But Remember Their Names

by Hillary Bell Locke

  “Very nice of you to see me on such short notice.” He shook my hand warmly as I showed him into the room. “I happened to be in the neighborhood when I picked up your message. I’m going out of town on Monday so I thought I’d just stop by and try my luck.”

  “Are you kidding? You’re offering us twenty-four carat gold. We’d crawl over broken glass to talk to you.”

  His eyebrows went up a well-bred eighth of an inch when I said “we’d,” so I thought this might be a good time to introduce Paul. I did. He got the same reaction from Learned as he did from most people. One good look and “Whoa!” Not that Learned did anything as vulgar or obvious as gape. Still, you could tell from his body language the impression Paul made. I basked in complacent satisfaction. That’s right, he’s smart, he’s passionate, he could model for GQ—and he’s mine.

  “Paul’s writing a novel.”

  I realized as soon as the words were out of my mouth how limp they had to sound. At any given moment, half the adults in Manhattan are writing novels. But apparently genuine interest flickered in the eyes Learned turned toward Paul.

  “Really? Genre or mainstream?”

  “Postmodern.” Paul actually blushed at the compliment of an intelligent question about his work.

  “Good for you. That’s a field sorely in need of fresh blood.”

  Learned flipped his attaché case onto the bed and shrugged out of the parka. By the time I had the parka hung up, he was discreetly checking out the Wi-Fi switch on my laptop.

  “You want to use a computer?” I asked.

  “If I may. I don’t have hard copies of the material I’d like to show you, but if you’re on Wi-Fi I can get it for you in about five minutes.”

  “Easily done.”

  My ThinkPad had gone into screen saver mode while Paul and I were dining and flirting, and now it wanted a password before doing any computer stuff. I swiped the tip of my right index finger over a metal sensor below the keyboard. An oblong box appeared on the screen, but instead of an inviting green check mark it flashed “too fast” at me.

  I tried again. “too short.”

  “It must be channeling my ex-wife,” Learned muttered from over my left shoulder.

  I gave up on the swipe and typed my password in. I had to pause to be sure I remembered it correctly, because I don’t use it very often, but I got it on the first try.

  “It’s all yours.” I vacated the chair so that he could slip into it.

  It took him about thirty seconds to get the hang of my ThinkPad, which has a miniature red ball and a couple of click-bars instead of a mouse. It’s not what you’d call intuitive. Once he got rolling, though, he hit links at high speed and soon my screen filled with a tiny picture and a bunch of data.

  “I could print this out for you to pick up in the Business Center,” he said, “but I don’t want to risk someone else glomming onto it. This information isn’t for just anyone. My contact has a passion for anonymity.”

  “I’ll make notes.”

  Four screens and ten minutes later I took a legal page full of Cindy-scrawls over to Paul. As he read through the data his eyes lit up. Four one-bedroom apartments ranging from twenty-six hundred to thirty-eight hundred a month, including utilities. No parking, but who needs parking in New York? Well, lots of people, but not Cindy and Paul. One in Brooklyn, but convenient to the subway, and the other three actually in Manhattan. Pretty far uptown except for the most expensive one, but even so. Twenty-six hundred would be a breeze, and we could swing thirty-eight without breaking too much of a sweat. I sensed Paul salivating.

  “You won’t find those on craigslist,” Learned said. “Before I leave on Monday morning I can make a couple of calls. Mention my name when you contact the landlords and you should be able to get a look that day.”

  “I can’t believe how incredible this is.” I beamed at Learned. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “Actually, you can.” He took a pint bottle of Johnny Walker Red from the attaché case. “How about a drink? I’ll provide the scotch if you’ll provide the water and the glasses.”

  There was something deliciously, absurdly retro about the gesture—as if we’d time-warped into a Mad Men episode without the Winstons. I’ve never really gotten into the cocktail-hour thing. My judge liked a Manhattan after dinner when we were traveling, and I think my generation has made martinis more popular than they’ve been since Sean Connery was playing James Bond, but counting the minutes until five thirty so you could have a guilt-free mixed drink always struck me as prewar, somehow—like Bridget Jones using a cigarette holder. There were four other clerks that I’d go to O’Brien’s Tap with at the end of the day sometimes during my clerkship, and we got to where we had a standing order: Tanqueray with a twist, whiskey sour, seven-and-seven, cosmopolitan, and chardonnay. I was the chardonnay.

  Paul ran for ice, I scrounged the glasses—two tumblers and a bathroom glass that neither of us had used yet—and in a few minutes we were cozily sharing scotch and water on the rocks, for all the world as if we were waiting for Cary Grant to stroll in.

  “What I’d like to discuss now, if you have a few minutes,” Learned said once we were all comfortable, “is how you can thank me for helping out in your apartment-hunting efforts.”

  “Anything within a zip code of legal and you’re on.” I sipped diluted scotch and liked it.

  “Have you wondered why I’ve been paying so much attention to you since our chance encounter?”

  “Charm and good looks?”

  Learned smiled at that. He swirled scotch around his glass, took a sip, and swirled it again.

  “Not exactly. It was something I overheard you say about the estate tax kicking back in for people who die after the first of next year. At first, in fact, I wondered whether you intended for me to overhear it.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “That’s what I eventually concluded. Which made me very happy—because if you had wanted me to hear it, that would have suggested an implied threat.”

  “Threat?” Paul yelped. “To whom?”

  “Ariane Bradshaw,” I said as the dime dropped.

  “Exactly,” Learned said.

  “Huh?” Paul asked.

  “Estate tax,” I said.

  “Right,” Learned said. “If someone worth, say, ten million dollars were to die just before Thanksgiving his heirs would get ten million dollars. Whereas if he kicks off during the Tournament of Roses Parade, they’d only get four-million-five-hundred-thousand. There were ways to avoid the tax, but you have to think about those things well in advance, and people got complacent.”

  For an awful moment I thought Paul was going to show us what a clever boy he was by spelling it all out: Ariane knows hubby is in deep with bad people; she figures they might kill him to shut him up unless he saves them the trouble by taking his own life to avoid the disgrace of a criminal prosecution; since he’s toast before the Super Bowl either way, why not anticipate the inevitable with some forty-four caliber estate planning? But Paul kept his mouth shut. Apparently undergraduates learn something at Harvard, even in the English Department.

  “What you need to know,” Learned said, “is that Ariane Bradshaw did not kill her husband. All you have to understand is that unless I’m sitting here telling you a barefaced lie, she had no role in his murder.”

  The message came through loud and clear. If Ariane Bradshaw absolutely did not kill her husband, then I don’t have to toss and turn at night agonizing over the ethical dilemma of whether my client—excuse me, Mendoza’s client—should go to the police with her little tidbit about mom. I wasn’t planning on agonizing over that, but now I was going to not agonize over it while pursuing four leads for great apartments. Plus, I was about half-an-hour away from bedding my fiancé. This was shaping up as one hell of a good day.

&n
bsp; “You want me to share this with Mendoza, right?”

  “Yes.” He finished his scotch and water with a decisive gulp and stood up. “Now, I’m sure you don’t plan on wasting a night in New York City sitting in a hotel room, so I’ll get out of your hair.”

  “Actually,” Paul said, “we’ve been discussing what to do tonight. The shows are all sold out. I guess it’ll be a movie.”

  “No, no, no.” Learned shook his head sadly with an appalled expression while he unholstered his mobile phone. “We can’t have that. There’s a show in previews at some downscale performance space in SoHo. Saloon Singer. Set at a place a lot like the Café Carlyle, featuring a lead who doesn’t look much like Bobby Short but sings like an angel. A tenor angel. Eight o’clock. Definitely not sold out. There’ll be two tickets waiting for you at the box office.”

  He thumbed a speed-dial number into his mobile phone. He gave whoever answered genial but firm instructions about tickets for Paul and me, while I fetched his parka. Only when seeing him through the door did I remember that the supposed rationale for my jaunt to the big city was to come up with some kind of physical address for him.

  “My mom will come back from the grave to rap my knuckles if I don’t write you a formal thank-you note for all your kindness. Where should I send it?”

  He turned slowly and smiled at me. More than a hint of condescension at my amateur attempt to finesse information from him shone through the smile.

  “Think nothing of it. The expression on your face is enough.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  We didn’t leave the Hilton until about 7:20, but we still made it to the Damp Squib Stage in SoHo before 8:00. I figured, no shot at an empty cab this close to Broadway, so we took the subway to Washington Square and hoofed it from there.

  DSS occupied the second floor of an old warehouse that was apparently being rehabbed into lofts when the developers ran out of cash and their bankers ran out of guts. Its “box office” was two guys sitting behind a slotted, metal money box on a long folding table in the second floor hallway, right in front of the doors to the theater itself. I basked in the glow of you-aren’t-in-Pittsburgh-anymore. In its own way, this kind of low-rent stuff stoked my New York high as much as the Nederlander or the Brooks Atkinson theaters would have. We joined the line of patrons about halfway up the stairs. Paul glanced appraisingly at the attendees ahead of us in line and milling around at the top of the stairs.

  “We’re on the high end of the age demographic here.”

  “Feeling old?”

  “Not particularly. Just a fun fact.”

  He had a point. Dirt-cheap tickets for previews is a business model that skews young. A dude in a tux who looked like he hadn’t been shaving all that long was sidling nimbly down the stairs, stopping about every three sidles or so to say something. By the third repetition we were close enough to make out his words.

  “Stone Toad will not be appearing in this evening’s performance.”

  “Now I’m feeling old.” Paul offered me a bemused frown. “Do you have the faintest idea who Stone Toad is?”

  “I know he’s not on the management committee at Calder & Bull.”

  We moved up four steps before we had to stop again. From there we could see the door leading to the performance area and catch a glimpse of the space inside, which looked pretty skimpy. As we reached the top step, a woman in a circa-1948 black cocktail dress approached. She was smoking a cigarette in a short holder, presumably to suggest a Café Society ambience. Unfortunately, herbal cigarettes are all you can legally smoke indoors in New York these days, and they don’t exactly scream “Toots Shor.”

  “Stone Toad will not be appearing in tonight’s performance,” she said.

  I caught a cranky little pout sneaking across Paul’s face, so I elbowed him in the ribs, just in case he was considering an appearance by the mischievous ten-year-old in his psyche.

  We finally reached the table and cashbox, where I gave my name. One of the guys leered at Paul, but the other one lifted the coin tray and fished out two tickets paper-clipped to a Post-It note with Cynthia Jakubek scrawled on it. I thanked him.

  “Stone Toad will not be appearing in tonight’s performance,” the leerer chirped.

  “You still have the singing cats, though, right?” Paul asked.

  “You’re asking for it,” I hissed in his ear as we made our way to the door.

  “Third time’s the harm. Plus, he was treating me as a sex object.”

  “Then you should have slapped his face.”

  “That would have looked like part of the performance—and I don’t have an Equity card.”

  I couldn’t help laughing. He can play me like a flute when he wants to.

  “If I ask the chick passing out programs at the entrance whether Stone Toad is appearing in tonight’s performance, are you going to hit me again? Not that a little subliminal S&M doesn’t add spice to a relationship, but just so I know what to expect.”

  “You’re in kind of a snarky mood all of a sudden. If I were feeling bitchy I might hint that you’re a bit jealous of our benefactor, Mr. L.”

  Paul chortled. “Mr. L is gay. There is no straight guy over fourteen this side of the Atlantic Ocean who smokes Caporal cigarettes.”

  By now we had made our way into the darkened theater and found seats on metal folding chairs in the eighth—and last—row. I raised my eyebrows at Paul out of pure habit, even though he couldn’t see them.

  “What makes you think he smokes Caporals?”

  “I noticed a carton of the things in his attaché case when he took the flask out.”

  “If he were gay wouldn’t our tickets have been in an ivory parchment monogrammed envelope?”

  “It was short notice.”

  The lights went from low to pitch black, a spotlight hit a pianist stage left, and the overture for Saloon Singer began tinkling through the room. What I remember of the first act was pretty good. They nailed the atmospherics and the songs had a smoky, nostalgic quality that caught me up and carried me along. The story line was just an excuse to pass time between songs, but that was okay. A preview for an Off-Off-Broadway play is barely above street performers in the show business food chain, but it was still wall-to-wall pros. That’s New York.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t give the performance the attention it deserved. “Caporals” and “short notice” kept distracting me. Caporals for obvious reasons, but I couldn’t figure out why “short notice” was bugging me. It finally came to me at intermission. No, “came to me” doesn’t quite get it. It hit me like Vince’s palm had that time when I was eleven.

  “I’m an idiot,” I told Paul.

  “‘I’m an idiot’ is the only non-brilliant thing you’ve ever said in your life. What are you talking about?”

  “The fax. That stuff about a bar reception. What in the world was I thinking? Two hours in a decent midtown hotel room turned my brain to mush.”

  “Slow down.” Paul gave me a baffled look. “Connect the dots.”

  “‘Association of the Bar of the City of New York’ my ass. You’re talking about laying out fifty thousand bucks for an event like that fax described. That means you make damn good and sure people are going to show up. You send out save-the-date emails two months in advance, and follow up with electronic invitations that have RSVP response buttons. You don’t count on faxing people a few hours before the thing is supposed to start. That fax was either a lame practical joke or a scam to get us out of the hotel room for awhile tonight.”

  “Doesn’t bad guys planning their nights around us strike you as a little melodramatic and self-important?”

  I winced. I’d just been called melodramatic and self-important by a novelist. That hurt.

  “Trust me on this one, creative genius. We have to get back to the room.
At least I do.”

  “No way you’re leaving without me. I can’t afford a cab and if I try to get back on the subway by myself I’ll end up in the South Bronx and have to be identified from my tooth fillings.”

  Either we lucked out or my whispered prayers were answered. We got a cab less than two minutes after we hit the sidewalk and we were muscling our way through the Hilton’s oversized and underpowered lobby door by nine fifteen. The elevator took its own sweet time but by now I realized that that didn’t really matter. I’d done some math during the cab ride. Seventy-five Park Avenue is at most a half-hour walk from the Hilton, probably less. A cab ride would be even shorter. If there was no reception, we’d have found that out almost as soon as we got there, realized we’d been had, and presumably hurried back. This meant that whoever set this up couldn’t have counted on having more than maybe forty-five minutes inside the room once they’d spotted us leaving the hotel. Therefore, they weren’t there now, nearly two hours later.

  The hallway on our floor looked normal. Perfect symmetry of colors and décor that seemed to go on to infinity. The only visual relief came from a room service cart down a bit from our room and on the opposite side of the hall. The guest who’d wheeled it back into the corridor after dining had not cleaned his plate.

  I’m not sure what signs of forced entry look like, but if I saw any I didn’t recognize them when we got to our door. I started to feel a little sheepish. If I had just reinforced some hysterical-female stereotype by letting my imagination run away with me, I’d be hearing about it from Paul for a long time. Please let there be wanton destruction inside, I prayed. Please let the room be trashed—except for Paul’s manuscript. Oh, and my computer.

  I slipped my key-card into the slot. The little green light stayed dark and a little red light came on. I checked the card to make sure I was putting the correct end into the slot and repeated the process. Same outcome. I tried the handle out of sheer cussedness, but of course it was locked tight. I tried my key-card a third time. Red light. First my laptop finger-swipe and now this. Apparently it just wasn’t my day for cooperation from computer chips.