Peter Spiegelman - Death's little helpers

Pratt’s voice was tiny and mad and scared. “I knew it. I knew I should never have talked to you. I knew it was a stupid thing to do. What is wrong with you, anyway? Why are you harassing me?”

“We haven’t gotten to the harassing part yet, Irene. Right now I just want to talk.”

“Is that supposed to convince me? Because all it makes me think of is calling the police.”

I laughed. “Sure, Irene, give them a call. And while you’re doing that, I’ll ring Turpin. We can all meet at your place and have a little party.”

She drew a sharp breath. “You bastard,” she said.

“Whatever. Can we talk now?”

She huffed for a while and then went quiet. “Come up, dammit,” she said finally.

Pratt was waiting at the door when I got off the elevator. She wore jeans and a T-shirt and an anxious, angry look. Her hair was caught in an unwilling ponytail, and her face was paler than usual. She said nothing as I walked in.

There was a kitchen straight ahead of me, with white cabinets and stone counters, and a long hallway to the left. To the right was the dining room and, beyond that, the living room. The walls were white and the floors were gleaming wood. The apartment was sparsely furnished, with bland rustic pieces that seemed to have come from the same catalog. Except for the dining table, which held a massive PC and stacks of paper, it was tidy.

I followed Pratt into the living room. It was long and narrow, with windows at the far end and a treetop view. There was a brick fireplace on one wall, with a striped sofa nearby. Pratt crossed the room and perched on a bench beneath the windows. She looked at me warily, and her eyes flicked from the bruise on my face to the envelope under my arm.

“So… talk,” she said.

I leaned against the sofa and looked down at her. “I didn’t sleep well last night, Irene. In fact, I haven’t slept well for a few nights now.”

“This is what you came here to say?”

I smiled. “On the one hand, lack of sleep has made me a little slow on the uptake; on the other, it’s given me time to think about things. Things like why you were so hesitant, back at the Warwick, when I asked you who had been calling about Danes. And what happened between Monday, when you were happy to hear my voice, and Tuesday, when you weren’t. Things like who it is that you’ve been talking to, Irene- who it is that got to you.”

Pratt’s brows came together behind her wire glasses and she turned her head a little, as if she had a crick in her neck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said evenly.

I smiled at her some more. “I think the breakin really shook you up. I think you were genuinely scared. But not so scared that you stopped thinking, right? Not so scared that those gears stopped turning.”

Pratt sighed and rubbed her hands on her knees. “Am I supposed to understand some part of this?”

I kept smiling. “I think something occurred to you, when I asked who had taken an interest in Danes’s absence. I think a lightbulb went on, Irene. You had someone in mind.”

Pratt shook her head but said nothing.

“I don’t know exactly what happened on Monday, though. Did you just wait for him to call the office again, or did you take the initiative and phone him- and offer up a little something?”

Pratt shook her head some more.

“I’m thinking it was the latter, and that you maybe started off talking about the breakin. That strikes me as an attention-getter.”

“This is… I don’t know what the hell to call this.”

“And once you got his attention, then I imagine you got into the meat of things- your conversation with me maybe, the fact that I knew someone had been tailing me, and that I intended to find out who it was. The fact that I’d called in some people to help me do it.”

“This is nuts-”

“I expect you probably got through to him right away, and you liked that. And why not? He’s an important guy, right? And a good friend to have in the industry, too: someone who could really help a career. A person wants a friend like that at any time, but especially when things are a little… uncertain… at work. When her boss has up and left- maybe for good- and left her without a career path. I can understand wanting to ingratiate yourself with someone with his kind of clout.”

Pratt chewed her lower lip. Color was rising on her white cheeks. “Are you almost done with… whatever this is?” Her voice was quieter and less steady.

“It’s understandable, I guess, but if you’re going to sign on for this sort of thing, you should make sure you know who you’re working for.”

“I work for Pace-Loyette. No one else.”

I shrugged. “Have a look at those,” I said. I tossed the envelope into her lap. She flinched as if it were a dead fish.

“What’s in it?” she said after a while.

“Open it up.”

“I don’t-”

“Open it.” My voice was sharp.

Pratt’s shoulders twitched and she looked up at me. The corners of her mouth were tight and there was fear in her eyes. She unfastened the little metal clasp and slid the photos out.

“It’s nothing gory, Irene, nothing messy. Just two little boys and a young woman, going to school, going to work, going about their business. Nothing scary.” Her fingers were clumsy as she leafed through the pages, and her hands were trembling.

“Who are they?” she asked.

I ignored her. “Nothing scary, right? But look at how close some of those shots are. Whoever took them must have been very near, don’t you think?”

“Who are they?” Her voice was quiet now.

“That shot there- they had to be right alongside her for that. But she had no idea that anyone was watching her. And there- they couldn’t have been more than a few paces away from the boys for that one.”

“Who are they, for God’s sake?” She was staring down and her face was hidden from me, but her voice was a harsh whisper. I kept my tone conversational.

“The little boys are my nephews. The older one is Derek; he just turned seven. His brother is Alec; he’s four. The young woman is a friend of mine. Her name is Jane. Someone delivered these to me on Wednesday afternoon. Around the same time, they delivered a couple of packages to my nephews- ostensibly from me. What’s that, maybe two days after you had your conversation?”

Pratt drew a sharp breath. “I didn’t… Are they… all right?”

“Sure, Irene.” I laughed harshly. “They’re just fine.”

She looked up at me. Her eyes were red and watery behind her glasses and she wiped them with her fingertips. She put the pictures back in the envelope. “You don’t know that this has anything to do with me,” she said. I laughed again and it was nasty, even to my own ears. I reached over and took the envelope from her. She drew back.

“The people who took these are just foot soldiers, Irene, just hired hands. They work for a guy named Jeremy Pflug, who works for your… employer, so I suppose that makes him your colleague. Have you met him yet? He’s a swell guy, and I’m sure you’ll like him. His hobbies are invasion of privacy, intimidation, and decapitating dogs.” Pratt gasped and I smiled at her. “I guess you haven’t come across him yet, huh? Maybe at the Christmas party.”

Pratt stood suddenly and crossed the room like she was leaving for good, but she stopped at the fireplace. She turned to me. “You make it sound like I’m a… spy. All I did was talk to him. He’s not my boss.” Pratt sniffled and I let out a deep, long-held breath. “And he called me- just like he has I don’t know how many times before. He asked about Greg, and what was going on, and I told him about the breakin. So what?”

“And you told him about me.”