“What about your colleague, Goran? Is he up to any freelancing?”
Gromyko’s small mouth moved minutely. “Goran is no longer with me,” he said. “It is not Goran.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Utterly,” he said. I was quiet, thinking. Gromyko was poised to stand, but he didn’t.
“Is it possible someone latched on to me while they were looking at you?”
A colder light came into his eyes, and the little crease on his forehead deepened. His voice grew quieter. “I think not,” he said.
I nodded and gestured toward the Hummer. “Did he know anything about this?” I asked.
Gromyko nodded imperceptibly. “He was escorting Gilpin from the office on Saturday and thought a blue van might have followed him for a time. It broke off before he could act on it. The license was covered with dirt.” I waited for more, but nothing more came.
“That’s it?” I asked. “No theories on what it was about?”
Gromyko’s face was as calm as an icon’s. “It is possible that I could be of assistance to you, Mr. March, but I do not operate a charitable organization. My advisory services are valuable, and for them I expect payment in kind.”
I laughed and put on my best Marlon Brando voice. “Someday, and that day may never come, I will call upon you to do a service for me.”
Gromyko raised an eyebrow and gave me an icy microscopic smile. “It is not a currency I expect you wish to part with,” he said, and he stood. “Your calculation in the garage, with Goran, bought you something, Mr. March, but do not be misled by that. Do not intrude on my business again. Do not come here.” He picked up the crumpled cup, the tea bag, and the napkin and placed them on the bar and left. The shark was out of the car again, umbrella in hand, before Gromyko was through the door.
I took a deep breath. A television came on at the far end of the bar. A soccer game was in progress, before a large crowd in a sunny clime. The play-by-play was in a language I didn’t recognize, but it was lively and plentiful and the barman seemed to find it amusing. Outside, the street was wet and ugly, and the prospect of walking to my car and driving back to the city seemed, all of a sudden, a hideously complicated thing.
I ran a hand over my face. I was tired, and only some of it was lack of sleep. Too many hours at the laptop had left me with bleary eyes and a bad feeling about Danes, but little else, and this trip to Fort Lee had been only slightly more productive. I believed Gromyko when he said he wasn’t having me followed- even if there was more to the story that he hadn’t told me. That let me take his name off my list, but it got me no closer to whoever was following me, and certainly no closer to Danes himself.
I drank off the melted ice at the bottom of my glass and rubbed my eyes. It was warm in the bar and soothing in the dim light. The images of running men were bright and cheery, and the foreign words were animated and friendly sounding. The shadow at the end of the bar began to move around the room, lighting the little candles on the tables. It was a waitress. She was black-haired and lithe, and I wondered what her name was and what her voice might sound like. The barman put two shot glasses on the bar and pulled a bottle from beneath the counter. Vodka. He filled a glass and looked over at me and held up the bottle.
“You want?” he asked. “On house.”
I was scared by how long it took me to tell him no.
Nina Sachs had called while I was in Jersey, and when I called her back she actually answered the phone.
“Where the hell have you been?” she said. “I left a message over a day ago.” Her voice was scratchy and fast and made me grind my teeth.
“And I’ve called you back- but no one picks up.”
“I’m working,” she snapped. I heard her lighter spark.
“So am I, Nina.”
“Yeah- for me.”
“For the moment.”
Nina Sachs sighed and cleared her throat. “All right, all right, let’s stop pissing at each other. Just tell me what’s going on.”
I started with Gilpin. Sachs smoked and listened while I told her about my trip to Fort Lee, and her only response was mild surprise that Danes had had any contact at all with his half brother. I tried the name Gromyko out on her, but she’d never heard of him.
I moved on to Danes’s apartment and the evidence I’d found of a relationship between him and Linda Sovitch. The news brought laughter rather than surprise.
“Christ, is that how she lines up her guests?” she said, with a nasty chuckle. Then she thought about it some more. “You think Sovitch was bullshitting you when she said she didn’t know anything about where Greg is?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t know for sure that there was anything going on between them. That’s why I want to talk to her again.”
“Trust me”- Sachs snickered-“she leaves her underwear, there’s something going on. What else did you come up with?”
“A business card,” I said, and told her about Foster-Royce. “It’s a detective agency, based in London. They have offices in New York and a bunch of other places, and apparently they do a lot of international work. And they’re at least good enough at it not to tell me whether Danes is a client of theirs. You have any idea why he’d hire an outfit like that?”
There was silence, and then Nina sighed. “How the hell should I know?”
“Has he hired PIs before?”
“I told you, I have no idea. What else did you find?”
I took a deep breath and told her that Danes’s apartment had already been searched, and that someone had been following me, at least since my first trip to Fort Lee. Sachs went quiet, and all I heard for a long while were the soft sounds of her smoking.
“What the fuck is going on?” she asked eventually. Her puzzlement was genuine.
“Someone else is looking for him. I haven’t figured out who yet, or why.”
Frustration boiled in Sachs’s voice and spilled out as anger. “I thought I paid you to figure things out, for chrissakes. But all I get from you is speculation and more fucking questions!”
I didn’t hang up on her, but I thought hard about it. I took another deep breath and let it out slowly.
“That’s the way this works sometimes, Nina. In fact, that’s the way it works most of the time- and getting mad about it doesn’t change things.”
She started to speak, stopped herself, and swallowed everything but a derisive snort. “Fucking racket,” she said under her breath. “Do you have any actual progress to report?”
“I have more fucking speculation,” I said. “You can decide if it’s progress.” I told her about the phone messages on Danes’s machine, and the calls on his caller ID, and the pattern I’d seen. Saying it out loud made it more troubling.
“He was calling in on a regular basis, Nina, every three days, for over two weeks. And then he just stopped.”
She was quiet for a moment. “When was this again?” she asked finally.
I read her the date of the last call from Danes’s cell phone. “The messages on the answering machine start piling up right after.”
“Maybe he was waiting for a call,” she said softly. “Maybe he finally got it, so he stopped checking in.”
“I suppose that’s one possibility.”
“And the other is what, that something happened to him?” The irritation and petulance were back in her voice. “And I suppose you’re going to lecture me again about calling the cops? Well, I don’t have time for it.” I heard her suck a lungful of smoke.
“You have to make time soon, Nina, because I’ve only got a few more people to talk to, and if they don’t lead anywhere I’m going to be out of things to do for you- not without spending a lot more of your money.”
Nina Sachs swore to herself. “Look, I’m working right now. Give me a day or two and we’ll talk about this, okay? Come by on Thursday.” I sighed and agreed and she hung up.