I checked my voice mail when I got home. There was nothing from Neary, but there was a message from Paul Gargosian.
“Don’t know if you still want to talk, but I’m home now. You have my number.” I did and I used it, and left him yet another message. Then I checked my e-mail. At long last, Gregory Danes’s phone records had arrived. I clicked on the attachments and scanned through the reports and felt my heart sink.
“Shit,” I whispered.
Neary called on Wednesday morning, and I was downtown in twenty minutes. DiLillo and Sikes were sitting on his office sofa. I leaned on the windowsill and Neary nodded at DiLillo.
“There’s surveillance at all the locations,” she began. “Four out of four. They’re using a lot of people, and they must be burning through a lot of cash. They’re running three eight-hour shifts at each site, and a round-robin deal with the cars, switching them from site to site, so the same one doesn’t show up at the same place two days in a row. As far as we could tell, the surveillance is static; we don’t think they’re tailing anybody. But we’d have to work it with more guys to be sure.” She held up a fat manila folder. “I’ve got the stills for you.”
I opened the folder and leafed through it. It was full of photographs, of men and cars. There were crisp daylight shots and grainy nighttime ones, from long distances and from close up and at odd angles, but all of them were clear enough to ID faces and read plate numbers. The men in the pictures were of various types: white and black and Hispanic, young and old, fat and lean. They didn’t look like brain surgeons, but then again they didn’t look like junkies or flashers or racetrack touts, either. Except for a certain wariness around their eyes, they were a mostly unremarkable bunch. There were a lot of different men in the pictures, and I stopped counting after a dozen. I didn’t recognize any of them, though I saw a black Grand Prix, a brown Cavalier, a dirty red hatchback, and a light-blue van that all looked familiar.
I was quiet for a while, and the three of them looked at me. My jaw felt tight and I heard a pulse thrumming in my ears. It wasn’t a surprise; I’d known they were out there. Still, it galled.
“At my place too?” I said. My voice sounded far away.
DiLillo nodded. “Uh-huh,” she said. “But they’re being real careful about it, if it’s any consolation. At least two cars, and they never park on your block.”
“Who are they?” I asked.
“We’re still working on IDs for some of them, but what we have so far is that they’re all independents- small-time, one-man shops, like you. No offense.”
“We think they’re subcontracting,” Neary said.
“For who?”
Neary looked at Sikes, who gazed out the window as he spoke. “I know a few of these guys, and one of them owes me. I braced him last night. He doesn’t know the client- he swears up and down he doesn’tbut he knows the prime contractor, the guy that signs his check. It’s Marty Czerka.”
My brow furrowed. “Who’s that?”
Sikes shook his head regretfully, and he and DiLillo exchanged sour smiles.
“Marty?” DiLillo said. “Marty’s the guy who put the sleaze in sleazeball.”
Sikes’s laugh was almost a whisper. “Yeah. The guy who put the douche in douche bag.”
DiLillo giggled. “The guy who put the fat in fat fuck.”
Neary shook his head. “Thanks,” he said to them. “That was helpful.” He turned to me. “Marty’s a PI. He’s got a small agency, him and a brother-in-law and an idiot nephew, all in an office on Canal Street. About a thousand years ago he was on the job uptown, working vice. His fifteen minutes of fame came when he busted some aging rock star in a suite at the Carlyle, with a carry-on full of coke, two semiautomatics, and an underage hooker with a busted arm. Got Marty on television and everything. It took him all of a week to fuck it up.
“First, he gets caught peddling pictures of the bust to some supermarket tabloid. Then another of those rags claims he promised them an exclusive on the photos, and they sue the shit out of him. And finally it comes out that Marty and the hooker have a longterm thing going, and the two of them maybe set up the whole show. He’s lucky they didn’t fry his large ass, but as it was that was his ticket to the private sector.
“Since then he’s made a specialty of any slimy thing that comes along: ugly divorce cases, ugly custody fights, ugly sexual harassment claims- a real dog parade. And whatever side of the shitpile Marty is on, it’s never the right one. He’s a fixture in some circles, the way Fresh Kills Landfill is, only Marty smells worse. I’m surprised you’ve never run across him.”
“I don’t breathe the same rarefied air as you big corporate types,” I said. “Who’s he working for now?”
Neary shook his head. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”
I turned to Sikes. “Your pal didn’t know, but what about these other guys? Think one of them might have a name?”
Sikes lifted a skeptical brow. “I’d guess Marty would keep that card pretty close to the vest; he wouldn’t want any of these geniuses going direct to the client and cutting him out of the deal. But shit does happen, especially in a group this big; the hens get together and get to gossiping. I wouldn’t bet on anybody talking, though- not without some serious leverage.”
“They’re all such good soldiers?” I asked.
DiLillo shook her head. “Marty buys a lot of freelance help, so he’s a regular meal ticket for a lot of these guys. They won’t want to fuck that up. And half of what they’re selling is their ability to keep their mouths shut. Nobody wants a rep for being a talker; it sucks for business.”
She had a point. “Anybody have leverage with one of these guys?” I asked.
“I shot my wad yesterday,” Sikes said. DiLillo shook her head.
“Think some cash would motivate them?”
Sikes smiled. “They’ll all take your money- no doubt about it- the problem is knowing who to give it to and what the hell you’re getting in return. Finding that out could be expensive.”
“How about Czerka himself?”
“You never know with Marty,” Neary said. “He’s a creep, and as a general rule you’ve got to figure he’s always for sale. On the other hand, he can’t afford to burn too many bridges. I think with Marty it’ll depend on how much he’s making off the client, what he thinks the blowback would be from burning him, and how much you’re willing to grease the rails.”
I thought about that for a while. “Surveillance still going?” I asked.
“Until you say otherwise,” Neary said.
“A couple of days more, then.” I looked at Sikes. “You think that friend of yours will give Czerka a heads-up?”
A chilly grin spread across Sikes’s face. “He’s not that stupid.” He and DiLillo got up and left. Neary sat back in his chair.
“Somebody’s spending a lot of money on this,” he said.
“You mean besides me?”
“Besides you. And that means somebody with deep pockets and motivation. It also means that Marty will suck at this tit for as long as he can.”
“If buying him doesn’t work, there’s always charm or deceit- or both.”
“Charm’s no good on Marty; he’s got no receptors for it. And I wouldn’t put too much faith in trickery either. He’s no rocket scientist, but Marty has a sewer-rat kind of shrewdness.”
“How about a nice beating, then?”
“You’re not paying nearly enough for that. No, I think we take a walk up to Marty’s office and have a talk. He’ll either negotiate or he’ll tell us to fuck off. And if he does, we can still make a run at the hired help.”
We were quiet for a while and Neary gave me a speculative look.
“I figured you’d be a little more excited about this,” he said.
“I’m smiling on the inside. I got Danes’s phone records last night- his home and his cell.”