firm and sitting at the top of everyone’s society shortlist. Though I didn’t drop it too often. I hated exploiting our friendship, especially since he was always so eager to help out. But at least I knew I wouldn’t get arrested for impersonating a very important person.
The receptionist was wearing a thin black headset, so all he had to do was hit a button on the console in front of him to connect with the offices behind a set of massive grey doors.
He spoke in hushed tones I had trouble making out. My hearing had never quite recovered from the effects of a big explosion I’d lived through a few years before. Lived to reach deep into my fifties, an age when even people who hadn’t almost been blown up or repeatedly socked in the head had a little hearing loss. I leaned over the top of the desk to get a better angle with my good ear, causing the guy to look up at me with a touch of alarm, the first honest expression I’d seen him make.
He stuck his index finger into the console and said someone would be out to see me. I leaned farther over the desk, forcing him to lean back in his chair, increasing his alarm.
“Good,” I said, then went and sat in a square chair that felt like a solid block of upholstered wood.
A few minutes later a tall, slim man with a head shaped like a lightbulb came through the big grey doors. He was wearing a dark green rayon shirt and black trousers that flowed when he walked. He was about my age, with close-cropped white hair that exaggerated the lightbulb effect. When he got closer I could see his eyes were a brilliant fluorescent lavender. Contacts.
When he saw me he turned and went back to the reception desk.
“Where’s Mr. Lewis?” he asked.
“Probably at the Gracefield Club having a beer and a tuna sandwich,” I said to his back. He turned. The pasty guy behind the desk shot me a look.
“You asked for a name. You didn’t ask for mine,” I said, getting up and walking back to the desk. I offered my hand to Lavender Eyes. “Floyd Patterson.”
He took my hand, studying my face.
“That name rings a bell,” he said.
“That was somebody else’s job. You got a name?”
“Jerome Gelb. What is it you want?”
“I want to know if you’ve heard from Iku Kinjo.”
He raised both eyebrows and pulled back his head, as if trying to get me in better focus.
“Your interest?”
A perfectly reasonable question. I just hadn’t worked out an answer. I wondered what my friend Jackie Swaitkowski would do in a situation like this. She was great on improvisation.
“I have to serve her papers,” I said.
“Oh?”
“Eisler, Johnson’s named, too, but I’m supposed to give them directly to her to make it official.”
“Really.”
“Those are the rules.”
“Who’s the plaintiff?”
“Where’s Miss Kinjo?”
I smiled at him. He smiled back and reached out his hand.
“Maybe if I could just take a look.”
“So you haven’t seen her or heard from her.”
He dropped his hand.
“No. Not for about four weeks. Officially, she’s no longer employed here. So if there’s some sort of action against the firm, tell whoever sent you to change the name of the recipient.”
“She have any friends here? Anyone who might know where she went?”
Gelb shook his head, then frowned, caught giving me an ounce more information than I deserved.
“I’m not in a position to discuss this any further,” he said. “Do you want the name of our attorneys?”
“Sure.”
While he wrote out their names on the back of his business card I asked him, “Was she a friend of yours?”
He handed me the card.
“I was her boss. There are no friends at Eisler, Johnson.”
“But you must be a little worried about her. I’d be, if one of ours went missing.”
“Maybe I’ll try a little worry when I finish digging out of the hole she left me in with our clients.”
“When I find her I’ll let her know that,” I said, as I stuffed his card in my shirt pocket, turned and headed back to the elevator. He was still standing there as I watched the elevator doors close on Eisler, Johnson’s cheerful reception area, a lanky, coutured centurion, off-balance but alert. Poised for battle.
FOUR
WHEN I GOT BACK TO Southampton I drove right past the turn off Route 27 that led up to Oak Point—the peninsula in North Sea I shared with Amanda—and headed east. It was about four in the afternoon, so I thought I’d just catch Jackie Swaitkowski at her office above the shops that lined Montauk Highway in Watermill. I probably could have stopped at the cottage and switched back to my Grand Prix, but I was reluctant to let go of the zippy little station wagon.
Jackie was nominally my lawyer. I’d never paid her anything and she hadn’t done much for me but keep me out of jail at a few critical junctures, for which I was sincerely grateful. Actually, I owed Jackie a lot more than simple gratitude. So I didn’t think it would hurt to toss a few more items on the bill.
I jogged up the outside stairs and tried the door to her office. It opened only partway. So I gave it a shove and pushed a bankers box clear of the passageway.
“Hey. I wanted that there,” she said from somewhere behind the piles of paper on her desk.
There were a half dozen more bankers boxes on the floor, since there was no room to put them on the desk, or the sofa and chairs, or work tables, or any other horizontal surface in the room, all of them already groaning under a year’s accumulation of professional detritus, indispensable possessions,
“If you can’t get out the door you’ll starve in there,” I said to her. “Unless you’ve put up survival rations.”
Jackie stood up so I could see it was actually her. She was a medium-sized, curvy thing with a lot of freckles and a head full of kinky strawberry-blonde hair. It was only the second week of September, so she was still in her summer wardrobe—a scoop-necked cotton dress and flip-flops. Her glasses were pushed up into her hair, where she also stored a pair of number two pencils. An unlit cigarette bobbed between her lips when she spoke.
“No, but if you could find my lighter, I’d really appreciate it.”
I tossed her mine.
“Keep it. I don’t need it anymore.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m giving it up. After I have one of yours.”
“In other words, you’re giving up buying and moving on to mooching full-time.”
I scooped the piles off the two easy chairs that faced the loveseat and waved her over. I found an ashtray under a wet beach towel and balanced it on the last six months of
Jackie flung herself over the arm of the chair and landed with her knees already tucked up under her butt. We lit our cigarettes.
“Where’s the mutt?” she asked.
“With Amanda. I left him with her so I could go into the City.”
“Biz or pleasure?” she asked.
“A little of both. Though mostly manipulation, extortion and threats of violence.”
She blew a lungful of smoke up at the ceiling.
“I hope that’s just the amusing way you express yourself.”
