JM02 - Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home

by Peter Spiegelman

  16

  “You’ve got to take it outside, sir,” the security guard said. “And there’s no loitering anywhere on this block.” He was six-foot-five and about 275 pounds, and his maroon blazer was strained to tearing across his shoulders. Of the dozen or so armed guards in the stone lobby of BNN’s fortresslike West Side studios, he was the most petite. He held his big arms wide and made a little pushing motion in the air, in the direction of the revolving doors. I was not inclined to argue. Besides, I was used to it; people had been telling me to get lost for much of the day. I walked over to Broadway and found a coffee place.

  I’d spent the morning trying to reach Linda Sovitch and failing miserably at it. Her supersecret cell phone number was no longer in service, and if she’d gotten a new one it was either not in her name or not yet for sale on the gray market. The number I’d found for Lefcourt’s place in Greenwich, Connecticut, was answered by an officious-sounding woman who’d informed me that unsolicited phone calls were unwelcome and refused to take any messages.

  My calls to BNN were received less warmly still. I didn’t get as far as Sovitch’s assistant, Brent; I didn’t even get as far as Brent’s assistant. Going down to the studio itself had been a desperation play, and not one I’d put much faith in. I’d been right not to. The big guys in the lobby would not, of course, let me see Sovitch or anyone who worked for her, nor would they accept messages. And there was no chance of catching a glimpse of her, as all BNN talent came and went from the studio through a distant and well-guarded garage entrance.

  I’d had better luck with Danes’s maid service: Maid for You. I’d pulled the name from Danes’s credit card bill and called the number early this morning. With only a little coaxing, an obliging fellow named Les had confirmed that Danes was a client, and told me that he’d suspended his weekly cleanings about six weeks before. Danes had told him that he was going out of town for a while and would call to resume service when he got back. He hadn’t called yet.

  I paid for my latte and slouched in a big chair and watched a couple of twenty-somethings type furiously on their laptops. I thought about Linda Sovitch, and eventually I had an idea. It wasn’t novel, and I wasn’t sure it was good, but I knew it would read better on my invoice than napping at Starbucks would. I hauled myself out of the chair and took my coffee home.

  I powered up my laptop and went online to the BNN Web site. It was badly designed and festooned with blinking advertisements, and I had to hunt for the icon that would open an e-mail window I could use to send a note to Linda Sovitch. While I was hunting, I got lucky. Under a banner that read Today on BNN.com, and next to a little picture of Linda, I read: Chat live with Market Minds host Linda Sovitch. Today at 2:30. It was 2:20.

  I found my way to the chat page and registered, and then I waited. At 2:40, a message flashed on my screen and the moderator introduced virtual Linda. I typed my question into the chat window and let it sit for the next fifteen minutes, while people with monikers like muniluv and buynsell and stockgal asked Sovitch questions about equities and bonds and interest rates— none of which, it seemed to me, was she qualified to answer. Which didn’t stop her. When the moderator informed all concerned that time was running out, I hit enter.

  I didn’t expect my message to show up on the chat board and I wasn’t disappointed. Linda took a final question and the moderator thanked all the participants, plugged Linda’s show, and ended the exchange. Ten minutes later my phone rang.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” It was Linda Sovitch. “You call my house, you call the studio, you show up here, and now this shit. This is coming damn close to harassment— and maybe stalking too.” Her voice was brittle and tight, like nothing I’d heard on her TV show.

  “You didn’t like my question?” I asked.

  “You think you’re fucking funny?” she said, and she read my question aloud, with plenty of bile. “ ‘What do you say to critics who charge that members of the business press are hopelessly compromised by conflicts of interest— that they are cheerleaders for business and too close to the people they’re supposed to be covering— that they are, in essence, in bed with their subjects?’ You think that’s cute?”

  “I thought it was a pretty good question— and relevant, too.”

  “Relevant to what?” she asked. I didn’t answer and after a while Sovitch’s breathing was audible. “Come on, asshole, spit it out. Relevant to what?”

  I sighed. “Relevant to you and Danes.”

  Sovitch started to say something but stopped. “What the hell do you want from me?” she asked eventually.

  “I want to talk to you about Danes. I want to know where he is.”

  Sovitch snorted. “I’m tired of this,” she said. “Keep bugging me and you’ll be talking to my lawyer.” She hung up. I shook my head and closed down my laptop. I thought it was a good question.

  Perhaps, upon reflection, Linda Sovitch thought so too. An hour after she’d hung up on me, and not long before Market Minds was due to go on the air, she called back. She was brisk and efficient.

  “Tomorrow morning at ten,” she said.

  “Where?”

  “Give me your address; I’ll send a car.” I gave it to her and she was gone.

  I put the phone down and wondered what had changed Sovitch’s mind. Worry about how much I knew, or about what I wanted? Worry about who else I might be talking to? All of the above, most likely.

  I yawned and went into the kitchen. My footsteps were loud on the wood floors. I heated some coffee in the microwave, but it was bitter and muddy and made my stomach feel the same. I looked down the length of my apartment. Late-day light fell in big yellow rectangles across the room but didn’t seem to warm it. It was quiet, and quiet upstairs too. I hadn’t seen Jane since yesterday morning, and she’d told me that I wouldn’t see much of her for the rest of the week, but I was listening for her footsteps nonetheless.

  I’d spent a lot of time alone in this apartment— a lot of time alone, period, in the past few years— and I’d wanted it that way. Alone was quiet and predictable. Alone was disciplined and organized and safe. It was sticking to my job and to my running and to an even keel. It was the opposite of static in my head and glass in my chest and aimless, calamitous motion and incinerating anger. It was the opposite of chaos. And if the cost of that stillness had been a certain austerity, even bleakness, then it was no more than I’d been willing to pay. It was getting off cheap. Alone was what I knew. It worked for me. But lately— since Jane— it didn’t work as well.

  I turned on the stereo. Jane had left a disc in: Flora Purim singing “Midnight Sun.” I flicked through the others in the changer— Nikka Costa, Lucinda Williams— and switched to the radio. The Iguanas were playing something funky on WFUV, but even they couldn’t dispel the mood that had overtaken me. I browsed my bookshelves and ran my hands across the spines, but the titles slid by unread. I opened my laptop and made a halfhearted attempt to update my case notes. One hour and two sentences later, I closed it again and went for a run.

  A town car pulled up in front of my building at ten on the dot, its black skin gleaming in the morning sun. There was a small man with gray hair behind the wheel. I got in back and we drove off. We headed uptown, but we did not make for the Manifesto Diner or the BNN studios. Instead, we slid onto the FDR Drive.

  “Where’re we going?” I asked him. He started a little, as if I’d roused him from a nap, and checked some papers on the seat next to him.

  “I got here that I’m taking you up to Greenwich. North Street, it says.” The Lefcourt residence.

  I sat back and watched the Triboro Bridge and the Bruckner Expressway slide by. He got on 95, and there was construction and chaos and lots of dodging and swerving and sudden braking. I was glad I wasn’t driving. Fifty minutes later, he got off in Greenwich, near the train station.

  Downtown Greenwich was crowded in the warm late morning, and we picked our way slowly past the low office buildings near the turnpike and
through the shopping district to the north. The shop buildings were brick and stone and meticulously maintained, and the shops themselves were gently rusticated versions of their cousins on Madison Avenue. The streets and curbsides were crowded with saurian SUVs and shiny sedans, mostly German. The sidewalks were filled with prosperous matrons and slender young mothers, mostly blond.

  We wound our way onto East Putnam, and homes began to appear. They were large and old and Victorian, and comfortable-looking on their well-barbered lots. The lots got larger as we went up Maple Avenue, and larger still on North Street, and the houses receded farther from view. We passed over the Merritt Parkway and drove under a canopy of branches and new leaves, and the lots and houses vanished altogether behind thick hedges and high stone walls.

  The Lefcourt spread was a few minutes north of the Merritt, and bordered by a tall, undulating brick wall. We stopped at the wrought-iron gates and a security camera looked us over. The driver spoke to an intercom and the gate swung open and we pulled in. The winding gravel drive was bordered by a blazing cloud of forsythia. It ended in a rising loop around a large circle of lawn and a gnarled oak. On the far side of the circle, at the top of the rise, was the house.

  It was a great wedge of fawn-colored shingle, with sage-green trim on the windows and doors, and a foundation of rough gray stone. The façade was asymmetric and busy, studded with window bays and eyebrow dormers and with a deep veranda on the right. Four broad steps led to the front door. The car crunched to a halt by the steps, and I got out.

  “I’ll be over there,” the driver said, and he pointed to a low shingled car barn, farther around the gravel circle. I nodded and he drove off. The sun was warm on my shoulders, and the light breeze carried the scents of grass and earth and cedar. It was quiet but for some birds chirping and the soft growl of a distant mower. The front door opened and a woman stepped out and stood at the top of the steps. It was not Linda Sovitch.

  She was about five-foot-two, and her gray suit was crisp and angular, like her short dark hair and pale face. She folded her arms across her chest and regarded me with something that might one day— in the distant future— thaw to suspicion. I was wearing a black polo shirt, gray trousers, and black loafers, and I’d left my gun at home. I was presentable, even by Greenwich standards, but she peered at me and sniffed as if I’d been sleeping in the stables.

  “Mr. March? I am Mr. Lefcourt’s assistant. We spoke on the telephone.” I recognized the cold officious voice. “Mr. Lefcourt is in his office.” She turned and went back inside. I followed.

  “I’m actually here to see Ms. Sovitch,” I said.

  She didn’t turn around. “Yes, well … this way.”

  The entrance foyer was bright and wide, with paneled walls painted white and dentil molding. The plank floors were a dark shiny brown, and the Persian rugs were mostly red. The coffered ceilings were far away.

  I followed the woman into a broad hallway. A stairway with slender balustrades swept along the wall to my left. Straight ahead, its entrance framed by a pair of columns, was a sitting room with tall windows and a marble fireplace, and silk-covered sofas that looked ornamental. I saw a broad swath of lawn through the windows and, in the distance, a flagstone-bordered swimming pool. Two men were working on the pool, peeling back its green covers.

  The woman led me down the hall to the right, past more tastefully decorated rooms that bore no signs of use. The hallway ended in a pair of paneled doors. She paused with her hands on the doorknobs and looked as if she were waiting for a drum roll. Finally she pushed the doors open and we went in.

  The room was long and low, with a brick fireplace at the far end and a row of French doors to the right that opened onto the porch I’d seen from outside. Near the French doors was a seating area, with a green silk sofa, armchairs, and low tables, all gathered around a large Persian rug. To the left was a wall of built-in shelves in glossy white wood and, toward the far end of the room, a big mahogany partners desk.

  Aaron Lefcourt was behind the desk, in a soft-looking leather chair. He had a phone receiver in one hand and a TV remote in the other, and he was talking to someone as he surfed through channels on the big screen mounted behind his desk. He looked much as he had in the BusinessWeek photo— the same dark, wavy hair, the same angry, cherubic features— only fatter and with a tan. He had on linen pants and a raspberry-colored polo shirt that was tight over his round belly. His arms were brown and hairless and thinner than his stomach might suggest. He wore a gold chain on one wrist and a thin gold watch on the other. He glanced at us as we came through the doors and then went back to the TV. His assistant led me into the middle of the room. I looked at the shelves behind Lefcourt.

  They were a shrine to Lefcourt and Sovitch, and festooned with testimonials from charities they’d supported, awards bestowed on them, and photos of them with politicians, celebrities, and captains of industry. There were a lot of photos of Sovitch with guests from her show. I didn’t see any with Danes. Lefcourt swiveled in his chair and scowled at my guide and me. The woman herded me toward the sofa. I sat in a chair; she stood.

  “You’re worried about nothing, Mikey,” Lefcourt said into the phone as he flicked past Court TV. His voice was medium-deep, with a distinct New York accent. “He’ll go for it ’cause he wants to be a part of the deal. It makes him feel good— like his dick is longer than two inches.” While he listened he shot past BNN and CNN and CNBC, and came to rest on an infomercial for a tooth bleaching device. Lefcourt laughed into the phone. “Trust me, Mikey, will you? Jesus, you’re like a fucking old woman. I’ll be in the office later— call me.” He laughed again and hung up and looked at me. He tapped a button on his phone console.

  “Yeah, he’s here now. Send Jimmy in.” Lefcourt hung up the phone and came out from behind his desk. He was about five-foot-ten, and his movements were clumsy but energetic. He went to the end of the room, to a sideboard near the fireplace. There was a chrome carafe on it and china cups and saucers. Lefcourt started pouring.

  “You want coffee, March?”

  “Black is fine,” I said.

  He turned to his assistant. “You just going to hang around like the maître d’?” The woman’s pale face was opaque. She turned and left without a word. A moment later, the double doors opened again.

  A big guy came in. He was bald and ham-faced, and his coloring was bad. He was the guy I’d seen with Sovitch at the Manifesto Diner, still dressed in black. Lefcourt paused in the middle of the room and watched as the big guy produced a digital camera. It was nearly lost in his huge hands. He peered at me through the viewfinder and flashed away. I sat still and said nothing. He took five or six shots and looked at Lefcourt, who nodded and looked at me as he spoke.

  “That’s good, Jimmy. Make sure everybody gets copies.”

  “Maybe you’d like some profiles,” I said.

  Jimmy looked a little confused. Lefcourt looked annoyed and motioned with his head toward the door. Jimmy left. Lefcourt put my coffee on a small table and took his to the sofa. He drank his coffee and looked at me.

  “I guess you don’t mind having your picture taken,” he said. I smiled. “And I guess you won’t mind if we hand it out, to the local police, maybe, or the security guys at the studio.”

  I smiled some more. “Not to be rude, but I’m actually here to see your wife.”

  Lefcourt drained his cup and slid it onto a side table. He crossed his legs and draped his hairless arm along the back of the sofa and tried to look relaxed, but whatever engine ran inside him didn’t like to idle, and his foot bounced around on the end of his leg.

  “What do you want to bother my wife for, March?” he asked, smiling.

  I drank some coffee. “I don’t want to bother her. I just want to talk to her about her friend Gregory Danes.”

  “What about him?” Lefcourt asked. He was still smiling, but his dark eyes were locked on my face.

  “That’s something I’d rather discuss with your wife.”r />
  Lefcourt gave a nasty laugh. He shifted his bulk on the sofa and ran his fingers over the upholstery. “Well, she doesn’t want to discuss that, or anything else, with you. So your choice is me or get the fuck out.”

  I finished my coffee and thought about that. “I’m not sure she’d feel that way if she knew what I wanted to talk about.” Lefcourt made a skeptical face and shook his head; I continued. “And I’m not sure you really want to hear this.”

  “I’m a grown-up, March,” he said. “I can handle it.” I nodded. It’s what everyone says— before they see the pictures. Maybe Lefcourt meant it.

  “I want to know about her relationship with Danes. I want to talk to her about where he might be.”

  “She went through that crap with you already.” He wasn’t making this easy; he wasn’t trying to.

  “Sure. I just want to go over some of it again.”

  “You think her answers will be different?”

  I sighed. “I have reason to believe she may not have been … entirely frank with me the first time.”

  “What reason?” Lefcourt snapped. “Where’d you get this reason from?”

  “That’s not the issue—”

  He cut me off and pointed at me. “Bullshit! Don’t call my wife a liar and make allegations, and then tell me you don’t have to substantiate them. If that’s how you do business, it’s a good thing you got yourself a trust fund.” Lefcourt watched me for a reaction, but I had none. I wasn’t surprised that he’d had me researched; I’d have been surprised if he hadn’t. I watched him, too, and saw that there was no real anger beneath the shouting, just posture and tactics.

  “I’m not trying to do business with you,” I told him. “I’m trying to talk to your wife.”