Death's little helpers jm-2

by Peter Spiegelman

  I took a deep breath, to dissipate the anger that had clotted in my throat. “Just a little something you neglected to mention, Ninathat your divorce action was reopened four months ago, after ten years. That Greg is fighting you for custody of Billy.”

  Sachs screwed her face into an impatient grimace and waved her hand. “Yeah… and? What’s the big deal?” she said. “And what the fuck is it to you anyway? I hired you to look for Greg, not investigate me.” I took another deep breath and bit back my first response, which began with the words, Listen, you stupid shit. When I spoke, my voice was level and quiet.

  “I am looking for him, Nina. One of the things you do in a missing persons case is look at any legal actions the missing person is involved in, the theory being that they might provide clues as to why the person disappeared- or why someone made him disappear.”

  Nina laughed unpleasantly. “Is that what’s got you hot and bothered? You think I made Greg disappear?” She laughed some more. “And then what, I hired you to throw the cops off? Jesus, March, that’s some conspiracy theory you’ve got there.”

  “What I’m saying- right now- is that you’ve withheld material information. Do I wonder why, and what else you might be holding back? Sure I do. And am I annoyed? More than a little. This stuff is hard enough without your games. But as far as conspiracy theories go, I haven’t gotten started yet. And rest assured, mine are nothing compared to what the cops will throw at you if you screw around with them this way. You can drop me a postcard and tell me all about it.”

  Nina reached for the tumbler of wine and took a long swallow. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “That means I’m out of here, Nina- right now- unless you stop bullshitting me.”

  We stared at each other, and neither one of us blinked. Finally, she shook her head.

  “What do you want from me? I’ve got no big secret. I told you all I know about where Greg is. The other stuff… I didn’t think it was worth mentioning. Greg’s been pissing and moaning about custody on and off for years. The only thing that changed recently was his filing suit. But it’s not like that’s going anywhere. That’s just Greg, grandstanding. We were talking about it. We were going to agree to something… just like all the other times.”

  “What other times?”

  “The other times Greg’s had a hair up his ass about custody. The other times he’s gotten it in his head that he doesn’t like how the kid’s growing up or that he wants to play full-time dad. He gets himself twisted up, we yell at each other for a while, and we agree to something.” Nina pulled hard on her B amp;H. The ash glowed orange, and the cigarette shrank before my eyes.

  “What didn’t he like about the way Billy was growing up?” I asked, after a while.

  Nina made a wry face. “Figure it out, March. His only son and heir growing up with two dykes? And he’s always had it in for Nes. He’s convinced himself she was the reason our marriage ended, which is crap. Things had gone to hell for us long before I met Nes, and she and I were nothing more than friends when I split with Greg. But he never listens.” Nina took another drink, and I thought some more.

  “And when it’s come up in the past, you’ve agreed- what?” Nina got up and walked to the little stereo in the corner. She squatted down and rifled through a stack of CDs on the floor and swapped The Ramones for something else. She turned up the volume: Bryan Ferry. She stood and turned back to me.

  “We agreed that Greg could see more of him- at least while his interest lasted.”

  “It didn’t, usually?”

  “It didn’t ever. But what the hell. We agreed.”

  “And what did you get out of it?” I asked. Nina Sachs frowned at me.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You just gave him more time with Billy out of the goodness of your heart?”

  Sachs’s face got white and hard, and her mouth became a tight line. “You have no idea what it’s like raising a kid in this city, trying to make a living as a painter. Money gets tight, and if Greg bumps up the child support payments it helps. Am I supposed to be ashamed of that? Does that mean I’m holding him up? Or that I’m selling my kid, for chrissakes?” She took a hit off her cigarette and breathed out a boiling column of smoke. “You have a lot of fucking nerve, for the hired help.”

  I nodded absently. “If this time was no different, what made Danes reopen the custody suit?”

  “He was in a bad mood about everything, he was mad at the whole fucking world, and he was complaining about money.”

  “So he’d rather spend it on a lawsuit?”

  Sachs shrugged. “Go figure,” she said. She ran her fingers along the base of her neck. “Maybe he thinks he can’t do anything about his career being in the tank, but he can do something about Billy. Maybe he thinks this is a battle he can win.” She sighed heavily and shook her head. “How do I know what goes on in his mind?”

  She sat at the drafting table, stubbed out her cigarette, and rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers. Then she picked up a pencil and started sketching. From the little stereo, Bryan Ferry crooned. I could feel at the time There was no way of knowing…p›

  I watched her and listened to the music and we sat that way for what seemed a long time.

  “Did you hire me to find Danes, or to find dirt on him for this custody thing?” I asked finally.

  Nina let out an exasperated breath. “I told you, I don’t give a shit about the custody case. There isn’t going to be a goddamn custody case.” She took a long drag on her cigarette and shook her head. “Look, the sad fact is Greg’s still my main source of income. If something has… if that’s going to change, I need to know. I hired you to find him; that’s it. Now, are you coming or going on this?”

  “Will you call the cops?”

  “Jesus, you don’t let up.” Nina sighed. “Is that a requirement for you to keep working?”

  “The requirement is that you don’t lie to me, Nina, and that you don’t hold out. Calling the cops is just good advice.”

  She looked down at her sketch and nodded. “I’m not lying to you, and I’ll think about the cops,” she said softly. She picked up a stick of charcoal and moved her arm in broad strokes.

  I looked at the top of her auburn head. “Okay,” I said. I left her apartment and made for the street.

  I went past the gallery, rounded the corner, and collided with Billy Danes. He was leaning against the building, smoking a cigarette. He staggered backward and embers went flying.

  “Goddammit,” he whined, and turned his mother’s irritated look on his broken cigarette and then on me. I brushed ash off my sleeve and Billy recognized me. “Oh, shit,” he said.

  “Hey, no need to apologize, Bill,” I said.

  He snorted. “Apologize? You’re the one that crashed into me, in case you didn’t notice.”

  I laughed. “And saved you from an early death by doing it.”

  Billy rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right,” he said. He was wearing baggy fatigue pants and a baseball jersey with a mournful-looking manga character on it. He fished in his pants pockets for another smoke, found one, and looked up at me defiantly. “Got the lecture ready?” He looked maybe ten.

  I shrugged. “Not me.” He snorted again, and lit the cigarette with a yellow plastic lighter. I gestured at his T-shirt. “Cowboy Bebop?” I asked.

  He nodded, grudgingly. “So, what- you’re some kind of comic freak? Kind of old, aren’t you? What do you do, hang in the stores and check out the little boys?”

  “Not exactly. How about you, do you collect?” Billy shrugged. “Anything in particular?” I asked.

  He puffed on the cigarette, suppressed a cough, and shrugged again. “Horror, mostly- old school stuff. House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Dark Mansion- that kind of thing.”

  I nodded. “How about The Unexpected or Vault of Evil?” I asked. Billy’s face lit for a second and then regained its indifferent faA§ade.

  “Yeah, like that,”
he said, and coughed again.

  He was staring out across the water and I stared with him.

  “She take a chunk out of your ass too?” he asked after a while. His voice was softer and there was weary knowledge in with the levity.

  “Just a small one- not so I can’t walk or anything,” I said.

  Billy laughed. “Probably ’cause she’d already eaten,” he said.

  I chuckled, and we both were quiet again.

  “She’s not always this way,” he said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “She’s got shit on her mind. A show coming up and… shit with my dad.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You looking for him?”

  “I am.”

  “You find him yet?”

  “Not yet.” There were footsteps on the pavement. Ines Icasa came around the corner and stopped. She looked at Billy and he sent the cigarette arcing into the darkness with a practiced flick. He backed up a little.

  “What are you doing, Guillermo?” she said. Her voice was tight with anger.

  “Nothing- just talking to him.” The whine was back in his voice.

  Ines shook her head. “Never mind. I know what you are doing, and we will talk about it later. Now get back inside and finish your schoolworks, please.” Billy started to speak, but Ines cut him off. Her voice was sharp. “Now, Guillermo.” Billy snorted and muttered and shuffled around the corner.

  Ines looked at me. Her lithe body was tense, and her smooth face looked harder than stone. “What are you doing?” she asked. Her dark eyes were hot.

  I felt like backing up too, but I didn’t. “We were talking,” I said, “mostly about comic books. I considered lecturing him on the evils of smoking, but I thought better of it.”

  Ines looked at me for a while, and the tension seemed to drain from her face and her body. She sighed and leaned against the building. “I apologize, detective,” she said. She reached into a hip pocket and brought out a crumpled pack of Gitanes and a slim gold lighter. She inhaled deeply and breathed smoke into the sky. “I am a hypocrite, no?” The wind kicked up and she wrapped her arms across her chest. “It has been a trying evening.”

  “So I gather. What was the fight about?”

  Ines sighed, and ran the toe of her shoe across the uneven pavement. A gypsy cab passed. It dropped a loud group in front of the club on the next block. Ines watched it pull away.

  “About his school,” she said. “He goes to a private school in the Heights, a very good one, but he is not happy there. It is difficult for him- not the schoolworks but socially. There are many gifted students there, but Guillermo is one of the youngest. He is young in many ways and… a little angry. He does not make friends easily.” She took another pull on the cigarette and exhaled with a quavering sigh.

  “He thinks he would prefer a different school, perhaps a boarding school. Nina does not agree. She would like him to remain close to home. It is an old argument.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I also would like him close to home. But I am not certain we can give him all that he needs. We try, but I think that Guillermo is looking for a life more… predictable than what he has. More conventional, perhaps.” Another puff, another sigh. “He is at an age where that has become important to him.”

  “What does his father think?”

  Ines stiffened beside me. “I would have no idea of that, detective,” she said. She stubbed her cigarette on the side of the building and walked around the corner.

  Jane bought me dinner that night at Viva!, a high-end Mexican place in Chelsea with mango-colored walls and a pretty, peripatetic clientele. At nine-thirty it was filled with music and clatter and a thousand chirping conversations. We sat beneath a mural of grinning skulls and feathered snakes and ominous sunflowers and ate- salmon roasted with fennel for me and chicken mole for Jane. Ours was the quietest table in the place.

  Jane was pale and there were shadows beneath her large black eyes. The little she said about her day and her deal was punctuated by pauses and yawns.

  “Am I keeping you up?” I asked.

  “Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m getting tired of those guys. I’ll be glad when this job is done.” She drank some water and picked at her chicken. “Bad time in Brooklyn?”

  “More weird than bad,” I said, and I told her about my talk with Nina Sachs, and with Billy and Ines afterward. There was a little frown on her bow-shaped mouth the whole time I spoke and her eyes never left me.

  “The kid sounds like a character,” she said when I’d finished.

  “He’s that.”

  “You feel bad for him.” It wasn’t a question.

  “It’s a bad age, caught between childhood and whatever comes next. You want to fit in but you don’t know with what. You want to jump right out of your skin a lot of the time, and maybe there’s some part of you that knows it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

  “And Billy’s got problems on top of that. He’s smarter than the other kids, and smaller, and his parents have been trading him like a poker chip for who knows how long. As far as I can tell, Ines is the closest thing he has to a grown-up in his life- the closest thing he’s got to a parent.”

  Jane nodded. Her frown deepened a little and a small line appeared between her eyes. “Do you like him?” she asked.

  I had to think about it. Certainly he was an irritable, awkward mix, of fear and anger and complaint and suspicion. And his attempts at teenage cool were still far off the mark, resulting mostly in a sullen truculence. But that’s not all he was. I remembered the manic pleasure in his voice when I’d heard him over the telephone, calling Ines to dance. I recalled the spark of interest in his face when we’d talked about comic books, and his deadpan delivery when he’d shared his opinion of Batman. And I could still hear his earnest tone when he’d explained his mother’s anger to me- and maybe to himself- and his gravity when he’d asked if I was searching for his father. I nodded slowly at Jane.

  “I guess I have to,” I said. “He reminds me of myself at that age.”

  “Unloved and unlovable?” Her tone was light, but she wasn’t smiling.

  “And wary,” I said, “and untethered.” Jane looked at me but said nothing.

  The waiter cleared our plates and left us with dessert menus. We read them in silence.

  “You want something?” I asked.

  “To go home,” she said.

  Peter Spiegelman

  JM02 – Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home

  10

  Jane woke late the next morning and scrambled, cursing, out of bed, into her clothes and upstairs to her apartment. There was bumping and thudding from above, followed by high heels, followed by silence. I pulled the sheet around me and closed my eyes and tried to find a warm spot on Jane’s pillow, but it was no good. Her heat had dissipated and I was awake.

  I showered and shaved, pulled on a pair of khakis, and took my time over a bowl of oatmeal and the newspaper. Then I carried my coffee mug to the table, along with the telephone and a notepad.

  The lawyer running Gregory Danes’s renewed custody fight with Nina Sachs was Reggie Selden, and he was a big deal in New York divorce circles. The woman who answered his telephone reminded me of this and assured me that my call would go no farther until I told her who I was and what I wanted. When I did she laughed unpleasantly.

  “Our understanding is that Ms. Sachs is represented by Margaret Lind,” she said. “Until we hear otherwise, any communications you have for Mr. Selden should come through her office.”

  “I just want to know if anyone in your office has spoken to Gregory Danes lately. I-”

  She cut me off. “That’s our policy, and discussing it with me won’t change things. I’m sorry I can’t help you.” I somehow doubted her sincerity. I finished my coffee and checked my watch and hoped that Anthony Frye would be a little more forthcoming.

  I was in front of 60 Wall Street at eleven o’clock sharp.
At eleven twenty-five, Frye came through the revolving door. He had a cell phone to his ear and he was talking quickly and looking at the pavement. I recognized the English accent and the sardonic tone.

  “Maureen?… Yes, it’s Tony… Yes, I know I’m late, and I’ll be later still, as I’m just now getting into a taxi. So tell them for me, will you? About thirty minutes, traffic willing. Thanks, Mo.” He put his phone away and shook his head and began to cast about for a cab.

  Frye was a slight handsome man of thirty or so. His dark hair was long and unruly, and his small regular features were unblemished except for the shadowed pouches beneath his eyes. He was rumpled but expensively so, in a gray suit, a red-striped shirt, and a blue tie worn loose.

  “Frye?” I asked. He was only slightly surprised.

  “Oh, Christ- you’re March, aren’t you?” he said, smiling. I nodded. “And I’m vastly late, I know. Sorry.”

  “No problem,” I said, “if we can still talk.”

  Frye nodded absently. “As long as you don’t mind doing it in the back of a cab.”

  We walked to the corner of Wall and Water, where Frye scared the hell out of me by wading into traffic and waving spastically at every cab in sight. It was an odd technique, and risky, but it was effective. Five minutes later we were rattling northward on the FDR Drive. I was asking questions and, in between listening to messages on his cell phone, Frye was answering them. He was less fond of Danes than Irene Pratt was, and more blunt about it.

  “How long did you work for Danes?”

  “Too long,” Frye said ruefully. “Five years.”

  “I’ve heard he can be a difficult guy.”

  Frye smiled. “Whoever told you that was a master of understatement.”

  “From which I gather you didn’t get along with him.”

  “That depends on your yardstick,” he said. “By the standards of normal human interaction, I’d have to say we got on abysmally. By the Greg standard, though, I suppose I did quite well with him- better than most, in fact.” He pushed a key on his phone and held it to his ear again.

  “Which meant what, in practical terms?”