“Is he here to see me?” Nina called. “Might as well send him in. Things can’t get much more fucked-up tonight.” She laughed bitterly. Ines nodded slightly and I stepped inside. The piles of clothes were a little smaller than they had been last time and the half-eaten meals were gone. Ines was in the midst of cleaning. She disappeared into the kitchen and I made my way to Nina’s studio.
Nina was at the drafting table, wearing jeans and a man’s blue shirt with the sleeves cut off. Her auburn hair was tied back. A new cigarette was dangling from her mouth and there was a glass tumbler full of red wine on the cart beside her. She was sketching furiously. I went to the little stereo and turned The Ramones down a few notches. Nina gave me a dirty look.
“Don’t fuck with my music.” She sounded like Billy when she said it. I ignored her.
“Have you given any more thought to the cops?” I asked. She shook her head.
“No time. Maybe you noticed: I have my hands full here.” She looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You have something to tell me?”
I nodded. “I spoke to Linda Sovitch this afternoon,” I said, and told her about my meeting at the Manifesto. When I was through, Nina Sachs pursed her lips and stared at her sketching.
“You think she’s going to put this on the news- about Greg?”
“I don’t think so- though I couldn’t tell you why not.”
She smiled a little. “It seems like Greg was having a bad fucking day, doesn’t it?” she said. It was the happiest she’d sounded since I came in.
“A bad day that got worse when he met with Turpin, later that afternoon. And Sovitch is just one more person- one more friend- who has no idea of where he’s gone. Are you worried yet?” Nina didn’t answer. We heard muffled voices, and Ines appeared in the doorway.
“I am going down to the gallery, and Guillermo is coming with me,” she told Nina.
Nina frowned and shook her head. “No, Nes, he has homework to finish, and I don’t want him bugging you.”
Ines held up a slender hand. “He is no trouble, and he will finish his schoolworks downstairs.” Ines looked at me and then at Nina. “And then perhaps you can get some work done here.” They stared at each other for a while without speaking. Finally, Nina shrugged. Ines turned and left, and in a little while we heard the door close. I looked at Nina.
“Are you worried yet?” I asked again.
She frowned at me and shook her head. “What is it with you? You think I’m some kind of… bitch? Well, fuck you, March. You don’t know me and you don’t know my dear ex-husband, either. You have no idea what a vengeful little prick he can be. And dragging the cops into his life is just the kind of thing that would set him off.”
“You’re sure that’s all that’s stopping you?”
Sachs sat up straight on her stool. She took a long drag on her cigarette and looked at me through the smoke. “There something on your mind?”
I took a deep breath, to dissipate the anger that had clotted in my throat. “Just a little something you neglected to mention, Ninathat your divorce action was reopened four months ago, after ten years. That Greg is fighting you for custody of Billy.”
Sachs screwed her face into an impatient grimace and waved her hand. “Yeah… and? What’s the big deal?” she said. “And what the fuck is it to you anyway? I hired you to look for Greg, not investigate me.” I took another deep breath and bit back my first response, which began with the words, Listen, you stupid shit. When I spoke, my voice was level and quiet.
“I am looking for him, Nina. One of the things you do in a missing persons case is look at any legal actions the missing person is involved in, the theory being that they might provide clues as to why the person disappeared- or why someone made him disappear.”
Nina laughed unpleasantly. “Is that what’s got you hot and bothered? You think I made Greg disappear?” She laughed some more. “And then what, I hired you to throw the cops off? Jesus, March, that’s some conspiracy theory you’ve got there.”
“What I’m saying- right now- is that you’ve withheld material information. Do I wonder why, and what else you might be holding back? Sure I do. And am I annoyed? More than a little. This stuff is hard enough without your games. But as far as conspiracy theories go, I haven’t gotten started yet. And rest assured, mine are nothing compared to what the cops will throw at you if you screw around with them this way. You can drop me a postcard and tell me all about it.”
Nina reached for the tumbler of wine and took a long swallow. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“That means I’m out of here, Nina- right now- unless you stop bullshitting me.”
We stared at each other, and neither one of us blinked. Finally, she shook her head.
“What do you want from me? I’ve got no big secret. I told you all I know about where Greg is. The other stuff… I didn’t think it was worth mentioning. Greg’s been pissing and moaning about custody on and off for years. The only thing that changed recently was his filing suit. But it’s not like that’s going anywhere. That’s just Greg, grandstanding. We were talking about it. We were going to agree to something… just like all the other times.”
“What other times?”
“The other times Greg’s had a hair up his ass about custody. The other times he’s gotten it in his head that he doesn’t like how the kid’s growing up or that he wants to play full-time dad. He gets himself twisted up, we yell at each other for a while, and we agree to something.” Nina pulled hard on her B amp;H. The ash glowed orange, and the cigarette shrank before my eyes.
“What didn’t he like about the way Billy was growing up?” I asked, after a while.
Nina made a wry face. “Figure it out, March. His only son and heir growing up with two dykes? And he’s always had it in for Nes. He’s convinced himself she was the reason our marriage ended, which is crap. Things had gone to hell for us long before I met Nes, and she and I were nothing more than friends when I split with Greg. But he never listens.” Nina took another drink, and I thought some more.
“And when it’s come up in the past, you’ve agreed- what?” Nina got up and walked to the little stereo in the corner. She squatted down and rifled through a stack of CDs on the floor and swapped The Ramones for something else. She turned up the volume: Bryan Ferry. She stood and turned back to me.
“We agreed that Greg could see more of him- at least while his interest lasted.”
“It didn’t, usually?”
“It didn’t ever. But what the hell. We agreed.”
“And what did you get out of it?” I asked. Nina Sachs frowned at me.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You just gave him more time with Billy out of the goodness of your heart?”
Sachs’s face got white and hard, and her mouth became a tight line. “You have no idea what it’s like raising a kid in this city, trying to make a living as a painter. Money gets tight, and if Greg bumps up the child support payments it helps. Am I supposed to be ashamed of that? Does that mean I’m holding him up? Or that I’m selling my kid, for chrissakes?” She took a hit off her cigarette and breathed out a boiling column of smoke. “You have a lot of fucking nerve, for the hired help.”
I nodded absently. “If this time was no different, what made Danes reopen the custody suit?”
“He was in a bad mood about everything, he was mad at the whole fucking world, and he was complaining about money.”
“So he’d rather spend it on a lawsuit?”
Sachs shrugged. “Go figure,” she said. She ran her fingers along the base of her neck. “Maybe he thinks he can’t do anything about his career being in the tank, but he can do something about Billy. Maybe he thinks this is a battle he can win.” She sighed heavily and shook her head. “How do I know what goes on in his mind?”
She sat at the drafting table, stubbed out her cigarette, and rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers. Then she picked up a pencil and started sketching. From the little stereo, Bryan Ferry crooned. I could feel at the time There was no way of knowing…p›