“Does any of them appear to have had a motive for killing him?”
I paused before answering and looked at Tony, who was grinning at me. He and I both realized from the attorney’s question that he had no idea what kind of person Peter Dobrynin had been.
“Motive? Oh, yes,” I said. “They all might have had a motive, I suppose. From what I’ve learned, virtually everyone who had any intimate dealings with him grew tired of him, or grew to loathe him, or fear him. He was promiscuous in every sense of the word. He used people. He . . . degraded them.”
The lawyer had no immediate response to that. Instead he poured himself half a cup of coffee and motioned that we should help ourselves to some.
Then he asked, “What about the line of inquiry you were following? The years in which he dropped out of sight. What have you found?”
“Not very much,” I admitted. “Just random stories of Dobrynin appearing briefly and then going back underground. Unsubstantiated sightings of him. And plenty of speculation. I think the only thing we can treat as fact is that he lived a sort of derelict existence on the West Side.”
“How will you proceed now?”
“Well, Mr. Brodsky, I’ve only scratched the surface of Dobrynin’s life. I plan to contact some of the dance companies he was affiliated with. And to find out more about his financial affairs. I thought I would now develop an in-depth profile of—”
Frank Brodsky held up his hand, interrupting me. “We haven’t time, Miss Nestleton. Lucia has no time.”
“I understand how pressed for time we are, Mr. Brodsky. But you cannot expect immediate results.”
“I do not. But I would think your focus—our focus—now should be not on Mr. Dobrynin himself but on Mr. Dobrynin’s assassin. Don’t you agree that the quickest path runs through the derelict briar patch?”
“I don’t know that I do agree, Mr. Brodsky. But I appear to be in the minority. Virtually everyone I spoke with is on your wavelength. They believe he was killed by another homeless person.”
“Quite. And so?”
“So?”
“So it appears, Miss Nestleton, that the best course might be to search out his derelict acquaintances.”
“That’s not as easy as it sounds, Mr. Brodsky. I mean, homeless populations are constantly shifting. Many of those people are addicts, criminals, released mental patients.”
“Yes,” he answered simply.
“And I don’t know that I’m really equipped to conduct that kind of investigation.”
“Why not? If I may ask.”
“For all kinds of reasons, Mr. Brodsky.”
“The potential danger, for instance?”
“There is that. But that isn’t the only reason I’d prefer to go about the investigation in my own way.”
Brodsky gave me another patronizing smile, but this time I saw the glint of steel behind it. “I think, Miss Nestleton, that if you are not presently ‘equipped,’ as you put it, then you should become so. Don’t you agree that, given Lucia’s predicament, any other course would be frivolous?”
I was stung by his criticisms and his manner. So much for the leeway he had claimed he would give me, the trusted professional.
“One other thing,” he continued.
“Yes, of course, Mr. Brodsky.”
“I’ve set up an expense account for you and your associate, Mr. . . . Mr. . . .”
“Basillio,” interjected Tony, who had been circling the room up to now, paying not the slightest attention to what was going on. I had a most compelling urge to slap him across the face. But if Brodsky thought I had botched things before, I could imagine how he’d respond to my attacking my own colleague.
“Yes. Mr. Basillio, of course. As I was saying, a special fund has been set up to enable you to buy information from people on the street who knew Dobrynin— if you can locate them.”
Another barbed comment, I thought.
“I am certain Mr. Basillio can guarantee your safety, Miss Nestleton. As I’m sure he must have done countless times in the past.”
Tony chuckled appreciatively. I glared at him, but he didn’t notice.
The problem was, I just wasn’t ready for the kind of enterprise Frank Brodsky wanted to launch me on. Yes, certainly time was of the essence. He was right about that. And yes, I had accepted a huge fee for my services—five thousand dollars. But mine was a more intensive, cerebral style of investigation. Searching out arcane facts . . . making connections no one else seemed to recognize . . . unraveling knots . . . unearthing supposedly irrelevant tidbits of data . . . extracting the truth from among the ambiguities. Yes, it was that kind of inquiry that played to my particular strengths. It was not easy to see myself acting like an undercover street cop. But that was what Brodsky expected of me, apparently.
I looked over at him. He was waiting patiently. Waiting for my decision. Clearly, it was going to be his way or no way.
Tony was standing up very close to one particular painting—a magnificent rendition of a mountain gorge and waterfall, set in a festival of jagged cliffs.
Then he limped happily over to the two of us, exclaiming, “I’ve actually been there!” He pointed back excitedly at the painting. “That’s Lookout Mountain! In the Catskills!”
Brodsky and I both regarded him dumbly. I felt my face go hot. When the attorney made eye contact with me again, I noticed for the first time that he had lovely blue-green eyes. And they seemed like the eyes of a young man.
Basillio continued, oblivious to our lack of response, “I’ve always loved this kind of stuff. It almost makes you dizzy—like good brandy.”
“Well,” Brodsky replied, this time looking searchingly at Tony, “perhaps one day you will have the good fortune to own one, Mr. Basillio.”
Tony laughed heartily and hobbled back to his chair.
“No, Tony,” I said. “Don’t sit down. I think we have our instructions now. We can let Mr. Brodsky get back to work.” And then I said directly to the lawyer, “I will do my best.”
“Excellent,” he said quietly, watching us go. “That’s excellent.”
***
I’d agreed to stop for coffee and strategy-planning with Tony—in fact, I’d suggested it. But the explosion I felt rumbling in my chest wouldn’t hold long enough for us to reach the café. So I began shouting in the middle of the sidewalk.
“Basillio, if you’re going to fall apart from your midlife crisis, then so be it! But if you ever humiliate me that way again in front of a client, I will kill you! Understood?”
Tony turned frightened, perplexed eyes upon me.
“Quit the ‘Who, me?’ act, Basillio! What the hell was that nitwit art-lover act all about? Didn’t you notice that Brodsky thought you were a moron? And don’t you see how behavior like that reflects on me? That it makes me look ridiculous?” I felt tears welling up in my eyes and angrily fought them down.
Tony’s face crumpled then. “I’m sorry, Swede.”
“So am I!” I barked. “I’m sorry you’re in trouble and I didn’t see it sooner. But I have a client—and a very old friend—in trouble, too. Lucia’s going to be sent to prison if we don’t do something, Tony. Prison!”
“I understand that,” he said.
“Do you, Tony? Do you really get that?”
“Yes!” he said, his own anger rising, then fading. “I just said I did.”
“Then, do you think you can hang in there with me until this is over? Because if you’re going to cave in, Tony, then . . . then . . . ,” I said hopelessly, “then I don’t know.”
He took me by the shoulders. “It’s okay, Swede. It’s going to be okay. I’m going to report for white knight duty, same as it ever was. You’ll see.”
I began to relent.
“And I’m really sor
ry if I lost it in front of whatsiz-name—the Claude Rains guy.”
“Patronizing old man . . .” I muttered.
We said we’d talk about “it”—“it” being whatever worries or demons seemed to be stalking Tony these days—when we got to the coffee shop. But we didn’t. We talked about the case.
Chapter 14
I’d given Basillio a couple of early-morning assignments. Then he was to pick me up at my apartment. It was close to ten A.M., which meant that he was forty minutes late. Resisting the panic that prickled just under the surface of my skin, I stood at the window leafing through that crazy script. Finally, the downstairs bell rang.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said, rushing through the door. “But it wasn’t my fault. It took forever to set things up at the bank. And then the photos weren’t ready when I got to that place on Twenty-third.”
He put two brown envelopes on my long living room table and then blew on his whitened fingers.
“Why aren’t you wearing gloves, Basillio?”
“I never wear gloves. They inhibit the sense of touch.”
“What are you touching on the street?”
He shrugged in answer.
I undid the buttons of his pea coat and loosened the muffler around his neck. “Don’t get overheated, sport.”
I picked up the larger of the two envelopes and opened it. There were supposed to be thirty-five ten-dollar bills inside it, taken from the special expense account Frank Brodsky had set up. I felt the heft of the stack of bills, as if I could determine whether the money was all there just from the weight. It felt right, I guessed.
Then I looked inside the other envelope. There were five different shots of Peter Dobrynin, taken from newspapers and magazines and reproduced in wallet-sized prints. All were late photographs of Dobrynin, which was good. But unfortunately, none of them equaled in clarity of feature the photo I’d seen in Betty Ann Ellenville’s loft. On the other hand, how could they?
“Want some coffee, Tony?”
“I want many things. But I’ll settle for Java.” I went into the kitchen and turned the flame way up under the kettle, returning with a cup of instant Medaglia d’Oro for him.
“I won’t be long,” I said. “Just let me get on some socks and a pair of warm sweaters. I mean, some sweaters and a pair of—you know what I mean.”
I went into the bedroom to dress for the long, wintry walk on the wild side. When I came back into the living room I saw Tony, seated backward on a chair, staring intently at Bushy.
The cat was basking in his daily circle of light—a spot by the window where a small but brilliant beam of sunlight appeared each morning. It wasn’t there for long, but before it dissipated it was as dazzling as any diamond. Bushy’s burnished coat gleamed in the sunlight, his eyes half-closed, his body still and expectant. He gave the impression of a king sitting for the royal portraitist.
“What are you doing?” I asked Tony good-naturedly. “Admiring the gorgeous Mr. Bush?”
He gave a disgusted snort. Then his face contorted slightly as he began to speak in a grossly broad “mitteleuropa” accent. I realized at once that he was gracing us with his not-very-good Peter Lorre impersonation.
“Your cat may be quite beautiful, madame, but . . . heh-heh . . . I denounce him as a traitor and a fop . . . heh-heh . . . To you perhaps he is an innocuous Maine coon. But we know him to be an imposter, a fraud. Why, he cannot catch a mouse or a bird . . . or, heh-heh . . . even a cricket. And for his crimes, I say he must die . . . I must kill him . . . heh! I want to kill him.” He then hobbled out of the apartment door, and I followed.
I know Bushy heard it all, but he never moved a muscle.
***
We chose to start at Forty-third Street and Ninth Avenue, walk north along the avenue until we reached Roosevelt Hospital, then go east to Broadway, up Broadway to Seventy-second Street, and west on that street until we hit Riverside Park.
This route, we hoped, would provide us with maximum exposure to the homeless people who existed in the shadow of the Lincoln Center complex and who might have known Dobrynin.
At the beginning our progress was impeded by the sheer numbers of homeless—in alleys, on gratings, in the entrances to banks where the cash machines were located, anywhere these people could escape from the cold. We were also impeded by our reluctance to confront these unfortunates, because of their dress, their demeanor, and often their smell. Then too, as we needed to show the photographs to them and get some sort of coherent response, our total lack of experience in differentiating between the merely down-and-out and the mentally deranged was a real liability.
But it really didn’t matter. No one responded to the photos anyway. And no matter how we tried to resist that kind of behavior, we ended up handing out many of the ten-dollar bills just for charity’s sake—which was awfully bad strategy.
We stopped to drink coffee at a little muffin place on Fifty-seventh Street, walked another block to the hospital, and were about to head toward Broadway and the Columbus Circle area when Tony spotted another candidate pushing an enormous makeshift wagon heaped high with his belongings and detritus of all sorts. There were newspapers and sprung sofa cushions and books and rags, all tied onto the contraption with twine.
The heavy-laden man was approaching us from uptown, perhaps heading toward the small public park at Ninth Avenue.
“I think we’ve got a hot one,” Tony mocked. “Let’s show the dear boy to him.”
As we drew closer to the man, we took in his bizarre costume. He was wearing a black ten-gallon hat with a few greasy feathers attached to it, and a filthy buckskin shirt with long, bedraggled fringes. He appeared to be a buffalo-hunter who had emerged from a hundred-year sleep. His grizzled whiskers only buttressed the image.
Tony stepped up to the man and politely addressed him. “Excuse me, could I speak to you for a moment?”
The old-timer halted, eased the end of his cart to the pavement, and met Tony’s gaze with an open, if blank, expression of his own. “Hell, yes,” he answered. “You can speak, buddy.”
“Have you ever run into this man?” Tony displayed three of the pictures, fanning them out like playing cards.
The buffalo hunter squinted hard at the photos.
“Say, partner, you wouldn’t happen to have a smoke on you—while I’m looking them over?”
Basillio lit one of his cigarettes and handed it over. The derelict seemed to crush down on it with his lips and puff out smoke in great billows.
He “looked them over,” as he put it, for quite a few minutes. I thought he’d forgotten we were standing there. But presently he brought his eyes up and, flicking his fingers contemptuously against the head shot on the left, said, “Never liked him. Never liked that one at all.”
“Are you saying you know him?” I burst in.
“Hell, yes, I know him,” he said. Then he took on a menacing air. “‘Buddy,’ I told him, ‘keep movin’! Get movin’ and keep movin’—see? Cause I don’t like you!’” He gave out what I’m sure he meant to be a hard-bitten laugh.
Tony quietly extracted two tens and stuffed them with emphasis into the breast pocket of Buffalo Man’s shirt.
“Can you tell us when you last saw him?” I asked.
He puffed on the cigarette again like a mad whale, then said, with true reflection: “I believe the last time I saw Lenny was Thanksgiving . . . over there at that dinner they give us. At the soup kitchen.”
“Lenny?” I repeated. “Did you call him ‘Lenny’?” Basillio and I exchanged looks, suddenly deflated.
“Hell yes, it’s Lenny. Oh, hell yes. He tried to hang around, but I told him, ‘Keep movin’!’ Just moved him along. Never liked him.”
Tony retrieved the photos and displayed them once more. “Are you sure that’s Lenny?”
Buffalo Man picked them out of Tony’s grasp and spent less than two seconds studying them again. “Lenny,” he pronounced, handing them back.
“Tell me,” I said before he could move on. “Where is this soup kitchen? Where you last saw Lenny.”
He seemed surprised that the whereabouts of the soup kitchen wasn’t known to all. But after we had apologized for our ignorance, he told us all about the kind people at the church on Seventy-first Street. Then Buffalo Man picked up his overburdened cart and left.
Tony and I stepped into a doorway to warm up a bit and to digest our first investigative success.
“I don’t know, Tony,” I said. “How can we be sure that Lenny was Peter Dobrynin?”
“Well, that guy seemed positive.”
“But he may be totally psychotic.”
“I doubt that.”
“But why would he call himself ‘Lenny’?”
“How should I know?”
“I think we’d better go over to that soup kitchen.”
The custodian was the only one on the premises of the Episcopal church. The man pictured in the photos didn’t look familiar to him, and he didn’t know anyone named “Lenny.” In addition, he told us, the church had suspended its feed-the-homeless program about six weeks ago, due to lack of funds. He did give us the names of the churchgoers who had run the program, though. We thanked him and left.
On the street again, Tony complained, “Not being a hardy Nordic type like you, Swede, I can feel the energy draining right out of me. This cold weather really takes its toll.”
“You mean you want to call it a day?” I asked. “I probably shouldn’t have you out here in your crippled condition, anyway.”
“No, I’m fine. But I do vote we dip into those tens to buy us something to eat.”
I hesitated only for a minute. I was indeed hungry—and cold.
Tony guided me to an old-fashioned family-style Italian restaurant. He hadn’t been there in years, he said, and though I’d probably passed it dozens of times, I’d never even noticed it before. We were coming in at an odd time—between lunch and dinnertime—so it was absolutely devoid of customers. The waiters sat drinking coffee together at a large round table. Tony and I took a booth and ordered opulently: a good Chianti, a Caesar salad for two; antipasto for two; then pasta. At the end of it all, we shared strawberries with zabaglione.
A Cat in the Wings: (InterMix) Page 7
