"Every office has its problems," I snapped, getting up. "You want Beryl Madison's property, deal with the police."
"I'm sorry," Mark said when we were riding down on the elevator. "I had no idea the bastard was going to hit you with this shit. You could have told me, Kay…"
"Told you?" I stared incredulously at him. "Told you what!"
"About the items missing, the bad publicity. It's just the sort of stink Sparacino thrives on. I didn't know and I walked both of us into an ambush. Damn!"
"I didn't tell you," I said, my voice rising, "because it isn't relevant to Beryl's case. The situations he mentioned were tempests in a teapot, the sort of housekeeping snafus that inevitably occur when bodies land on the doorstep in every possible condition and where funeral homes and cops are in and out all day long to pick up personal effects-"
"Please don't get angry with me."
"I'm not angry with you!"
"Look, I've warned you about Sparacino. I'm trying to protect you from him."
"Maybe I'm not sure what you're trying to do, Mark."
We continued to talk in heated voices as he cast about for a cab. The street was almost at a standstill. Horns were blaring, engines rumbling, and my nerves were to the point of snapping. A cab finally appeared and Mark opened the back door, placing my suit bag on the floor. When he handed the driver a couple of bills after I got in, I realized what was happening. Mark wasn't joining me. He was sending me back to the airport alone and without lunch. Before I could roll down the window to talk to him, the cab jerked back out into traffic.
I rode in silence to La Guardia and still had three hours to spare before my flight departed. I was angry, hurt, and bewildered. I couldn't stand parting like this. Finding an empty chair inside a bar, I ordered a drink and lit a cigarette. I watched blue smoke curl up and dissipate in the hazy air. Minutes later I was feeding a quarter into a pay phone.
"Orndorff amp; Berger," the businesslike female voice announced.
I envisioned the black console as I said, "Mark James, please."
After a pause, the woman replied, "I'm sorry, you must have the wrong number."
"He's with your Chicago office. He's visiting. In fact, I met him at your office earlier today," I said.
"Can you hold?"
I was treated to a Muzak rendition of Jerry Rafferty's "Baker Street" for what must have been two minutes.
"I'm sorry," the receptionist informed me when she returned, "there's no one here by that name, ma'am."
"He and I met in your lobby less than two hours ago," I exclaimed impatiently.
"I checked, ma'am. I'm sorry, but perhaps you have us confused with another firm."
Cursing under my breath, I slammed down the receiver.
Dialing directory assistance, I got the number for Orn-dorff amp; Berger's Chicago office and stabbed in my credit card number. I would leave a message for Mark telling him to call me as soon as possible.
My blood ran cold when the Chicago receptionist announced, "I'm sorry, ma'am. There is no Mark James at this firm."
6
Mark wasn't listed in the Chicago directory. There were five Mark Jameses and three M Jameses, and after I got home I tried each number and either got a woman or some unfamiliar man on the line. I was so bewildered I couldn't sleep.
It didn't occur to me until the next morning to call Diesner, the chief medical examiner in Chicago whom Mark had claimed to run into.
Deciding being direct was my best recourse, I said to Diesner after the usual pleasantries, "I'm trying to track down Mark James, a Chicago lawyer I believe you might know."
"James…" Diesner repeated thoughtfully. "Afraid the name's not familiar, Kay. You say he's a lawyer here in Chicago?"
"Yes." My heart sank. "With Orndorff amp; Berger."
"Now, I know Orndorff amp; Berger. A very well respected firm. But I can't recall, uh, a Mark James…"
I heard a drawer opening and pages flipping. After a long moment, Diesner was saying, "Nope. Don't see him listed in the Yellow Pages either."
After I hung up, I poured myself another cup of black coffee and stared out the kitchen window at the empty bird feeder. The gray morning threatened rain. I had a desk downtown requiring a bulldozer. It was Saturday. Monday was a state holiday. The office would be deserted, my staff already enjoying the three-day weekend. I should go in and take advantage of the peace and quiet. But I didn't care. I couldn't think of anything but Mark. It was as if he didn't exist, as if the man was imaginary, a dream. The more I tried to sort through it, the more tangled my thoughts became. What the hell was going on?
To the point of desperation, I tried to get Robert Sparacino's home number from Directory Assistance and was secretly relieved to find it was unlisted. It would be suicidal for me to call him. Mark had lied to me. He told me he worked for Orndorff amp; Berger, told me he lived in Chicago and knew Diesner. None of it was true! I kept hoping the phone would ring, hoping Mark would call. I straightened up the house, did the laundry and ironing, put on a pot of tomato sauce, made meatballs, and went through the mail.
The phone didn't ring until five P.M.
"Yo, Doc? Marino here," the familiar voice greeted me. "Don't mean to be bothering you on the weekend, but been trying to find you for two damn days. Wanted to make sure you was all right."
Marino was playing guardian angel again.
"Got a videotape I want you to see," he said. "Thought if you was going to be in, I'd just drop it by your house. You got a VCR?"
He knew I did. He had "dropped by" videotapes before. "What sort of videotape?"
I asked.
"This drone I spent the entire morning with. Interviewing him about Beryl Madison."
He paused. I could tell he was pleased with himself.
The longer I knew Marino, the more he had begun subjecting me to show-and-tell. In part I attributed this phenomenon to his saving my life, a horrific event that had served to bond us into an unlikely pair.
"You on duty?" I asked.
"Hell, I'm always on duty," he grumbled.
"Seriously."
"Not officially, okay? Knocked off at four, but the wife's off in Jersey visiting her mother and I got more loose ends to tie up than a damn rug maker."
His wife was gone. His kids were grown. It was a gray, raw Saturday. Marino didn't want to go home to an empty house. I wasn't exactly feeling contented and cheery inside my empty house, either. I stared at the pot of sauce simmering on the stove.
"I'm not going anywhere," I said. "Drop by with your videotape and we'll watch it together. You like spaghetti?"
He hesitated. "Well…"
"With meatballs. And I'm getting ready to make the pasta now. You'll eat with me?"
"Yeah," he said. "I guess I can do that."
When Beryl Madison wanted a clean car, it was her habit to visit Masterwash on Southside.
Marino had found this out by hitting every high-class car wash in the city. There weren't that many, a dozen at most that offered to roll your driverless car automatically through an assembly line of "hula skirts" gyrating over sudsy paint as spray jets fired needle streams of water. Following a quick hot-air drying, the car was manned by a human being and driven to a bay where attendants vacuumed, waxed, buffed, dressed the bumpers, and all the rest of it. A Masterwash "Super Deluxe," Marino informed me, was fifteen dollars.
"I was lucky as hell," Marino said as he guided spaghetti onto his fork with a soup spoon. "How do you track down something like that, huh? The drones wipe off, what, seventy, a hundred rides a day? And you think they're gonna notice a black Honda? Hell, no."
He was the happy hunter. He had bagged the big one. I knew when I had given him the preliminary fiber report last week he would start hitting every car wash and body shop in the city. One thing about Marino, if there was one bush in the desert, he had to look behind it.
"Hit pay dirt yesterday," he went on. "Buzzed by Mas terwash. Was close to last on my list because of its location. Me, I figured Beryl would take her Honda to some West Endy joint. But she didn't, took it Southside, and the only reason I can figure for that is the place has a body and detail shop. Turns out she took her car in shortly after she bought it last December and had one of those hundred-buck jobs done to seal the undercoating and paint. Next thing, she's opened an account there, made herself a member so she could get two bucks knocked off each wash and the perk of the week thrown in free."