JM02 - Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home (22 page)

I got up and stretched and stood by the windows. The sky was dark now, and tinged with purple. The evening rush had merged seamlessly with the leading edge of the dinner crowd, and traffic was, if anything, worse. The streetlights were lit, and I saw the van still parked across the way.

I filled my water glass, turned on the television, and switched to BNN. Market Minds was on, and Linda Sovitch’s blond image filled the screen. She was saying something about housing starts and mortgage refinancings, and I turned the sound off and watched her full lips move and her blue eyes shift back and forth. She gestured with her left hand, and the big yellow diamond on her ring finger flashed under the studio lights. I thought of something I had read somewhere.

I opened my laptop and went online, back to LindaObsession.com. I found what I was looking for on the bio page: a mention of Sovitch’s marriage, ten years earlier, to real estate developer Aaron Lefcourt. It got just a single line— as if the Web site’s authors couldn’t bear to contemplate it any longer. It was the only reference to Lefcourt anywhere on the site, and I had to look elsewhere to learn more.

I didn’t have to look hard. Aaron Lefcourt, while not a household name, was by no means anonymous. For the last dozen years, he’d been CEO of Royal Court Development, a real estate company started by his father back in the sixties. When Aaron took over, Royal Court specialized in cheesy “vertical malls” in New York City’s poorer neighborhoods. Twelve years later, Royal Court had interests all over North America, including hotels, convention centers, golf courses, and ski resorts. According to a recent interview in BusinessWeek, Aaron had plans to expand into Asia and to take the company public “any day now.” According to a companion piece that ran alongside the interview, Lefcourt’s success in real estate was his second act. Before that, he had achieved a sort of fame in another sphere altogether— television.

Fourteen years earlier, Aaron Lefcourt had been an executive at AXE— one of the first of the upstart television networks— and a wunderkind in a business of wunderkinds. He’d developed such landmark series as Showmom, a sitcom about a kooky single mother, her smart-aleck teenage daughters, her lovable ex-con grandma, and her life as a Vegas showgirl, and Taggers, a drama about an attractive and racially diverse troupe of LA graffiti artists who were also undercover cops. Lefcourt had had the network’s top spot all but locked up when his genius overreached.

According to the article, industry insiders now judged the show to have been far ahead of its time— a forerunner of reality television. Back then they had called it “shocking” and “beyond bad taste.” The show had been Lefcourt’s pet project, his brainchild, and it was called Me! Me! Me! Its premise was simple: three adorable orphaned children would compete in games of chance and skill and vie for the affections of a wealthy childless couple. At the end of the segment, the couple would choose one child for adoption and send the others back to their orphanages. It aired only once. A firestorm of angry print and chatter ensued, and culminated in Lefcourt’s dismissal two days later.

The articles mentioned Linda Sovitch only briefly, and then only to speculate about her husband’s influence on the steep upward trajectory of her TV career— a subject her husband declined to discuss.

I looked at the photo of Lefcourt. He was forty-three now. His face was full and shiny, with rounded features and deep dimples— cherubic but for the hint of anger around his small mouth, and the watchfulness in his dark eyes. His brown hair was wavy and gleaming.

I rubbed my eyes and drank my water. Market Minds had ended and two paunchy bald guys in expensive suits were yammering silently and pointing at each other. I turned the television off and walked back and forth in front of my windows and looked down at 16th Street, at the van still parked there.

So what if it is light blue? I asked myself. There are plenty of blue vans in New York, and nothing sinister about them, right? I slipped on my coat and went downstairs.

It was cool outside, and the sidewalks were full of couples and loud groups. The van was up the block, about forty yards away. At street level I could see that it was light blue and that its windows were smoked. I walked away from it, to the corner, and crossed the street and came up on the other side. I was half a block away when the van’s tailpipe smoked and its lights flared and it pulled out of its tight spot and drove off. I tried to read its rear plate but it was caked in mud.

Plenty of light-blue vans in New York. Right. The jumpy off-center feeling that had hung behind my eyes like a nascent migraine since I’d spotted the tails last Friday blossomed now into full-blown paranoia.

I looked at the cars parked on the block, and at the crowd that filtered past, and I thought about how I might do it. I wouldn’t leave it to just one car, and I wouldn’t leave it to cars alone. I looked up and down the street, but I knew it was no use; if anyone else had been watching, they’d seen me make the van and seen the van take off. They would’ve dropped far back by now. Assuming the van had been watching me in the first place. Shit. Someone took hold of my arm and I reached out and spun around.

“Jesus Christ!” Jane said. She yanked her wrist from my grasp. “What’s the matter with you? You scared the hell out of me.”

“Sorry,” I said. “You surprised me.”

Her brow was furrowed, and a patina of anger lay over her tired, pretty face. She rotated her wrist and massaged it with her other hand.

“Sorry,” I said again.

“You look like you just stuck your finger in a light socket. What are you doing out here?”

“Nothing … I was going to the store. I thought you were going to call before you left work.”

“I was in a hurry to get out of there.”

I took Jane’s arm and walked her across the street and up the stairs to our building. Her eyes were narrow.

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. What do you want to do for dinner?”

Jane shook her head and went inside. “I don’t know,” she said. “Let me shower and change first.” I nodded. She pressed the elevator button and looked at me some more.

“Let me see the hand,” I said. She held up her hand and I took it in mine and inspected it elaborately. I turned it over and kissed her palm. “Better?” I asked.

“It’s a start.”

15

Tuesday morning was wet and windswept— more like March than nearly May— and I was soaked by the end of my run and chilled to my fillings. My apartment was quiet and full of rainy light, and though her perfume hung faintly in the air, I knew that Jane had gone. I tapped some wall switches and the overheads came on, and the place was brighter but just as empty. I stripped off my clothes and toweled myself dry and stretched.

A shower and a decent meal had restored Jane last night, and the prospect of the days ahead, full of lawyers and wall-to-wall meetings, had filled her with a taste for freedom, and so we’d stayed out late. A jazz trio was playing at Fez, and we’d gone there after dinner for the ten o’clock set. We lingered for the midnight show as well, and then we’d strolled up Broadway and had dessert at an all-night place off Union Square. Then we’d come back here and taken off our clothes and made love until we were insensate.

And we did not once discuss my case or mention the scene on the sidewalk. Don’t ask, don’t tell. I finished stretching and got into the shower.

I was drinking coffee when Neary called. He was on his cell and he spoke loudly over traffic noise.

“I talked to some people about your pal out in Jersey,” he said. He told me what some people had to say.

“His name is Valentin Gromyko, and he’s from the Ukraine by way of Paris and Madrid. And apparently he’s a real comer. He started here a few years ago with a crew of Slavs, doing hijack work around the Port of Elizabeth. From there he got bigger and branched out into protection, gambling, and loan-sharking. He’s moved north too, into Passaic and Paterson and, lately, Fort Lee. And he’s been giving the old guys a real pain in the ass— crowding them, undercutting them, stopping just short of out-and-out war. He took over a boiler-room operation from one of them a couple of years ago. Could be that’s what you saw.”

“Any idea how he’s connected to Gilpin?”

Neary snorted. “Yeah,” he said. “Gromyko owns the guy.”

“Owns as in … ?”

“As in lock, stock, and barrel. It seems Gilpin is a big bettor, and a really stupid one, too. About a year ago, he got in over his head with his bookie— six figures over— and the bookie sold his paper to Gromyko. Gilpin’s been working off the debt ever since, doing what he does best. But you know how that goes. With a nut that size and the vig on top, he’ll never see the light of day. And it’s not like he can call the cops.”

Neary’s voice dissolved into static, and the connection dropped. I hung up the phone and waited for a call back and thought about Gilpin while I did. I thought about what he’d told me of his last conversation with his brother— about the loan he didn’t get— and I thought about Gilpin’s exhausted caged-animal look. I felt sorry for the guy. The phone rang; it was Neary.

“These people you’re talking to know a lot about Gromyko,” I said.

“Not enough for an indictment,” Neary said. “They tell me Gromyko’s a cautious guy. He’s not flashy and he keeps a close eye on things, and he doesn’t make waves unless he has to. But when he does, he’s thorough about it. Nothing floats back up.” I was quiet and Neary swore at an unseen driver.

“You have any more company?” he asked.

“Not today,” I said, and I told him about the van. It was his turn to be quiet.

“And you don’t think this comes from Gromyko?” he said finally.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I should go over and ask.”

“Ask nice.”

“Nice is my best thing,” I said. Neary snorted. “Ever hear of an outfit called Foster-Royce?” I asked him.

“It’s a Brit agency, and they work a lot in Europe. I’ve never dealt with them but I hear they’re pretty good. Why?” I explained how I’d come across the name, and Neary thought some more. “You think he hired them?” he asked.

“Could be, or could be one of their people came to talk to him about something. Nobody at Foster-Royce will tell me one way or the other.” Neary made a sympathetic noise and rang off.

I finished my coffee and called Nina Sachs and once again got no answer. I thought about driving over to see Gromyko, but I didn’t have nearly enough caffeine in me for Jersey just yet, and it was still too early. I went to the table and looked at the lists of phone numbers waiting for me there.

I filled my mug and switched on the laptop. I checked my e-mail, but there was no sign of the phone records I’d bought last week. I cursed to myself; phone records would make this a lot easier. I opened a spreadsheet and began to transcribe dates, times, names, and numbers from my notes and to match answering machine messages to the telephone numbers from the caller ID list. It was a tedious process, but coffee helped. I ticked and tied, and whenever I came across a number with no name attached, I consulted an online reverse directory to fill in the blanks. I hadn’t paid much attention to the numbers as I’d copied them down at Danes’s place— I’d just wanted to get them all, and quickly— but now, typing them into the spreadsheet, I saw a pattern.

Danes had gone on vacation just over six weeks ago, and the first of the fifty calls in his telephone’s memory was dated two days after he’d left. But the messages on his answering machine went back only three weeks or so. Almost thirty calls had come in during those first two and a half weeks. Had none of those callers opted to leave a message? Somehow I didn’t think so.

I recognized many of the numbers on the caller ID list, including Danes’s own cell phone number. It appeared over and over again, at regular intervals of three days, and always around the same time of day: 6 p.m. And then, just over three weeks ago, just before the first message had been recorded on his answering machine, it stopped appearing. I was pretty sure Danes had been calling in to retrieve and erase the messages on his answering machine. But I had no idea of where he’d been calling from and no more than a bad feeling about why he’d stopped.

I listed the names that owned the numbers appearing on Danes’s caller ID. It was a short list, and, other than Danes’s divorce lawyer, I’d already spoken to all the people on it. But the names on the list didn’t account for every call that Danes had received. Scattered across the six weeks of his absence, there were over a dozen calls that had registered on Danes’s phone only as PRIVATE, with no number or name associated. Telemarketers maybe. Or maybe not. I looked at the short list of callers and wondered again at how small his world seemed to be.

I drove a Buick across the bridge. Other than that, things were pretty much the same in Fort Lee: asphalt and bad traffic, all covered in rain. The little office building was still there, with its white bricks stained the color of tea. The smell was still bad in the tiny elevator, and worse in the fourth-floor hallway. And the girl was still there, with her white skin and tattoos and scary breasts, smoking behind her desk and watching TV. She looked at me with tiny, empty eyes. After a while recognition came.

“What you want?” she asked, and blew smoke at me.

“I need to talk to Gromyko.”

She looked at me some more and took a long pull on her cigarette. “Who’s Gromyko?” she said.

I sighed and shook my head. “I’ll be at the bar down the street.” The girl blinked at me and said nothing, and I left.

Roxy’s was empty, and dim enough that the décor was mostly hypothetical. Amber lamps shone behind the battered black bar onto the bottles and the glassware and the chromed cash register, and the only other light came from the EXIT signs and through the small front window. There was a gray-haired guy built like a fireplug behind the bar, and a shadow at the far end that might have been a waitress. I bought a club soda and took it to a table by the window. I drank slowly and watched the rain come down. It took Gromyko an hour to get there.

The black Hummer pulled up in front of the bar, and the big blond guy who looked like a shark got out of the passenger seat, opened the rear door, and held an umbrella. Gromyko stepped out and said something to the shark, who nodded. He got back in the front seat and Gromyko crossed the pavement and came in.