pond and pushed some damp leaves around. Two pigeons landed near our bench and eyed our lunch.
“Did you sleep with him?” Helene was unfazed. If anything, she seemed vaguely amused. She chuckled softly and shook her head a little.
“ ‘Dating’-is that term in style again? I’m too old to know. I guess it’s not very clear as far as sex goes, is it?” She drank some water. “But to answer you-yes.”
“Just during the three or four months that you were dating?” She nodded. “What happened with him? Why did it break off?” Helene shrugged a little.
“I don’t know that there was a big reason. I don’t think it was some deep romance for him. I know it wasn’t for me. Probably, better things came along, one way or another.”
“And after that three or four months, did you see much of him?”
“I did for a while. He’d invite me to parties and things. We’d have dinner every so often.” She drank some water and looked at me, smiling a little. “Is this really part of your investigation, or are you just a gossip?” I ignored her question, and we both ate some more.
“How long did you stay in touch, after you’d stopped dating him?”
“Six or eight months, maybe a year.” I did a little figuring and a little guessing.
“Until around the time that picture was taken?” Helene smiled again and nodded.
“Yes, around then.”
“And then what happened? Why did you lose touch?”
“I guess I had better things to do with my time,” she said, and took a bite of her apple.
“You part on good terms?”
“Oh, yes-very friendly.” She chewed slowly, looking at me.
“What was he like?” I asked.
“Gerard? Well… he was charming, really. Old-fashioned good manners. Very generous, with gifts and favors and things. And quite the man of the world-at least to my eyes back then. Seemed like he’d been everywhere and knew everybody. Knew all the hot spots, and he could always get a table. Knew just what to order, the wines and everything. ’Course back then I still had hay in my hair, so I probably wasn’t the best judge.” She thought a little more. “And the man loved a party, that’s for sure. Not that he was a big drinker or one of those guys who’d be dancing on the tables. That wasn’t him. He just liked the feel of a party-the liquor flowing, the food, cigars, pretty women, music-he liked being right in the thick of the good life.”
“What kinds of gifts and favors was he generous with?”
“Gifts? I don’t remember, but he was always buying things out of the blue. Not huge things, not like a car or anything, but nice stuff. A Hermes scarf once, a camera-that kind of thing.”
“And the favors?”
She ate some more of her apple. Her eyes skidded away from mine. “He helped me with a couple of jobs. My first catalogs. He knew the people who ran the company.” Alex stirred a little, and Helene shushed him and rocked his stroller until he settled down.
“Did you meet Rick through Nassouli?” She shook her head.
“Indirectly. Rick had just moved to London. I was there working for a few weeks, with another girl who knew Gerry. Gerry had given Rick this girl’s number. The three of us met for drinks; five months later, Rick and I got married. That was eleven years ago.” She smiled again. The wind was picking up a little. Helene pulled a small, blue blanket out of the diaper bag and covered Alex.
“Last week, a guy told me some different things about Nassouli. Some very ugly things. That Nassouli used people, and corrupted them. That he went through women like candy, and that when he was done with them, he’d hand them out to friends, as gifts. He talked about other stuff too-videos, blackmail, things like that. Very dramatic, very nasty.” I took another bite of the apple. It was good-tart and crisp. “You know anything about that?”
So far my questions hadn’t seemed to trouble Helene much. She’d been matter-of-fact, vaguely amused even, and only a little evasive. If it wasn’t genuine, it was an impressive facade. But now there were some cracks. Helene drank some water and coughed and studied the Alice in Wonderland statue that stood across the empty pond from us.
“I didn’t know anything about his business. I met some of his business friends-I guess all his friends were business friends-but I didn’t know any of them, except for Rick. So if this person was talking to you about business, I can’t help you with that.”
“It wasn’t just about business, Helene.” She drank some more water and chuckled ruefully to herself.
“Back then, Gerard had this whole… scene around him. Girls he’d dated who… hung around him-kept going to the dinners and the parties, kept taking the gifts and the favors. They had a good time doing it, from what I could tell.” Her voice faded.
“He ever ask them for anything in return?” She was quiet for a while, looking at Alice, across the pond, thinking about rabbit holes, maybe.
“Not in so many words, but… yes, I think he did.” Helene filled her cup and drank, and stared at the empty boat pond. Her face was still, and her skin seemed very smooth in the gray light. The wind ruffled her chestnut hair. She drew her coat a little closer around her.
“What kinds of things?” I asked. She shook her head. Didn’t know, or wouldn’t say. “Were you a part of that scene?” I asked, softly. Again it took her a while to answer.
“I drifted to the edge of it, I guess. I was new to New York then
… new to everything. I didn’t catch on right away. But eventually I did, and I knew it wasn’t for me.” She drank some water. “I suppose that’s what the picture is about.”
“But you parted on friendly terms, you said.” She nodded.
“We did. Like I said, Gerard never asked in so many words. He was charming and polite, and also very slippery. He’d say things in a way that gave him an out if you called him on anything, and that gave you an out too- that let you say no, or ignore him or pretend to misunderstand him without having to be too blunt about it. It was a real talent he had.”
“Rick know about this?” She nodded. “Is that why he didn’t stay in touch with Nassouli?” A shrug. “And you guys never saw him when you moved back to New York?”
“No.”
“Never even ran into him?” She shook her head. “Really? Isn’t that a little odd? I mean, in certain circles, New York can be a pretty small town.” She shrugged again. “When was the last time you saw him?” She stared at Alice and thought about it and shook her head some more.
“I don’t really know. It was a long time ago… over a dozen years, I’d think.” She picked at the remains of her sandwich, dissecting it, but she ate nothing more.
“Rick didn’t tell me about any of this. How come?” Another shrug.
“I never knew anything about Gerard’s business, and I hadn’t even met Rick then. I guess he just didn’t think it had anything to do with
… this fax thing.” Her eyes met mine, and she smiled wryly. “And truth be told, John, my husband’s pretty traditional-you know, a nice Italian boy from Long Island. I don’t expect he’d be too comfortable discussing the history of my love life with many people.”
I asked Helene if she’d ever heard of Michael Lenzi, Nick Welch, Kenneth Whelan, Steven Bregman, Bernhard Trautmann, or Al Burrows, and she shook her head no to each name. I thought she might have blanched when I mentioned Trautmann’s, but I could have been mistaken. We were quiet for a time. The wind picked up some more, and every so often a cold raindrop fell. One landed on Alex’s cheek, and he looked annoyed and rolled over. Helene pulled up the stroller’s cloth canopy, and gathered up the lunch things.
“I should really be getting him back,” she said, and stood. “It was nice seeing you, John. I hope I was some help-to you and to Rick. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do.” She handed me a small, round package. “We never got to the cookies. You take them home. They’re really very good.”
I rode the subway downtown, eating cookies and thinking about Helene. She’d confirmed her involvement with Nassouli, and explained some of it. In her own way, she’d validated Burrows’s description of the man. She’d been uneasy at points, though that’s often the case when people talk about their youthful indiscretions. And I’d gotten the sense of things left unsaid-again, not so unusual. I’d also gotten the sense that, when it came to appearing ingenuous, Helene Pierro was at least as good as her husband. By the time I got to my stop, the cookies were gone.
