Peter Spiegelman - Death's little helpers

“John,” he said more sharply.

I walked out and Neary followed. The reception area was deserted when we passed through, and quiet except for the sound of a vacuum cleaner running somewhere out of sight. The elevator came quickly and we got on. The doors were sliding shut when we heard Pflug’s braying laughter.

Peter Spiegelman

JM02 – Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home

I banged some cubes from an ice tray and wrapped them in a dish towel and held the towel to my face. Neary popped a can of ginger ale and drank half of it and took the rest to my long table. He sat down and looked at me.

“What is it with you?” he said finally. “What are you, thirty-something going on fifteen? I should know by now- every time I work with you, I end up with some kind of agita.” It was the first time he’d spoken since we’d left Pflug’s office.

Cold water ran down my neck and soaked into my shirt. My sinuses were frosting up, and the pain in my cheek was spreading across my face. I didn’t say anything.

Neary took another long pull and drained the can. He sighed. “Did you somehow miss that this guy was trying to get into your head? Did you not get that he wants your mind on your nephews and Jane- and on him? That he wants it on anything besides who his client is and where the hell Danes went? I know Pflug’s a subtle guy, but did that somehow escape you?”

“I got it,” I said, from behind my towel.

“And you thought letting him goad you into a fucking bar brawl was the best way to handle it?”

“That wasn’t my plan going in.”

“I think that’s probably bullshit,” Neary said, and he crushed his soda can. “But I won’t argue the point.”

I wrung my towel into the sink and fiddled with the cubes and held the pack to my face again. I looked at Neary. “Sorry,” I said. There wasn’t much more to say: He was right, and we both knew it. Neary snorted. He tossed his soda can to me. I caught it and dropped it in the trash.

“Pflug is not a cream puff,” he said. “We’re not going to scare a name out of him.”

I nodded. “And there’s no one like Stevie in his shop, whose shoes we can squeeze.”

“Anybody you particularly like, of the people that you’ve talked to?”

“For hiring Pflug? I don’t know… Not Pratt- she was genuinely freaked by the surveillance and by the breakin at the Pace offices. Turpin- it’s hard to say. I don’t know why he’d do it, and if it was him why the breakin? Why wouldn’t he just give Pflug’s guys the keys? Sovitch and Lefcourt- I suppose they’re a possibility… Of course, it would help to have some idea about what Pflug was hired to do.”

“You don’t think he’s trying to find Danes?”

“Maybe. Or maybe he’s trying to make sure no one else does.”

Neary nodded. “You didn’t mention your Ukrainian buddy.”

“Gromyko? It’s not him.”

“You sound pretty sure.”

I shrugged. Neary walked over to the windows and looked out on the shadowed rooftops.

“You think Czerka is typical of the kind of guy Pflug hires?” he asked, after a while.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if Pflug hires a guy like Marty to do his shitwork in New York, you think there’s a chance he hires a similar kind of guy down in DC?”

I thought about it. “I guess it’s possible.”

“I guess so too. So maybe we could do what Gerber did: dig up one of Pflug’s ex-freelancers. The guys in my DC office know the local players- including the local versions of Marty.”

“Even if they can find someone who worked for him- and someone who’s willing to talk- Gerber said Pflug kept the day labor away from the clients.”

“Maybe. But maybe one of these guys was a little more enterprising than Pflug expected… or a little more cautious. Maybe Pflug wasn’t as careful as he thought.” Neary shrugged. “Hell, maybe one of them has a good guess about who Pflug’s clients are- in which case they’d be one up on us.”

I took the ice off my face and prodded my cheek. It was numb. “It’s a plan,” I said.

“Close enough, anyway,” Neary said, and he looked out the window some more.

I poured a glass of water and drank it down and sat at the table. “As long as we’re speculating, Gerber’s sources said there were a lot of Wall Street people on Pflug’s target list. It’s possible that Greg Danes was one of them. It’s possible that Danes pissed someone off badly enough that they sicced Pflug onto him.”

“The pissing-off part is plausible,” Neary said.

“I can go back at Pratt again, and see if she knows of anyone that was particularly angry with Danes. I can try Tony Frye, too. It’s thin, but it’s better than waiting around.”

Neary nodded and stretched. He collected his suit jacket from the kitchen counter. “How are your nephews doing?”

“Fine, last I heard.”

“And Jane?”

“Somewhat less fine,” I said. He looked at me but said nothing.

Neary went back to his office, to start making phone calls. I showered and ate tuna fish from a can, and in between bites I left messages for Tony Frye and Irene Pratt. Then I read for a while from a book by Paul Auster, and then I went to bed and didn’t sleep. The night was filled with shouts and car horns and sirens from the street. From upstairs there was only silence.

Friday morning was gray, and heavy with rain that never quite fell. I tried Irene Pratt twice more and got her voice mail and no calls back. I drank coffee and read the paper and poked absently at the little purple knot under my eye and at its larger cousin on my arm. Anthony Frye phoned me at noon.

“Mr. March,” he said, with mock formality. “I was so pleased to get your message. What can I do for you today?”

“More gossip about your old boss,” I said.

“Greg still hasn’t turned up?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, I’m happy to oblige, though it’s fortunate you’re getting me now. I’m rapidly forgetting my days as a lowly analyst.”

“I’ll talk fast,” I said.

I asked him again about anyone who might have had an ax to grind with Danes, anyone who might be nursing a grudge. Frye gave it some thought but came up with nothing more than he had the last time I’d asked.

“Sorry to disappoint,” he said, “but have you spoken with Pratt? She might have an idea.”

I made a noncommittal noise. “How about people interested in Danes? Has anyone called you lately, asking about him?”

Frye snorted. “Only you, March, but again, I’d think Pratt would know better.”

I thought back to when I’d asked Irene Pratt that same question, in the bar at the Warwick. She’d taken a while to respond, and when she finally told me no, her eyes had skittered around the room, looking at anything but me. At the time I’d marked it down to nerves, but was it? I remembered what she’d said when I’d asked what kind of people had been calling about Danes.

“People we do business with: industry contacts, fund managers, people from the companies we cover- the same people who called before he went away.”

“You told me last time that Danes wasn’t always adept at dealing with big investors,” I said. “That there were fund managers who got the better of him.”

“Indeed,” Frye said.

“Were there any who did it on a consistent basis- any who Danes might have had a gripe with?”

Frye was quiet for a while. “I suppose there were,” he said. “I don’t know how Greg felt about them, but certainly whenever it would happen- whenever he would find that one of these people had blown smoke up his ass- he’d be angry and as near to embarrassment as he ever got.”

“Why did he keep dealing with them?”