It started eight weeks ago- in mid-March- with marks for Danes’s lunch with Linda Sovitch, his argument with Dennis Turpin, and his abrupt exit from the offices of Pace-Loyette, and it ended on the present day in a big question mark. In between were Danes’s call to Nina Sachs, canceling Billy’s weekend visit; his call to Irene Pratt, telling her he was going on vacation; his departure from New York the next morning; his periodic calls to retrieve messages from his answering machine; his calls to Billy; and his final call for his phone messages. I’d recorded Danes’s activities in blue ink. I’d used green for Pflug’s men- their trip to see Gilpin, out in Fort Lee; their presumed visit to Nina Sachs’s place; the breakin at Pace-Loyette; the tails on what seemed like half the city; the photographs. The questions were in red.
My meeting with Hauck yesterday had given me a few more tick marks for my picture, but it had added at least as many question marks. I knew now that Hauck, too, was searching for Danes, and that he had no better idea of where to look than I did. And I was all but certain that Hauck and Danes were into something together. But I had no idea of what that something was, or why Hauck wanted Danes, or what he might do if he found him.
I scanned the time line again, but repeated viewings didn’t help. It remained history without narrative, a massing of dates and events that told no story. It captured nothing of Danes’s barren personal life, and it caught none of the pressures that had been driving him in the months before his departure- the golden career turned to lead, the thwarted attempts at professional redemption, the failed relationship with Sovitch, the custody battle with his ex-wife, and the death of the man who might have been his only friend. Danes had ridden a long stretch of bad road before he’d ever gotten in his car that morning, and I couldn’t believe that where he’d gone had nothing to do with where he’d been.
I’d drawn a red circle around the mark for Danes’s last call home. Whatever else went on before- whatever his reasons for leaving, whatever he had going on with Hauck- that was when he’d stopped calling; that was when something had happened. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was something bad.
Neary had called this morning to say that Hauck had made good on his promise to pull the surveillance from my place, and I’d tried some of my questions out on him. He’d been no help with them, but he had a couple of his own for me.
“Where do you go from here?” he’d asked.
“The doorman, Gargosian, gave me something about Danes’s neighbor, a guy named Cortese. He was a music buff, and maybe the single honest-to-God friend Danes had- until the old guy died. It’s the only lead left, and I guess I’ll see what I can make of it.”
“Why?”
“I told you, it’s the only lead.”
Neary sighed. “I know it’s the only thing left to do. I meant, why are you doing it? Pflug and Hauck have backed off, and I doubt they’re coming around again anytime soon, on top of which you have no client. And while I’d be pleased as punch to know where the hell Danes has gone, I just don’t see that you have a dog in this fight anymore.”
I’d been quiet for a while, looking around at my empty apartment, thinking about Jane and about Billy, and finally I’d said nothing. It was another answer I didn’t have.
I’d spent the rest of the morning looking for Joseph Cortese, and though he’d been dead over six months, he wasn’t a hard man to find.
Cortese was seventy-eight when he passed away, widowed, childless, and very rich. The money had come from the sale of his plastics company, over twenty years before. Since then, Cortese had been a generous patron of the arts and had served on the boards of half a dozen museums, music conservatories, and dance companies around the city. According to the Times obituary, he had maintained homes in Manhattan, on Sanibel Island, Florida, and in Lenox, Massachusetts. He was survived by his nephew, Paul Cortese.
Besides the obit, I’d found traces of Cortese on the Web sites of cultural institutions all over town- in meeting minutes, on lists of major donors, and in dozens of testimonials and expressions of sorrow. They all said essentially the same thing- that Joseph Cortese was a great guy, whose company and generosity would be greatly missed. If I wanted more, I’d have to go downtown. And so I had.
Larry beckoned with a dusty finger, and I folded my map, hoisted myself from the unforgiving bench, and hobbled to the counter. He had a single sheet of paper in his hand.
“You got no standing in the case, and no court order,” he said. His voice was wheezy and soft. “So you can’t see the whole package. This is what I can give you.” He handed me the sheet. “Come back when you got some standing.” He disappeared down one of the aisles and left me to my reading.
It was the top sheet of Joseph Cortese’s estate package, the cover page of his probated last will and testament. What it revealed wasn’t much, but it was what I had come for: the name and address of his estate’s executor.
30
“We didn’t do the will,” Mickey Rich said. “Jerry Litvak- over at Litvak, Gant- did that. We do real estate here, exclusively real estate.” He was a stout man with a deep weathered voice, a warm smile, and a cool gaze. There was a little brown left in his wavy white hair, and a little more in his thick beard, and he looked to be somewhere in his middle sixties. He was the senior partner at the law firm of Rich amp; Fiore and the executor of Joseph Cortese’s will.
His office was furnished in oak and green leather, and it was comfortably frayed at the edges, broken in but not broken down. Family photographs covered every available surface, and an old lithograph of the Brooklyn Bridge hung behind his desk. He had a nice view of the Flatiron Building and a corner of Madison Square, and he had time on his hands. He’d agreed to see me when I told him that I wanted to discuss Joseph Cortese, and hadn’t pressed much about why.
“I know Joe forty years- from when I got out of law school and he first gave me work. We were friends ever since, so when he asked me to be his executor, what was I going to say? Besides, there wasn’t much for me to do. Joe kept his affairs neat as a pin and Jerry made a real clean will. The whole thing went through probate in under four months, which for an estate that size is some kind of record in this town.”
“I gather he didn’t have much family.”
Rich shook his head. “No. His brother and sister-in-law passed away a long time ago. And when Margie, his wife, passed, that was it.”
“The obituary said he had a nephew.”
A pained look flitted across Rich’s face. He nodded. “Paul.”
“I guess the bulk of the estate went to him?”
He nodded carefully. “The Philharmonic, City Ballet, Juilliard, the Boston Symphony, some bequests to friends, and Paulie. Paulie was well taken care of.”
“You know how I can reach him?”
Rich’s cool gaze turned downright chilly, and he sat back in his chair. “Paulie’s a little hard to locate sometimes. Why?”
I ignored the question. “He’s a big guy, balding, with dark hair and glasses?”
“You know him?”
I shook my head. “Somebody pointed him out to me, over at Mr. Cortese’s apartment building.”
“When was that?”
“Not too long ago. He seemed a little… agitated to me.”
“Paulie’s like that sometimes,” Rich said.
“How come?”
He shook his head. “You told me you wanted to talk about Joe, and now you’re asking about Paulie. What do you want, March?”
“Do you know Mr. Cortese’s friends?”
Rich smiled, and some warmth came back into his eyes. “That’s a big group. People liked Joe and he liked people. I know some of them, but not all.”
“Do you know Gregory Danes?”
