Hard Stop

THREE

I HAD A LOT OF DIFFERENT TITLES when I worked for the company, but my job was basically to figure things out. First as a field engineer with the operating units, diagnosing process and equipment failure. I loved that job. Not for the big hairy catastrophes; those were relatively easy. But for the subtle ones, the failed efforts to optimize, or improve efficiency, or repurpose operations. The tricky stuff that usually had everybody stumped.

I loved walking onto a site, looking up at the gigantic cracking towers and smelling the fragrance of partially remediated sulfur and complex hydrocarbons. The look of confusion and near panic in the eyes of the plant operators and engineers—some filled with hostility toward the asshole from White Plains, whom they assumed was just another ambitious prick fresh out of the corporate grooming salon. What they got was a lot more complicated, but sometimes a lot more dangerous in the long run.

Whether this was adequate preparation for the project George Donovan had in mind was yet to be proven.

“Just give me the whole story,” I told him. “Don’t make me fill in the holes.”

He sighed.

“It all sounds so dreary and predictable. We hired a consultant to help with strategic planning. They assigned a woman who’d worked with us years before, when she was barely out of business school. A brilliant, attractive woman. We spent a lot of time together and you won’t believe me when I say I’ve never done anything like it before, in all my years, despite the ongoing opportunities. I don’t flatter myself to think it’s my beauty and charm. I know it’s just money and power. Nevertheless, this particular woman was different. More exotic, more intelligent, more powerfully compelling in her own right. And there I was approaching that now-or-never age. It all conspired to produce the inevitable.”

I looked around for a pad and pen to write things down. With all the craziness and adrenaline poisoning, I wasn’t about to trust my memory.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

“Iku Kinjo. You may remember her. She remembered you.”

I did. Like he said, brilliant and compelling. I could see her sweeping into my office on slender legs and an abundance of confidence. Trying to knock me off balance with the first question of the interview. Smiling at me, like we’d been assigned seats across from each other at the company barbecue, but intent on getting the answers she was looking for.

Instead of answering her question I lit a cigarette, contrary to office policy, and winked at her. She held up her forearm and looked at me over the top of her watch.

“My next interview is at two p.m.,” she said, “which means this meeting has a hard stop at one fifty-five. That gives us exactly forty-eight minutes.”

Consultant-speak like that usually makes me sit up and square my shoulders. But I couldn’t help liking her. She got her forty-eight minutes’ worth, and as it turned out, eventually held up my division as a model on which the rest of the corporation might consider basing itself, which did a lot for her standing with me.

I said as much to Donovan.

“She respected the way you ran your division,” he said. “You and your man Endicott, the financial fellow. Have you two stayed in touch?”

I remembered our divisional CFO, though his name hadn’t passed through my mind since I left the company. Ozzie Endicott. It didn’t surprise me that Donovan remembered. It was one of his political gifts.

“Haven’t seen him or talked to him. You recall the severance agreement. No fraternizing with Con Globe employees. Not that I wanted to.”

“Ah. Of course. Iku liked Endicott. But she didn’t like you very much.”

“Like you said, smart girl. What do you mean you lost her? In what way?”

“She’d been spending weekends in the Hamptons. That’s where she was the last time I heard from her, by email, nearly a month ago. I haven’t heard from her since.”

Despite myself I suddenly felt something akin to sympathy for Donovan. Not for losing a lover, but for the pain he clearly felt in having to discuss it with me. Or anyone else. Now I understood why he wanted to extort my help. It would be easier to control the embarrassment from a position of strength.

“I’m going to ask you a lot of personal things,” I said. “Don’t expect me to be good at it.”

“If it was tact I needed, believe me, you wouldn’t be my first choice.”

“How were things going with the relationship when she disappeared?”

“I thought they were going fine, but something was a little off. Nothing overt. Nothing apparent. She was distracted. Maybe a little distant. I might have imagined it. Conjured the memory after the fact.”

“How secret is this thing?”

He thought that was amusing.

“You’re now the third person in the universe who knows. Unless there’s a God or Iku has a confidante she’s hidden from me. I pray she doesn’t. Exposure would be ruinous.”

He read my expression.

“You know Arlis,” he said. “My wife.”

I pictured a small woman with iron-grey hair and a face that looked unnaturally young for her years. She was formal, but in a gracious, kindly way, and always looked me in the eye and smiled when I tried to make idle chitchat.

“Sure. I guess you don’t want to lose her either.”

“The loss would be total. You’re probably unaware her family holds a significant share of Con Globe’s voting stock. Enough to compel the board to review the chairmanship.”

Now I understood why he wanted a stick to go with the carrots. Better yet, a hammer.

“I might’ve known that back then,” I said. “Not the kind of thing I’d pay much attention to.” I was probably the only VP in the place who could’ve said that, but that was one of my career specialties. Political myopia.

“Arlis Cuthright is her maiden name. Back in ’38 her grandfather sold off his coal mines and cargo ships and needed to reinvest the proceeds. Hydrocarbon processing seemed a good bet on the future. The dot-com of its time. The family never thought much of me. Just another shanty Irish in their eyes. So the connection did little to help me on the way up. But it would surely grease the slide in the other direction.”

I looked around the room and breathed in the aroma of leather and oiled furniture. I once thought people who lived like Donovan had discovered a secret tunnel that led from aching nervous want to a paradise of eternal security. Until I got to actually know people like George Donovan.

“I know I’m taking a monstrous risk involving you,” he said. “But it’s no worse than having this thing just hanging there. I couldn’t possibly trust a private investigator. I’m even afraid to do a computer search. Afraid of leaving a trail. I know you’re a capable man. The best troubleshooter the company ever had. And even if you hate me, I believe you’ll honor a deal.”

Now that I had a chance to focus on him, he didn’t look so good, even in the dim light of the study. Older, wan. He prided himself on physical fitness, showing off his straight posture and knuckle-grinding handshake. But no exercise routine could counter this stew pot of uncertainty, loss, embarrassment and dread.

“What about family and friends?” I asked.

He looked around at the ersatz erudition that surround ed him.

“I don’t think she has any friends. Just a boyfriend. Ostensibly. A man named Robert Dobson. She calls him Bobby, of course. I have no idea what he knows, or where he lives, or what he does. Just the name.”

“Do you have a picture of her?”

He nodded with a half smile.

“Not in a frame on my desk. But she’s part of a group photo in Eisler, Johnson’s annual report. You can see it on their website. It’s not very big, but you can make out her features. I visit the site as often as I dare. Rather wretched of me, but there you are.”

“Parents?”

“She was the product of an army officer’s liaison with a woman on Okinawa. Adopted by an American couple as an infant. Raised in Brooklyn. Parents now dead, reportedly. Again, that’s all I know. No other details.”

“I don’t remember much about Eisler, Johnson,” I said.

“Management consultants or legal extortionists, depending on what you think of their reports.”

“No word from them?” I asked.

“Her most recent assignment with us concluded several months ago. She and I continued. With all the lust and romantic fervor of addled adolescents. And then suddenly, no word. After a few days, I asked my assistant to get in touch with Eisler, Johnson on a simple pretext. The people she spoke to said Iku had left the firm, but to have her contact them if we heard from her. That’s when I started to worry in earnest.”

I tried to fix Iku Kinjo in my mind. I thought she’d be in her late thirties by now. A little older than Allison, my daughter, another princess of New York City, working hard in the graphic arts, the right brain division of the professional community. Talented and willing to wreck herself over vast, meaningless projects, though not the best at yielding to authority. Cursed with genetically determined behavior.

“Okay,” I said.

“Okay?”

“I’ll do it. The deal I laid out. If you don’t remember the terms, I’ll send you a copy of the transcript.”

I pulled a small digital recorder out of my backpack and held it up. It was an exotic, highly sensitive device Allison had given me to record messages to send her over the computer. Not having a computer, I was glad to have a chance to finally put the thing to use.

“How thoughtful,” said Donovan.

“Only one other condition.”

He raised an eyebrow, waiting.

“All I have to do is find her.”

“Of course,” he said.

“No matter what I find.”

I moved the little recorder closer to his face. He paused, catching the implication.

“I understand.”

I downed the last ten-dollar gulp of scotch and got up to leave.

“You have a hole in one of your basement windows,” I said. “Better get somebody to reglaze it before the critters start crawling inside.”

Donovan stared back at me from his lustrous leather chair.

“With all the dust stirred up when you left the company, I wasn’t able to express to you what I truly felt,” he said.

I held up my hand to ward him off. This wasn’t part of the deal.

“You don’t have to. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Yes it does. I’m sorry about what happened. I know it was partly my fault. I didn’t realize all the implications at the time. If I had, I might have chosen a different course.”

I could feel two balls of something forming somewhere around my midsection. One fury, the other regret, leavened with a strange, brainless kind of concern for George Donovan. Loathsome emotions all.

There were things I could have said to him at that moment, but none of them sounded right in my head, so I kept my mouth shut and just left, with Donovan watching me go—pale, thin and alone in his silent house, his stone and mortar fortress home.

I half expected to be pulled over by the Connecticut State Police on the way down the Merritt Parkway, George Donovan having had a sudden change of heart. But I made it all the way to the border without incident.

From there I went into the City and booked myself into a hotel I used to stay at when I had an early meeting at Con Globe headquarters on Seventh Avenue. It was a stubby little place sandwiched between high-rises, a real City hotel with Italian doormen, Nigerian desk clerks and twelve-inch baseboards groaning under two inches of off-white paint. The radiators rattled and the carpets smelled of cigars and the elevator still had a guy working the sloppy brass controller, sitting on a milk crate, his belly stuffed inside a pair of grey polyester pants, his nails chipped and yellow, his breath a dank, sweet tribute to cheap liquor.

I slept until the sun came up, then I called Joe Sullivan on his cell phone. He was at the twenty-four-hour diner in Hampton Bays having breakfast with Ackerman.

“What did you do with him all night?” I asked.

“I took him over to Hodges’s boat and cuffed him to a handhold inside the quarter berth. I took the salon. The wind was up and the boat rocked like a cradle. We slept like babies.”

“I need you to let him go.”

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

I told him about my discussion with George Donovan, including everything about his involvement with the missing Iku Kinjo, and his attempt at extorting my help in finding her, but leaving out the preceding B&E. No sense further straining his already strained sense of propriety. Instead, I worked on persuading him that Ackerman posed little threat to the community.

“He’s not a criminal, just criminally stupid,” I said. “Anyway, you like it when I owe you a favor.”

That tipped the scales. Sullivan kept me on the line while he told Ackerman he could go, as long as he left behind his gun and a promise to stay clear of Eastern Suffolk County for the next twenty years. I didn’t hear Ackerman’s reply, but I guess he’d agree to anything to get out from under Sullivan’s baleful glare.

After I hung up I called Amanda and told her everything that had happened. Every detail I could remember. She almost seemed convinced that I was being fully candid and forthcoming. Which I was, almost. I diverted her by asking about the morning walk she took with Eddie and what she was making for breakfast. She didn’t fall for it.

“Can I ask you to take care of yourself, even if I don’t believe you truly will?” she asked.

“I will. In fact, I’m going back to bed for a few hours. Try to catch up on my sleep.”

Which I did, with surprising success. Then I showered, shaved and put on jeans and a black T-shirt under the blue blazer. And black shitkickers. City garb. Then I called Allison, waking her up.

“Time to get up, honey. It’s the crack of eleven-thirty,” I said.

She said something like “mumph-umph” and coughed into the phone.

“Hold that thought,” I said. “I’ll be there in a half hour with coffee and bagels.”

“You can’t get here that fast,” she squeaked out.

“I can if I’m only thirty blocks away.”

Allison had a studio up on the West Side where she lived and designed on her own computer after recognizing she couldn’t manage a regular full-time job. She didn’t want it and full-time employers didn’t want her. Luckily, graphic arts was the kind of thing you could do as a freelancer and still do pretty well.

I visited her place whenever I could. I always fed her lunch, which would take about the time needed to catch up and stay clear of the big emotional bear traps that would open in front of us if we lingered too long in one place.

But that was fine. Compared to where we used to be, this was paradise.

I was always glad to see her. I’d be glad to see anyone for whom I feel blind, unconditional love and devotion. Even when she met me on the sidewalk outside her apartment, red-eyed, with her dirty blonde hair looking like her mother’s did when I first saw her walking across Kenmore Square, clutching her books to her chest as if expecting someone to leap out of a manhole and snatch them out of her arms.

“I can’t let you see the place right now,” she said, grabbing my arm and moving me down the sidewalk. “I’ve been cranking on this big crappy job all week and there’s crappy stuff all over everywhere. And no, there’s no boy in there.”

“If there was I could get him to clean up the place.”

She pulled me along quietly before asking the usual questions.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m great,” I said. She looked suspicious. “Honestly. Everything’s great.”

“Everything’s always great. You sure there’s nothing you need to tell me?”

“Such trust.”

She trusted me enough to stop asking, though she didn’t look entirely convinced. I couldn’t blame her.

She brightened considerably after her first cup of coffee. I listened attentively while she told me about her big job. I held eye contact and asked questions to help propel the narrative and demonstrate how well I was listening. These were things I’d learned from my friend Rosaline Arnold, a psychologist. Things that hadn’t come naturally to me when Allison was growing up, when she really needed them. But Rosaline had convinced me that late was better than never, and based on how things were going with Allison, she was right.

When I thought it was safe to take the floor, I told her that Amanda and I were getting along reasonably well. Better than ever. I told her before she had a chance to ask, voluntarily sharing intimate emotional information. Something else I’d been taught by Rosaline. Both the content and delivery were pleasing to Allison. She adored Amanda, and the feelings were returned. This was a total, joyful mystery to me. Maybe some day Rosaline could explain it all.

When we were back on the sidewalk she actually hugged me for the first time since I’d left her mother.

“If you mess this up with Amanda I’ll knock you on the head,” she said into my shirtfront before letting me go, and without another look headed back to her messy apartment and big crappy job.

Eisler, Johnson occupied the top fifth of a glassy skyscraper on Madison Avenue. I breezed past the airtight security in the building’s lobby and took the elevator, which opened directly into a starkly appointed reception area—all sharp-edged metal furniture, pale grey walls and Pop Art.

The receptionist was a reedy little guy with a shaved head and a complexion that matched the decor. Eisler, Johnson must have hired a first-rate interior designer. I walked up to him and asked for Iku Kinjo. What I got back was a blank stare. I asked for her again.

“She’s not here,” he said.

“When will she be back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then please call someone who does.”

“Do you have an appointment?” he asked, still looking colorless and blank.

“Yes. And I expect someone here to honor it.”

“Can I have a name?”

“Burton Lewis. Lewis and Shanley.”

Dropping Burton’s name always had a predictable effect. He was a big deal in the City, running a gigantic law firm and sitting at the top of everyone’s society shortlist. Though I didn’t drop it too often. I hated exploiting our friendship, especially since he was always so eager to help out. But at least I knew I wouldn’t get arrested for impersonating a very important person.

The receptionist was wearing a thin black headset, so all he had to do was hit a button on the console in front of him to connect with the offices behind a set of massive grey doors.

He spoke in hushed tones I had trouble making out. My hearing had never quite recovered from the effects of a big explosion I’d lived through a few years before. Lived to reach deep into my fifties, an age when even people who hadn’t almost been blown up or repeatedly socked in the head had a little hearing loss. I leaned over the top of the desk to get a better angle with my good ear, causing the guy to look up at me with a touch of alarm, the first honest expression I’d seen him make.

He stuck his index finger into the console and said someone would be out to see me. I leaned farther over the desk, forcing him to lean back in his chair, increasing his alarm.

“Good,” I said, then went and sat in a square chair that felt like a solid block of upholstered wood.

A few minutes later a tall, slim man with a head shaped like a lightbulb came through the big grey doors. He was wearing a dark green rayon shirt and black trousers that flowed when he walked. He was about my age, with close-cropped white hair that exaggerated the lightbulb effect. When he got closer I could see his eyes were a brilliant fluorescent lavender. Contacts.

When he saw me he turned and went back to the reception desk.

“Where’s Mr. Lewis?” he asked.

“Probably at the Gracefield Club having a beer and a tuna sandwich,” I said to his back. He turned. The pasty guy behind the desk shot me a look.

“You asked for a name. You didn’t ask for mine,” I said, getting up and walking back to the desk. I offered my hand to Lavender Eyes. “Floyd Patterson.”

He took my hand, studying my face.

“That name rings a bell,” he said.

“That was somebody else’s job. You got a name?”

“Jerome Gelb. What is it you want?”

“I want to know if you’ve heard from Iku Kinjo.”

He raised both eyebrows and pulled back his head, as if trying to get me in better focus.

“Your interest?”

A perfectly reasonable question. I just hadn’t worked out an answer. I wondered what my friend Jackie Swaitkowski would do in a situation like this. She was great on improvisation.

“I have to serve her papers,” I said.

“Oh?”

“Eisler, Johnson’s named, too, but I’m supposed to give them directly to her to make it official.”

“Really.”

“Those are the rules.”

“Who’s the plaintiff?”

“Where’s Miss Kinjo?”

I smiled at him. He smiled back and reached out his hand.

“Maybe if I could just take a look.”

“So you haven’t seen her or heard from her.”

He dropped his hand.

“No. Not for about four weeks. Officially, she’s no longer employed here. So if there’s some sort of action against the firm, tell whoever sent you to change the name of the recipient.”

“She have any friends here? Anyone who might know where she went?”

Gelb shook his head, then frowned, caught giving me an ounce more information than I deserved.

“I’m not in a position to discuss this any further,” he said. “Do you want the name of our attorneys?”

“Sure.”

While he wrote out their names on the back of his business card I asked him, “Was she a friend of yours?”

He handed me the card.

“I was her boss. There are no friends at Eisler, Johnson.”

“But you must be a little worried about her. I’d be, if one of ours went missing.”

“Maybe I’ll try a little worry when I finish digging out of the hole she left me in with our clients.”

“When I find her I’ll let her know that,” I said, as I stuffed his card in my shirt pocket, turned and headed back to the elevator. He was still standing there as I watched the elevator doors close on Eisler, Johnson’s cheerful reception area, a lanky, coutured centurion, off-balance but alert. Poised for battle.