“And?”
She sighed again. “And I don’t want to do it.” I drew a breath to speak, but Nina kept on going. “I don’t want to do any of this anymore.” She looked at me and I looked back. “You know what I’m saying? I want to stop. I want you to stop.” She turned away and popped another B amp;H out of the pack and lit it. The smoke vanished in the night air.
“You want me to stop looking for Greg?”
She stared at the black water and the cityscape and nodded. “I appreciate what you’ve done, but-”
“What’s this about?” I said. Nina looked at me again. Her mouth was tight and her eyes were narrow. She ran a hand through her hair and looked down at her clogs.
“I didn’t realize I had to explain myself to you,” she said, and the nasty familiar edge came up in her voice.
“I’ve been working hard on this thing for nearly two weeks now, Nina- and getting poked at and threatened and tailed in the processand all of a sudden you tell me to drop it. I think you owe me some explanation of where the hell this is coming from.”
“Don’t throw that crap about threats and being followed my way,” she snorted. “It seems to me all that shit comes with your job description. And as far as what I owe you, I owe you what’s on your fucking invoice, pal, and nothing more.”
She blew out a big cloud of smoke and glared at me. Then she held up her hands and shook her head.
“Christ, we really push each other’s buttons, don’t we? I haven’t gone at it like this with anyone since Greg.” She puffed some more and rubbed the back of her neck. “Look, this isn’t out of nowhere, March. I told you up front I didn’t want to sink a lot of money into this, and you said yourself you’ve done almost everything you can without it costing me a lot more. I decided I don’t want to spend a lot more.” She took another pull on her cigarette and it sizzled and shrank noticeably.
“So it’s just the money?”
Nina shook her head. “It’s the money… and the fact that I’m tired of this back-and-forth about the cops. I know what you think and you know what I think and I doubt either one of us is going to change. Am I way off base about that?” She wasn’t.
“There’s something wrong, Nina,” I said quietly. “There’s something wrong about Greg. The fact that he stopped calling, the fact that other people are out there looking-”
“Jesus, again with this!” She massaged her forehead with her fingertips. “I don’t want to hear it, okay?” Her voice was loud, and a couple of dog walkers looked at us. She traded stares with them but took the volume down a notch. “I don’t give a damn about whatever else he’s involved in. I’m not going to the cops, and I don’t want you to either. Can I be any clearer than that?” I didn’t answer. “You promised me confidentiality,” she said. “And that’s what I expect.”
“That’s what you’ll get,” I said.
Nina sighed and climbed down from the back of the bench and stood before me. “You’ll send a bill?” I looked at her and nodded. She flicked her cigarette away and put her hands in her pockets. “For chrissakes, don’t take it so personal.”
I took a deep breath and started to speak. And stopped. Why bother? “Tell Ines thanks for dinner,” I said. “And tell Billy good-bye.” Nina nodded and walked away, already fishing for another smoke. I heard her lighter spark behind me.
Peter Spiegelman
JM02 – Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home
18
Warren Bradley was saying something about the CIA, but my mind was wandering. In fairness, it wasn’t Warren’s fault. He was an excerpt from a job interview textbook: well groomed, well spoken, confident, and poised. His dark hair was going gracefully gray at the temples and was expensively cut, and if he were any more distinguished-looking, he’d have to run for office. His white shirt was spotless and his blue suit was pristine. Even the racehorses that galloped on his necktie did so with calm assurance. And as far as I could tell, he was entirely sober. I was the one having problems.
“… of course, that was before counterterrorism became a growth industry,” Warren said. He looked at me expectantly, an uncertain smile on his handsome face.
I wrenched my thoughts away from Nina Sachs and the ferry landing, and back to the conference room at Klein amp; Sons and the interview with Warren. I was pretty sure he’d been making a joke, and I smiled back at him. I guessed right, and he looked reassured and kept on talking.
I read through Warren’s rA©sumA© again. Like him, it was perfect: Ivy League college, law school, a stint in the air force, another with the Bureau, and ten years at a big Wall Street firm, where he’d risen steadily through the ranks to the number-two spot in their internal security department.
“Tell me about your assignment in London,” I said. That kept him going for another ten minutes.
Warren was my second interview of the day. Alice Hoyt had been my first, and she too had been sober and confident and eminently presentable, though that’s where the similarities ended. Alice was medium height and broad-shouldered, and there were a lot of laugh lines around her full mouth and dark eyes and a lot of gray in her short Afro. She had graduated public high school in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, and although she had served in the military too, it had been in the army as a lance corporal. From there she’d joined the NYPD and attended Queens College at night for a BS and, later, an MS in criminal justice. She’d spent over twenty years on the job, fifteen as a detective and five as the boss of a detective squad in Midtown North. From there she’d gone private, to a DC firm that did a lot of corporate consulting and, as Alice told it, employed at least as many publicists as it did operatives. After five years, she was tired of the travel and of the time away from her husband and three kids.
“I’ve been away from Brooklyn too long,” she’d said, with a wry smile.
Warren’s deep voice wound down. It was my turn to talk again.
I went back and forth with him for another twenty minutes, and I mostly paid attention. We exchanged firm handshakes and Mrs. K showed him out, swooning only slightly as she did. I went into Ned’s office.
Ned wasn’t there, but my sister Liz was. She was sitting on Ned’s sofa, her shoes off and her long legs propped on the teak coffee table. She looked up from a sheaf of papers and pushed narrow reading glasses onto her forehead.
“Where’s your boss?” I said.
“Lunch meeting. You do more interviews?” I nodded, and Liz grinned. “Any bodily fluids spilled in there?”
“Not today.”
“Off your game, huh?” Liz dropped her glasses back on her nose and returned to her papers. I took off my suit jacket, loosened my tie, and sat. I put back my head and closed my eyes. I heard Liz turn some pages, and after a while she spoke.
“What’s wrong with you?”
I answered without moving. “I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“I take it there was no upside to that.”
“Not that I could tell.”
“What was the problem?”
I opened an eye. She was still scanning her papers. “I got fired yesterday.”
She looked up. “Surely not for the first time.”
“It doesn’t happen so often that I’m used to it,” I said. “And this time I’m not even sure of the reason.”
Liz stared at me for several moments without expression. “Well… you can always reconsider Ned’s offer. We’ll find you a nice little office down the hall, maybe a cute assistant…” I flipped her the bird and she went back to her papers. I closed my eyes, and thoughts of Nina Sachs and her case spun in my head.
An hour of sitting at the ferry landing and another few spent turning in my bed hadn’t improved my understanding of why Nina had given me my walking papers, or brought me any closer to figuring out where Danes had gone to or why he hadn’t come back. I’d gone over and over what I knew about him and what I could only guess at, and no matter how many times I did, it never amounted to much.