'Is Mr. Cowles around?' Jay asked.
'He's on the phone,' said the man, his accent British.
'My name's Jay Rainey. I'm the new owner. This is Bill Wyeth, my lawyer. Thought I'd introduce myself.'
He showed us in. It was a small but obviously prosperous operation. Green carpeting, brass desk lamps, oak filing cabinets, major league coffee machine. Information dripped brightly down a handful of screens.
'You did a nice job designing it,' said Jay, looking around.
'We like it, thank you.'
'Mr. Cowles free?'
'I'll check.'
He disappeared down a hallway and a moment later returned, followed by a large, well-dressed man who looked like he might have played a little rugby twenty years earlier. 'Hello, hello,' came a booming British voice. 'David Cowles.' His eyes passed me and landed on Jay. 'You must be the new owner?'
Both men appeared surprised by the other's size. They shook hands.
'Glad to meet you,' said Jay. 'You have a great shop.'
'We try, yes,' said Cowles.
'What do you do?' I asked.
'Oh, a little of this and a lot of that.' Cowles smiled at this oblique answer. 'Basically, we build proprietary financial software, we do a little momentum trading in securities, we play the field, we try to jump on and off the train at the right time.'
'Been here long?' asked Jay.
'Little more than a year.'
'Moved from London?'
'Yes, in fact.' Cowles looked at Jay. 'You've checked on us, it would seem?'
'Nope,' said Jay agreeably, 'just a hunch.'
'Want to have a look around?'
'Sure. I did see the office once, with the seller,' said Jay. 'But I don't think you were here.'
The tour took a few minutes. Behind a desk of family photos, Cowles's office had a good view to the west, filled with the irregular brick buildings of the neighborhood, stovepipes poking over slanting rooftops.
'Reminds me a little of London,' Cowles laughed. 'Just a little, just enough to miss it.'
I noticed chewed pen tops on the desk, several calculators, stacks of newspaper clippings, an ashtray filled with butts. Cowles was a worrier, a figurer, and a smoker.
'You've got, what, a year left on your lease?' asked Jay.
'Indeed. It's been a good location for us. Even in this economy, we're growing.'
'You want more space in the building?'
'I don't know.' Cowles smiled at me. 'Let's see how accommodating my landlord is.'
'The adjacent offices are empty.'
'I know.'
'Though I have one possible tenant.'
'Better fire away then,' said Cowles. 'We have enough room here.'
Jay studied Cowles's office wall. 'You might hear a bit of construction.'
'A lot of noise?'
'Some noise. I can ask them to minimize it, work on the weekends.'
'We'll appreciate that.'
'Not to worry,' said Jay. He pointed at the photos. 'Nice family.'
'Yes… thank you,' said Cowles, and his eyes fell upon them. There was a shot of a darling girl with dark hair sitting with a baby boy. And separate photos of two women, one older, the other younger and blonde, each posed with Cowles himself. 'I know that's odd,' he said, seeing me frown. 'I lost my first wife some years ago.' He picked up the photo of the older woman. 'She's- she was my daughter's mum, and so I feel it's all right to keep her picture.' His grief was still on his face. 'I remarried as soon as I could, for my daughter, really.' He turned to me. 'You have kids?'
'Yes, well- yes, I do,' I stammered, feeling clubbed in the head. 'A son.'
We stood there awkwardly for a moment, three men hanging in separate cocoons of thought.
'All right then,' announced Cowles. 'I need to get to work.'
'Did you ever meet the previous owners?' I asked. 'They had kind of a funny name?'
'You mean Bongo Partners,' said Cowles. 'Oh sure. Bunch of fish-and-chippers, too. They set up their New York City leases in their London office. Helps with the dollars and pounds thing. Decent enough chaps, didn't rob me too badly.'
I was about to ask if he knew of Voodoo LLC but we heard a loud banging at the door downstairs.
'Maybe someone forgot his key,' said Jay. 'Better go look.'
We said goodbye to Cowles, and I followed Jay down the wide stairs. At the bottom we could see a figure outside in the winter suna short black woman of about sixty in a sensible coat, gloves, and red woolen cap.
'Hell's bells,' Jay muttered. He opened the door. 'Mrs. Jones? You came all the way into the city?'
'Yes, Jay Rainey, I did.'
He held the door open for her. 'You want to come in?'
She frowned at him and didn't step inside.
'How did you-'
'Poppy told me you might be here, so I kept banging.'
'You try the buzzer?'
'Didn't see no buzzer.'
'You want to come in where it's warm?'
'No, I don't. I'm going to say my piece and then be done. I don't need much of your time where that is concerned, Jay Rainey, not much time at all.'
So we stepped outside into the cold.
'This is my lawyer, Bill Wyeth.'
The old woman nodded at me, but it was a disgusted and wary nod, too. 'All right then. You've got your lawyer with you. You expecting me?'
'No,' said Jay. 'Why?'
'Funny, 'cause you got a lawyer with you.'
'We were just looking at the building,' I said.
'You knowed I was coming?' she demanded. 'Poppy tell you?'
Jay shook his head. 'What can I do for you, Mrs. Jones? I'm sorry about Herschel. I sent some-'
She waved her hand in his face bitterly. 'Jay Rainey, don't start all that with me. I come down here to tell you that you got to do something.'
'Like what?'
'Something for the family.' Her eyes, yellowed and old, didn't blink. 'Herschel, he work for your family almost forty years.'
'I know that,' said Jay.
'He kept that farm going all those years things was so bad for your family and when your daddy get sick and then after he die! You was gone most of that time, you don't know how it was.'
'Yes.'
'So now you got to do something.'
'You mean money.'
'That's what I mean, yes. I mean money! Herschel was all we had.' She looked disapprovingly at me, a stranger hearing her business. 'You know my boys, the two of them, Robert and Tyree, they settled now with families, they the ones who worked with Herschel, but you don't know Tommy and his cousin Harold.'
Jay was silent.
'They upset.'
'Okay-' Jay glanced at me, trying to sound reasonable.
'I said they upset and that ain't good!' Mrs. Jones stamped her foot. 'They call me this morning and they say
