“I believe you,” I said. “But I still need to know what was in it and where it is.”
“I swear I don’t know,” Luis said. “It was supposed to be delivered that day, at one o’clock. But it never showed. I don’t know what was in it. I just know it was important.”
“How important?”
“Michael, he had this man. A guy named Angelo Pineiro. Angelo called me every now and then. He said he trusted me, that he’d only call when Michael really needed it. He said unlike the other guys I wasn’t no junkie. I wasn’t going to wig out, go nuts. He said there was an important package coming and I had to protect it or I’d die. That’s what he said. Said it was the kind of package that if you fucked up the delivery you’d just disappear. He said I had to hold on to it and Officer Fredrickson would pick it up later.”
“Why didn’t you tell Fredrickson the package never arrived? He would have understood, right?”
“I did tell him,” Luis pleaded. “I swore to him I never got the package, but he didn’t believe me. And now they think you got it, Henry. They think you stole it. And Michael will do anything to get it back.”
Then it hit me. That’s where the man in black came in. He was sent by Michael DiForio to retrieve the package. The package Michael DiForio thought I’d stolen. And he’d kill me, if necessary. Everything was getting so deep, so dark. Michael DiForio was deadly enough, but bringing in a mercenary meant he needed someone even more vicious.
“Who was it, Luis? Who was supposed to deliver the package to you?”
“This photographer guy named Hans Gustofson. I only met him once. Kind of a jittery fuck, like he thought someone was always watching him. He lived in Europe, but this guy Angelo say he kept a Pied-a-something in New York. Big-ass motherfucker, too. Used to be a bodybuilder.”
“Hans Gustofson,” I said. There was a glimmer of recognition.
“Told me he was working on something big. That he’d either finish it or die trying.”
“Do you know where Gustofson lives?”
“I don’t know, somewhere around…” Luis stopped talking. I heard the sound of scuffling on the other end, footsteps on linoleum. My heart thumped louder as someone yelled no, then stop. Then I heard a thud, like something hitting the floor. Then there was silence.
“Who is this?” A new voice on the phone. Not Luis. “Who the fuck is this?”
I hung up.
“We need to go,” I said to Amanda. “We need to go now.”
Stepping out of the subway into the night, the sirens seemed to have grown louder. I told Amanda what Luis said. How we needed to find this package. And how we were being hunted.
“So how’s this guy Gustofson connected to Michael DiForio?” she asked.
Sighing, I told her what I’d known as soon as Luis dropped the name.
“Hans Gustofson was a photographer,” I said. “When Luis told me that, something clicked. I knew I recognized the name. Gustofson was one of Helmut Newton’s proteges. He made his name as a wartime photojournalist-Vietnam, Kuwait-then decided to get artsy. He said the human body was more beautiful in the nude than in the grave. You can figure out what happened next.”
“Let me guess…he went to the dark side.”
“Like Darth fucking Vader,” I said. “When I was a kid, I read every newspaper I could get my hands on, every one that the public library carried. Searching old microfiche to see what the greatest journalists ever wrote about the most important events of the last half century. I saw a lot of Gustofson’s work, especially during the Gulf, and then in Sarajevo. When you want to be a journalist, you get to know all the names associated with the industry, and he was a big one.”
“So what happened?”
“He got hooked on heroin and started believing he was one of the models instead of the person photographing them. Thousands of dollars in debt later, he started taking sleazy pictures, naked celebrities on vacation, things like that. Soon the mainstream papers wouldn’t touch him, but the tabloids were more than happy to pay his salary.”
I continued. “Every photo tells a story. It’s a snapshot of a moment in time, a context in and of itself. But the pictures Hans ended up taking were a sham. That crap isn’t a portrait of time, it’s a bastardization of it. A quick fix with no relevance. Anyway the press dragged him through the mud until there was no digging himself out. Word was he’d become a recluse, burying himself in heroin and alcohol and women, mostly at the same time.”
“So the question is,” Amanda said, her sentiments echoing mine, “how is Gustafson involved with Michael DiForio?”
“Only one way to find out,” I said. “We need to find Hans.” Amanda nodded in resigned agreement.
“If he’s living in New York, he must have an address.”
I nodded again. “Time to find our old buddy Mr. White Pages.”
We walked another five blocks and found an all-night diner. Fire burned through my leg with each step. Stepping inside to the welcome smell of grease and grilled meat, I asked the chef for the pay phone. He nodded and used his spatula to point us toward the restrooms.
Tattered copies of the yellow and white pages sat on a small desk beneath a soiled phone. I flipped through the white pages until I found a listing for an H. Gustofson, then glanced over my shoulder. I made a violent coughing noise, and simultaneously tore the page from the book.
Hans Gustofson lived just ten blocks away. My wobbly legs could handle it, barely.
“You think we should call ahead?” Amanda asked, grinning.
“Now what would be the fun in that?”
We made the walk in fifteen minutes, our bodies hunched over as though straining against tremendous resistance. We were no longer concerned about being inconspicuous. The last few days had sapped our energy to the point where we actually were relying on the wind to propel us.
Gustofson lived in a brick town house on 90th and Columbus. Upper West Side. Pretty decent neighborhood. Like all good brownstones there was no doorman, only a buzzer-based security system. These things were tough to crack, only done so by the most daring and intuitive thieves and espionage artists.
Or a college graduate who’d spent his entire freshman year breaking into said buildings to surprise his girlfriend for some late-night sex.
I slid out my American Express corporate card, doubting that the Gazette had this in mind when they gave it to me.
“Watch the master,” I said to Amanda, deftly slipping the plastic between the door and frame. I leaned in close and listened, sliding the card gently in a north-south direction. I heard the telltale click and the door swung open.
“Better than MacGyver,” Amanda said.
We stepped into the musty lobby. Chinese food menus were scattered about the floor. A plant stood in the corner, looking like it was last watered during the Cold War. Crispy brown leaves surrounded the pot like dandruff. A black-painted staircase wound upward. The building was five stories. No elevator. Perfect.
I checked the tenant directory and found Hans. He lived in apartment 5A. Of course he had to live on the fifth floor. One step at a time, I told myself. Not five whole flights, but one step at a time. Positive thinking. Amanda sighed beside me.
“Do we have to walk all the way up there?” So much for positive thinking.
“Unless there’s a donkey attached to some sort of pulley system, I’m afraid so.”
By the time we reached the third floor my calf muscles felt like they were sloughing off my body. My wounded leg had gone numb again, which scared the shit out of me. Amanda panted as she followed a few steps behind. I offered to go alone, to rejoin her downstairs when I was through. She offered a four-letter response. My kind of girl.
As we reached the third-floor landing and headed for the fourth, a foul smell caught my nostrils. Bad Chinese food, maybe. Or someone who’d worn the same pair of socks for three or four hundred years. But as we reached the fourth floor, I noticed an ominous scent lurking beneath that smell. Something sour. More sinister. I turned to Amanda. We both had the same thought. There was something rotten one flight above us.
There was only one apartment on the fifth floor. Like a penthouse suite in a town house of clogged toilet bowls. Amanda pinched her nose, covered her mouth. Several envelopes were stuffed underneath the door to apartment 5A. It had been a while since Hans opened his mail.
