“Five weeks ago, maybe. We had lunch. Why?”
“His wife- his ex-wife- is having a little trouble getting in touch with him.”
Sovitch tilted her head again. “Has she tried his office?”
“He’s on vacation and hasn’t come back yet.”
“Don’t they know how to reach him at Pace?”
“Apparently not. I was given to understand that you two were friends. I thought maybe you had heard from him or that you might have some idea of where he’s gone.”
Sovitch looked puzzled and shook her head slowly. “I haven’t seen much of Greg lately. That lunch was the first time in a long time.”
“He didn’t mention vacation plans?”
She shook her head. “Not to me. You sure he’s not just avoiding her?”
“Why would he do that?”
Sovitch shrugged. “I don’t know, to piss her off maybe. They don’t exactly get along, you know.”
I nodded. “What did you two talk about at lunch?”
Sovitch’s mouth closed and her eyes narrowed. “Why does that matter?”
“I’m not sure it does, but I won’t know for certain until you tell me about it.”
She scowled and shook her head. “That sounds like bullshit to me, March.”
“I’m curious about what was on his mind. If he talked a lot about music, for example, then maybe he went off to hear some music.”
Sovitch looked impatient. “He didn’t talk about music,” she said. She checked her watch again and glanced at the counter. I was losing her.
“I heard he hasn’t been in such a good mood lately. Did he mention that at all?”
Sovitch fixed her eyes on me again. “If you’re getting at something, March, get at it. Otherwise, stop dicking around.” It was a legitimate request. The problem was, I didn’t quite know what I was getting at. I was fishing.
“I’m not trying to dick around, and I don’t want to turn this into a guessing game either. I just want to know how Danes seemed the last time you saw him: what his mood was, what you talked about, that kind of thing. It may seem irrelevant to you- it may seem like gratuitous prying- but I’ve been at this long enough to know that useful things don’t usually come with a label attached. They may not even be useful at first; they may only become significant later on, when you put them alongside five other things. Sometimes you just have to put stuff in a bag and shake.”
Her mouth took on a skeptical twist. I continued.
“Look, I appreciate your time, Ms. Sovitch, and I don’t want to bother you more than I have to, but what’s the big deal about this lunch?”
Sovitch’s eyes flashed and she gave me a hard look. After a while, she nodded to herself and took a deep breath. “There’s no big deal. It just wasn’t… particularly pleasant, that’s all.” She picked up her sunglasses and fiddled with the nosepieces. “I told you I hadn’t seen Greg in a while. That’s because he’s been a little unhappy with me lately- with most things, really. When he called about lunch, I took it to mean we’d gotten past all that. But I guess not.”
“What was he unhappy about?”
Sovitch’s laugh was ironic. “Haven’t you caught the news the last few years? It’s been a little bumpy on Wall Street, in case you haven’t noticed. Greg’s got investor complaints up the ass, and his reputation has taken a serious whipping.”
“I know that part. I meant, why was he unhappy with you?”
She looked at the tabletop. “He’s angry- hurt, I guess- about some of the stories we ran on analysts. He thinks they were one-sided. I’ve told him a lot of people thought our coverage was pretty one-sided in the other direction, back when the Dow was at eleven thousand, but he doesn’t want to hear that. And I’ve told him he should just forget it and move on- between nine-eleven and war, it’s old news anyway- but that just makes him crazier.”
“Is that what you talked about at lunch?”
“Yeah. And if I’d known that was going to be the topic, I’d have skipped the whole thing. But like I said, I thought we were done with that. It turned out Greg just had a different approach; he had an idea to pitch to me. A special segment of Market Minds-‘An Analyst’s Perspective,’ he wanted to call it- with himself as the only guest.”
She shook her head in disbelief, and an indignant tone came into her voice.
“You like that- an hour of Greg Danes telling his side of the story? Maybe we could get some harp music in the background and big blowups of his baby pictures. Can you believe I actually had to explain to him why that would never fly? Jesus, he could be so tone deaf about some things.
“And then he had the nerve to get all pissed off at me. He started in with how he felt used, how we treated him like a trained seal or a circus geek- something to sell tickets with- really fucking abusive. I finally got fed up listening to him and left.” Sovitch straightened and tossed her hair back. It occurred to me that Danes might’ve had a point about selling tickets, but I kept it to myself.
“That was the last you heard from him?”
“The last I heard, and the last I hope to hear. Greg’s a smart guy, but he’s a fucking nut, too, and times have changed. He’s just not worth the trouble anymore.” She looked at her watch.
I nodded. “One last thing, Ms. Sovitch. Has anyone else called to ask you about Danes?”
She shook her head. “Lucky me, you’re the only one.” She glanced at Brent and cocked an eyebrow. He and the big guy got up and stood by the door. Sovitch turned back to me. “You got twenty minutes out of me, March.”
“And I’m grateful for it. I’ll try not to ask for more.”
Sovitch smiled coolly. “Ask as much as you like,” she said. “You won’t get another damn minute.” She slipped her sunglasses on and left, her minders close behind.
I walked home from there. There was a chill in the air, and faint traces of yellow and orange in the sky over New Jersey. I thought about what a great pal Linda Sovitch was, and about the little she had told me. Her story was consistent with the others I’d heard: that Danes was angry and bitter, fixated on his lawsuits and bad press and on the raw deal he thought he’d gotten.
But more interesting than what she’d said was what she hadn’t said- or asked. For someone who called herself a journalist, Sovitch had been remarkably incurious about Danes being missing. Other reporters I knew would’ve been crawling through my socks and picking my pockets the instant they’d heard, and they certainly wouldn’t have answered my questions without asking some of their own in return. But not Sovitch. All the way back to 16th Street, I wondered about her lack of curiosity and about why she’d agreed to see me in the first place.
It was after five when I got home, and there were messages. The first was from Simone Gautier, out in Queens. Danes’s car wasn’t at the airports and his body wasn’t in the local morgues. Written reports and bills to follow.
The second message was from Danes’s vacationing doorman. His voice was gravelly and full of Brooklyn. There were other voices in the background and what sounded like a ballgame on TV.
“This is Gargosian; you left a message with my wife. I’ll try you later, or when I get home- be about ten days.” Shit. I called his home on City Island and left another message with Mrs. Gargosian. I made a note of it on my pad and saw my earlier entry there, to call Anthony Frye, late of the Pace-Loyette equity research department. I flicked on my laptop and picked up the phone again.
It didn’t take long to find a residential listing for Frye, and he answered on the first ring. He spoke with an upper-class English accent, and his voice was young and ironical. I explained who I was and what I wanted, and nothing that I said seemed to surprise him very much.
“I heard about Greg storming out,” he said. “But I understood he’d decided to take some sort of impromptu sabbatical.”
“Maybe, but his ex-wife and his son would like to get in touch with him. Were you there when he left?”
“No. I’d resigned the week before, and Pace likes deserters off the premises straightaway.”
“Was that the last time you saw Danes- the day you resigned?”
“Yes,” Frye said. “Though I barely saw him then, they had me out the door so fast.” A doorbell chimed on his
