JM02 - Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home (23 page)

He ignored me and went to the bar and spoke quietly to the bartender, who passed him a steaming paper cup and a napkin. Then he walked up front and sat down across from me. Raindrops beaded on his short blond hair, and his pale narrow face was still. He dunked his tea bag in and out of the hot water and looked at me.

“I did not expect to see you again,” he said quietly.

“Same here, but something’s come up.”

Gromyko took his tea bag out of his cup and put it on the napkin. He blew on the tea and swallowed some and looked at me, waiting.

“When I drove back to the city on Friday, I had some company. Two cars: a black Grand Prix and a brown Cavalier. Ring any bells?”

Gromyko sipped more of his tea. A tiny crease appeared between his canted gray eyes. “No.”

“How about a Ford Econoline van, light blue, with smoked glass and mud on the plates?”

He raised his head slightly, then turned and motioned through the window. The shark climbed out of the Hummer and trotted into the bar. Gromyko spoke softly and rapidly and I understood none of it. The shark nodded and replied and Gromyko dismissed him.

“Did he know something about this?” I asked, but Gromyko ignored the question.

“Why do you bring this to me?”

“I thought there might be a connection,” I said. “I picked up the tails after talking to you.”

Gromyko shook his head. “Did it not occur to you that that was simply the first time you noticed them?” he asked, and he sipped again at his tea. “There are more profitable ways for me to allocate my resources than to following you, and more pressing business for me to attend to.” He emptied his cup and crumpled it so quickly and completely that it seemed to vanish before my eyes.

“What about your colleague, Goran? Is he up to any freelancing?”

Gromyko’s small mouth moved minutely. “Goran is no longer with me,” he said. “It is not Goran.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“Utterly,” he said. I was quiet, thinking. Gromyko was poised to stand, but he didn’t.

“Is it possible someone latched on to me while they were looking at you?”

A colder light came into his eyes, and the little crease on his forehead deepened. His voice grew quieter. “I think not,” he said.

I nodded and gestured toward the Hummer. “Did he know anything about this?” I asked.

Gromyko nodded imperceptibly. “He was escorting Gilpin from the office on Saturday and thought a blue van might have followed him for a time. It broke off before he could act on it. The license was covered with dirt.” I waited for more, but nothing more came.

“That’s it?” I asked. “No theories on what it was about?”

Gromyko’s face was as calm as an icon’s. “It is possible that I could be of assistance to you, Mr. March, but I do not operate a charitable organization. My advisory services are valuable, and for them I expect payment in kind.”

I laughed and put on my best Marlon Brando voice. “Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me.”

Gromyko raised an eyebrow and gave me an icy microscopic smile. “It is not a currency I expect you wish to part with,” he said, and he stood. “Your calculation in the garage, with Goran, bought you something, Mr. March, but do not be misled by that. Do not intrude on my business again. Do not come here.” He picked up the crumpled cup, the tea bag, and the napkin and placed them on the bar and left. The shark was out of the car again, umbrella in hand, before Gromyko was through the door.

I took a deep breath. A television came on at the far end of the bar. A soccer game was in progress, before a large crowd in a sunny clime. The play-by-play was in a language I didn’t recognize, but it was lively and plentiful and the barman seemed to find it amusing. Outside, the street was wet and ugly, and the prospect of walking to my car and driving back to the city seemed, all of a sudden, a hideously complicated thing.

I ran a hand over my face. I was tired, and only some of it was lack of sleep. Too many hours at the laptop had left me with bleary eyes and a bad feeling about Danes, but little else, and this trip to Fort Lee had been only slightly more productive. I believed Gromyko when he said he wasn’t having me followed— even if there was more to the story that he hadn’t told me. That let me take his name off my list, but it got me no closer to whoever was following me, and certainly no closer to Danes himself.

I drank off the melted ice at the bottom of my glass and rubbed my eyes. It was warm in the bar and soothing in the dim light. The images of running men were bright and cheery, and the foreign words were animated and friendly sounding. The shadow at the end of the bar began to move around the room, lighting the little candles on the tables. It was a waitress. She was black-haired and lithe, and I wondered what her name was and what her voice might sound like. The barman put two shot glasses on the bar and pulled a bottle from beneath the counter. Vodka. He filled a glass and looked over at me and held up the bottle.

“You want?” he asked. “On house.”

I was scared by how long it took me to tell him no.

Nina Sachs had called while I was in Jersey, and when I called her back she actually answered the phone.

“Where the hell have you been?” she said. “I left a message over a day ago.” Her voice was scratchy and fast and made me grind my teeth.

“And I’ve called you back— but no one picks up.”

“I’m working,” she snapped. I heard her lighter spark.

“So am I, Nina.”

“Yeah— for me.”

“For the moment.”

Nina Sachs sighed and cleared her throat. “All right, all right, let’s stop pissing at each other. Just tell me what’s going on.”

I started with Gilpin. Sachs smoked and listened while I told her about my trip to Fort Lee, and her only response was mild surprise that Danes had had any contact at all with his half brother. I tried the name Gromyko out on her, but she’d never heard of him.

I moved on to Danes’s apartment and the evidence I’d found of a relationship between him and Linda Sovitch. The news brought laughter rather than surprise.

“Christ, is that how she lines up her guests?” she said, with a nasty chuckle. Then she thought about it some more. “You think Sovitch was bullshitting you when she said she didn’t know anything about where Greg is?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t know for sure that there was anything going on between them. That’s why I want to talk to her again.”

“Trust me”— Sachs snickered—“she leaves her underwear, there’s something going on. What else did you come up with?”

“A business card,” I said, and told her about Foster-Royce. “It’s a detective agency, based in London. They have offices in New York and a bunch of other places, and apparently they do a lot of international work. And they’re at least good enough at it not to tell me whether Danes is a client of theirs. You have any idea why he’d hire an outfit like that?”

There was silence, and then Nina sighed. “How the hell should I know?”

“Has he hired PIs before?”

“I told you, I have no idea. What else did you find?”

I took a deep breath and told her that Danes’s apartment had already been searched, and that someone had been following me, at least since my first trip to Fort Lee. Sachs went quiet, and all I heard for a long while were the soft sounds of her smoking.

“What the fuck is going on?” she asked eventually. Her puzzlement was genuine.

“Someone else is looking for him. I haven’t figured out who yet, or why.”

Frustration boiled in Sachs’s voice and spilled out as anger. “I thought I paid you to figure things out, for chrissakes. But all I get from you is speculation and more fucking questions!”

I didn’t hang up on her, but I thought hard about it. I took another deep breath and let it out slowly.

“That’s the way this works sometimes, Nina. In fact, that’s the way it works most of the time— and getting mad about it doesn’t change things.”

She started to speak, stopped herself, and swallowed everything but a derisive snort. “Fucking racket,” she said under her breath. “Do you have any actual progress to report?”

“I have more fucking speculation,” I said. “You can decide if it’s progress.” I told her about the phone messages on Danes’s machine, and the calls on his caller ID, and the pattern I’d seen. Saying it out loud made it more troubling.

“He was calling in on a regular basis, Nina, every three days, for over two weeks. And then he just stopped.”

She was quiet for a moment. “When was this again?” she asked finally.

I read her the date of the last call from Danes’s cell phone. “The messages on the answering machine start piling up right after.”

“Maybe he was waiting for a call,” she said softly. “Maybe he finally got it, so he stopped checking in.”

“I suppose that’s one possibility.”

“And the other is what, that something happened to him?” The irritation and petulance were back in her voice. “And I suppose you’re going to lecture me again about calling the cops? Well, I don’t have time for it.” I heard her suck a lungful of smoke.

“You have to make time soon, Nina, because I’ve only got a few more people to talk to, and if they don’t lead anywhere I’m going to be out of things to do for you— not without spending a lot more of your money.”

Nina Sachs swore to herself. “Look, I’m working right now. Give me a day or two and we’ll talk about this, okay? Come by on Thursday.” I sighed and agreed and she hung up.

I put my phone on the counter and looked out the window. The rain had stopped and a breeze stirred the water that pooled at the curbs and on the rooftops. Umbrellas had vanished and people moved more easily on the sidewalks. Traffic was light and nicely unfamiliar.

16

“You’ve got to take it outside, sir,” the security guard said. “And there’s no loitering anywhere on this block.” He was six-foot-five and about 275 pounds, and his maroon blazer was strained to tearing across his shoulders. Of the dozen or so armed guards in the stone lobby of BNN’s fortresslike West Side studios, he was the most petite. He held his big arms wide and made a little pushing motion in the air, in the direction of the revolving doors. I was not inclined to argue. Besides, I was used to it; people had been telling me to get lost for much of the day. I walked over to Broadway and found a coffee place.

I’d spent the morning trying to reach Linda Sovitch and failing miserably at it. Her supersecret cell phone number was no longer in service, and if she’d gotten a new one it was either not in her name or not yet for sale on the gray market. The number I’d found for Lefcourt’s place in Greenwich, Connecticut, was answered by an officious-sounding woman who’d informed me that unsolicited phone calls were unwelcome and refused to take any messages.

My calls to BNN were received less warmly still. I didn’t get as far as Sovitch’s assistant, Brent; I didn’t even get as far as Brent’s assistant. Going down to the studio itself had been a desperation play, and not one I’d put much faith in. I’d been right not to. The big guys in the lobby would not, of course, let me see Sovitch or anyone who worked for her, nor would they accept messages. And there was no chance of catching a glimpse of her, as all BNN talent came and went from the studio through a distant and well-guarded garage entrance.

I’d had better luck with Danes’s maid service: Maid for You. I’d pulled the name from Danes’s credit card bill and called the number early this morning. With only a little coaxing, an obliging fellow named Les had confirmed that Danes was a client, and told me that he’d suspended his weekly cleanings about six weeks before. Danes had told him that he was going out of town for a while and would call to resume service when he got back. He hadn’t called yet.

I paid for my latte and slouched in a big chair and watched a couple of twenty-somethings type furiously on their laptops. I thought about Linda Sovitch, and eventually I had an idea. It wasn’t novel, and I wasn’t sure it was good, but I knew it would read better on my invoice than napping at Starbucks would. I hauled myself out of the chair and took my coffee home.

I powered up my laptop and went online to the BNN Web site. It was badly designed and festooned with blinking advertisements, and I had to hunt for the icon that would open an e-mail window I could use to send a note to Linda Sovitch. While I was hunting, I got lucky. Under a banner that read Today on BNN.com, and next to a little picture of Linda, I read: Chat live with Market Minds host Linda Sovitch. Today at 2:30. It was 2:20.

I found my way to the chat page and registered, and then I waited. At 2:40, a message flashed on my screen and the moderator introduced virtual Linda. I typed my question into the chat window and let it sit for the next fifteen minutes, while people with monikers like muniluv and buynsell and stockgal asked Sovitch questions about equities and bonds and interest rates— none of which, it seemed to me, was she qualified to answer. Which didn’t stop her. When the moderator informed all concerned that time was running out, I hit enter.

I didn’t expect my message to show up on the chat board and I wasn’t disappointed. Linda took a final question and the moderator thanked all the participants, plugged Linda’s show, and ended the exchange. Ten minutes later my phone rang.

“What the fuck are you doing?” It was Linda Sovitch. “You call my house, you call the studio, you show up here, and now this shit. This is coming damn close to harassment— and maybe stalking too.” Her voice was brittle and tight, like nothing I’d heard on her TV show.

“You didn’t like my question?” I asked.

“You think you’re fucking funny?” she said, and she read my question aloud, with plenty of bile. “ ‘What do you say to critics who charge that members of the business press are hopelessly compromised by conflicts of interest— that they are cheerleaders for business and too close to the people they’re supposed to be covering— that they are, in essence, in bed with their subjects?’ You think that’s cute?”

“I thought it was a pretty good question— and relevant, too.”

“Relevant to what?” she asked. I didn’t answer and after a while Sovitch’s breathing was audible. “Come on, asshole, spit it out. Relevant to what?”