asked.
“Could be, or could be one of their people came to talk to him about something. Nobody at Foster-Royce will tell me one way or the other.” Neary made a sympathetic noise and rang off.
I finished my coffee and called Nina Sachs and once again got no answer. I thought about driving over to see Gromyko, but I didn’t have nearly enough caffeine in me for Jersey just yet, and it was still too early. I went to the table and looked at the lists of phone numbers waiting for me there.
I filled my mug and switched on the laptop. I checked my e-mail, but there was no sign of the phone records I’d bought last week. I cursed to myself; phone records would make this a lot easier. I opened a spreadsheet and began to transcribe dates, times, names, and numbers from my notes and to match answering machine messages to the telephone numbers from the caller ID list. It was a tedious process, but coffee helped. I ticked and tied, and whenever I came across a number with no name attached, I consulted an online reverse directory to fill in the blanks. I hadn’t paid much attention to the numbers as I’d copied them down at Danes’s place- I’d just wanted to get them all, and quicklybut now, typing them into the spreadsheet, I saw a pattern.
Danes had gone on vacation just over six weeks ago, and the first of the fifty calls in his telephone’s memory was dated two days after he’d left. But the messages on his answering machine went back only three weeks or so. Almost thirty calls had come in during those first two and a half weeks. Had none of those callers opted to leave a message? Somehow I didn’t think so.
I recognized many of the numbers on the caller ID list, including Danes’s own cell phone number. It appeared over and over again, at regular intervals of three days, and always around the same time of day: 6 p.m. And then, just over three weeks ago, just before the first message had been recorded on his answering machine, it stopped appearing. I was pretty sure Danes had been calling in to retrieve and erase the messages on his answering machine. But I had no idea of where he’d been calling from and no more than a bad feeling about why he’d stopped.
I listed the names that owned the numbers appearing on Danes’s caller ID. It was a short list, and, other than Danes’s divorce lawyer, I’d already spoken to all the people on it. But the names on the list didn’t account for every call that Danes had received. Scattered across the six weeks of his absence, there were over a dozen calls that had registered on Danes’s phone only as PRIVATE, with no number or name associated. Telemarketers maybe. Or maybe not. I looked at the short list of callers and wondered again at how small his world seemed to be.
I drove a Buick across the bridge. Other than that, things were pretty much the same in Fort Lee: asphalt and bad traffic, all covered in rain. The little office building was still there, with its white bricks stained the color of tea. The smell was still bad in the tiny elevator, and worse in the fourth-floor hallway. And the girl was still there, with her white skin and tattoos and scary breasts, smoking behind her desk and watching TV. She looked at me with tiny, empty eyes. After a while recognition came.
“What you want?” she asked, and blew smoke at me.
“I need to talk to Gromyko.”
She looked at me some more and took a long pull on her cigarette. “Who’s Gromyko?” she said.
I sighed and shook my head. “I’ll be at the bar down the street.” The girl blinked at me and said nothing, and I left.
Roxy’s was empty, and dim enough that the dA©cor was mostly hypothetical. Amber lamps shone behind the battered black bar onto the bottles and the glassware and the chromed cash register, and the only other light came from the EXIT signs and through the small front window. There was a gray-haired guy built like a fireplug behind the bar, and a shadow at the far end that might have been a waitress. I bought a club soda and took it to a table by the window. I drank slowly and watched the rain come down. It took Gromyko an hour to get there.
The black Hummer pulled up in front of the bar, and the big blond guy who looked like a shark got out of the passenger seat, opened the rear door, and held an umbrella. Gromyko stepped out and said something to the shark, who nodded. He got back in the front seat and Gromyko crossed the pavement and came in.
He ignored me and went to the bar and spoke quietly to the bartender, who passed him a steaming paper cup and a napkin. Then he walked up front and sat down across from me. Raindrops beaded on his short blond hair, and his pale narrow face was still. He dunked his tea bag in and out of the hot water and looked at me.
“I did not expect to see you again,” he said quietly.
“Same here, but something’s come up.”
Gromyko took his tea bag out of his cup and put it on the napkin. He blew on the tea and swallowed some and looked at me, waiting.
“When I drove back to the city on Friday, I had some company. Two cars: a black Grand Prix and a brown Cavalier. Ring any bells?”
Gromyko sipped more of his tea. A tiny crease appeared between his canted gray eyes. “No.”
“How about a Ford Econoline van, light blue, with smoked glass and mud on the plates?”
He raised his head slightly, then turned and motioned through the window. The shark climbed out of the Hummer and trotted into the bar. Gromyko spoke softly and rapidly and I understood none of it. The shark nodded and replied and Gromyko dismissed him.
“Did he know something about this?” I asked, but Gromyko ignored the question.
“Why do you bring this to me?”
“I thought there might be a connection,” I said. “I picked up the tails after talking to you.”
Gromyko shook his head. “Did it not occur to you that that was simply the first time you noticed them?” he asked, and he sipped again at his tea. “There are more profitable ways for me to allocate my resources than to following you, and more pressing business for me to attend to.” He emptied his cup and crumpled it so quickly and completely that it seemed to vanish before my eyes.
“What about your colleague, Goran? Is he up to any freelancing?”
Gromyko’s small mouth moved minutely. “Goran is no longer with me,” he said. “It is not Goran.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Utterly,” he said. I was quiet, thinking. Gromyko was poised to stand, but he didn’t.
“Is it possible someone latched on to me while they were looking at you?”
A colder light came into his eyes, and the little crease on his forehead deepened. His voice grew quieter. “I think not,” he said.
I nodded and gestured toward the Hummer. “Did he know anything about this?” I asked.
Gromyko nodded imperceptibly. “He was escorting Gilpin from the office on Saturday and thought a blue van might have followed him for a time. It broke off before he could act on it. The license was covered with dirt.” I waited for more, but nothing more came.
“That’s it?” I asked. “No theories on what it was about?”
Gromyko’s face was as calm as an icon’s. “It is possible that I could be of assistance to you, Mr. March, but I do not operate a charitable organization. My advisory services are valuable, and for them I expect payment in kind.”
I laughed and put on my best Marlon Brando voice. “Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me.”
Gromyko raised an eyebrow and gave me an icy microscopic smile. “It is not a currency I expect you wish to part with,” he said, and he stood. “Your calculation in the garage, with Goran, bought you something, Mr. March, but do not be misled by that. Do not intrude on my business again. Do not come here.” He picked up the crumpled cup, the tea bag, and the napkin and placed them on the bar and left. The shark was out of the car again, umbrella in hand, before Gromyko was through the door.
I took a deep breath. A television came on at the far end of the bar. A soccer game was in progress, before a large crowd in a sunny clime. The play-by-play was in a language I didn’t recognize, but it was lively and plentiful and the barman seemed to find it amusing. Outside, the street was wet and ugly, and the prospect of walking to my car and driving back to the city seemed, all of a sudden, a hideously complicated thing.
I ran a hand over my face. I was tired, and only some of it was lack of sleep. Too many hours at the laptop had left me with bleary eyes and a bad feeling about Danes, but little else, and this trip to Fort Lee had been only slightly more productive. I believed Gromyko when he said he wasn’t having me followed- even if there was more to the story that he hadn’t told me. That let me take his name off my list, but it got me no closer to whoever was following me, and certainly no closer to Danes himself.
I drank off the melted ice at the bottom of my glass and rubbed my eyes. It was warm in the bar and
