The James Deans

and here the artificial lighting at least gave the fallen night a fighting chance. As I stepped down off the curb onto the crumbled blacktop of Ninth Avenue, I noticed the footfalls of a man walking right up behind me.

“He won’t talk to you, you know.”

I turned. “Are you talking to me?”

“I am indeed, Mr. Prager.”

His short, slight stature was unimposing if not exactly unthreatening. He was impeccably dressed in a gold- buttoned blue blazer, khaki pants, a white oxford shirt, a superbly knotted red silk tie, and loafers. He was an older man, in his mid-sixties, but his gray-blue eyes beneath stylish tortoiseshell glasses were still very young and fiery. His head was tan and bald, and his chin was adorned with a rich gray goatee.

“Who won’t speak to me? You seem perfectly willing to chat.”

“I do, don’t I? But it’s John Heaton to whom I refer. He won’t speak to you.”

“I won’t even get into how you seem to know so much about my business. There seems to be a lot of that going around lately. So, how do you know John Heaton won’t talk to me?”

“That’s easy, Mr. Prager.” My new acquaintance showed me an expensive white smile. “I’m paying him not to.”

“That’s a switch. Most of the people who don’t speak to me do it for free. Maybe I should give them your number. No sense letting their animosity go to waste if they can make a few bucks on the deal.”

“Very good. Very good. Can I buy you a scotch?”

“Not back at that dump,” I said. “I’ve had my fill of tawdry for the year.”

“Oh my, no, Mr. Prager. I was thinking more along the lines of the Yale Club.”

The Yale Club was just west of Grand Central Station, a block or two north of Forty-second. It was a charming old building that was only slightly less difficult to get into than Skull and Bones. There wasn’t a hint of ivy anywhere. No one sang “Boola Boola,” and, much to my chagrin, none of the staff wore plaid golf pants.

My host’s name was Yancy Whittle Fenn, but I was to call him Wit. Everyone called him Wit, so I was told. Though I hadn’t recognized his tanned and bearded face, I immediately recognized his name when he was finally gracious enough to share it with me on the ride over. Y. W. Fenn was one of the most famous journalists around. He wrote for everyone from Esquire to Playboy, from GQ to The New Yorker. His forte was the celebrity expose. Not just any old celebrity would do, however. No, Wit’s subjects, or more accurately, targets, tended to be from among the ranks of the rich and the powerful, particularly those who had landed in the chilly womb of the criminal justice system.

“You know, Wit,” I said as the waiter slid my chair under me, “I don’t see John Heaton as the typical subject of one of your pieces.”

“How very perceptive,” he mocked.

“How are you this evening, Mr. Wit, sir?” asked the nimble, gray-haired black man who had attended to my chair.

“Very good, Willie. Good. And yourself?”

“Same as always, sir. Same as always. What can I get for you and your guest this fine evening?”

“The usual for me, Willie. My guest will have …”

“Dewar’s rocks.”

“Very good, gentlemen. One Dewar’s rocks and one Wild Turkey heavy on the wild.”

Wit and Willie had a good laugh at that. Man, they really got wacky at the Yale Club. Wit waited for Willie to leave before speaking to me.

“Of course I’m not interested in John Heaton as anything more than a source. Actually, he’s a bit of a drunken bore.”

“He’s got his reasons.”

“So have we all, Mr. Prager. My grandson was himself kidnapped and murdered several years ago in New Mexico.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yes, well, ‘sorry’ is a particularly empty word to me these days. But I digress. I suspect you have a good idea of whom my piece will focus on. He’s your client, if I may be so bold.”

“I can’t dis-”

“-cuss my clients. Blah, blah, blah. Please, Mr. Prager. Next thing you know, you’ll be telling me you can’t drink whilst on duty.”

“Nah, I’m pretty confident the word ‘whilst’ doesn’t appear once in the ethics code.”

Willie brought the drinks, placing them atop blue-and-white napkins embossed with a block Y.

“Enjoy your drinks, gentlemen.”

Wit and I clinked glasses. He took all of his in a gulp, got Willie’s attention, and pointed at his urgently empty glass. When Willie looked my way, I shook my head no.

“Well then, for argument’s sake, let us say your client happens to be a certain New York state senator whose biggest backer is a rather wealthy man from that part of Long Island once known as the Gold Coast. Let us further say that said senator had quite a bright-excuse me-a promising future until one of his interns went poof!”

“You’re buying.” I took another sip of my scotch. “It’s only fair that I play along.”

“And now I hear that this certain senator feels he’s spent enough time in the doghouse for circumstances completely out of his control and that the moment has come to begin resurrecting that once promising career.”

Willie brought Fenn’s second drink. Both men dispensed with the pretense and chatter this time. Wit guzzled the bourbon right in front of the waiter and held up three fingers to indicate a third round would be in order. Willie gave me a glance, saw my drink was still half full, and left.

“As I was saying, resurrection is upon us, praise the Lord. But I’m as yet unwilling to let go of Moira Heaton’s disappearance. No resurrection without resolution.”

“So you’re paying off John Heaton for his exclusive story. At least that’s what you’re telling him, right?” I said. “What you’re really doing is trying to stall until you can dig up some dirt on this hypothetical client of mine.”

“Maybe. You know what fascinates me, Mr. Prager?”

“Other than bourbon, no.”

“Good. That was good. I’m curious why you went to Heaton first. It’s not the logical place to start an investigation into the girl’s disappearance.”

“You’re right. It isn’t,” I conceded. “But all the logic got squeezed out of this case a long time ago by the cops and by the private investigators. I wanted to get a feel for who Moira Heaton was. That’s important to me. It’s the way I work.”

“You’re a pretty sharp fellow.”

“For an ex-cop, you mean.”

He ignored that, and Willie’s reemergence couldn’t have been better timed.

“Bring me the chit, Willie,” Y. W. Fenn ordered, the false chumminess completely gone from his voice.

“Very good, sir.”

“So I’m a little slow on the uptake, but I get you didn’t bring me here to buy me a drink. You want something, Wit, something from me.”

“Everybody wants something from somebody. It’s Newton’s unwritten law of thermodynamics. It’s really what makes the world spin about. I think we might be able to do one another some good and get to the truth while we’re at it. It’s that simple, Mr. Prager.”

“I didn’t know horse trading was a course offered up at New Haven.”

“Oh, indeed it is, or it was, once,” he said, this time sipping on his bourbon. “I majored in it. I’ll let you review all my notes and research and, if it’s that crucial to you, talk to John Heaton.”

“And in return …”

“Whisper in my ear so that no one else can hear. That’s all.”

I got the odd sense that our setting impressed Wit far more than it impressed me, and the liquor wasn’t helping his perspective any. Did he think I was just going to roll over on my client because he had Ivy League