Greene and ducking into a restaurant that took up the whole corner. I gave it a few seconds, then followed him in.
The place featured a U-shaped bar anchoring the center of the room, lit by floor-to-ceiling tinted windows. The booze was on brass racks over the bartenders’ heads, the upper strata reachable by a ladder like the one in Donovan’s library.
There were also a few stool-high round tables between the bar and the window walls where Gelb was talking with a young woman who’d apparently saved him a seat. I sat at the bar on the other side of the U so I could keep them in direct view. I ordered an Absolut on the rocks to maintain authenticity.
The first fifteen minutes or so involved the usual boring stuff. Ordering food and drink, running to the restroom, settling in. Then it picked up when I saw the woman run her high-heeled foot up the inside of Gelb’s calf. She might have seen him grin in response. It looked to me more like a leer, though to be fair, I was sitting much farther away.
The woman leaned closer into the table and started fiddling with a necklace that hung between her breasts. Gelb leaned in as well. He held his drink by the rim of the glass and swirled it around to either melt the ice or send another suggestive message. He didn’t have to do it for my sake. My intuitive powers were up to the challenge.
Not knowing when I’d be back, I left a ten dollar bill on the bar. I walked over and set my drink down on their table. Gelb looked up with a jolt.
“Hey, Jerome,” I said, “Floyd Patterson again. Mrs. Gelb, I presume?” I added, looking at his ring finger, then his lunch date.
What followed was an awkward silence. For them. For me it was just a silence.
“No, actually,” said the woman, putting out her hand, “I’m Marla Cantor. A colleague of Jerome’s.”
“Oh,” I said, happily, “wonderful. Fine firm you folks work for.”
“So, Floyd,” said Gelb, not quite through his teeth, “what can I do for you this time?”
“That’d be a private matter, Mr. Gelb. I think you’d want that,” I said, keeping my smile as big as a face that almost never smiled would let it.
He grimaced, but judging by the red flush on his cheeks, he was eager to deal quickly with the situation. He made stammering apologies to Marla, who graciously wouldn’t hear of it. She said she’d concentrate on her salad and be there when he came back.
We went out to the sidewalk. I led him across the street to a shop that had a huge display window with a sill deep enough to sit on. We were both well dressed enough to loiter there while I asked him a few questions.
“I’ve consulted with our attorneys, by the way,” said Gelb. “They’re unaware of any action being taken against Eisler, Johnson.”
“That’s because there isn’t any,” I told him.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Shut up and listen. I found Iku Kinjo. Dead. It was very upsetting. When I think about how you talked about her, I get even more upset.”
“I wasn’t happy with her, but I didn’t want her dead, for God’s sake.”
“Your wife know about Marla?” I asked.
The rosy little patches on his cheeks drained away, turning his skin back to white.
“I resent the implication.”
“Don’t waste my time with all that. Assume I got the goods.”
“You’re a private investigator,” he said in a hushed breath.
“Doesn’t matter what I am. You need to tell me why you think Iku dropped out of sight. And you need to do it in the next five seconds.”
I looked at my watch.
“I don’t know,” he said, rushing out the words. “Honestly, I don’t. She just didn’t come in one day.”
“What kind of a mood was she in?”
“Tense. But who at Eisler isn’t? She seemed tired and a little frayed at the edges, but that’s also nothing unusual. Our relationship was one hundred percent professional,” he said, his eyes twitching toward the joint across the street, as if catching the irony. “So if she was concerned about something at work or in her personal life, I wouldn’t know. And that’s the honest-to-God truth.”
“So she was handling her job.”
“Iku? We used to think she dictated memos in her sleep. Everything brilliant, all the time.”
“Jealous of her, huh?” I asked.
He smirked.
“Yeah, of her talent. Not what it got her. I want a life outside of work.”
“Apparently.”
He was a really tall guy, but sitting there on the windowsill in SoHo, he’d begun to shrink. I felt a little bad for him, but not enough to take out the hook. Not yet.
“What was she working on? The big stuff.”
“Consolidated Global Energies. You’d know it as Con Globe. Oil-based, refining and petrochemical. Though her regular assignment was the hedge fund, Phillip Craig. And the usual load of small stuff that Eisler likes to pile on to maintain their reputation as the sweatshop of the consultancy trade.”
I made the mistake of stopping to think. Gelb took the opening.
“I need to get back to my table,” he said.
“Yeah, ’course you do.”
He stood up and looked down at me. I leaned back so I wouldn’t wrench my neck looking up at him.
“Are you going to talk to my wife?” he asked.
“I don’t think so. And if I do, we won’t be talking about Marla. Though we could.”
“That sounds like blackmail.”
I shook my head.
“I’m not threatening you. I’m just looking for some information. And a favor.”
“Oh?” he asked.
“Yeah. I want to talk to Angel. I need an introduction.”
His eyebrows rose, accentuating the lightbulb shape of his skull.
“Angel Valero?” he asked.
“Yeah. Iku’s Angel,” I said, hoping I had the right one.
“She consulted for him. Though I wouldn’t exactly say he was hers. Even if she did help him get a nice piece of the big oil deal.”
He went on to specify which deal. Big indeed.
“So he’s with Phillip Craig,” I said.
“Officially. Though he rarely leaves his house in the Hamptons. Why would he if he didn’t have to?”
I asked him to give Valero a call and tell him I had an opportunity worth listening to. He was welcome to improvise from there as long as he told me the story line. As I escorted him back across the street I said I couldn’t promise he’d never hear from me again, but I’d try to leave him alone after I got the introduction. Then I told him to call me on my cell phone, and gave him the number.
I didn’t know if he’d follow through, though nothing about him said he wouldn’t.
When I handed him back to Marla she shook my hand.
“It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Patterson. I must say retirement from the ring has had a surprising effect.”
“Remarkably well-preserved?”
“Remarkably white.”
Before checking into my hotel I found another bar where I could have a drink and call Amanda. I gave her a cleaned-up version of my meeting with Gelb, skipping minor details like the stakeout, the cab chase and the girlfriend at the SoHo bar. This wouldn’t have met Rosaline’s standards for full and free dis closure, but it did make for a less tense and sober conversation.
In turn, Amanda told me about her day sanding floors at one of her rehab houses. It sounded like more fun
