JM02 - Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home

by Peter Spiegelman

  “Maybe Hauck?”

  “I’m hoping she’ll tell me.”

  Neary nodded. “If you can get her to cop to that, there’s something else you can ask.” I looked at him. “I checked in with my guys on the way over here. Nothing’s changed at Nina Sachs’s place or at Danes’s or yours; Marty’s geniuses are still doing their thing. But not at Pratt’s place. At her place, they’ve packed up and left. Maybe you can ask her why.”

  27

  “This is it for me, Irene,” I said into my cell phone. “This is all that’s on my agenda today— just sitting here, waiting for you.” It was Saturday morning, and I was outside the bar at the end of Irene Pratt’s street, watching the door of her building. I had come there on a fishing trip, but there’d be nothing patient or quiet about it; I was wading in with big boots and a club.

  Pratt’s voice was tiny and mad and scared. “I knew it. I knew I should never have talked to you. I knew it was a stupid thing to do. What is wrong with you, anyway? Why are you harassing me?”

  “We haven’t gotten to the harassing part yet, Irene. Right now I just want to talk.”

  “Is that supposed to convince me? Because all it makes me think of is calling the police.”

  I laughed. “Sure, Irene, give them a call. And while you’re doing that, I’ll ring Turpin. We can all meet at your place and have a little party.”

  She drew a sharp breath. “You bastard,” she said.

  “Whatever. Can we talk now?”

  She huffed for a while and then went quiet. “Come up, dammit,” she said finally.

  Pratt was waiting at the door when I got off the elevator. She wore jeans and a T-shirt and an anxious, angry look. Her hair was caught in an unwilling ponytail, and her face was paler than usual. She said nothing as I walked in.

  There was a kitchen straight ahead of me, with white cabinets and stone counters, and a long hallway to the left. To the right was the dining room and, beyond that, the living room. The walls were white and the floors were gleaming wood. The apartment was sparsely furnished, with bland rustic pieces that seemed to have come from the same catalog. Except for the dining table, which held a massive PC and stacks of paper, it was tidy.

  I followed Pratt into the living room. It was long and narrow, with windows at the far end and a treetop view. There was a brick fireplace on one wall, with a striped sofa nearby. Pratt crossed the room and perched on a bench beneath the windows. She looked at me warily, and her eyes flicked from the bruise on my face to the envelope under my arm.

  “So … talk,” she said.

  I leaned against the sofa and looked down at her. “I didn’t sleep well last night, Irene. In fact, I haven’t slept well for a few nights now.”

  “This is what you came here to say?”

  I smiled. “On the one hand, lack of sleep has made me a little slow on the uptake; on the other, it’s given me time to think about things. Things like why you were so hesitant, back at the Warwick, when I asked you who had been calling about Danes. And what happened between Monday, when you were happy to hear my voice, and Tuesday, when you weren’t. Things like who it is that you’ve been talking to, Irene— who it is that got to you.”

  Pratt’s brows came together behind her wire glasses and she turned her head a little, as if she had a crick in her neck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said evenly.

  I smiled at her some more. “I think the breakin really shook you up. I think you were genuinely scared. But not so scared that you stopped thinking, right? Not so scared that those gears stopped turning.”

  Pratt sighed and rubbed her hands on her knees. “Am I supposed to understand some part of this?”

  I kept smiling. “I think something occurred to you, when I asked who had taken an interest in Danes’s absence. I think a lightbulb went on, Irene. You had someone in mind.”

  Pratt shook her head but said nothing.

  “I don’t know exactly what happened on Monday, though. Did you just wait for him to call the office again, or did you take the initiative and phone him— and offer up a little something?”

  Pratt shook her head some more.

  “I’m thinking it was the latter, and that you maybe started off talking about the breakin. That strikes me as an attention-getter.”

  “This is … I don’t know what the hell to call this.”

  “And once you got his attention, then I imagine you got into the meat of things— your conversation with me maybe, the fact that I knew someone had been tailing me, and that I intended to find out who it was. The fact that I’d called in some people to help me do it.”

  “This is nuts—”

  “I expect you probably got through to him right away, and you liked that. And why not? He’s an important guy, right? And a good friend to have in the industry, too: someone who could really help a career. A person wants a friend like that at any time, but especially when things are a little … uncertain … at work. When her boss has up and left— maybe for good— and left her without a career path. I can understand wanting to ingratiate yourself with someone with his kind of clout.”

  Pratt chewed her lower lip. Color was rising on her white cheeks. “Are you almost done with … whatever this is?” Her voice was quieter and less steady.

  “It’s understandable, I guess, but if you’re going to sign on for this sort of thing, you should make sure you know who you’re working for.”

  “I work for Pace-Loyette. No one else.”

  I shrugged. “Have a look at those,” I said. I tossed the envelope into her lap. She flinched as if it were a dead fish.

  “What’s in it?” she said after a while.

  “Open it up.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Open it.” My voice was sharp.

  Pratt’s shoulders twitched and she looked up at me. The corners of her mouth were tight and there was fear in her eyes. She unfastened the little metal clasp and slid the photos out.

  “It’s nothing gory, Irene, nothing messy. Just two little boys and a young woman, going to school, going to work, going about their business. Nothing scary.” Her fingers were clumsy as she leafed through the pages, and her hands were trembling.

  “Who are they?” she asked.

  I ignored her. “Nothing scary, right? But look at how close some of those shots are. Whoever took them must have been very near, don’t you think?”

  “Who are they?” Her voice was quiet now.

  “That shot there— they had to be right alongside her for that. But she had no idea that anyone was watching her. And there— they couldn’t have been more than a few paces away from the boys for that one.”

  “Who are they, for God’s sake?” She was staring down and her face was hidden from me, but her voice was a harsh whisper. I kept my tone conversational.

  “The little boys are my nephews. The older one is Derek; he just turned seven. His brother is Alec; he’s four. The young woman is a friend of mine. Her name is Jane. Someone delivered these to me on Wednesday afternoon. Around the same time, they delivered a couple of packages to my nephews— ostensibly from me. What’s that, maybe two days after you had your conversation?”

  Pratt drew a sharp breath. “I didn’t … Are they … all right?”

  “Sure, Irene.” I laughed harshly. “They’re just fine.”

  She looked up at me. Her eyes were red and watery behind her glasses and she wiped them with her fingertips. She put the pictures back in the envelope. “You don’t know that this has anything to do with me,” she said. I laughed again and it was nasty, even to my own ears. I reached over and took the envelope from her. She drew back.

  “The people who took these are just foot soldiers, Irene, just hired hands. They work for a guy named Jeremy Pflug, who works for your … employer, so I suppose that makes him your colleague. Have you met him yet? He’s a swell guy, and I’m sure you’ll like him. His hobbies are invasion of privacy, intimidation, and decapitating dogs.” Pratt gasped
and I smiled at her. “I guess you haven’t come across him yet, huh? Maybe at the Christmas party.”

  Pratt stood suddenly and crossed the room like she was leaving for good, but she stopped at the fireplace. She turned to me. “You make it sound like I’m a … spy. All I did was talk to him. He’s not my boss.” Pratt sniffled and I let out a deep, long-held breath. “And he called me— just like he has I don’t know how many times before. He asked about Greg, and what was going on, and I told him about the breakin. So what?”

  “And you told him about me.”

  She swallowed hard. “Is that supposed to be a crime? I’ve known him longer than I’ve known you.”

  I laughed. “You make it sound so innocent, Irene, almost as if you had no inkling that he might have been the guy who orchestrated the breakin and had both of us followed.”

  Pratt blushed deeply and looked away. “You don’t know what I was thinking,” she said after a while, but it was choked and without conviction.

  “Why don’t you tell me, then?”

  Pratt snorted. “You don’t know what it’s like. If Greg doesn’t come back, I’ve got no future there. Even if he does, it’s a good bet he’ll be out on his ass before long, and then it’s just a matter of time for me. And it’s not like analyst jobs are plentiful out there. I have to look out for myself; I have to network. It’s not like anyone’s going to do it for me. It’s not like anyone at Pace gives a shit.”

  My eyebrows went up. “Is that what you call this—networking? Is that how you rationalize selling me out— at the same time that I was trying to keep Turpin off your back?”

  A wave of color rose up Pratt’s neck. “I didn’t sell you out,” she said softly.

  “Of course not, you just reported our conversations to the man you thought might be behind the breakin and the tail jobs and neglected to mention any of it to me. Tell me, what did you get out of the deal? The promise of a job? Funding for a new business? Thirty pieces of silver? I hope it was something good.”

  Pratt’s lip was trembling again and there were tears welling in her eyes, and I didn’t give a shit. “I didn’t know for certain that he had anything to do with … anything. I still don’t. It was just a conversation.”

  “Sure, Irene. And part of that conversation was about how you shouldn’t talk to me anymore, wasn’t it?”

  She glanced at me and then down at the floor. “I didn’t know he would … do anything. I—”

  “For chrissakes, they threatened my nephews, Irene. They came after my family! Please don’t talk to me about what you didn’t know— or didn’t want to know.”

  That did it. A sob bubbled up from Irene Pratt’s chest and her shoulders shook and she hung her head and cried. I let her go for a while, and then I went into her kitchen and found a glass and filled it with tap water. I went back to the living room and guided Pratt to the sofa and gave her the glass. She held it with two hands and rested it on her knees, and after a minute or two the tears began to subside. She sipped at the water and wiped her face with her hand. She looked up at me and looked away again.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  She nodded. “I … I’m sorry … I don’t know what to say. Things are just so fucked-up …” Her voice was tentative and hoarse.

  “I know, Irene. I know they are.”

  “He asked about me … about how I was doing. He wanted to know what all this … with Greg … would do to my job.” She took a shaky breath and another swallow of water. “He said I shouldn’t worry, that I could do much better. He’s … practically a legend, and he never talked like that to me before.” She looked up at me and her eyes were wet again. “That’s how it started.”

  I nodded. This was the tricky part. I took a deep breath and tried to keep my voice even. “Did you ever talk to Pflug, or was it just Hauck that you spoke with?”

  Pratt looked at me and grew very still. Her brows were furrowed and her small mouth was pursed. “Just Hauck,” she said softly, and my heart started beating again.

  “What’s he got going with Danes?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing … I … I don’t know.”

  “But there is something going on?”

  More head shaking. “I don’t know— really, I don’t. But … it’s like you said. Ever since Greg went away, Mr. Hauck has called a lot more often and I’m not sure why.”

  “You have a phone number for him?”

  “Yes,” she sniffled.

  Forty-five minutes later I left Irene Pratt, red-eyed, in her living room and walked the few blocks to the subway station at 72nd Street. I had a gut full of soured anger and self-disgust, and a meeting the next morning with Marcus Hauck.

  28

  The Kubera Group was headquartered in a low unmarked building of fieldstone and glass that sat atop a rise about ten minutes from downtown Stamford. It was hidden from the street by a screen of fir trees and thick plantings and surrounded on three sides by parking lot. The lot was empty at 8 a.m. on Sunday, and I parked my rented Ford about fifty yards off the building entrance and ran the windows down. It was a mild breezy morning, and the air around Kubera was scented with pine and new-cut grass. It was quiet in the parking lot, for the two minutes it took security to show.

  “Can I help you?” the guard said. He was in the driver’s seat of the unmarked white sedan that rolled up alongside me. He was young and crew-cut.

  “I’m meeting with Hauck at eight-thirty. I’m early.”

  “Yes, sir. If I could have your name, please.” I gave it to him and he thanked me and wrote something on a clipboard and drove off. I fiddled with the radio and found a college station playing Josh Rouse. I stretched my legs out and propped my feet on the dash. I closed my eyes and listened to the music and tried not to think about last night. I failed miserably at it.

  After browbeating Irene Pratt into phoning Marcus Hauck, and forcing a meeting with him through thinly veiled threats to call the press and the police, I’d spent the rest of the day in a futile online search for more information about Hauck and the Kubera Group. By five o’clock I’d been frustrated and restless, and I took myself for a long walk, down to the Battery and up along Water Street. I’d lingered for a while at the Seaport, amid the tourists and the strings of white lights, and looked at the Brooklyn waterfront. I picked out a corner of a building that I thought was Nina Sachs’s and wondered how they were doing over there— if Nina was still angry and Ines still scared, if Billy was still worrying about his father. I could still hear the pleading in his reedy voice: Will you look for him anyway?

  I’d continued north from there and stopped for dinner at a tavern in the East Village. It was a dark tin-ceilinged place, with a scarred black bar along one wall. I’d sat at the bar and drunk club soda and picked at what passed for a tuna sandwich while the place filled up with regulars. Their faces were animated and unfamiliar and their conversations swirled around me like smoke. I listened to their words without comprehension and found the murmur of voices somehow comforting. I walked home through a thin rain.

  The lights had been on when I’d come back to my apartment. There was a black umbrella by the door and a gray raincoat on the coatrack. Lauren was standing at the kitchen counter, drinking tea and turning pages of the Sunday Times Magazine. Her black hair was pulled into a loose ponytail, and her sharp features were pale.

  “Am I intruding?” I asked, but my sarcasm made barely a dent.

  “You’re wet,” she said.

  “Wet, tired, and not up for this.”

  Lauren smiled thinly. “I notice your fingers look okay, though, and your phone is still working— so it must be your brain that’s out of whack. That must be why I don’t fucking hear from you.”

  I tossed my keys on the counter and went into the bathroom and came out with a towel. I dried my face and hair. “What do you want, Laurie?”

  She closed the magazine. “I don’t want anything, except to know that you’re all right. I heard about what happened … wit
h those photos.”

  “Well, I’m fine— superb, in fact.”

  “So I see.”

  “Is there something else?”

  She looked at me and sighed. “Things will cool off with Ned and Jan. Just give it a little time.”

  I threw the towel on the counter. “Sure, things will be fine. In no time they’ll be as warm and fuzzy as ever.”

  “They’ll be okay, Johnny. They—”

  “No, they won’t. When this passes, assuming it passes, there’ll just be something else and something else after that; it’s inevitable. Because they’re right— Ned and Jan and David— they’re right. I’m not like them, my life isn’t like theirs, and I’m not good company. And none of that is going to change.”

  Lauren shook her head. “They just don’t get what it is you’re doing with yourself, Johnny. I’m not sure I do either, but so what? We’re your family.”

  “That’s a nice sentiment, but it’s not real life. The world is full of brothers and sisters who have nothing to do with one another. Maybe we should take a page from their book.” I went around the counter to the fridge, pulled out a bottle of cranberry juice, and took a glass from the cabinet. “I’m best left alone, Laurie. It was stupid for either of us to think otherwise.”

  “Meaning what?” she said softly. “You’re saying adiós to all of us?”

  “I’m just being realistic.”

  “Is Jane a part of your new realism?”

  I filled the glass and took a drink. “You’re out of bounds now,” I said, but she didn’t care.

  “You know she’s been staying with me the last couple of nights? She’s not comfortable here while those people are still … watching. She said it creeps her out.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  “It’s not just the being followed, it’s that you didn’t tell her anything about it. And that you keep working on whatever this is, even though you have no client— and even with this threat.”