the guy.”
Gargosian nodded slowly and relaxed a little. “It’s just that I went through a fucking evil time with my own ex, so I’m a little touchy. I don’t want to go telling tales.”
“Sure,” I said, and kept looking at him.
“He didn’t have a lot of visitors. His kid was probably the most regular; he’d come by every few weeks or so.”
“No girlfriends?”
“Not lately.”
“How about before lately?” Gargosian hesitated, and I helped him out. “How about a pretty blonde who’s shorter than she looks on TV?”
He looked relieved. “What do you need me for? You seem to know it all already.”
“Confirmation helps,” I said. “Anybody besides Sovitch?”
“No, just her. But for a while now, not even her.”
“How long a while?”
He shrugged. “It’s got to be six months at least.”
“She was a pretty regular visitor before then?”
“It was kind of tapering off, I think. But for a while there it was two or three nights a week.” Gargosian’s eyes shifted to the doors and he loped across the lobby and held them for an attractive blond woman pushing a baby carriage. He walked them to the elevators and came back to the concierge station.
“Danes have many friends in the building- anybody he might’ve told where he was going?” I asked.
Gargosian shook his head. “He’s not a real sociable guy.”
“According to his son, he’s got at least one friend in the building- someone he goes to hear music with.”
Gargosian thought for a moment and began to nod. “He had one friend, more like: the old fellow, Mr. Cortese- Joseph- and a nicer guy you’ll never meet. Hell of a sad thing when he passed. He was a real music buff, and friendly with Danes. They went to concerts together and stuff.”
“White-haired guy- mostly bald on top- with a narrow face and hollow cheeks?” I asked. He nodded. “When did he pass away?”
“Last year, right around Thanksgiving. Bad heart.”
“He live alone?”
“All alone. The missus was long gone.”
A FedEx truck double-parked in front of the building. The driver waved at Gargosian and started stacking boxes on a hand truck. Gargosian waved back.
“I got to get the service door,” he said, and went out to the street.
I leaned on the marble counter and thought about Danes and his late friend. Now I had a name to go with the face in the photosJoseph Cortese- but I wasn’t sure what that led to besides another dead end. My head was aching again and I was tired, and I wondered how Neary was faring in tracking down Pflug. I pressed my fingers to my temples but it didn’t help. Gargosian returned and I hauled my thoughts back to Danes and Cortese.
“You said they went to concerts together.” Gargosian nodded. “Here in the city?”
“Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, up at St. John’s- the old guy talked about it all the time. And in the warm weather he’d go someplace up in Westchester. And he went to the mountains, too- the Berkshires. He had a house up there, and he’d go for big chunks of the summer. Danes went with him now and then.”
“You know if Cortese had family? Anyone he was close to?”
Gargosian tilted his head a little. “We’re getting kind of far from Danes, aren’t we?”
“I’m looking for someone to talk to about this place in the Berkshires.”
“The old guy had a nephew, but I don’t know how close they were. He’d come around sometimes; he still does.”
“Cortese’s apartment hasn’t been sold?”
“The nephew owns it now. Like I said, he comes by once in a while.”
“Any idea where he lives?” Gargosian shook his head. “How about a name?”
“Don’t know his first name, but his last name’s Cortese.”
I pulled a card from my pocket. “Can I leave this for him, for the next time he comes in?” Gargosian looked skeptical but took the card. “What about neighbors?” I asked. “Does Danes get along with his?”
Gargosian looked puzzled for a second. “I didn’t explain it right, did I? Mr. Cortese was in apartment Twenty-C; he was Danes’s neighbor, pretty much the only one. The other two units up there are owned by a corporation, and they’re empty most of the time.”
I thought about that for a while, and about the disheveled-looking man I’d seen coming off the elevator and going into 20-C, the day I’d creeped Danes’s apartment. “What does the nephew look like?” I asked.
Gargosian thought for a moment. “A very big guy, not young… balding, with some dark hair around the sides… a big face… glasses. Kind of… messy.” That was him. Gargosian looked at his watch. “If there’s nothing else, I’ve got to get to the mail.”
I nodded. “Thanks for your time.”
“Hope I was worth the wait,” he said, and held the door for me.
I hailed a cab on Lex and rolled the window down. We pulled away from the curb and a diesel wind rushed in at me. I thought about what Paul Gargosian had told me. Joseph Cortese seemed to be the closest thing to an actual friend of Danes that I’d come across so far. Except that I hadn’t really come across him, as he’d been dead for going on six months.
That six-month period couldn’t have been a pleasant one for Gregory Danes. Cortese died; Sovitch stopped coming around; a custody battle erupted with Nina Sachs; and Turpin had shown up at Pace-Loyette with a mandate to settle the claims that Danes wanted to fight. Not an easy time. Who could blame the guy for going away? Who could blame him for not coming back? I thought about how I might find Cortese’s nephew, but I was tired and my mind kept wandering to Neary and Pflug.
The phone was ringing as I came through the door. It was Neary.
“I found him,” he said.
“Where?”
“Here, in town.”
“Is he willing to meet?”
“He said he’d be more than happy to. He even invited us to his rented conference room.”
“When?”
“Six o’clock this evening,” Neary said. I wrote down the address.
“Doesn’t sound like it was too hard to get hold of him.”
“I just called the numbers on his Web site.”
“Was he surprised to hear from you?” I asked.
“Not even a little.”
I met Neary in front of an undistinguished glass box on Park Avenue and 38th Street. We signed in and rode up together in silence. The company that provided Pflug with his New York address occupied the entire twelfth floor. The reception area was windowless and softly lit. The magazines were plentiful but out-of-date and the plump furniture was slightly shabby, and it looked like the business-class lounge of a failing airline. But for two receptionists preparing to leave, the room was empty.
They were making final adjustments to hair and makeup when we came in, and they eyed us warily. The short redhead with the diamond chip in her nose buzzed Pflug and led us to a conference room.
“It’ll be just a minute,” she said, and left us alone.
I sat in a scuffed leather chair at the long scuffed conference table and took a few slow breaths to bring my heart rate down. I looked out the window at the dim view of 38th Street. Neary sat across from me.
“I should do the talking,” he said.
“Sure.” I kept looking at the view.
“You should mostly just sit there.”
“Sure.”
“And not say much.”
“Uh-huh.”
