came from old money, but there was more old than money by the time it trickled down her way.”
“When’d the Brightmans move into the city?”
“In ‘57, when he turned fourteen.”
I stopped asking questions. This was all very interesting, much like the rest of the case, but it got me no closer to Moira Heaton. I knew more about Susan Leigh Posner, for chrissakes! Wit might’ve been able to detail every aspect of the lives and times of Thomas Geary and Steven Brightman and it probably wouldn’t do me a damn bit of good. I was now more determined than ever to get some insight into Moira Heaton.
I dropped wit back at the Pierre around three. That still left me plenty of time to get over to Brightman’s relocated community affairs office. Not wanting to give anyone time to concoct a story or edit his responses, I didn’t call ahead.
This office was pretty much like the storefront I’d been at with Detective Gloria, only it was flanked by a pizza place and a unisex hair salon. It must’ve been difficult for Brightman’s staffers to keep their weight down. I got lucky. At least that’s what I thought when I first walked in. Everyone on my list was still in the office. Unfortunately, Brightman had earlier alerted them that I might be dropping by someday soon. So much for the element of surprise.
“Could you sign in, please?” a round-faced woman asked, pointing at a clipboard. “It’s a rule.”
“No problem.”
The place was nicely appointed with gray carpeting, wood veneer desks, leather furniture. There was a water cooler, a coffee machine, a little fridge. The walls were covered with informational placards, a few in Spanish, ranging in subject from how to reach a suicide hotline to how to apply for food stamps. The main feature on each wall was a poster featuring Moira Heaton’s face. It was much like any such poster. MISSING-$25,000 REWARD was printed boldly above her picture. Her physical description, the date she disappeared, what she was thought to be wearing at the time, and a phone number were listed below.
It was sort of a wasted trip. All five members of the office staff seemed to try their best to cooperate, some clearly distraught and frustrated over their inability to contribute anything to the search for Moira. To a person, they treated me with complete respect, even when I asked the ugly but necessary questions about their boss and Moira. It wasn’t quite a total waste of time, because certain themes became clear to me during the course of the interviews.
The staff were categorically behind Brightman, certain he would never sleep with an employee, let alone murder one. They were at least half wrong about that. He was a caring, compassionate warrior for the causes in which he, and by extension they, believed. Generous to a fault, he inspired loyalty not only from his staff, but from the voters in his district. Even after Moira’s disappearance, he won reelection with over a 70 percent majority. A wise man once said that all politics are local. Like most adages, it was only partly true. Because he got the streets plowed in the snow, he could probably get reelected for the next hundred years in his own district, but he wouldn’t be elected to any higher office until the nagging suspicions about Moira Heaton’s disappearance were cleared up.
Something else was becoming painfully clear to me. Moira Heaton had been almost as difficult to know before she disappeared as she was after. Though the office staff were all quick to point out that she had been head and shoulders the best intern they’d ever been associated with, a woman willing to overcome her lack of political savvy with hard work and tenacity, Moira apparently didn’t inspire much affection. They all used the same phrase: “She was a very private person.”
“Not shy, exactly,” said Sandra Sotomayor, Brightman’s most experienced staffer. “Very good with the people who come in off the street. She don’t take no bullshit from city agencies or nobody when people need help, but with us, she keep her distance.”
I thanked them all very much for their cooperation and left numbers I could be reached at in case they remembered anything, even if it seemed stupid, that might help. What the visit did more than anything else was convince me that my first instinct had been the right one. I had to talk to John Heaton, whether Wit liked it or not.
Glitters was far more sedate than during my first visit. In fact, everyone from the doorman to the cocktail waitresses seemed to be in a bit of a stupor. The thump of the drumbeat sounded a bit less insistent. The dancers were nearly sleepwalking, the expressions on their faces devoid of either passion or pain. Maybe the heat and humidity of the first oppressive day of the year had infected the place, seeping in through cracks in the windows and beneath the doors. The air-conditioning was rendered helpless against the drowsy atmosphere.
In spite of the general malaise, my reappearance seemed to inject a bit of a spark back into things. Adonis at the door scowled at me even as he took my ten bucks. I was potential trouble, that’s all he cared about. I waved hello to one of the bartenders I recognized from my last visit, the one who had wondered why I was looking for her old dead boyfriend. She smiled back before quickly retreating to the far end of the bar. It’s nice to be popular. I found that lonesome little two-top I had sat at previously and bided my time until the stupor set back in.
Luckily, the waitress from my first visit, the woman with the otherworldly blonde hair, had my station. It took her a second, but the flash of recognition rippled across her face. I’d seen happier expressions on morticians.
“You again,” she hissed.
“Yeah, but you can call me Typhoid Mary.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind.”
“Dewar’s rocks, right?”
“Right. You didn’t call. I’m hurt.”
“Only a cop would think twenty bucks would buy him anything but a smile around here. You guys are the cheapest motherfuckers on the planet.”
I smiled, doffed an invisible hat. “And a pleasant day to you, too, ma’am.”
“I’ll be right back with your scotch.”
So, word
The waitress dropped my drink, sticking around just long enough to get paid. The first chords of “Whip It” blasted over the PA. It was time for Domino’s black rubber romp across the stage, and the club, which only minutes before had seemed empty and tomblike, was abuzz. She was good, so good I found I was watching her in spite of myself. She was so good that when she got around to removing her mask, she almost appeared to be enjoying herself. In a dive like this that was no mean feat.
After Domino left the stage, Glitters quieted back down some, but not all the way back. No, she had revved things up considerably. The stupor would not return this evening. I sat, drank my Dewar’s at a leisurely pace, and rehearsed the words I thought I might use. My plan was to try and see Domino again. During my last trip in I thought I had spotted a drop of sympathy in her yellowy eyes. Of course, I might have wanted to see it.
It hadn’t been my intention to ask directly about John Heaton. I was thoroughly aware how little that approach had brought me. No, this time someone else would do the pleading for me. If I had to spend several hundred dollars of Thomas Geary’s money to convince Domino it was in her best interest to act on my behalf, so be it. I couldn’t afford to count on her phantom sympathies. I had a second scotch before heading downstairs.
I didn’t have to wait very long for her to pop out of the dressing room, and she saved herself the embarrassment of fending me off with that lame bullshit about the house rules. Today she was wearing denim shorts and a tube top.
“Whaddya want?”
“To buy you a drink and talk some business.”
She laughed. “Shit, I never heard that line before, especially not from a cop.”
“We must not know the same cops,” I said.
“Oh, yeah, that must be it, ‘cause the cops I know never use the words ‘buy’ and ‘business.’ Their vocabulary only includes words like ‘free’ and ‘on the house.’”
“I was wrong. I guess we do know the same cops, but that’s not the kinda business I’m interested in.”
“You’re a man, right?”
