Bracco stepped into the breach. "Harlen said you knew Mrs. Ross. I wonder if you could tell us a little about her before we go and interview her."
"Why would you want to do that? Surely she isn't any kind of a suspect?"
Fisk replied frankly, "We're on what you might call a short leash with Lieutenant Glitsky. This is our first real case and I think he wants us to work in from way outside. Not spook any important witnesses with naive questions."
"Parnassus may be part of the motive, if there is one." Bracco's tone was confident, as though he'd done this kind of thing a hundred times before.
"But Nancy Ross?" West asked. "Was she even there when Markham died? She would have had to be at the hospital, wouldn't she?"
"She's not a suspect," Fisk reiterated. "We're just interested in the personal side of Parnassus, if you will. The players. If there might be anything there."
"Well…" She put her cup down. "I really don't know Malachi Ross at all, although of course we've met several times. Nancy, on the other hand, I know fairly well. She is a lovely person. Very active, socially, I mean. She also volunteers with the Opera Board, the Kidney Foundation, several other charities, many of a medical nature." West narrowed her eyes slightly. "I may as well tell you that politically, as well, she's been a friend. So I'm afraid I'm not going to be a very good source of dirt."
"We're not looking for dirt," Bracco assured her. Though the idea that there might be some dirt was appealing, this wasn't the venue to pursue it. "Was she a nurse, by the way?"
West shook her head no. "I don't believe Nancy has ever worked for a living. I mean, at a real job. She's never needed to. She comes from money."
"But even when her husband was young? To help out?" Bracco asked.
West laughed. "When her husband was young, Inspector, Nancy was a baby. She's Dr. Ross's second wife. I'd be surprised if she's thirty-five." A cloud crossed her brow. "Her parents weren't altogether taken with the marriage. I remember hearing that the money from that source dried up. They didn't like the idea of Nancy being a trophy wife for an older man, and they cut her off entirely. I mean her money. Not that it mattered, as it turns out. Malachi does very well"-she shook her head in commiseration-"as the entire city now knows."
Harlen finally thought of a question. "Does she do anything with her husband? For Parnassus?"
The supervisor shook her head. "I don't really think so, not specifically with the company. But she entertains all the time, and I suppose to some degree that's part of his business."
"All the time?" Bracco asked.
A nod. "I don't know how she does it with the small children-she's got her twin girls, I think they're about six-but I suppose with the nannies…" She collected her thoughts a moment. "But back to your question, I'd guess she throws a really lavish party once a month, with smaller affairs-charity do's-two or three times a week."
Bracco wasn't familiar with the lifestyle, and didn't seem to understand it. "This would be most weeks?"
"I'd say so. When she's in town."
"As opposed to where?"
"Well…" She smiled and opened her palms in front of her. "Wherever she wants to go, I'd suppose. They have a second place-really stunning, I've been there, seven or eight thousand square feet-right on the lake at Tahoe. And I know they-or she and the girls-they Christmas at Aspen or Park City. They have their own plane, I believe."
Darrel Bracco jogged through the rain with his partner, got to his car and into his seat. When Harlen was buckling up beside him, he caught his eye. "Wow."
"Real money," Fisk agreed. "Real live money."
"Their own airplane? I'd like my own airplane."
"How could you pay for the gas to go anywhere, though?"
"Yeah, there's that." Bracco pulled out into the traffic. The rain continued as though it would never end, drifting in sheets before them. It was nearly noon, and still dark as dusk, and after a bit, Bracco's expression closed down to match it. "But we knew they were rich to begin with, didn't we? I don't see what else it gets us."
Fisk considered that. "It got us a better cup of coffee than Ed's body shop."
"At least that." The message, especially welcome coming from Fisk, was a good one. They were finally working a righteous homicide, not a variant of hit and run. And the truth was that it wasn't the same at all. Now, without any real guidance, the job was to follow where their intelligence and instincts led them. They were gathering random information, that was all. And by definition much of it would be irrelevant. But some of it might be important-you just didn't know until you knew.
Without any discussion, Bracco turned west, toward Kaiser and Ann Kensing's house. Fisk, concentrating, sat in a deep silence for a couple of blocks. Then, "Darrel."
"Yeah?"
"What does a plane cost, you think?"
"I think it's one of those things where if you've got to ask, you can't afford it."
But his partner was a ball of surprises today. Something had started his engine over this investigation, and now he was obviously pursuing a train of thought. "No, not that. I mean just the upkeep alone-the hangar, the gas, monthly payments, insurance?"
"I don't know. I suppose it would depend on where you keep it, the size of the plane, all that. Why?"
Fisk shrugged. "I'm thinking about a million two. How far it goes."
This wasn't a hard one for Darrel. "If I had a million two, I'd be retired on the beach in Costa Rica. Where'd that figure come from?"
"That's what Ross makes a year." Bracco shot a glance of utter skepticism across the seat, and Fisk retorted, "Hey, that was the number in the paper-'CityTalk.' It's got to be true. But my point isn't how much money it is. It's whether it's enough."
This made Bracco laugh. "It's enough, trust me."
"Is it? Two mansions, a past marriage, which means alimony and probably child support. A new, young, party-giving society wife, kids in private schools, servants, airplanes, vacations."
"A million two, though." For Darrel Bracco, son of a cop, a million dollars might as well be a trillion. They were both unfathomably large sums of money, a lifetime's worth of money.
Clearly, though, not so for Fisk. "You ever read a book called Bonfire of the Vanities?"
"Was that a book? I think I saw the movie."
"Yeah, well, the movie sucked, but it was a book first. Anyway, a cool thing in the book was this guy running down the list of his expenses, showing how impossible it was to get along on only a million dollars a year. And this was like ten years ago."
"He should have called me," Bracco said. "I could have helped him out."
"The point," Fisk pressed on, "is that maybe we just did learn something we can use from Aunt Kathy. Instead of concentrating on how rich Ross is, it might be smarter to think how poor he is. I mean, face it, if your expenses are greater than your income, you're poor, right? No matter what you make."
They stopped at Kaiser first and discovered that Mrs. Kensing had called in sick.
The rain that had been falling steadily since last night had found a new life. Monsoonlike, driven nearly horizontal by strong winds off the ocean, the drops pelted both inspectors as they stood on her front stoop. She answered the door wearing heavy gray socks, designer jeans, and a red, cowl-neck pullover. Bracco's immediate impression was that she hadn't slept in a couple of days.