Survival Of The Fittest

Jersey but once again, they were no help. And I couldn't tell them it might not be suicide, my line was I was just touching base. I also looked into Zena Lambert's background and it's spotless. She left PlasmoDerm voluntarily, wasn't fired, nothing iffy in her personnel file, and she's the registered owner of the bookstore, so it looks like an attempt at self-employment.”

She looked at Milo.

He said, “The only morsel that came up at the meeting was that Alvarado dug through Recreation Department files and found a guy named Wilson Tenney who'd worked at the park where Raymond Ortiz was abducted and was fired a few weeks later because of personality problems. Wouldn't take orders, showed up when he wanted to, sat on a bench and read instead of raking. They warned him several times, finally gave him the boot. Tenney contested the firing, made noises about a lawsuit, reverse discrimination because he was a white male, but then he just went away.”

He handed me a sheet printed with a photocopied driver's license. Tenney was thirty-five, five ten, one fifty. Green eyes, shoulder-length hair, light brown, unless the black and white copy was inaccurate. Hard eyes, tight mouth. If you were looking for something. Nothing else remarkable about the face.

“Angry man,” I said. “Resentment of minorities. Reading on the job because he's a self-styled intellectual? Interesting.”

“We ran him through, and he's as clean as Lambert and didn't go crosstown for a job at the conservancy. He did split from his last known address- apartment in Mar Vista. And guess what he drives?”

“A van.”

“Seventy-nine Chevy, lapsed registration, so that raises the hunch quotient a bit. If he's living on the street, he's not on the dole, no welfare applications.”

“He might have a history of psychiatric treatment,” I said. “Could be hospitalized.”

“Alvarado's already starting to check public hospitals; at this point, private places would be impossible to crack. I also dropped by that Mensa president's place- Bukovsky. It's his business, an auto-parts yard, and he wasn't in. I decided not to leave a card. Suggestions, so far?”

“No,” said Sharavi, “just information.” He repeated what he'd told me about Sanger and the Loomis Foundation.

“Fifth Avenue,” said Milo. “And maybe they're silent partners with the creep who wrote that book… maybe partners with Zena Lambert, bankrolling Spasm. One way for a clerk to go self-employed overnight.”

“Venture capital for a new utopia,” I said.

“And if the store brings in money,” said Sharavi, “maybe it goes back to the Loomis Foundation. Interesting way to launder.”

“So you'll keep checking Sanger's travel records?” said Milo.

Sharavi nodded.

“What about the editor, Cranepool?”

“She lives alone in an apartment on East Seventy-eighth Street, works long hours at the brokerage house, comes home and rarely goes out except to shop and run errands.”

Three photos came out of his pocket. The first landed upside down and he left it that way. The second was a snapshot of a tall, beefy man around forty with sloping shoulders that good tailoring couldn't conceal. His hair was dark and combed straight back and his features were thick, slightly flattened. Dark eyes, droopy lids. He wore a gray suit, white shirt, navy tie, and carried a soft leather attachE. The camera had caught him walking down a crowded street looking preoccupied.

The third featured a tight-lipped, harried-looking woman ten years older, wearing a bulky beige sweater and dark green plaid slacks. Light brown hair was pulled back from a broad face. Large gold earrings, gold-rimmed glasses. More flattened features and I asked if she and Sanger could be related.

“Good question,” said Sharavi. “I'll try to find out.”

I examined the shot of Helga Cranepool some more. She was in motion but a fast lens had captured her without blur- stepping out of a door holding two white shopping bags. The window behind her displayed apples and oranges. The lettering on one of the bags said D'AGOSTINO.

“He was on his way to a business lunch,” said Sharavi. “We found her grocery shopping on Lexington Avenue on Saturday.”

“Both of them are pretty grim-looking,” said Petra Connor.

“Maybe being brilliant's not what it's cracked up to be,” said Milo.

Sharavi flipped the first photo over. Farley Sanger in a red polo shirt and canvas hat, a pretty blond woman, and two blond children sitting in a motorboat still moored to a dock. Flat, green water, hints of marsh grass at the periphery.

Sanger still looked unhappy and the woman seemed cowed. The children had turned away from the camera, showing thin necks and yellow hair.

“Not exactly Norman Rockwell,” said Connor.

Milo asked if he could have the pictures and Sharavi said sure, they were copies for him.

I thought about the fact that he'd waited til Milo arrived to display them. Waited to let loose with details.

Cop-to-cop. I was a very small part of this.

“Onward,” said Milo. “The Melvin Myers stabbing. I met with Mrs. Grosperrin, the director at Myers's trade school. At first she kept describing Myers as the perfect student. Too perfect, so I pressed her and she finally admitted he could also be a giant pain: quick temper, chip on his shoulder, always looking for signs of discrimination against the handicapped, complaining the school patronized the students instead of treating them like adults, the facilities sucked, the course offerings sucked. Grosperrin figured it was because Melvin's mother had cooped him up for so long, now he was feeling his oats. She said Myers saw himself as a crusader, tried to turn the student council into some big deal- greater voice for the students, more respect from the administration.”

“A leader but abrasive,” I said. “Someone who could have made enemies.”

“Grosperrin denied he'd had any conflict with anyone, claimed the faculty understood where he was coming from and admired him. For his spunk, quote unquote.”

“What about the people at Myers's group home?”

“Four residents, I talked to three and the landlady, over the phone. They said basically the same thing. Melvin was bright, but he could piss you off with his smart mouth.”

“Still,” said Connor, “none of the other victims was abrasive. It sounds like who they were made them victims, not what they did.”

“Did Mrs. Grosperrin have any idea what could have lured Myers into that alley?” said Sharavi.

“None,” said Milo. “But one thing's for sure: He didn't get lost. She said he knew the area like the palm of his hand, had trained himself to memorize the entire downtown grid. So someone offered him motivation to walk through that alley. And that's where we stand. You schedule a time for visiting the bookstore yet, Alex?”

“Daniel suggested Thursday or Friday. To give the beard some time.”

“Good idea,” he said, “Andrew.”

40

The three of them left, talking procedure, cop-to-cop, as I thought about Nolan Dahl.

The parallels to Ponsico; another bright boy destroying himself.

Not very profound. IQ was no defense against pain. Sometimes it hurt to perceive too clearly.

But the next morning it stayed with me.

Dr. Lehmann's bleak situation. The things Helena was better off not knowing.

Things that left Nolan drowning in guilt?

I'd assumed a sexual secret, but maybe not. Helena had talked about Nolan's embracing extremes.

How far had he taken it?