JM02 - Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home

by Peter Spiegelman

  “Nope.”

  “Which doesn’t mean much by itself.”

  “Not much,” Barrento said. He drew on his pipe some more and then he looked at me. “We think he was killed in the dining room. The floors were cleaned in there, but there was blood in the boards.” Barrento paused and smiled at me. “But you know all that already, don’t you?”

  I smiled back and he continued.

  “Curtains and a curtain rod were missing from the dining room. We found them in the trunk, with Danes’s blood on them.” Barrento sighed deeply and put his pipe down. He ran his hands over his mustache. “There was quite a collection of stuff in there— a bottle of red wine, two wineglasses … Did you happen to notice the stain on the dining room table? No? It was red wine. Turns out there was some in the floorboards too, mixed in with the blood, and there was even some on the curtains. We think it spilled when Danes was shot.” Barrento’s eyes were on me, and they weren’t tired now.

  “Two glasses?” I asked.

  He nodded. “You think he and Cortese were having a drink together?”

  “Probably not,” I said slowly.

  “Probably not. There was other odd stuff in the trunk, too— newspapers, magazines, all kinds of catalogs.”

  I nodded vaguely. I was still thinking about the two glasses, and his next question took me by surprise.

  “Danes has a kid, right?”

  I looked at him for a moment. “A son.”

  “He lives with the ex?”

  “In Brooklyn.”

  “That’s where he goes to school?”

  I nodded. “Where are you going with this?”

  Barrento shrugged. “The catalogs we found in the trunk, they were from different private schools— boarding schools— most of them up here in New England. That tell you anything?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and I said it like I meant it. My shoulder was throbbing again and I was feeling oddly light-headed.

  Barrento looked at me and stroked his mustache. He took his time getting to the next question. “You know if Danes was a smoker?”

  I shook my head. “He wasn’t.”

  “We didn’t think so, and Cortese isn’t either— not according to his car ashtrays anyway. But somebody in that house was. We found a dirty ashtray at the bottom of the trunk and lots of cigarette ash. And we found these.” Barrento reached into his desk drawer. “There are five of them,” he said, and he held up the evidence bag. The cigarette butts were brown and wilted and wet-looking.

  He let me look at the bag for a while, and then he called someone on his telephone and a trooper came in and took it away. Barrento leaned back in his chair and folded his hands across his solid middle.

  “We’ve got a lot of evidence to process still,” he said. “Prints off the wine bottle and the glasses and the ashtray, for instance, and DNA off the cigarette butts— plenty of stuff. And we’ve barely touched Cortese’s car.

  “But I took a quick look last night. Seems like the guy was living in there when he wasn’t camping out in kitchen closets. The thing is full of smelly clothes and candy bar wrappers and half-eaten hamburgers. And store receipts. It looks like Cortese saved every goddamn Seven-Eleven sales slip he ever got, and from the stack I saw, it seems like he hit every one between here and Florida in the last few weeks.” Barrento leaned forward and opened his top drawer and took out a brown leather tobacco pouch. It was weathered and soft, and the smell of tobacco filled the room when he opened it.

  “Be interesting to take a look at the dates on some of those,” he said, “once we get a time of death for Danes.” We were quiet for a while. Barrento watched me as he packed his pipe. I looked out the window and tried to catch the thoughts that were spinning away from me. The throbbing in my shoulder was worse and the light-headed feeling had become free fall.

  “You’re not interested in Cortese,” I said finally.

  Barrento smiled. “I feel good about the forensics,” he said. “There’s a lot to process, but there was no master criminal working here; forensics will get me where I want to go. The only problem is, they take time.” He stuck the pipe in his mouth and tested the draw again. “I figure you’ve been traipsing around in Danes’s life the last few weeks— maybe you have some ideas.”

  My mind was racing, swirling with all the things I hadn’t seen last night, all the pieces I hadn’t put together while I’d been thinking about Hauck and reading through the red accordion file. I looked at Barrento and shook my head slowly.

  His mouth twitched beneath his mustache, and for the first time a note of impatience crept into his voice. “C’mon, March, what did they teach you over in Burr County? Who’s the first person you look at when somebody gets whacked?”

  Barrento took my amended statement without comment and walked me to the door. The crowd of press outside had grown larger and more restless.

  “You going to give out the ID soon?” I asked.

  “Half hour from now. I got some boy genius from the AG’s office coming over, and then the fun really starts.” Barrento put his hand out and we shook, and he locked his tired eyes on mine. There was no twinkle in them. “You stay in touch with me, March,” he said, and he handed me a card. “And if something— anything— occurs to you, you make me your first call.”

  I got back in my rental car and put the key in the ignition. I looked at Barrento’s card and closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I let it out very slowly.

  “Goddammit,” I said softly.

  37

  News of Gregory Danes’s death beat me back to New York, and so did news of my involvement in the case. There was a camera crew in front of my building when I got home, but they were slow or inattentive and I was inside before they could get out of their van. My voice mail was full.

  There were a lot of messages from reporters, including three from Linda Sovitch. She was chatty and intimate and she called me John. She wanted to interview me for Market Minds.

  There were messages from my family, too— from Lauren and Liz, who wanted to know that I was okay, and from Ned, to tell me that reporters had been calling him, that he didn’t like it, and that if I did talk to the press he’d prefer me not to mention any connection to Klein & Sons. It was touching, really.

  Mickey Rich had called also. I called him back.

  “They’re saying on TV that Paulie killed Danes,” he said. He sounded very old.

  “That’s because they feel compelled to say something. Paul’s in custody— which is probably a good thing all around— but the police haven’t come to any conclusions.”

  “Is he in bad shape?”

  “Physically he seemed quite fit to me, but otherwise he’s not good. No matter how this shakes out, he’s going to need a lot of help.”

  “Did Paulie … hurt you? I saw something on the news—”

  “I’m fine, Mr. Rich. A little scuffed but nothing worse.”

  Rich sighed and was quiet. “I’m going up there,” he said, after a while. “I mean, Joe would want it, and who else has he got if not me?”

  He hung up and I went back to deleting messages. While I did I turned on the television to BNN. One of their reporters was standing in front of Pace-Loyette’s office building, annoying the guards and harassing anyone going into or out of the lobby. I flicked to an all-news channel, which just then was an all-Danes channel. They ran old clips of him addressing an investor conference, and with Linda Sovitch on Market Minds, and more recent, less flattering footage of him walking fast and looking furtive on Park Avenue.

  Then the coverage switched gears into a recap of the story so far. I froze when they got to the part about the discovery of his body. Aerial footage of Calliope Farms was followed by a nighttime shot of the driveway and flares and state troopers, and of a gray Audi TT turning onto a road. My face was clearly visible through the window glass, and so was Jane’s.

  “Shit.” My voice echoed in the apartment. I flicked the TV off.

  My second-to-last mes
sage was from Marcus Hauck. He was quiet, cold, and very brief. “Call me.” The last message was from Billy. He spoke in a whisper.

  “You said you’d find him and I guess you did, so I should say thanks. Maybe you could call me. I want to know what happened to him is all, and Mom won’t tell me or let me go online or even watch TV. The phone is ringing every five seconds, and TV people are outside, and she’s all freaked out. She and Nes are screaming at each other about I don’t know what. Mom’s taking me out to New Jersey in a while, to Grandpa’s place. Maybe you could call me there. I just want to know what happened.” He left me his grandfather’s phone number and hung up.

  I took my sling off and worked my shoulder around. It was sore, but less so. I opened some windows and powered up my laptop. Then I sat at my table and spent the next half hour reading again through Danes’s phone records and through my own notes. When I was done I pushed my chair back and ran my hands through my hair.

  “Shit.”

  I called Nina Sachs’s apartment again, and again got no answer. Then I tried the Jersey number that Billy had left. It was busy and stayed that way for half an hour, and finally I gave up. I tried the I-2 Galeria de Arte in Brooklyn next. The phone rang for a long while before an irritated-sounding woman with a high-pitched voice picked up. She claimed not to know Nina Sachs and told me Ines was out. When I pressed, she suggested I try the gallery in SoHo. I called the SoHo number and someone picked up on the first ring, but whoever it was kept silent and hung up when I asked for Ines. After that the line was busy.

  I went to the window and looked out at the street. The news crew was gone. The sun was fading and a wind had picked up. I pulled on my field jacket before I left, and clipped the Glock behind my back.

  The I-2 gallery in SoHo was on Greene Street, near Canal. It was smaller than its Brooklyn cousin, a narrow space in a narrow brick building flanked by pricey shoe stores. It had a glass front and a glass door, and all the glass was covered by fabric shades. The door was locked and I pressed the bell. Nothing happened for a while and then a corner of a window shade was pulled back. It was Ines. She looked at me for a long moment and then she went away. I rang again and after minutes of nothing happening I rapped on the glass with my fist. The door buzzed. My pulse quickened and I went in.

  The gallery was dim inside, lit only by the gray haze that filtered through the shades in front and by the chrome gooseneck lamp on the big black desk in back. The walls were empty and the bleached wood floors were bare; the ceiling was hung with shadows. The whole place smelled of cigarettes and plaster dust, and the air felt ten degrees colder than out on the street. My footsteps were loud and hollow.

  Ines sat behind the desk, at the edge of a black wooden chair. She wore a green jersey dress, and her hair fell around her face. There was a wineglass on the desk, nearly empty, and a bottle of merlot, mostly gone. There was a round glass ashtray beside the bottle, with a cigarette burning in it. And beside the ashtray there was a small chromed semiautomatic.

  I took a deep breath.

  Ines leaned forward and her face came into the cone of light from the desk lamp. She was gaunt and sallow, and her huge almond eyes were painted with ash. Her straight strong nose was red at the end, and pinched-looking, and the creases on her forehead were dark and deep. And there were three parallel lines— angry red scratches— that ran from the bottom of her left ear to the left corner of her mouth. She looked up at me and made a wry face.

  “You do not look well, detective,” she said. She was hoarse and tired-sounding.

  “You and me both.”

  “Yes. It has been a difficult few weeks.”

  “I can imagine.”

  Ines laughed bitterly. “Can you, detective?” She rested her long fingers on the edge of the desk. She stretched out one and nudged the butt of the gun.

  “Where is Nina?” I asked.

  “She took Guillermo …” Her breath deserted her and she stumbled over his name. “She took him to New Jersey, to her parents’ home. It was … too much in Brooklyn.” She took a hit off her cigarette, and the ember hissed.

  “Is she coming back?”

  Ines shrugged. Her shoulders were stiff and brittle-looking beneath the jersey. “I do not know her plans, detective.”

  “What happened to your face?”

  Ines shook her head. Her black hair was dull and heavy. “A household accident,” she said, and drained her wineglass. She stubbed out her cigarette and lit a fresh one.

  “Was Nina part of it?”

  She looked at me through a cloud of smoke. “Was Nina part of what?”

  I shook my head. “Now is not the time, Ines. I know your taste in wine and your choice of smokes. The cop who’s running this case doesn’t, but he’ll know other things. He’ll pull prints off the wine bottle and DNA from the cigarette butts, and it won’t take him long. And the first comparisons he’s going to make are with you and Nina. So now is not the time to play around. Now we have to think about Billy, and it’s a whole different story if Nina knew about this.”

  Ines sighed and her shoulders sagged. A look that might have been relief rolled across her face like cigarette smoke and vanished. “Dios mÃo,” she whispered. “He is all I think of: what will become of him, what he will think of me. He is what this is all about.” She made her long fingers into a fist and slammed it on the desk. “Ä„Mierda!”

  “Did she know, Ines?”

  She shook her head, and her eyes roamed the shadows over my shoulder. “I did not tell her, if that is what you mean; we have never spoken of it. She did not know what happened— otherwise she would not have hired you. Later on, after you began your work, when you told her about Gregory calling for his phone messages, and that he had suddenly stopped calling, and the date that he stopped— then I think she began to know something. Then I think she remembered that I had been away, and when. I think she knew then what I had done, but she did not want to know. You understand?” I let out a deep breath and nodded. “That is why she fired you, I think.”

  “But you never discussed it with her?”

  “When we got the news … that his body had been found … I tried. But she was so frightened and … angry.” Ines touched the scratches on her face. “She would not hear it, and she would not let me speak of it.”

  Ines shook her head and clasped her hands in front of her, as if in prayer.

  “But how can I not, detective? When I look at Guillermo— when he asks about his father— how can I not speak of it? It is like a weight on my chest. It squeezes the breath from me and breaks my ribs. How can I bear this thing any longer?” Ines rested her forehead on her clasped hands, and her shoulders shook. Her cigarette fell to the desktop and began to smolder. I reached down and put it in the ashtray. Ines put her hand over the gun.

  “How did you know where to find him?” I asked softly.

  “We spoke, and he told me where he was,” Ines said. She ran her hands over her eyes. “He gave me directions.”

  “You spoke when he called for Billy?”

  She nodded. “He called to leave a message for Guillermo, and I was at home. I picked up the phone.” She looked up at me. “How did you know?”

  “His phone bill. There isn’t much activity on it, but there is a call to Nina’s number, made about two weeks after Danes left town. At first I thought it was one of the calls Billy told me about, one of the times his father had left a message. Billy told me those calls had come in the first ten days or so after Danes left, but I thought maybe he’d gotten the dates wrong. Then I checked the bill again, and the length of the call, and I realized Billy wasn’t mistaken. Danes called a third time.”

  A look of disgust crossed Ines’s face. “Yes, he called and I picked up the phone and spoke to him.”

  “About what?”

  “About Guillermo … about the schools and the custody.”

  “You were involved in those discussions?”

  Her bitter smile returned. “No, detective, thos
e were between Nina and Gregory only. I merely had to live with the consequences, with Nina’s upset … and Guillermo’s. It has been very bad for him, especially in the last months, since his father started again with lawyers.”

  “Since he reopened the custody suit?”

  She nodded. “It was very difficult for Guillermo, very upsetting. And then I heard Gregory’s voice on the machine and I just … picked it up.”

  “What happened then?”

  Ines lit a fresh cigarette and shivered. “It was terrible. He was angry and mocking and cruel, and he was … triumphant. He talked about Guillermo coming to live with him, and sending him away to boarding school, and he thanked me for it … for making it possible.”

  “Thanked you why?”

  Ines blew out a cloud of smoke. “He said it was because of me that he would win the custody— that no judge would leave Guillermo in a household with me.”

  I shook my head. “Being a lesbian is hardly grounds for—”

  “That is not what he meant, detective. He meant something else.” Ines looked down at her smooth right arm and ran a finger over the fat shiny scar just below her elbow. “It seems like such a small thing now,” she said.

  “What was he talking about, Ines?”

  “It was in Spain, when I was much younger. I was a fool, and I did a foolish thing. I carried a package for a friend, from Istanbul back to Madrid. I was stopped at the airport. It was heroin, and there was over a kilo. I was in prison for almost two years. I had never done anything like it before, and I never have since.” Ines poured the rest of the wine into her glass, and took a drink. “Years later, when I came to this country, I made sure that none of that appeared on my immigration forms or came to the attention of the INS.”

  “Danes found out?”

  “When he started again with lawyers, he hired detectives of his own, detectives in Madrid. They found records.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes. I thought about the business card I’d found in Danes’s desk: FOSTER-ROYCE RESEARCH. “Gregory thanked me for my help, detective, and wished me a good trip back to Spain.”