“So I gather. What was the fight about?”
Ines sighed, and ran the toe of her shoe across the uneven pavement. A gypsy cab passed. It dropped a loud group in front of the club on the next block. Ines watched it pull away.
“About his school,” she said. “He goes to a private school in the Heights, a very good one, but he is not happy there. It is difficult for him- not the schoolworks but socially. There are many gifted students there, but Guillermo is one of the youngest. He is young in many ways and… a little angry. He does not make friends easily.” She took another pull on the cigarette and exhaled with a quavering sigh.
“He thinks he would prefer a different school, perhaps a boarding school. Nina does not agree. She would like him to remain close to home. It is an old argument.”
“And what do you think?”
“I also would like him close to home. But I am not certain we can give him all that he needs. We try, but I think that Guillermo is looking for a life more… predictable than what he has. More conventional, perhaps.” Another puff, another sigh. “He is at an age where that has become important to him.”
“What does his father think?”
Ines stiffened beside me. “I would have no idea of that, detective,” she said. She stubbed her cigarette on the side of the building and walked around the corner.
Jane bought me dinner that night at Viva!, a high-end Mexican place in Chelsea with mango-colored walls and a pretty, peripatetic clientele. At nine-thirty it was filled with music and clatter and a thousand chirping conversations. We sat beneath a mural of grinning skulls and feathered snakes and ominous sunflowers and ate- salmon roasted with fennel for me and chicken mole for Jane. Ours was the quietest table in the place.
Jane was pale and there were shadows beneath her large black eyes. The little she said about her day and her deal was punctuated by pauses and yawns.
“Am I keeping you up?” I asked.
“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m getting tired of those guys. I’ll be glad when this job is done.” She drank some water and picked at her chicken. “Bad time in Brooklyn?”
“More weird than bad,” I said, and I told her about my talk with Nina Sachs, and with Billy and Ines afterward. There was a little frown on her bow-shaped mouth the whole time I spoke and her eyes never left me.
“The kid sounds like a character,” she said when I’d finished.
“He’s that.”
“You feel bad for him.” It wasn’t a question.
“It’s a bad age, caught between childhood and whatever comes next. You want to fit in but you don’t know with what. You want to jump right out of your skin a lot of the time, and maybe there’s some part of you that knows it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
“And Billy’s got problems on top of that. He’s smarter than the other kids, and smaller, and his parents have been trading him like a poker chip for who knows how long. As far as I can tell, Ines is the closest thing he has to a grown-up in his life- the closest thing he’s got to a parent.”
Jane nodded. Her frown deepened a little and a small line appeared between her eyes. “Do you like him?” she asked.
I had to think about it. Certainly he was an irritable, awkward mix, of fear and anger and complaint and suspicion. And his attempts at teenage cool were still far off the mark, resulting mostly in a sullen truculence. But that’s not all he was. I remembered the manic pleasure in his voice when I’d heard him over the telephone, calling Ines to dance. I recalled the spark of interest in his face when we’d talked about comic books, and his deadpan delivery when he’d shared his opinion of Batman. And I could still hear his earnest tone when he’d explained his mother’s anger to me- and maybe to himself- and his gravity when he’d asked if I was searching for his father. I nodded slowly at Jane.
“I guess I have to,” I said. “He reminds me of myself at that age.”
“Unloved and unlovable?” Her tone was light, but she wasn’t smiling.
“And wary,” I said, “and untethered.” Jane looked at me but said nothing.
The waiter cleared our plates and left us with dessert menus. We read them in silence.
“You want something?” I asked.
“To go home,” she said.
Peter Spiegelman
JM02 – Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home
10
Jane woke late the next morning and scrambled, cursing, out of bed, into her clothes and upstairs to her apartment. There was bumping and thudding from above, followed by high heels, followed by silence. I pulled the sheet around me and closed my eyes and tried to find a warm spot on Jane’s pillow, but it was no good. Her heat had dissipated and I was awake.
I showered and shaved, pulled on a pair of khakis, and took my time over a bowl of oatmeal and the newspaper. Then I carried my coffee mug to the table, along with the telephone and a notepad.
The lawyer running Gregory Danes’s renewed custody fight with Nina Sachs was Reggie Selden, and he was a big deal in New York divorce circles. The woman who answered his telephone reminded me of this and assured me that my call would go no farther until I told her who I was and what I wanted. When I did she laughed unpleasantly.
“Our understanding is that Ms. Sachs is represented by Margaret Lind,” she said. “Until we hear otherwise, any communications you have for Mr. Selden should come through her office.”
“I just want to know if anyone in your office has spoken to Gregory Danes lately. I-”
She cut me off. “That’s our policy, and discussing it with me won’t change things. I’m sorry I can’t help you.” I somehow doubted her sincerity. I finished my coffee and checked my watch and hoped that Anthony Frye would be a little more forthcoming.
I was in front of 60 Wall Street at eleven o’clock sharp. At eleven twenty-five, Frye came through the revolving door. He had a cell phone to his ear and he was talking quickly and looking at the pavement. I recognized the English accent and the sardonic tone.
“Maureen?… Yes, it’s Tony… Yes, I know I’m late, and I’ll be later still, as I’m just now getting into a taxi. So tell them for me, will you? About thirty minutes, traffic willing. Thanks, Mo.” He put his phone away and shook his head and began to cast about for a cab.
Frye was a slight handsome man of thirty or so. His dark hair was long and unruly, and his small regular features were unblemished except for the shadowed pouches beneath his eyes. He was rumpled but expensively so, in a gray suit, a red-striped shirt, and a blue tie worn loose.
“Frye?” I asked. He was only slightly surprised.
“Oh, Christ- you’re March, aren’t you?” he said, smiling. I nodded. “And I’m vastly late, I know. Sorry.”
“No problem,” I said, “if we can still talk.”
Frye nodded absently. “As long as you don’t mind doing it in the back of a cab.”
We walked to the corner of Wall and Water, where Frye scared the hell out of me by wading into traffic and waving spastically at every cab in sight. It was an odd technique, and risky, but it was effective. Five minutes later we were rattling northward on the FDR Drive. I was asking questions and, in between listening to messages on his cell phone, Frye was answering them. He was less fond of Danes than Irene Pratt was, and more blunt about it.
“How long did you work for Danes?”
“Too long,” Frye said ruefully. “Five years.”
“I’ve heard he can be a difficult guy.”
Frye smiled. “Whoever told you that was a master of understatement.”
“From which I gather you didn’t get along with him.”
“That depends on your yardstick,” he said. “By the standards of normal human interaction, I’d have to say we
