“I know this,” I said. “Who is it?” Billy looked pleased.
“Band’s called Galactic, the album is-”
“Crazyhorse Mongoose,” I interrupted. “I haven’t heard this for a while.” Billy was taken aback, and maybe a little impressed. And that got us onto a whole other topic.
Billy’s taste in music was not the typical twelve-year-old’s, and it was catholic, to say the least. It ranged from sixties and seventies soul to jazz fusion to ska to old-school punk and hip-hop, and he talked about musicians and bands with a fervor that surpassed even his comic book discourses. Many of his favorites were obscure, but I knew a few of them, which surprised Billy some more.
“Do you play anything?” I asked.
Billy shrugged. “A little bass, but I don’t spend enough time with it.” He looked at me and hesitated. “My dad’s always trying to get me going on the piano.”
“That’s what he plays, right?”
Billy nodded. “Shit, yes. He’s been playing since he was five or something, and he’s amazing. He’s into classical stuff. I told him he should listen to some jazz, but he thinks it’s bullshit. I told him to check out Monk, but he doesn’t want to know.”
He looked down and thought about something and laughed to himself.
“Check this,” he said, and he sprang off the sofa and trotted down the hall toward his room. From the kitchen, Ines watched him go. Then she looked at me and brushed a strand of damp hair away from her face. Billy was back in under two minutes, holding a glossy photograph.
“This is what my dad knows about jazz,” he said, and handed me the photo. It was a picture of three men in black tie, standing side by side. On the right was Gregory Danes, and in the center was a world-renowned bassist, an aging jazz icon and darling of the NPR set. On the left was a white-haired man with hollow cheeks whose name I didn’t know, but whose face I recognized from a similar photo I’d seen in Danes’s apartment. The famous bassist had autographed the picture in black marker: To my buddy, Bill- keep swingin’, man. Billy laughed.
“Personally, I think the guy plays elevator music,” Billy said. But I could tell he was pleased to have the photo, and proud that his father had met the great man- and too full of adolescent cool to admit to either.
“Who’s the other guy?” I asked him, but Ines called to him and interrupted any answer he might have given.
“Guillermo, set the table, will you?” Billy rolled his eyes dramatically but hoisted himself off the sofa and into the kitchen. I followed him.
“Need some help?” I asked.
“I got it,” he said. He made a stack of plates and flatware and carried it to the living room, to the green glass table near the sofa. Ines and I watched him.
“He’s in a better mood,” I said quietly.
Ines laughed softly. “For the moment. We went to visit a school in Manhattan this afternoon. It is very small and it caters solely to gifted children, and they have a very impressive maths program. The atmosphere there is very… welcoming.”
“He liked it?”
She smiled. “His exact words were, It doesn’t suck.” Her imitation of Billy’s disaffected, cracking tenor was spot-on, and I laughed and so did she.
“Will he go there?” I asked.
Ines’s face grew still. “I do not know,” she said. She turned back to the stove and the skewers of beef. “The grill is hot and these will not take long to cook. Could you call Nina please, detective?”
Nina and Ines sat on the sofa, and Billy and I sat on cushions on the floor. The food was delicious. Besides the salad and the kebabs, Ines had made a couscous, and Nina whipped up a few more batches of daiquiris- virgins for Billy and me.
Dinner conversation started with Nina’s upcoming show at a small but influential art museum in Connecticut, meandered around to the sorry state of the New York City art scene, and somehow found its way to the love lives of the half-dozen or so galleristas who were sometimes in Ines’s employ. Billy speculated freely on who was doing what to whom, but he grew silent and squirmy when a girl named Reese was mentioned. Nina teased him.
“Reese is this little blond thing from Santa Barbara,” Nina said to me. “She goes to Cooper Union, and she works for Nes on the weekends. She’s nineteen and she’s got this snaky little bod and Billy’s totally hot for her.” Billy colored deeply. “I’m telling you, Bill, she’s single again and I think she’s into younger stuff.” Billy slurped the last of his daiquiri and flipped her the bird.
Throughout, Billy was the DJ, spinning Curtis Mayfield, The Radiators, The Tom Tom Club, and more Galactic, and he and Ines slid, spun, and bumped to all the danceable tracks. Billy was wild and comic and Ines was liquid. They dragged Nina up a few times and made an earnest go at me too, but I was resolute.
Ines brought out coffee and a big bowl of cut fruit, and when these were gone I did the clearing. Billy surprised Ines and Nina by volunteering to help. We were in the kitchen when he asked, in a low voice, about his father.
“You know where he is yet?”
I shook my head. “Not yet,” I said. “You have any thoughts about it?”
He was scraping food into the trash and he didn’t look up. “Not a fucking one,” he said softly.
Billy finished loading the dishwasher and I went into the living room. Ines and Nina were on the sofa, leaning into each other and laughing at something. Nina trailed a finger up the curve of Ines’s bare calf, and Ines closed her eyes.
“We should talk,” I said. Nina and Ines disengaged. Ines stood and gathered up some stray glasses.
“I need smokes,” Nina said. “Walk with me.”
The sun was gone and the tropical-chemical colors had bled from the sky, and only the pinkish city glow remained. But it was still mild outside and the streets were still benign. There was a cluster of people down the block, standing outside a chic-looking bar. They were drunk and cheerful, and they assumed everyone else was too. They were wrestling with the question of what to do next and confusing each other deeply in the process. One of the girls called out to us.
“Hey, what do you think? Williamsburg? Or do we go to the new place on Smith Street?” We didn’t answer, but Nina shot them a sloppy salute and they all laughed. We went around the corner, and our heels made a knocking sound on the cobblestones. Nina was wobbly on the uneven paving and she steadied herself on my arm. She bought Benson amp; Hedges at a twenty-four-hour grocery and slit the pack open as soon as we got outside.
“Want to sit by the ferry landing?” she asked. She didn’t wait for an answer but headed toward the river. I followed.
There were a lot of people in the little park by the water- packs of teenage boys and girls looking for each other and something to do, couples strolling hand in hand, dog walkers, tourists, and more than a few photographers, trying hard to capture the dizzying view. The Manhattan skyline rose, glittering and wet, from the black river, and the office towers seemed to lean toward us. My eyes were drawn to the empty patch of sky downtown, and I felt my throat close up and my teeth clench.
We found a bench. The seating slats were badly splintered, and we perched on the back rests. Nina smoked in silence, and after a while I gave her my report. I told her about my meeting with Lefcourt and about my futile attempts to track Danes to the Hamptons, the Berkshires, and Bermuda. I didn’t have much to say and it didn’t take long to say it, and when I was done Nina kept quiet.
“Have you thought any more about the cops?” I asked eventually.
She sighed heavily and took a last drag on her cigarette and flicked it into the darkness. It landed far off, in a burst of orange cinder. “Yeah, I’ve thought about it.” Her voice was tight.