Peter Spiegelman - Death's little helpers

“Since then he’s made a specialty of any slimy thing that comes along: ugly divorce cases, ugly custody fights, ugly sexual harassment claims- a real dog parade. And whatever side of the shitpile Marty is on, it’s never the right one. He’s a fixture in some circles, the way Fresh Kills Landfill is, only Marty smells worse. I’m surprised you’ve never run across him.”

“I don’t breathe the same rarefied air as you big corporate types,” I said. “Who’s he working for now?”

Neary shook his head. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”

I turned to Sikes. “Your pal didn’t know, but what about these other guys? Think one of them might have a name?”

Sikes lifted a skeptical brow. “I’d guess Marty would keep that card pretty close to the vest; he wouldn’t want any of these geniuses going direct to the client and cutting him out of the deal. But shit does happen, especially in a group this big; the hens get together and get to gossiping. I wouldn’t bet on anybody talking, though- not without some serious leverage.”

“They’re all such good soldiers?” I asked.

DiLillo shook her head. “Marty buys a lot of freelance help, so he’s a regular meal ticket for a lot of these guys. They won’t want to fuck that up. And half of what they’re selling is their ability to keep their mouths shut. Nobody wants a rep for being a talker; it sucks for business.”

She had a point. “Anybody have leverage with one of these guys?” I asked.

“I shot my wad yesterday,” Sikes said. DiLillo shook her head.

“Think some cash would motivate them?”

Sikes smiled. “They’ll all take your money- no doubt about it- the problem is knowing who to give it to and what the hell you’re getting in return. Finding that out could be expensive.”

“How about Czerka himself?”

“You never know with Marty,” Neary said. “He’s a creep, and as a general rule you’ve got to figure he’s always for sale. On the other hand, he can’t afford to burn too many bridges. I think with Marty it’ll depend on how much he’s making off the client, what he thinks the blowback would be from burning him, and how much you’re willing to grease the rails.”

I thought about that for a while. “Surveillance still going?” I asked.

“Until you say otherwise,” Neary said.

“A couple of days more, then.” I looked at Sikes. “You think that friend of yours will give Czerka a heads-up?”

A chilly grin spread across Sikes’s face. “He’s not that stupid.” He and DiLillo got up and left. Neary sat back in his chair.

“Somebody’s spending a lot of money on this,” he said.

“You mean besides me?”

“Besides you. And that means somebody with deep pockets and motivation. It also means that Marty will suck at this tit for as long as he can.”

“If buying him doesn’t work, there’s always charm or deceit- or both.”

“Charm’s no good on Marty; he’s got no receptors for it. And I wouldn’t put too much faith in trickery either. He’s no rocket scientist, but Marty has a sewer-rat kind of shrewdness.”

“How about a nice beating, then?”

“You’re not paying nearly enough for that. No, I think we take a walk up to Marty’s office and have a talk. He’ll either negotiate or he’ll tell us to fuck off. And if he does, we can still make a run at the hired help.”

We were quiet for a while and Neary gave me a speculative look.

“I figured you’d be a little more excited about this,” he said.

“I’m smiling on the inside. I got Danes’s phone records last night- his home and his cell.”

“Were they worth the wait?”

I nodded. “They cover a thirty-day period starting about five weeks ago, just a few days before he last called in for his messages.”

Neary nodded. “And?”

“The home number was no surprise; no calls made from there during that time. The activity was on his cell. There were a couple of calls to Reggie Selden, the lawyer representing him on the custody thing, and calls to his own home, to get messages. There was a call to Nina Sachs’s number-”

Neary cut me off. “I thought she hadn’t heard from Danes.”

“So did I, but according to Billy his father left a couple of messages for him on the answering machine. He didn’t mention them to his mother.” Neary nodded, and I continued. “Then there’s that final call to his home number- which corresponds to the date and time on his caller ID- and that’s it. There are no other calls.”

Neary’s brows came together. “That was the last one?”

I nodded. “Not only did he stop calling in for his messages, he stopped making calls altogether.”

Neary sat back in his chair. He tapped a finger lightly on the edge of his desk. “He could have another phone,” he said.

“I guess so, but I haven’t turned up another number in his name.”

“It could be one of those prepaid throwaway things.”

“It could be.”

“You talk to Sachs about this?”

“She’s made it pretty clear she’s not interested.”

Neary shook his head and drew a big hand slowly down his jaw.

We walked north on Broadway. A skim coat of pearly cloud had spread itself across the sky, and glare and heat and intimations of summer had begun to build beneath its shell. Bus fumes and car exhaust and the smell of ripening trash stayed close to the pavement, and I was sweating a little when we turned east on Canal. Both of us were thinking about Danes’s phone bill and what it might mean, but neither of us put it into words.

Czerka’s office was in a soot-gray building near Centre Street, and convenient to the House of Detention. The lobby walls were green and the linoleum floor was sticky underfoot. The lone desk guard barely glanced at our IDs when we signed in. We took a dim elevator up.

The ninth-floor corridor was fluorescent-lit and painted a nasty blue. It was empty and quiet and smelled powerfully of disinfectant. The doors to the office suites were metal-clad and bristled with locks. Czerka’s office was to the left, tucked between a bail bondsman and a bathroom. The plastic sign on the door read CZERKA SECURITY BUREAU. There was an intercom box mounted on the wall, and Neary leaned on the buzzer.

Nothing happened for a while and then a storm of static erupted from the speaker and abruptly stopped. Neary hit the buzzer again and was rewarded by another burst of noise and then nothing.

“If you’re talking, I can’t hear a word you’re saying,” he shouted into the box. A feeble buzzing came from the vicinity of the doorknob. Neary pushed and we went in.

It was a cramped, windowless room with fluorescent lights and a smell of cigarettes, old food, and flatulence. The walls were lined with battered metal file cabinets and most of the floor space was taken by two metal desks, facing each other across a narrow aisle in the center of the room. There was a computer on the left-hand desk, with a huge monitor, a modem, and a rat’s nest of cabling that snaked away behind the cabinets. The right-hand desk was covered in food wrappers and magazines- Burger King, KFC, and Krispy Kreme, Soldier of Fortune and Maxim. A sound mind in a sound body. There was no one in the room, but there was a doorway straight ahead, and a voice shouting out from it.

“Who the fuck is it?” It was a man’s voice, deep, wheezy, and wet and with a strong Long Island accent. I followed Neary in.

The inner office was larger than the outer one, and was graced by a dirt-fogged window, but it was no less crowded and smelled even worse. It too was lined with file cabinets, and all of them were topped by dusty heaps of newspapers and magazines. To the right was another big workstation, perched on a frail-looking card table, and in the corner was a half-sized refrigerator with a coffeemaker on top. In the center of the room was a scarred oak desk. Its surface was obscured by layers of file folders and newspapers and glossy catalogs, and by an immense glass ashtray that overflowed with cigarette butts and spent matches. In front of the desk were two plastic guest chairs, and wedged behind it was the man I took to be Marty Czerka.