Peter Spiegelman - Death's little helpers

It took me fifteen minutes to copy down the caller ID information from Danes’s phone and another ten to listen to the dozen messages on his answering machine. I wrote down the names of the callers and when they called. All the messages were from people I knew: Nina Sachs, Irene Pratt, Dennis Turpin, Giselle Thomas, and Nancy Mayhew. The wording was different, but the content was all the same: “Where are you? Call me.” One of the last calls was from Billy. It began with a long breathing silence after the beep, disappointment perhaps, at getting the machine. When he finally spoke, his voice was a choked mix of hurt and anger and low expectations bitterly fulfilled.

“You were supposed to pick me up,” he said. And then, after a long pause: “Are you ever going to fucking call?”

Billy’s message was fairly recent, just over a week old, and none of the messages went back much more than three weeks. I put my pad away. I pressed the redial button on the phone and after two rings got a Chinese restaurant that I knew was around the corner, on Third Avenue. Someone asked for my order and I hung up.

The desk had a center drawer, and I pulled it out and put it on my lap. Inside were paper clips, rubber bands, a roll of postage stamps, and- in the back- Danes’s passport. It was dog-eared and swollen, full of stamps from countries in Europe and Asia and the Caribbean, and its presence here meant that Danes wasn’t in any of those places. At the back of the drawer was a business card. The paper was heavy stock and the print was black and sober-looking. FOSTER-ROYCE RESEARCH. JUDITH PEARSON, ACCOUNT MANAGER. I put the card in my pocket and the drawer back in the desk and turned to the credenza.

The top drawer was full of file folders and so was the bottom. There were labels on the folders- phone, condo, utilities, bank, brokerage, insurance, legal- and nothing at all inside them. I pushed them aside and found only paper clips and bent staples on the bottoms of the drawers. I closed the drawers and heard a tearing sound. I opened them again and knelt down and reached my hand into the space behind the drawers.

Whoever had been here before me had searched a lot, but not well. I came out with papers: a bank statement. It was six months old and crumpled, but it was better than bent staples. I pulled the bottom drawer out and reached into the empty space and found another wrinkled sheaf: credit card bills and a brokerage statement. I smoothed the documents out and folded them and put them in my pocket. I went to the orange bookshelves.

Most of the books were on business and mathematics, though there was one shelf devoted to music: history of, theory of, and composer biographies. I pulled some volumes at random from the shelves, leafed through them, and found nothing there but pages.

There were silver-framed photos lying flat on the topmost shelf, and I took them down one by one to look at. There was a picture of Billy standing on the deck of the Intrepid and looking sullen, and another of him on the climbing wall at Chelsea Piers, looking embarrassed and angry. There was a photo of Danes in black tie flanked by several gray-haired executive types. He was holding a framed certificate that declared him to be 1999’s analyst of the year, at least in the judgment of one prominent trade rag. Next to that photo was the framed certificate itself. It seemed to have aged well. There was a picture of Danes and an older man, standing on either side of a young Asian woman who was holding a violin. I recognized the woman from television and from the time I’d heard her play at Carnegie Hall. I didn’t recognize the old man. He had sparse white hair on a tanned and freckled head, and his face was narrow and hollow-cheeked. His smile was tired but warm. The last photo was an old one- over ten years old. It was of Danes and Nina Sachs, and it had the same tropical backdrop as the one Sachs had shown me in her apartment. In this one, she and Danes stood side by side on a stone terrace above an empty bay. He wore a blazer and white trousers, and his hair looked blond in the sunlight. Nina wore the same gauzy caftan. Their fingers were laced and they smirked identically into the camera, as if at a private joke. They looked happy.

I checked my watch. Christopher was no doubt having seizures downstairs; it was time to go. I looked quickly through the front hall closet and the powder room and found nothing in either place. I listened at the front door. It was quiet in the corridor, and I slipped out and locked the door behind me. I took my gloves off, put them in my pocket, and took a deep breath.

The elevator came right away and I was about to step on when a tall broad-shouldered man came churning out. His head was down and he sideswiped me as he went past. I rocked backward but he seemed not to notice. He had a long coat on, too warm for spring, and jeans and work boots. There was an unkempt fringe of dark hair around his ears and collar, and a thin tangle across the top of his large head. His face was full, and shaded by a few days’ dark growth. His mouth was small and puffy and it was moving as he stepped off the car, but only he could hear the words. His wire glasses were askew on his broad nose, and I caught only a glimpse of his eyes, which were dark and agitated and far away.

I stepped into the elevator and watched him go to the door next to Danes’s- apartment 20-C- bend over the handle, and work a key in the lock. The doors slid closed and I descended. The elevator car had a rank smell.

Peter Spiegelman

JM02 – Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home

It was four o’clock when the taxi dropped me at 23rd Street, and I took my time walking home from there. When I got to 16th I was reasonably sure I was alone. My block was quiet: a couple of dog walkers, two moms pushing strollers, a FedEx guy unloading, a light blue van pulling away from the curb, a dirty red hatchback pulling in. I went upstairs.

It was too warm in my apartment and the air was stale, and I opened all the windows while my voice mail played over the phone speaker. There was a message from Mrs. K, telling me, in somewhat cautious tones, that two more interviews had been scheduled at Klein for later that week and to consult my e-mail for details. And Nina Sachs had phoned, to ask- brusquely- that I call her with a progress report. I shook my head and wondered what she’d make of the lingerie.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it myself. The clothing and the receipt suggested that Danes and Sovitch had been having a thingand an ongoing thing, at that. If that was so, it would cast a different light on what Sovitch had said to me- and maybe explain her distinct lack of journalistic curiosity. I wouldn’t know until I had another chat with her, and maybe not even then. Maybe I’d find that the underwear belonged to someone else altogether. Maybe it belonged to Danes. I called Nina Sachs’s number and let it ring twelve times before I gave up.

Jane had called too. “I’ve got time off for good behavior tonight. Want to do something? I’ll ring when I’m ready to leave.”

I flicked on my stereo. WFUV was playing Freedy Johnston, but I wasn’t in the mood. I put a Ry Cooder disc in, something Cuban with guitars, poured a big glass of water, and carried it to the table. I took off my coat and emptied its pockets of souvenirs: my handwritten list of phone calls and messages, the business card, and the wrinkled collection of months-old documents- the bank statement, the brokerage statement, and the credit card bills.

I’d tried pressing Christopher for more current mail when I’d come downstairs, but he was no help, telling me only that Danes’s box was empty and his mail was being held at the post office. He hadn’t been completely useless, however, even if he was unwilling at first.