1 Runaway Man

by David Handler

  As the two of them bickered I heard a floorboard creak in the hallway. Someone was eavesdropping on our conversation.

  Paul heaved a sigh of annoyance. “You know what? There’s a simple way to get to the bottom of this.” He grabbed his cell phone from the coffee table and speed dialed a number. Waited as it rang, then shook his head at us. “Voice mail.” He left Bruce a message: “Hi Beefer, I was just watching the Knicks get killed and thought I’d check in. Talk to you soon.” He rang off, scrolled his directory and tried another number. “Hi, Chris, sorry if I’m interrupting anything. It’s Paul Weiner … I’m fine, son. Just fine. Been trying to get in touch with Bruce and he’s not … Oh, he is? Uh-huh.… Sure, I understand. Glad to hear it. Okay, thanks.” Paul rang off, gazing at me with amusement. “Somebody gave you a bum steer, young fellow. His roommate just told me that Bruce has been pulling long hours at the library every night this week. He couldn’t answer my call just now because they make the kids turn their cell phones off.”

  And yet this very same roommate had told Peter Seymour’s office he hadn’t seen Bruce in three days. Who was Chris Warfield lying to? And why?

  “If you hear from him please let me know.” I left my business card on the coffee table and stood up. “Excuse me for asking, but have you folks had any prior dealings with Bates, Winslow and Seymour?”

  Laurie lowered her eyes, coloring slightly.

  Paul looked me right in the eye and said, “Never heard of them.” He was a good liar.

  It was still snowing lightly. There was a thin coating on the windshield of the Caddy. Nothing the wipers couldn’t take care of. I was just about to back out of the driveway when someone came darting out of a door next to the garage, jumped in next to me and dove under the dashboard.

  “Just keep going,” Sara blurted out, crouching there. “Drive around.”

  “Drive around where?”

  “Park down the block or something. Just go, will you?”

  I backed out of the driveway and started up the street. As soon as I’d gone around a bend, Sara sat up on the seat next to me, tossing her long, shiny hair. She wore an oversized fleece top, a pair of tights and Ugg boots. She was a cute little thing with big brown eyes, a soft, plump mouth and glowing skin. A real doll. A nervous doll. She was wringing her hands.

  “I was listening to what my parents were just telling you in there,” she said with great urgency. “And they are, like, totally full of shit, okay? They don’t know anything.”

  “And you do?”

  “Well, yeah. So does Chris. He was lying his ass off to my dad.”

  I pulled over to the curb and idled there with the heater cranked up high. We had Powder Horn Hill Lane all to ourselves, unless you count the deer.

  Sara was studying me from across the seat with those big brown eyes. “You don’t look like a Ben.”

  “My friends call me Benji.”

  “I like that much better. Tell me why you’re looking for Brucie.”

  “It’s my job. A law firm hired me.”

  “Some big fancy law firm in the city?”

  “Yes.”

  “That totally figures.” She glanced around at the interior of the Caddy. “This is your ride?”

  “Company car.”

  “So what do you drive?”

  “I don’t. I live in the city.”

  “God, I can’t wait to. It bites out here. There’s nothing to do, nowhere to go. A lot of my friends are applying to these small, elitist colleges in the New England countryside. Not me. I want to be in a city where shit happens.” She pulled a hand-rolled joint out of the pocket of her fleece top. “Does your lighter work?”

  “I imagine so.”

  She pushed it in and waited, gazing at me curiously. “So you’re a real dick.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Isn’t that what they call a guy who does what you do?”

  “Generally, they call me a private investigator.”

  The lighter popped up. She yanked it out and lit her joint, toking deeply on it. “Want some?” she asked, opening her window a crack to let the smoke out.

  “No, thanks.”

  “It helps me relax. I’m hardwired to excel—academics, music, sports. I’m a little tightly wound.” Sara flashed a smile at me. She had a sweet smile. A set of dimples you could go spelunking in. “Trevor? This guy who I’m sort of boning? He’s really into old Bogie movies. That’s why I asked you about the dick thing. Trevor likes to wear this old gray fodera just like Sam Spade.”

  “Fedora.”

  “It’s like a hat? He said it was called a fodera.”

  “Fedora.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I couldn’t be more sure. What does ‘sort of boning’ mean?”

  “We’re fuck buddies but it’s not serious.”

  “You don’t consider fucking serious?”

  “Not really. Why, do you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “That’s so sweet.” She toked on her joint. “Do you carry a roscoe?”

  “No one has used that term for at least seventy years. But, yes, I’m licensed to carry a firearm.”

  “Have you ever shot anyone?”

  “No.”

  “But you know how to use it?”

  “I go shooting regularly at the Westside Pistol Range in Chelsea.”

  “Are you carrying it with you right now?”

  “It’s locked in the glove compartment.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, what kind is it?”

  “A Smith and Wesson Chief’s Special. It has a short, two-inch barrel. Is easy to conceal. I find it easy to handle, too. I don’t have very big hands.”

  “That’s too bad.” She arched an eyebrow at me. “I’ve heard what they say about guys who have small hands.”

  I let that one slide on by. She was too young to get frisky with. A straight-A student, according to her file. An adorable little hottie, according to me. Too bad she wasn’t five years older. Hell, even three. I gazed back out at the deserted road. Once again I was sensing a shadow out there somewhere. I saw no one. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling. “Sara, you said your parents don’t know anything. Did you mean in regards to Bruce’s unnamed benefactor?”

  “Wait, you’re the one who’s looking for him, right?”

  “Right.…”

  “And you don’t know who his benefactor is?”

  “Also right.”

  She smoked her joint some more. “That’s fairly weird, isn’t it?”

  “Yes and no. I’m only told what clients choose to tell me. Do you have an idea who it is?”

  “Some giant, sleazoid sneaker company, obviously. They’re trying to buy him off. I wonder how much they’re offering Brucie. I bet it’s a million. A million means nothing to those people.”

  “Sara, I think we’d better hit rewind,” I said, not following one word she was saying. “Tell me about Bruce, will you?”

  She leaned her head back against the headrest. The joint was calming her down. “He’s a great brother. Just a real sweet guy. Smart, but not one of those ego kings who’s always trying to chump you. In high school he was a major, major baller. But not anymore, except for pick-up games. I think that’s how he and Charles met.”

  “And Charles is?…”

  Sara rolled her eyes at me like a suffering teenager. God’s subtle way of reminding me that she was one. “Charles,” she said, louder this time. “The Charles.”

  “Do you mean Charles Willingham?”

  “Duh.”

  “Your brother and Charles ‘In Charge’ Willingham are friends?”

  “Benji, they’re more than friends. They’re lovers.”

  I looked at her in shock. “Charles Willingham is gay?”

  “The two of them mean everything to each other.”

  “Charles Willingham is gay?”

  She glared at me. “Yes, Charles Willingham is gay. And, by
the way, so is my brother. Get over it, will you?”

  Easier said than done. There had been no mention of this particular mother lode in the Leetes Group file. How come? Was it possible they hadn’t uncovered it? Or was their report redacted because they didn’t want me in the loop? I had no idea. I only knew that our case had just taken a sharp swerve toward weird.

  I looked back out at the falling snow, soaking in the enormity of it. Canterbury College was by no means a hotbed for intercollegiate athletics. It didn’t even offer athletic scholarships. But for the past two seasons the tiny Division II school had produced one of the top men’s basketball teams in the entire country, right up there with powerhouses like North Carolina and Kansas. Canterbury’s Athenians had been the Cinderella story of last year’s NCAA tournament, toppling the mighty UCLA Bruins and Pitt Panthers on their way to the Elite Eight before they were finally eliminated by Duke in a nationally televised prime time game. The Canterbury Tale, the media had dubbed this improbable run of upsets engineered by John Seckla, the team’s dynamic young head coach. And it was no fluke. Coach Seckla’s Athenians had kept right on winning this season. They were even favored to make it into the Final Four. And the overwhelming reason why was six-foot-five-inch Charles “In Charge” Willingham, their incandescent All-American shooting guard. Charles Willingham was a consensus top three pick in the next NBA draft who’d chosen tiny Canterbury over the traditional hoops schools because he was also a 4.0 brainiac who planned to go to law school someday. Charles was the ultimate feel-good story. A black hometown hero out of Harlem’s Martin Luther King housing projects who never made a false move on or off the court. He was modest in victory, gracious in defeat, polite, well-spoken and movie star handsome. The media adored him. Everyone did. Charles Willingham was a once-in-a-generation talent. The black Bill Bradley, old-timers called him.

  “Sara, how long have Bruce and Charles been together?”

  “More than a year. Brucie hasn’t told our folks because they’ll freak.”

  “About him being gay, you mean?”

  She nodded. “Their values are totally outmoded.”

  “But you’re cool with it?”

  “Of course. We are who we are. We can’t let … Oh, shit!” She narrowed her gaze at me. “Did you just scam me?”

  “Scam you how?”

  “You’re not going to go blab this to, like, TMZ or Gawker are you?”

  “Of course not. You can trust me.”

  “How do I know that?”

  “Because I just gave you my word.”

  She studied me carefully for a moment. “Benji, how old are you?”

  “Twenty-five, why?”

  “Because you don’t look like someone who’d do this kind of work.”

  “Looks can be deceiving.”

  “So that means you’re not?”

  “Not what?”

  “A total bunny.”

  I smiled at her. “My mom calls me Bunny.”

  “I would kill for your eyelashes. Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Are you gay? It’s okay if you are.”

  “I’m not gay.”

  “Good, I’m glad,” she said, showing me those dimples of hers again.

  “You were saying something about sneakers?…”

  “Well, yeah. Charles is going to pull down huge endorsement deals this spring after the NBA draft. Sneakers, power drinks, all of that. He is such a golden boy. Except he won’t be if the public finds out that the great love of his life is a guy named Bruce Weiner. So somebody wants to pay Brucie to go bye-bye. It’s got to be that, don’t you think?”

  I didn’t know. A sneaker manufacturer didn’t exactly sound like Bates, Winslow and Seymour’s usual sort of clientele. Then again, we were all working a bit harder these days. “Sara, I’m still wondering something. Why did you jump in my car?”

  She lowered her eyes. “Because I’m really worried about Brucie. The last time we talked he sounded incredibly down. Which is not a good thing. When nobody offered him a basketball scholarship he got super depressed and tried t-to hang himself in the basement. I’m the one who cut him down. The ambulance guy told me, like, one more minute and he’d have been a goner.” Sara took a ragged breath that was almost but not quite a sob. “I’ve left him ten messages on his cell. He hasn’t called me back or answered my e-mails. He didn’t tell me where he was going. Or what’s bothering him. Although it has to be about Charles. Having to sneak around and be invisible. It’s hard on Brucie. And so hard on Charles. That poor guy is under constant pressure to make every shot, ace every test, smile for every camera, be nice to everyone all day long. He’s on stage twenty-four/seven and he’s been hiding his sexual identity this whole time. Bruce wishes he’d come out. So do I. Charles would be such a trailblazer—the sports world’s first openly gay male superstar. But he’s afraid to. And the whole situation’s really getting to him. He had to be hospitalized overnight a couple of weeks ago.”

  “I read about it. They said he had food poisoning.”

  “Benji, it wasn’t anything Charles ate. His blood pressure spiked so high during practice that he passed out. He’s carrying around too much stress. It’s not healthy.”

  “Do his teammates know about Bruce?”

  “No way. No one connected with the team knows. Just a few people who they really trust. Charles trusts his mom, Velma, who’s a nurse at St. Luke’s Hospital. She raised Charles all by herself and is his best friend. She knows. So does Brucie’s roommate, Chris. He’s good people.”

  “Who else?”

  “Me. I know the real deal. And now so do you.”

  “Why me, Sara?”

  “I’m not stupid, Benji. If that law firm hired you to find him then that means somebody else must know. Which totally bites. But when I saw you at the bottom of the stairs just now, I was positive you were sent here to help him. I have good instincts that way. I’m very empathetic.”

  “Do you have any idea where Bruce might be?”

  “No, but Chris might. Although he’ll never tell you. Not if Brucie swore him to secrecy. I’m worried about my brother, Benji. He’s all alone somewhere and I’m afraid he might go into another downward spiral a-and…” She was fighting back tears. “He just sounded so down. He’s been that way ever since Christmas vacation.”

  “You mean because of Charles?”

  “Well, yeah. And no.”

  “Is something else bothering him?”

  “Maybe. There was this lady…”

  “What lady, Sara?”

  “Just some really strange lady. She came up to him at the mall when we were shopping for presents together. Asked if she could talk to him for a minute. The two of them walked away from me and started talking. Or she talked. Brucie hardly said a word. She was real freaky-deaky. Wild-eyed, waving her arms around in the air. Plus she was a total mess, you know? Like a homeless person. Had this stringy blond hair that I swear she hadn’t washed in weeks. And her clothes were all ratty. Brucie couldn’t get away from her fast enough. After she left I said, ‘What was that about?’”

  “And what did he say?”

  “Not a word. He got real quiet.”

  “Do you think he knew her?”

  “He definitely knew her.”

  “How old was this woman?”

  “Thirty. Maybe thirty-five. Whoever she was, she upset him. And he wouldn’t tell me why.”

  “Does he usually shut you out that way?”

  “We’re incredibly close. But, yeah, he can be pretty private sometimes.” Her half-smoked joint had gone cold. She stuffed it back in her pocket. “Benji, I’ll take the train into the city tomorrow morning instead of going to school. I’m going to help you find him.”

  “I don’t think so, Sara.”

  “But I have to help him.”

  “You already have.”

  “I want to do more. Please? I’ll
do anything.”

  “Will you back my play with Chris? I may have to come at him a little sideways.”

  “Okay, I don’t know what that means.”

  “It means don’t narc me out. Go with it. Are you up for that?”

  “Totally. I won’t let you down.”

  I took out a pen and two of my business cards. Gave her one card in case she needed to reach me. Had her write her cell number on the other for me.

  “You can take me back to the house of horrors now, Benji.”

  “Can you sneak back inside without your folks knowing?”

  “I do it all of the time,” she said with a toss of her long, shiny mane. “My parents are so clueless. I mean, they actually think they still belong together. How pathetic is that?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “NOW LET YOUR LIMBS GO HEAVY,” Svet commanded us as she paced back and forth in the basement community room of Congregation B’Nai Jacob. “Allow the prana to course through your body on this beautiful winter morning.”

  Eight of us had shown up at six o’clock on this blustery, not-so-beautiful morning. It was now an hour later and we’d arrived at savasana, or corpse pose, our exhausted limbs splayed out on our mats, sweat pouring from us. Russian-born Svet’s sunrise yoga class is a grueling workout. But stamina and core strength are important in my line of work. And so I drag myself out of bed before dawn three mornings a week.

  “Welcome the day,” she implored us, her thick accent and commanding bearing infusing her words with a vaguely martial aura. “You will feel peaceful. You will embrace your inner strength.”

  B’nai Jacob is the small neighborhood temple where my dad became a regular after the cancer took hold of him. It’s a squat stone building on West 102nd Street, midway between Amsterdam and Columbus, that looks like either an undersized firehouse or an oversized mausoleum. No windows face the street. In the final months of his life my dad took to attending the minyan service that’s held in the basement there every morning at 7:20. I went with him. After he died I gave it up.

  We closed out our practice by chanting “Om…” Then opened our eyes and headed up the stairs to greet the new day.

  The minyan regulars were already filing down those stairs, punctual as ever. A minyan requires no rabbi. Just ten congregants who share a desire to pray or reflect. At B’Nai Jacob, it’s also a social thing. The regulars coffee klatch for at least an hour. Many are retirees. As they came clomping down the stairs in their dark overcoats and heavy wool scarves, I waited to say hi to them. Morris Kantor and Jerry Granick had both been on the job with my dad. Milt Miller had been his CPA and still handles the books for my mom. Al Posner, a sarcastic old grouch who always smells like pickled herring, was my dad’s bookie.