by Konstantin
Fenn barked out another laugh. “An audience for what? You doing tricks or something?”
Chris took a step toward me and poked a finger in my direction and then at the door. “You, out— now.” His face was red, and his fists were clenched. Fenn’s dark eyes were shining with expectation.
“You’re going to get him hurt,” I said to Fenn. Behind Chris’s back, he shrugged. Chris took another step.
“There’s only one guy gonna get hurt, asshole,” he said. Then he put his hands up, to shove me in the chest. I stepped aside and he fell past me, and I hurried him along with a push between the shoulders. I stuck out my foot as he went by, and he stumbled into the hallway, down on one knee and flapping like an ungainly red bird. I shut the door and turned the lock and looked at Fenn. He laughed out loud.
“Tommy said you were a piece of work,” he said, and his wide frame shook. Behind me, Chris cursed and worked the doorknob. Then he started pounding.
“You okay, Mitch?” he shouted. “You want security for that asshole, or the cops?”
“No,” Fenn called. “No cops. Everything’s fine, Chris— I’ll catch you tomorrow.”
“You sure? I can—”
“Tomorrow, Chris,” he repeated, and Chris got the message and went away. Fenn picked up a red rubber ball from his desk and started squeezing it. He shook his head.
“Or was I wrong, and you’re going to try and push me around, too? ’Cause I’m telling you, it won’t be so easy with me.”
“As appealing an idea as that is, I came to talk.”
Fenn leaned back in his chair and smiled. If there was relief there, it was hard to tell. “You want to talk, talk to Tommy.”
I walked to the desk and slung my coat on one guest seat and sat in the other. “I heard what he had to say. I didn’t find it convincing.”
“That sounds like something between you and Tommy.”
I sighed heavily. “You’re going to make me go through the motions?”
Fenn squeezed the rubber ball, and watched his knuckles go white. “Which motions are those?” he asked.
“The ones I make while I’m calling the cops.”
“Calling them about what?”
“About you and the Williamsburg Mermaid, for starters.”
Fenn was quiet for a while, and studied his fingers on the red ball. “Is that supposed to make me go weak in the knees?” he asked eventually.
“Worry more about the effect it has on the cops, and especially when they see Cassandra’s video.”
He smirked. “You know, I’ve never watched the final product. I hope she made me look good.”
A little rushing noise started in my ears. “Yeah, you look great choking her, Mitch— almost as good as when you’re slapping her around, or burning her breasts with candle wax.”
Fenn let go of the ball. It took a small bounce on his desk and came to rest against his phone. He pointed at me, and finally the grin went away. “Fuck you, March— that bitch was a freak, but she was a grownup freak. She knew what she was getting into, and she liked it, so don’t lecture me.”
I felt my hands grip the armrests of the chair, and I felt something shift in my face. Fenn pushed his chair back from his desk by half a foot.
“What— she was a friend of yours or something?”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Don’t call her ‘bitch’ anymore,” I said softly.
“Whatever,” he said. “My point is, she was no schoolgirl, and the cops will figure that out. And, anyway, I can account for my time.”
“Sure, and while they’re figuring, and you’re accounting, who knows what other agencies will start asking questions— about your business, maybe, and Tommy’s, about your clients…”
Fenn’s eyes narrowed. “What agencies?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “The IRS, maybe, or the SEC— there are all sorts of initials out there, and all just a phone call away.”
Fenn’s mouth was an angry line, and I could almost see the steam rising from his dark curls as he stared at me. He shook his head. “Tommy wasn’t bullshitting you; it’s been years since I had any contact with her, and I had nothing to do with what happened.”
“Why did you send him looking for her, then?”
He ran a hand across the back of his neck and let out a long breath. “I got a letter a while ago— about three months back— pictures of me and her, from when we were together. A few days later a note came, from somebody squeezing me, or trying to.”
“Somebody who?”
Fenn snorted. “Do blackmailers usually sign their letters?”
“You assumed it was Wren?”
“From the photos and the bullshit threats, that’s what I thought, but I never knew who the fuck Wren was. That’s why I called Tommy.”
“What were the threats?”
“The same crap as two years ago,” Fenn said. “Sending pictures to the boss, the wife, the in-laws— all that shit.” Fenn paused and surprised me with a satisfied smile. “She didn’t know that it was all old news, though. That ship sailed a long time ago.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means in the last couple years I’ve become pretty much squeeze-proof.”
“Squeeze-proof how?”
Fenn laughed. “Two years ago, I was still married, I was working for somebody else, and I was just putting together the money for this.” He gestured around him. “Now I’m single, I’m in charge around here, and I bought out the last of my investors six months back. So if somebody wants to put pictures of me fucking a beautiful girl on the Internet, they can go right ahead. The way we went at it, it’d probably get me more dates.”
“Why not ignore the letter, then? Why send Vickers to look for her?”
“That’s just what Tommy said— leave it alone— but I said no way. Immune to it or not, I fucking hate the idea of someone trying to shake me down. I hate being harassed; I hate people messing with my privacy. And the fact that there’s somebody out there who thinks they can get away with it— who thinks I’m a soft touch— that’s a fucking insult.”
“So what was Vickers supposed to do once he found her?”
“Send her a fucking message, that’s what. Let her know that I know who she is, and that she’s going to get herself in trouble— serious legal trouble— if she keeps screwing around with me.” I shook my head. The words were familiar, and so was the reasoning.
“What happened then?” I asked.
“Just what Tommy told you. He tracked her down, they had their talk, and that was it, the one and only time he spoke to her.”
“How did she take it?”
“The bit— the girl? Tommy said she was fucking surprised.”
“Surprised that he’d tracked her down?”
Fenn shook his head. “Surprised by the whole thing. According to him, she didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. Didn’t know about the pictures or the letter, didn’t know anything about a squeeze. According to Tommy, it was all a big shock.”
“He believed her?”
Fenn shrugged. “I told him this chick could sell ice to Eskimos, but still he bought it.”
“But not you?”
“I knew her. I also know that after their talk we never heard another word about pictures or threats or sending cash. To me, that says she took the hint.”
“To the cops, it might say you killed her.”
Fenn slapped his hand on the desk. His voice was tight and loud. “Don’t you listen? I had no reason to kill her. Those pictures were no threat to me, they were just an annoyance. She was just an annoyance. Shit, if I was planning something like that, do you think I would’ve sent Tommy out looking for her that way? It wasn’t exactly a secret what he was doing.”
“Maybe things were different once you found her. Something she said, maybe, or something she did…”
“What— some kind of a crime of passion? I told you, I never even saw her. And I was out of th
e country when she died.” I shook my head. “You don’t believe it,” Fenn said, “here— look.” He opened a drawer and pulled out a manila envelope and slid it across the desk.
I looked inside. There were fifteen pages, all copies— airline tickets and hotel receipts mostly. Rio, SДѓo Paulo, Buenos Aires, Punta del Este, then back to Rio— three weeks, just as Vickers had said. I tossed it back to him.
“These don’t mean anything. You could’ve hired it out.”
Fenn shook his head, and the grin began to reappear. “You just can’t make up your mind, can you? ‘Hired it out’ or ‘crime of passion’— which is it? Hiring somebody means planning, and if I was planning it, I wouldn’t have had Tommy out beating the bushes so loud. And flipping out means I had to be there— which you can see I wasn’t. On top of which, I had no fucking reason to do anything to this girl besides sue the hell out of her.
“For chrissakes, March, for a guy who’s supposed to be smart, you got your head squarely up your ass.”
26
Cold and fatigue sat like a yoke on my shoulders, and I leaned heavily in the elevator as it rose. It was only seven o’clock, but it felt like years since I’d left my apartment to meet Paul Darrow. I opened my door to the smell of thyme and warm bread, and to Clare at the kitchen counter, leafing through a shiny magazine. I hung my coat and poured a cranberry juice and looked in the pot that was heating on the stove. A thick stew simmered inside.
“You cooked?” I asked.
Clare smiled. “If by cooking you mean buying it, putting it in the pot, and turning on the heat— then, yes. It’s an old family recipe I picked up at the hem of Mother’s cocktail dress.” I smiled back at her, but it turned into a yawn midway.
“This’ll keep,” she said. “Why don’t you rest for a while?” Which sounded like a fine idea— a deeply brilliant idea— except that Mitchell Fenn’s wide smile lit the darkness whenever I closed my eyes, and I knew that I should call Mike Metz. As it happened, I wasn’t fifteen minutes tossing on the sofa when he called me. I carried the phone into the bedroom.
I told Mike how it went with Fenn and there was silence when I was done, and then a moment’s irritation.
“I thought you were just going to follow him,” Mike said.
“An opportunity presented itself,” I said, “and, anyway, no blood was spilled.”
“That’s comforting. Do you buy his story?”
I’d had a slow cab ride home to think about it. “Grudgingly,” I said.
“So do I. And it presents an interesting scenario— of someone using Holly’s videos for blackmail, and of Holly finding out. Those are circumstances for violence, and it’s a story the police will take seriously.”
“It suggests someone close to her— close enough to have access to her unedited work, anyway.”
“Someone like a boyfriend, for instance.”
“That’s one possibility.”
“With Coyle’s record, it’s the possibility the cops will focus on. And speaking of which, it’s time to call them— past time, really. Have you talked to David about Stephanie?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“Jesus,” Mike sighed. “You have to do it, John. We need to know—”
“I know, I know— I’ll call him tonight.”
And I did, right after I got off the phone with Mike. I had no idea of what to say to him, and I was relieved when his recorded voice came on. I thought about just hanging up, but ultimately I left a message. Call me.
I came out of the bedroom as Clare was setting a bowl of stew and a loaf of peasant bread on the table. She carried her own bowl over and sat.
“You didn’t seem to be doing much resting,” she said. I shook my head and tore off a piece of bread and dipped it in the stew. “I won’t ask about your day at the office,” she said. “’Cause then you’d have to kill me, and you’re too tired now.”
I smiled. “So thoughtful. How did it go with your lawyer?”
“No surprises,” Clare said. “The pre-nup spells it all out, and according to Jay no one’s arguing anything. It’s a matter of filings and court calendars now.”
I nodded. “And afterward?”
A little smile crossed Clare’s face. “Afterward what?”
“Do you have…”
“Plans?” Clare asked. I nodded. “I’ve been thinking about going back to gallery work,” she said, “or maybe something else. I’m in no rush. And as far as housing goes…I figured I’d just move in here.” I stopped chewing for half a second— not even that long— but it was long enough for Clare to have her fun.
Her smile was wicked and her cheeks turned pink. “Never a camera when you need one.”
I shook my head. “And I called you thoughtful,” I muttered, which made her laugh more.
Later, I stretched out next to her in bed, my head against her hip. Clare was sitting up, reading, and her fingers traced my hairline. My eyes were heavy doors.
“I don’t mind your staying,” I said as they were closing.
“I know,” she whispered.
* * *
I was blind and deaf, and Clare shook me awake for the telephone. I rubbed sleep from my eyes and looked at the clock, and didn’t believe that it was seven a.m. I read the caller ID.
“Shit,” I sighed. It was David, and I still had no idea what to say. As it turned out, he did the talking.
The voice on the line was nothing I’d heard from him before: trembling, fragile, and utterly lost. “The police are downstairs, Johnny. They want to come up.”
27
Pitt Street runs through the heart of the Lower East Side, several miles south of where my brother lives, and usually a world away— though not that Tuesday morning. That morning, David’s world had collapsed to the size of the narrow, windowless room where we sat and waited and watched a clock tick to ten. The Seventh Precinct station house is a new building, but the beige walls around us seemed a hundred years old, and the thick air older still. We were on one side of a metal table, Mike and I, and David in between. He was silent and motionless, and he had the blasted look of a man who’s recently survived a terrible storm. Except the storm was just beginning, and survival was very much an open question.
In David’s apartment, the dance had been all cordiality and caution, everyone polite and all the threats implicit. The two detectives sent to fetch him, Russo and Conlon, were large and tired-looking and almost bored with the proceedings. They’d been happy to wait until Mike and I arrived before talking to David, and they’d never uttered the word “arrest” or “suspect,” never even hinted at them. They kept their explanations of why they’d come vague— something about help with an investigation, a Jane Doe they’d been trying to identify for over a week— and they acted as if a summons to a police station was an unremarkable thing, a bureaucratic nuisance no more important than an expired dog license.
It was only when Mike tested the waters of resistance, suggesting that David appear tomorrow instead, that they’d stirred. And then, without a word spoken— with only glances, furrowed brows, small coughs, and the shifting of feet— David’s situation was plain. We’ve come, so early in the morning, for you. And so we went.
In the station house, the politesse thinned further, and in the way cops do— in the way that I used to do— they made us wait. Because waiting works. Worry turns into paranoid fantasy and a case of the sweats, stomach cramps turn into an urgent need to crap, and pretty soon out bursts full-blown terror. It was working on David— I could see it in the pallor and in the moist sheen on his forehead, and I could hear it in the rumblings of his gut— and nothing Mike or I said seemed to help. I wasn’t sure how much was even getting through.
Mike squeezed David’s shoulder and smiled, relaxed, imperturbable, and entirely confident. “We’re going home soon,” he said. I was hoping he was right when the door opened and a new cast of characters walked in. There were three of them, a man and two women.
The detectives were L
eo McCue and Tina Vines, and they made an odd couple. McCue was about fifty and medium height, with a jutting belly and sagging smudges beneath his spaniel eyes. His mustache, like his hair, was bulky and mostly gray, and his fingers were thick and ragged-nailed. Vines was thirty, tall and precise and with the concave cheeks and restless look of an exercise junkie. Her blond hair was cut short, and her blue eyes were quick and unconvinced of anything. She wore her sleeves rolled, and there was a lot of muscle definition in her forearms.
The ADA was Rita Flores. She was small and rounded and forty, with glossy black hair cut to her shoulders, a full, pretty face, and nearly black eyes. Her suit was blue and careful, her shoes were flat, and it was easy to imagine the kindergarten art on her office wall, and the minivan in her garage— easy to cast her as the reliable car-pooler or the genial soccer mom. Which would have been a bad mistake. She introduced herself and I saw Mike’s jaw tighten.
