Peter Spiegelman - Death's little helpers

The walls were glass at the crook of the V, with doors that opened onto a V-shaped terrace. The view was south and east, and the room was full of light. The thin clouds were close enough to touch. Besides the red sofa, the room was dominated by a gleaming black baby grand piano and a wall of built-in cabinets. I opened one of the cabinet doors. Inside was music.

There were shelves of it, from floor to ceiling- CDs and vinyl, lots of vinyl. I slid some records out. They were all classical, and each was sleeved in clear plastic. Behind other doors was the stereo, though that was hardly an adequate term for it. It was a wall of black metal technology: a pre-amp and amplifier- with actual vacuum tubesan impossibly complicated equalizer, a disc player, a separate disc changer, and a black-and-silver turntable that looked like something you could mill plutonium with.

There were file-sized drawers at the base of the cabinets. I opened them and thumbed through the papers inside. It was sheet music, all for piano and organized by composer: Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart. The pages were well handled and annotated in pencil at the margins.

I headed down the hallway to the master bedroom and froze. There were voices in the corridor outside. They were muffled by the thick walls, but they were men’s voices and they were coming closer. I heard keys jangle, and the voices got louder and someone laughed. Then the elevator doors opened with a clank, and the voices dimmed. They closed, and it was quiet. I started breathing again and felt sweat trickle down my back. My shoulders were stiff and I rolled them around and went into the bedroom.

It was a large room, with not much in it: a glowing green chair like something from a Star Trek episode, a king-sized bed with built-in nightstands, and more built-in cabinetry. A door to my right led to a deep walk-in closet, and another led to the master bath. The bed was made up. The bedding was pale green and felt expensive. There were no clothes lying around. I started with the cabinets.

Inside were a big flat-screen TV, a DVD player, and a cable box. Danes’s DVD collection was modest, nothing like his music wall and distinctly lower-brow: action flicks, science fiction, some frat-boy farces. They were sorted by genre and title.

There were pictures on one of the nightstands, in silver frames: one of a younger Billy near the polar bear pool at the Central Park Zoo; another of Billy and Danes by the seal tank. It was blurry and looked like Danes had been holding the camera at arm’s length when he’d taken it.

There was an alarm clock and a telephone on the other nightstand. I picked up the phone and hit the redial button. It rang four times and a heavily accented voice answered: “Garage.” I stayed on long enough to establish that it was the place Danes parked his car and then hung up. The nightstand drawers held little of interest: pens, notepads, a bag of cough drops, a package of tissues. The shelves underneath were empty but for a slim red restaurant guide and a TV remote. There was nothing under the bed or under the mattress. I went into the bathroom.

It was a beige marble temple to the gods of hygiene and evacuation. There was a long counter with two fancy German sinks, a Japanese-style soaking tub, and a glass-walled shower with seating for six and more knobs, spouts, and hoses than a submarine. The toilet and bidet were sequestered in a little marble chapel of their own. They were low-slung and futuristic and seemed unsuited to human anatomy. The medicine cabinet was above the sinks, behind a mirrored panel. I pressed on it and it opened with a hiss.

Inside was a collection of toiletries and drugs. The toiletries were all high-end, and the drugs were over-the-counter and unremarkable: aspirin, antacids, eye drops, and vitamins.

There was a linen closet next to the soaking tub, stocked with sheets, thick towels, toilet paper, a first-aid kit, and a box of condoms. There was nothing exceptional about the condoms- they were a simple domestic brand, without bells or whistles- but they suggested that Danes had a sex life. I went back to the bedroom, to the big closet.

It was actually a wood-paneled room, done up like a little slice of Paul Stuart. Clothes hung in double racks on either side, and like his collections of music and movies, Danes’s wardrobe was ruthlessly organized. Business attire on the left, casual clothing on the right, accompanied by appropriate belts and ties; everything sorted by season and color. His shoes were mustered in neat rows on shelves below the hanging clothes. There were empty hangers on the casual side, and gaps in the platoon of casual shoes- at least two pairs were gone.

There was a wide bureau at the back of the closet, with built-in shelves above it; a set of brown leather luggage was on the highest one. The bags were empty, but there seemed to be one missing from the set- something larger than an airplane carry-on but smaller than a trunk. I put the bags back and went through the bureau.

The top drawer held hardware: watches, cuff links, collar stays, belt buckles. The others held clothing: underwear in one drawer, socks in another, pajamas in the next. Then I opened the bottom drawer.

They were in matching sets- pale blue, pale gray, green, maroon, and black- all the same expensive Italian brand: bras and panties, neatly folded. I didn’t think they were Danes’s size. Along with the lingerie, there was a woman’s green polo shirt in the drawer, a pair of faded jeans, and the faintest trace of a musky scent. Beneath the jeans, there was a green leather clutch bag with a silver clasp. The leather was soft and had a matte finish. The clasp was tarnished. Inside the bag was a leaky blue pen, a folded credit card receipt, a dusty roll of mints, and three quarters. I unfolded the receipt. It was from a little French restaurant on Lexington, a few blocks from Danes’s apartment, and it was over a year old. The print was faded but still legible in the light, and so was the signature scrawled across the bottom: Linda Sovitch.

I let out a deep breath and looked at the receipt for a while. Then I folded it and put it back in the purse and put the purse back in the drawer.

I checked my watch. I had another hour before Christopher started going into cardiac arrest. The guest room went quickly. It had a double bed, a nightstand, a bureau, an armchair, and a TV- and nothing of any interest to me. I moved on to the office.

It was a small room, with narrow windows at one end. There was a sleek metal desk and a matching credenza on the left-hand wall, the orange bookshelves on the right, and barely room left over for the leather swivel chair. My predecessor’s tracks were plain there- in the gaping file drawers and open cabinet doors and in the books that lay like toppled dominoes on the shelves. I started with the desk.

The desktop had nothing on it but equipment: a telephone and an answering machine at one end and, at the other, a flat-screen monitor and a mouse, both hooked to a docking station for a laptop. But there was no laptop in sight. I followed cables from the docking station to a cabinet in the credenza and found a printer-copier-fax combo and a modem, but still no laptop. It was impossible to know if it had left with Danes or afterward.

A blinking light on the answering machine caught my eye. I picked up the telephone. It had caller ID, and I scrolled through the recorded numbers. There were fifty of them, all the phone could hold. I thought for a moment about taking the phone and the answering machine with me but decided against it. There was a chance- maybe a good one- that this case could become a police investigation. If it did, the cops would take a very dim view of my walking off with evidence, so dim they might walk off with my license in return. I got out my pad and pen and sat down in the swivel chair.