the paper clip.
“I’ve heard of it,” he said.
“Your name came up in some work that I’m doing that’s tangentially related to MWB-”
Lenzi cut me off. “Came up how?” He was quite still now.
“Only in the vaguest way. Just that you did some business with them a while back, maybe fifteen or twenty years ago.” Lenzi placed his palms flat on the desk. His face was immobile except for a small, pulsing vein high on his forehead. I went on. “That you dealt with a guy there named Gerard Nassouli.”
It was like I’d spit in his face. Lenzi pushed back from the desk and gripped the arms of his chair. His hands were white, and the veins in them stood out like blue wires. The skin of his face seemed to contract around the muscle and bone underneath, and two red patches flared at his cheeks. His mouth was a taut furrow, and his whole body seemed to coil. I had at least seven inches on him, and probably fifty pounds, but the guy was ready to come across the desk at me.
“Who are you, and what the fuck do you want?” The words came out in a dangerous hiss, like steam rushing from a valve. But he was fighting his rage, breathing deeply, flexing his fingers, trying to get the tiger back in the cage.
“I’m looking for some answers,” I said evenly. “Nothing else. I just want to know if you knew Gerard Nassouli. And if anyone else has contacted you over the last few years about your dealings with him.” Lenzi stared at me in silence, his chest rising and falling sharply. I kept going. “I don’t care how you knew him, or what business you had with him. I don’t want to know. All I want to know is if you were threatened on account of it. Were you squeezed because you had dealt with him?”
When he finally spoke, Lenzi’s voice was a choked whisper. “You get the fuck out of here. Get out now, and if you ever come near me again, I’ll fucking kill you-I swear it,” he said.
This was not going well-death threats are always a sure sign. The rage that had overtaken him at the mention of Nassouli’s name had made Lenzi deaf to everything else I’d said or might say. And my sitting here wasn’t going to make it better. If I hung around any longer I was going to have to fight him or watch him have a stroke. I stood up and placed a card at the edge of his desk.
“I don’t mean you any harm, Lenzi. If you decide you want to talk, give me a call.” I left him alone with his tiger.
There was an espresso place around the corner from the Arroyo offices, and I went in and ordered a double and thought about Michael Lenzi. I was willing to bet I wasn’t the first person to bring up the unwelcome subject of Gerard Nassouli with him. The indirect confirmation was useful, but I needed more. I finished my coffee, walked over to Fulton Street, and caught the subway.
Brooklyn Heights is at the western edge of the borough, across the East River from lower Manhattan and just south of the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s an affluent, almost suburban neighborhood, and has more in common with Scarsdale than with Bay Ridge or Bensonhurst. Its quiet, leafy streets, meticulously maintained townhouses, and postcard views of the city skyline, along with its proximity to downtown offices, lure plenty of Wall Street types across the bridge. It was a ten-minute ride from downtown Manhattan to the heart of the Heights.
I took a slow elevator from the subway station to the street. It had stopped raining, but the sky was full of steely clouds and the wind was blowing in gusts off the river, shaking water from the bare trees. I walked down Clark Street a block and a half, to Willow Street. I took a left and walked nearly to the corner of Pierrepont. Lenzi’s building was on the west side of the street. It was a wide, four-story, Federal-style townhouse in brick, with white trim and black shutters on its high, narrow windows. It was set a little back from the sidewalk and separated from it by a black wrought iron fence and some boxwood shrubs. A short flight of brick steps led to the entrance portico and a glass and wrought iron door. I went in.
I was in a small vestibule with a worn stone floor. In front of me was another glass door, this one locked. On the wall to my left was a video intercom and buttons for each apartment. Lenzi was in 4B. Through the inner door I saw a nicely decorated foyer with striped wallpaper, a small table, a couple of chairs, a bank of gleaming brass mailboxes, and an elevator. I pressed the intercom button for 4B.
“Yes?” she said. Her voice was tinny and remote through the little speaker, but it was the young-sounding woman. Now she sounded young and anxious. I looked into the camera lens and gave my best trustworthy smile.
“Mrs. Lenzi?” I said.
“Who are you?” Suspicious now, and scared. My trustworthy smile needed work.
“Mrs. Lenzi, my name is March. We spoke on the phone yesterday morning-”
She cut me off. “Oh Jesus, I don’t believe it. I’ve got nothing to say to you. Nothing. You go away, or I’m calling the cops.” She was scared and angry, but more scared.
“Mrs. Lenzi, please, I just want to talk to you-”
She cut me off again. “I mean it.” She was getting shrill. “He said you might show up here. I thought he was being nuts, but… Jesus. I’m telling you, get out now or I’m calling 911.” I heard a click from the speaker.
“Mrs. Lenzi? Mrs. Lenzi?” Nothing.
I went outside and stood on the steps. It was midafternoon, and the street was quiet. A few people came and went from houses up and down the block. A taxi rolled slowly by, dropped its fare at the corner of Pierrepont, and sped away. A few doors down, on my side of the street, a mailman brought his three-wheeled cart to a halt in front of a building much like Lenzi’s. He went inside. I walked down the steps, down the block to Pierrepont Street, and around the corner. I pulled out my phone and called Lenzi’s home number. I let it ring ten times. She wasn’t picking up. On the next corner there was a newspaper box with the Daily News inside. I dug out some change and bought a copy.
I walked back to the corner of Willow to check on the mailman. He was working the building next door to Lenzi’s now. It took him ten minutes. Then he was back at his cart for a moment, and then he was climbing the steps to Lenzi’s building. I sprinted from the corner and went in behind him. I caught the inner door as it was closing. I walked through with my keys out, my umbrella hung on my arm, and my head buried in the sports page. The mailman turned to look at me.
“How’s it going?” I asked, still in the paper. I pushed the elevator button. He grunted and kept looking at me. I turned to the funnies. The elevator came, and I got in and pressed 4. He was still looking at me as the door slid closed.
The door opened again on a small hallway with striped wallpaper like the lobby’s. There were three apartments; 4B was opposite the elevator, its door a dark, shiny green with the apartment number in gold leaf, just above the peephole. I walked to the doors of the other apartments and listened. They were quiet. The whole building was quiet. I rang the doorbell. I heard footsteps from inside and someone at the peephole.
“Oh god,” she gasped. “How did you get in here? Jesus… you broke in, you bastard. That’s it, that’s it, I’m calling 911, you son of a bitch.” She was very scared now, getting frantic.
“Mrs. Lenzi, please calm down. I don’t mean any harm to you or your husband. I just want to talk to you…”
“Talk? I talked to you for a minute on the phone, and now look. You fucking break in here… you have no idea…” She was crying now. The sound of her ragged breath got closer, as if she’d pressed her face against the door. She was pounding on it now. “Please, please, just go away. Please, you have no idea how he gets… how angry he is, just because I gave you his number. He’s crazy. Please.”
This was not going well, either. I didn’t know what demons my questions had unleashed in the Lenzi household, but I thought of what Alan Burrows had said to me, about making people relive nightmares. And I thought, bitterly, of my reply. I’ll be discreet, I’ll be quick, and I won’t be heavy-handed. Shit.
“Maybe I can help him, Mrs. Lenzi. I’ll put my card under the door. Call me. Please.”
“Help him? Help him?” She was hysterical, almost shrieking. Her voice was coming from lower down now, like she had sunk to the floor. “What the hell are you going to do? Get the bank to take him back? Make the fucking mortgage payment for him? Make him stop drinking?” Her words dissolved into sobbing and I thought I’d lost her, but she gulped some air and came back. “Please, just go away, please… we were hanging on, we were making it, and now… please, just leave him alone. If you want to help-let him be.” And then her sobbing found a second wind, and I lost her completely.
I had a long wait for the subway at Clark Street, plenty of time to feel lousy about what I’d done to Lenzi and his wife, and to think about where to go from here. Something had happened to Lenzi, something bad enough that
