Staying Cool

by Catherine Todd

  I slid into the vinyl seat opposite him. The tables were cheap brown Formica and the atmosphere was nonexistent, but the walls were mostly windows and the ocean was lapping underneath your feet. One year, in a big storm, the waves had gone right over the top of the restaurant and demolished it. The owners had rebuilt in the same tacky fifties style. You can’t argue with success.

  He looked up and smiled. “Sorry, but you did say to start without you, and I was starved. Did you get my message?”

  I froze. “Y-you mean at my house?” I stuttered. I couldn’t believe he’d come right out and admit it.

  He looked at me oddly. He put the taco back on his plate and wiped his fingers. “I assume so. On your answering machine.”

  I let my breath out. I’d been so preoccupied with satanic tipplers that I’d forgotten to check for messages. “Oh, sorry. No. I was out this morning.” But then I wondered: Is he toying with me?

  “Oh. I just asked if we could meet a little earlier. I have to take my father to the doctor later this afternoon, and I was hoping I could get some work done first.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll try to make it fast,” I told him.

  He smiled again. “We always seem to be rushing through meals. Maybe that’s why Ivanova Associates matched us up.” He saw my expression and stopped smiling. “That was a joke, Ellen.”

  “I know. I’m just…I guess I’m still feeling a little uncomfortable about this whole thing.” I tried to change the subject. “I hope your father’s not seriously ill.”

  “He had hip surgery, so he’s staying with me till he’s fully recovered. He’s already getting around with a walker, but he still needs a lot of attention. My mother died a couple of years ago, and he’s never been the same. He’s not really all that interested in getting better.”

  “No. How sad.” I thought about my mother, watching hours and hours of daytime TV. Old age didn’t look all that inviting, no matter what the AARP literature said.

  “Yes. Look, I can see you’re still a little upset, so let me say that I want to apologize again for last night. Not just for the mix-up about Ivanova Associates, but for other things, too. I wasn’t even very nice about your business.”

  “That’s okay,” I told him. “Lots of people think that all art consultants do is find something that doesn’t clash with the carpet. I’m used to it.”

  “Thanks, but I just wanted you to know I didn’t mean to be rude. The truth is, I’ve always found art a little intimidating.” He pronounced “art” as if it came with a capital A and was some rarely encountered by-product of an alien species. I recognized the problem; he’d been dragged around to museums at too early an age or been forced to listen to Kenneth Clark reruns on late-night PBS.

  Still, I found it hard to believe. He didn’t seem notably lacking in confidence. “Intimidating how?” I asked him.

  “I don’t think I have any taste. I’m not sure what a lot of it’s about.” He sounded perfectly serious. I wondered if he was confessing to a minor sin as a way of camouflaging a more major one. Or maybe he just thought it was endearing.

  It was, a little.

  “Of course you have taste. You just have to react. Or not. That’s what taste is. I mean, it isn’t necessarily informed taste, but it’s still valid.”

  He grinned. “Well, the last time I went to New York, I stepped on one of the artworks at the Whitney on my way to looking out the window. It wasn’t till the guard blew his whistle at me that I looked down and realized I was standing on this nicely laid out row of bricks. I just didn’t get it. I still don’t.”

  I laughed. “It’s minimalist. No figures, no life. Just its nonreferential self.”

  “I don’t like it. It’s too cold.”

  “You don’t have to like it. That’s my point. Robert Hughes said postmodernism is the story of Van Gogh’s ear, without Van Gogh himself. I think the really good stuff tries to break the boundaries, but a lot of it is just the equivalent of an empty suit. It isn’t about anything but itself.”

  I studied him to see if he was interested in the topic, always a useful trick before you get carried away. His blue eyes appeared thoughtful and focused, so I continued. “People always try to get status by convincing themselves and everyone else that they know something no one else does. It’s just garden-variety snob appeal. That doesn’t excuse you from trying to keep an open mind, but it definitely means you shouldn’t allow yourself to feel intimidated.”

  He looked at me. “You feel pretty strongly about this, don’t you?”

  “Moderately,” I said. “I spend a lot of time working for people who buy something because they think it’s what they ought to have—it’s trendy, or it’s obviously expensive, or they can drop the artist’s name on the charity circuit and people will take notice. It’s depressing, in a way. All the juice has gone out of the transaction. Sometimes I’d prefer it if they bought things just because they loved them.”

  He grinned. “Even if it’s something tacky? Like velvet paintings?”

  I smiled. “There might be limits. But, hey, if you love it, go for it.”

  “I feel better already,” he said. “Enough to order another fish taco. Will you join me?”

  At least he’d asked this time, before he ordered. “Sure,” I said.

  “So how old were you when you got interested in art?” he asked me, after he’d signaled the waitress.

  I wasn’t about to tell him about the painting my grandmother had given me as a child. “Oh, high school, I guess. I always liked to paint and draw. I majored in art history at college because other people’s work seemed so much better and more interesting than mine. Then we went to Europe, and I was sure of it.”

  “You went with your husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “So things were still good then?”

  “Things were always good, or mostly always.” I looked at him. “I’m not divorced, Scott. My husband died.”

  “Ah.” He hesitated. “Recently?”

  I shook my head. “Five years.”

  “That’s rough. I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Thank you.”

  I wondered how we had veered onto the personal. He’d made it clear that this was supposed to be an information exchange, not a social event, and I didn’t want to scare him off. “Well,” I said, “could we talk about pooling information?”

  “Sure, we can talk about it,” he said, with a small smile. “Why not?”

  20

  “You first,” I said.

  He sat back against the vinyl seat. “Nothing doing.” It was as if he’d switched gears and shifted into lawyerese.

  I leaned forward, suddenly tense. “Why not?”

  “Look, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way…”

  “That usually means that the right way is particularly unpleasant,” I said.

  He laughed. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate that you have an interest in this case. But I might be onto something sensitive here, something that could turn out to be a matter for the police. I can’t afford to screw it up by seeing the details leaked, or…”

  “You think I’m going to blow your investigation?”

  “I didn’t say that. Honestly, I need your help. Just tell me what you’ve found out.”

  I contemplated stalking away from a meal with him for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. Just when I was letting down my guard a little, he was trying to shut me out. I couldn’t afford revenge fantasies, however; the truth was, I needed his help. I’d reached a dead end in what I could easily find out on my own, and they weren’t giving amateur-private-eye courses through The Learning Annex this quarter.

  “So basically, the deal is, I’m supposed to tell you everything I know, but you’re not going to share at all, is that it?” I asked him.

  He looked amused. “When you put it like that, it does sound like a raw deal,” he said.

  “And?”

  He lowered his head and laughed. “And
that was sort of the plan, yes.”

  “Is this what Cynthia suggested?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “That’s what I thought. I bet she suggested that we work as a team, right?”

  He looked at the ceiling. “There are teams and teams. Some teams don’t necessarily work on everything together.”

  “That’s not fair,” I pointed out. “Not to me, and not to Ramon Garcia. Don’t you think you have some obligation to help him?”

  He leaned forward and gave me an intense look. A trial-lawyer look. “Are you so convinced this kid is innocent? It sounded like a pretty good case to me.”

  His intensity was mesmerizing, and I had to force myself to concentrate. “It was…it is a good case, at least good enough for all of us to vote to convict him. To tell you the truth, Ramon seems like a lowlife who doesn’t deserve a lot of help. He probably deserves to be in jail for something, even if it isn’t murder. I honestly don’t know whether he did it or not. But if he didn’t, it’s not fair that he pay for a crime he didn’t commit.” Matlock couldn’t have said it better.

  “You seem to be big on fairness,” he remarked.

  “You’re not?”

  “I’m a lawyer.” He grinned mischievously.

  “Don’t try to divert me with that cynical ‘I’m a lawyer’ crap. It doesn’t let you off the hook from trying to do the right thing.”

  His eyes widened. They were very blue, but not at all cold. He didn’t look angry. “You’re a tough one, aren’t you?”

  “I guess so,” I said, surprised but not entirely displeased. “Besides, something’s going on. I think somebody’s been warning me not to investigate Ivanova Associates.”

  “That doesn’t amaze me, if you’ve been advertising your interest,” he said. “That’s precisely why I don’t want to see any of the details leaked. What kinds of warnings have you been getting?”

  “I’m not sure, because they’re sort of subtle. They may have nothing to do with who killed Natasha.” I told him about the calls to Diana, and about losing business. I wasn’t about to mention the wine glasses till I was sure he wasn’t involved, and I didn’t know how to ascertain that one way or the other. What could I say? “How do you feel about Breaking and Entering?” I kept having to remind myself to be careful.

  “Hmmm,” he said.

  No further information was apparently forthcoming, so I decided to apply more pressure. “If you don’t want me to keep blundering around and messing up whatever you’re trying to find out, why don’t you help me? I’m operating blind here, and if you don’t clue me in, you know I’ll just keep stepping on your toes.”

  His lip twitched. “That sounds remarkably like blackmail. Your appeal to my sense of fairness was more noble.”

  But maybe less effective. “Plus, I won’t be able to tell you what I learned from Ramon’s family, or from scouting out Ivanova Associates,” I added.

  “Which, of course, is invaluable information.”

  I said nothing, a response I thought was more effective than inflated promises.

  For whatever reason, he went for it. “All right,” he said finally.

  “Great,” I said, sitting back, waiting.

  “After you,” he said amiably.

  I frowned. “Didn’t we already play this game?”

  He laughed. “Sure, but I’m holding better cards than you are. You need me more than I need you, especially now that you’ve told me there’s more to find out, and where to find it.”

  I was outmaneuvered, but he was a pro. Besides, he was right. I sighed.

  The waitress brought the platter of tacos, with guacamole on the side. She seemed to be stopping by the table unnecessarily often, and I didn’t think it was merely in the hope of a big tip. Scott helped himself to two tacos but skipped the sauce. I took three, but I was behind. Besides, they were pretty small and incredibly delicious.

  Between bites, I told him about sleuthing around the perimeters of Natasha’s office building and discovering that there had to be something suspicious about the phone call reporting the burglary. I told him what I had learned about Natasha’s involvement in the art world, and about the murkiness of the introductions. I told him about the missing files, and about the hints I’d gotten from Mark that there was something disreputable about the service. Scott was a careful listener, stopping me once or twice to ask questions but otherwise not interrupting. I ended with my less-than-triumphant visit to Casa Garcia.

  I took a sip of iced tea and waited for his response.

  “You astonish me,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not. “You’re even more determined than I thought.” He shook his head. “That took a lot of guts. That part of town is Gangland Central, you know.”

  I knew. “You should have seen his mother and grandmother, Scott. They want him to be innocent so much, they’ll listen to anybody, even me. Even his brother keeps insisting that Ramon was framed, and I’d say he has more reason to be realistic than most.”

  He looked at me. “Let me get this straight. You’re doing all this because you feel…what? Responsible?”

  That required either a very brief answer or a very long one. I nodded. “Basically.”

  “That’s an old-fashioned concept,” he suggested.

  I shrugged.

  He smiled. “I like it.”

  I tried not to blush. “So you’ll help me?”

  “Yes. Also because, even though I had my doubts, you seem to have come up with some pretty good stuff on your own.”

  I looked at him.

  “Some very good stuff,” he amended.

  I smiled back.

  “Besides…”

  “Besides?”

  “I’m actually pretty big on fairness myself.”

  “Natasha Ivanova was under investigation by the IRS,” Scott told me. “Large sums of money passed through Ivanova Associates’ accounts on their way to places where they’re less inquisitive, like the Cayman Islands. Granted, she got big fees, but not big enough to trigger that kind of scrutiny. Moreover, she had some acquaintances who were less than savory back in the Old Country. Or in what we presumed was the Old Country.” He shook his head. “The Bulgarian Gypsy part still amazes me. The woman must have been quite a chameleon, putting on identities to suit her audience. How else can you explain all the conflicting stories? Anyway, some of her friends have been trying to start up businesses here, and there is speculation that she might have been laundering money for the Russian Mafia.”

  “Explain to me why this didn’t come out in the trial,” I said.

  He shrugged. “Nothing was proved. The investigation was ongoing. But truthfully, it’s probably because Ramon’s attorney didn’t dig very hard.”

  “What about the art? Where does that come in?”

  “I’m not sure. But art is a fertile field for all kinds of shenanigans. Think about it. Nobody can really say what it’s worth. It’s sold all over the world. If it goes to a private purchaser, it’s hard to trace. It could be a way to legitimize dirty money. I’m just speculating here, but if there was something not-quite-right going on, the art is probably connected.” He cleared his throat. “The other thing, of course, is what you’ve discovered: Not all the graduates of the matrimonial service were quite as top-drawer as they were supposed to be. I think there’s more to the complaints than dissatisfaction with which way the new mate hangs the toilet-paper roll,” he said.

  “The mate doesn’t hang the toilet-paper roll,” I reminded him. “The maid does.”

  “Okay,” he conceded, “but you see what I mean. I’m willing to bet there’s financial fraud involved. I smell it. There are too many rich people involved in this thing for somebody not to have thought of attempting some kind of scam.”

  I reminded him that Mark had a patient who thought she’d married a rich man through the service but found out afterward that she’d been mistaken. “She’s worried he might have married her just for her money.”
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  “Hmmm.” Scott put the tips of his fingers together and flexed them. He had big hands and long, slender fingers. “The thing is, she’d have to be an exceptionally naive rich person and one practically without friends not to know enough to get a prenuptial agreement. He’d get something, but not everything. Still, it might be worth checking out.”

  “But how are we going to prove what used to go on there? I mean, Natasha is dead, so how can we ever know if she fixed up people who were just in the market for taking some rich pigeon to the cleaners?” It was a bizarre metaphor, but my thoughts were in a tumble.

  “You’re assuming these practices would all be in the past?”

  I gasped. “Aren’t you?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe, but not necessarily. Nobody’s talking, and all the principals are still in place. Except for Natasha, of course.”

  I remembered what the receptionist had told me. “And except for the receptionist. The old one left suddenly right before the murder.”

  He smiled. “Speculation.”

  “Withdrawn.”

  The smile widened. “Watch much of the OJ trial?”

  I laughed. “Some. But mostly I read legal thrillers.”

  “Ah.”

  “Don’t say ‘ah’ like that. I know what you’re thinking, but—”

  “I doubt it.”

  I looked away, embarrassed by his scrutiny, but, yes, a little pleased by it, too.

  “So where do we go from here?” I asked him.

  “Tehachapi,” he said.

  “Tehachapi? The prison?”

  He nodded. “Ramon. The files, remember? I’m going to have to go up there and talk to him, if his lawyer will agree to it.”

  “But I thought you had to apply at least a month in advance and get on the approved list,” I told him.

  “He’ll have to agree to see me, that’s true. I’ll talk to the mother. If she goes along, it won’t be a problem.”

  “I tried that.”

  He grinned. “If there were an exclusive gallery opening, a really hot ticket, could you wrangle an invitation?”

  “Probably,” I agreed.