I stood at the top of the ramp for several minutes and let the tension drain away, but my limbs still quivered with loose adrenaline as I walked to my Toyota, and I was edgy and alert. If I hadn’t been, I might have missed the cars that followed me back over the bridge and into Manhattan.
Peter Spiegelman
JM02 – Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home
12
A bad tail job has all the subtlety of a cold sore; a good one- an expensive one, with lots of cars, and drivers who don’t get overeageris delicate as lace. The guys who’d followed me from Jersey weren’t bad- they’d used at least two cars, and they never crowded- they were just unlucky. Traffic over the bridge brought them in too close and I was already jumpy. They’d known the deal was done when I started a slow meander through the streets of Morningside Heights, and after a game half hour they’d broken off. But they weren’t bad.
Which was why I took the long way to my brother’s house on Saturday, and stopped frequently to check my back. My last checkpoint was a Starbucks on First Avenue. I sat near the window and scanned the afternoon traffic for faces or cars I’d seen too often. I caught no glimpse of the rusted brown Cavalier from last night, or of the black late-model Grand Prix, but that was little comfort. And I still had no idea of who they were or what they wanted- which was even less.
I’d called Neary this morning and told him what happened. He’d thought it was Gromyko. I had disagreed.
“It would surprise me somehow,” I’d said.
Neary laughed skeptically. “From what you told me about your chat in the garage, I’m surprised he didn’t dump you in the Hudson for cold-cocking his ape.”
“I think he’s a little more subtle than that- at least on a first date. He wanted to find out what I was up to and send a message about staying out of his yard. He did that, and we… reached an understanding. And there are practical considerations, besides. You think he’s got the manpower for a professional car tail just waiting around?”
“I don’t know who he is or what kind of manpower he’s got, and neither do you. But I’ll make some calls and maybe we’ll find out.” I thanked Neary and told him I owed him one. He muttered something about a long list, and asked if I had any kind of line on Danes yet. I told him no and told him about Pratt and Sovitch and Anthony Frye and what I’d found out about Danes’s custody fight with Nina Sachs. When I was through, Neary whistled softly.
“Not exactly Mr. Congeniality,” he said.
“Not exactly.”
“Still, you’d think a semifamous guy like him would have a few more friends.”
“If he does, they stay well hidden.”
I finished my coffee, left Starbucks, and headed south and west. I watched the cars and the sidewalks as I went, and thought some more about the smallness of Gregory Danes’s life, how sparsely peopled it was, how an absence of five- almost six- weeks could occasion so little notice and even less concern. I walked and thought about Danes’s isolation, and by the time I reached Ned’s I was somehow thinking about my own.
Ned lives on Park Avenue in the low seventies, in the big old apartment we all grew up in. It was just after two when the doorman trotted out, held the big bronze door, and greeted me by name- a sure sign I’d been visiting too often. A tall slender couple waited in the marble lobby: Lauren and Keith.
“Look at you, all prompt and everything,” Lauren said, and she kissed me on the cheek. She wore a green cotton sweater and baggy pants. Her black hair was loose and parted in the middle. She brushed it from her angular face, and it hung straight and glossy down her back. There was a faint tan across her cheeks and her strong pointed nose. Her green eyes narrowed slightly.
“Where’s Jane?” she asked.
“At the office,” I said, “arguing with lawyers.” I reached around her to shake hands with her husband. Keith Berger looked down from his six-foot-four elevation. He was wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, and he still had his Rockefeller University ID clipped to his pocket. He ran a hand through his tangled brown hair and grinned.
“You’re getting good at this,” he said. “You hardly grind your teeth at all now.”
Lauren elbowed him and looked behind me. Liz came through the door. She wore a gray linen shift and a wry smile on her handsome face. She kissed Lauren and Keith and dug a finger in my ribs.
“You still need some meat on you,” she said, and kissed me too. “Where’s Jane?” I told her, and she looked at me skeptically for a moment and nodded.
Lauren checked her watch. “Let’s go up,” she said.
My nephew Derek had just turned seven, and it was his birthday party. Not the lavish one for schoolmates; that was next week, at the Museum of Natural History. This was the more relaxed version, for family. And as family functions went, it wasn’t too bad.
There was a tangle of children in the den- Derek, his younger brother, Alec, and a passel of Klein cousins, once and twice removed. They were in the degenerated stages of a game of Twister, and most of the action seemed to be about pulling one another’s socks off.
The grown-ups were scattered through the living room and dining room and on the brick-paved terrace that runs around most of the apartment. There were twenty or so of them: my Uncle Daniel and Aunt Marion, my Uncle Ben, a few of their kids- my cousins- and their spouses, a couple of Janine’s siblings, my brother David and his unlovely wife. Elevator jazz was playing, and it got nicely lost in the sounds of ice on glass and silver on china. Someone handed me a glass of iced tea and a plate of food and started talking. I fastened a smile on my face and started nodding.
I drifted through the big apartment, through the crowd of family, through the afternoon, like a new suitor: benign, agreeable, and mostly silent. But I had no complaints. No cross words were spoken, no snide remarks were made about keyholes, motel rooms, or hidden cameras, and no one offered anything close to career advice. Maybe we were getting somewhere, my family and I; maybe we were finding neutral ground. Or maybe it was just that I managed to avoid my brother David all afternoon.
It was nearly four-thirty when Lauren and Keith came to get me. I was playing a video game with Derek and Alec and a bunch of other kids and failing badly at it, much to their great amusement. I kissed my nephews and we left.
As family functions went, not too bad.
I got home before five, with no one following me or staked out at the curb- at least that I could tell. I changed my clothes and went for a run before the streets got thick with Saturday-night crowds. There was a message from Jane when I got back. I took a pitcher from the fridge and poured a glass of water, and I listened to her tired voice on the telephone speaker with an odd mix of disappointment and relief.
“I’m just finishing up, but I have another session with these clowns tomorrow, so I’m going straight to bed. I’ll be out early, so I’m not sure when I’ll see you. Sometime, I guess.”
I drained my glass and felt the cold spread through my chest and into my stomach.
“Sometime,” I said softly.
Peter Spiegelman
JM02 – Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home
13
I’d worried that Christopher might have second thoughts about letting me into Danes’s apartment, but my worries were misplaced. He’d had a rough weekend, and the only thing on his mind on Monday afternoon was more money. We stood in the small alcove off the lobby and haggled a little over price and time. We finally agreed on three hundred for three hours, and he palmed me the key. I gave him half the cash.
