Which was what this buyer had done. She remembered the closing, because nobody showed up for it, not even MultiCircle’s lawyer. He sent the check by messenger.
Come to think of it, had she ever met the lawyer? They’d spoken on the phone several times, and she had this mental picture of him that looked like the lieutenant on Miami Vice, but had she ever seen him?
She didn’t remember the selling price, but she could ballpark it. All the apartments on a line varied in price — the higher you went, the more you had to pay — and that floor on that line would be, let’s see, three-twenty? Well, give or take ten or fifteen thousand dollars, but that was close, anyway.
Probably a third of that was the view, and wasn’t it spectacular? You didn’t mind sitting around by the hour waiting for prospects when you had that to look out at. She’d enjoyed living there, although she hadn’t been crazy about the neighborhood to begin with. But she liked it better as she got to know it more.
“There’s a place right across the street,” she said, “that’s really super. Jimmy Armstrong’s? Looks like nothing much from the outside, but it’s nice and the food’s sensational. Serious chili, and the selection of beers on tap is outstanding. You ought to check it out.”
I assured her I would.
I called Elaine. “I had a hunch you’d be home,” I said.
“I was out earlier, though. I went to the gym. Of course there were no cabs to be had, but I put on that plastic shmatte and I carried an umbrella. And I still got soaked going and coming, but it didn’t kill me. You’re home, I take it?”
“And staying put.”
“Good, because it doesn’t look as though it’s going to quit soon. If I lived on a lower floor I’d start building an ark.”
I told her what I’d learned about MultiCircle. “Foreign money,” I said, “and no easy way to tell where it came from. One principal or a whole slew of them, and no way to tell that, either. A condo’s an attractive investment, a good hedge against inflation and a way to shift some money here to guard against political or economic instability at home.”
“Wherever home is.”
“Although that probably wouldn’t have been a big consideration, not if they were already incorporated in the Caymans and could stow the money in a dollar account there. Still, it’s a good investment and you can rent it out. There’s usually a minimum rental period, it’s not like a hotel, although some resort condos have the minimum down to three days. In New York it’s generally a month, sometimes longer.”
“And in the Holtzmanns’ building?”
“A month, but it didn’t matter to MultiCircle because they never had a tenant in there. Glenn and his wife” — interesting how I avoided saying her name — “were the first people to spend a night there.”
“And they’d been married all of a week at the time? I bet they did a good job of christening it.”
“MultiCircle paid cash,” I said. “They sent over a check in full payment.”
“So?”
“So how did they lose it? I was thinking foreclosure, but how can you foreclose on a nonexistent mortgage? Sometimes a corporation has its assets seized to satisfy creditors, but this was some kind of shell in the Caymans. What kind of creditors would they have?”
“Their lawyer could probably tell you.”
“Could but wouldn’t. Assuming I knew who he was, which I don’t. She didn’t remember his name. It’s probably on a piece of paper somewhere, and I’ll try to find it, but even if I managed to find the guy I wouldn’t get anything out of him. MultiCircle. You know what that sounds like to me?”
“Like going around in circles?”
“Like wheels within wheels,” I said.
“Does it even matter who they are, or why they lost the property? I mean, if you were investigating me, would you want to know who lived here before I did?”
“This is different,” I said. “There’s something strange about MultiCircle Productions, and there’s something strange about US Asset Reduction Corp., and God knows there’s something strange about Holtzmann. All that strangeness, you’ve got to assume a connection.”
“I guess.”
“I have a feeling it’s right in front of me,” I said. “But I just can’t see it yet.”
I called Joe Durkin. “I actually tried you an hour ago,” he said. “Two, three times. Your line was busy.”
“I’ve been on it all morning.”
“Well, just to set your mind at rest, Gunther Bauer was not the hired agent for an international conspiracy. I was lucky, guy I talked to was polite as can be. I could tell he wanted to laugh in my face, but he managed to control himself. Gunther’s beef with George was personal and deeply felt, according to him. He was nobody’s guided missile. Unless God told him to do it, which is possible, but he wasn’t taking orders from any intermediary.”
“I didn’t really have much faith in that theory anyway.”
“No, but you thought it was worth checking, and you’re an overly stubborn son of a bitch but you’re not stupid.”
“Thanks.”
“The idea was somebody put him up to it to keep George from talking, right?”
“Well, George wasn’t much of a talker. But to close out the case.”
“It was already closed out, though I’ll grant you this slams the door. But if you’re thinking about somebody pulling strings inside Rikers—”
“Which has been known to happen.”
“Oh, no question, but it’s not something your average citizen can do. You can’t take a course at the Learning Annex, ‘How to Arrange a Homicide Behind Prison Walls.’ Might be a popular course, but they haven’t offered it yet.”
“No.”
“So you’re thinking in terms of somebody with reach. You must’ve found something indicates Holtzmann’s dirty.”
“Yes.”
“What did he do?”
“Bought an apartment from a foreigner that nobody was living in.”
“Well, Jesus, that’s just as suspicious as hell, isn’t it?”
“Why would a foreigner buy an apartment and not live in it or rent it out? You got any idea?”
“I don’t know, Matt. Why would a foreigner do anything? Why would a foreigner join the police force?”
“Huh?”
“You didn’t read about that? There’s a proposal to do away with the citizenship requirement on the NYPD.”
“Seriously? Why would they want to do that?”
“To make the department more representative of the population at large. Which is a worthwhile goal, don’t misunderstand me, but that’s a hell of a way to do it. You should hear the PBA delegate on the subject.”
“I can imagine.”
“ ‘Go all the way,’ he says. ‘Why should they even need green cards? Take illegal aliens, take wetbacks. Hang a fucking sign on the Rio Grande, You too can be a police officer.’ He was in rare form.”
“Well, it’s an unusual idea.”
“It’s a terrible idea,” he said, “and it won’t do what they want it to, because what you’ll wind up with is half the male population of Woodside and Fordham Road, donkeys fresh off the Aer Lingus flight. Remember when they did away with the height requirement? That was supposed to get more Hispanics on the force.”
“Did it work?”
“No,” he said. “Of course not. All it brought in was a lot of short Italians.”
I called Holtzmann’s previous landlord, owner of the building in Yorkville where he’d been living when he met Lisa. When I was downtown I’d found the address in an old city directory and got the landlord’s name and address from city real estate records. That’s not always easy, a lot of landlords hide behind corporate shells as hard to penetrate as MultiCircle, but not this fellow. He owned the building, lived with his wife in one of its sixteen units, and served as its superintendent himself.