seventh floor. Mr. March would like to meet with you afterward for about fifteen minutes, to discuss your impressions of Mr. Tyne. Please call me to confirm.” I didn’t dare do otherwise.
Mrs. K’s call ended in a discreet click, and then Jane’s voice was there. There was noise on the line and other voices in the background.
“I’m with the lawyers again, and it looks like I’ll be here late.” I heard the rueful smile in her voice. “Leave a message, tell me what you’re up to. Maybe we can have dinner, if you don’t mind waiting.” I heard someone call her name. “Got to jump. Call me.”
I’d learned that, to Jane, late could mean anything from nine till after midnight, and I called to tell her voice mail that tonight I couldn’t wait. Tonight I’d be working. I’d made two failed attempts to speak with Irene Pratt; the third time, I figured, would be the charm. I opened up my laptop and started my browser.
There were three Irene Pratts in the metropolitan area, but only one in Manhattan- on the Upper West Side. I dialed her number, and an answering machine picked up. I recognized the quick talk and the Long Island accent. I didn’t leave a message. I couldn’t count on finding Pratt at home for at least a couple of hours, so I heated some coffee and returned to the court records databases and my list of the complaints against Danes and Pace- Loyette.
The list of the aggrieved was long and varied- from pension funds in the Midwest to coupon clippers in the Sun Belt and day traders on both coasts- and their allegations ranged from plain old negligence and conflict of interest to elaborate conspiracy and fraud. Most, though not all, involved Piedmont Science. Some of the claims had been resolved, settled out of sight for undisclosed sums and with all concerned silenced by nondisclosure agreements, and some were still pending, drifting slowly through a limbo of depositions and discoveries, but none of them had yet made it to an actual judgment.
Mixed in with the investor suits were others, unrelated to Danes’s job as an analyst. There was a six-year-old action- ultimately dismissed- against Danes and every other shareholder in his old 90th Street co-op, brought by a bicycle messenger who’d sprained his ankle in the building’s lobby. And there was an eight-year-old claim, brought by Danes, which involved chipped granite countertops, a broken sink, and an unrepentant contractor. It had dried up after five months. At the bottom of my list was the ten-year-old case of Sachs v. Danes, the divorce proceedings. Seeing it there reminded me that I owed Nina a progress report, and I called her before I headed uptown. She answered on the eighth ring, and she was distracted and barely civil.
“I’m working, for chrissakes,” she muttered, and I heard her lighter snap. “You can come over tonight if you want to talk.” I told her I would.
Irene Pratt lived in the upper seventies, on a leafy street of brownstones between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues. It was nearly six when I got there, and the narrow sidewalks were crowded with people walking dogs and toting groceries and heading for expensive workouts. Pratt’s building was a Romanesque town house of rough, tobacco-colored stone. It was five stories tall, with narrow arched windows, a cavernous entryway, and lots of decorative masonry. There was a video intercom system at the door. Judging from the buttons, there was only one apartment per floor. Pratt was on the third. I buzzed and waited and nothing happened. It was still early and I wasn’t surprised. I walked down the street.
There was a bar on the corner of Columbus, with small tables out front. I found one with a clear view of Pratt’s building and ordered a ginger ale. I stretched out my legs and worked my way through a bowl of cashews while the soft air grew dark. Noise and smoke and the smell of liquor thickened around me, and with them- suddenly- came a strong and acrid nostalgia.
It could have been the light that set it off- the ripening purple sky and the swelling shadows, the sense of recklessness and promise that seemed to fall with evening- or it could have been the jumble of voices- laughing, flirting, boasting and arch, eager to please, studiously bored, and all a little slurred. It could have been the tiny buzz of danger as the customers grew louder and less cautious, or the possibility of violence- however remote- that rode with every jostling arm and elbow. It could have been the anonymous feel of being alone in the midst of a raucous crowd that did it, or my own incipient restlessness, scratching in my head like a low-grade fever. Whatever the cues, the memories- of other bars and other evenings, years agowere powerful and close enough to taste. Columbus Avenue was a world away from Burr County, and from the dives I’d haunted in the months after Anne’s death. But the jagged, angry feeling that was always with me then was abruptly back again, lodged in my chest like a hunk of broken glass.
Back then it was broken glass and a head full of static, a furious buzzing that I could never silence but could only distract. And every night, for four blurry months, I did just that, trading grief and guilt for motion, for drink and drugs, for violence and sex. I crashed along the back roads with my headlights dark and a chemical fire in my brain, and I made the rounds of places like the Rind and Buddy’s Fox and every other bucket of blood in the county. When I paused it was only to pass out, and when I came to I was often bruised and battered, or else I was sprawled alongside women whose names I never knew and who were never pleased to see me in the light of day. After a while, I took my act to the neighboring counties, to spare my colleagues the bother and embarrassment of cleaning up after me. It was only luck that no one got killed.
I swallowed some ginger ale, and for an instant it tasted smoky and bitter and my throat closed up. These were long-absent feelings, but they were more than familiar. They dwelled someplace below conscious recall and were bound in me like muscle memory. Like riding a bike. And they scared the hell out of me.
A shudder ran through me and I looked up the street and saw Irene Pratt, walking east from Amsterdam. She had a purse and a big leather tote bag on her shoulder and a plastic grocery sack in her hand, and her gait was awkward. Her head was down, but I recognized the thick chestnut hair and the pink blouse.
I watched her fumble for her keys and disappear inside. I gave her twenty minutes- time enough to sort the mail, put the groceries away, check messages, change clothes; then I took out my cell phone and punched her number. When she answered, I spoke fast.
“Ms. Pratt, this is John March. We spoke yesterday morning, and I stopped by your office this afternoon-”
She cut me off. “Jesus Christ, what the hell are you calling me at home for? What do you want from me?”
“I want to talk about Gregory Danes, Ms. Pratt. I’m trying to find him, and I thought maybe you could help.”
She heaved an exasperated sigh. “I told you, we can’t-”
It was my turn to cut her off. “I know what your orders are, Ms. Pratt. I’m at the bar on the corner, sitting at a table outside. I’ll be here for another half hour if you want to talk.” I clicked off.
It took her forty-five minutes, and her steps were tentative. She’d changed into jeans and sneakers and a blue T-shirt from an electronics trade show in Las Vegas. She was small-breasted and slender, and her arms were soft looking. There was a gold watch on her wrist and a plastic clip holding back her heavy hair. She stood near my table and looked down at me.
“You’re still here,” she said. There was a dark shine to her eyes and more color in her face. A light perfume wafted toward me, something with lilac. I nodded.
“Sit,” I said, but she didn’t.
“What do you want from me?”
“I told you, I’m trying to find your boss. And I’m trying to find someone who cares enough that he’s missing to help me out. I thought that might be you.” Pratt squinted at me but did not speak. “Sit,” I said again. I pulled out the metal chair next to mine. “I’ll buy you a drink.”
She rested her hand on the back of the chair and shook her head. “Why do you say missing?”
“I don’t know what else to call it. The guy’s gone away- no one knows where- and he hasn’t come back when he said he would. And no one has heard from him since the day he left. What do you call it?”
Pratt bit her lower lip. “There’s nothing I can tell you. I don’t know where he is, and the last I heard from him was his voice mail, telling me he was taking time off.”
A waitress orbited the table; I caught her eye and she came closer.
“Another ginger ale for me, and…” The waitress and I looked at Irene Pratt, who looked irritated, and then resigned.
“I don’t know… a Bud, I guess.” The waitress went away, and Pratt looked down at me.
“Sit,” I said. Pratt pulled the chair out and sat at its edge. “Nuts?” I offered her the bowl. She ignored them.
