Colin Harrison - The Havana Room

"Voodoo LLC is not the current listed owner of the building."

"Oh, hell, I know that, guy," Jay answered as he examined the building directory. "It's not so complicated. It's just paperwork. You didn't need to check on that." He turned toward me. "But I do need you to talk to a guy for me tonight, actually."

"Jay, did you hear me? I don't think you own this building."

"Of course I own this building!" He jabbed his fist against the staircase's newel post, making it shudder.

"You better explain."

But that held no interest for him- he was already on his way up the stairs, making them creak under his weight. "It's a corporate shell thing, Bill, no big deal. They do this all the time." His voice bounced off the pressed-tin ceiling high above us. "Really. You should know that, a guy with your experience. I do want you to talk to this other guy this evening, though, be my lawyer again, hold his hand, whatever. Go have dinner with him."

"Forget it."

"What?"

"I'm out." I turned to go. And I should have gone, too, right then, should have stamped my way back down to the snowy sidewalk and not stopped until I had crossed back into some safer country of probability, but Jay came after me and pulled a slip of paper from his breast pocket.

"This is for last night, for the whole deal."

"I never gave you a fee."

"I estimated."

It was a check for twenty-five thousand dollars. Very generous. Too generous, in fact. Shut-your-mouth money. I handed the check back. "I don't want it. I want out."

"All right," he nodded. "Fine."

"But what do I have to do to understand, legally, what happened last night? It seems the title man didn't-"

"Just go have dinner with this guy for me tonight, and everything will be explained."

"Who is it?"

"The seller."

"The guy who owned this building?"

"Yeah."

"So also the guy who now owns your old farm."

"Right."

"Why are you set to have dinner?"

"We weren't. He called me half an hour ago, said he had to hand over a couple more papers. Insisted. I just deposited his check, so I want to be polite. I didn't tell him I couldn't make it. Tonight is impossible for me. You can ask him whatever you want about the paperwork, Bill. He'll explain. Okay?"

"Just have dinner with him?"

"Yeah. Ask him anything."

I shrugged. That was enough for Jay. He stood up. "Let me at least show you the place. We can start in the basement."

And so we did, then worked our way up. "It's got eight office spaces. I've got several leases to renegotiate and you can help me with that, if you're interested," Jay said.

"Nope."

"All right. Anyway, it's a good location. People like the funky downtown locations. Good restaurants nearby, art galleries." He pointed to a line of ancient screw holes that ran up the center of the wide stairs. They'd been sanded over and filled in with wood putty. "See that?" he said. "There used to be a long metal slide that went down the middle."

"For finished goods."

"Right. In the nineteenth century, beaver hats, then chairs. In the early twentieth, it was baseball gloves for a while."

Now the building housed companies that manipulated symbols.

We knocked on the door of one small company named RetroTech, and a young Indian man opened it.

"Is Mr. Cowles around?" Jay asked.

"He's on the phone," said the man, his accent British.

"My name's Jay Rainey. I'm the new owner. This is Bill Wyeth, my lawyer. Thought I'd introduce myself."

He showed us in. It was a small but obviously prosperous operation. Green carpeting, brass desk lamps, oak filing cabinets, major league coffee machine. Information dripped brightly down a handful of screens.

"You did a nice job designing it," said Jay, looking around.

"We like it, thank you."

"Mr. Cowles free?"

"I'll check."

He disappeared down a hallway and a moment later returned, followed by a large, well-dressed man who looked like he might have played a little rugby twenty years earlier. "Hello, hello," came a booming British voice. "David Cowles." His eyes passed me and landed on Jay. "You must be the new owner?"

Both men appeared surprised by the other's size. They shook hands.

"Glad to meet you," said Jay. "You have a great shop."

"We try, yes," said Cowles.

"What do you do?" I asked.

"Oh, a little of this and a lot of that." Cowles smiled at this oblique answer. "Basically, we build proprietary financial software, we do a little momentum trading in securities, we play the field, we try to jump on and off the train at the right time."

"Been here long?" asked Jay.

"Little more than a year."

"Moved from London?"

"Yes, in fact." Cowles looked at Jay. "You've checked on us, it would seem?"

"Nope," said Jay agreeably, "just a hunch."

"Want to have a look around?"

"Sure. I did see the office once, with the seller," said Jay. "But I don't think you were here."

The tour took a few minutes. Behind a desk of family photos, Cowles's office had a good view to the west, filled with the irregular brick buildings of the neighborhood, stovepipes poking over slanting rooftops.

"Reminds me a little of London," Cowles laughed. "Just a little, just enough to miss it."

I noticed chewed pen tops on the desk, several calculators, stacks of newspaper clippings, an ashtray filled with butts. Cowles was a worrier, a figurer, and a smoker.

"You've got, what, a year left on your lease?" asked Jay.

"Indeed. It's been a good location for us. Even in this economy, we're growing."

"You want more space in the building?"

"I don't know." Cowles smiled at me. "Let's see how accommodating my landlord is."

"The adjacent offices are empty."

"I know."

"Though I have one possible tenant."

"Better fire away then," said Cowles. "We have enough room here."

Jay studied Cowles's office wall. "You might hear a bit of construction."

"A lot of noise?"

"Some noise. I can ask them to minimize it, work on the weekends."

"We'll appreciate that."

"Not to worry," said Jay. He pointed at the photos. "Nice family."

"Yes… thank you," said Cowles, and his eyes fell upon them. There was a shot of a darling girl with dark hair sitting with a baby boy. And separate photos of two women, one older, the other younger and blonde, each posed with Cowles himself. "I know that's odd," he said, seeing me frown. "I lost my first wife some years ago." He picked up the photo of the older woman. "She's- she was my daughter's mum, and so I feel it's all right to keep her picture." His grief was still on his face. "I remarried as soon as I could, for my daughter, really." He turned to me. "You have kids?"

"Yes, well- yes, I do," I stammered, feeling clubbed in the head. "A son."

We stood there awkwardly for a moment, three men hanging in separate cocoons of thought.

"All right then," announced Cowles. "I need to get to work."

"Did you ever meet the previous owners?" I asked. "They had kind of a funny name?"

"You mean Bongo Partners," said Cowles. "Oh sure. Bunch of fish-and-chippers, too. They set up their New York City leases in their London office. Helps with the dollars and pounds thing. Decent enough chaps, didn't rob me too badly."

I was about to ask if he knew of Voodoo LLC but we heard a loud banging at the door downstairs.

"Maybe someone forgot his key," said Jay. "Better go look."

We said goodbye to Cowles, and I followed Jay down the wide stairs. At the bottom we could see a figure outside in the winter suna short black woman of about sixty in a sensible coat, gloves, and red woolen cap.

"Hell's bells," Jay muttered. He opened the door. "Mrs. Jones? You came all the way into the city?"

"Yes, Jay Rainey, I did."