“He is just-,” she began, but Nina cut her off.
“Don’t say it, Nes. I know what he’s just- he’s just a moody son of a bitch.” She shook her head and followed after Billy. I heard doors opening and closing and tight, muffled voices.
I turned to the dark woman, who was looking around the room. She stared at the mess on the ebony desk and pursed her lips. She put her green bag down and took off her suit jacket and somehow found a spot for it on the coatrack. Her ivory blouse was sleeveless and her arms were sinewy. She sniffed the air and wrinkled her nose. She flicked a wall switch; somewhere a big fan whirred and air began to move and freshen in the loft.
She picked up the desk drawer, slid it halfway into the desk, and swept the pile on the desktop inside. She knelt and scooped up the paper clips and envelopes and matchbooks, tossed them into the drawer, and closed it. Then she turned to the coatrack.
Her movements were quick and efficient and practiced. Clothes were plucked from the floor and the furniture and folded or hung. Journals were stacked on a shelf. Tables were cleared, counters were cleaned, and dishes scraped, rinsed, and put in the dishwasher. Her heels made hard sounds as she moved about the loft. She spoke not a word and paid me less attention than the furniture.
With her advent and Billy’s, I felt as if I’d suddenly become audience to a piece of theater- something contemporary and far-off-Broadway- staged not so much for my benefit as for that of the actors themselves. My business with Nina was done for the moment and I could simply have left, but I didn’t. I was curious; I wanted to see it play out. I got up and gathered a few full ashtrays and carried them into the kitchen. The dark woman was at the sink and looked at me.
“Garbage?” I asked.
She looked at me some more and finally pointed. “Under there,” she said.
I emptied the ashtrays in the trash and went out to get some more. When I returned, the dark woman was drying her hands on a dish towel.
“I was rude. I apologize. It was a very hectic morning.” She put out a hand. “I am Ines Icasa. You are the detective, no?” Ines- Nes.
“John March,” I said.
Her grip was firm. “Come, sit,” she said, and I followed her into the living room. She retrieved her purse and we sat on the sofa. She took a gold lighter and a blue package of Gitanes from her bag and dug in the package for a cigarette. It was empty.
“Mierda,” she said softly, and crumpled the pack. There was a fresh box of B amp;Hs on the coffee table, and Ines slit it open with a sharp well-tended thumbnail. She drew out a cigarette, tamped it down, pinched off the filter, and fired up the ragged end.
“You have settled things with Nina? You will look for Gregory?” I looked at Ines but said nothing. She didn’t seem to mind. She ran a hand through her hair and over her neck, and I saw a scar on her smooth right arm, on the inside, just below the elbow. It was wide and shiny and flat.
“It is enormous trouble to go through,” she said. She exhaled a great cloud and watched the draft carry it away. “As busy as she isshe should not waste her energies.” Ines turned her vigilant eyes on me. “But this is not your concern, I know,” she said.
A door opened and closed and Nina Sachs stood in the kitchen. She leaned against the counter and rubbed her forehead with the heel of her palm and sighed. Ines went into the kitchen and stood very close to her and spoke softly. After a while, Nina bowed her head and rested it against Ines’s breast. Ines stroked her hair and neck, and Nina ran her fingers up Ines’s bare arm, from elbow to shoulder and back again. Then she leaned away slightly and turned her face up and they kissed.
They kissed slowly and for a long time, and when they finished they stood entwined, looking at me. Ines was without expression; Nina wore a smile that was strangely like her husband’s.
“You still here?” she said. “I thought we were done.”
I nodded. “I’ll call in a couple of days,” I said. “Sooner, if I learn anything.” They turned away from me and back to their soft conversation. I let myself out.
2
Flesh amp; Blood was a new place just off Union Square that specialized in red meat and game birds and nostalgia for the bull market. It occupied what was once a firehouse, and the hundred-year-old building’s elaborate plaster and tile and brass work had been lovingly restored and augmented with dark wood paneling and crystal chandeliers and a bar across the back that looked like J. P. Morgan’s yacht. It was a small place, but its designers had successfully achieved the cavernous feel and stupefying din of much larger spots. The wine list ran to several volumes, as did the list of single malts and cocktails. The waitresses- and there were only waitresses- were uniformly young and attractive, and clad in short black skirts and white shirts with plunging necklines. If not for city ordinances to the contrary, they would certainly have had cigarette girls in spike heels and fishnets working the tables and firing up the customers’ stogies. It was not my usual sort of place, but Tom Neary was a slave to food fashion, and I owed him more than a few favorsthe latest one being this job for Nina Sachs.
He was at the restaurant when I arrived, standing near the hostess’s podium and making the hostess slightly nervous. Not that Neary was particularly threatening- in fact, with his short dark hair, clean-cut good looks, and horn-rimmed glasses, he could pass for a grown-up Eagle Scout. And he wasn’t saying anything, or doing much at all besides studying the platters that the waitresses hoisted by. But at six-foot-four and 250 pounds, he had a tendency to loom.
Neary wore a dark suit, a white shirt, and a striped tie- the same G-man look he’d sported when I first met him, back when he was with the Bureau’s resident agency in Utica, and I was a sheriff’s investigator in Burr County. Nowadays, though, the clothes were more expensively cut. Gone from the Feds over three years, Neary had a big-deal job with Brill Associates, a big-deal corporate security and investigations firm. The division he ran covered the whole East Coast, and his clients included some of the largest banks and brokerages around.
Neary was more comfortable in the private sector than he had been at the Bureau; his masters at Brill let him run on a much looser lead, so long as revenues kept growing. And now that he was firmly ensconced in management himself, a little of the edge had come off his reflexive distrust of authority. And, of course, the money was a whole lot better. Neary used to worry about the moral gray areas of private security work- his Jesuit schooling, he said- but he seemed to navigate those waters well enough, and I didn’t know if he still gave it much thought.
There were plenty of things I didn’t know about Neary. I wasn’t a guy he invited over for Sunday barbecues or a guy he sent family photo cards to at Christmastime. But he and I had traded favors for years now, and I knew the important stuff- that he was smart and tough and could think on his feet. That he knew the difference between what was right and what was expedient. That I could trust him.
Neary offered me a massive hand and we shook. The hostess looked relieved and led us to a table near the back. Neary hung his suit jacket on the chair, loosened his tie, and unfurled a white cloth napkin on his lap. A blond waitress recited the menu to us, and he listened closely and nodded slowly as she spoke. She took our drink orders and left, and I took a closer look at him.
Success was taking its toll. Behind the glasses, his brown eyes were bleary, and the skin beneath them was pouched and dark. There were new lines around his mouth and new gray in his hair. His big shoulders were slumped and rounded. He yawned and stretched out his arms and rolled his neck. I spoke over the clamor.
“Too much work?” I asked.