retina, and fractured ribs- with that list of injuries, I was surprised that Coyle had only gone for Assault II. Good lawyering. I took down the details and the name of the reporter who’d written the pieces.
Clare sighed massively and put down her book. She stretched and walked to the window and looked down at Sixteenth Street.
“I want to go for a walk before they plow it all away. You want to come?”
I was surprised: Clare was usually very careful about us and public places. Maybe the storm had swept away her caution. I nodded. “Let me just call this guy again,” I said. “I’ve been trying to reach him for days.” Clare pulled on a sweater and I pushed the buttons for Gene Werner’s number yet again. And was stunned when he actually answered.
21
I wrong-numbered Gene Werner, pulled on boots, coat, and sunglasses, and made my apologies to Clare, who took them stoically. In fifteen minutes I was at the subway station, where the subway gods were kind, and in thirty minutes more I was climbing the snow-covered stairs at the 110th Street station.
Werner’s block was a mess, barely plowed and badly shoveled, with only the narrow path of other people’s footprints to walk in. I saw no sign of Jamie Coyle, which didn’t mean he wasn’t hiding in a drift. I stamped my boots at the door to Werner’s building, brushed snow from my legs, and pushed his intercom button. His newscaster voice was tinny through the speaker.
“Who is it?”
“It’s John March, Gene- the guy who’s been leaving you messages for what seems like forever.” Silence. “Gene, I’m getting cold out here.”
“You’re who?”
“John March. I left you phone messages. Several of them.”
“And you want…?”
“To talk about Holly.” More silence. “Holly Cade.”
“What about her?”
“How about I tell you indoors, Gene?”
The buzzer sounded, and I walked up to the second floor. Werner was in the hall outside his apartment. He wore jeans and a black checked shirt, and he pulled the apartment door shut behind him.
He looked much as he did in the snapshots, though the straight, dark hair was shorter now- just long enough for a stubby queue- and the goatee was trimmed to little more than a stripe down the center of his square chin. The handsome face was leaner too, and there was a vulpine cast to his dark eyes that the camera hadn’t caught, and a cruel stamp to his mouth. Neither had the camera caught the aura of snaky strength that surrounded Werner. He was a sinewy six-three, lithe despite his size, and there was something coiled and nasty about him that made the hallway seem dangerous and too small. Werner pushed his sleeves up over muscular, hairless forearms.
“I didn’t think anyone would be out today,” he said, and made it a question about my judgment. I ignored it and we shook. His grip was strong and rubbery. He looked me over and shook his head. “Been too busy to call you back. Now, what did you want about Holly?”
“I have some questions, and it’s probably better if we talk inside.”
“What questions? I haven’t seen her in a long time.”
“That was one of the things I wanted to talk about. I’m trying to locate Holly.”
“Locate?”
“I don’t think you want to discuss this in the hall, Gene- unless there’s some problem with going inside.”
Werner squinted at me. “Whatever.” He dug a key from his pocket and I followed him in.
We walked into a tiny foyer, and from there into the living room. It was a high-ceilinged space, with white plaster walls, dark wood molding, and a scuffed wooden floor, and there was a bay window at one end, flooded with white light.
The furnishings were spare and thrift-shop chic- soft and faded, but still solid-looking. Green sofa, brown easy chairs, tables in dark, battered cherry, oak bookshelves stacked with plays. The artwork was mostly framed posters, big reproductions of French and Italian advertisements from the 1920s, with stylish devils and sultry fairies perched over giant coffee cups or lounging on bars of soap. The only other pieces on the walls were a half-dozen framed photographswhite-clad, mesh-masked, sword-wielding figures, leaping and lunging: fencers in mid-duel. A look at the newspaper clippings mounted with each photo revealed that the big guy in the pictures was Werner himself, ten years before- the star, apparently, of his college fencing team.
Werner stalked around the room, watching warily as I eyed the photos, took off my coat, and opened my notebook. When I sat on the sofa, he struck a graceful pose near the fireplace. He leaned an elbow on the dark wood mantel and looked into the mirror above and absently groomed his beard. When he was satisfied, he tossed a thumb at the photos.
“Hell of a sport,” he said. “Incredible physical conditioning, and great training for the theater. And there’s nothing like competition to let you know where your balls are.”
I didn’t recall ever misplacing mine, but I resisted the urge to comment. “About Holly,” I said.
“She’s missing?”
“My client has been trying to reach her for some time.”
“Are you working with the cops?”
I paused half a beat. “Not yet.”
“Why not? If she’s missing…”
“From what I gather, Holly is sensitive about her privacy. My client wants to respect that.”
“And this client is…?”
“Someone who’s concerned about her.”
“But not someone you’ll name?”
“Confidentiality is part of what clients pay for.”
Werner shook his head. “I can’t help. I told you, I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“But you’ve known her awhile- a long while. Since your days with the Gimlets, at least.”
“Yeah…and?”
I smiled encouragingly. “And you’re bound to know plenty of things that I don’t.” Werner shrugged and I pressed on. “Did you stay in the theater after the Gimlets broke up?”
He nodded, and smiled back, happy for the chance to talk about himself. “I’m directing, and the days of scrambling to find a stage and an audience seem like a long time ago. Now I’ve got more work than I can handle. I’m at the end of a run of one-acts, and next month I’m doing Hamlet downtown. Come spring, I’m doing Mamet up in Connecticut, and I’ve got a big project in Williamstown scheduled for summer. Not enough hours in the fucking day.” He looked in the mirror and ran a finger over his eyebrow.
I nodded. “But Holly got out of all that, right? Out of theater and into what…film?”
“Video,” he said carefully.
“She doing well at it?”
“How the hell should I know? Like I said, I can’t help you, March.”
I smiled. “Only because you’re not trying, Gene. I’m sure you know all there is to know about her- you two were involved for a long time, after all.”
Werner stiffened and a ridge of tension rose along his jaw. His voice became a low rumble. “I guess you know a fair amount about her, yourself.”
I shrugged. “I’ve been talking to people.”
“Talking to who?”
“Friends, acquaintances, the usual suspects.” I made a show of leafing through my notebook. “Why, did I get it wrong about you and her dating?”
He took a deep breath and forced out a laugh. “No, I just don’t know if I’d call it dating, is all. We’d worked together, we were friends, and sometimes we fucked. But it wasn’t an exclusive thingnot for me, anyway.”
Peter Spiegelman
