“Sure,” I said, and followed. Helene spotted him on the ladder while I waited below. He made it to the top alright, but the slide was wet and slick, and his feet slipped out from under him as he was sitting down. He slid down fast on his back, with his feet in the air, and shot off the end of the slide. I caught him in midair and hoisted him up high, and he squealed with laughter. Helene came over, shaking her head.
“Thanks,” she said to me. She took Alex from me. “That’s enough for you, big man. You need a rest, right? How about a binky for you?” Alex rubbed his eyes.
“Binky,” he agreed. In short order, Helene had him in the stroller, chewing on a pacifier. She slipped a cap on his head and mittens over his hands, and adjusted the seat so that he was lying flat. She put on her coat and took a pair of chocolate-colored gloves from her pocket.
“Let’s walk a little, till he’s asleep. Then we can eat,” she said. We left the playground and followed a path south, toward the boat pond. By the time we got there, Alex was out cold.
The boat pond had been drained for the winter and there were plenty of empty benches around it to choose from. We picked a west-facing one. Helene opened the diaper bag and took out two paper-wrapped sandwiches on French bread, a couple of Granny Smith apples, a large bottle of water, paper cups and napkins. “I hope this is alright. I had some cookies in here, somewhere,” she said, still digging in the bag. She looked up at me. “You didn’t want a big sit-down lunch, did you?” I shook my head. “You pick-mozzarella with prosciutto or with tomato. Either one’s okay with me.” Her southern accent seemed more pronounced today.
“Tomato,” I said. She handed me a sandwich and started unwrapping hers. It wasn’t exactly the usual circumstance for conducting a sensitive interview: over a picnic lunch in the park, with the subject’s toddler sleeping nearby. Not what I would’ve chosen. If Helene had meant to disarm me, she’d made a fine start of it. She opened the bottle of water and poured us each a cup. It was probably a good idea to cut to the chase, before she started knitting me socks.
“You know what I’m working on for your husband?” I asked.
“That fax he got. Somebody’s trying to blackmail Rick because he did business with MWB way back when,” she said, and handed me a cup. I nodded.
“Does he know you’re talking to me today?” Her eyebrows went up.
“Of course. He told me to do all I could to help you.” I nodded again.
“I was down at what’s left of MWB last week, in Gerard Nassouli’s old office. I saw a photo you’d taken of him, some years ago.” She peeled off her gloves and took a bite of her sandwich. No response. Okay. “How long ago did you take it?”
“What did it look like?” she asked. I described it to her, and she nodded as I spoke. “That was a very long time ago. Let’s see… it must be thirteen… no, fourteen years back.” She took another bite of her sandwich.
“Before you’d met Rick?” She nodded. “When did you meet Nassouli?”
“Not long after I first came to town. About fifteen years ago.”
“How did you meet him?” She thought for a moment.
“I’m not really sure. It was at a party, I know that. I think one of my roommates knew him. I was living with about a half-dozen girls back then, in a real ratty place in the East Village. Third-floor walk-up, bathroom in the kitchen, that kind of thing. The oldest girl was maybe twenty-two, and not a one of us had been in town longer than a year. I think one of them maybe dated him for a while.”
“And you-did you date him too?” She looked up at me, with only the faintest smile on her face.
“Yes, I did. I dated him too, for a while.”
“How long a while was that?”
“Three or four months, I think.” We were quiet for a minute, working on our sandwiches. I drank some water. Alex sighed heavily and settled into some deeper level of sleep. The wind rippled puddles in the bottom of the boat pond and pushed some damp leaves around. Two pigeons landed near our bench and eyed our lunch.
“Did you sleep with him?” Helene was unfazed. If anything, she seemed vaguely amused. She chuckled softly and shook her head a little.
“ ‘Dating’-is that term in style again? I’m too old to know. I guess it’s not very clear as far as sex goes, is it?” She drank some water. “But to answer you-yes.”
“Just during the three or four months that you were dating?” She nodded. “What happened with him? Why did it break off?” Helene shrugged a little.
“I don’t know that there was a big reason. I don’t think it was some deep romance for him. I know it wasn’t for me. Probably, better things came along, one way or another.”
“And after that three or four months, did you see much of him?”
“I did for a while. He’d invite me to parties and things. We’d have dinner every so often.” She drank some water and looked at me, smiling a little. “Is this really part of your investigation, or are you just a gossip?” I ignored her question, and we both ate some more.
“How long did you stay in touch, after you’d stopped dating him?”
“Six or eight months, maybe a year.” I did a little figuring and a little guessing.
“Until around the time that picture was taken?” Helene smiled again and nodded.
“Yes, around then.”
“And then what happened? Why did you lose touch?”
“I guess I had better things to do with my time,” she said, and took a bite of her apple.
“You part on good terms?”
“Oh, yes-very friendly.” She chewed slowly, looking at me.
“What was he like?” I asked.
“Gerard? Well… he was charming, really. Old-fashioned good manners. Very generous, with gifts and favors and things. And quite the man of the world-at least to my eyes back then. Seemed like he’d been everywhere and knew everybody. Knew all the hot spots, and he could always get a table. Knew just what to order, the wines and everything. ’Course back then I still had hay in my hair, so I probably wasn’t the best judge.” She thought a little more. “And the man loved a party, that’s for sure. Not that he was a big drinker or one of those guys who’d be dancing on the tables. That wasn’t him. He just liked the feel of a party-the liquor flowing, the food, cigars, pretty women, music-he liked being right in the thick of the good life.”
“What kinds of gifts and favors was he generous with?”
“Gifts? I don’t remember, but he was always buying things out of the blue. Not huge things, not like a car or anything, but nice stuff. A Hermes scarf once, a camera-that kind of thing.”
“And the favors?”
She ate some more of her apple. Her eyes skidded away from mine. “He helped me with a couple of jobs. My first catalogs. He knew the people who ran the company.” Alex stirred a little, and Helene shushed him and rocked his stroller until he settled down.
“Did you meet Rick through Nassouli?” She shook her head.
“Indirectly. Rick had just moved to London. I was there working for a few weeks, with another girl who knew Gerry. Gerry had given Rick this girl’s number. The three of us met for drinks; five months later, Rick and I got married. That was eleven years ago.” She smiled again. The wind was picking up a little. Helene pulled a small, blue blanket out of the diaper bag and covered Alex.
“Last week, a guy told me some different things about Nassouli. Some very ugly things. That Nassouli used people, and corrupted them. That he went through women like candy, and that when he was done with them, he’d hand them out to friends, as gifts. He talked about other stuff too-videos, blackmail, things like that. Very dramatic, very nasty.” I took another bite of the apple. It was good-tart and crisp. “You know anything about that?”
So far my questions hadn’t seemed to trouble Helene much. She’d been matter-of-fact, vaguely amused even, and only a little evasive. If it wasn’t genuine, it was an impressive facade. But now there were some cracks. Helene drank some water and coughed and studied the Alice in Wonderland statue that stood across the empty pond from us.