“Saturday,” I said, and left.
The conference room doors were open and I looked inside. It was empty and, but for the faint bouquet of an air freshener, you’d never know that Tyne had been there. I passed Mrs. K’s desk on my way out. She made another clicking noise and eyed me warily.
Peter Spiegelman
JM02 – Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home
8
I took a window seat at the Manifesto Diner, looking out on Eleventh Avenue and the trucks that rumbled by, northbound and south. Directly across the street was a block of low brick tenements with an adult video store, a locksmith, and a plumbing supply shop at sidewalk level. Diagonally across, to the south, was a corner of DeWitt Clinton Park. I saw some flowerless rosebushes and a pair of shirtless handball players bounding around on a concrete court. I’d ditched my jacket and tie, but I was still overdressed for the Manifesto and for the neighborhood.
Eleventh Avenue between 53rd and 54th streets is the north end of Clinton- or Hell’s Kitchen, as it used to be known. The neighborhood has a sordid and much romanticized past, full of grog houses, luckless sailors, and ravening street gangs. Its present is more prosaic. These days, Clinton is in the later stages of a remorseless gentrification, its old tenement buildings and factories giving way to residential high-rises and dramatic eateries, its population of working-class immigrants and aspiring actors squeezed ever tighter or squeezed out altogether. But despite the assault, the area’s gritty industrial roots are stubborn and still plain to see.
I didn’t know how far back the Manifesto’s history went, but it was not a newcomer. It was long and narrow, clad in metal on the outside and in chipped green Formica inside. There was a long counter with worn green vinyl stools, a row of green vinyl booths along the front window, and another set of booths in a nook at one end of the counter. The ceiling fans were still, and the place smelled of grease, ammonia, and burnt coffee.
There were two Asian women in quiet conversation at the counter, and an old guy speaking Spanish into the pay phone, and the only other people in the place at three-twenty were the counterman and the cook. A black town car was circling the block. I’d counted four trips around when it stopped out front at three-thirty.
A skinny young man in khaki pants and a dark blue button-down shirt got out of the back and stepped into the diner. He was balding and he wore his remaining hair very short- shorter even than his narrow goatee. There was an annoyed, impatient look on his face as he scanned the room. His eyes stopped at me. He walked over.
“You March?” he asked softly. I recognized the voice- Brent. I nodded. “How about moving to the back?” he said. I slid out of the booth and picked up my coffee cup. I looked at the counterman and gestured toward the back. He shrugged.
“Just a sec,” Brent said. He went out to the car. A big bald white guy in a black suit got out of the front passenger seat. Brent opened the rear door and Linda Sovitch stepped out. She took a last drag on a cigarette and tossed it in the gutter, and the three of them crossed the pavement and came inside. The big guy looked around and then stared at me. He had a face like a ham and skin the color of a turnip and he was wearing black wraparound shades. I ignored him. He and Brent sat at the counter. Sovitch came to my booth and took off her sunglasses.
She was smaller than I expected, about five-foot-two, and her features were somehow more intense out in the real world, but otherwise Linda Sovitch looked much as she did on television. She was wearing the same cream-colored jacket and the same sea-green blouse she’d worn on TV that morning; the same strand of pearls rested on her delicate clavicles. Her pale hair still fell in an artful curve, down to the base of her neck. Her lips looked, if anything, fuller, and her eyes even bluer. Besides the jacket and blouse, she wore torn faded jeans and black clogs, and a musky, flowery perfume- Shalimar, maybe. Her hands were small, with sharp pink nails, and she wore a big yellow diamond on one finger, above a platinum wedding band. I knew she was in her middle thirties, but she looked younger.
She slipped into the seat opposite me and checked her watch. “You wanted to talk about Greg?” she asked. Her voice was high but without accent, and there was nothing girlish about it. She looked me squarely in the eye.
“When’s the last time you spoke with Mr. Danes?” Might as well cut to the chase. She tilted her head a little and thought about things.
“Five weeks ago, maybe. We had lunch. Why?”
“His wife- his ex-wife- is having a little trouble getting in touch with him.”
Sovitch tilted her head again. “Has she tried his office?”
“He’s on vacation and hasn’t come back yet.”
“Don’t they know how to reach him at Pace?”
“Apparently not. I was given to understand that you two were friends. I thought maybe you had heard from him or that you might have some idea of where he’s gone.”
Sovitch looked puzzled and shook her head slowly. “I haven’t seen much of Greg lately. That lunch was the first time in a long time.”
“He didn’t mention vacation plans?”
She shook her head. “Not to me. You sure he’s not just avoiding her?”
“Why would he do that?”
Sovitch shrugged. “I don’t know, to piss her off maybe. They don’t exactly get along, you know.”
I nodded. “What did you two talk about at lunch?”
Sovitch’s mouth closed and her eyes narrowed. “Why does that matter?”
“I’m not sure it does, but I won’t know for certain until you tell me about it.”
She scowled and shook her head. “That sounds like bullshit to me, March.”
“I’m curious about what was on his mind. If he talked a lot about music, for example, then maybe he went off to hear some music.”
Sovitch looked impatient. “He didn’t talk about music,” she said. She checked her watch again and glanced at the counter. I was losing her.
“I heard he hasn’t been in such a good mood lately. Did he mention that at all?”
Sovitch fixed her eyes on me again. “If you’re getting at something, March, get at it. Otherwise, stop dicking around.” It was a legitimate request. The problem was, I didn’t quite know what I was getting at. I was fishing.
“I’m not trying to dick around, and I don’t want to turn this into a guessing game either. I just want to know how Danes seemed the last time you saw him: what his mood was, what you talked about, that kind of thing. It may seem irrelevant to you- it may seem like gratuitous prying- but I’ve been at this long enough to know that useful things don’t usually come with a label attached. They may not even be useful at first; they may only become significant later on, when you put them alongside five other things. Sometimes you just have to put stuff in a bag and shake.”
Her mouth took on a skeptical twist. I continued.
“Look, I appreciate your time, Ms. Sovitch, and I don’t want to bother you more than I have to, but what’s the big deal about this lunch?”
Sovitch’s eyes flashed and she gave me a hard look. After a while, she nodded to herself and took a deep breath. “There’s no big deal. It just wasn’t… particularly pleasant, that’s all.” She picked up her sunglasses and fiddled with the nosepieces. “I told you I hadn’t seen Greg in a while. That’s because he’s been a little unhappy with me lately- with most things, really. When he called about lunch, I took it to mean we’d gotten past all that. But I guess not.”
“What was he unhappy about?”
Sovitch’s laugh was ironic. “Haven’t you caught the news the last few years? It’s been a little bumpy on Wall Street, in case you haven’t noticed. Greg’s got investor complaints up the ass, and his reputation has taken a serious whipping.”