“Mr. Sekula appears to be responsible for a property in Williamsburg. I wanted to ask him about it.”
“Mr. Sekula is involved with a lot of properties.”
“This one is pretty distinctive. It seems to have a lot of dead people in it.”
Sekula’s secretary didn’t even blink at the mention of what had occurred in Williamsburg.
“Mr. Sekula has been over that with the police,” she said.
“Then it should all be fresh in his mind. I’ll just take a seat and wait until he’s done in there.”
I sat down in one of the chairs. It was uncomfortable in the way that only very expensive furniture can be. After two minutes, the base of my spine was aching. After five minutes, the rest of my spine was aching too, and other parts of my body were crying out in sympathy. I was considering lying on the floor instead when the black doors opened and a man in a charcoal gray pinstripe suit stepped into the reception area. His hair was light brown and trimmed as carefully as potentially prizewinning topiary, so that not a single strand was out of place. He had the bland good looks of a part-time model, his features without a single flaw or hint of individuality that might have lent them character or distinction.
“Mr. Parker,” he said. “I’m David Sekula. I’m sorry you had to wait. We’re busier than we might appear.”
Clearly, Sekula had heard everything that was said in the reception room. Perhaps the secretary had simply left the room-to-room intercom open. Either way, it made me curious as to whom Sekula had been talking with on the phone. It might have been nothing to do with me, in which case I would have to face the possibility that the world didn’t revolve around me. I wasn’t sure that I was ready to take that step yet.
I shook Sekula’s hand. It was soft and dry, like an unused sponge.
“I hope you’ve recovered from your ordeal,” he said, ushering me toward his office. “What happened in that place was terrible.”
The cops had probably explained my involvement to Sekula when they interviewed him. Clearly, they’d forgotten to include his secretary in the loop, or maybe they’d tried to tell her, but she couldn’t understand them through their drool.
Sekula paused by his secretary’s desk.
“No calls, please, Hope,” he told her.
Hope? It was hard to believe.
“I understand, Mr. Sekula,” she replied.
“Nice name,” I told her. “It suits you.”
I smiled at her. We were all friends now. Maybe they’d invite me to go away with them on a trip. We could drink, laugh, reminisce about how awkward that first encounter between us had been before we all got to know one another and realized how swell each of us truly was.
Hope didn’t smile back. It looked like the trip was off.
Sekula closed the doors behind us and waved me to an upright chair in front of his desk. The chair faced the window, but the drapes were drawn, so I couldn’t see what lay beyond them. Compared to the reception area, his office looked like a bomb had hit it, but it was still neater than any lawyer’s office I had ever been in before. There were files on the desk, but they were neatly stacked and housed in nice clean folders, each marked with a printed label. The trash can was empty, and it looked like the filing cabinets were hidden behind the false oak fronts that lined two walls, or simply didn’t exist at all. The art on Sekula’s walls was also a lot less disturbing than the paintings in the reception area: there was a large Picasso print of a faun playing a lute, signed no less, and a big canvas that resembled a cave drawing of horses rendered in layered oils, the horses literally carved into the paint: the past re-created in the present. It too was signed by the artist, Alison Rieder. Sekula saw me looking at it.
“Do you collect?” he said.
I wondered if he was being funny, but he seemed serious. Sekula must have paid his investigators way above the going rate.
“I don’t know enough about it to collect,” I said.
“But you have art on your walls?”
I frowned. I wasn’t sure where this was going.
“Some, I guess.”
“Good,” he said. “A man should appreciate beauty, in all its forms.”
He inclined his chin toward the office door, behind which lay the increasingly less enticing form of his secretary, and grinned. I was pretty certain that if he did that in front of the lady in question, she’d cut off his head and stick it on a railing in Central Park.
Sekula offered me a drink from a cabinet against the wall, or coffee if I preferred. I told him I was fine as I was. He took his seat at his desk, steepled his fingers, and looked grave.
“You’re unhurt after the incident?” he said. “Apart from—”
He touched his fingers to his left cheek. I had some cuts on my face from the splinters, and there was blood in my left eye.
“You should see the other guy,” I said.
Sekula tried to figure out if I was joking. I didn’t tell him that the image of Garcia slumped against the wall was still fresh in my mind, his blood soaking the dusty, paint-spattered sheets, his lips moving in prayer to whatever deity permitted him to collude in the killing of women yet still offered hope and succor to those who prayed to it. I didn’t tell him of the metallic smell of the dying man’s blood, which had infected what little food I had consumed throughout the day. I didn’t tell him of the stench that rose from him as he died, or the way his eyes glazed over with his last breath.
And I did not mention the sound of that final breath, or the manner in which it was released from him: a long, slow exhalation, both reluctant and relieved. It had always seemed somehow apt that words connected with freedom and escape should be used to describe the moment when dullness replaced brightness, and life became death. To be close to another human being at that instant was enough to convince one, however briefly, that something beyond understanding passed from the body with that final sigh, that some essence began its journey from this world to another.
“I can’t imagine what it must be like to kill a man,” said Sekula, as though all that I had just considered had been revealed to him through my eyes.
“Why would you even want to imagine it?” I said.
He seemed to give the question some thought.
“I suppose there have been times when I’ve wanted to kill someone,” he said. “It was a fleeting thing, but it was there. I thought, though, that I could never live with the consequences; not just the legal consequences, but the moral and psychological ones. Then again, I have never been placed in the situation where I was seriously forced to consider taking the life of another. Perhaps, under such circumstances, it would be within my capabilities to kill.”
“Have you ever defended someone accused of a killing?”
“No. I deal mainly in business affairs, which brings us to the matter in hand. I can only tell you what I told the police. The warehouse was once a storehouse for the Rheingold brewing company. It closed in 1974, and the warehouse was sold. It was acquired by a gentleman named August Welsh, who subsequently became one of my clients. When he died, some legal difficulties arose over the disposal of his estate. Take my advice, Mr. Parker: make a will. Even if you have to write it on the back of a napkin, do it. Mr. Welsh was not so farsighted. Despite repeated entreaties on my part, he refused to commit his intentions to paper. I think he felt that making a will would in some way be an acknowledgment of the imminence of his mortality. Wills, in his view, were for people who were dying. I tried to tell him that everyone was dying: him, me, even his children and his grandchildren. It was to no avail. He died intestate, and his children began to bicker among themselves, as is often the case in such situations. I tried to manage his estate as best I could in the interim. I ensured that his portfolio remained watertight, that any funds accruing were immediately reinvested or lodged to an independent account, and I endeavored to produce the best results from his various properties. Unfortunately, the Rheingold warehouse was not one of his better investments. Property va
lues in the area are improving, but I could find no one who was willing to commit sufficient funds to the redevelopment of the building. I left the matter in the hands of Ambassade Realty, and largely forgot about it until this week.”
“You are aware that Ambassade is no longer in business?”
“I’m sure that I must have been informed, but passing on responsibility for the leasing of the building was probably not a priority at the time.”
“So this man, Garcia, had signed no lease with either Ambassade or your firm.”
“Not that I know of.”
“Yet some work had been done on the top floor of the warehouse. There was power, and water. Someone was paying the utilities.”
“Ambassade, I assume. There may be an arrangement in place.”
“And now there’s nobody at Ambassade left to ask.”
“No, I’m afraid not. I wish I could be of more help.”
“That makes two of us.”
Sekula composed his features into an expression of regret. It didn’t quite take, though. Like most professionals, he wasn’t fond of those outside his field casting doubts upon any aspect of his business. He stood, making it clear to me that our meeting was over.
“If I think of anything that might be of help to you, I’ll try to let you know,” he said. “I’ll have to tell the police first, of course, but under the circumstances I would have no objection to keeping you informed as well, as long as the police confirmed that to do so would not interfere with the progress of their investigation.”
I tried to interpret what Sekula had just said, and came to the conclusion that I had learned all that I was going to from him. I thanked him, and left him with my card. He walked me to the office door, shook my hand once again, then closed the door behind me. I tried one last time to chip away at his secretary’s permafrost exterior by expressing my gratitude for all that she’d done, but she was impervious to insincerity. If Sekula was keeping her company at night, then I didn’t envy him. Anyone sleeping with her would need to wrap up against the cold first, and maybe wear a warm hat.
My next call was to Sheridan Avenue in the Bronx, where Eddie Tager had his office. There was a lot of competition for business, and the streets east of Yankee Stadium, and near the courthouse, were lined with bondsmen. Most were at least bilingual in their advertising, and the ones that could afford neon usually made sure that the word “fianzas” was at least as conspicuous as “bail” in their windows.
There was a time when the bail industry was the preserve of pretty nasty characters. They still existed, but they were strictly minor players. Most of the bigger bail bondsmen were backed by the major insurance firms, including Hal Buncombe. According to Louis, he was the bondsman that Alice was supposed to call if she ever found herself in trouble. The fact that she hadn’t called him indicated the animosity she felt for Louis, even when she was in the most desperate of situations. I met Buncombe in a little pizzeria on 161st, where he was eating the first of two slices from a paper plate. He was about to wipe his fingers on a napkin in order to shake hands, but I told him not to worry about it. I ordered a soda and a slice, and joined him at his table. Buncombe was a small wiry man in his fifties. He radiated the mixture of inner calm and absolute self-belief that is the preserve of those who have seen it all and who have learned enough from their past mistakes to ensure that they no longer repeated them too often.
“How’s business?” I asked.
“It’s okay,” he said. “Could be better. We’ve taken some skips already this month, which isn’t good. We figure we gave up $250,000 to the state last year, which means we’re playing catch-up from the start of this one. I’ll have to stop being nice to people. In fact, I’ve already stopped.”
He raised his right hand. I noticed that his knuckles were bruised, the skin broken in places.
“I pulled a guy off the streets earlier today. Just had a bad feeling about him. If he skipped, he’d cost us fifty thou, and I wasn’t prepared to take that chance.”
“I take it he objected.”
“He took a couple of swings,” Buncombe conceded. “We hauled him out to Rikers, but they aren’t taking bodies, and the judge who set bail is on the West Coast until tomorrow, so I have him in a room in back of the office. He claims he has an out-of-state asset that he can offer as collateral—a house in some crack alley in Chicago—but we can’t take out-of-state or out-of-country property, so we’ll just have to hold him overnight, try to get him locked up safe in the morning.”
He finished his first slice and started in on his second.
“Tough way to make money,” I said.
“Not really.” He shrugged. “We’re good at our job, my partners and me. Like Joe Namath said, it’s only bragging if you can’t do it.”
“What can you tell me about Eddie Tager?” I asked. “Is he good at his job too?”
“Tager’s bad news, a scavenger. He’s so desperate he works mostly Queens, Manhattan, and they’re hard, real hard. The Bronx and Brooklyn are picnic boroughs by comparison, but beggars can’t be choosers. Tager deals with small-time beefs: not just bonds, but fines too. I hear most of the hookers don’t like turning to him if they’re in trouble—he likes them to give up a little extra as a show of thanks, if you catch my drift—which is why I was surprised when I heard that he supplied the cut slip for Alice. She would have been warned about him.”
He stopped eating, as though he had suddenly lost his appetite, and dropped the remains of the slice onto the plate before dumping it in the trash.
“I feel bad about what happened. I was trying to deal with paperwork over here and doing what I could over the phone. Someone told me in passing that the cops had pulled Alice in on a drug trawl, but I figured I had a couple of hours and that she could just sit tight until I picked up a few more bonds to make it worth my while heading over there to check up on her. It’s a pain in the ass waiting for Corrections to release one inmate. Makes more sense to build up four or five, then wait for them all to be cut loose. By the time I got over there, she was already gone. I saw the slip and figured that she decided to go with Tager. I knew she had a problem with our ‘mutual friend,’ so I didn’t take it personally. You know, she was a mess by the end. Last time I saw her, she wasn’t looking good, but she didn’t deserve what happened to her. Nobody deserves that.”
“Have you seen Tager lately?”
“Our paths don’t cross so much anymore, but I asked around. Looks like he’s gone to ground. It could be that he’s running scared. Maybe it got back to him that the girl had connections, and that certain people were going to take a dim view of his involvement once she didn’t reappear.”
Buncombe gave me directions to Tager’s office. He even offered to come along with me, but I declined. I didn’t believe that I’d need help making Eddie Tager talk. Right then, words were the only currency he had with which to buy his life.
Eddie Tager was so low-rent that he lived and worked out of the back of a fire-damaged bodega that had closed for renovations sometime during Watergate and never reopened. I found the place without too much trouble, but there was no answer when I tried the bell. I went around back and tried hammering on the rear door. It came ajar slightly under the impact of my fist.
“Hello?” I said.
I opened the door wider and stepped inside. I was in the kitchen area of a small apartment. A counter separated it from a living room furnished with brown carpet, a brown couch, and a brown TV. Even the wallpaper was light brown. There were newspapers and magazines scattered around. The most recent was dated two days earlier. Straight ahead was a hallway with an open door leading into the main office. To the right was a bedroom, and beside that a small bathroom with mold growing on the shower curtain. I checked each room before ending up in the office. It wasn’t exactly spotless, but there was at least an attempt at order. I went through the recent files but could find nothing relating to Alice. I sat down in Tager’s chair and searched the drawers of his desk,
but nothing struck me as important. I found a box containing business cards in the top drawer, but none of the names was familiar to me.
There was a small pile of mail behind the door. It was all junk and bills, including one from Tager’s cell phone company. I opened it and flipped through the pages until I came to the date of Alice’s arrest. Like most bondsmen, Tager used his cell phone a lot in the course of his business. On that day alone he had made thirty or forty calls, the frequency of them increasing as the night drew on. I placed the bill back in its envelope and was about to put it in my jacket pocket so that I could take a closer look at it later when I saw a dark smear on the paper. I looked at my fingers and saw blood. I wiped them on the envelope, then tried to find the source, retracing my steps until I was back at Tager’s chair.
The blood was congealing on the underside and right-hand corner of the desk. There wasn’t a lot of it, but when I shined my flash-light on it I thought I could see some hairs mixed in, and there were stains on the carpet. The desk was big and heavy, but when I checked the area around the legs I saw marks on the fabric where the desk had shifted slightly. If the blood was Tager’s, then someone had hit the bondsman’s head pretty hard against the corner of the desk, probably when he was already sprawled on the floor.
I went back to the kitchen and soaked my handkerchief under the faucet, then cleaned down every surface that I had touched. When I was done, my handkerchief was covered in pink stains. I left the same way that I had entered, once I was certain that there was nobody around. I didn’t make any calls about the blood. If I did, I’d have to explain what I was doing there, and I’d need my own bail bondsman. I didn’t think Tager was coming back, though. Someone had asked him to post bail for Alice, which meant that he was complicit in the sequence of events that had led to her death. Garcia had not been acting alone, and now it looked like his confederates were taking care of the weak links in the chain. I patted the cell phone bill in my pocket. Somewhere in that list of numbers was, I hoped, another link that they might have overlooked.
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