“Rich family?”
“My client is.”
“Who’s that?”
The ugly man tried to put on a sympathetic-but-sorry expression and failed.
“That’s one thing I can’t tell you,” he said. “My client likes privacy. That is my first concern.”
“So how do I know that you aren’t using me to wipe out a state’s witness or to get revenge for a jilted john?”
“You watch too much television, Mr. McGill,” Farth admonished. “People do things like that in old books. In the new world criminals stick among themselves. Anyway, I just need you to find Ms. Lombardi and tell her that I’d like to have a conversation with her. You can set that up any way that makes you comfortable.”
He was very good. If I hadn’t met Hiram Stent, seen the photo of Celia Landis, had my office invaded by professionals, and been the cause of two innocent men’s deaths, I might have believed about 2 percent of what he was saying.
“The reason I’m here,” Josh said, now affecting honesty, “is because Coco is in trouble with some bad people. She knows some things that she shouldn’t know and maybe has taken things that don’t belong to her.”
“From your client?”
“No, no. My client is close to the family. I’m here on a mission of mercy, not vengeance.”
“And how do I fit into this mission?”
“Peter told me that you are often a person of interest to the police.”
“And yet you want to hire me anyway.”
“I believe that I will need a man like you to find Coco.”
“A man like me.” I was liking our back-and-forth. It was a way to hone my skills.
“A professional who isn’t afraid of the law,” Farth explained.
“Do you have an ID, Mr. Farth?”
“Why?”
“Just so that I can say, if asked by the constabulary, that I at least checked that you were who you said you were.”
He smiled and took a wallet from his back pocket. From this he produced a Massachusetts driver’s license. Joshua Farth, DOB December 1971.
“Ten thousand dollars,” I said.
“What?”
“Ten thousand down payment for the search and another ten when I find the girl and facilitate your talk.”
“Twenty thousand dollars for a simple missing person case?”
“That’s the going price for a man not afraid of the law.”
“That’s outrageous,” he said in a tone that carried no outrage whatsoever.
Farth or Shonefeld, or whatever his name was, gave me a frown that ever so slowly turned into a smile. I doubted if this man ever had an honest expression in his life. Everything he said, every response he gave, was planned. Too bad for him his plans were scrawled in crayon.
He reached into the same pocket that held the stripper’s photograph. From this he brought out a stack of hundred-dollar bills bound together in thousand-dollar packets. He counted out ten of these and put them on the desk, returning the rest of the treasure to the all-purpose pocket.
Gathering up the cash I asked, “What else can you give me about Coco?”
“Since she’s come to New York she’s been an artist’s model, a topless dancer, a personal assistant to a painter named Fontu Belair, and once she was arrested for kiting checks. She got out on bail and disappeared.”
“So the police are looking for her,” I said.
“Maybe in their sleep. She’s been in New York nearly a year.”
“What about before then?”
“I really don’t know.”
“Did she live in Boston?”
“Possibly. The only information I have about her is since she moved to New York.”
“What about her family?”
“My client is protecting them from the complete truth about the girl. I haven’t even met them.”
“Is Coco her real name?”
“I doubt it,” Josh said. “Like I said, I don’t even know if she’s originally from Boston. One guy said that she told him she came from out west somewhere.”
“What guy?”
“A man called Buster who worked at the Private Gentleman’s Club on Thirty-ninth Street.”
It’s funny how a word can trigger a deeply felt response. Josh said “Buster” and I suddenly had the strong desire to jump across my big black desk and bust his head. Killing him would have given me great pleasure but that’s not what Hiram had posthumously hired me for. He hired me to get his 10 percent and use that to bring Lois and the kids back into his life, such as it was.
18
The meeting with Farth lasted a quarter hour more. He gave me a couple of addresses and informed me that the money I’d been given didn’t have to be reported. He gave me an address or two for witnesses and a phone number where he could be reached.
“There’s a sense of urgency on behalf of the girl’s parents,” he said after rising to leave. “My client would like to limit their friends’ pain and so the sooner you find Coco the better.”
I walked Josh Farth down the hall, through the hole, and out the front door. I didn’t like him and he, I believed, could have easily ended my life without remembering my name in the morning.
After he was gone I levered the heavy door back into place.
“What did you think of Mr. Farth?” I asked Mardi. I’d learned over time that her insight on human nature was at least as keen as my own.
“I don’t know,” she said, considering. “He’s kinda like a ghoul—there in his body but not in his eyes.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on with Twill?”
“You know Twill,” she said, once again staring me in the eye. “He’s always doing something he shouldn’t. When I was in the tenth grade I stayed away from him because everybody said he was one of the bad kids.”
“And what is my bad child doing today?”
“You’ll have to ask him, sir. He’s my best friend and I won’t tell his stories.”
She was right of course. I looked away because her eyes had gained the power of a woman since she admitted putting her stepfather in his place.
“You should go home,” I told her.
“You’re firing me?”
“No. No, I’m trying to protect you. I won’t have you sitting behind a door that might fall in at any moment when there’s a good chance that the real bad guys might return.” I handed her the black envelope from my outbox and the ten thousand Farth had given me. “Put this in the safe and stay home until I call for you to come back.”
“Are you going to be okay?” she asked.
Before I could think up some wise-assed retort the buzzer sounded.
Bells and buzzers had begun to bother me. They seemed like evil portents insinuating themselves between me and my loved ones.
“It’s Mr. Domini and some other men,” she said.
I did my exercise with the front door, revealing a crew of six.
Westley Domini was a short Italian man, though not as short as I. He had white hair and skin as close to white as it could get. He was my Mr. Fixit and a former member of one of the more powerful New Jersey mobs. He’d done some bad things in his life but then met a woman named, of all things, Ginger and decided to leave the mob business to do the thing he loved most, which was, like his immigrant grandfather, working with his hands.
This decision brought him to my office. He’d heard that I’d gone straight and wanted, for lack of a better term, a blueprint for success. We talked and drank and drank and talked for fifty hours. At the end of the session Westley had promised to work for me whenever I needed it.
For my part, I rarely called on him.
“Looks like they took your fancy door off with a firecracker” was the first thing Westley said.
“Yeah. Can you fix me?”
“Quintez, Li,” he said to two of his crew. “Let’s start diggin’ this wall out.”
Domini had a multiracial crew culled from New York. I had convinced him that he had to
break daily ties to his old friends in Jersey.
“How long?” I asked the reformed pimp and murderer.
“By nine tonight,” he said. “We’ll get to your back-office door too.”
“Some guys from Seko Security will be here along the way,” I said. “Let ’em do what they need to do.”
—
Back at my desk I called Zephyra Ximenez, my Telephonic and Computer Personal Assistant (TCPA). I rarely saw this pillar of my information jungle; if we met face-to-face two times in a year that was a lot. Most of our work was over the phone or via the Internet. It’s not that I didn’t want to see the Dominican/Moroccan beauty from Queens. She had skin the color of polished onyx and poise that would have put Princess Grace to shame. But Zephyra plied her trade for her many clients by wire, satellite, and microwave beams. She eschewed office work. I couldn’t blame her.
“Hello, Mr. McGill,” she said, answering on the eighth ring. She had my number and therefore my name.
“Hey, Z, how’s it goin’?” I could hear the Domini crew banging from down the hall.
“All right I guess,” she said.
“Problems?”
“A little bit.”
“We’ll get back to that in a minute,” I promised. “First I need you to do some research for me.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“There’s supposed to be a law firm in Frisco called Briscoe/Thyme. I think the last name is spelled like the Simon and Garfunkel song but it could be temporal.” I liked talking to Zephyra because she knew all the words in five or six dictionaries. “I can’t find ’em so I thought you could look.”
“Sure thing.”
“Also I’m looking for a young woman named Coco Lombardi. She’s a stripper here in New York but she might be from Boston originally. Celia Landis might be her alias or vice versa. And there’s some other names I’d like you to look up,” I added. “Josh Farth, forty-four, private investigator or security specialist; Alexander Lett, around forty, from down in DC. He’s a strong-arm so probably listed as security too. Then there’s a Marella Herzog. That name is almost definitely a.k.a. but it’s probably used down in DC for a wedding registration at high-end stores. I’d like to know who she’s marrying and what her backstory is.”
“Got it, got it, and got it,” Zephyra said; her voice sounded cheerier when she was working. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, yeah. Check out the social media sites for somebody named Twitcher.”
“Male or female?”
“Man.”
“Age?”
“It’s Twill.”
Silence, then: “Okay.”
“What’s wrong, Z?”
“I don’t think I want to talk about it.”
“Then let me do the talking,” I said in my most avuncular tone. “There was once a fat man named Bug Bateman who lived in a hole clutching a stick of dynamite in one hand and his dick in the other. A Spanish princess named Ximenez dragged him out of there, made him do push-ups and shop at Armani, and then, just when he was exactly what she wanted, she told him that she needed the freedom to see other guys. He found out that there are many women who want a guy like him.”
“He rubs my nose in it.”
“Any guy you know that you wouldn’t mind spending a few weeks with?”
“There’s this man that calls himself Petipor the Younger. A Turkish technology importer. I think his father is a Thracian prince.”
“After you finish with my searches go away with him.”
“And you’ll tell Bug?”
“I won’t need to.”
“Where do you want me to start with your work?”
“Do a cursory on Coco first and get that to me as soon as possible.”
“You got it, boss.”
19
“I’m leaving now, Mr. McGill,” Mardi said via intercom maybe five minutes after my talk with Zephyra. “Do you need anything else?”
“Tell Twill I’m askin’ about him if you see him and take your sister to some musical on the office account.”
“Thanks.”
“And one more thing,” I said.
“What’s that.”
“Try to find yourself a boyfriend.”
“Bye.”
—
I called the Chambre du Roi about midafternoon to make a reservation.
“llo?” a young woman who was not French answered.
“Leonid McGill,” I said. “I want a table for two at eight tonight.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” the woman replied, dropping all pretense at a French heritage. “We’re booked solid until the beginning of next week. If you want to make a reservation you have to call at least a week in—”
“Let me speak to Henry,” I said, cutting off her misplaced sense of hierarchy.
“Who?”
“In that French class you failed they called him Henri. But this is America and I want to talk to your boss.”
“Um,” she said and then she put me on hold.
“llo?” a man who was French said after maybe fifteen seconds.
“Hello, Henri, Leonid here.”
“Tonight?”
“Two at eight.”
“See you then,” he said.
I disconnected the call feeling the little triumph of defeating the snobby young woman. I had many ins in New York. Most of these I’d earned by doing people favors saving their lives, getting them out of legal jams, or shedding a little blood here and there—but in Henri’s case it was simply that I tipped him a hundred dollars every fourth time I ate at the Chambre du Roi.
—
I stayed at my desk trying to see if I could find out anything about Coco Lombardi. It would have given me a great deal of pleasure if I beat Zephyra to the finish line on that search. I guess, looking back on that afternoon, I was trying to feel superior after my office had been violated like that.
Gordo sent me a text saying that Chin Wa wanted a rematch. I spent a good while wondering what I could do to the fast, hard-hitting middleweight now that he knew that I knew how to count to seven. Not coming up with a satisfactory answer, I failed to respond to the text.
—
At 6:30 I was prepared to walk up to Marella’s neighborhood. My head was telling me that maybe I should cancel but my pulse had a whole other set of expectations. As a compromise I called for a limo to pick me up at 7:30 and then called a number that was answered by a switchboard operator uptown.
“Tivoli Rest Home,” a woman answered.
“Katrina McGill.”
“Hello, Mr. McGill,” the operator said. “This is Sister Monica.”
“Hi, Monica, how are you?”
“I’m taking a group to the Metropolitan Museum of Art tomorrow. I asked your wife to come. She said that she’d think about it but she hadn’t signed up by dinner.”
“I’ll talk to her,” I promised and Sister Monica put my call through.
“Hello?” she answered on the fifth ring. Katrina never picked up the receiver before the fourth ring. At least she retained something of her premenopause sense of self.
“Hey, babe.”
“Leonid. Is everything all right?”
“You’re up there and not home with us. That’s not okay.”
“You know I’m too weak to maintain a home. Maybe I should give you a divorce and you could go get a younger wife.”
Maybe, I thought.
“Sister Monica says that you haven’t signed up for the museum trip,” I said. “You love the Met.”
“Too much walking.”
“You could take a wheelchair.”
“I’m very tired, Leonid.”
“What if I hired a nurse to come take care of you at home?” I offered. “You know, like we did for Gordo.”
“You’re a sweet man,” my wife of too many years said, “but you don’t want me.”
“I want you to come home.”
“As your wife or an invalid?”
�
��Katrina, we have lived in that apartment, raised three beautiful kids, and eaten ten thousand gourmet dinners on that dining room table. There’s not one in ten can lay claim to that.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
While waiting for her to say more I tried to think of some compelling argument for her to return to our flawed life.
Finally I said, “I’ll come by tomorrow.”
“Good-bye, Leonid.”
It wasn’t till after we hung up that I remembered to ask if Twill had dropped by like he’d promised. I wanted to call back but decided that Katrina would have been suspicious and worried at the insistence and so I let that opportunity drop. Twill was in trouble, I was sure of that, but he was a capable young man so would do what it took to survive—I hoped.
—
“Excuse me, mister,” a voice laced with Spanish song said.
It was the brown young man that Westley called Quintez. He was my height and so I liked him. Though soft-spoken he still looked me in the eye.
“Yes?”
“A lady at the door to see you, mister.”
“A lady?”
He nodded.
“A young lady?” I asked.
He hunched his shoulders. Young for him and for me might have been apples and pork chops.
“Send her on down.”
Quintez went away and I took a deep breath. It felt like I’d been on a twenty-mile forced march with eighty pounds strapped to my back.
And the real battle hadn’t even begun.
“Hello?” She was young even by Quintez’s standards, I was sure. He probably didn’t understand what I was asking.
Tall, maybe five-eight, and thin, she had brunette hair and skin that took to the sun; a white girl no more than twenty, her face was plain and pretty by turns with eyes promising intelligence, patience, and empathy.
“Can I help you?” I said.
“Is Twill in?”
“He’s out of the office right now. I’m Leonid McGill, Twill’s father and the chief investigator.”
“Oh. Maybe I should come back.”
“No,” I said. “Come on in and sit down. Maybe I can help.”
While she hesitated I studied her couture. The silk blouse was blue with an underlying patina of gray. Her black pants looked to be cashmere as did the emerald sweater she had draped on her shoulders. No purse. Not much makeup either.
And Sometimes I Wonder About You : A Leonid Mcgill Mystery (9780385539197) Page 9
