Void in Hearts

by William G. Tapply

  “Well? Can I go in now?”

  She shrugged. “He’s not in, Mr. Coyne.”

  “You mean he won’t see me.”

  She leaned forward and peered up at me. I noticed that her eyes were dark bluish-green, a most unusual color for eyes, the color of Bermuda grass, which is used on some of our better golf courses. “I mean,” she said, spacing out her words for emphasis, “Mr. Hayden is not in. Which is what I said.”

  I shrugged. “You could have said that right at the beginning. You can appreciate my confusion.”

  She sighed and didn’t answer. She shifted some papers on her desk.

  “I mean,” I persisted, “if you have to go check with somebody to ask them if they’re in, a less trusting person might actually assume you’re checking with the person who’s not in. Except, of course, then he’s in. So I figured you went in to old Derek’s office. ‘There’s this guy, name of Coyne, says something about photographs, mentions somebody named Lester Katz, and you wanna see him, or what?’ And old Derek says, ‘Tell him I’m out, Beth, honey. Guy’s probably selling brooms or something.’ And you say, ‘Well, he gave me his card, and it says on it that he’s a lawyer.’ And old Derek would laugh and maybe pinch your cheek or something, and he’d say, ‘Well, that’s probably how he fools receptionists so he can get in to sell his brooms.’ And you might say, ‘Well, Derek, kid, this guy looks more like a lawyer than a broom salesman,’ and Derek says, ‘Well, Bethie, who the hell wants to talk to a lawyer this time on a Friday afternoon, huh? I mean, TGIF, right, sweets? So you wanna get rid of this guy for me? Tell him I’ll call him sometime.’ ”

  She was smiling. “Melanie,” she said.

  “Pardon?”

  “My name is not Beth. It’s Melanie. And Mr. Hayden is really and truly not in. And when he is in, he does not pinch my cheek. Or anything else. And he doesn’t call me sweets, or honey, either.” Her head was lowered, but I could see that she was grinning broadly. She looked up, still smiling. “Honest.”

  “Melanie,” I said. “Nice name. And if he’s really and truly not in, then maybe at least you could—”

  At this instant a man appeared behind her from the office suite. He had thick white hair, an unusually wide, sensual mouth, and narrow eyes that drooped on the outside corners. He was short and broad and gave the instant impression of power and confidence. He was glowering at me.

  “Who is this man, Ms. Walther?”

  “This is Mr. Coyne, sir. Who I mentioned to you.”

  “Well? What do you want?” he said to me.

  “For one thing, I’d like to know why your receptionist is so much more pleasant than you are.”

  His frown lasted just a moment longer. Then he converted it into a professionally amiable smile. “Of course. I apologize. The end of a long week. Please excuse my manners. My name is Arthur Concannon.”

  He came around from behind Melanie Walther’s desk with his hand extended. I took it. His grip was just firm enough, well practiced. He fixed me with his eyes when we shook, which was the same way I had learned to do it.

  “May I get you some coffee, Mr. Coyne? Or a drink, perhaps?”

  I shook my head. “Thanks, no. I really just wanted to talk with Derek Hayden for a minute. If he’s really not here—”

  “He’s been out of town for a few days.”

  “When do you expect him back?”

  “I’m not sure. You see, Mr. Coyne, Derek and I are partners. We consult frequently, but each of us has his own accounts, and for the most part we work quite independently. We do not keep tabs on each other. Except, of course, where it counts.”

  He smiled and I nodded. “The old bottom line,” I said.

  “Anyway, I really couldn’t tell you when he’ll be back. I suppose you’ll just have to try again.”

  “Perhaps you could give me his home phone number. I seem to have misplaced it. Can’t even remember where he lives.”

  Concannon shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Coyne. It is a general principle of mine not to give out any such information. Nothing personal. I’m sure you understand.”

  I shrugged. “It’s up to you.” I turned to Melanie Walther. “You have my card. When Mr. Hayden comes in, would you be good enough to give it to him and ask him to call me?”

  She nodded. “Certainly.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I turned to Concannon. “Thank you, too.”

  He held out his hand again, and we practiced staring at each other some more. “Sorry we couldn’t help you. I’m sure Derek will be sorry to have missed you.”

  I smiled. “I’m sure. But I’ll catch up with him.”

  As I left the office, I noticed that Melanie Walther was staring quizzically at me. It occurred to me that she might have told me more had not Concannon interrupted.

  I rode the elevator back to the lobby. It was nearly five o’clock. Quitting time. On a hunch, I resumed my unobtrusive place on the sofa and watched the elevators. They were busy, spewing folks out into the lobby and then rising back up into the bowels of the building for another load.

  I waited ten or fifteen minutes before Melanie Walther stepped off the elevator. I stood up. Arthur Concannon was not with her. I caught up with her before she left the building and managed to get into position to hold the door for her. It didn’t seem to surprise her.

  She gave me that same quizzical smile. “I wondered if you’d be here,” she said, brushing past me. She paused outdoors to turn up the fake fur collar on her coat. “Whew! Nippy, huh?”

  “What did you mean?”

  “About what?”

  “Wondering if I’d be here.”

  She smiled. “If you’d try to pick me up, I guess.”

  “Oh, no, Miz Walther. I’m not trying to pick you up. I just hoped you might—”

  “Tell you more about Mr. Hayden. Why Arthur and I were so mysterious about it. Right. And maybe buy me a couple drinks while you’re at it, huh?”

  I spread my hands. “Exactly. What do you say?”

  “I really don’t think I should.”

  “Have the drink, or tell me about Derek Hayden?”

  We were walking down the short flight of stairs where Hayden had been photographed by Les Katz. She moved cautiously in her high-heeled shoes on the icy steps, so I touched her elbow to steady her. At the bottom of the steps she stopped to face me. “Both, I guess. I don’t think Arthur wants me to talk to you. And I don’t normally allow myself to be picked up.”

  “I don’t want to be dramatic or anything,” I said, “but this may literally be a matter of life and death. I must get in touch with Hayden. It is really important.”

  She stared at me, her eyes rounded, as if she hoped to discover my true intent. Then she tossed her head. “Okay. You got me. If you’re hitting on me, you’re doing a good job of it. You got me interested. Buy me a drink.”

  We strolled briskly across the brick plaza past Faneuil Hall and around the greenhouses to Durgin Park. The bar was more crowded than it had been an hour earlier, but we found two empty stools and hoisted ourselves onto them. The hooker/attorney with the Dutch boy haircut had left, but the Aussie barman was still there. He came over, made a pass in front of us with his rag, winked broadly at me, and said, “Found what you were looking for, eh, mate?”

  I turned to Melanie and spread my hands. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Honest.”

  “Sure,” she said. But she was grinning.

  “What would you like to drink?”

  “Vodka martini, please.”

  “Stirred, not shaken, like my pal James Bond, right?” To the barman I said, “Bourbon old-fashioned for me, on the rocks.”

  He turned to get our drinks. I helped Melanie slip her coat off. I lit a cigarette and offered her one. She shook her head and rummaged in her purse for her own. I held my lighter for her. She touched my hand as she guided the flame to her cigarette.

  She exhaled a long plume of smoke, then swiveled on the stool to face me.
“Okay, now, Mr. Attorney, sir. What is this life-and-death stuff, anyhow?”

  I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the envelope of photographs. I found the picture of Derek Hayden and put it onto the bar. “Is this Derek Hayden?”

  She only glanced at the photo. “Sure. I thought you knew him.”

  “Well, actually I don’t. We have a mutual acquaintance.”

  “Who’s your client, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So whose life is it that’s in jeopardy here? Derek’s?”

  I shook my head. “I’d rather not get into that. You’ll just have to trust me that it’s important.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I have an honest face, of course.”

  She studied my face. Then she smiled. “Okay. I’m a sucker for tall, skinny men with gray eyes and lumpy noses. Makes me believe you got beat up trying to defend your sister’s honor sometime. What do you want from me?”

  “When do you expect Hayden back in the office?”

  She made a show of stubbing out her cigarette. Without looking at me, she mumbled, “Mr. Concannon—”

  “What about him?”

  She sighed and looked up at me. “American Investments does a lot of high-risk things. It’s very important for the company that our plans remain secret. Timing, getting the jump on the competitors, information—what I’m saying is that neither Mr. Concannon nor Mr. Hayden would appreciate me talking with you. Hell,” she said, smiling, “they wouldn’t like it if they knew I was here, even. You know?”

  I nodded. “All I want to know is when Hayden is expected back. I don’t care where he went, or why he went there.”

  “I’m trying to tell you. We don’t know where he went. He just didn’t show up when we expected him. Nobody knows where he is. And I know I shouldn’t have told you that.”

  “So Concannon didn’t tell me the truth.”

  She shrugged. “What did you expect?”

  “Okay. Fair enough, I guess.” I paused as the Aussie delivered our drinks. I lifted my glass and gestured toward Melanie Walther with it. “Your health,” I said.

  She nodded and we sipped. I lit another cigarette. Then I said, “When did Hayden disappear?”

  “I didn’t say he disappeared,” she said quickly. “I just said he didn’t show up at the office.”

  “But he didn’t call in sick or anything?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, when was it that he failed to appear?”

  She frowned. “It was a week ago Wednesday. I remember, because I had to cancel an appointment, and Arthur—Mr. Concannon—couldn’t fill in because it was Derek’s deal, and the client was very upset. I called Mrs. Hayden. She seemed surprised he wasn’t in.”

  A week ago Wednesday, I quickly calculated, was the day after Les Katz had been struck down by a hit-and-run automobile. Not, I decided, a coincidence. It seemed clear to me that Hayden had run over Les and then fled, probably with his mysterious ladylove, for parts thus far unknown.

  “Have you talked with Hayden’s wife since then?”

  She nodded. “Several times, as a matter of fact. She won’t say much. But I don’t think she knows where he is. Arthur is extremely upset. Their system makes it very hard for them to pick up for each other. A number of things have gone sour because Derek isn’t around.”

  “I’d like to talk to Mrs. Hayden.”

  “You think something has happened to Derek, don’t you.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “He lives in Harvard. They have a big old farmhouse with a view of Mount Wachusett. They keep horses for their girls.”

  “His number is in the phone book, then.”

  “I imagine so. Never looked.”

  I reached back into my envelope of photographs and found the one of Hayden’s lover. I put it on the bar. “Do you recognize her?”

  She picked it up and squinted at it. “No,” she said slowly. “I’m sure I don’t know her. I’m pretty good on faces. I don’t believe I’ve ever laid eyes on this person.” She put the picture down and looked at me. “What’s her connection?”

  I shook my head. “I’d have to speculate.”

  Melanie tilted her glass and finished her drink. Then she picked up her napkin and touched her mouth with it. “I really have to go.”

  She hesitated. My move? Simple enough. Have you made plans for dinner? Have you seen the show at the Shubert? Interested in the nighttime view of the ocean from the sixth floor of my apartment building? Are you lonely like me?

  Wanna fool around?

  Becca Katz. Gloria.

  I smiled. “Here. Let me help you with your coat.”

  She cocked her head, then smiled and nodded. “Thank you.” She shrugged on her coat and held her hand to me. “Thanks for the drink,”

  “I appreciate your help, Melanie.”

  I watched her leave, then swiveled back to face the bar. The barman came over. He arched his eyebrows. “Have another, mate?”

  “Might as well,” I said.

  9

  HARVARD, MASSACHUSETTS, GOT ITS name from the same John Harvard who founded the university whose law school declined me admission twenty years ago on the reasonable ground that a lanky tight end with a trick knee and mediocre grades would be unlikely to become an attorney worthy of its hallowed name, for which I was grateful, even at the time, realizing that Yale Law, which had happily accepted me, was better suited to my relatively laid-back temperament, but that, had the Crimson bestowed its blessing upon my application, it would have been a bitch to turn down.

  Harvard—the village—snuggles among rolling hills and meadows a good thirty miles west of Boston, beyond Interstate 495, on the fringe of the surprisingly rural central part of the commonwealth. It has only recently been discovered by young lieutenants of high-tech, psychiatrists, architects, podiatrists, and, yes, attorneys. The solid old farmhouses, Capes, and colonials have been renovated to make them look even older than they are. Rigorous zoning laws and building codes have, so far, preserved the country flavor of the town, so that as I exited off Route 2 on Saturday morning I felt as if I had abruptly arrived in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. The road wound through woodland, marsh, pasture, and orchard. Sheep grazed behind a recently whitewashed fence. A little farther on, the stubble of a cornfield poked up through the windswept remains of the winter’s snowfall.

  I descended a hill and came upon the village green—now white—rimmed with leafless old maples and beeches. Tucked between an imposing brick house and a square old country store was a real-estate office of relatively recent vintage. I parked in front and went in.

  The single large room was furnished with half a dozen desks. Only one of them was occupied, that by a chubby young woman with an Orphan Annie hairdo. She was talking softly into a telephone, and when I entered she smiled and nodded to me and gestured with her free hand at a chair beside her desk. I returned her nod but chose instead of sitting to study the display of available real estate, Polaroid photos, and index cards tacked onto a large bulletin board on the wall.

  Property values, I learned, were as grotesquely inflated in rural Harvard as in the more easterly parts of the state.

  I heard the woman hang up. “Hi,” she said. “Can I help you?”

  I went over and sat in the chair beside her desk. “I’m not looking for a house.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “I just want directions.”

  She shrugged. “Actually, I don’t now the town that well. I don’t live here, myself. Can’t afford it. But I’ve got maps and stuff.”

  “Farm Pond Road?”

  “Let’s look it up.” She rummaged in the bottom drawer of her desk and came up with a tabloid-size soft-covered book. She flipped it open, squinted at it for a moment, and then said, “Here we are.” She turned the map so I could look at it. “We’re right here,” she said, touching a place on the map with her forefinger. “You go down that road out front,
heading north—go left, see—and take the—one, two, three—third right. Okay? Farm Pond Road will be your second left.” She looked up at me. I noticed that a pencil had been jammed into her hair. Only the eraser end showed. “I remember now,” she said. “It’s nice out there. We had a listing on Farm Pond Road last year. Didn’t last long. I thought it sounded familiar.”

  “I studied the map for a minute. “Okay. I got it. Thanks a lot.”

  “Glad to help.”

  I went outside and climbed back into my BMW. I had gone to the public library earlier in the morning to find a phone book with Harvard listings. Derek was one of the three Haydens living in the town. I copied down his number and street address and then decided to medicate a mild case of midwinter cabin fever by driving out there rather than phoning.

  Farm Pond Road turned out to be several miles into the countryside, much farther from the real-estate office than it appeared on the map. I drove slowly, unsure of what I was looking for, since the phone book had not given a number to go with the street address. Melanie Walther had mentioned a farmhouse, a view of a mountain, horses. I hoped I’d be able to pick out Hayden’s place.

  It was easier than that. His mailbox was labeled “Hayden” in glow-in-the-dark stick-on letters.

  I pulled into the curving driveway beside a white-shingled old farmhouse. Behind it was a small barn. A Volvo station wagon was parked in front of the barn. I sat in my car for a minute, regretting my decision to dress in my customary Saturday morning garb—baggy old brown corduroy pants, scarred cowboy boots, turtleneck, and parka. My gray wool three-piece suit and tweed topcoat would have enabled me to present myself more credibly.

  I got out and went to the door. I rang the bell, waited, peered inside into the richly carpeted foyer and beyond to a winding staircase, and listened for footsteps. I rang the bell again and waited some more before concluding that no one was inside.

  I went around back. It was one of those crystal-clear winter days when the sun’s light is intensified by its reflection off the snow, the air so crisp and cold that a deep breath burns the lungs. When I stepped into the dark mustiness of the barn, I was momentarily blinded, so that I heard the voice before I could see its source.