Death's little helpers

5

Richard Gilpin was calling himself Gilford Richards these days, at least at the esteemed investment firm of Morgan amp; Lynch of Fort Lee, New Jersey. His voice was deep and ripe with sincerity, but he went quiet when I used the name Gilpin and hung up when I said I was calling about his half brother, Gregory Danes.

Finding Gilpin hadn’t been hard; he was in the book, at an address somewhere in Englewood. I’d called that number and an answering machine there told me I’d reached the residence of Gilford Richards. I’d plugged Gilford Richards into a search engine and come up with Morgan amp; Lynch’s cheesy Web site. According to the site, Morgan amp; Lynch was a Cayman Islands company that operated half a dozen hedge funds- microcap stock and foreign equity funds mainly. They claimed steady growth in assets under management, and remarkable returns, and they made elaborate and incoherent statements about the mathematical models used to manage their investments. The whole thing reeked of Ponzi.

No one named Morgan or Lynch seemed to be associated with the firm, but Gilford Richards was listed as one of its principals. Richards’s CV was impressive but curiously failed to mention his earlier incarnation as Gilpin or his run-ins with the SEC. An oversight, no doubt. After five attempts, I gave up trying to reach him again, and resigned myself to a trip to Fort Lee. But not today.

Today, Dennis Turpin was on my calendar. I’d called Nina Sachs last night, to get approval to disclose her name to Turpin. It was a surprisingly painless experience. And from what I’d heard on the phone, the whole gestalt at Sachs’s place had taken a definite uptick.

Nina had answered. Her voice was light and her mood was expansive. There was music in the background, and Billy was laughing and calling to Ines.

“Come on, Nes, I put on that Miami shit you like.” He sang “Turn the Beat Around,” badly.

I told Nina about my talk with Turpin and about his offer to trade information, and she didn’t think long before agreeing.

“Hey, what the hell- they already know I’m looking for Greg.” She thought longer about my conversations with Christopher, the doorman, and Rafe, the garage attendant.

“It wasn’t the cops?” she asked after a while. She was quieter and worried.

“It doesn’t sound like them.”

“So, who then?”

“I was hoping you might have an idea.”

“Fuck, no. People from work, maybe?”

“Could be,” I had said. “Maybe I’ll find out tomorrow.”

I had some time until my afternoon meeting with Turpin- time enough for lunch and more phone calls. I punched Simone Gautier’s number.

She had no word for me yet on the hospitals and morgues, but that’s not why I was calling. I gave her Danes’s plate numbers and a description of his BMW and agreed on a fee to have her check out the longterm parking lots at Newark and LaGuardia and JFK. I’d already searched for Danes’s car in the NYPD’s online database of impounded vehicles and come up empty, and I didn’t hold out great hope for the longterm lots- Danes struck me as the type to use a car service for his airport trips- but I’d feel stupid if I missed something so obvious.

My next call was to Paul Gargosian, the vacationing doorman from Danes’s building. I’d found him in the book, too- the only Gargosian with an address on City Island, in the Bronx. Mrs. Paul Gargosian answered. She had a heavy Brooklyn accent, and she was friendly and forthcoming.

“Paulie’s away, hon, down in Sarasota the next couple weeks, with his brother, Jerry. They’re out on Jerry’s boat most of the time, and I don’t know when he’s going to call. You want to leave a number, maybe he’ll get back to you.” I gave her my number and thanked her.

Then I went to the kitchen, made two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on wheat bread, and poured a tall glass of milk. I sat at my long table and opened up my laptop, picking up where I’d left off last night, reading the reports from the search services.

They held no easy answers. The apartment on 79th Street was Danes’s only real property; there was no weekend place in the Hamptons and no winter home in Florida; there was no summer cottage in Maine. He’d bought the apartment almost four years ago, and at the same time sold a place on 90th Street, in Carnegie Hill. He’d been in that place since the divorce, when he and Nina had agreed to sell the co-op they’d owned on Monroe Place, in Brooklyn Heights. And there was only the Beemer to look for; no other vehicles were registered to Danes, not in the fifty states anyway. There was, however, a long list of court cases and arbitration claims.

The search services had provided me with docket numbers, and now I was plowing through online court records and the SEC database for the details of each case. I hadn’t realized there were so many of them. Nor had I realized that, in addition to charging Pace-Loyette with wrongdoing, some made claims against Danes specifically. A lawyer named Toby Kahn represented Danes in the suits, and I spoke to his voice mail and asked him to call. It was slow going, and I hadn’t gotten through many cases when it was time for my meeting at Pace-Loyette. I added water to Jane’s tulips and headed out the door.

Pace-Loyette’s headquarters occupied eight floors of a tower at 52nd Street and Sixth Avenue, a block up from Radio City. The main reception area was on the twentieth floor and was done up like Mies van der Rohe’s rumpus room. The furniture was black leather, chromed steel, and sharp angles, the marble floors were bare and whiter than eggshells, and the walls were mostly glass.

The reception desk was a glass and steel sliver, nearly invisible edge on, and so was the receptionist. She was tall and thin and bloodless, with platinum hair and big gray eyes. Her dress was steel-colored silk, and she spoke softly and in a monotone. She bade me sit, and played her fingers across the keys of a slim phone and whispered into the handset. She put down the phone and looked at me and nodded, but the look and the nod were empty of meaning. In a while a young woman came to get me. She was small and nervous-looking.

I followed her onto the elevator, and off again on the twenty-fourth floor. We went to the left, past a waiting area with blocky leather chairs and glass end tables, and through a pair of glass doors. Everything beyond the doors- the carpet, the cubicle walls, the filing cabinets and furniture- was shades of gray. The cubicles were full of people talking on telephones and peering at computers. Their low voices merged into an ambient murmur, punctuated only by the soft tapping of keys. The young woman led me down a hallway to a door with Turpin’s name on it. She knocked sharply and pushed it open and I went in.

It was a corner office, square, with big windows and nice light and views west and north. I saw the CBS building across 52nd Street and a chunk of the Hilton across Sixth Avenue. The walls were white and the floors were covered in thick beige carpet. The furniture was office modern: warm woods and brushed steel, earth tones and soothing patterns. There was a tan sofa to my right, and two matching chairs arranged around a low table. An L-shaped desk dominated the other end of the room, with a leather throne and a long credenza behind it and a pair of chairs out front. There was a woman in one of the chairs, who looked up when I came in. There was a man on the throne, who did not.

The woman was a well-maintained forty. She wore a black suit and a white blouse, with a green silk scarf at her neck. Her hair was a glossy auburn, with just enough gray to make it plausible, and there were freckles sprayed across her cheeks. Laugh lines bracketed her mouth and brown eyes, but just then she wasn’t laughing.

From behind his desk, Turpin ignored me elaborately. He was fiftyish and small, but fit-looking. His pin-striped jacket lay smoothly on his shoulders and around his bright white shirt. His gray hair was short and parted neatly on the right, and his brows were dark, perfectly clipped lines above nearly black eyes. His face was clean-shaven, and his skin fit so tightly over the muscle and bone underneath that it gave him a slightly simian look- like a very tidy chimp. He perused the monitor before him and laughed to himself now and then, ostensibly at something he saw there. No one said anything.

The woman looked at me and gave nothing away. Turpin gazed more intently at his screen and laughed more loudly. I figured the performance might go on for a while, so I took a seat next to the woman and looked at Turpin’s bric-a-brac.

There was a framed photo on the credenza behind him, of himself in the cockpit of a sailboat with three people I took to be his wife and kids. The wife had lank blond hair, a sour mouth, and a seasick look. The kids looked teenaged and sullen.

Next to the photograph, in a neat row, were a dozen Lucite tombstones commemorating M and A deals that had been presided over by the law firm of Hazelton, Brown amp; Cluett. I hadn’t heard of any of the companies involved, but I knew Hazelton as a white-shoe securities law firm. The deals were a decade old, and Dennis Turpin had been the firm’s officiating partner on each one.

It was at best a step sideways- and arguably a step down- to go from partner at a firm like Hazelton to head of legal at Pace-Loyette, and I wondered what had happened to Turpin’s career. Maybe his billings had dried up when the mergers and acquisitions market tanked, and his partners had forced him out. Or maybe they’d just gotten tired of his overacting.

Down from the tombstones was an elaborate pewter beer stein, decorated with two enamel seals, one the Justice Department’s, the other the FBI’s. Next to it was another framed photo: Turpin in black tie standing with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Alongside that was a coffee mug with the Marine Corps insignia on it. Semper fi. Great. Turpin gave a last little laugh and swiveled in his chair to face me.

He looked at me and sighed and looked around the room theatrically, as if he’d been expecting someone else.

“That’s it?” he asked. “Just you?” I didn’t say anything. “No representation? No counsel?” His voice was flinty, and the New England accent more pronounced. “Friends of mine downtown told me you always travel with a lawyer. They said it was a good thing, too.”

He studied my face for surprise but I just raised an eyebrow. Turpin shrugged.

“Jan Carmody from Harris, Coldwater, our outside counsel,” Turpin said, gesturing with his head toward the woman. He looked at me some more. “You know, I worked a deal with your brother Ed a few years back,” Turpin said. “A management buyout that Klein funded.”

He looked for surprise again, but again there was none. Wall Street is in many ways a small town and my family is not unknown there, so I’d long ago lost interest in the game of who knows whom. But I was amused that Turpin had referred to my brother as Ed. While Edwin is his given name, no one who knows my brother even casually calls him anything but Ned. Turpin looked at Jan Carmody.

“You know Ed March, over at Klein, don’t you, Jan?”

She nodded and smiled thinly. “I know Ned,” she said. Turpin didn’t notice her correction, or pretended not to. That amused me too.

“And we know you too,” Turpin said. “We know you fancy yourself some kind of cowboy, and we know what a high-handed pain in the ass you can be. So let’s get something straight from the outset: We have no intention of putting up with your bullshit here.” Turpin pointed at me, and the scolding tone I’d heard on the phone came back to his voice. “You keep harassing my people, you mess with the conduct of our business, and I’ll have your license- and your goddamned trust fundin my pocket before I’m through.” Turpin gave me a hard look. Jan Carmody stuck with empty.

I smiled at them. “Unless I’m mistaken, you asked me here today, and I thought it was to have a grown-up conversation, not to sit through a piece of bad theater.” Carmody stiffened. Turpin began to color and drew a breath to speak, but I continued. “I understood what you said yesterday, and I still understand it today, though I hardly think a few phone calls qualify as harassment. My only interest is in finding Gregory Danes. If you want to talk about that, fine. Otherwise, I’ll let you get back to work.” Turpin’s lips were pressed together and his face was dark. Jan Carmody cleared her throat, and she and Turpin exchanged glances. She spoke.

“The point Dennis is making, Mr. March, is that Pace-Loyette takes its responsibilities to its shareholders and clients and employees very seriously. And it will react seriously to anything that impedes its ability to serve those constituents.” It was impressive lawyer-speak- a gentle threat, a claim to the moral high ground, but oblique and ultimately elusive in its meaning. And Jan Carmody delivered it well: polite, reasonable, and serious, and without a hint of Turpin’s posturing. I nodded at her.

“About Danes…?” I said. Carmody looked at Turpin, who’d come off the boil.

“I assume you got your client’s say-so to talk to us,” Turpin said. I nodded. “And? Who are you working for?”

I smiled. “Before we get to that, I need some assurance that I’ll get my questions answered.”

Turpin leaned forward in his chair. He pointed again. “That depends on your questions, doesn’t it? Don’t think you’re getting a goddamn blank check here.”

“I don’t. But I want to know that you’re willing to talk about certain things- like when you last saw Danes, or when anyone here last spoke with him, or what his mood was- that sort of thing.”

Carmody answered. “And in turn, Mr. March, you’re authorized to tell us what?”

“I can tell you who I’m working for and what I’ve found so far.” Carmody and Turpin looked at each other and reached some sort of agreement. Turpin nodded.

“All right,” he said, “you first.” I told them who had hired me and what I knew so far. It was a short story and they were silent when I finished, as if they were waiting for something more.

“That’s it?” Turpin said. “That’s what you’ve got? There’s nothing there I didn’t already know.” I shrugged. He knitted his thick brows. “How do I know you’re not feeding me a line of crap, anyway? You have proof you’re not working for someone else?”

“Who else would I be working for?”

“How the hell should I know? There are plenty of plaintiffs out there.”

Jan Carmody interrupted with a cough. “We have Ms. Sachs’s number. Why don’t we call and verify.” She slipped a cell phone from her pocket and stepped out of the room. She was gone less than five minutes, during which time Turpin and I sat silently, looking at nothing. Carmody nodded at Turpin when she returned; he looked at me. My turn.

“Has anyone at Pace heard from him since the day he stormed out of here?” I asked him.

He leaned forward and his color began to rise again. “Who the hell says he stormed anywhere?” he growled. “Who’ve you been talking to?”

I looked at Carmody. She sighed.

“As far as we know, Danes has not been in touch with anyone at the firm since he left,” she said. Turpin smacked his palm on the desktop.

“What the hell are you doing, Jan? Why should we tell him a goddamn thing if he’s not willing to play ball?”

Carmody looked at him. “He is playing ball, Dennis. He’s held up his end of the bargain. Now he’s asking his questions and doing a little fishing in the process. There’s nothing wrong with that. And there’s nothing that says we have to take the bait, either.”

Her voice was calm and level, and I smiled at her. While Turpin might have been- and maybe still was- a high-powered securities lawyer, it was clear he hadn’t spent much time in court. And it was just as clear that Carmody had.

Turpin’s mouth got tight and his nostrils flared, and I could see him talking himself down.

“So this business of his being on leave…?” I asked.

“Technically, he is on leave,” Carmody said. “That’s the status he was placed on when he didn’t return from vacation.” Turpin shot her an annoyed look, but it passed.

“When did he tell you he was taking vacation?”

Turpin answered this time. “The last day he was in the office- or that night. He left a voice mail with his number two in research, saying he was taking three weeks. She got it the next morning.”

“He say anything about where he was going?” Turpin shook his head. “And he hadn’t mentioned this vacation to anyone beforehand?” Another no. “That didn’t worry anybody?”

“I thought a vacation was a good idea,” Turpin said. “He had a lot on his mind.”

“Like lawsuits and arbitration claims?” I asked. “Like the SEC?”

“That’s something we’re not going to talk about today, Mr. March,” Carmody said. I nodded.

“Anybody he’s particularly friendly with here at the office?” I asked. They looked puzzled.

“Not that I know of,” Turpin said.

“Have you been looking for him?” I asked.

“We’ve made some calls,” Turpin said.

I nodded. “Calls to whom?”

Turpin stiffened visibly and looked at Carmody.

“We’ve spoken with his lawyer, Toby Kahn,” she said. “He hasn’t heard anything from Danes since he left. On the other hand, he wasn’t expecting to. The cases are moving to settlement, and there’s nothing happening now that requires Danes’s input.”

“And that’s the extent of your search- calling his lawyer?”

Turpin’s face darkened. “What the hell would you have us do?” he said.

I shrugged. “You’re not worried about him at all?”

“We’d like to know if he plans on coming back,” he huffed. “We’d like to-”

Carmody cut him off. “Do you have reason to worry about him, Mr. March?” she asked me. “If so, you should take your concerns to the police. That’s what we would do.”

“But you haven’t yet?”

She shook her head. “As Dennis said, we’ve made some calls. But we haven’t found out any more than you have, and nothing that would lead us to bring in the police.”

Turpin checked his watch. “I think you’ve hit your limit here, March,” he said.

“Just one more thing. What were you and he fighting about the day he walked out of here?” Turpin may have had a short fuse but he wasn’t completely stupid, and this time he managed a respectable lie.

“I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but whoever it is they’re not reliable. Gregory Danes is a smart guy, with firm opinions that he defends vigorously. I can respect that- I’m that way myself. Sometimes Greg knocks heads with people- and so do I. Occasionally, we’ve knocked heads with each other. Voices get raised, doors get slammed. It happens in business; sometimes it’s even healthy. Creative tension, they call it.” His smile was crooked and disturbing.

“And what were the two of you creatively tense about that day?”

Turpin’s face got tight, but Jan Carmody spoke before he could. “I think Dennis was right when he suggested we wrap this up, Mr. March. Thanks for your time today.” She didn’t wait for a response but pulled a date book from the briefcase at her feet and began leafing through it. Turpin was perfectly still. His thick brows were knit together, and he stared at me as if I’d stolen his last banana. I left.

I waited alone for the elevator, and it arrived empty. I knew from the directory Neary had given me that Danes’s department, Research, was on 22. I rode down two floors.

The reception area was unattended when I passed through, and for no good reason I turned left. The color scheme on this floor was slate blue and white. Otherwise, it was nearly identical to 24: cubicles and thick carpet, telephones and computers, bent heads and hushed tones. The people in the cubicles paid me no heed as I walked by.

I turned a corner and came to another acre of blue and white cubicles, bordered by offices and conference rooms. But in this neighborhood, instead of bland corporate art on the walls, there were long chrome racks stocked with Pace-Loyette research reports. The cubicles here were larger and equipped with more imposing computers, sometimes several of them, and the stacks of paper and periodicals rose higher. There was a big glass room along the rear wall, outfitted like a library. I figured this was Research. Although it was well past lunchtime, there were few people about. If any of them noticed me, they didn’t seem to care. I went looking for the biggest office.

It was on a corner, and Danes’s name was outside. Nearby was a large low-walled cubicle with Giselle Thomas’s name on it. It was empty. I looked around and saw no one. I tried the door. It was locked.

“Can I help you?” It was a woman’s voice and nothing like helpful. I turned around. She was tall and very thin, and she was standing near Giselle Thomas’s cubicle, holding an armful of journals. She wore khaki pants and a beige button-down shirt and a wary expression on her pinched face.

“Irene Pratt’s office?” I said.

She scowled. Her eyes went to Danes’s nameplate and came back to me. “Well, this clearly isn’t it.” She looked me up and down and decided I passed some sort of muster. “Irene is back that way and around the corner.” She gestured with her head. I thanked her and walked off. I glanced back as I was rounding the corner and saw her talking to a tall black woman. They were looking in my direction. Shit.

My pulse quickened. It was just a matter of time now; I needed to pick up the pace. Irene Pratt’s office was where the skinny woman said it would be, and the door was open. Her assistant’s cubicle was empty. I looked into the doorway.

Pratt’s office was similar to Turpin’s, but with more evidence of actual work being done in it. There was more technology on her deskthree big flat-panel screens- and more paper, too- wobbly stacks of spreadsheets, prospectuses, research reports, and trade rags- and no room for knickknacks. Pratt was at her desk, talking into a telephone headset and scanning one of her monitors, when I stepped in. She looked up.

Disheveled chestnut hair fell past her shoulders and framed her pale oval face. Round wire-framed glasses sat askew on her short straight nose; the eyes behind them were large and dark and intelligent. Her mouth was small and skeptical and partially obscured by the headset microphone. Her pink blouse had a square neck and a coffee stain down the front. If not for the headset and the speed at which she spoke, it would’ve been easy to imagine Irene Pratt as an academic- a Beowulf scholar, perhaps, or an expert in medieval textiles- something dusty and far from the world of commerce. A fragment of her conversation dispelled the thought.

“I’m telling you, they’re full of shit. They’re shading the costs, and their pension assumptions are solidly fucked.” The high nasal voice was as I remembered it.

Irene Pratt tilted her head and looked at me. There was no alarm in her gaze and not much curiosity, just a mild annoyance. She nodded as she listened through the headset and turned back to her monitor. She started speaking again but I never heard what she said.

“Excuse me, sir, can we help you?” It was a stern, skeptical voice- a cop voice- from the hallway behind me. They were faster than I expected. I felt an adrenal surge and turned.

There were two of them, both well over six feet, in ill-fitting blue blazers, sagging gray pants, and thick cop shoes. They wore equipment belts under their jackets, a radio on the left hip, a telescoping baton on the right; the cuffs and mace were probably in back. The older one was broad and balding and sleepy looking. The younger one had a blond crew cut and a thick face and big hands he couldn’t keep still. The cop voice belonged to the older one.

“Could you step over here, sir, and show us some ID?” he said. He gestured to his younger partner to flank me, but their rhythm was disrupted by Dennis Turpin, rounding the corner with a full head of steam. Standing up, he was no more than five-foot-six, and his rolling bandy-legged gait and long arms accentuated his chimplike qualities.

“I knew it!” he said. He was huffing and somehow pleased. “I knew I couldn’t trust you. What the hell do you think you’re doing here? Did you think I wasn’t serious when I told you to stay away? Did you think I was just blowing smoke?” He jabbed his finger in my chest. I smiled down at him.

“That’s the problem with playacting- too much of it and people don’t know when you’re blowing smoke and when you’re not. Like that nonsense about creative tension. What was I supposed to make of that?” I stopped smiling. “And please keep your hands off me.” Turpin sputtered and glanced at his security guards and at the people who stood staring from their cubicles. The balding guard still had his sleepy look, but his brow was furrowed, as if he’d forgotten something. The younger one looked eager.

“You’ll see how serious I am when I have these men toss you out of here, and I have you up on trespass charges.”

“Trespass?” I smiled again. “I took a wrong turn on my way out, and when I found myself in the Research department I thought I’d drop in on Ms. Pratt. That’s pretty thin grounds for trespassing, Turpinespecially when I came here at your invitation.” I looked back at Pratt’s office. She was watching from her doorway, but her expression was hard to read. Turpin sputtered some more. He shook his head fiercely and poked me in the chest again.

“Throw this bastard out on his ass,” he said. The older guard started to speak, but the young guy couldn’t hold his water any longer. His voice was nervous and excited and surprisingly high-pitched. Probably the steroids.

“You heard the man, shithead, you’re gone,” he said.

“No, Jimmy-,” the balding guard said, but it was too late; Jimmy had already gripped my arm, just above the elbow, and was reaching for my wrist to complete the come-along hold. I took a step forward and Jimmy followed, off balance and leaning into me. I took a quarter pivot and drove my free elbow into his ribs. He gasped and loosened his grip, and I pivoted again, jerked my other elbow loose, and popped it into his nose. His head snapped back and his hands flew up and I spun away, adrenaline dancing through my arms and legs.

“Fuck!” he yelped. Blood trickled between his fingers. “My fucking nose!” Turpin looked- open-mouthed- from Jimmy to me and back again.

“Jesus,” he said. The older guard shook his head ruefully. Jimmy wiped his nose with the back of his hand and winced. He stared at the blood and then at me, and his eyes got small.

“Bastard,” he hissed, and he reached for his baton. The older guy put a hand on Jimmy’s wrist and stopped him in his tracks.

“Okay, Jimmy,” he said softly, and he looked at me. His eyes were hard and shiny, like blue marbles, and there was nothing sleepy left in them. “This fellow is just leaving, and he’s doing it quietly and right away. And he knows, if he does that, then nobody has to lay hands on nobody anymore. Isn’t that right, sir?” I nodded slowly, and something relaxed in the old guy’s shoulders. He tensed up again when Turpin spoke.

“He’s not going anywhere, goddammit. He assaulted this man, and we’re holding him for the police.” Turpin rocked from one foot to the other and the older guy shook his head.

I took another deep breath and managed a small laugh. “That’s your story. Mine is that you incited this guy to attack me and I defended myself. I’m happy to stick around and let the cops and the press sort it out; I’m happy to leave, too. It’s your choice.”

Turpin’s face was an odd mauve color, and his lips all but disappeared. The balding guard looked at him sadly, but Turpin didn’t notice. He just stood there- red-faced, silent, and shaking with anger. I looked over at Pratt’s office. She was still in the doorway, watching, and her expression was still a mystery. After a moment, I headed for the elevator.

Peter Spiegelman

JM02 – Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home