There were people in the gallery, a skinny young woman with bleached hair, camo pants, and a T-shirt that let her midriff peek through, and an even skinnier young man with shiny blue bellbottoms and a steel ball through his nose. They were sealing and hauling wooden crates with impressive speed and skill. There were two opened wine bottles on the long counter, and three glasses, and an ashtray with a smoldering cigarette. I heard music through the glasssomething thudding and techno.
Ines Icasa came through a door at the back of the gallery. Her hair was pulled back and she paused in mid-stride when she saw me. She was perfectly still for a moment, and then she moved again, walking to the counter, plucking her cigarette from the ashtray, and waving me in.
I pushed open the heavy door. The music got louder and I felt the bass in my gut. I smelled tobacco and sawdust and wood polish. The skinny people looked up from their crates and eyed me speculatively. Ines called me over.
“A?QuA© tal? Just passing through the neighborhood, detective, or are you shopping for some art?” I smiled. Ines took a deep hit off her cigarette and reached for a wineglass. She poured some red wine, showed me the bottle, and raised her nice eyebrows. I shook my head. Ines frowned melodramatically and poured herself some more. I heard a noise from the end of the counter, and a foot, wearing something like a bowling shoe, slid into view. I walked over and looked down. It was Billy.
He was sitting on the floor on a huge paisley pillow, his back against the end of the counter. There were earphones on his head that snaked off to a sleek MP3 player hooked to his belt, and there was a spiral notebook and a thick text-Trigonometry: An Introduction- open in his lap. He raised his head and looked at me, blankly at first and then with recognition, but without discernable interest. He had a pencil in his teeth and a bottle of Sprite at his side. He was wearing baggy pants and a T-shirt again, but he’d swapped the Talking Heads lyric for a blowup of a Dr. Strange comic book cover. I raised a hand in greeting. Billy looked at me for a while and nodded minutely. I pointed at his shirt.
“Master of the Mystic Arts,” I said. “One of my favorites- though he’s no Batman, of course.”
Billy winced theatrically and let the pencil fall into his lap. “Batman’s a pussy,” he said softly, and turned again to his book.
I laughed. “I’ll let him know you said that.”
“He is working, detective, and he is very focused,” Ines said. She put a hand on my arm and led me back down the counter. “Are you sure I cannot get you something? Something stronger than wine, perhaps.” I shook my head. There was a moist sheen to the smooth skin of her face, and her big almond eyes were gleaming.
“Trig’s advanced for a twelve-year-old, isn’t it?” I asked. “It seems to me I studied it in high school.”
Ines smiled proudly and nodded. “Guillermo has always been many years advanced in maths. He takes most of his classes in the upper school.” She glanced at the skinny man and woman, who had gone back to sliding wooden crates around. “We are packing up the last of an exhibition,” Ines said. “Iguacu, we called it- the work of five painters from the ParanA? region of Brazil. They are very talented, and the show was well received.”
“I’m sorry I missed it.”
“I will add you to our mailing list. You will never have to miss another.” She drank some more wine. Her glass was nearly empty.
“Nina upstairs?” I asked.
“She is expecting you,” Ines said.
“Then I’d better not keep her waiting.” Ines nodded, and I started for the door. Halfway there I stopped and turned back to her. “You have any thoughts on where he might be?” Ines looked at me. She shook her head slowly and blew out a cloud of smoke.
Upstairs, Nina Sachs was still working. I’d rung twice and waited several minutes for her to answer. She wore a paint-splattered T-shirt and jeans, and she was barefoot. She had a smoke in one hand and a paintbrush in the other and her hazel eyes were jumpy, but she’d smiled when she opened the door.
“Back here,” she said, and walked quickly across the loft to her studio. The place was a mess again, as if Ines had never cleaned it, and the smell was back. I followed Nina’s smoke trail to her easel. Her little stereo was pounding out The Subdudes.
“Pull up a chair.” She pointed to the beat-up armchair in the corner. “I’m doing busywork now, so I can talk.” I turned the stereo down a notch and dragged the chair closer and sat. Nina paced back and forth before her canvas, and occasionally daubed at it, and sang along with The Subdudes as I spoke. She never interrupted and she never glanced in my direction. I told her about my trip to Pace-Loyette and my discussion with Irene Pratt, and about the long list of lawsuits and arbitration claims that Danes was involved in. When I was through, she stepped away from the easel, lit another cigarette, and leaned her hips against the utility sink.
“So, basically, you haven’t found out anything.” She said it matter-of-factly.
“I haven’t found out much. But we know that the people at Pace are worried-”
“I knew that before,” Sachs interrupted.
I nodded. “We know that someone else is looking for him-”
“But not who it is.”
“And we know that Irene Pratt is genuinely concerned about him. As far as I can tell, she’s one of the people closest to him, and she has no clue of where he went or why he hasn’t returned.”
Nina laughed nastily. “What did you think of Pratt? She’s like a frustrated librarian, isn’t she? Or the nun who secretly lusts for the priest.”
“You think she and Danes had a thing?”
Nina shook her head and chuckled. “She’s not his type. She’s smart enough, but Greg likes a jagged little pill- he likes them edgy. Pratt’s too much of a schoolgirl. But she was interested, God only knows why. No accounting for taste, I guess.”
“I guess not,” I said. “Though you must have thought he had something going for him- once upon a time.”
She snorted. “Sure I did- back when I was fresh out of art school and fighting with my parents over the dump I was living in and the shithole where I waited tables. Back then I thought Greg was a hoot. He was smart and he knew it, and he had no time for people who weren’t. And unlike most of the wannabe bohemians I hung with back then, he actually liked what he was doing, he made good money doing it, and he planned to make a lot more. Plus, he was fucking funny, too. He’d say anything to anybody, and he didn’t give a damn who he pissed off. He was a real poke in the eye back then, and so was I. Maybe I still am.”
Nina looked at her high ceiling and blew out a long cord of smoke.
“’Course, all that gets old fast when you live with it every day and he decides he’s smarter than you are and you’re just there to fetch and carry while he’s out conquering the universe.” She ran a hand through her hair and crossed her arms and looked at me. A fleck of ash floated past her ear. “You really are a nosy bastard.”
I shrugged. “Like I said, it’s part of what you’re paying for.”
She rubbed her chin with the back of her hand and puffed on her cigarette. “Yeah, well… what else do I get? What’s next?”
“Next Monday I get into his apartment. That should tell us something. Between now and then, I keep an eye out for whoever else might be looking for Danes, and I try to talk to Linda Sovitch.”
“Isn’t that risky?” Sachs said. “Talking to her is kind of… public.”
“Sure. She gets wind that he’s missing- and for how long- and it could be all over cable the same night. And there’s not much I can do to finesse it. But he did have lunch with her on the day he walked out of the office, and according to Pratt she was one of his few friends, so it’s hard to ignore her. Besides, some press coverage might not be a bad thing. If he’s near a TV, it might flush him out. And maybe he won’t find out who broke the story- or how.”