Christopher Buckley - Wet Work

He dialed down to New York City police headquarters and had them fax up a record photograph of Felix Velez. Next he dialed Neon Leon's and got the voice saying, "I'm sorry, the number you have called has been disconnected." It was funny the way she said "disconnected" so upbeat, like it was good news, you were really hoping it would be disconnected.

He called Ignacio's cousin's number and got someone who'd never heard of Ignacio or his cousin. He called the owner, his paella buddy, and spoke to his wife, and tracked him down at a golf and tennis club in Dania.

"What happened to Neon Leon's?" he said.

"Business died after the Herald called it a 'hangout of local drug lords.' I never knew that. That cabron of a headwaiter never told me about that pig."

Diatri explained he was trying to reach Ignacio. The owner said Ignacio was having some immigration problems and was up in Jacksonville somewhere, or maybe Gainesville.

"What about the maitre d'?"

"I don't care where he is. He is a bastard!"

"All right. Could you try to locate Ignacio for me? It's very important."

Just then Marie said, "Frank, Mr. Colaris wants to see you."

"What for?" said Diatri suspiciously.

"Roberta told me it's got something to do with a physical."

"A what?"

"A medical. They want to set one up."

"How come?"

"I don't know, Frank. But you have been looking kind of sick."

"That's ridiculous. I'm fine. I'm too busy to have some stupid physical."

"Okay by me, Frank, but I'm not the Agent in Charge."

"Listen, Marie. Tell him I just got a tip from one of my CIs and I had to go out on it."

"Aw, Frank."

"Tell him I got good information on a five-hundred-a thousand-key shipment coming in by Greyhound into Port Authority, but I got to go UC on it real fast. You got that?"

" Frank. "

"Marie, I'm not asking you to be the mother of my children, I'm asking you to tell the Agent in Charge that a possible major shipment of, of cocaine is coming in and I'm on it, okay? Okay, for crying out loud?"

"All right, Frank."

Diatri went out the emergency exit, walked down three flights and took the freight elevator the rest of the way.

He had to stall the physical at least until the bruises on his inner arms from the IV needles went away. Probably ought to build up his strength a little too. Jog, or something.

He walked down to the Port Authority building on Forty-second with the thought of scaring up a little action-though a thousand keys was going to be tough on such short notice. After a half hour of sizing up various nervous-looking guys clutching attaché cases a little too tightly, he realized he'd lost interest in the small hauls, the one- and two-kilo busts. He decided to head over to the Public Library on Forty-second and Fifth and just maybe read, look through old issues of Life magazine. He got very depressed on the way over. The Red Meteor was doing him in, it was only a matter of time.

He went to the main reading room and instead of getting old Lifes looked up Charles Becker in Who's Who . There was nothing in Current Biography , so for the hell of it he went to the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature .

There wasn't all that much on him. He was listed in a recent Forbes magazine roundup as the forty-eighth-richest man in the United States. Not bad. He'd married into a little money and turned that into a fortune. The American Way. Diatri wondered if these rich guys competed among themselves for the rankings. He visualized a rich man's marathon, except all the runners were in the back of chauffeured limousines that had racing numbers on their grilles. He went to the New York Times index and ate up hours sifting through that for citations.

He took his call slips to the microfilm desk and then went to the viewers. He flicked on the light, threaded the spindle and cranked the film through the viewfinder. It was warm, but he kept his jacket on since pistols in holsters tended to make people nervous, especially in libraries. He cranked for hours, hundreds and hundreds of yards of current events warping and woofing across the scratched glass lens. Mrs. Charles Becker went to the Metropolitan Ball in Mrs. Charles Becker died in 1975. Mr. Becker took Telemetries private. Crank. Mr. Becker sold Zacatecas Petroleum. Crank. What was he looking for? This was ridiculous. If he wanted to eat up time-page 63, Metro section-he should get on a plane to Miami with a good print of the Velez photo and take it to the maitre d'. He could get healthy in Miami, run on the beach, get some real sun instead of lying under that bastard tanning machine, all that remained of his second marriage. Page 63. Russian exiles finding difficulty adjusting to New Jersey. No kidding. He should check with Eastern Airlines to see if there was anything on Becker trying to take them over. Sanit Commission urges study of eastern Long Island landfill. Conservationists "cool" to idea. Shakespeare in the Park threatened by federal funding cuts. That would be a nice thing to do some night, Shakespeare in the Park. Editor's Note: Felix Rohatyn is not 93 years old, as yesterday's article stated. A feminist group "upset" by the "impression" given in yesterday's story that they advocated breast-feeding children into their early teens. Breast-milk had to be an improvement over the stuff they had him drinking. He wondered what breast milk tasted like. Heiress dead of apparent overdose. Nothing about Charles Becker on 63. That was annoying. You go to the trouble of looking it up and it's not there. He checked the date of the citation. 63, all right. Shakespeare in the Park… he'd always wanted to see Man of La Mancha . Maybe some night-

No one seemed to have any file footage of Charles Becker, not ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, not C-SPAN. Diatri wondered how it was possible for any human being in the latter part of the twentieth century, much less the forty-eighth-richest guy in America, to make it to his age without leaving a piece of himself on video.

He set up his office in a phone booth at the Public Library. After two days he found a field producer with WPIX who seemed to remember that she'd sent a crew to the New York City morgue that day, but they'd decided in the end that Natasha Becker just wasn't a big enough heiress.

"If it'd been Cornelia Guest," she said, "we would have gone with it."

Diatri watched the raw footage. He saw the old man in the Jackie O glasses being shoved up against his car by the crowd of shouting reporters. He recognized Felix Velez, trying to clear a path.

The problem was, he didn't say anything, just looked dazed as Velez and another guy, a detective, it looked like, hustled him through the crowd. Diatri felt a little sorry for the guy, watching him. He looked like he was about to go into shock.

He went back to the Public and cranked through microfilm.

He'd wound his way through twenty-seven miles of current events when he came to a 1981 story in the National Catholic Reporter saying that Becker had just given five million dollars to Mount St. Mary's College in Maryland.

He called up the college's development office. "Yeah, this is Murray Kempton, with Newsday? Listen, we're doing a big story on Charles Becker, the philanthropist? He made a very nice gesture to you, I know, back in '81. I was wondering if maybe you gave him an honorary degree… You did? Well, for five million, I'd give him one too. You hand those out at graduation, am I correct? Did he by any chance give a little speech to say thanks?… Is that right? Did you record it?… Uh-huh. You know, that's just what my article could use, because, as you know, he's such a private guy. I spent hours with him and would you believe he didn't mention anything about this five mil to me? Now, where exactly are you in Maryland?"