Red Cat

21

I wrong-numbered Gene Werner, pulled on boots, coat, and sunglasses, and made my apologies to Clare, who took them stoically. In fifteen minutes I was at the subway station, where the subway gods were kind, and in thirty minutes more I was climbing the snow-covered stairs at the 110th Street station.

Werner’s block was a mess, barely plowed and badly shoveled, with only the narrow path of other people’s footprints to walk in. I saw no sign of Jamie Coyle, which didn’t mean he wasn’t hiding in a drift. I stamped my boots at the door to Werner’s building, brushed snow from my legs, and pushed his intercom button. His newscaster voice was tinny through the speaker.

“Who is it?”

“It’s John March, Gene- the guy who’s been leaving you messages for what seems like forever.” Silence. “Gene, I’m getting cold out here.”

“You’re who?”

“John March. I left you phone messages. Several of them.”

“And you want…?”

“To talk about Holly.” More silence. “Holly Cade.”

“What about her?”

“How about I tell you indoors, Gene?”

The buzzer sounded, and I walked up to the second floor. Werner was in the hall outside his apartment. He wore jeans and a black checked shirt, and he pulled the apartment door shut behind him.

He looked much as he did in the snapshots, though the straight, dark hair was shorter now- just long enough for a stubby queue- and the goatee was trimmed to little more than a stripe down the center of his square chin. The handsome face was leaner too, and there was a vulpine cast to his dark eyes that the camera hadn’t caught, and a cruel stamp to his mouth. Neither had the camera caught the aura of snaky strength that surrounded Werner. He was a sinewy six-three, lithe despite his size, and there was something coiled and nasty about him that made the hallway seem dangerous and too small. Werner pushed his sleeves up over muscular, hairless forearms.

“I didn’t think anyone would be out today,” he said, and made it a question about my judgment. I ignored it and we shook. His grip was strong and rubbery. He looked me over and shook his head. “Been too busy to call you back. Now, what did you want about Holly?”

“I have some questions, and it’s probably better if we talk inside.”

“What questions? I haven’t seen her in a long time.”

“That was one of the things I wanted to talk about. I’m trying to locate Holly.”

“Locate?”

“I don’t think you want to discuss this in the hall, Gene- unless there’s some problem with going inside.”

Werner squinted at me. “Whatever.” He dug a key from his pocket and I followed him in.

We walked into a tiny foyer, and from there into the living room. It was a high-ceilinged space, with white plaster walls, dark wood molding, and a scuffed wooden floor, and there was a bay window at one end, flooded with white light.

The furnishings were spare and thrift-shop chic- soft and faded, but still solid-looking. Green sofa, brown easy chairs, tables in dark, battered cherry, oak bookshelves stacked with plays. The artwork was mostly framed posters, big reproductions of French and Italian advertisements from the 1920s, with stylish devils and sultry fairies perched over giant coffee cups or lounging on bars of soap. The only other pieces on the walls were a half-dozen framed photographswhite-clad, mesh-masked, sword-wielding figures, leaping and lunging: fencers in mid-duel. A look at the newspaper clippings mounted with each photo revealed that the big guy in the pictures was Werner himself, ten years before- the star, apparently, of his college fencing team.

Werner stalked around the room, watching warily as I eyed the photos, took off my coat, and opened my notebook. When I sat on the sofa, he struck a graceful pose near the fireplace. He leaned an elbow on the dark wood mantel and looked into the mirror above and absently groomed his beard. When he was satisfied, he tossed a thumb at the photos.

“Hell of a sport,” he said. “Incredible physical conditioning, and great training for the theater. And there’s nothing like competition to let you know where your balls are.”

I didn’t recall ever misplacing mine, but I resisted the urge to comment. “About Holly,” I said.

“She’s missing?”

“My client has been trying to reach her for some time.”

“Are you working with the cops?”

I paused half a beat. “Not yet.”

“Why not? If she’s missing…”

“From what I gather, Holly is sensitive about her privacy. My client wants to respect that.”

“And this client is…?”

“Someone who’s concerned about her.”

“But not someone you’ll name?”

“Confidentiality is part of what clients pay for.”

Werner shook his head. “I can’t help. I told you, I haven’t seen her in a while.”

“But you’ve known her awhile- a long while. Since your days with the Gimlets, at least.”

“Yeah…and?”

I smiled encouragingly. “And you’re bound to know plenty of things that I don’t.” Werner shrugged and I pressed on. “Did you stay in the theater after the Gimlets broke up?”

He nodded, and smiled back, happy for the chance to talk about himself. “I’m directing, and the days of scrambling to find a stage and an audience seem like a long time ago. Now I’ve got more work than I can handle. I’m at the end of a run of one-acts, and next month I’m doing Hamlet downtown. Come spring, I’m doing Mamet up in Connecticut, and I’ve got a big project in Williamstown scheduled for summer. Not enough hours in the fucking day.” He looked in the mirror and ran a finger over his eyebrow.

I nodded. “But Holly got out of all that, right? Out of theater and into what…film?”

“Video,” he said carefully.

“She doing well at it?”

“How the hell should I know? Like I said, I can’t help you, March.”

I smiled. “Only because you’re not trying, Gene. I’m sure you know all there is to know about her- you two were involved for a long time, after all.”

Werner stiffened and a ridge of tension rose along his jaw. His voice became a low rumble. “I guess you know a fair amount about her, yourself.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been talking to people.”

“Talking to who?”

“Friends, acquaintances, the usual suspects.” I made a show of leafing through my notebook. “Why, did I get it wrong about you and her dating?”

He took a deep breath and forced out a laugh. “No, I just don’t know if I’d call it dating, is all. We’d worked together, we were friends, and sometimes we fucked. But it wasn’t an exclusive thingnot for me, anyway.”

Peter Spiegelman

JM03 — Red Cat

“Apparently not for Holly, either.”

Werner’s sculpted brows furrowed. “Come again?”

“I’ve seen her videos, Gene.” Werner straightened, but said nothing. “I understand you have too, and that they took you by surprise.”

He pursed his lips and toyed with the small gold hoop in his ear. “They’d surprise anybody,” he said slowly.

“Sure,” I said. “And you had no idea-”

“Of how fucking crazy she was? No, I didn’t. It was a bolt from the goddamn blue.”

“I heard you were upset. It must’ve felt like a real betrayal.”

“Heard from who?” he asked. “Who are these people?”

“Friends of Holly. How upset were you?”

Werner took a deep breath and ambled to a chair. He settled in it with elaborate nonchalance, and pulled off the rubber band that held his little ponytail. He ran his hands over his shiny hair, and put a smile on his face. It looked uneasy there.

“I was…” Werner looked away from me, and back again, with eyes wide. “Those videos were a shock, it’s true, but they were also a wake-up call. Holly has always had issues, but this was another story entirely. You know what she looks like- stunning, incredibly…excitingbut even so, after seeing those things, it was too much. I was sick, and I wanted no part of her. That’s why I broke things off.”

I kept my voice even and my face still. “You broke things off with her?”

Werner touched his goatee and showed his big teeth. “I only have so much energy, and it frankly wasn’t enough to deal with Holly’s craziness. It was upsetting, but I got some perspective on it soon enough. And like I said, it was never that big a deal- not for me, at least.”

I nodded. “But you were pretty pissed off at the time, right? I heard you guys went at it hammer and tongs last fall.”

Werner leaned forward and pointed at me. “You’re talking to that old man, aren’t you- her fucking neighbor?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t met the guy, but back to my question: Were you two fighting a lot last fall?”

“We were both unhappy then.”

“Unhappy- like it was the end of more than just a casual thing?”

Werner stood and swept his hair behind him and wrapped it again in his rubber band. He sighed deeply and put on a grave expression. “All that time, and I never knew: it was like she’d lied to me every one of those days. So I was upset- we both were. We yelled, we slammed doors, we said things we regretted later- okay? It wasn’t pleasant and I’m not particularly proud of it, but it is what it is.”

I tried to look sympathetic, but it was hard work. Werner paced around the living room and I let him, and let him think we were moving on to something else. After a minute or so, I shook him up some more. “I heard it was more than just cruel words and slammed doors, Gene. I heard you hit her.”

Werner spun around. There was anger in his face, and maybe a little fear. “Where the fuck did that come from? Because that’s bullshit! Sure, we fought, but I never once laid hands on her. It’s crap, and I’d be careful about spreading it around.”

“I hear you kind of stalked her for a while too, followed her around-”

“Pure crap! Have you been talking to Krug? Because that old queen has always had it in for me, and I’ve never even met the bastard.”

“Imagine,” I said. “But I wonder why people thought you were knocking her around.”

“How the hell should I know? Maybe if you told me where you heard this garbage-”

“People saw bruises on her, Gene, and she was upset. You know her, or at least, you did back then- where else could she have gotten those bruises? Who else might have upset her?”

“Fuck if I know. Anything could’ve happened to her in those hotel rooms.”

I sighed and let the silence percolate. “Sure,” I said finally. “But you don’t know any names.”

A cunning light came up in Werner’s dark eyes. “There was one guy… She hung with him over the summer, and after we ended things, I think she started seeing him. But he’s a real psycho, a muscle-man type, a bouncer, if you can believe it. Anyway, I think she finally realized what a nasty piece of work he was and wanted to break it off. But she was scared of him- scared of what he might do.”

“And this guy would be Jamie Coyle?”

Werner nodded vigorously. “Jamie, yeah, that’s him- a real lowlife. You know about him?”

“A little. When did Holly tell you all this?”

“I don’t know…whenever I saw her last.”

“Which was when?”

“A while ago- a month at least.”

“And you haven’t been in touch since?” He shook his head. “Not last week?” Another shake. “Not the week before?”

“I told you- it was a couple of months ago.” I nodded slowly and Werner leaned on the mantel again and looked at me. “Now, if you’re through with your questions-”

“Almost. You said that Holly had issues. What kind of issues?”

Werner looked surprised. “Family issues,” he said. “Daddy issues. Christ, it’s all she ever wrote about. I don’t know the details, but her family was screwed up, more than the usual amount. I gather when she was a kid her father chased anything in skirts, and didn’t bother to hide it. Now, if that’s it…”

“One more thing. How well do you know Jamie Coyle?”

He squinted, even more confused. “I don’t- not really. I met him a couple of times last summer, at a club Holly went to. He worked there. But I don’t think I said ten words to him.”

I raised my eyebrows. “No? Then can you think of a reason why he’d be hanging around outside your apartment building?”

Werner went pale, and his casual elbow slipped from the mantel.