”

  “Yes, like that. But nothing happened at my place. I mean, I’ve never called Holly to ask her to go over for anything. I haven’t even spoken to her for like five months.”

  Listening to Jill Nolan hadn’t robbed me of quite all my ability to think. I looked at the jelly jar still sitting on my kitchen counter. “I understand,” I said. “And this would be Holly Welch you’re referring to, yes?”

  “Who’s Holly Welch? I’m talking about Holly Cade.”

  “Of course,” I said, and chuckled— silly me—while I copied down the name. “And you’re sure Holly would’ve told you if she’d gone there?”

  “I’m positive,” she said.

  “Is it possible she stopped by your place, but hasn’t had a chance to mention it yet?”

  “That’s nuts. Holly knows my number— she would’ve called if she’d gone over.”

  “How can you be so certain?”

  “Because I’ve known her since, like, second grade— that’s how.”

  “I see. Could you describe Holly for me, Ms. Nolan?”

  “Could I what? What does that have to do with your accident thing?”

  “Maybe nothing, but my client is sure he saw a woman looking out on the accident scene from what turned out to be a window in your apartment. Tell me, does Holly have blond hair?”

  She laughed. “You’re way off base. Holly’s got red hair, and she’s had it all her life. So your client must be wrong, Mr. Fitch. Maybe he got the windows mixed up.”

  “I didn’t say that my client saw a blond, Ms. Nolan. In fact, what he saw was a tall, thirtyish woman with thick auburn hair, fair skin, a narrow face, and a slender build. Does that sound familiar?”

  Her response was slow in coming, and when it did, confusion and surprise vied with anger in her voice. “That sounds like…But she would’ve…You…you tricked me.”

  “And I’m sorry about that, but does the description fit Holly Cade?”

  A few moments more of silence, and anger won out in Jill Nolan. It made her smarter. “How could your client see someone so clearly from all the way down in the street, anyway? You lied to me, Mr. Fitch— if that’s your real name— and I don’t think I’ll talk to you anymore.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way. If you give me Holly’s number, I could finish up with her directly.”

  I wasn’t surprised when the line went dead, and I wasn’t dissatisfied, either. I had a name to work with now, and maybe the name of my little bird. Holly Cade.

  * * *

  Holly Cade who had no listed phone number and no address, no car registration or voter registration, no real property in her name— almost no presence at all in the on-line world. Almost.

  I found a reference to her on the website of some sort of performance space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on its calendar of events. The event in question was the staging of a play entitled Liars Club, by a theater troupe called the Gimlet Players. Liars Club was a one-act work, penned by one of the Gimlet’s founders, a certain Holly Cade. Unfortunately for me, the performance had taken place three Aprils ago, and in the meanwhile the Gimlet Players seemed to have disbanded.

  The only other trace I found was a brief mention of her in a back issue of something called Digital Gumbo: The On-line Journal of Emerging Video Arts. Clicking through the website didn’t tell me much about “emerging video arts” or anything else, and most of the articles read like muddled pastiches of Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes. The reference to Holly was in a review of a group show at the Krug Gallery, in Woodstock, New York. Holly was one of four artists who had exhibited their video works there nearly two years ago. The review was lukewarm, and Holly’s piece rated barely two sentences. Like the Gimlet Players, the Krug Gallery hadn’t stood the test of time; it had closed last May. Which left me, as the evening wore out, knowing not much more about Holly Cade than her name. Except that I remembered what Jill Nolan had said.

  “Because I’ve known her since, like, second grade…”

  Holly Cade was mostly invisible on the Web, but Jill Nolan was not. I found a one-paragraph biography of her on the touring company’s website, and a headshot of her bland, pretty, bright-toothed face. The bio was mostly a list of stage and TV credits, but near the end was the nugget I’d been looking for. �
�Born and raised in Wilton, Connecticut…”

  4

  Forty-eight hours was more time than David wanted to wait for a progress report. I was happy to report what little progress I’d made over the telephone, but David wouldn’t have it. He was typically specific in his other demands too: no stopping by his office, no meetings south of Park Row or anywhere on the Upper East Side, and definitely no house calls— not to his house, anyway. In the end, we met at the Florida Room, an airy, high-concept diner around the corner from my place. It has a lot of jalousies and slow-turning ceiling fans, and enough background noise for private conversation. There’s a row of booths along the back wall and I was in one, working on a bowl of oatmeal, when David arrived. He kept his coat on and sat and stared out the windows at the pedestrians and cars.

  “Holly Cade,” he said again, and shook his head. “Never heard of her.” He dug his hands into his coat pockets and seemed to shiver. The waitress came and David ordered orange juice and nothing else.

  “How about Jill Nolan?” I asked.

  “Not her either,” he said softly.

  He was turned out in pinstriped navy, crisp and spotless despite the messy sidewalks. But David also looked smaller today, and older and more distracted too.

  “Is this Nolan going to tell her pal about your call?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Probably. And I don’t expect it will take Holly long to figure out what it was about.”

  “That’s fucking great,” David said. “What happened to discretion?”

  “You think she’ll be surprised that you’re looking for her? It’s not like she ordered you not to try to find her, after all. Hell, she might even be flattered. Maybe it’ll make her get in touch.”

  “Fucking great,” he said again. David’s juice came, but he just looked at it for a while and went back to peering out the window. He looked east and west and east again, searching for something along the length of Seventeenth Street.

  “Has she called again?” I asked.

  David snorted. “Don’t you think I would’ve mentioned it?”

  I was by no means certain, but I nodded anyway. “Did something else happen, then?”

  He stiffened and shook his head slowly. “What the hell are you going on about?”

  “You seem a little jumpy.”

  David stared at me for a long moment, his eyes feverish in his waxen face. “Don’t think you know something about me now, because you don’t,” he said. He tugged at a tiny scrap of skin over his Adam’s apple, a nervous habit he’d had since he was a kid but that I hadn’t seen in years. And I thought of something I hadn’t thought of for at least as long.

  I couldn’t have been much older than ten, which made David maybe twelve. It was springtime, I remembered, because the French doors were opened onto the terrace, and a table was set outside with our parents’ breakfast on it, though no one was eating. And I remembered it was a weekday, because Irma, the woman who took care of us back then, was orbiting raggedly around Lauren and me, trying to get us ready for school. But her efforts were in vain that morning; we were even less cooperative than usual, distracted as we were by the tension congealing around us, and the dangerous hum in the air.

  It was what happened when the usually simmering border war between our parents heated up to something more overt. We never knew the substance of their conflict, or the particulars that brought things to a boil, but we knew more or less what to expect: lowered voices, raspy whispers, quick footsteps and slamming doors, and a thick, oppressive silence in between. Familiar, but frightening nonetheless.

  We hadn’t seen our mother, but only heard her voice in jagged fragments. Our father had made a brief appearance, unshaven and still in his striped pajamas and robe— he’d given up going to the Klein & Sons offices years before. He breezed through the kitchen with a bottle of seltzer under his arm and ruffled his hand through my hair. His smile was lopsided and his eyes were unfocused. He breezed off again, in the direction of the bedrooms, and I followed at a distance. I found David outside the double doors to their room, his ear cocked. He turned away as I approached.

  “What are they saying?” I whispered. He didn’t answer. “Can you hear?” Again, nothing. I stepped up to the door, to listen myself, and I saw David’s face— the tears in his eyes and on his cheeks. It was the first time I remember seeing him cry.

  “What the fuck are you looking at?” he snapped.

  “Nothing.”

  “Then get out of here.”

  “Can you hear?” I asked again. “What are they talking about?”

  David wheeled and wiped his arm across his face and shoved me in the chest. “You, you little faggot— they’re talking about what a fucking loser you are, and how they’re sending you to military school. So you better run now, before the Marines show up to take you.”

  I stumbled backward until I hit the hallway wall. My eyes were burning. “Fuck you, crybaby,” I whispered.

  David stared at me and tugged at a tiny scrap of skin over his Adam’s apple. He looked for a long time and then his fist came up from what seemed like nowhere and split my lower lip.

  It was the first time for that too.

  I shook my head and shook the thought away and the restaurant din returned. David was still looking at me across the table.

  “So where the hell does this Cade live— in Wilton?”

  “Somebody named Nicole Cade lives there— the only Cade in town; I don’t know if she knows Holly. But Jill Nolan grew up there, and she and Holly were childhood friends, and—”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah— I get it,” David said, and looked up and down Seventeenth Street some more. “Just call me when you get back.”

  The waitress came to refill my coffee cup, and when she left David did too.

  * * *

  Wilton was just over an hour’s drive from the city, north and east on 95 and then north on Route 7— chaotic interstate followed by strip malls followed by pricey clapboard suburbs. Concrete and slush gave way to pines and stone fences and still white snow, and the cars were fewer but more expensive. I turned off 7 onto Route 33, toward Ridge-field, and turned again when I came to Cranberry Lane. It was a quiet road and the houses were large and far-between along it. My rent-a-car fishtailed through two miles of scenic turns before I reached the Cade place.

  It was a red-doored, black-shuttered white colonial set well back from the road, and set handsomely in its landscape. The big lindens in front would make for nice shade in summer and nice color in fall, and the conservatory at the south end, while certainly not original, was well proportioned and well matched to the lines of the roof and the flow of the faГ§ade. The plantings around the stone foundations were wrapped in neat burlap. Snow lay like cake frosting on the brown bundles and covered the broad front lawn in a pristine blanket that was painfully bright under the noontime sky. The curving drive was plowed to a layer of ice and packed gravel and I took my time driving up, parking in the turnaround by the garage, and walking back down the shoveled flagstone path. The man on the front steps, fussing clumsily with a screwdriver and the hinges of a storm door, watched me the whole way.

  He was middle-aged and bulky, and soft-looking all over, and his dark eyes were vaguely nervous behind rimless glasses. He took off his Red Sox cap and his brown hair was messy and thinning underneath. He wiped his brow on the sleeve of his corduroy shirt, and cursed when he dropped his screwdriver into the snow. He stooped to retrieve it and the storm door swung against his hip. I caught him by the elbow before he tipped.

  “Thanks,” he said softly. He steadied himself on my arm as he rose. His face was small and bland and fleshy around the jaw. A web of shattered veins darkened the pinched end of his nose, and embarrassment colored his unshaven cheeks.

  “Mr. Cade?” I asked.

  His mouth puckered in annoyance. “My name is Deering, Herbert Deering. Who are you looking for?”

  “Nicole Cade,” I said. Nicole Cade was the name the public recor
ds search had returned— the owner of this house, its purchaser six years back from a Fredrick Cade.

  The man’s annoyance heightened for a moment, and then was gone. “Nicole’s my wife, but she didn’t say anyone was stopping by. You are— who?”

  “John March. Is your wife at home?”

  Deering slid the screwdriver into the back pocket of his jeans and wiped his hands on his thighs. “What is it you want to see her about?”

  I looked past him through the open door, into the entrance foyer and down the wide center hall. I saw a brass chandelier, cream-colored walls, glossy wood floors, and dark Persian rugs, and I heard sharp footsteps, like blows from a tack hammer. A shadow crossed the hallway near the back, beyond the staircase.