“I don’t know, I just thought I’d run it by you. Basically, I’m returning your call.”
“Have you given my proposition any further consideration?”
“I gave you my answer last night.”
“That,” he sniggered, “was an answer. You still have time to go back and change it.”
“Nah, I always heard it was better to go with your first answer when you’re being tested. Besides, too much erasing makes it hard to score.”
“Don’t lose my number, Mr. Prager. We’re still only in the first hour of the exam.”
I had to give the guy credit. He didn’t back down easy. I’d have to watch him closely. His type could sneak right up and bite you in the ass.
Detective Rob Gloria was only too happy to meet me at what had once been State Senator Steven Brightman’s community affairs office. Fortyish, bright-eyed and barrel-chested, he looked a little sharper than what I’d expected. Well deserved or not, Missing Persons had the rep of being a dumping ground for the barely adequate and downright inept. And my one close encounter with Missing Persons during the search for Patrick had only served to reinforce its bad reputation. But there were studs and stinkers in every bureau of the NYPD.
The now vacant storefront was on a busy street squeezed between a Chinese takeout and a real estate office. It was not unfamiliar to me. I’d seen pictures of the place in the Spivack file. The only hints of its former tenant were a sun-bleached campaign poster Scotch-taped to the inside of the plate-glass window and, just beneath it, a sign listing the new office address and phone numbers for reaching Brightman.
“You wanna have a look-see?” Detective Gloria asked, jingling a ring of keys.
“Sure.”
He opened the door with the ease of a man who’d done this several times before. He hadn’t had to struggle, figuring out which keys went where. I liked that. He’d spent a lot of time here. This case meant something to him.
“Did you know John Heaton when he was on the job?” I wondered as Gloria pushed the door back for me.
“Nope.” He strode a few feet to his left. “This is approximately where Moira Heaton’s desk was. There were generally three or four other people working here, answering phones and such. She was the last one to leave that night, supposed to lock the doors at eight.”
“Supposed to?”
“No one was here to see her do it, and we only have an iffy witness or two who might or might not have been driving by that say they saw her leaving.”
“But the front door was locked?” I said, my eyes drifting to the gray steel back door.
He followed my gaze. “I’m way ahead of you. You’re figuring someone locked the front door from inside and dragged her out through the back. Didn’t happen that way. Produce delivery to the Chinks next door. There were people in and out of the alleyway for fifteen, twenty minutes.”
“A delivery at night?”
“Because of the holiday the next day. They didn’t wanna get caught short. It’s kosher. We checked ‘em out and the driver, too. Clean all around. Besides, both doors were locked, and the Heaton girl didn’t have keys to the back door. Nope, we figure whatever happened to her didn’t happen here.”
“What makes you think something happened to her and she didn’t just split?”
Detective Gloria looked at me like I had three heads. “Come on, you were on the job. You know.”
“I had to ask.”
“I guess.”
“Why’d this case get to you?”
There was an attempt at denial in his eyes, but it was a weak one. “I used to think it was because she was a cop’s kid, you know? Now I’m not so sure. It’s too fuckin’ clean. Even if she split on her own, it’s too clean. Nothing’s missing from her apartment. Her bank account and credit cards are untouched. There’s zero physical evidence, no witnesses. Look, you get conflicting evidence all the time so’s it can make you crazy. But here, there’s like negative evidence. You work cases long enough, you get a sense about these things. It’s like when you’re riding your patrol sector, you just know when something don’t feel right.”
I knew exactly how that was.
The siren scents of frying ginger and garlic came calling through walls. I asked Rob Gloria if he wanted to heed their call.
“Order me a number five with extra duck sauce on the side,” is what he said.
So we sat and ate, silently at first.
I broke the ice. “There’s something you’re not saying.”
“There’s a lot of things I’m not saying. You’re workin’ for Brightman, right? How come?”
“I guess I could say because he hired me, but the truth is I sort of got forced into taking the job. It’s a long story not worth repeating. Why he hired me is easy. I think he wants to run for higher office and needs to get any stink off him before he tries. I can’t tell you for sure, because I never met the man. What’s John Heaton like?”
“Typical hotheaded donkey. Why?”
“Just curious.”
“Somebody else’s been sniffin’ around, you know?” he said, shoveling a forkful of pork lo mein into his mouth.
“Y. W. Fenn?”
“You met the little prick, huh? Yeah, he’s a queer duck, that Wit. Just being in the same room as him makes me want to shower.”
“You think Brightman did the girl, don’t you?”
“What I think’s my business. What I can prove is something else.”
“Then maybe it’s a good thing Wit and I are around. Maybe we can shake a little dust out of your clean case.”
“I doubt it,” he said, throwing a five on the counter to cover his end. “I doubt it.”
I sat with my mostly untouched food in front of me, watching Detective Gloria’s unmarked Chrysler retreat. Of course, it’s what he didn’t say that intrigued me. His silent accusal of Brightman didn’t shock me, per se. That was the point of this whole exercise. It’s why Brightman needed someone like me. Brightman could jump through hoops of fire and have Jesus himself testify to his innocence, but without concrete evidence that he didn’t do it he was screwed. The public outside his district would treat him with the same silent suspicions as Rob Gloria.
Klaus was just being flippant before when he mentioned my closet philosophy. As it happened, however, his casual remark was quite prescient. Trouble was, I couldn’t prove a negative in Philosophy 101, and I didn’t think my chances had improved with age.
Crocus Valley was a quaint hamlet to the northeast of Glen Cove on the North Shore of Long Island. It proudly displayed its rustic trappings to strangers passing through, but only in an effort to cloak the smell of money. You weren’t apt to see Jags and BMWs out on the street like you might in Sands Point or Great Neck. That’s not to say residents of this little piece of heaven didn’t drive luxury automobiles. Quite the opposite was true. The people of Crocus Valley had that Waspy humility and false sense of good taste to park them around back.
Thomas Geary’s digs weren’t hard to find, as his property line was only a chip and a putt away from the twelfth hole of the Lonesome Piper Country Club. If I got the chance I’d have to sneak a peek to see if the out-of-bounds stakes were made of solid gold. The Gearys’ was a white country manor surrounded by corral-type fencing. I could see stables in the distance, and I recalled Constance talking about her love of riding. A semicircular driveway led up to the front portico. The minimum lots in this neck of the woods were five acres. My guess was the Gearys’ property more than doubled that.
I parked in front. Although the wine business afforded me the luxury of no longer driving a rolling advertisement for AAA membership, there was little danger of the good-taste police citing my host. By the time I made it onto the porch, Geary was standing in the front-door jamb. The sight of him dressed in jeans and riding boots and holding a Manhattan was priceless.
“Come in,” he said, dispensing with his put-on manners.
I followed him into a big study. Here there was a grand piano, naturally, a harp in one corner, a wet bar, and expensive but muted furniture. There was a trophy cabinet filled to the max with medals, ribbons, cups, statuettes, etc. All bore Connie’s name and were for excellence in music or riding. There was a rustic fireplace with a maw bigger than my garage door. Since I hadn’t seen another car outside, I figured maybe Brightman had parked in the fireplace.