“To ask me why I’d stopped looking for his father.” Ines stepped back, as if balance had deserted her. “I told him he’d have to talk to Nina about that. Or to you.” She puffed on her cigarette and shook her head.
“I am sorry,” she said softly. “Nina should not have … It was a mistake to say that to Guillermo.”
“Maybe you should tell her.”
Ines stabbed her cigarette into the ashtray and picked up her glass and drank half of what was in it. Her laugh was short and unpleasant. “Perhaps you have noticed that Nina is a difficult person to tell things.”
“If not you, then who?”
She shook her head. “It is complicated.”
“Apparently.”
Ines looked at me sharply. “I can do some things for Guillermo, but I am not his parent. I could teach him to use the toilet and to throw a ball. I could show him how to ride a bicycle. I can be sure I am here when he arrives from school, so he does not come to an empty apartment. I can know when he is late … or when he is truant. Those things I can do, detective, but I am not his mother, and I cannot tell his mother what is best for him. On some topics, my opinions are irrelevant.” Her lovely oval face sagged and she drank from her wineglass again. “Do you have children?”
“No.”
“Then you cannot know the complications,” she said, and smiled bitterly. “Perhaps neither one of us can.”
The wineglass was empty and Ines’s eyes were clouded. She leaned heavily on the counter and rested her head on her arms. I saw the razor-straight part in her black hair and I saw her shoulders quiver. There was no traffic in the street beyond the big windows, and it was very quiet in the gallery. There was a new exhibit hanging— massive canvases with large, vaguely floral shapes in deep purples and reds and pinks— and I stood and looked at them while I waited for Ines to raise her head. After a couple of minutes she did.
“I must check on him now,” she said. She took her heavy key ring from the counter, and I followed her to the street. She locked the glass doors and looked at me. “You should not be here when Nina gets home.”
22
I spent the rest of the afternoon at home, waiting for word from Neary and thinking about Billy. I thought about the tension in his narrow frame as he looked down from the steps of my building, and of the hurt and confusion etched around his eyes. I remembered what he’d said about his mother, and how, when he knew he’d said too much, he’d made excuses for her and looked to me for agreement. I recalled Ines’s advice to him— to simply fade away— and I clenched my fists. I thought about parents and children, and about how kids survive and at what price. I thought and I waited, but no answers came to me and Neary never called.
Jane appeared late Monday night, bleary-eyed and subdued, and bearing Indian food. She hung her suit jacket on a chair and kicked off her shoes, and we ate mostly in silence. When she did speak it was in angry fragments about her deal, which had hit an eleventh-hour snag over her participation in the company after its sale. The buyers wanted her to run things for two more years, but Jane wasn’t interested. They were insistent and threatening to make it a deal-breaker; Jane was getting mad.
“I don’t come with the copier and the paper clips,” she muttered over her tandoori. “I’m not a piece of fucking office furniture.” She got tired of talking about it halfway through dinner and flicked on the television. She surfed through the channels and leafed angrily through the pages of another fat travel magazine and finished her meal in silence. I carried the trash to the chute down the hall, and when I got back Jane was sitting on the sofa. The travel magazine was in her lap and the TV was off. She was staring at me.
“So, have you figured out what you want to do about this vacation thing yet?” she asked. Her words were quick and taut, as if she’d had too much coffee, and her eyes— though tired in her tired face— were looking for something. Like a fight.
“What do you mean?”
“You said there was a chance your client might reconsider over the weekend— that your job might come back. Are you still waiting for that to happen, or has something else come along?”
I sighed. “Is this really the best time? Don’t you want to get some sleep?”
“Sleep’s overrated,” Jane snorted. “I just want to know where I stand with this trip. How much time can that take?”
I went into the kitchen and poured a glass of water. I drank some of it and cleared my throat and looked at her over the counter. “We’ve talked about this. We—”
“No, we haven’t. We’ve talked around it— for weeks now. Now I actually want to talk about it.” Her dark eyes narrowed and color rose in her face. “Did your job come back?”
“Not exactly.”
“That’s nice and direct,” she said. Her laugh was short. “Is there an explanation to go with that?”
“Sachs hasn’t changed her mind, but there was a breakin at Pace-Loyette over the weekend, in Danes’s office. I’m looking into that.”
“They hired you?”
“Not exactly.”
Jane’s brows came together. “Has anyone hired you?”
“I told Irene Pratt I’d look into it. And I told Nina’s kid, Billy, that I’d keep looking for his father.”
“So they’re your clients now?”
“It’s more of a pro bono thing.”
Jane shook her head. A tiny smile, equal parts incredulous and bitter, played on her perfect lips. “Pro bono is right. The question is: good for who, them or you?”
“They need—”
“What do you need, John? What is it that you want?”
I put my glass down. “I’ve told you, I don’t think a trip is a bad idea, I just—”
“I’m not talking about the trip anymore,” Jane said. The silence afterward was ringing.
“I was starting to suspect that,” I said, after a while.
Jane’s face darkened. “Don’t be funny,” she said quietly. “Not now.”
“What do you want me to say, Jane?”
Jane looked down at her stockinged feet for a while. Then she raised her head and locked her eyes on mine. “You can say what it is we’re doing here, for starters. You can tell me what this is supposed to be. Whether it’s just something convenient, that fits into the time you can’t fill up with work, or … something else.” Jane’s fingers were white at the edges of the magazine, and a pulse was beating quickly on her neck.
“I’ve never thought of this as just handy,” I said softly.
She took a deep breath and dragged a hand through her cropped hair. “And was there some way I was supposed to know that? Was there a sign I missed? Maybe it’s the lack of sleep— or maybe I’m just no good at parsing the oblique stuff— because the only signal I get from you says convenience.”
I drank some more water, but it didn’t relieve the churning in my gut. My ears were full of a rushing sound. “Convenience is a two-way street,” I said.
Jane’s mouth tightened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that your work is important to you, and you like your life organized a certain way, and all of this is pretty convenient for you too. It fits nicely into what little free time you give yourself. It’s close to home and to the office, and—”
“You really think that’s why I’m here, because of … geography?” she asked. Her magazine had fallen to the floor but she didn’t seem to notice. Her face was very still.
I shrugged. “I think we’re alike, Jane. Both of us like things neat, and we like them on our own terms.”
Jane looked at me, and after a while she sighed. “I think that’s facile bullshit,” she said. “And what’s more, I think you know it.” She went to the table and picked up her jacket and slipped her feet into her shoes. “I think you know there’s a difference between being dedicated to your work and hiding inside it. And an even bigger difference between being self-sufficient and … whatever it is that you are.”
She slung her ba
g over her shoulder and turned when she reached the door.
“But you were right about one thing,” she said. “This wasn’t a good time to talk.” She closed the door softly behind her.
I ran long on Tuesday morning, and worked my way through the weight stations at the gym a few times, and stood under the shower afterward until the wobbly feeling in my limbs passed. I called Irene Pratt from a diner on Eighth Avenue, over my first cup of coffee. She answered right away, but when I told her who it was she said she couldn’t talk and to try her later. I finished my oatmeal and read the paper, and over my last cup of coffee, I called again. She kept me on hold for five minutes.
“Just checking in,” I said, when she came back on the line.
“Uh-huh. Well … thanks, I guess.”
“Everything all right with you?”
“Me? I’m fine— great, in fact.”
“Any more signs of that guy?”
“I haven’t seen anything or anybody. In fact, I’m thinking now that I was just being paranoid.”
“The breakin wasn’t paranoia.”
“Yeah, but the business of people watching me—”
“A black Grand Prix followed me too. I don’t think you imagined that.”
“How do you know? There are probably hundreds of cars like that in New York— maybe thousands.”
I was quiet for a moment. “What’s wrong, Irene?” I asked finally.
“Nothing— nothing’s wrong,” she said. “I just need to get some work done, that’s all. I think I was being paranoid, and now I need to cut it out and get back to work.”
“I won’t keep you, then. I’ll call if I hear anything.”
“Don’t bother,” she said quickly. “I mean, not on my account. Like I said, I’m fine and I just want to get back to work. I don’t want to think about this stuff anymore.”
“I can understand that, but these guys may have other ideas.”
An edge came into Pratt’s voice. “These guys? You talk like there’s some big conspiracy, but I’m telling you I’m not sure I even saw anything, okay? Now let me get back to work.” The line went dead.
I pocketed the phone and the waitress dropped a check on the table. I sat there and looked at it and thought about Pratt. On Monday morning she’d been scared and worried and had taken comfort in hearing from me. Twenty-four hours later, she wanted me to go away. I had no idea why.
Plenty of people have taken sudden dislikes to me before, but I didn’t think that was Pratt’s problem. Fear was a possibility. Fear of getting any more involved in whatever was going on, perhaps, or of having anything more to do with me. Fear of Turpin finding out. Fear of losing her job. Pratt had had a bad case of nerves when I’d seen her on Saturday, and I was willing to bet it had only gotten worse and more corrosive with each passing day. Maybe she figured to put it all behind her with a hearty dose of denial. Or maybe she just had a lot of work to do.
I paid the bill and walked home. And kept right on walking, past my building. I didn’t feel like sitting in an empty apartment just then, or hearing the echoes of Jane’s voice, or the silence upstairs, so I headed east— to Union Square— and spent much of the day roaming in a very large bookstore. I wandered the science fiction and the history aisles, and read some essays on contemporary politics and world affairs, and when I was sufficiently disheartened I drank a lot of coffee.
I checked my voice mail when I got home. There was nothing from Neary, but there was a message from Paul Gargosian.
“Don’t know if you still want to talk, but I’m home now. You have my number.” I did and I used it, and left him yet another message. Then I checked my e-mail. At long last, Gregory Danes’s phone records had arrived. I clicked on the attachments and scanned through the reports and felt my heart sink.
“Shit,” I whispered.
Neary called on Wednesday morning, and I was downtown in twenty minutes. DiLillo and Sikes were sitting on his office sofa. I leaned on the windowsill and Neary nodded at DiLillo.
“There’s surveillance at all the locations,” she began. “Four out of four. They’re using a lot of people, and they must be burning through a lot of cash. They’re running three eight-hour shifts at each site, and a round-robin deal with the cars, switching them from site to site, so the same one doesn’t show up at the same place two days in a row. As far as we could tell, the surveillance is static; we don’t think they’re tailing anybody. But we’d have to work it with more guys to be sure.” She held up a fat manila folder. “I’ve got the stills for you.”
I opened the folder and leafed through it. It was full of photographs, of men and cars. There were crisp daylight shots and grainy nighttime ones, from long distances and from close up and at odd angles, but all of them were clear enough to ID faces and read plate numbers. The men in the pictures were of various types: white and black and Hispanic, young and old, fat and lean. They didn’t look like brain surgeons, but then again they didn’t look like junkies or flashers or racetrack touts, either. Except for a certain wariness around their eyes, they were a mostly unremarkable bunch. There were a lot of different men in the pictures, and I stopped counting after a dozen. I didn’t recognize any of them, though I saw a black Grand Prix, a brown Cavalier, a dirty red hatchback, and a light-blue van that all looked familiar.
I was quiet for a while, and the three of them looked at me. My jaw felt tight and I heard a pulse thrumming in my ears. It wasn’t a surprise; I’d known they were out there. Still, it galled.
“At my place too?” I said. My voice sounded far away.
DiLillo nodded. “Uh-huh,” she said. “But they’re being real careful about it, if it’s any consolation. At least two cars, and they never park on your block.”
“Who are they?” I asked.
“We’re still working on IDs for some of them, but what we have so far is that they’re all independents— small-time, one-man shops, like you. No offense.”
“We think they’re subcontracting,” Neary said.
“For who?”
Neary looked at Sikes, who gazed out the window as he spoke. “I know a few of these guys, and one of them owes me. I braced him last night. He doesn’t know the client— he swears up and down he doesn’t— but he knows the prime contractor, the guy that signs his check. It’s Marty Czerka.”
My brow furrowed. “Who’s that?”
Sikes shook his head regretfully, and he and DiLillo exchanged sour smiles.
“Marty?” DiLillo said. “Marty’s the guy who put the sleaze in sleazeball.”
Sikes’s laugh was almost a whisper. “Yeah. The guy who put the douche in douche bag.”
DiLillo giggled. “The guy who put the fat in fat fuck.”
Neary shook his head. “Thanks,” he said to them. “That was helpful.” He turned to me. “Marty’s a PI. He’s got a small agency, him and a brother-in-law and an idiot nephew, all in an office on Canal Street. About a thousand years ago he was on the job uptown, working vice. His fifteen minutes of fame came when he busted some aging rock star in a suite at the Carlyle, with a carry-on full of coke, two semiautomatics, and an underage hooker with a busted arm. Got Marty on television and everything. It took him all of a week to fuck it up.
“First, he gets caught peddling pictures of the bust to some supermarket tabloid. Then another of those rags claims he promised them an exclusive on the photos, and they sue the shit out of him. And finally it comes out that Marty and the hooker have a longterm thing going, and the two of them maybe set up the whole show. He’s lucky they didn’t fry his large ass, but as it was that was his ticket to the private sector.
“Since then he’s made a specialty of any slimy thing that comes along: ugly divorce cases, ugly custody fights, ugly sexual harassment claims— a real dog parade. And whatever side of the shitpile Marty is on, it’s never the right one. He’s a fixture in some circles, the way Fresh Kills Landfill is, only Marty smells worse. I’m surprised you’ve never run across him.”
&nbs
p; “I don’t breathe the same rarefied air as you big corporate types,” I said. “Who’s he working for now?”
Neary shook his head. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
I turned to Sikes. “Your pal didn’t know, but what about these other guys? Think one of them might have a name?”
Sikes lifted a skeptical brow. “I’d guess Marty would keep that card pretty close to the vest; he wouldn’t want any of these geniuses going direct to the client and cutting him out of the deal. But shit does happen, especially in a group this big; the hens get together and get to gossiping. I wouldn’t bet on anybody talking, though— not without some serious leverage.”
“They’re all such good soldiers?” I asked.
DiLillo shook her head. “Marty buys a lot of freelance help, so he’s a regular meal ticket for a lot of these guys. They won’t want to fuck that up. And half of what they’re selling is their ability to keep their mouths shut. Nobody wants a rep for being a talker; it sucks for business.”
She had a point. “Anybody have leverage with one of these guys?” I asked.
“I shot my wad yesterday,” Sikes said. DiLillo shook her head.
“Think some cash would motivate them?”
Sikes smiled. “They’ll all take your money— no doubt about it— the problem is knowing who to give it to and what the hell you’re getting in return. Finding that out could be expensive.”
“How about Czerka himself?”
“You never know with Marty,” Neary said. “He’s a creep, and as a general rule you’ve got to figure he’s always for sale. On the other hand, he can’t afford to burn too many bridges. I think with Marty it’ll depend on how much he’s making off the client, what he thinks the blowback would be from burning him, and how much you’re willing to grease the rails.”
I thought about that for a while. “Surveillance still going?” I asked.
“Until you say otherwise,” Neary said.
“A couple of days more, then.” I looked at Sikes. “You think that friend of yours will give Czerka a heads-up?”
Death's Little Helpers Page 25
