I smiled some more. “Not to be rude, but I’m actually here to see your wife.”
Lefcourt drained his cup and slid it onto a side table. He crossed his legs and draped his hairless arm along the back of the sofa and tried to look relaxed, but whatever engine ran inside him didn’t like to idle, and his foot bounced around on the end of his leg.
“What do you want to bother my wife for, March?” he asked, smiling.
I drank some coffee. “I don’t want to bother her. I just want to talk to her about her friend Gregory Danes.”
“What about him?” Lefcourt asked. He was still smiling, but his dark eyes were locked on my face.
“That’s something I’d rather discuss with your wife.”
Lefcourt gave a nasty laugh. He shifted his bulk on the sofa and ran his fingers over the upholstery. “Well, she doesn’t want to discuss that, or anything else, with you. So your choice is me or get the fuck out.”
I finished my coffee and thought about that. “I’m not sure she’d feel that way if she knew what I wanted to talk about.” Lefcourt made a skeptical face and shook his head; I continued. “And I’m not sure you really want to hear this.”
“I’m a grown-up, March,” he said. “I can handle it.” I nodded. It’s what everyone says- before they see the pictures. Maybe Lefcourt meant it.
“I want to know about her relationship with Danes. I want to talk to her about where he might be.”
“She went through that crap with you already.” He wasn’t making this easy; he wasn’t trying to.
“Sure. I just want to go over some of it again.”
“You think her answers will be different?”
I sighed. “I have reason to believe she may not have been… entirely frank with me the first time.”
“What reason?” Lefcourt snapped. “Where’d you get this reason from?”
“That’s not the issue-”
He cut me off and pointed at me. “Bullshit! Don’t call my wife a liar and make allegations, and then tell me you don’t have to substantiate them. If that’s how you do business, it’s a good thing you got yourself a trust fund.” Lefcourt watched me for a reaction, but I had none. I wasn’t surprised that he’d had me researched; I’d have been surprised if he hadn’t. I watched him, too, and saw that there was no real anger beneath the shouting, just posture and tactics.
“I’m not trying to do business with you,” I told him. “I’m trying to talk to your wife.”
Lefcourt carried his cup to the sideboard and filled it with coffee. I didn’t think he needed any more, but I kept my opinion to myself. He stood at his desk, drinking it, while he ran through channels with his remote. He stopped at a music video and watched two girls grind their pelvises together.
“You spoke to her once,” Lefcourt said. “What are you going to hear different the second time around?”
I was getting tired of the back-and-forth. “I don’t know. The truth, maybe.”
“Listen, March-”
I cut him off. “Was she or was she not having an affair with Danes?”
Lefcourt took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His voice was softer when he spoke, and his words were very distinct. His dark eyes glittered above his round cheeks. “It’s not just gossip when you say that about somebody like my wife. That kind of talk calls her professional ethics into question- and her judgment. That kind of talk has an impact- on reputation, on ratings, on contract negotiations. It’s not schoolyard bullshit anymore, March, it’s serious business.” He tapped his small mouth with his finger.
I sighed again. “I don’t give a shit about her ethics or her sex life. I just want to know where Danes is.”
Lefcourt tossed the remote on the desk and came back to the sofa and stood behind it. “She can’t tell you anything.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“A husband knows things,” he said, and there was a grim little smile on his little mouth.
“Things like where Danes might be, maybe?”
“That’s not something I keep track of.”
“Not now,” I asked, “or not ever?”
Lefcourt smirked. “What’s got you so convinced that something was going on between them anyway? What’ve you seen?”
He was relentless in his fishing, and I decided to tug a little on the line. “She left stuff at his place,” I said.
Lefcourt’s face got tight. His tanned forehead was shiny. “What stuff? And what proof do you have that it’s hers?”
I shook my head. “I’m not interested in proving it.”
Lefcourt paced behind the sofa and pointed at me, trotting out the anger again. “You’d better be prepared to, if you’re going to go around talking like that. You’re a deep enough pocket, March. You screw up Linda’s earning capacity, and I promise I’ll fucking empty you out.” I stood up and Lefcourt seemed startled. “Where are you going?”
“It seems a safe bet that your wife isn’t showing up anytime soon, and we’re going round and round here and getting nowhere, so I figured it was time to leave.”
Lefcourt stared at me for a few seconds. “Have you heard a word that I’ve said?” he asked.
“You know, I was about to ask you the same thing.”
I was at the door when Lefcourt called to me. “I meant it, March, about leaving her alone. Any more crap like your chat-room stunt, and there’ll be a flock of lawyers picking on your bones.” I looked back at him but said nothing. “I meant it about Danes, too. Neither one of us knows where he is, and neither one of us gives a shit.”
Peter Spiegelman
JM02 – Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home
17
“Sure, I remember the guy,” Phyllis said. “A few more customers like him, I’ll burn the place down and go back to being a parole officer.” It was late afternoon, and I was calling the hotels that had appeared on Danes’s credit card statement. The Copper Beech Inn, in Lenox, Massachusetts, was first on my list. Phyllis was the owner, and her voice was rough and friendly through the telephone.
“He was a real piece of work,” she continued, laughing. “Had something to say about everything, from the pillows, to the coffee, to the water pressure, and none of it was good. We love guests like thatthey make it all worthwhile.”
“Was he there with anyone?”
“Nope, it was just him and his sunny disposition.”
“Had he ever been there before?”
“Not before or since, thank God.”
“Any idea what he was doing up there? That time of year isn’t ideal for leaf-peeping.”
Phyllis laughed again. “Back in January, it would’ve been more like snow-peeping. But folks do come up then, for cross-country skiing or just to get away. I have no idea what Chuckles was doing, though. Can’t say he seemed real relaxed.”
I thanked Phyllis and made my next call, to the Maidstone Tavern in East Hampton. A guy named Tim answered. He was arch and breathy and kept putting me on hold, and it took him a long while to tell me very little. Eventually, he confirmed that Danes had been a guest there about three months earlier and that he’d not been back since, but he had only vague memories of Danes himself and couldn’t say if he had been alone during his stay. I got off the line before a headache took hold.
I sat back from my long oak table and looked at the TV screen. Linda Sovitch’s muted image appeared. Her mouth moved, her white teeth flashed, and then she was gone, replaced by an ad for a German car. I thought- again- about my morning visit with her husband.
Aaron Lefcourt hadn’t registered much shock at the notion of his wife carrying on with Gregory Danes; the closest he’d come was an imitation of indignity. He was much more interested in how I knew about the affair and in how much noise I planned to make. Which, when I considered it, made a kind of pragmatic sense: the fact that she’d been sleeping with one of her regular guests- especially one as tainted as Danes- wouldn’t do Sovitch’s career any good. An imaginative plaintiff’s lawyer could even use it to turn her- and her network- into collateral damage in one of the investor suits still floating around. Reason enough, I supposed, for a practical man like Lefcourt to want things kept quiet. But was it also the reason Danes hadn’t come home?