Death's Little Helpers

by Peter Spiegelman

  “Not exactly Mr. Congeniality,” he said.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Still, you’d think a semifamous guy like him would have a few more friends.”

  “If he does, they stay well hidden.”

  I finished my coffee, left Starbucks, and headed south and west. I watched the cars and the sidewalks as I went, and thought some more about the smallness of Gregory Danes’s life, how sparsely peopled it was, how an absence of five— almost six— weeks could occasion so little notice and even less concern. I walked and thought about Danes’s isolation, and by the time I reached Ned’s I was somehow thinking about my own.

  Ned lives on Park Avenue in the low seventies, in the big old apartment we all grew up in. It was just after two when the doorman trotted out, held the big bronze door, and greeted me by name— a sure sign I’d been visiting too often. A tall slender couple waited in the marble lobby: Lauren and Keith.

  “Look at you, all prompt and everything,” Lauren said, and she kissed me on the cheek. She wore a green cotton sweater and baggy pants. Her black hair was loose and parted in the middle. She brushed it from her angular face, and it hung straight and glossy down her back. There was a faint tan across her cheeks and her strong pointed nose. Her green eyes narrowed slightly.

  “Where’s Jane?” she asked.

  “At the office,” I said, “arguing with lawyers.” I reached around her to shake hands with her husband. Keith Berger looked down from his six-foot-four elevation. He was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, and he still had his Rockefeller University ID clipped to his pocket. He ran a hand through his tangled brown hair and grinned.

  “You’re getting good at this,” he said. “You hardly grind your teeth at all now.”

  Lauren elbowed him and looked behind me. Liz came through the door. She wore a gray linen shift and a wry smile on her handsome face. She kissed Lauren and Keith and dug a finger in my ribs.

  “You still need some meat on you,” she said, and kissed me too. “Where’s Jane?” I told her, and she looked at me skeptically for a moment and nodded.

  Lauren checked her watch. “Let’s go up,” she said.

  My nephew Derek had just turned seven, and it was his birthday party. Not the lavish one for schoolmates; that was next week, at the Museum of Natural History. This was the more relaxed version, for family. And as family functions went, it wasn’t too bad.

  There was a tangle of children in the den— Derek, his younger brother, Alec, and a passel of Klein cousins, once and twice removed. They were in the degenerated stages of a game of Twister, and most of the action seemed to be about pulling one another’s socks off.

  The grown-ups were scattered through the living room and dining room and on the brick-paved terrace that runs around most of the apartment. There were twenty or so of them: my Uncle Daniel and Aunt Marion, my Uncle Ben, a few of their kids— my cousins— and their spouses, a couple of Janine’s siblings, my brother David and his unlovely wife. Elevator jazz was playing, and it got nicely lost in the sounds of ice on glass and silver on china. Someone handed me a glass of iced tea and a plate of food and started talking. I fastened a smile on my face and started nodding.

  I drifted through the big apartment, through the crowd of family, through the afternoon, like a new suitor: benign, agreeable, and mostly silent. But I had no complaints. No cross words were spoken, no snide remarks were made about keyholes, motel rooms, or hidden cameras, and no one offered anything close to career advice. Maybe we were getting somewhere, my family and I; maybe we were finding neutral ground. Or maybe it was just that I managed to avoid my brother David all afternoon.

  It was nearly four-thirty when Lauren and Keith came to get me. I was playing a video game with Derek and Alec and a bunch of other kids and failing badly at it, much to their great amusement. I kissed my nephews and we left.

  As family functions went, not too bad.

  I got home before five, with no one following me or staked out at the curb— at least that I could tell. I changed my clothes and went for a run before the streets got thick with Saturday-night crowds. There was a message from Jane when I got back. I took a pitcher from the fridge and poured a glass of water, and I listened to her tired voice on the telephone speaker with an odd mix of disappointment and relief.

  “I’m just finishing up, but I have another session with these clowns tomorrow, so I’m going straight to bed. I’ll be out early, so I’m not sure when I’ll see you. Sometime, I guess.”

  I drained my glass and felt the cold spread through my chest and into my stomach.

  “Sometime,” I said softly.

  13

  I’d worried that Christopher might have second thoughts about letting me into Danes’s apartment, but my worries were misplaced. He’d had a rough weekend, and the only thing on his mind on Monday afternoon was more money. We stood in the small alcove off the lobby and haggled a little over price and time. We finally agreed on three hundred for three hours, and he palmed me the key. I gave him half the cash.

  “It’s on twenty— Twenty-B,” he said. “Just be real quiet, bro, and be real fucking careful.” His body was stiff and his movements were jerky.

  “Any neighbors around?” I asked. Christopher’s eyes bounced around the lobby.

  “How the hell should I know?” he hissed. He wiped his hands on his uniform pants and softened his voice. “I don’t think so.”

  “Take a deep breath, Christopher. This will work out fine.” I rode to the twentieth floor alone.

  The doors opened onto a quiet corridor that made a square around the elevator shaft. The carpeting was thick and peach-colored, and the walls were ivory, with brass sconces. There were four doors in dark wood with shiny brass hardware. Apartment B was to my left, at eleven o’clock. There was a button on the doorframe and I pushed it. I heard a chime inside, but nothing else. I took a deep breath, put the key in the lock, and went in.

  I closed the door softly and stood listening. I heard ticking sounds in the ductwork, the faraway whoosh of traffic, and nothing else. I was in a rectangular foyer, carpeted in pale gray. The walls were white, and there were tiny halogen lights mounted flush in the ceiling. To my left was a powder room in white marble, and to my right was a closet with double doors. The air was stale and still, but scented with nothing more malignant than carpet and dust. My pulse was fast and my shoulders were tight, and I was filled with the tense uneasy thrill I always got when I creeped a house. I slowed my breathing and snapped on a pair of vinyl gloves.

  I started with a walkabout. Danes’s was a corner apartment, laid out in a broad V, with the living room at the apex. Off the living room, down one leg of the V, were the dining room and kitchen. Down the other were the master bedroom, a guest room, and an office.

  It wasn’t a huge place, but it was well appointed. The doors were solid and the walls were thick; the switches and fixtures were European, and the kitchen appliances were top-of-the-line. Except for the brushed-steel kitchen and the marble baths, all the rooms were painted white and carpeted in the same gray pile as the foyer.

  The rooms were furnished sparely with modern Italian pieces. Everything was sleek and aerodynamic-looking, and the colors were muted— grays and tans and olives— except for a cherry-red sofa in the living room, an acid-green armchair in the master bedroom, and a bank of neon-orange bookshelves in the office. The walls were mostly bare, and what was hanging was abstract and bland. The apartment looked not so much decorated as delivered whole from a showroom in Milan. I finished my walk in the kitchen and leaned against a counter and sighed.

  “Fucking Christopher,” I said aloud.

  The place had already been tossed, and not carefully. It wasn’t heavy-handed— the sofas hadn’t been upended and the beds hadn’t been gutted— but it was plain nonetheless. The apartment, though clean and neat throughout, was off-kilter, like a deck of cards that has been shuffled but not squared. The countertops were spotless and the wastebaskets were clean— even t
he soap dishes were pristine— but the closet doors were ajar and so were the drawers, and their contents, though hung and folded, were askew and misaligned. I lowered my expectations and started searching.

  The refrigerator was sparse but not bare. There were condiments, a carton of eggs, a bottle of seltzer, ground coffee, and a magnum of champagne inside, but no leftovers and nothing with a short shelf life. That could mean Danes had emptied it out before he left, or that his cleaner had, or it could mean he didn’t eat at home much. In New York City it was hard to tell. The freezer was empty but for the ice trays.

  There was nothing of interest in the drawers or cabinets. The china and silver were good but not extravagant, and the pots and pans and cutlery looked unused. The pantry was stocked with Swiss breakfast cereal, tea bags, canned soup, and expensive cookies, but with no hints of Danes’s whereabouts.

  There was nothing in the dining room besides an aluminum and glass dining table, eight spindly aluminum chairs, and a sideboard in bleached wood. The sideboard was empty. I moved on to the living room.

  The walls were glass at the crook of the V, with doors that opened onto a V-shaped terrace. The view was south and east, and the room was full of light. The thin clouds were close enough to touch. Besides the red sofa, the room was dominated by a gleaming black baby grand piano and a wall of built-in cabinets. I opened one of the cabinet doors. Inside was music.

  There were shelves of it, from floor to ceiling— CDs and vinyl, lots of vinyl. I slid some records out. They were all classical, and each was sleeved in clear plastic. Behind other doors was the stereo, though that was hardly an adequate term for it. It was a wall of black metal technology: a pre-amp and amplifier— with actual vacuum tubes— an impossibly complicated equalizer, a disc player, a separate disc changer, and a black-and-silver turntable that looked like something you could mill plutonium with.

  There were file-sized drawers at the base of the cabinets. I opened them and thumbed through the papers inside. It was sheet music, all for piano and organized by composer: Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart. The pages were well handled and annotated in pencil at the margins.

  I headed down the hallway to the master bedroom and froze. There were voices in the corridor outside. They were muffled by the thick walls, but they were men’s voices and they were coming closer. I heard keys jangle, and the voices got louder and someone laughed. Then the elevator doors opened with a clank, and the voices dimmed. They closed, and it was quiet. I started breathing again and felt sweat trickle down my back. My shoulders were stiff and I rolled them around and went into the bedroom.

  It was a large room, with not much in it: a glowing green chair like something from a Star Trek episode, a king-sized bed with built-in nightstands, and more built-in cabinetry. A door to my right led to a deep walk-in closet, and another led to the master bath. The bed was made up. The bedding was pale green and felt expensive. There were no clothes lying around. I started with the cabinets.

  Inside were a big flat-screen TV, a DVD player, and a cable box. Danes’s DVD collection was modest, nothing like his music wall and distinctly lower-brow: action flicks, science fiction, some frat-boy farces. They were sorted by genre and title.

  There were pictures on one of the nightstands, in silver frames: one of a younger Billy near the polar bear pool at the Central Park Zoo; another of Billy and Danes by the seal tank. It was blurry and looked like Danes had been holding the camera at arm’s length when he’d taken it.

  There was an alarm clock and a telephone on the other nightstand. I picked up the phone and hit the redial button. It rang four times and a heavily accented voice answered: “Garage.” I stayed on long enough to establish that it was the place Danes parked his car and then hung up. The nightstand drawers held little of interest: pens, notepads, a bag of cough drops, a package of tissues. The shelves underneath were empty but for a slim red restaurant guide and a TV remote. There was nothing under the bed or under the mattress. I went into the bathroom.

  It was a beige marble temple to the gods of hygiene and evacuation. There was a long counter with two fancy German sinks, a Japanese-style soaking tub, and a glass-walled shower with seating for six and more knobs, spouts, and hoses than a submarine. The toilet and bidet were sequestered in a little marble chapel of their own. They were low-slung and futuristic and seemed unsuited to human anatomy. The medicine cabinet was above the sinks, behind a mirrored panel. I pressed on it and it opened with a hiss.

  Inside was a collection of toiletries and drugs. The toiletries were all high-end, and the drugs were over-the-counter and unremarkable: aspirin, antacids, eye drops, and vitamins.

  There was a linen closet next to the soaking tub, stocked with sheets, thick towels, toilet paper, a first-aid kit, and a box of condoms. There was nothing exceptional about the condoms— they were a simple domestic brand, without bells or whistles— but they suggested that Danes had a sex life. I went back to the bedroom, to the big closet.

  It was actually a wood-paneled room, done up like a little slice of Paul Stuart. Clothes hung in double racks on either side, and like his collections of music and movies, Danes’s wardrobe was ruthlessly organized. Business attire on the left, casual clothing on the right, accompanied by appropriate belts and ties; everything sorted by season and color. His shoes were mustered in neat rows on shelves below the hanging clothes. There were empty hangers on the casual side, and gaps in the platoon of casual shoes— at least two pairs were gone.

  There was a wide bureau at the back of the closet, with built-in shelves above it; a set of brown leather luggage was on the highest one. The bags were empty, but there seemed to be one missing from the set— something larger than an airplane carry-on but smaller than a trunk. I put the bags back and went through the bureau.

  The top drawer held hardware: watches, cuff links, collar stays, belt buckles. The others held clothing: underwear in one drawer, socks in another, pajamas in the next. Then I opened the bottom drawer.

  They were in matching sets— pale blue, pale gray, green, maroon, and black— all the same expensive Italian brand: bras and panties, neatly folded. I didn’t think they were Danes’s size. Along with the lingerie, there was a woman’s green polo shirt in the drawer, a pair of faded jeans, and the faintest trace of a musky scent. Beneath the jeans, there was a green leather clutch bag with a silver clasp. The leather was soft and had a matte finish. The clasp was tarnished. Inside the bag was a leaky blue pen, a folded credit card receipt, a dusty roll of mints, and three quarters. I unfolded the receipt. It was from a little French restaurant on Lexington, a few blocks from Danes’s apartment, and it was over a year old. The print was faded but still legible in the light, and so was the signature scrawled across the bottom: Linda Sovitch.

  I let out a deep breath and looked at the receipt for a while. Then I folded it and put it back in the purse and put the purse back in the drawer.

  I checked my watch. I had another hour before Christopher started going into cardiac arrest. The guest room went quickly. It had a double bed, a nightstand, a bureau, an armchair, and a TV— and nothing of any interest to me. I moved on to the office.

  It was a small room, with narrow windows at one end. There was a sleek metal desk and a matching credenza on the left-hand wall, the orange bookshelves on the right, and barely room left over for the leather swivel chair. My predecessor’s tracks were plain there— in the gaping file drawers and open cabinet doors and in the books that lay like toppled dominoes on the shelves. I started with the desk.

  The desktop had nothing on it but equipment: a telephone and an answering machine at one end and, at the other, a flat-screen monitor and a mouse, both hooked to a docking station for a laptop. But there was no laptop in sight. I followed cables from the docking station to a cabinet in the credenza and found a printer-copier-fax combo and a modem, but still no laptop. It was impossible to know if it had left with Danes or afterward.

  A blinking light on the answering machine caught my eye. I p
icked up the telephone. It had caller ID, and I scrolled through the recorded numbers. There were fifty of them, all the phone could hold. I thought for a moment about taking the phone and the answering machine with me but decided against it. There was a chance— maybe a good one— that this case could become a police investigation. If it did, the cops would take a very dim view of my walking off with evidence, so dim they might walk off with my license in return. I got out my pad and pen and sat down in the swivel chair.

  It took me fifteen minutes to copy down the caller ID information from Danes’s phone and another ten to listen to the dozen messages on his answering machine. I wrote down the names of the callers and when they called. All the messages were from people I knew: Nina Sachs, Irene Pratt, Dennis Turpin, Giselle Thomas, and Nancy Mayhew. The wording was different, but the content was all the same: “Where are you? Call me.” One of the last calls was from Billy. It began with a long breathing silence after the beep, disappointment perhaps, at getting the machine. When he finally spoke, his voice was a choked mix of hurt and anger and low expectations bitterly fulfilled.

  “You were supposed to pick me up,” he said. And then, after a long pause: “Are you ever going to fucking call?”

  Billy’s message was fairly recent, just over a week old, and none of the messages went back much more than three weeks. I put my pad away. I pressed the redial button on the phone and after two rings got a Chinese restaurant that I knew was around the corner, on Third Avenue. Someone asked for my order and I hung up.

  The desk had a center drawer, and I pulled it out and put it on my lap. Inside were paper clips, rubber bands, a roll of postage stamps, and— in the back— Danes’s passport. It was dog-eared and swollen, full of stamps from countries in Europe and Asia and the Caribbean, and its presence here meant that Danes wasn’t in any of those places. At the back of the drawer was a business card. The paper was heavy stock and the print was black and sober-looking. FOSTER-ROYCE RESEARCH. JUDITH PEARSON, ACCOUNT MANAGER. I put the card in my pocket and the drawer back in the desk and turned to the credenza.