Death's little helpers

37

News of Gregory Danes’s death beat me back to New York, and so did news of my involvement in the case. There was a camera crew in front of my building when I got home, but they were slow or inattentive and I was inside before they could get out of their van. My voice mail was full.

There were a lot of messages from reporters, including three from Linda Sovitch. She was chatty and intimate and she called me John. She wanted to interview me for Market Minds.

There were messages from my family, too- from Lauren and Liz, who wanted to know that I was okay, and from Ned, to tell me that reporters had been calling him, that he didn’t like it, and that if I did talk to the press he’d prefer me not to mention any connection to Klein amp; Sons. It was touching, really.

Mickey Rich had called also. I called him back.

“They’re saying on TV that Paulie killed Danes,” he said. He sounded very old.

“That’s because they feel compelled to say something. Paul’s in custody- which is probably a good thing all around- but the police haven’t come to any conclusions.”

“Is he in bad shape?”

“Physically he seemed quite fit to me, but otherwise he’s not good. No matter how this shakes out, he’s going to need a lot of help.”

“Did Paulie… hurt you? I saw something on the news-”

“I’m fine, Mr. Rich. A little scuffed but nothing worse.”

Rich sighed and was quiet. “I’m going up there,” he said, after a while. “I mean, Joe would want it, and who else has he got if not me?”

He hung up and I went back to deleting messages. While I did I turned on the television to BNN. One of their reporters was standing in front of Pace-Loyette’s office building, annoying the guards and harassing anyone going into or out of the lobby. I flicked to an all-news channel, which just then was an all-Danes channel. They ran old clips of him addressing an investor conference, and with Linda Sovitch on Market Minds, and more recent, less flattering footage of him walking fast and looking furtive on Park Avenue.

Then the coverage switched gears into a recap of the story so far. I froze when they got to the part about the discovery of his body. Aerial footage of Calliope Farms was followed by a nighttime shot of the driveway and flares and state troopers, and of a gray Audi TT turning onto a road. My face was clearly visible through the window glass, and so was Jane’s.

“Shit.” My voice echoed in the apartment. I flicked the TV off.

My second-to-last message was from Marcus Hauck. He was quiet, cold, and very brief. “Call me.” The last message was from Billy. He spoke in a whisper.

“You said you’d find him and I guess you did, so I should say thanks. Maybe you could call me. I want to know what happened to him is all, and Mom won’t tell me or let me go online or even watch TV. The phone is ringing every five seconds, and TV people are outside, and she’s all freaked out. She and Nes are screaming at each other about I don’t know what. Mom’s taking me out to New Jersey in a while, to Grandpa’s place. Maybe you could call me there. I just want to know what happened.” He left me his grandfather’s phone number and hung up.

I took my sling off and worked my shoulder around. It was sore, but less so. I opened some windows and powered up my laptop. Then I sat at my table and spent the next half hour reading again through Danes’s phone records and through my own notes. When I was done I pushed my chair back and ran my hands through my hair.

“Shit.”

I called Nina Sachs’s apartment again, and again got no answer. Then I tried the Jersey number that Billy had left. It was busy and stayed that way for half an hour, and finally I gave up. I tried the I-2 Galeria de Arte in Brooklyn next. The phone rang for a long while before an irritated-sounding woman with a high-pitched voice picked up. She claimed not to know Nina Sachs and told me Ines was out. When I pressed, she suggested I try the gallery in SoHo. I called the SoHo number and someone picked up on the first ring, but whoever it was kept silent and hung up when I asked for Ines. After that the line was busy.

I went to the window and looked out at the street. The news crew was gone. The sun was fading and a wind had picked up. I pulled on my field jacket before I left, and clipped the Glock behind my back.

The I-2 gallery in SoHo was on Greene Street, near Canal. It was smaller than its Brooklyn cousin, a narrow space in a narrow brick building flanked by pricey shoe stores. It had a glass front and a glass door, and all the glass was covered by fabric shades. The door was locked and I pressed the bell. Nothing happened for a while and then a corner of a window shade was pulled back. It was Ines. She looked at me for a long moment and then she went away. I rang again and after minutes of nothing happening I rapped on the glass with my fist. The door buzzed. My pulse quickened and I went in.

The gallery was dim inside, lit only by the gray haze that filtered through the shades in front and by the chrome gooseneck lamp on the big black desk in back. The walls were empty and the bleached wood floors were bare; the ceiling was hung with shadows. The whole place smelled of cigarettes and plaster dust, and the air felt ten degrees colder than out on the street. My footsteps were loud and hollow.

Ines sat behind the desk, at the edge of a black wooden chair. She wore a green jersey dress, and her hair fell around her face. There was a wineglass on the desk, nearly empty, and a bottle of merlot, mostly gone. There was a round glass ashtray beside the bottle, with a cigarette burning in it. And beside the ashtray there was a small chromed semiautomatic.

I took a deep breath.

Ines leaned forward and her face came into the cone of light from the desk lamp. She was gaunt and sallow, and her huge almond eyes were painted with ash. Her straight strong nose was red at the end, and pinched-looking, and the creases on her forehead were dark and deep. And there were three parallel lines- angry red scratches- that ran from the bottom of her left ear to the left corner of her mouth. She looked up at me and made a wry face.

“You do not look well, detective,” she said. She was hoarse and tired-sounding.

“You and me both.”

“Yes. It has been a difficult few weeks.”

“I can imagine.”

Ines laughed bitterly. “Can you, detective?” She rested her long fingers on the edge of the desk. She stretched out one and nudged the butt of the gun.

“Where is Nina?” I asked.

“She took Guillermo…” Her breath deserted her and she stumbled over his name. “She took him to New Jersey, to her parents’ home. It was… too much in Brooklyn.” She took a hit off her cigarette, and the ember hissed.

“Is she coming back?”

Ines shrugged. Her shoulders were stiff and brittle-looking beneath the jersey. “I do not know her plans, detective.”

“What happened to your face?”

Ines shook her head. Her black hair was dull and heavy. “A household accident,” she said, and drained her wineglass. She stubbed out her cigarette and lit a fresh one.

“Was Nina part of it?”

She looked at me through a cloud of smoke. “Was Nina part of what?”

I shook my head. “Now is not the time, Ines. I know your taste in wine and your choice of smokes. The cop who’s running this case doesn’t, but he’ll know other things. He’ll pull prints off the wine bottle and DNA from the cigarette butts, and it won’t take him long. And the first comparisons he’s going to make are with you and Nina. So now is not the time to play around. Now we have to think about Billy, and it’s a whole different story if Nina knew about this.”

Ines sighed and her shoulders sagged. A look that might have been relief rolled across her face like cigarette smoke and vanished. “Dios mAo,” she whispered. “He is all I think of: what will become of him, what he will think of me. He is what this is all about.” She made her long fingers into a fist and slammed it on the desk. “A„Mierda!”

“Did she know, Ines?”

She shook her head, and her eyes roamed the shadows over my shoulder. “I did not tell her, if that is what you mean; we have never spoken of it. She did not know what happened- otherwise she would not have hired you. Later on, after you began your work, when you told her about Gregory calling for his phone messages, and that he had suddenly stopped calling, and the date that he stopped- then I think she began to know something. Then I think she remembered that I had been away, and when. I think she knew then what I had done, but she did not want to know. You understand?” I let out a deep breath and nodded. “That is why she fired you, I think.”

“But you never discussed it with her?”

“When we got the news… that his body had been found… I tried. But she was so frightened and… angry.” Ines touched the scratches on her face. “She would not hear it, and she would not let me speak of it.”

Ines shook her head and clasped her hands in front of her, as if in prayer.

“But how can I not, detective? When I look at Guillermo- when he asks about his father- how can I not speak of it? It is like a weight on my chest. It squeezes the breath from me and breaks my ribs. How can I bear this thing any longer?” Ines rested her forehead on her clasped hands, and her shoulders shook. Her cigarette fell to the desktop and began to smolder. I reached down and put it in the ashtray. Ines put her hand over the gun.

“How did you know where to find him?” I asked softly.

“We spoke, and he told me where he was,” Ines said. She ran her hands over her eyes. “He gave me directions.”

“You spoke when he called for Billy?”

She nodded. “He called to leave a message for Guillermo, and I was at home. I picked up the phone.” She looked up at me. “How did you know?”

“His phone bill. There isn’t much activity on it, but there is a call to Nina’s number, made about two weeks after Danes left town. At first I thought it was one of the calls Billy told me about, one of the times his father had left a message. Billy told me those calls had come in the first ten days or so after Danes left, but I thought maybe he’d gotten the dates wrong. Then I checked the bill again, and the length of the call, and I realized Billy wasn’t mistaken. Danes called a third time.”

A look of disgust crossed Ines’s face. “Yes, he called and I picked up the phone and spoke to him.”

“About what?”

“About Guillermo… about the schools and the custody.”

“You were involved in those discussions?”

Her bitter smile returned. “No, detective, those were between Nina and Gregory only. I merely had to live with the consequences, with Nina’s upset… and Guillermo’s. It has been very bad for him, especially in the last months, since his father started again with lawyers.”

“Since he reopened the custody suit?”

She nodded. “It was very difficult for Guillermo, very upsetting. And then I heard Gregory’s voice on the machine and I just… picked it up.”

“What happened then?”

Ines lit a fresh cigarette and shivered. “It was terrible. He was angry and mocking and cruel, and he was… triumphant. He talked about Guillermo coming to live with him, and sending him away to boarding school, and he thanked me for it… for making it possible.”

“Thanked you why?”

Ines blew out a cloud of smoke. “He said it was because of me that he would win the custody- that no judge would leave Guillermo in a household with me.”

I shook my head. “Being a lesbian is hardly grounds for-”

“That is not what he meant, detective. He meant something else.” Ines looked down at her smooth right arm and ran a finger over the fat shiny scar just below her elbow. “It seems like such a small thing now,” she said.

“What was he talking about, Ines?”

“It was in Spain, when I was much younger. I was a fool, and I did a foolish thing. I carried a package for a friend, from Istanbul back to Madrid. I was stopped at the airport. It was heroin, and there was over a kilo. I was in prison for almost two years. I had never done anything like it before, and I never have since.” Ines poured the rest of the wine into her glass, and took a drink. “Years later, when I came to this country, I made sure that none of that appeared on my immigration forms or came to the attention of the INS.”

“Danes found out?”

“When he started again with lawyers, he hired detectives of his own, detectives in Madrid. They found records.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes. I thought about the business card I’d found in Danes’s desk: FOSTER-ROYCE RESEARCH. “Gregory thanked me for my help, detective, and wished me a good trip back to Spain.”

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. “What did you say?”

“I… I pleaded with him… for Guillermo’s sake. I said we all wanted what was best for Guillermo, and that destroying the home we had made for him could not be for the best. I said if he wanted more participation in Guillermo’s life, we would welcome that. And I asked if we could meet, to work something out. I pleaded with him to meet me, detective.”

“And he said yes?”

Ines shook her head. “At first he was angry. He called me filthy names and said how dare I talk to him about what was best for his son. He said all I cared about was not being deported. But I pleaded and… I cried, detective, and he enjoyed that. He said if I wanted to waste my breath, why not, and he told me where he was staying.”

“And you went up there?”

“A few days later.”

“And Nina had no idea?”

“She thought I was visiting the gallery in Kinderhook.” Ines sighed deeply. Her gaze fell to the desk and wandered across its surface and came to rest on the gun. It seemed to exert a gravity of its own on her, and her eyes were drawn to it again and again. She placed her hand on it once more.

“Why did you go there, Ines? What did you think would happen?”

Ines started to speak and stopped. She looked up at me, and tears were falling from her almond eyes. “I do not know, detective.”

“Did you think that you could talk to him- that he would listen and be convinced?” She shook her head slowly. “You had that with you?” I pointed at the gun.

She slid the gun across the desk until it was in front of her. She looked at it as if it might speak. “Yes,” she said.

“Where did you get it?” I stepped closer to the desk.

“It is mine,” she said, and she picked up the gun and put it in her lap. “I have owned it for years.”

“And you took it with you- why?”

“I… I do not know, detective, I-”

“Were you afraid of Danes?”

She nodded vigorously. “I was terrified of him. He was a small man, and full of anger and bitterness and fear. Even before Nina and I became lovers, since the time we were merely friends, he has hated me. I have always been afraid of him.”

“And that’s why you took the gun?”

Ines looked up at me and made a small and very tired smile. “Is that what you want me to say, detective? Is that what you want to hear- that I did not go there to kill Gregory? That I had the gun with me because I feared for my life?”

I shook my head. “I just want to hear what happened. What happened when you went to see him?”

Ines took another drink. “It was terrible- worse than on the phone. I tried to be very friendly. I brought wine and he opened it and poured glasses for us both. We sat at the table and I talked. I talked again about wanting only what was best for Guillermo, and how Nina and I had made a good home for him. I talked about this being a difficult time for Guillermo, a difficult age, and that he needed all of us to help him. And Gregory nodded and smiled and I thought… that he was listening to me. Then he went into the next room and came back with a stack of booklets. They were from different boarding schools, and he laughed and asked if I wanted to help pick the one that Guillermo would go to.

“He called me a drug addict bitch and said the drugs must have made me crazy or stupid if I thought he would ever allow his son to be raised by a spic bull dyke. And then he told me never to call his son by a spic name again- that his name was William or Billy or Bill and not Guillermo. And then he asked me if I was going to cry again, because he had really been looking forward to that.”

“And then?”

“And then I threw my wine in his face and called him a dickless little weasel. And then he punched me.”

“He hit you?”

“In the stomach. I fell down and he stood over me and laughed and

… that is when I shot.”

“Did you think he was going to keep hitting you?”

She shook her head wearily. “I do not know what I thought, detective. I do not know what he would have done.” Ines rubbed her eyes and raked a hand through her hair.

“And afterward?”

She shook her head. “Afterward, nothing was real. I walked out of the house and I was… surprised. I was surprised that I could still walk, and that my car could start, and that I could drive. It seemed to me that people should stop and stare, or that the police should come, but they did not. I drove all the way to New York- all the way home- and everything was very ordinary and no one noticed me. And then I saw Guillermo and found that I could not breathe.

“He was as he always is, sweet and funny and bright- and difficult- and he spoke to me about his school and his comic books, and he had… no idea. He had no idea that everything had changed.” Ines pressed her fingers to her eyes, and her shoulders shook. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“No one had any idea. I woke, I ate, I worked. I spoke and people spoke to me. I could even laugh. It all was as before- but of course it was not. There were moments I told myself that it could go on this way, that no one would find him… but then I would see Guillermo, walking around, not knowing…

“I try to tell myself that I saved him, detective, but I know it is not so. I know that I have lost him. I know I have destroyed him.” She ground the heel of her palm between her breasts, and her voice became choked and desperate. “And the weight is so great, detective… I cannot breathe.”

Ines put her arms on the desk and her head on her arms. The sun was nearly set and street light could not penetrate the window shades. I stepped closer to the pool of light around the desk and put my hand on her shoulder. It was bony and trembling, and after a while she reached out and placed a cold hand on mine.

We stayed that way for a while and then Ines raised her head and pushed back from the desk and away from me. She took the gun from her lap and held it in both her hands and turned the muzzle inward. My heart began to pound.

“I was scared when Nina hired you- terrified. But a part of me was relieved that someone had come… to take all this from me. And now you have, and I thank you for that, detective.”

I took a deep, shaky breath. “We have a lot to do, Ines- a lot to do for Billy. And the first thing is to have you talk to a friend of mine. He’s a lawyer- the best one I know- and he can help us with this.” I was too far away. I took a half step forward and tried not to look at the gun.

Ines smiled grimly. “A lawyer cannot help me, detective. A lawyer cannot make this right with Guillermo or let me look at him again. A lawyer cannot make this… stop.” She ran a forefinger along the top of the gun barrel. My skin prickled, and sweat rolled down my back. My throat was closing and I had to fight to get words out.

“He can help you to survive it, Ines, and that’s what Billy needs. He needs for you to survive this.”

She shook her head. “I cannot. I have destroyed his life, detective, and I am too much of a coward to see the aftermath.” She stared at the gun some more and I took another half step. I was still too far.

“Billy will need a lot of help- it’s true- but he’ll need even more without you.”

“Nina is there,” she said, but there was more hope than certainty in her soft voice.

“We both know that Nina’s not so good at help, Ines. Billy needs you.”

She closed her eyes. “He is the closest I will have to a child, detective,” she said softly. She slid her thumbs along the trigger guard and put her right thumb on the trigger. I edged closer. My heart was hammering at my ribs and blood was roaring in my head. I flexed my fingers. My joints felt welded shut. I was too far.

“And you’re the closest he has to a parent, Ines. You’re all he has of home. Don’t take that from him.”

Ines brought the gun up and stared into the barrel. Her chest was heaving and her eyes were black and shattered and fixed on something far from the empty room. She squeezed them shut and grimaced, and my body clenched for impact.

“Please, Ines,” I whispered. “He’s lost too much already.”

Her knuckles were white over the pistol grips and her arms were shaking. And then she opened her eyes, and they were filled with tears. Color came back into her fingers, and she lowered the gun and put it on the desk. I put my hand over it and let out an ancient breath.