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by Konstantin

  Krug sighed. “It’s not as if Holly sobs on my shoulder about her love life, Mr. March, but my sense is that the relationship was always fraught. He was, by the sound of things, quite obsessed with Holly. She was less invested, but she let things go on— I’m not sure why. Perhaps she liked being the object of his mania, or perhaps staying with him was the path of least resistance; perhaps she liked the element of abuse that I think was there; but, whatever the reason, she allowed the relationship to carry on for years. Then— sometime in late summer or fall— he found out about her videos.”

  “He hadn’t known?” I felt my brows go up. “Privacy is one thing, but to hide something like that from someone you’re involved with…”

  Krug shook his head. “She takes pains to insulate her life from Cassandra’s work, but you’re right, it’s odd, and I don’t claim to understand it. Perhaps she thought it was none of Werner’s business, or perhaps she was afraid of his reaction.”

  “What was his reaction?”

  “Anger. Jealousy. More anger. I don’t know the particulars, but I know that Holly was very upset, and that it went on for weeks. He called here countless times looking for her, and there was an ugly scene out front. I think there may have been some violence too.”

  “He hit her?”

  “It’s speculation on my part, but…I saw bruises.”

  “You said there was an element of abuse in their relationship— does that mean there’d been violence before?”

  He nodded. “It wasn’t the first time I’d seen bruises.”

  “Could they have been from Cassandra’s work?”

  Krug shrugged. “Of course they could have. As I said, it’s speculation.”

  “What finally happened with Werner?”

  “His anger seemed to play itself out after three or four weeks. Holly stopped talking about him and she seemed less tense. And a little while after that, she told me she was involved with Jamie.”

  I took a slow breath. “Jamie is the guy she’s seeing now?”

  Krug nodded. “Holly seems happy with him, as happy as I’ve known her to be.”

  “Do you know Jamie’s last name?”

  Krug shook his head. “I haven’t met him or even caught a glimpse; I just know him as Jamie.”

  “Any idea of where he lives?” Another head shake. “How about where he works?”

  “He works at a place in the East Village, the 9:30 Club. Holly met him there.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know precisely, but she hired him over the summer to do some work on the side.”

  “What kind of work?”

  Krug pursed his lips and ran a manicured finger across his chin. “Security, for some of her filming.” The puzzlement showed on my face, and Krug went on. “Filming the closing scenes of her pieces can be dangerous. Her subjects are agitated, and they sometimes become…hostile. Holly finally decided to be sensible and have someone close by. Jamie is apparently an imposing fellow. He was a fighter, Holly tells me, and she intimated that he’d spent time in prison.”

  “He sounds wonderful. How close does she keep him while she’s filming?”

  “Not in the room, of course, but nearby, and reachable by telephone.”

  I thought about Interview Four, and Bluto, and Holly’s telephone check-ins. I looked at Krug. “Was he on the other end of the phone in Interview Four?”

  He smiled thinly. “She made that long before she hired Jamie.”

  “Was it you?”

  “It wasn’t me, either, Mr. March. It was acting. There was no one waiting for Holly’s call when she filmed that scene, but she made that man believe there was, and she made you believe it too.”

  I sighed and shook my head. “She has quite an appetite for risk.”

  “What work of art worthy of the name isn’t risky?”

  “I wasn’t talking just about her art.”

  Krug gave me a speculative look. “An artist’s life and work necessarily run together, Mr. March. Holly’s work is dangerous and…extreme, and I suppose her life is too, though she takes pains to keep the two separate.”

  “The alter ego thing, you mean?”

  He nodded. “Anonymity enables her to work. It keeps her safe.”

  “But her secret identity isn’t so secret, is it?”

  “Your presence here is proof of that.”

  “And I’m not the first to come calling.” Krug ran a hand through his snowy hair and tapped his chin and said nothing. “I’m talking about the lawyer who came here a couple of months ago,” I said. “The guy working for one of Holly’s interview subjects.”

  “I know who you’re talking about, Mr. March.”

  “Do you know who he was working for?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Or what he wanted?”

  “He wanted Cassandra, though he wouldn’t say why. In fact he said very little, though he did it in a very threatening way. Despite that, I told him nothing.”

  “Did you know that he’d found her anyway? Did Holly mention that?”

  Krug’s eyes narrowed. “She did not. I told her about his visit and gave her the information on his business card, and that was the last we discussed it.”

  “He gave you a card?”

  Krug rummaged briefly in his desk and took out a large leather-bound diary. He opened it, flicked through a thick sheaf of business cards, and handed one to me. It was heavy stock and plain white, with simple black print. Thomas Vickers, Attorney.

  I copied down the name and number and handed the card back to Krug. I finished my cold coffee and asked a few more questions that he couldn’t answer, and he walked me to the door. When I thanked him for his time he stared at me. His face was like a weathered stone and his eyes were full of worry.

  “Just tell her to call me,” he said. His voice was low and tattered and it followed me through the snow, all the way home.

  18

  When I have questions about lawyers, I call Michael Metz. I heated some soup from a can and watched a taxi skate sideways down Sixteenth Street while I waited for Mike to come to the phone. When I said Thomas Vickers’s name to him, he went quiet.

  “You know this guy?” I asked after a long silence.

  “I do.”

  “And?”

  “And Tommy Vickers is a very good lawyer. A very expensive and discreet lawyer. A lawyer about whom there is much rumor and speculation, none of which has yet been substantiated.”

  “Rumor and speculation about what?”

  “Tommy is in the tax consulting business these days— at least that’s what he calls it. Tax shelters, offshore corporate shells, and byzantine trust arrangements are the specialties of the house. Rumor has it that his client list is heavy with Wall Street types, and speculation is that his services run right to the edge— maybe over the edge— of tax evasion and money laundering. Our crackerjack Justice Department has apparently been looking at him for years without any joy.”

  “How do you know so much about this guy?”

  Mike chuckled. “Back when he was a litigator, a dozen or so years ago, he cleaned my clock in a civil case. I like to keep track.”

  “I didn’t know you’d ever had your clock cleaned.”

  “What can I say, the ink was barely dry on my law diploma. It was all very educational.”

  “No doubt. What does he look like?”

  “Somewhere in his fifties by now, medium-sized, silver-haired, and very old-school. Always the dark suit and white shirt and dark tie, like a G-man, and always the closed mouth.”

  “Fits the description I got from Holly’s neighbor. What’s his firm called?”

  “It’s called the Tommy Vickers All by Himself Firm. He’s not big on trust and sharing.”

  “So what’s a high-priced tax consultant like him doing chasing down Holly Cade?”

  “Only one reason comes immediately to mind.”

  “And that is?”

  “Because a very important client asked him
to.”

  I laughed. “I’ll call him today and find out who.”

  “Get him to say more than twenty-five words, I’ll buy you lunch.”

  I was about to ring off but Mike wasn’t through. “I spoke to your brother this morning, and told him what I’d learned about the cause of death, and the timing.”

  “How did that go?”

  “Not well. The news upset him— no surprise there— and he wasn’t particularly cooperative when I asked him his whereabouts that Tuesday.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And when I asked about Stephanie, he pretty much hung up on me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You know I’ve worked with painful clients before— worse than David, if you can believe it— and I manage them fine, but he’s not doing himself any favors here. And of course it makes me wonder, and worry.”

  “You want me to talk to him?”

  “He needs to get past this angry denial crap soon. God forbid the cops call and we still aren’t straight about where he was that Tuesday, or about what your sister-in-law knows.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” I said. For all the good it would do. Shit.

  My appetite was shot, but I ate my soup anyway, and thought about my brother and his angry denial crap. I didn’t see him getting past angry anytime soon: he had too much to spare, deep wells of the stuff, and it was too dependable. Anger anchored David, and organized his world, and it gave him comfort somehow— though from what I didn’t know.

  Denial was something new, though, and it spoke of an irrationality I wouldn’t have expected from him. David had always fancied himself a realist— pragmatic, unsentimental, and supremely logical; tough-minded, he liked to think. Refusing to answer your lawyer’s questions didn’t fit that picture. But then, what about this case fit any picture of David that I’d ever had? A wind was kicking up outside, and little funnels of snow spun up from the rooftops. I watched them rise and vanish in the air.

  I put my soup bowl in the dishwasher and called Thomas Vickers. A frail-sounding woman answered and took my name and put me on hold. Vickers came on the line five minutes later. I started to introduce myself and he stopped me.

  “I know who you are,” he said. “You’re a PI.” His voice was soft and raspy and it came from somewhere in Nassau County.

  “I’m calling about Holly Cade,” I said, “or maybe you know her better as Cassandra Z.”

  “What makes you think I know her at all?”

  “Maybe the fact that you were at Krug Visual a while ago, looking for her, and that you were seen at her apartment last month.”

  “Looking isn’t the same as finding.”

  “Did you find her?”

  “I’m not clear on how it’s any of your business.”

  “Would you rather it be cop business?”

  Vickers made a coughing sound that might have been a laugh. “So much for romance.”

  “I don’t want to waste anybody’s time. Should we get together?”

  “I need to make a call,” he said. “Give me your number.” I did and Vickers rang off.

  I spent the next couple of hours not calling my brother, and thinking about what I’d say when I finally did. I picked up the phone a half-dozen times and put it down again, and while I wasn’t calling him, I tried the 9:30 Club. I was surprised when someone answered.

  The man’s voice was reedy and annoyed. “Sure we’re open tonight— why not? Half my staff is stuck here, what the hell else should I do?”

  “Is Jamie working tonight?”

  “No, she’s in Wednesdays and Thursdays.”

  She? “I’m talking about the Jamie who’s a guy— a big guy— and works the door sometimes.”

  The man was quiet for what seemed a long while. When he spoke again, his voice was rushed and nervous. “Must be another place you’re thinking of,” he said. “No Jamie here.” And then he was gone.

  I put the phone down and wondered. It was possible that Krug had been mistaken about where Jamie worked, but the man on the phone hadn’t been confused, he’d been tense. I recalled the tattoos on Babyface’s hands, and what Krug had said about Jamie having perhaps been in prison. If that was true, it might explain the tension: places with liquor licenses— places like the 9:30 Club— weren’t supposed to hire convicted felons.

  The apartment door opened and Clare came in. Snow dusted her long black coat and glistened in her pale hair. Her cheeks were red and her gray eyes were shining. She handed me a brown plastic sack and pulled off her gloves and whisked snowflakes from her sleeves. There was an overnight bag slung on her shoulder, and a larger bag rolling behind her on its own set of wheels. I wondered where her husband was, and how long he’d be snowbound, but I decided not to ask.

  Clare laughed. “Well, they got it right this time,” she said. “It’s starting to blow out there.” I looked in the plastic sack. The smell of cilantro wafted up from the takeout containers.

  “Thai?” I asked. Clare smiled and nodded. “Where’d you find a place that was open?”

  “This is the center of the fucking universe, pal, haven’t you heard?” She unbuttoned her coat. “Put that stuff in the fridge and take a bath with me. We’ll see how those bruises are coming along.”

  It was six o’clock and dark when the phone rang. Clare stirred and muttered something, and I rolled out of bed to get it. It was David. His voice was at once sleepy and combative, and it took a while for me to realize he was drunk.

  “I talked to your pal Metz today.”

  “You should think of him as your lawyer, David, not as my pal.”

  “If I think of him that way, I’m not too impressed. In fact, I’m thinking he’s more sizzle than steak, and maybe I should get somebody else.”

  “What did he do that was so unimpressive?”

  “As far as I can tell, he hasn’t done anything at all. I still don’t know for sure who Mermaid-girl is, and your pal couldn’t seem to find out from the cops.”

  “Find out what? The police haven’t identified her yet, for chrissakes— something for which you should be supremely grateful.”

  “So he doesn’t know who she is, but he still wants me to go talk to the cops? How fucked up is that?”

  “Be serious, David: how many women do you think are walking around with that tattoo on their legs?”

  “How do I know? And why should I fucking bet my life on the chance that there was only one?”

  “If it’s not her, then all it costs you is a little embarrassment in front of a few cops. If it is her, then—”

  “A little embarrassment? How do you know what’s big and what’s little? You don’t give a shit what people think, you never have, so don’t lecture me, Johnny.”

  “I don’t lecture drunks. I learned it was a waste of time when I was a cop.”

  David laughed nastily. “It took till then? Shit, I figured it out listening to Mom lecture Dad.”

  I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Where were you the Tuesday before last, David?”

  “Your fucking pal was after me about this too. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “We have to talk about it. Where were you?”

  “Where was I when?”

  “Don’t fuck around, David.”

  “Where the hell do you think I was? I was at work, for chrissakes, just like every fucking day. You should try it some time.”

  “What time did you get in?”

  “Probably the usual time— seven, seven-fifteen the latest.”

  “What does ‘probably’ mean?”

  “I got in at the usual time— okay?”

  “You came direct from your apartment?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “And you were in the office all day?”

  “What’s all day? I had meetings, I had a lunch— I was in and out.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  “I don’t know— six, six-thirty.”

  “You went right home from ther
e?”

  “Sure.”

  “Is that the same as yes?”

  “Yes, I went right home.”