Matt said, still not turning to face me, “Life’s not a joke, Payton. But your life can
I sat and thought, but not about what he’d said. My brain was ticking away on Law Addison. There had to be a nice big reward for information leading to his capture. The kind of money people would do anything for, and—I admit it—I’m people. I thought it would be fun to collect. On top of that, it’d be a Botox shot to my sagging practice if I brought him in.
But Matt was right, I didn’t know enough to figure this out on my own, how it all fit together. I didn’t have the resources at my fingertips. But I knew someone who did, and she was home. I could hear the clomp of her boots above my ceiling.
Chapter Thirteen: BURNING BRIDGES
I went upstairs to Tigger’s door, knocked, and answered her “Who’s there?” with “Me, returning your set of keys.”
The door opened.
She said in a hushed voice, “Quiet, everyone’s sleeping. Nana and papa fell asleep on Rue’s floor by her bed. Retz nodded off on the can, so shhh.”
As soon as I saw her, I got a lump in my throat.
She’d been my neighbor in this top-story loft apartment for over ten years, was here when I moved in. We’d had an instant connection, pals at first sight. Maybe if I’d been younger, I’d’ve tried to make it more. But she was seventeen at the time and I was too old for her. Funny I used to think twenty-eight was too old.
I still didn’t know the whole story of how she’d come to New York City, she’d never put forth the information, but she’d dropped enough hints for me to sketch in the outlines. She’d come to the city at fourteen or fifteen, running away from a home life that made resting her head on the hard edge of a sidewalk a more comfortable cushion. She’d mixed with rough people in those early years and become one herself. She began working raves when she was sixteen; it turned out she had a natural talent as a techie. By the time I moved in she was going on eighteen and already had her union card, working Broadway shows in the city and sometimes on tour.
Deeper than that I’d never dug. I deliberately avoided it. Tigger knew what I did for a living, invading people’s pasts and ferreting out the truth. It was work in the pursuit of which you developed certain “skills” of mistrust, deceit, emotional insulation, and healthy paranoia. But what’s healthy professionally can be poison in a friendship. Stay in the business long enough and these skills harden into personality traits you can no longer turn on and off. After a while, you can’t meet someone new without dissecting them; you start assuming all the faces you meet are masks.
But I had never done that with Tigger. And never wanted to. Somehow it was important having one person in my life I didn’t treat as suspect, not even the least-likely variety.
Of course we’d also both been young back then, and the temptation to probe hadn’t been so great. The past hadn’t been that important to us; too much was going on in the now that needed sorting out. But soon the past was all I would have of her.
She must’ve seen some of the thought on my face, because her bushy brows knitted.
I swallowed the lump and forced a smile. Be happy. I needed her help, not her sympathy. And most of all I needed her computer.
Tigger had a much more sophisticated computer setup than I ever would—a NASA console by comparison. The whole thing was separately powered by a solar panel unit she’d mounted up on the roof. Con Ed never saw a penny. She could set up shop on a desert island, that one.
In the past year, after becoming a new mother, she’d quit working in theater and turned to graphic design, something she could do from home. She’d been successful at it, too. Too successful. It was enabling her to buy a house in the country and leave the city, and everyone still in it, behind.
Part of my discomfort over losing Tigger was selfish: I used her on a regular basis as a sounding board and procurer of information. She was my Huggy Bear. She knew parts of this city I didn’t know existed and the sort of people who inhabited them. I would miss that almost as much as I’d miss her.
To make up for that impending deficit, I was going to wring as much out now as I could.
She must have seen the greed in my eyes.
“Is this for a case? Finally got a client?”
A client? Just to show her up, I gave her a tally of my clients so far that day. Four in all. If she was shocked, her face didn’t betray it. She was the quintessential New Yorker, never batting an eyelash. Though she did squint hard when I was telling her about Mr. and Mrs. Dough knocking my stuffing out and interrupted me to ask, “Wait, is this
“Dunno, I’m just telling you what happened.”
I stopped giving her the rundown of my day at the point where Matt walked out, for fear of lapping myself.
“Four clients in one day,” I said. “That’s more than I’ve had all year. And it all started with George Rowell. Everything that’s happened…there’s got to be something that connects it all. I can’t chalk it up to coincidence.”
I got no argument from her. I was a little disappointed. Never could anticipate what her reaction was going to be, but usually she was contrary.
This time she said, “You’re right. There is something that connects all these things. Links all of them together.”
That tone of voice—complete conviction, complete self-confidence…she saw something, she knew the answer! I could feel my heart start thudding like a boot kicking the back of my chair in study hall.
I asked, “What is it?”
“It’s you, Payton,” she said. “You’re the connection. Your perception frames them all and imposes a pattern, which precludes you from ever perceiving them as what they might well be, merely a random set of unrelated events.”
“Oh,” I said. It was a letdown. “Well, thank you,
“I call ’em as I see ‘em,” she said, and leaned back in her rolling chair. “So let’s get to the important part: Which of these women is it that’s got you panting?”
“What?”
“Come off it, I’ve seen that look in your eye before, like the pilot light’s gone on. You don’t get that look over a man. Only a woman. And not an ugly one either. So give—is it Little Miss Pilates with the nice bum and the fake name or is it the Suicide Girl with the
I gave. “Neither,” I said. “It’s the bad guy.” I’d told her about following Sayre Rauth from Yaffa and then speaking to her outside her townhouse, but I’d confined myself to the what, where, and when. This time around, I added in the how. And what a how it was. I hadn’t realized how much she’d made my blood boil or how obvious it was that she had. Tigger smiled as I told her of the effect Ms. Rauth had had on me.
“Who’d’ve thought one of the city’s hottest women would be working as a realtor?” she said. “Not one of your top ten sexiest jobs. Which firm did you say she’s with?”
“I didn’t say. She’s got her own, Rauth Realty. That’s what the townhouse is, their office.”
Tigger’s smile vanished. “No such company.”
I grinned. “Sez you. I was there a few hours ago.”
Tigger shook her head resolutely. 99% of the time there was no arguing with her, because 98% of the time she was right.
“I know all the registered realtors in the area. Trust me, for the last year I’ve been talking to half of them, the other half I e-mailed. And I never heard of a Rauth Realty, at least not here in the city. Certainly not in this
