JM02 - Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home (39 page)

“The little boys are my nephews. The older one is Derek; he just turned seven. His brother is Alec; he’s four. The young woman is a friend of mine. Her name is Jane. Someone delivered these to me on Wednesday afternoon. Around the same time, they delivered a couple of packages to my nephews— ostensibly from me. What’s that, maybe two days after you had your conversation?”

Pratt drew a sharp breath. “I didn’t … Are they … all right?”

“Sure, Irene.” I laughed harshly. “They’re just fine.”

She looked up at me. Her eyes were red and watery behind her glasses and she wiped them with her fingertips. She put the pictures back in the envelope. “You don’t know that this has anything to do with me,” she said. I laughed again and it was nasty, even to my own ears. I reached over and took the envelope from her. She drew back.

“The people who took these are just foot soldiers, Irene, just hired hands. They work for a guy named Jeremy Pflug, who works for your … employer, so I suppose that makes him your colleague. Have you met him yet? He’s a swell guy, and I’m sure you’ll like him. His hobbies are invasion of privacy, intimidation, and decapitating dogs.” Pratt gasped and I smiled at her. “I guess you haven’t come across him yet, huh? Maybe at the Christmas party.”

Pratt stood suddenly and crossed the room like she was leaving for good, but she stopped at the fireplace. She turned to me. “You make it sound like I’m a … spy. All I did was talk to him. He’s not my boss.” Pratt sniffled and I let out a deep, long-held breath. “And he called me— just like he has I don’t know how many times before. He asked about Greg, and what was going on, and I told him about the breakin. So what?”

“And you told him about me.”

She swallowed hard. “Is that supposed to be a crime? I’ve known him longer than I’ve known you.”

I laughed. “You make it sound so innocent, Irene, almost as if you had no inkling that he might have been the guy who orchestrated the breakin and had both of us followed.”

Pratt blushed deeply and looked away. “You don’t know what I was thinking,” she said after a while, but it was choked and without conviction.

“Why don’t you tell me, then?”

Pratt snorted. “You don’t know what it’s like. If Greg doesn’t come back, I’ve got no future there. Even if he does, it’s a good bet he’ll be out on his ass before long, and then it’s just a matter of time for me. And it’s not like analyst jobs are plentiful out there. I have to look out for myself; I have to network. It’s not like anyone’s going to do it for me. It’s not like anyone at Pace gives a shit.”

My eyebrows went up. “Is that what you call this—networking? Is that how you rationalize selling me out— at the same time that I was trying to keep Turpin off your back?”

A wave of color rose up Pratt’s neck. “I didn’t sell you out,” she said softly.

“Of course not, you just reported our conversations to the man you thought might be behind the breakin and the tail jobs and neglected to mention any of it to me. Tell me, what did you get out of the deal? The promise of a job? Funding for a new business? Thirty pieces of silver? I hope it was something good.”

Pratt’s lip was trembling again and there were tears welling in her eyes, and I didn’t give a shit. “I didn’t know for certain that he had anything to do with … anything. I still don’t. It was just a conversation.”

“Sure, Irene. And part of that conversation was about how you shouldn’t talk to me anymore, wasn’t it?”

She glanced at me and then down at the floor. “I didn’t know he would … do anything. I—”

“For chrissakes, they threatened my nephews, Irene. They came after my family! Please don’t talk to me about what you didn’t know— or didn’t want to know.”

That did it. A sob bubbled up from Irene Pratt’s chest and her shoulders shook and she hung her head and cried. I let her go for a while, and then I went into her kitchen and found a glass and filled it with tap water. I went back to the living room and guided Pratt to the sofa and gave her the glass. She held it with two hands and rested it on her knees, and after a minute or two the tears began to subside. She sipped at the water and wiped her face with her hand. She looked up at me and looked away again.

“You all right?” I asked.

She nodded. “I … I’m sorry … I don’t know what to say. Things are just so fucked-up …” Her voice was tentative and hoarse.

“I know, Irene. I know they are.”

“He asked about me … about how I was doing. He wanted to know what all this … with Greg … would do to my job.” She took a shaky breath and another swallow of water. “He said I shouldn’t worry, that I could do much better. He’s … practically a legend, and he never talked like that to me before.” She looked up at me and her eyes were wet again. “That’s how it started.”

I nodded. This was the tricky part. I took a deep breath and tried to keep my voice even. “Did you ever talk to Pflug, or was it just Hauck that you spoke with?”

Pratt looked at me and grew very still. Her brows were furrowed and her small mouth was pursed. “Just Hauck,” she said softly, and my heart started beating again.

“What’s he got going with Danes?”

She shook her head. “Nothing … I … I don’t know.”

“But there is something going on?”

More head shaking. “I don’t know— really, I don’t. But … it’s like you said. Ever since Greg went away, Mr. Hauck has called a lot more often and I’m not sure why.”

“You have a phone number for him?”

“Yes,” she sniffled.

Forty-five minutes later I left Irene Pratt, red-eyed, in her living room and walked the few blocks to the subway station at 72nd Street. I had a gut full of soured anger and self-disgust, and a meeting the next morning with Marcus Hauck.

28

The Kubera Group was headquartered in a low unmarked building of fieldstone and glass that sat atop a rise about ten minutes from downtown Stamford. It was hidden from the street by a screen of fir trees and thick plantings and surrounded on three sides by parking lot. The lot was empty at 8 a.m. on Sunday, and I parked my rented Ford about fifty yards off the building entrance and ran the windows down. It was a mild breezy morning, and the air around Kubera was scented with pine and new-cut grass. It was quiet in the parking lot, for the two minutes it took security to show.

“Can I help you?” the guard said. He was in the driver’s seat of the unmarked white sedan that rolled up alongside me. He was young and crew-cut.

“I’m meeting with Hauck at eight-thirty. I’m early.”

“Yes, sir. If I could have your name, please.” I gave it to him and he thanked me and wrote something on a clipboard and drove off. I fiddled with the radio and found a college station playing Josh Rouse. I stretched my legs out and propped my feet on the dash. I closed my eyes and listened to the music and tried not to think about last night. I failed miserably at it.

After browbeating Irene Pratt into phoning Marcus Hauck, and forcing a meeting with him through thinly veiled threats to call the press and the police, I’d spent the rest of the day in a futile online search for more information about Hauck and the Kubera Group. By five o’clock I’d been frustrated and restless, and I took myself for a long walk, down to the Battery and up along Water Street. I’d lingered for a while at the Seaport, amid the tourists and the strings of white lights, and looked at the Brooklyn waterfront. I picked out a corner of a building that I thought was Nina Sachs’s and wondered how they were doing over there— if Nina was still angry and Ines still scared, if Billy was still worrying about his father. I could still hear the pleading in his reedy voice: Will you look for him anyway?

I’d continued north from there and stopped for dinner at a tavern in the East Village. It was a dark tin-ceilinged place, with a scarred black bar along one wall. I’d sat at the bar and drunk club soda and picked at what passed for a tuna sandwich while the place filled up with regulars. Their faces were animated and unfamiliar and their conversations swirled around me like smoke. I listened to their words without comprehension and found the murmur of voices somehow comforting. I walked home through a thin rain.

The lights had been on when I’d come back to my apartment. There was a black umbrella by the door and a gray raincoat on the coatrack. Lauren was standing at the kitchen counter, drinking tea and turning pages of the Sunday Times Magazine. Her black hair was pulled into a loose ponytail, and her sharp features were pale.

“Am I intruding?” I asked, but my sarcasm made barely a dent.

“You’re wet,” she said.

“Wet, tired, and not up for this.”

Lauren smiled thinly. “I notice your fingers look okay, though, and your phone is still working— so it must be your brain that’s out of whack. That must be why I don’t fucking hear from you.”

I tossed my keys on the counter and went into the bathroom and came out with a towel. I dried my face and hair. “What do you want, Laurie?”

She closed the magazine. “I don’t want anything, except to know that you’re all right. I heard about what happened … with those photos.”

“Well, I’m fine— superb, in fact.”

“So I see.”

“Is there something else?”

She looked at me and sighed. “Things will cool off with Ned and Jan. Just give it a little time.”

I threw the towel on the counter. “Sure, things will be fine. In no time they’ll be as warm and fuzzy as ever.”

“They’ll be okay, Johnny. They—”

“No, they won’t. When this passes, assuming it passes, there’ll just be something else and something else after that; it’s inevitable. Because they’re right— Ned and Jan and David— they’re right. I’m not like them, my life isn’t like theirs, and I’m not good company. And none of that is going to change.”

Lauren shook her head. “They just don’t get what it is you’re doing with yourself, Johnny. I’m not sure I do either, but so what? We’re your family.”

“That’s a nice sentiment, but it’s not real life. The world is full of brothers and sisters who have nothing to do with one another. Maybe we should take a page from their book.” I went around the counter to the fridge, pulled out a bottle of cranberry juice, and took a glass from the cabinet. “I’m best left alone, Laurie. It was stupid for either of us to think otherwise.”

“Meaning what?” she said softly. “You’re saying adiós to all of us?”

“I’m just being realistic.”

“Is Jane a part of your new realism?”

I filled the glass and took a drink. “You’re out of bounds now,” I said, but she didn’t care.

“You know she’s been staying with me the last couple of nights? She’s not comfortable here while those people are still … watching. She said it creeps her out.”

“That makes two of us.”

“It’s not just the being followed, it’s that you didn’t tell her anything about it. And that you keep working on whatever this is, even though you have no client— and even with this threat.”

“This is really not your business, Laurie.”

“You can understand why she’d be a little scared.”

“I understand perfectly,” I said slowly.

Lauren looked down at her white hands for a while, and then she looked at me. “You won’t meet a lot of people like her, Johnny. She—”

“Jesus Christ!” I said. “Don’t you have someplace else to be? Don’t you have a husband somewhere, and a job? Go spend your time on them. Go have a kid or something. Go lead your own fucking life.” My voice was tight and harsh, and Lauren went quiet. She turned away from me and stood near the windows. The rain had grown heavier and made a sound like ice on the glass.

“That’s pretty funny, from someone who barely has a life himself, who runs away from any chance of having one, who’d rather poke around in someone else’s life than lead his own. It’s pretty funny— in a sad, pathetic kind of way.”

I sighed. “Do you have even a clue of what you’re talking about?”

“Of course not. How could I have a clue? How could anybody? That would mean you let someone intrude on you and your anger. That would mean you actually told someone what the hell happens inside your head.”

I laughed nastily. “I’ll leave the psychobabble to you; you have a knack for it. I think chemistry is my ticket to better living.”

“Right, right, it’s a big joke, getting help. Who the hell could possibly need that? Certainly not you. You’ve got your own personal twelve-step program going, a perpetual one-man meeting. Tell me, do you serve yourself doughnuts and coffee and give out little tokens for each day of joylessness? Probably not doughnuts, I guess; those might be too much fun. And they might somehow interfere with getting those precious miles in. Now, in which step do you pledge yourself to complete and utter isolation? Is that before or after the hair shirt and the self-flagellation?”

“You’re pretty funny yourself,” I said quietly, but it didn’t slow her down.

“I guess you’ve made it work for you, though,” she said. “I mean, I can’t remember the last time I heard you mention Anne.”

“Jesus—”

“Do you talk about her to anyone, Johnny? Can you even bring yourself to say her name?”

I stared at Lauren’s back. Her shoulders were stiff and her head was bent. “You should get the fuck out of here,” I said.

Lauren laughed bitterly and turned to face me. “That might carry more weight if I didn’t actually own this place,” she said. Her green eyes were wet, and she ran a hand over them and looked at me. “But you’re right, I should go. There’ve got to be better ways for me to spend my time.” She’d walked to the door and pulled on her raincoat and picked up her umbrella. “You don’t get that many chances, Johnny,” she’d said from the doorway. “You should try not to fuck this up.”

I heard the hiss of tires on asphalt. A gray Mercedes pulled up to the building’s entrance, and even before it stopped a security guard came out at a run to open the glass doors. Two men climbed out of the car. I recognized one as Jeremy Pflug. The other, I assumed, was Hauck. They spoke briefly with the guard and Pflug glanced my way, and then they went inside. I took my feet off the dash and locked the car and walked across the lot. Nobody ran to hold the doors for me.

The lobby was stone— smooth and pale on the floor, rough blocks of gray and tan on the walls— and it was spare, with no art or corporate logo or sign of any kind hanging, and no waiting area for visitors. The only adornment— if you could call it that— was the guard station, like a stone fortification at the far end of the space. A guard was waiting there, and so was Pflug.