Authors: Chris Knopf
“What about you?” I asked. “Can you stick with this?”
“Not really, but I will. I don’t get a lot of personal discretion, but I take it anyway. I blame this on my Polish mother. Very stubborn woman.”
I took a shower after that, and woke up Amanda before I left the room. She told me she’d fix herself up as well, then go back over to the hospital. She told me she’d pick up some clothes and toiletries for me, and secure the room for a few days.
“Abby’s going to show up eventually,” I said. “Could complicate things.”
“Surely she’ll want what’s best for her daughter.”
“In her mind, that might include banishing her daughter’s father’s girlfriend.”
“You’re kidding.”
“At the end of time,” I said, “as the apocalypse descends upon this earth, it’ll still be all about Abby.”
“I won’t make a scene. I promise.”
“You can make anything you want, as far as I’m concerned.”
She brooded on that for a moment, then let it drop, though I knew not forever.
“Do you know what you’re going to do?” she asked, changing the subject. “About this whole thing.”
“No. One step at a time.”
“I’d rather not lose you, if that’s all right. I’ve gotten used to those nights out on the Adirondack chairs. It’s quite pleasant.”
“Yes it is.”
“Allison won’t want to lose you either,” she said. “She’ll need you to pull through this.”
“What’s all this talk? I’m just going to nose around a little. Nothing new about that.”
“No, it’s new and you know it.” I moved a wave of hair out of her eyes. She used the back of her arm to finish the job. She looked at me and said, “Don’t worry, I won’t bring it up again.”
I
T WAS
midmorning, and already getting hot. But I needed the exercise, so I walked the ten blocks uptown to Allison’s apartment. There was a yellow crime-scene tape barring the way. I put on surgical gloves and used my key to open the door, peeling, then reattaching the tape before closing the door behind me.
The apartment was a one-bedroom deal, which meant it had a bedroom, a bathroom, and another room that included living area, kitchen, and a counter where two people could eat. Allison was a freelance graphic artist, so the living space was really a work area, with a professional computer set up under a big task light, and a couple of file cabinets crammed in the corner. Every square inch of wall space was covered in photos, paintings, and fabric designs. None of it seemed to belong together, yet it all worked well in the end. I guess that’s what happens when graphic artists decorate their apartments.
On top of her big monitor she’d duct taped a brass plaque that said “Suffer Fools.”
It was hot with the air-conditioning off, and all the rooms were pretty badly tossed, though I’d seen worse. Fingerprint powder, in a variety of colors, was everywhere, and the drawers and cabinet doors were all partly open, their contents spread on the counters and floors. The coarse, woven rug was good at hiding stains, but there was a lot of blood. Also on the hardwood floors and up one of the walls. I hadn’t seen much of the place over the years. Allison was a certified slob and was usually embarrassed to let me in. Or she had a man tucked away in there and was reluctant, for some reason, to expose him to her gentle, unassuming father. So I wouldn’t likely know if there was anything abnormal, any sort of tale the apartment’s inanimate objects might tell.
I sat at the computer and turned it on. Nothing happened. I looked under the desk and saw a tangle of severed cords, then remembered that the CPU, the brain of the computer, was gone. I looked around the apartment, knowing it was a waste of effort. Whoever beat her up took the computer. Maybe because of what was on it, or he was just taking precautions. Or simple theft, though that was unlikely. Too much else was left behind.
I took out my cell phone and called Randall Dodge—Shinnecock Indian, occasional sparring partner and go-to geek.
I asked him if he could break into my daughter’s e-mail account, which I assumed lived somewhere in the cloud.
“No guess on the password?” he asked.
“Nah. I’m more likely to lock it up from too many wrong tries.”
I told him I’d get Amanda to forward one of Allison’s messages as soon as she could get back on her computer.
“No guarantees, but I’ll give it a go,” he said. “You might tell me why.”
I told him, and he expressed sympathy and concern through a few simple words. This was one of the reasons Indians make good friends. Not a lot wasted on unwanted sentiment.
Before leaving the building, on impulse, I knocked on the door of Allison’s next-door neighbor to the left. No one answered, so I knocked on the door to her right. The door opened as far as the chain would allow and a sallow young face with a dusting of beard and shiny skin peered out. The hall was hotter than Allison’s apartment, and the air flowing from this guy’s place hotter still.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“You know the girl next door was assaulted?”
“Yeah. Thoroughly shitty.”
“Did you hear or see anything?”
“I told you guys already, I didn’t see or hear shit because I wasn’t here. I was at a meeting and if you want proof, I can line up people from here to Paterson, New Jersey.”
“Anything when you were here? People coming around threatening or acting abusive?”
“Look, detective. I love Allison. Totally unperverted by the mindless, predatory exploiters she had to work for to pay the rent. Quiet, respectful, nonjudgmental, and generous with her pharmaceuticals whenever asked.” I let that last bit roll by unexamined, helped by a rise in the guy’s amplitude. “So I’m a lot more
upset
about this than you’ll
ever
be and I’d do anything to nail the mother
fuckers
who did this to the fucking
wall
and carve off their fucking genitals and feed them to their
puppies
, but I wasn’t here when it went down.” His voice dropped down to its original volume. “So, sorry.”
“Okay then,” I said to the door, after it was closed delicately in my face.
I
WAS
out on the street when I got a call from Joe Sullivan.
“Jesus Christ, Sam, what the hell.”
“If you had anything to do with Detective Fenton getting assigned the case, thank you.”
“Not a thing. Though they say he’s one of the better ones, if you get past the booze and bad rapport with senior police officials, which makes him sound like every other cop I know.”
“There’s not much to go on. Looks like she knew the guy, though no witnesses and forensics running like a slow boat to China.”
“By the way, Ross put in a word for you as well,” said Sullivan. “Much better than mine, given his hitch in NYPD homicide.”
“Thank him for me.”
“I got a shitload of time off banked if you need company,” he said.
Right after feeling a wave of gratitude, I remembered that thing I was working on when I got the call from Nathan.
“What about the Alfie investigation?”
“Jackie and Veckstrom will have to get along without us,” he said.
“They might make progress, but getting along is not a possibility. Anyway I’d be grateful for the help.”
“You get the room and don’t forget the minibar.”
I
’
M ASHAMED
to say I rarely remembered the details of my conversations with Allison. I could follow the big picture, but when she named names from work or off time, or referred to performers, TV shows, or other useless junk from popular culture, I’d put my attention on hold. So it was a bit surprising I remembered one of her regular clients, a design firm called Brand & Weeks, just because the name stuck in my head.
It was high up in a tower in Midtown, near, but not on, Madison Avenue. The crack security guy at the desk had me sign my name in a book, and even looked at my driver’s license. I asked him if he thought the picture was a decent likeness. He didn’t answer, just handed back the card and told me which floor to get off.
The elevator opened onto a basketball court, though not one you could actually use to play basketball, given the eight-foot ceilings and tiny parquet floor. A very small young woman in a form-fitting dress and nosebleed pumps sat at a table at center court. The only thing on the table was a desk phone. I walked up to her.
“I’d like to talk to the person who hires freelancers,” I said.
“You need to go online and post your book,” she said, loneliness nearly overcoming the tedium of repeating the line. “Somebody will call you. Or not.”
“I’m not a freelancer. It’s a police matter.”
“Oh,” she said, perking up. “That’s different.” She picked up the phone and punched in a number. “There’s a cop here who wants to talk to you,” she said into the phone. She looked up at me.
“Do you have identification?”
“I’ll show it to the person who hires freelancers,” I said.
“He says he has to show it to you,” she said into the phone. “Probably police procedure.”
She nodded and hung up the phone, telling me Althea would be right out. I thanked her. Althea showed up a few minutes later, and instantly filled up the reception area. Six feet tall, or a little more, big around the middle, but not fat, scruffy clothes, and sloppy white hair barely restrained by a red headband, blue jeans and knee-high laced boots, a loose chambray shirt, and a drafting pencil stuck in her mouth. She shook my hand, or rather cranked it like you would a recalcitrant pump handle.
“Cop, huh?” she said. “Love cops, when they aren’t arresting me. Just a joke. Not a very good one.”
I showed her my driver’s license.
“Not a cop,” I said. “I’m Allison Acquillo’s father. Somebody beat her up yesterday bad enough to put her in a coma. I was hoping you could talk to me about her work life.”
“Fucking shit. You are fucking kidding me.”
“I’m not. Can you spare a minute?”
“Yeah,” she said, in the two-syllable way people do now when they mean of course. “Follow me.” She led me into a big room full of long tables at which mostly young people clothed as haphazardly as Althea worked side by side at computers.
“Interesting setup,” I said, as we wormed our way down a narrow aisle.
“We did away with private offices, then cubicles, and now we all work at whatever work station is open when we get here. Two thirds of our people work remotely. I don’t know where they are. I think a few of them are on the moon, but I can’t prove it.”
She led me into a room with a door, walls made of whiteboards covered in script and sketches, and a few overstuffed chairs.
“War room,” she said. “For the big pitches and projects.”
“Tough business.”
“You have no idea.” As soon as we were in the comfy chairs she said, “Allison is one of my favorite designers. Great left brain/right brain thinker. Not that common.”
“She got the best of her parents,” I said, leaving out that she also got some of the worst of me, but I didn’t have to.
“Not first rate in the interpersonal department, no offense I hope.”
“So she had some enemies,” I said, “if that’s not too strong a word.”
“Will it surprise you to learn that creative people can have delicate feelings? No, enemies isn’t too strong. It’s a tough business even when you get along with people. I call Allison for the work that’s so tricky and complex it makes your hair hurt. But never as part of a team. Growing up, did she share her toys and play nicely with the other children?”
“You probably know the answer to that.”
“I put her on staff once for about a week. Disaster. I sent her back home with a plaque that said ‘suffer fools.’ Probably threw it out.”
“She didn’t. Can you tell me who had a bad beef with her?”
“Bad enough to beat her up? No. Designers specialize in stabs to the back, though entirely metaphorical. I’m really sorry about this. Terrible thing. Do you want some coffee?”
I admitted I did. She called somebody on the phone and a few minutes later two mugs were brought in by a young guy attempting to grow a beard, maybe to balance out his glasses, which had frames made of thick, black plastic.
“Do you know who else hired her?” I asked.
“Other than Brandon?” I must have looked confused. “Brandon Weeks, my former partner. The only writer who could work with her. Just as smart and difficult, but a lot crazier.”
“Explains the name of the place.”
“I bought him out in the nineties when he was trying to single-handedly sustain the Manhattan cocaine industry. Laudable, but not business friendly. Rehab saved his life but didn’t do much for his people skills. He makes Allison look like Dale Carnegie. Though I think they’ve been on the outs the last couple years. They used to sweep the awards shows. Now it’s just her. I don’t hear much about him. I don’t care. Some people are so toxic you’d need about a million years to even look at them without a beta blocker.”
“I don’t know any of this,” I said, mostly to myself.
“Kids don’t tell you shit. I have two sons who work in theater and nuclear biology, respectively, and live in apartments that I can find on a map and that’s about all I know. Oh, one of them has a cat and the other dated a girl who liked him to wear dresses. Don’t ask me how I found that out.”
We talked a little more about all the changes going on in her business, how the Internet had turned everything on its head, which I could have guessed on my own even though I didn’t own a computer. She promised to think about whom Allison might have worked with beyond the already mentioned Brandon Weeks, and anything else that might shed some light. I thanked her, gave her my cell phone number, and got up to leave. She stood up and loomed over me.
“I probably gave you the wrong impression about me and Allison,” she said. “We actually get along great. I love her even if she keeps me at arm’s length. I just figured she had a lousy childhood or something. Oh shit, I just said that to her father. I’m sorry.”
I shook her offered hand.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Interpersonal skills aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.”
And just to prove the point, on the way out I told the kid with the wispy beard if he ever wanted to get laid to get contacts and shave off the stupid beard. Althea said, “Listen to the man,” and crushed my knuckles with a handshake that sent me back to the street thinking that fools weren’t the only people worth suffering.