JM02 - Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home (37 page)

“Sure.” I kept looking at the view.

“You should mostly just sit there.”

“Sure.”

“And not say much.”

“Uh-huh.”

Neary looked at me and sighed. Five minutes later the conference room door opened and Pflug walked in.

He was a lanky six-two, and there was a lot of elbow and knee in his gait as he shut the door and moved to the head of the table. His khaki shirt had epaulets and many pockets, and his olive-drab pants were held in place by a wide leather belt, adorned near the buckle with the brass end of a shotgun shell. His long head was topped by a brush of salt-and-pepper hair, and his sunburned face was meaty, and acne-scarred on one side. He pulled out a chair and folded his long arms and legs and sat. He looked at us with pale eyes and showed a lot of horsy teeth when he smiled.

“Tom, John, what can I do for you gentlemen today?” His voice was deep and theatrically haughty, like a bad Bill Buckley impersonation. He tapped at the side of his pockmarked nose. Neary looked at me and I said nothing.

“Mr. March is my client, and he would like to know why you’ve hired people to have him watched.”

Pflug turned to me and grinned and shook his head. “Where does this come from, John? What could I possibly know about this?” He spread his large hands in staged confusion. I said nothing.

“He’d also like to know what your interest is in Gregory Danes,” Neary said.

Pflug’s toothy smile got larger and more disingenuous. Again he turned to me. “As a matter of professional curiosity, John, do you discuss your cases with just anyone who comes in off the street? Not that I know anything about this Danes, mind you, or about people following people; I’m just curious. Is that all it takes for you to bend over, John— just someone asking?” His pale eyes locked on mine and sparkled like broken glass. I stayed quiet.

Neary cleared his throat. “Mr. March recently received some photographs of a threatening nature. We have reason to believe you sent them, and we’d like to know why.”

Pflug’s smile stayed wide, and he didn’t take his eyes off me. “Well, I guess everyone’s got a right to their beliefs, even here in godless New York City. But belief is one thing and fact is quite another. Now, what was in these photographs that could be so threatening to a strapping fellow like you, John? Or are you just the nervous kind, perhaps, the kind that scares easily? I suppose that’s no surprise, considering what you’ve been through, upstate and all. I suppose that’s enough to leave anyone a little … skittish.”

Neary rapped on the table. “Hey, squire, over here,” he said.

Pflug turned his head slowly and smiled at Neary, but when he spoke it was to me. “Is that why Tom has come along today— because you’re easily frightened?”

“Those photos could constitute harassment, Pflug,” Neary said. “Maybe worse, with a sympathetic prosecutor. And this little display doesn’t help. But we know you’re just a hired man. Let’s talk about who put you up to this.”

Pflug smirked. “That was probably more effective when you were with the Bureau, wasn’t it? It’s easier when you’ve got a badge.” He turned back to me. “So what was in those frightening photos?” I took another deep breath and let it out very slowly. I pursed my lips but kept quiet.

Neary shook his head and changed tack. “What are you doing in New York, anyway? From what I heard, you work out of Virginia— in your garage or something.”

Pflug didn’t like that. His brow wrinkled momentarily and his thin lips curled in a scowl, but he recovered quickly.

“You know, I ask myself the same question: What are you doing in this city, Jeremy? Between the foreigners and all the domestic whiners and complainers, I feel as if I’m in another country when I come here. Lord, I feel as if I’m on another planet. I don’t know how you stand it. But hang on— you’re actually from here, aren’t you, John? You actually grew up here. Well, maybe that explains it.” He showed me more teeth, and his eyes found mine again.

“You don’t like leaving the country?” Neary asked. “Then what’s with all the foreign-correspondent CIA bullshit on your Web site? Or is this Long Island lockjaw routine the bullshit part?”

Pflug’s eyes narrowed and his face clouded with brief irritation. “Your friend is taking us away from our conversation, John. Let’s get back to those photographs. Maybe if you’d tell me what was in them, it would stir some memories.”

I nodded slowly.

Neary rapped on the table again. “Look. We know you’re interested in Danes, and you know we are, too. Maybe we can cooperate here.”

Pflug laughed. It was loud and braying, and it went on too long. “Well, that’s very generous,” he said finally. “But I don’t think I could hold up my end of the bargain. I’ve got nothing to say about this Danes, and— truth be told— I’m not really a very cooperative fellow. At any rate, I don’t think John here has his mind on that business anymore. I think he’s got his mind on those photographs.” He turned to me again. “Now, how about telling me a little about what was in those pictures. There was nothing of a personal nature, was there? No pictures of you and that Chinese girl of yours? Because from where I sit, that would be rude.”

I looked at Neary. “This is pointless.” I sighed. “He isn’t going to help himself.” I shook my head and got up from my seat. Pflug laughed loudly and stood up too, and as he did I whipped my right forearm into the side of his head. He went backward over the top of his chair and came down loud and hard, and before I could do anything else Neary had his hand on my chest. I leaned against it for a moment and then stepped back. My heart was pounding and adrenaline was careening through my veins.

Pflug rolled to his feet. He came up quickly and gracefully, a step out of my range and with his hands in front of him. His eyes were unfocused for a moment, but he shook it off and bent his legs and balanced nicely. A red welt was growing along the left side of his face. He touched it with his fingertips.

“Now we’re getting to the point,” he whispered.

Neary turned to him and put out his other hand. “Right there is fine,” he said softly. He turned back to me. “You done now?” His voice was calm. “You satisfy your inner idiot?” I looked beyond him, at Pflug, and nodded minutely. Neary followed my gaze. “And you?” he asked. Pflug grinned. I was pleased to see there was blood in his mouth.

“I’m just fine,” he said. He was breathing hard and fighting to control it.

“Then I think we’re done here,” Neary said to me. I nodded. He moved to the door and Pflug opened it. He stepped aside and made a little bow and started tucking in his shirt. Neary went through and I followed, and as I passed him, Pflug twisted his hips and his left arm snapped out and up at my face. I was looking for it but not at that speed, and he tagged me hard under the eye with the back of his fist. My head jerked sideways and filled with flares of pain and light and I shuffled back. I heard rather than saw him closing and I brought my hands up and tucked my chin down. I turned my body and his boot smacked my right arm, just above the elbow. It was like a brick shot from a cannon, and I staggered back. Numbness spread up to my shoulder and into my hand. I shook my head and my vision cleared and I saw Neary holding Pflug, one-handed, against the conference room wall.

“I thought we were done, Jer,” he said softly.

Pflug managed a little smile. “We are now,” he said.

Neary shook his head and took his hand from Pflug’s throat. “Let’s go,” he said to me.

I looked at Pflug and didn’t move. My knees were twitchy and so were my arms, and I could barely hear Neary over the rushing sound that filled my ears.

“John,” he said more sharply.

I walked out and Neary followed. The reception area was deserted when we passed through, and quiet except for the sound of a vacuum cleaner running somewhere out of sight. The elevator came quickly and we got on. The doors were sliding shut when we heard Pflug’s braying laughter.

26

I banged some cubes from an ice tray and wrapped them in a dish towel and held the towel to my face. Neary popped a can of ginger ale and drank half of it and took the rest to my long table. He sat down and looked at me.

“What is it with you?” he said finally. “What are you, thirty-something going on fifteen? I should know by now— every time I work with you, I end up with some kind of agita.” It was the first time he’d spoken since we’d left Pflug’s office.

Cold water ran down my neck and soaked into my shirt. My sinuses were frosting up, and the pain in my cheek was spreading across my face. I didn’t say anything.

Neary took another long pull and drained the can. He sighed. “Did you somehow miss that this guy was trying to get into your head? Did you not get that he wants your mind on your nephews and Jane— and on him? That he wants it on anything besides who his client is and where the hell Danes went? I know Pflug’s a subtle guy, but did that somehow escape you?”

“I got it,” I said, from behind my towel.

“And you thought letting him goad you into a fucking bar brawl was the best way to handle it?”

“That wasn’t my plan going in.”

“I think that’s probably bullshit,” Neary said, and he crushed his soda can. “But I won’t argue the point.”

I wrung my towel into the sink and fiddled with the cubes and held the pack to my face again. I looked at Neary. “Sorry,” I said. There wasn’t much more to say: He was right, and we both knew it. Neary snorted. He tossed his soda can to me. I caught it and dropped it in the trash.

“Pflug is not a cream puff,” he said. “We’re not going to scare a name out of him.”

I nodded. “And there’s no one like Stevie in his shop, whose shoes we can squeeze.”

“Anybody you particularly like, of the people that you’ve talked to?”

“For hiring Pflug? I don’t know… . Not Pratt— she was genuinely freaked by the surveillance and by the breakin at the Pace offices. Turpin— it’s hard to say. I don’t know why he’d do it, and if it was him why the breakin? Why wouldn’t he just give Pflug’s guys the keys? Sovitch and Lefcourt— I suppose they’re a possibility… . Of course, it would help to have some idea about what Pflug was hired to do.”

“You don’t think he’s trying to find Danes?”

“Maybe. Or maybe he’s trying to make sure no one else does.”

Neary nodded. “You didn’t mention your Ukrainian buddy.”

“Gromyko? It’s not him.”

“You sound pretty sure.”

I shrugged. Neary walked over to the windows and looked out on the shadowed rooftops.

“You think Czerka is typical of the kind of guy Pflug hires?” he asked, after a while.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if Pflug hires a guy like Marty to do his shitwork in New York, you think there’s a chance he hires a similar kind of guy down in DC?”

I thought about it. “I guess it’s possible.”

“I guess so too. So maybe we could do what Gerber did: dig up one of Pflug’s ex-freelancers. The guys in my DC office know the local players— including the local versions of Marty.”

“Even if they can find someone who worked for him— and someone who’s willing to talk— Gerber said Pflug kept the day labor away from the clients.”

“Maybe. But maybe one of these guys was a little more enterprising than Pflug expected … or a little more cautious. Maybe Pflug wasn’t as careful as he thought.” Neary shrugged. “Hell, maybe one of them has a good guess about who Pflug’s clients are— in which case they’d be one up on us.”

I took the ice off my face and prodded my cheek. It was numb. “It’s a plan,” I said.

“Close enough, anyway,” Neary said, and he looked out the window some more.

I poured a glass of water and drank it down and sat at the table. “As long as we’re speculating, Gerber’s sources said there were a lot of Wall Street people on Pflug’s target list. It’s possible that Greg Danes was one of them. It’s possible that Danes pissed someone off badly enough that they sicced Pflug onto him.”

“The pissing-off part is plausible,” Neary said.

“I can go back at Pratt again, and see if she knows of anyone that was particularly angry with Danes. I can try Tony Frye, too. It’s thin, but it’s better than waiting around.”

Neary nodded and stretched. He collected his suit jacket from the kitchen counter. “How are your nephews doing?”

“Fine, last I heard.”

“And Jane?”

“Somewhat less fine,” I said. He looked at me but said nothing.

Neary went back to his office, to start making phone calls. I showered and ate tuna fish from a can, and in between bites I left messages for Tony Frye and Irene Pratt. Then I read for a while from a book by Paul Auster, and then I went to bed and didn’t sleep. The night was filled with shouts and car horns and sirens from the street. From upstairs there was only silence.

Friday morning was gray, and heavy with rain that never quite fell. I tried Irene Pratt twice more and got her voice mail and no calls back. I drank coffee and read the paper and poked absently at the little purple knot under my eye and at its larger cousin on my arm. Anthony Frye phoned me at noon.

“Mr. March,” he said, with mock formality. “I was so pleased to get your message. What can I do for you today?”

“More gossip about your old boss,” I said.

“Greg still hasn’t turned up?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, I’m happy to oblige, though it’s fortunate you’re getting me now. I’m rapidly forgetting my days as a lowly analyst.”

“I’ll talk fast,” I said.

I asked him again about anyone who might have had an ax to grind with Danes, anyone who might be nursing a grudge. Frye gave it some thought but came up with nothing more than he had the last time I’d asked.

“Sorry to disappoint,” he said, “but have you spoken with Pratt? She might have an idea.”

I made a noncommittal noise. “How about people interested in Danes? Has anyone called you lately, asking about him?”

Frye snorted. “Only you, March, but again, I’d think Pratt would know better.”

I thought back to when I’d asked Irene Pratt that same question, in the bar at the Warwick. She’d taken a while to respond, and when she finally told me no, her eyes had skittered around the room, looking at anything but me. At the time I’d marked it down to nerves, but was it? I remembered what she’d said when I’d asked what kind of people had been calling about Danes.