I gave the guard at the desk my name, which he passed along over the phone to someone else. He listened, nodded, and hung up; then he told me to sign in, pointed at a pair of double glass doors, said "Upstairs."
I went up open-riser oak steps with an oak rail and a skylight at the top. Ferns hung in the light well in white plastic baskets. At the top was a hall lined with oak doors. The pair at the end were labeled President. I went through them into a large outer office with a beige carpet, and framed pictures of carrots, zucchini, and tomatoes on the walls.
A young woman with a heart-shaped face smiled behind a white desk in the middle of the room. Her glossy blond hair was an organized cap cut neatly at chin length. She wore a blue wool dress, and her nails were an understated length and an understated color.
"Did anyone ever tell you you have a beautiful voice?" I asked before she spoke.
She blushed but kept her composure. The effect was becoming. "Mr. Smith? Mr. Sanderson has been expecting you. Please have a seat; I'll just tell him you're here."
She picked up the phone on her desk, spoke into it, smiled at me again. Smiling was something she did well, probably from practice. I sat on a beige fabric-covered chair, the kind that puts you too low to the ground. I admired the vegetables. Five minutes; ten. For a man who'd been anxious to see me, in particular, Mark Sanderson didn't seem very excited now that I was here.
I took out a cigarette, rolled it around in my fingers a little, lit it. After the first drag the phone on the desk buzzed. The secretary answered it, hung up, smiled again. "Mr. Sanderson will see you now. Go right in." She nodded toward a door in the wall behind her.
Funny how often that cigarette thing worked.
Mark Sanderson's office was a corner office, as I'd imagined, with a view out over the plant, the parking lot, and the soft hills wrapping the valley. Sanderson's desk, though, was facing the door I came through. He'd have to turn his back on his work to get the benefit of that view.
"Smith." Sanderson rose, came out from behind the desk as I came in. He extended a well-kept hand in a solid handshake. A smile came and went on his round baby face, leaving no trace. His steel-colored eyes studied me. Then, with the casual tyranny of a man so used to being obeyed that he rarely gave orders, he said, "Sit down."
I sat.
Sanderson perched on the edge of the desk, one foot still on the floor, one hand folded over the other. I watched the action behind his hard eyes. "Look," he said, "I think we may have gotten off to a bad start earlier. If it was my fault, I apologize. I can be abrupt, I know." The smile blinked on and off again.
"I can be pretty rough myself," I said. "Let's forget it. What was it you wanted to see me about?"
"Frankly, I need your help." He walked back around the desk, sat in a leather swivel chair. I was left trying to read his face against the glare from the uncurtained windows. "I need to find a boy named Jimmy Antonelli. I've been told you can help me."
The cigarette I'd started in the outer office hadn't been much fun. I took out another, lit it, looked around for a place to throw the match. There was an ashtray on a credenza against the wall. Sanderson didn't move, so I got up, walked around him, picked it up. I repositioned my chair before I sat back down.
I pulled on the cigarette, breathed out some smoke. "Why do you want him?"
"It's a personal problem."
"Jimmy's got some of those, too. Why do you want him?"
"Well." He smiled again. This one was longer-lasting than the others, but it vanished as completely. "Well, I really don't want him. But my daughter seems to have run off with him."
"Alice?" I asked.
He looked at me blankly. "My daughter. Ginny. Who's Alice?"
"Never mind. What makes you think your daughter's with Jimmy?"
"They've been seeing each other. Two nights ago Ginny didn't come home. I haven't seen her since."
"Did you call the police?"
"Naturally." He frowned impatiently. "And they came to the same conclusion I had already come to."
"If you've talked to the police you know they're looking for Jimmy, too. So why call me?"
"You're a friend of his."
"That doesn't mean I can find him."
"Have you tried?"
"I’m not a cop."
"Doesn't that mean you're likely to do better than they have?"
I said, "Do you have a picture of your daughter, Mr. Sanderson?"
He started to say something, but stopped. He picked up a photograph from his desk, stood and handed it to me. It was a studio portrait, maybe a yearbook picture, of a small, beautiful girl with thick golden hair billowing around a delicately boned face. A hint of a smile, high red cheeks, and something in her deep blue eyes that sent a chill up my spine. Sanderson watched me. "She's fifteen," he said, unexpectedly softly.
I looked up quickly. His face had lost none of its arrogance and his mouth was still hard, but his eyes held a sudden tenderness, a familiar desperation that cut through me like a knife.
He stood abruptly, turned to the window, hands in his pockets. "I didn't want Ginny growing up around here, with the kind of punks that hang out in McDonald's and drag race down the highway. I sent her to boarding school. But like any kid, she probably thinks the grass is greener where she's not allowed to go, and she's naïve enough to fall for an SOB like Antonelli if he came on to her."
"Do you know Jimmy?"
He turned back to me. "By reputation."
"How did they meet, if she's in boarding school?"
He regarded me silently. I thought he wasn't going to answer; but he said, "She was sent home—suspended—a month ago."
"For what?"
"Her roommate, a first-year girl, was selling drugs. When they caught the little bitch, she claimed Ginny was involved, too.
"It wasn't true?"
"Of course it wasn't." There was ice in his words and his eyes. "Ginny didn't like that girl from the first day. She was loud and crude, Ginny said. I wish she'd told me that then. I'd have had that girl moved in two seconds flat."
I put my cigarette out. "So Ginny was home, with nothing to do, and she met Jimmy at the soda shop?"
His eyes hardened. "I don't have any idea how they met. And believe me, if I'd known they were seeing each other, I'd have forbidden it."
"How did you find out?"
"I was told yesterday morning, by a friend."
"Why didn't your friend tell you sooner?"
"How the hell do I know?" he burst out, then clamped his jaw shut immediately, the jutting tendons in his neck proof that he was working to contain anger he hadn't wanted to show.
I leaned forward, put the photograph back on his desk. "I don't know where she is, Mr. Sanderson."
"I know where she is." His voice was tight. "She's with Jimmy Antonelli. All I need is for you to tell me where he is."
I didn't say anything. His hard eyes looked me over. He said, shaping his mouth as though the words tasted bad, "Of course, I expect to pay for this information. Whatever a man like you would expect to be paid."
The sun broke suddenly through the dark clouds behind him, streaking the sky with slanted rays. "Mr. Sanderson," I said, "I don't know where Jimmy is. I don't know that your daughter's with him. I don't know that I could find him if I wanted to. But you're right about one thing: I'm a friend of his. I won't obstruct a police investigation, but that doesn't mean I have to be point man on this."
"Goddammit!" he exploded. "Goddammit, Smith, we're talking about my daughter!"
"I'm sorry," I said, toughening myself against the pain in his eyes.
For a moment he didn't speak. Then suddenly his eyes became hard again, and he smiled that firefly smile. "You have a cabin near North Blenheim, don't you? Off Thirty? I hear you come up here a lot. It's a long way from New York. You must like it here."
"Your friend tell you that, too?"