Death's little helpers

28

The Kubera Group was headquartered in a low unmarked building of fieldstone and glass that sat atop a rise about ten minutes from downtown Stamford. It was hidden from the street by a screen of fir trees and thick plantings and surrounded on three sides by parking lot. The lot was empty at 8 a.m. on Sunday, and I parked my rented Ford about fifty yards off the building entrance and ran the windows down. It was a mild breezy morning, and the air around Kubera was scented with pine and new-cut grass. It was quiet in the parking lot, for the two minutes it took security to show.

“Can I help you?” the guard said. He was in the driver’s seat of the unmarked white sedan that rolled up alongside me. He was young and crew-cut.

“I’m meeting with Hauck at eight-thirty. I’m early.”

“Yes, sir. If I could have your name, please.” I gave it to him and he thanked me and wrote something on a clipboard and drove off. I fiddled with the radio and found a college station playing Josh Rouse. I stretched my legs out and propped my feet on the dash. I closed my eyes and listened to the music and tried not to think about last night. I failed miserably at it.

After browbeating Irene Pratt into phoning Marcus Hauck, and forcing a meeting with him through thinly veiled threats to call the press and the police, I’d spent the rest of the day in a futile online search for more information about Hauck and the Kubera Group. By five o’clock I’d been frustrated and restless, and I took myself for a long walk, down to the Battery and up along Water Street. I’d lingered for a while at the Seaport, amid the tourists and the strings of white lights, and looked at the Brooklyn waterfront. I picked out a corner of a building that I thought was Nina Sachs’s and wondered how they were doing over there- if Nina was still angry and Ines still scared, if Billy was still worrying about his father. I could still hear the pleading in his reedy voice: Will you look for him anyway?

I’d continued north from there and stopped for dinner at a tavern in the East Village. It was a dark tin-ceilinged place, with a scarred black bar along one wall. I’d sat at the bar and drunk club soda and picked at what passed for a tuna sandwich while the place filled up with regulars. Their faces were animated and unfamiliar and their conversations swirled around me like smoke. I listened to their words without comprehension and found the murmur of voices somehow comforting. I walked home through a thin rain.

The lights had been on when I’d come back to my apartment. There was a black umbrella by the door and a gray raincoat on the coatrack. Lauren was standing at the kitchen counter, drinking tea and turning pages of the Sunday Times Magazine. Her black hair was pulled into a loose ponytail, and her sharp features were pale.

“Am I intruding?” I asked, but my sarcasm made barely a dent.

“You’re wet,” she said.

“Wet, tired, and not up for this.”

Lauren smiled thinly. “I notice your fingers look okay, though, and your phone is still working- so it must be your brain that’s out of whack. That must be why I don’t fucking hear from you.”

I tossed my keys on the counter and went into the bathroom and came out with a towel. I dried my face and hair. “What do you want, Laurie?”

She closed the magazine. “I don’t want anything, except to know that you’re all right. I heard about what happened… with those photos.”

“Well, I’m fine- superb, in fact.”

“So I see.”

“Is there something else?”

She looked at me and sighed. “Things will cool off with Ned and Jan. Just give it a little time.”

I threw the towel on the counter. “Sure, things will be fine. In no time they’ll be as warm and fuzzy as ever.”

“They’ll be okay, Johnny. They-”

“No, they won’t. When this passes, assuming it passes, there’ll just be something else and something else after that; it’s inevitable. Because they’re right- Ned and Jan and David- they’re right. I’m not like them, my life isn’t like theirs, and I’m not good company. And none of that is going to change.”

Lauren shook her head. “They just don’t get what it is you’re doing with yourself, Johnny. I’m not sure I do either, but so what? We’re your family.”

“That’s a nice sentiment, but it’s not real life. The world is full of brothers and sisters who have nothing to do with one another. Maybe we should take a page from their book.” I went around the counter to the fridge, pulled out a bottle of cranberry juice, and took a glass from the cabinet. “I’m best left alone, Laurie. It was stupid for either of us to think otherwise.”

“Meaning what?” she said softly. “You’re saying adiA?s to all of us?”

“I’m just being realistic.”

“Is Jane a part of your new realism?”

I filled the glass and took a drink. “You’re out of bounds now,” I said, but she didn’t care.

“You know she’s been staying with me the last couple of nights? She’s not comfortable here while those people are still… watching. She said it creeps her out.”

“That makes two of us.”

“It’s not just the being followed, it’s that you didn’t tell her anything about it. And that you keep working on whatever this is, even though you have no client- and even with this threat.”

“This is really not your business, Laurie.”

“You can understand why she’d be a little scared.”

“I understand perfectly,” I said slowly.

Lauren looked down at her white hands for a while, and then she looked at me. “You won’t meet a lot of people like her, Johnny. She-”

“Jesus Christ!” I said. “Don’t you have someplace else to be? Don’t you have a husband somewhere, and a job? Go spend your time on them. Go have a kid or something. Go lead your own fucking life.” My voice was tight and harsh, and Lauren went quiet. She turned away from me and stood near the windows. The rain had grown heavier and made a sound like ice on the glass.

“That’s pretty funny, from someone who barely has a life himself, who runs away from any chance of having one, who’d rather poke around in someone else’s life than lead his own. It’s pretty funny- in a sad, pathetic kind of way.”

I sighed. “Do you have even a clue of what you’re talking about?”

“Of course not. How could I have a clue? How could anybody? That would mean you let someone intrude on you and your anger. That would mean you actually told someone what the hell happens inside your head.”

I laughed nastily. “I’ll leave the psychobabble to you; you have a knack for it. I think chemistry is my ticket to better living.”

“Right, right, it’s a big joke, getting help. Who the hell could possibly need that? Certainly not you. You’ve got your own personal twelve-step program going, a perpetual one-man meeting. Tell me, do you serve yourself doughnuts and coffee and give out little tokens for each day of joylessness? Probably not doughnuts, I guess; those might be too much fun. And they might somehow interfere with getting those precious miles in. Now, in which step do you pledge yourself to complete and utter isolation? Is that before or after the hair shirt and the self-flagellation?”

“You’re pretty funny yourself,” I said quietly, but it didn’t slow her down.

“I guess you’ve made it work for you, though,” she said. “I mean, I can’t remember the last time I heard you mention Anne.”

“Jesus-”

“Do you talk about her to anyone, Johnny? Can you even bring yourself to say her name?”

I stared at Lauren’s back. Her shoulders were stiff and her head was bent. “You should get the fuck out of here,” I said.

Lauren laughed bitterly and turned to face me. “That might carry more weight if I didn’t actually own this place,” she said. Her green eyes were wet, and she ran a hand over them and looked at me. “But you’re right, I should go. There’ve got to be better ways for me to spend my time.” She’d walked to the door and pulled on her raincoat and picked up her umbrella. “You don’t get that many chances, Johnny,” she’d said from the doorway. “You should try not to fuck this up.”

I heard the hiss of tires on asphalt. A gray Mercedes pulled up to the building’s entrance, and even before it stopped a security guard came out at a run to open the glass doors. Two men climbed out of the car. I recognized one as Jeremy Pflug. The other, I assumed, was Hauck. They spoke briefly with the guard and Pflug glanced my way, and then they went inside. I took my feet off the dash and locked the car and walked across the lot. Nobody ran to hold the doors for me.

The lobby was stone- smooth and pale on the floor, rough blocks of gray and tan on the walls- and it was spare, with no art or corporate logo or sign of any kind hanging, and no waiting area for visitors. The only adornment- if you could call it that- was the guard station, like a stone fortification at the far end of the space. A guard was waiting there, and so was Pflug.

“The early bird,” Pflug said. He looked at my cheek and put a finger to his own and smiled. It was wide and toothy and entirely unappealing on a Sunday morning- or at any other time. The Long Island lockjaw was less pronounced today, and he’d traded his duck hunting look for something more corporate: gray trousers, blue blazer, white shirt. He wore the jacket open, and I could see a shoulder rig under his left arm, and the butt of something heavy hanging there.

“Assume the position for me, John,” he said, and gestured toward the guard station.

I was wearing jeans and a black polo shirt, and unless you were blind or stupid it was pretty clear I wasn’t carrying. Pflug was yanking my chain, and I stared at him.

He shook his head and smiled. “Rules are rules, my friend, and we’ve all got to live with them. So be a good scout or go away- I don’t care which- but you’re not going in without a pat-down.”

I sighed and held my arms out. The guard came around the stone counter with a hand-held metal detector. He was maybe twenty, and tentative, and he ran the wand quickly along my sides and legs and around my waist. It warbled at the car keys in my pocket and at my belt buckle but was otherwise quiet. I put my arms down and he stepped back and looked at Pflug.

Pflug shook his head. “No, no, no,” he chided the guard. “Where did you learn to do this, at Wal-Mart? You can’t rely on that little gizmo; you’ve got to lay hands on him. You’ve got to grab him.” A blush and a pained expression spread across the guard’s face, and he looked from Pflug to me and back again. I helped him out.

“Take me to Hauck or go explain to him why not,” I said to Pflug. “That’s your choice. I’m done with this sideshow.” The guard went back behind the counter and studied his clipboard intently.

Pflug smiled and shook his head. “Don’t get yourself in a twist, John, we’re going, we’re going.” He went around the guard station and into a corridor on the left. I followed.

The corridor was paneled in shiny blond wood. The lighting was soft and the carpeting was thick. We progressed in silence, past darkened offices and around corners, to a smoked-glass door. Pflug pushed it open.

There was an elaborate secretary’s desk to the left, in blond wood that matched the wall paneling, and a waiting area with tan leather sofas to the right. Straight ahead was a set of double doors with sleek brass handles. The doors were shut.

“We wait,” Pflug said, and sat on one of the sofas. He crossed his long legs and patted the seat next to him. “Come on, take a load off, John. Don’t be shy.”

I looked at him but said nothing.

He laughed. “Peevish today? What’s the matter, not seen enough of your little friend lately? She is a busy beaver.” I stared at him. He cracked his knuckles and showed me more of his big teeth. He held his hands in front of his face like an imaginary camera and moved his finger up and down. “Click-click,” he said. I shook my head and the double doors opened.

Marcus Hauck was my height but heavier, and his close-set features were half a size too small for his round pink face. His hair was blond gone gray, cut close and slicked down, and his brown eyes were moist and guileless behind wire-framed glasses. He wore an oxford shirt that was tight across the belly and khaki pants that were an inch too short, and his careful mouth was set in a tiny smile. Hauck was deep in his forties, but despite the graying hair and spreading gut, he had an unripe, somehow fussy look, like an over-large choirboy.

“Come in,” he said. His voice was soft and had no accent.

It was a long room with a desk at one end, in front of a wall of windows that looked out on a stone terrace. The desk was a broad slab of maple with sharp edges and tapered legs, and there was a tan leather chair behind it and two Windsor chairs in front. The desktop was bare except for a leather blotter, a black telephone, a coffee mug, and a crystal sphere the size of a baseball.

A maple console sat along the wall to the left, its surface mostly covered with flat-panel monitors arranged in a strict row. There was a green rug on the floor, with a geometric pattern. It ran the length of the room, and at the far end, facing the desk, was a large weathered statue of a plump four-armed man.

He sat cross-legged on a stone plinth, and his stone features, and the elaborate carvings of jeweled strands on his arms and across his belly, were blurred and indistinct. His four hands held a club, a cup, a bowl, and a pouch, and there was something at once comic and sinister about him.

I took a seat in a Windsor chair. Pflug shut the doors and leaned against them. Hauck sat behind the desk and clasped his hands in front of him. They were pink and pudgy and perfectly still.

“I think I gave Ms. Pratt the wrong idea, perhaps- or maybe she was confused on her own.” Hauck gave a hesitant smile. “In any event, between her and our Mr. Pflug here, I think you have gotten a mistaken impression as well.” He shrugged his shoulders and the smile turned wry. Just a regular Joe, with five billion under management. I looked at Pflug. His eyes were fixed on me. I looked back at Marcus Hauck.

“What impression was that?” I asked.

Hauck laughed softly. “Something… sinister, perhaps? Something conspiratorial?” He smiled at me some more, but I didn’t reciprocate and didn’t speak.

Hauck was a quick study. He looked down at his clasped hands, and when he looked up again and spoke every trace of levity had vanished from his face and from his voice. “I understand your feeling that way,” he said. “Those photos must have been quite upsetting.” He looked over at Pflug and scowled. “I don’t condone those tactics, and regardless of the outcome of our business today, I want you to know that you have my deepest apologies.” It was an impressive change of tack- sudden, but with enough sincerity that it didn’t seem jarring. I picked up the crystal baseball and turned it over in my hand. It was heavy and cool to the touch. Hauck’s eyes followed it.

“That’s comforting,” I said. “But I’d like to know why it happened.”

Hauck nodded gravely. “Mr. Pflug was working for me, doing what I gather you have been hired to do: searching for Greg. He actually started his work ahead of yours, Mr. March, but when he learned that you were on the job- and when he learned of your reputation- he thought he might leverage your efforts. Ride your slipstream, as it were.”

“In other words, he thought he’d follow me around and see if I led him to Greg.”

Hauck nodded encouragingly. “Yes- though unfortunately your results don’t seem to have been much better than his.” Hauck paused and looked at me, but I kept still. He went on. “And then you became aware of his people.”

“They became hard to miss.”

Hauck looked pained. “I’ve already spoken to Mr. Pflug about the quality of some of his resources.”

I looked over at Pflug. If any of this was bothering him he hid it well. I rolled the ball from hand to hand above my lap. Hauck’s eyes followed it, back and forth.

“And then?” I asked.

“And then some unfortunate decisions were made.”

“Starting with the breakin at Pace-Loyette?”

Hauck cleared his throat. “I have no comment on that, Mr. March.”

“Then which unfortunate decisions were you talking about?”

“When he learned of your determination to identify who was following you, Mr. Pflug elected to send those photos. And when you were undeterred and traced them back to Mr. Pflug and made contact with him, he became… hostile. Again, you have my apologies, Mr. March.”

I nodded and rolled the crystal ball in my palm. I looked at Hauck. “As entertaining as that was, I’d figured most of it out already. What I was asking was why you were looking for Danes in the first place.”

Another change came over Hauck, more subtle this time but just as quick. He sat back in his chair and his shoulders stiffened. His eyes cooled distinctly. The sincerity remained in his voice, in full measure, but the empathetic undertones dropped out and were replaced by something that hinted at indignity. He crossed his arms on his chest.

“Gregory Danes is a friend of mine, Mr. March, and I was worried about him; I still am. As you may have gathered, he has few friends and no family to speak of. If I didn’t do something, who would?”

It was a credit to his performance, not to mention my self-control, that I managed not to shout bullshit. “Who indeed,” I said, and nodded some more. “But why the secrecy? Why send Pflug sneaking around? Why not call the cops?”

Hauck smiled a little. “In retrospect, perhaps I should have, Mr. March. Perhaps things wouldn’t have gotten so… out of hand. It would certainly have saved a good deal of misunderstanding. But at the time, I’m afraid, that just didn’t seem possible.

“For one thing, I had- I have- no reason to think that anything untoward has happened to Greg. I’m still hoping that he’s just decided to go on another of his unannounced retreats, and that the phone will ring and it will be him on the other end. If that’s all this is, and I call in the police and create a furor in the press…” Hauck shook his head and smiled. “Well, I don’t think Greg would appreciate it.

“And I have my own interests to consider, and those of my investors. Media attention is at best a double-edged sword for someone in my business, and I’ve made a habit of avoiding it. A story of this sort- hedge fund manager calls police in search for missing analystwould be irresistible to the press. I have no wish to be linked to such a story, Mr. March, and neither do my investors. We simply couldn’t afford it.”

I couldn’t suppress a laugh. “And this business- with photographs and threats- this was supposed to be the discreet approach?”

Hauck shook his head. “It seems absurd from this vantage point, I know.”

Absurd and unbelievable, I thought, but I didn’t say it. “And now what?” I asked.

Hauck smiled benignly and leaned forward. “And now, I hope, we’ve cleared things up between us, Mr. March. Now, I hope, you realize that this nonsense with the photos was simply Mr. Pflug’s ill-advised attempt to cover his tracks- a desire for discretion taken to ridiculous and upsetting lengths.”

“Like Watergate,” I said. Hauck frowned for an instant, and then his smile returned, brighter than before.

“And knowing this,” he continued, “I hope you’ll forget about talking to the press- or whoever- and move on with me from here.” His eyes were wide behind his glasses.

“Move on?”

Hauck nodded. “I’d like to hire you, Mr. March, to find Gregory for me.”

I looked at him and he kept nodding. I looked over at Pflug, who was utterly indifferent. I looked back at Hauck. “You want to hire me?”

“To find Gregory, yes.”

I sat back and sighed. Hauck looked at me eagerly. “What about him?” I asked, and flicked a thumb at Pflug.

“Mr. Pflug and I have discussed methods and tactics, and we’ve come to an understanding. Mr. Pflug will continue his work, but there will be no further incidents like the ones that brought you here.”

“What do you want with Danes?”

Hauck’s smile turned quizzical but never faltered. “I thought I explained, Mr. March- Greg is my friend. I just want you to locate him.”

“And if I do, then what?”

“Then you call me, and let me know that he’s well and where I can find him.”

“What if he doesn’t want to be found?”

“You have a dark turn of mind, I can tell. I simply want to talk to Greg. I simply want to know that he’s well.” I was quiet for a while, looking at Hauck. When his smile began to fray, he cleared his throat. “I realize the money may not be important to you, Mr. March, but this could be a quite lucrative engagement- and no different from what you’re already working on.”

I nodded and tossed the crystal in the air a few inches and caught it again. Hauck fought to keep his eyes on mine. “When’s the last time you heard from him?” I asked.

He seemed relieved by the question. “We spoke on the phone several weeks ago- almost six weeks by now. I can get you an exact date.”

“But it was after he left work?” Hauck nodded. “What did you talk about?”

He smiled. “It was just a chat between friends.”

“Did you have an argument?”

“It was a chat, Mr. March, nothing more.”

“He called you?” Another nod. “On his cell?” Nod. “Any idea where from?”

“None at all,” Hauck said.

“You asked him?”

“He didn’t care to say.”

Pflug made a snorting sound and I turned to look at him. His face was still without expression and his eyes were still on me.

“Why not?”

“Greg could be… stubborn. I can’t claim to know his thoughts.”

“He say anything to you about his plans before he left?” Hauck shook his head. “What was his mood like?” Again the quizzical smile. “Was it stable? Did he sound depressed, elated, detached?”

Hauck hesitated, choosing his words. “It was stable- yes, and not depressed. Angry, perhaps, but not depressed.”

“Angry at what?” Hauck smiled and shook his head and said nothing.

“What are you into with Danes?” I asked. “What’s going on with you two?”

Hauck sat back and sighed, the picture of patience wearing thin. He folded his fat hands in his lap. “Really, Mr. March, I don’t know how else to say it: I am Greg’s friend. There just isn’t anything I can add to that.”

“No, of course not,” I said, and rose from my seat. Hauck leaned forward and Pflug pushed off the door and moved his feet apart and balanced himself.

“You’re leaving us?” Hauck asked. I nodded. “We haven’t worked out the details of my offer yet.” His eyes got smaller and his voice lost some of its softness.

“I don’t think I can accept your offer,” I said, and Hauck changed again. There was nothing subtle about it this time. His eyes narrowed to slits and his features took on a nasty, porcine look. His voice was flat and cold.

“I assumed from your questions that you already had accepted,” he said. I still held the crystal baseball. I tossed it from my left hand to my right and said nothing. Despite himself, Hauck watched it travel.

“I feel that I’ve been misled, Mr. March,” he said, and his face reddened to the collar line. “I really don’t think you appreciate the gravity of this. Perhaps it would be best- for all concerned- if you would reconsider.” He glanced behind me at Pflug.

“Which all is that?” I asked. “Are we talking about my family again?” I tossed the sphere from my right hand to my left. It was Hauck’s turn to keep silent, and he did. His gaze was icy. I moved toward the door and Pflug shifted, blocking my way. He smiled at me and unbuttoned his jacket and shook his head. I looked at Hauck.

“I’ve answered your questions, Mr. March, and it’s only fair that you answer some of mine.”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I pursed my lips and nodded. And then I pivoted and lobbed the crystal sphere at Pflug, who was game but never had a chance.

I tossed it up above his head, and against his will his eyes flicked upward and his hands moved to follow and I kicked him in the balls. The breath came out of him in a sickening bellow and he folded up around his pain, but even as he did, Pflug lunged at me. He groped in his jacket for his gun and pointed his shoulder into my gut and I turned and took the hit on my left arm. There wasn’t much behind it and Pflug clawed at me with his left hand and snapped his head up, trying to connect. But his grip was loose and his timing was way off and I stepped away and hammered twice, hard, on the side of his neck with the side of my fist. Pflug went heavily to his knees. His eyes were rolling in his head, but still he flailed at me and dug for his gun. I threw my elbow into the center of his face, and his nose exploded and he went over backwards. He lay still, with his long legs bent beneath him.

I knelt over him and pulled a semiautomatic from under his arm. It was a shiny cannon, a Desert Eagle, and it weighed about fifty pounds. I turned to Hauck. He was standing behind his desk. His cheeks were flushed and his eyes darted from me to his black telephone and back.

I went to the desk and unplugged the phone and put it on the floor. I slid the clip out of the Eagle and put it in my pocket. My hands were shaking and I took some deep breaths and concentrated on keeping them steady. I checked the chamber. The shithead had a round up there, and I jacked it out and put it in my pocket with the clip. I sat again in the Windsor chair and put the gun on the desk.

“Sit down,” I said. Hauck sat. Pflug groaned and rolled on his side. Hauck and I looked at him. Hauck shook his head and swallowed hard.

“Wasteful,” he said. “You’ve damaged a valuable asset, and for nothing.” His voice was soft again, but not yet steady.

“Not for nothing, Marcus, but to make a point.”

Hauck’s eyes narrowed. “And that is…?”

“That you should keep your dog on a leash, Marcus. Because if he gets loose again, I’m holding you responsible.”

“Is that a-”

“Your little story about how he got out of hand is a pile of crap, and we both know it. He does what you tell him to do. For all I know, you even tell him how to do it.”

Hauck took another breath and started to speak but I cut him off again.

“But be clear on one thing: If I see him again- or anybody who works for him- around me or anyone I know, I’m talking to you, Marcus. Whether you sent him or not, I’m talking to you. You understand that?” Hauck was still and silent for a moment and then he nodded once. “And you’ll make sure that he understands?” Another nod. I stood.

“What about my offer?” Hauck said. I looked at him and didn’t know whether to laugh or spit. I settled on a bitter chuckle and headed for the door.

As I went past him, Pflug pushed himself to kneeling and launched himself at me. His movements were surprisingly fluid for someone whose nose was spread all over his face, but they were also slow and I had about a week to react. I twisted his wrist and kneed him in the jaw and sent him back down to Hauck’s geometric rug. He landed with a grunt and rolled slowly on his back.

I looked down at him and remembered George L. Gerber and his murdered dog out in LA, and thought about booting Pflug in the nuts once more. But his face was bloody, his wrist was bent and likely broken, and he was altogether too wretched. I picked up the crystal sphere, which had come to rest, unscathed, against the console, and I looked at Hauck.

He was still seated at his desk, with his fat hands clasped before him. His brow was furrowed and his mouth was a blister of concentration. His eyes were fixed across the room on the weathered stone face of Kubera. I set the glass ball on the table and closed the door behind me and left him there, waiting for a sign.