The Girl in the Face of the Clock

by Charles Mathes

  “I wanted to surprise you.”

  “I’m surprised. Funny, I don’t recall giving you this number.”

  “Funny,” said Jane, “I don’t recall your mentioning that you worked for Willie Bogen.”

  There was another pause.

  “I was going to tell you,” Valentine said finally, “really I was. It just seemed so awkward. I was waiting for the right moment.”

  “Like the right moment in Seattle when you were buying that lighthouse clock out from under Perry Mannerback?”

  “There was nothing untoward about it, Jane,” said Valentine, a trifle defensive. “We simply beat you to the prize, that’s all.”

  “What were you doing coming out of Rosengolts yesterday afternoon?” she asked angrily. Now that she was talking to him, she might as well go for broke.

  “How do you know about that?”

  “I saw you. I followed you back to your office.”

  “You’re in London!”

  “Brilliant deduction, Sherlock.”

  “But this is marvelous,” said Valentine. “I wasn’t able to show you Seattle, but I hope you’ll let me show you London. How long are you going to be here?”

  “I’m going back on Monday. You haven’t answered my question.”

  “I’ll tell you all about it over lunch, how’s that? Where are you staying?”

  “Please, Valentine,” said Jane. “You’re working for a man that Perry hates. I see you coming out of the shop of the person that I specifically came to London to see. I need to know what’s going on. Just tell me what your involvement is with Mr. Rosengolts. Please.”

  “Well, it’s certainly nothing sinister, if that’s what’s worrying you,” said Valentine. “My employer, Mr. Bogen, happened to have been in the same Swiss detention camp as the Rosengolts family during the Second World War and he occasionally does business with them, that’s all. May I ask how you happen to know Rosengolts et fils?”

  “I’d rather not go into that,” said Jane. “What kind of business does Mr. Bogen have with Mr. Rosengolts just now?”

  “I’m afraid it would be indiscreet, professionally speaking, for me to tell you.”

  “Then tell me why you were so interested in the ceramic clock in my father’s painting. You asked me about it when you called me last week.”

  There was another long silence.

  “Well,” said Valentine finally, “if I may be honest, this clock is the sort of thing that Mr. Bogen might be interested in. If it’s in your possession, that is.”

  “It is, but it’s not for sale.”

  “We’d give you a good price for it.”

  “How much?”

  “Well, that’s difficult to say offhand,” said Valentine, suddenly sounding guarded and very remote. “How much would you ask?”

  “How about ten thousand dollars?”

  “That’s certainly possible.”

  “Mr. Rosengolts told me that his grandfather’s ceramics weren’t worth more than a few hundred pounds.”

  “Is that what he told you?”

  “Yes, that’s what he told me. So why are you willing to pay so much for this particular one?”

  “You know you sound very pretty this morning,” said Valentine. “What are you wearing?”

  “Don’t change the subject. Why would you pay ten thousand dollars for my clock?”

  “Mr. Bogen is a collector. It would be worth that much to him.”

  “Would you pay twenty thousand?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “How about fifty thousand?”

  “Jane, I know that you’re angry with me. I apologize for not being more forthcoming with you. I care about you, really I do.”

  “Then how come you’re playing games with me about the value of my clock?”

  “This is business, Jane. In a negotiation, my first responsibility has to be with my employer.”

  “I see,” Jane replied icily.

  “I must tell you that you’ve become involved in a very complex situation,” said Valentine, his voice soft and sincere. “Isidore Rosengolts is a very difficult person. He is not what he appears to be.”

  “And you are?”

  “Please, Jane. If you’ll just tell me where you’re staying …”

  Jane hung up the phone, then sat staring out the window for a long time, trying to add it all up.

  Valentine Treves and Willie Bogen were after her clock. Unless Valentine was a great actor, he didn’t know Leila Peach. Isidore Rosengolts now had a cross that was somehow related to the clock. Ted Danko, not Perry Mannerback, had been involved with Leila Peach.

  But why would any of these facts impel someone to push Aaron Sailor down the stairs eight years ago? Why did someone give him a fatal injection of insulin last week?

  And when, Jane wondered, would she ever feel safe again?

  Fourteen

  The time difference ran in the other direction for the eight o’clock flight back to New York on Monday morning. Jane arrived at Kennedy International airport a little after 10 a.m. local time.

  After clearing Customs with nothing to declare but a blouse from Harrods, several cans of tea from Fortnum & Mason, and a pounding headache, she took a cab directly to the offices of Ombi-Corp International on Sixth Avenue. Having had a long weekend of cooling her heels playing American tourist in London, she didn’t intend to wait another minute to confront Mr. Theodore B. Danko.

  Jane finessed the young woman at reception whom she had previously befriended, then made her way to Danko’s offices. She hadn’t been in this part of the building before, and it took another ten minutes to make her way through three dressed-for-success secretarial gatekeepers. All of them were less than impressed with Jane’s black travel blazer that now had thirty-five hundred miles worth of wrinkles in it. After satisfying each of them that she didn’t intend to leave until he saw her, however, Jane was finally admitted to Danko’s private office, a light-filled suite twice the size of Perry Mannerback’s.

  The CEO of the OmbiCorp empire was seated behind the enormous Biedermeier table that served as his desk. He was dressed in an elegantly cut black suit, a crisp white shirt with the initials TBD on its french cuffs, gold cufflinks, and a Hermès tie. Behind him was a fieldstone wall with a fireplace in the center. In front of him was a telephone, a crystal decanter of ice water, and a glass. The tabletop was otherwise bare. Danko was studying an annual report through half-moon reading glasses. Jane entered and made the long cross to one of the blond-wood armchairs opposite him. He didn’t look up.

  “I’d like to talk to you about Leila Peach, Mr. Danko,” said Jane, sitting down. “I’m Jane Sailor. Remember me?”

  Danko didn’t answer, just continued to stare at the report as if there were no one in the room but himself.

  “I know that you were involved with Leila eight years ago, Mr. Danko.”

  Still no answer.

  “I know that she was pregnant.”

  Danko let out a weary sigh.

  “I don’t see why this would be any of your business, Ms. Sailor,” he said in a quiet voice, peering owl-like at her over the tortoiseshell rims of his glasses.

  “It’s my business because my dad may have been the father of that child.”

  “I see,” said Danko, putting his report aside, taking off his glasses, and fixing her in his cold gray eyes. “And what child would that be?”

  Jane met his gaze and didn’t answer for a moment. She had asked Suzy McCorkle what had become of the child Leila was pregnant with. Suzy didn’t know. Leila hadn’t wanted to talk about it.

  “A man was seen rushing out of my father’s loft building the night he fell down the stairs eight years ago,” said Jane. “Was that you?”

  “I’m a busy man, Ms. Sailor. I have said all I intend to say about this matter to the police. Good day.”

  “What do the police have to do with this?” asked Jane, surprised.

  Danko studied her for a moment.

  �
�Don’t you know?” he asked, arching an eyebrow. “Isn’t that why you’ve been giving me your rendition of the third degree?”

  “Know what? What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Leila Peach. She’s dead.”

  “No,” said Jane, feeling herself deflate into the chair. “I don’t believe it.”

  “They found her body Saturday morning in a midtown hotel room,” said Danko with what appeared to be some satisfaction. “She’d been shot with a small-caliber handgun. Unfortunately, my name appeared in her address book, as did Perry’s. I’ve already had a rather unpleasant conversation about Miss Peach with the police, and I do not care to have another with you. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a corporation to run.”

  Finding herself speechless, Jane stood up and left the room. She collected her suitcase and carry-on bag from Danko’s secretary, then made her way to Barbara Fripp’s office at the other side of the building.

  Miss Fripp was sitting behind her old-fashioned mahogany desk in the small, philodendron-filled office between the bustle of OmbiCorp International and Perry Mannerback’s quiet suite.

  “Is Perry here?” asked Jane.

  “He’s nowhere to be found as usual,” said Miss Fripp a little too breezily. Her brown hair, usually solidly sprayed together, evidenced several renegade strands. The wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and along her lips were deeper than usual. She looked harried and concerned.

  “Have the police spoken with him?”

  “Why would the police want to speak with Perry?” asked Miss Fripp with an uncharacteristic laugh, still poker-faced and professionally discreet.

  “I know about the woman who died,” said Jane. “Danko told me.”

  Barbara Fripp’s manufactured smile disappeared.

  “I don’t know where Perry is,” she confessed, looking relieved to be able to admit it. “The police have been trying to question him since the day of your father’s funeral, but Perry hasn’t wanted to speak with them. Mr. Ruiz and Mr. Apoustocle—they’re Perry’s attorneys—have been putting them off with written statements, but things have gotten quite impossible since that Peach woman was killed. Perry finally had to agree to a detective’s ringing him up this morning at home where Mr. Ruiz and Mr. Apoustocle could listen in on the extension. I telephoned to see how it went when I got in, but Perry had already left.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “I don’t know,” said Miss Fripp, shaking her head, staring out the glass walls of the office at the skyscraper across the street. “Olinda is very emotional. All I could get was that Perry had had a long telephone conversation with a police lieutenant and was very upset. Apparently, he dashed off somewhere without his coat.”

  “Would you mind if I called Olinda?”

  “No, not at all,” said Miss Fripp, turning her phone around to face Jane. “It’s outrageous that the authorities would harass Perry like this. He couldn’t have had anything to do with that woman who was killed, and I can’t imagine why they were pestering him about your father. Perry’s just a little boy. He’s very sensitive. I’m terribly concerned.”

  Jane dialed the number for Perry’s apartment. Olinda answered, but as Barbara Fripp had said, her answers weren’t very comprehensible.

  “Why policemen make this trouble?” demanded Olinda after a blur of Spanish. “Perry all unhappy, very unhappy. He try to talk to them nice on the phone, but they say bad things, make him all angry. ‘I no have to take this,’ say Perry. ‘I have big company. They write about me all the time in newspapers and on TV. I no have to take this.’”

  “Where did he go, Olinda?” Jane asked again.

  “Mr. Ruiz and Mr. Apoustocle, they think they’re so smart. They make Perry to talk to police, and now look. He cry. Tears come onto his face. He very sad. Why they do this?”

  “Did Perry say anything before he left?”

  “He say he sick of questions, he want be with only true honest people in New York. He say for everybody to leave him alone. Just leave him alone.”

  “Only true honest people in New York?” repeated Jane. “What did he mean by that? Who was he going to see?”

  “How Olinda know? Perry crazy. He run out. Not take his coat or nothing. Perry always crazy but not like this. Very bad.”

  Jane said good-bye, then turned to face a concerned Barbara Fripp.

  “Where is Perry going to find any true honest people in New York?” asked Jane.

  “Not here, that’s for certain,” answered Fripp, frowning. “He couldn’t mean his relatives, either. Or his attorneys.” She shook her head. “I have no idea.”

  “I’m going home and standing in a hot shower for an hour,” said Jane with a sigh. “Please call me if you hear anything. It’s really important that I speak with Perry.”

  Fripp nodded. Jane took the long elevator ride down to the real world, then caught a cab on Sixth.

  Ten minutes later, the taxi pulled up in front of her brownstone. In the lobby, Jane briefly put down her bags to collect a wedge of junk mail from her box, then wearily climbed the four flights of stairs. At the top landing she dug into her pocket for her keys, but when she touched the handle of the door to her apartment, she found it was open. Only then did she see the fresh jimmy marks on the side of the repaired doorframe.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” she exclaimed in dismay, entering the darkened room and depositing her bags inside. The door closed behind her as she turned on a light. There was a strange woman sitting on her couch.

  Even seated, the intruder looked large. She was a flat-chested, bleached blonde, with the shoulders of a linebacker. Probably twice Jane’s weight, she was dressed against type in designer jeans, a loose-fitting pink cashmere sweater, and diamond stud earrings. She wore an ugly expression on her flat broad face.

  “Who are you?” demanded Jane, astonished. “What are you doing in my apartment?”

  “Where is it?” replied the woman, standing up slowly from her relaxed position on the couch, not bothering to reach for the little leather purse at her side. Her voice was surprisingly high and childish for someone so big—the woman was at least six feet tall, Jane estimated. She spoke with a British accent.

  “Where is what?” said Jane, feeling her hands get cold and her stomach rise toward her heart. “What do you want?”

  “You know.”

  “I don’t have much money, but you can have it all,” said Jane, reaching into the side pocket of her blazer for her wallet. This was no time to be a heroine.

  “Where is it?” repeated the woman.

  “Where’s what?”

  “The clock, you stupid git. I know you’ve got it. I didn’t find it before, but you’ve got it, by Christ.”

  Finally, Jane understood. The clock. Of course, it had to be about Grandmother Sylvie’s clock, safe in the basement.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she lied.

  The woman reached down and pressed the “play” button on Jane’s answering machine.

  “Jane, it’s Valentine. It’s Friday afternoon. I’m in New York, at the Carlyle Hotel. I know you’re getting back on Monday, and I would very much like to speak to you about your ceramic clock with no hands. Please ring me when you get in.”

  “Look, who are you?” demanded Jane. “Get out of my apartment. You have no right …”

  The woman didn’t wait for the rest of Jane’s attempted indignation. Instead, she tore the answering machine by its cords out of the wall and hurled it at Jane’s head. Jane ducked in disbelief. By the time the machine smashed against the door, the intruder had charged across the room and was upon her, giving Jane a slap that sent her flying.

  “You’re going to give me that clock,” said the woman, showing a smile of perfectly capped teeth. “You’re going to beg to give it to me.”

  Jane picked herself off the floor, holding her head in her hands, pretending to be dazed (which wasn’t difficult, considering the stars that presently were dan
cing around in front of her).

  Her opponent was clearly not expecting any kind of credible resistance. Smiling, she walked slowly over and drew Jane to her by the lapels of her jacket. Jane was close enough to smell the woman’s expensive perfume before she suddenly stamped her foot down on her attacker’s instep, then swung her clasped hands at the woman’s jaw.

  It was a series of movements that Jane had often used in fight routines, and it looked positively lethal.

  The trouble was that, while she understood perfectly how to mimic the appearance of a kick or a punch, Jane had no idea how to actually hurt someone. Stage combat was about diffusing and deflecting energy, not directing it to do damage. When you kicked someone, you kicked from the knee and put most of your energy into your foot’s return trip from its target. When you pretended to strangle, you were really pulling your hands away from the victim’s neck with all your strength, while he frantically tried to hold them there. Everything was designed so that the audience would see the energy of the fight, not where it was going.

  It was not surprising, therefore, that Jane hadn’t stomped on her assailant’s instep hard enough or landed her blow squarely enough to incapacitate. The woman had released her grip merely out of surprise. Jane’s attack had hurt her only enough to infuriate.

  With a roar, the woman now struck back with a fist at Jane’s face. Jane dodged backwards just in time to save her teeth. The next minute was a nightmare. There was no choreography, no neat series of holds and punches, just wild swings, grasped limbs, and frantic scrambles as the intruder tried to batter Jane and Jane did her best to get away from her larger opponent.

  At one point, the woman had gotten hold of her from behind. Jane was sure it was all over until she had the wits to use her teeth. At another point, she squirmed free from a bear hug by frantically jabbing her thumb into a pressure point on the woman’s neck the way she had learned in a junior lifesaver’s swimming class.

  Suddenly they were on opposite sides of the tiny apartment and the woman again had enough room to charge. Jane was pinned into the corner that served as her kitchen, but this time she didn’t try to get away.