Peter Spiegelman - Death's little helpers

A gust of wind rattled the glass. I pulled on my shorts and stood at the window. Low clouds scrambled across the sky and caught on the jagged edges of the cityscape. I looked down and saw the tops of many umbrellas, bumping at each other like clumsy fat men. I rubbed my hands over my face and got into the shower.

I owed Nina Sachs a final report, to go with my invoice, and I poured a cup of coffee and opened my laptop to write it. After forty-five minutes I pushed back from the table and read over my work. The INVESTIGATION section was a straightforward chronology of what I’d done, where I’d gone, and whom I’d spoken with, and the FINDINGS section was a recitation of everything relevant that I’d learned. It was depressingly short. I drank off the last of my coffee and went to the kitchen to brew a fresh pot.

Despite my best efforts, I’d been unable to wrestle my worry about Danes into anything like a theory, and the CONCLUSIONS section of my report was still unwritten. Maybe I should keep it simple: Something bad has happened. I put the paper cone in the coffee machine and spooned coffee in and thought again about Billy. I could still hear his nearly whispered question: You know where he is yet? I flicked the switch on the machine and the phone rang.

“You fucking bastard!” she said. She was nearly breathless with anger, and it took me a moment to place the voice. “You fucking son of a bitch! I trusted you- I talked to you- I spilled my goddamn gutsand you do this?”

“Calm down, Irene, and tell me what it is you think I’ve done.”

Irene Pratt huffed at the other end of the line. “Don’t give me that crap. You’re the one who was looking for him. You’re the one who was sniffing around his office. You know what you did, you lying shit.”

I thought for a moment and listened to the coffee trickle into the carafe. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Irene, so why don’t you take a deep breath and tell me what’s going on?”

Pratt started to speak and stopped herself a couple of times and settled into a furious silence. When she finally spoke the edge was off her voice, and something tentative had replaced it. “You’re serious?”

“I’m serious that I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

“You’re serious you didn’t do it?”

“Didn’t do what?”

She seemed not to hear the question. “But if it wasn’t you, then… who did it?”

I clenched my teeth. “Who did what, Irene?”

It took her a long while to answer. “Who broke into my office… and into Greg’s?”

Peter Spiegelman

JM02 – Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home

I met Irene Pratt in the lobby bar of the Warwick Hotel. There were lots of plump armchairs in there, and big windows that looked out on Sixth Avenue, and soft incandescent lighting that gave the place a snug feel against the rain. Irene Pratt wore jeans and sneakers and a school-bus-yellow rain slicker, and she looked young and scared. She was perched at the edge of a bar stool, nursing a Coke and fidgeting with a bowl of peanuts, when I came in. She looked up and looked ready to bolt.

“Tell me again how you had nothing to do with this,” she said. Her voice was low and taut. She pushed a strand of wet hair away from her face.

I shook the water from my shoulders and hung my jacket on the back of a bar stool. “I told you, Irene, I haven’t been near your office since you saw me there with Turpin. This isn’t me.” The bartender came by and laid a small napkin in front of me. I ordered a cranberry juice and club soda and turned back to Pratt. “What happened?”

She took a swig of her soda. “I came in just before noon and my office door was unlocked and I knew something was wrong.”

“Because of the door?” I asked. Pratt nodded. “You’re sure it was locked when you left last night?”

“Last night and every night,” she said. “And then I looked at my desk, and I knew that things were… different. Not obviously different, but… neater than I leave things. A little more squared off.” Her shoulders were rigid beneath the yellow slicker, and she kept shifting in her seat.

“The cleaners couldn’t have straightened things up a little and maybe forgotten to lock the door?”

Pratt shook her head. “They don’t have keys to our offices, and they don’t clean them unless we’re there. I was still working when they came last night. They just emptied the trash, vacuumed, and left.” She took a peanut from the bowl and chewed it nervously.

“What else besides the door and the desktop?”

“My credenza- behind my desk- it’s got a set of file drawers in it and they were opened.”

“Unlocked or actually pulled open?”

“The lock was still locked, but it wasn’t latched on to anything, and you could just pull all the drawers open.”

“And you’re sure-”

“I always lock it. Always.”

“Anything missing?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Your PCs were okay?”

“As far as I could tell.” A big group of tourists came into the bar. They were loud and took up a lot of space, and they seemed to make Irene Pratt even jumpier. I leaned toward her.

“And what about Danes’s office?”

“It was locked, but the knob was loose in my hand, and the little metal thing- in the doorjamb- was dented. And when I put the key in the lock, it didn’t turn at first.”

“It’s always locked?”

“Always, when Greg’s not there.”

“You know who’s got keys?”

“I’ve got one; our assistant, Giselle, has another; and security’s got one. I think that’s it.”

“What did you find inside?”

“It was neat as a pin in there, just like always: desk clean, everything very orderly…” She took off her glasses and wiped them with a bar napkin and put them on again. Her dark eyes moved back and forth across the crowd behind me. “But he has the same credenza as I do, and it was opened just like mine.”

“When’s the last time you were in there?”

“Wednesday or Thursday, to get a file. And don’t even ask if the drawers were locked then, because they were- and there was nothing wrong with his door either.”

“Who has keys to his credenza?”

“As far as I know, just me,” Pratt said, and she chewed another peanut into dust.

I drank my drink and thought for a while. “You’re pretty careful about keeping things locked up.”

“Everyone is, in this business. An advance copy of a research report, or even of a draft, could be worth a lot to some people. It’s like betting on the Sunday football games when you’ve already read the Monday papers. So- yeah- we’re pretty careful.”

“Has Pace had that kind of trouble before?”

“Leaked reports? God, no- that’s all we need.”

“What made you go into Danes’s office today?” Her eyes fixed on mine for a moment and then flicked away.

“I… I don’t know,” she said. “When I thought someone had been in my office, I guess I just got worried.” She looked at me, and there was color in her pale face. “The first thing I thought of was that it must’ve been you.”

“I’m flattered.” I laughed. “But why me?”

She looked down at her knees. “You’d called me, and come around the office and had that scene with Tampon, and then you showed up at my place. Who else was I supposed to think of?”

“Am I the only one who’s been asking about Danes?”

Pratt was quiet for a while. “You’re the only one who’s come to the office or come to see me,” she said.

“But am I the only one who’s been asking?”

“A lot of people call us,” she said. “Some of them ask about Greg.”

“People like who?”