The Cabinet of Curiosities (20 page)

“Mr. Fairhaven—”

Fairhaven grinned. “You want a confession?”

This temporarily stopped Smithback.

Fairhaven lowered his voice to confessional level. “I have committed two unforgivable crimes.”

Smithback tried to maintain the hard-bitten reportorial look he cultivated in instances like these. He knew this was going to be some kind of trick, or joke.

“My two crimes are these—are you ready?”

Smithback checked to see if the recorder was still running.

“I am rich, and I am a developer. My two truly unforgivable sins. Mea culpa.”

Against all his better journalistic instincts, Smithback found himself getting pissed off. He’d lost the interview. It was, in fact, a dead loss. The guy was a slimeball, but he was remarkably adroit at dealing with the press. So far Smithback had nothing, and he was going to get nothing. He made one last push anyway. “You still haven’t explained—”

Fairhaven stood. “Smithback, if you only knew how utterly predictable you and your questions are—if you
only
knew how tiresome and mediocre
you
are as a reporter and, I’m sorry to say, as a human being—you’d be mortified.”

“I’d like an explanation—”

But Fairhaven was pressing a buzzer. His voice smothered the rest of Smithback’s question. “Miss Gallagher, would you kindly show Mr. Smithback out?”

“Yes, Mr. Fairhaven.”

“This is rather abrupt—”

“Mr. Smithback, I am
tired.
I saw you because I didn’t want to read about myself in the paper having refused comment. I was also curious to meet you, to see if you were perhaps a cut above the rest. Now that I’ve satisfied myself on that score, I don’t see any reason to continue this conversation.”

The secretary stood in the door, stout and unmovable. “Mr. Smithback? This way, please.”

On his way out, Smithback paused in the outermost secretary’s office. Despite his efforts at self-control, his frame was quivering with indignation. Fairhaven had been parrying a hostile press for more than a decade; naturally, he’d gotten damn good at it. Smithback had dealt with nasty interviewees before, but this one really got under his skin. Calling him tiresome, mediocre, ephemeral, nugatory (he’d have to look that up)—who did he think he was?

Fairhaven himself was too slippery to pin down. No big surprise there. There were other ways to find things out about people. People in power had enemies, and enemies loved to talk. Sometimes the enemies were working for them, right under their noses.

He glanced at the secretary. She was young, sweet, and looked more approachable than the battle-axes manning the inner offices.

“Here every Saturday?” He smiled nonchalantly.

“Most of them,” she said, looking up from her computer. She was cute, with glossy red hair and a small splash of freckles. He winced inwardly, suddenly reminded of Nora.

“Works you hard, doesn’t he?”

“Mr. Fairhaven? Sure does.”

“Probably makes you work Sundays, too.”

“Oh no,” she said. “Mr. Fairhaven never works on Sunday. He goes to church.”

Smithback feigned surprise. “Church? Is he Catholic?”

“Presbyterian.”

“Probably a tough man to work for, I bet.”

“No, he’s one of the best supervisors I’ve had. He actually seems to care about us little folk.”

“Never would have guessed it,” Smithback said with a wink, drifting out the door.
Probably boning her and the other “little folk” on the side,
he thought.

Back on the street, Smithback allowed himself a most un-Presbyterian string of oaths. He was going to dig into this guy’s past until he knew every detail, down to the name of his goddamn teddy bear. You couldn’t become a big-time real estate developer in New York City and keep your hands clean. There would be dirt, and he would find it. Yes, there would be dirt. By
God,
there would be dirt.

M
ANDY
E
KLUND CLIMBED THE FILTHY SUBWAY STAIRS TO
F
IRST
S
TREET,
turned north at Avenue A, and trudged toward Tompkins Square Park. Ahead, the park’s anemic trees rose up against a sky faintly smeared with the purple stain of dawn. The morning star, low on the horizon, was fading into oblivion.

Mandy pulled her wrap more tightly around her shoulders in a futile attempt to keep out the early morning chill. She felt a little groggy, and her feet ached each time they hit the pavement. It had been a great night at Club Pissoir, though: music, free drinks, dancing. The whole Ford crowd had been there, along with a bunch of photographers, the
Mademoiselle
and
Cosmo
people, everyone who mattered in the fashion world. She really was making it. The thought still amazed her. Only six months before, she’d been working at Rodney’s in Bismarck, giving free makeovers. Then, the right person happened to come through the shop. And now she was on the testing board at the Ford agency. Eileen Ford herself had taken her under her wing. It was all coming together faster than she’d ever dreamed possible.

Her father called almost every day from the farm. It was funny, kind of cute really, how worried he was about her living in New York City. He thought the place was a den of iniquity. He’d freak if he knew she stayed out till dawn. He still wanted her to go to college. And maybe she would—someday. But right now she was eighteen and having the time of her life. She smiled affectionately at the thought of her conservative old father, riding his John Deere, worrying himself about her. She’d make the call this time, give him a surprise.

She turned onto Seventh Street, passing the darkened park, keeping a wary eye out for muggers. New York was a lot safer now, but it was still wise to be careful. She felt into her purse, hand closing comfortingly around the small bottle of pepper spray attached to her key chain.

There were a couple of homeless sleeping on pieces of cardboard, and a man in a threadbare corduroy suit sat on a bench, drinking and nodding. An early breeze passed through the listless sycamore branches, rattling the leaves. They were just beginning to turn a jaundiced yellow.

Once again, she wished her walk-up apartment wasn’t so far from a subway station. She couldn’t afford cabs—not yet, anyway—and walking the nine blocks home at night was a hassle. At first it had seemed like a cool neighborhood, but the seediness was starting to get to her. Gentrification was creeping in, but not fast enough: the dingy squats and the old hollow buildings, sealed shut with cinderblock, were depressing. The Flatiron District would be better, or maybe even Yorkville. A lot of the Ford models, the ones who’d made it, lived up there.

She left the park behind and turned up Avenue C. Silent brownstones rose on either side, and the wind sent trash along the gutters with a dry, skittery sound. The faint ammoniac tang of urine floated out from dark doorways. Nobody picked up after their dogs, and she made her way with care through a disgusting minefield of dog shit. This part of the walk was always the worst.

She saw, ahead of her, a figure approaching down the sidewalk. She stiffened, considered crossing the street, then relaxed: it was an old man, walking painfully with a cane. As he approached she could see he was wearing a funny derby hat. His head was bowed, and she could make out its even brim, the crisp black lines of its crown. She didn’t recall ever seeing anybody wearing a derby, except in old black-and-white movies. He looked very old-fashioned, shuffling along with cautious steps. She wondered what he was doing out so early. Probably insomnia. Old people had it a lot, she’d heard. Waking up at four in the morning, couldn’t go back to sleep. She wondered if her father had insomnia.

They were almost even now. The old man suddenly seemed to grow aware of her presence; he raised his head and lifted his arm to grasp his hat. He was actually going to tip his hat to her.

The hat came up, the arm obscuring everything except the eyes. They were remarkably bright and cold, and they seemed to be regarding her intently.
Must be insomnia,
she thought—despite the hour, this old fellow wasn’t sleepy at all.

“Good morning, miss,” said an old, creaky voice.

“Good morning,” she replied, trying to keep the surprise from her voice. Nobody ever said anything to you on the street. It was so un–New York. It charmed her.

As she passed him, she suddenly felt something whip around her neck with horrible speed.

She struggled and tried to cry out, but found her face covered with a cloth, damp and reeking with a sickly-sweet chemical smell. Instinctively, she tried to hold her breath. Her hand scrabbled in her purse and pulled out the bottle of pepper spray, but a terrible blow knocked it to the sidewalk. She twisted and thrashed, moaning in pain and fear, her lungs on fire; she gasped once; and then all swirled into oblivion.

I
N HIS MESSY CUBICLE ON THE FIFTH FLOOR OF THE
T
IMES
BUILDING,
Smithback examined with dissatisfaction the list he had handwritten in his notebook. At the top of the list, the phrase “Fairhaven’s employees” had been crossed out. He hadn’t been able to get back into the Moegen-Fairhaven Building—Fairhaven had seen to that. Likewise, “neighbors” had also been crossed out: he’d been given the bum’s rush at Fairhaven’s apartment building, despite all his best stratagems and tricks. He’d looked into Fairhaven’s past, to his early business associates, but they were either full of phony praise or simply refused comment.

Next, he’d checked out Fairhaven’s charities. The New York Museum was a dead loss—no one who knew Fairhaven would talk about him, for obvious reasons—but he had more success with one of Fairhaven’s other projects, the Little Arthur Clinic for Children. If success was the right word for it. The clinic was a small research hospital that cared for sick children with “orphaned” diseases: very rare illnesses that the big drug companies had no interest in finding cures for. Smithback had managed to get in posing as himself—a
New York Times
reporter interested in their work—without rousing suspicion. They had even given him an informal tour. But in the end that, too, had been a snow job: The doctors, nurses, parents, even the children sang hosannas for Fairhaven. It was enough to make you sick: turkeys at Thanksgiving, bonuses at Christmas, toys and books for the kids, trips to Yankee Stadium. Fairhaven had even attended a few funerals, which must have been tough.
And yet,
thought Smithback grumpily,
all it proved was that Fairhaven carefully cultivated his public image.

The guy was a public relations pro from way back. Smithback had found nothing. Nothing.

That reminded him: he turned, grabbed a battered dictionary from a nearby shelf, flipped through the pages until he reached “n.” Nugatory: of no importance, trifling.

Smithback put back the dictionary.

What was needed here was some deeper digging. Before the time when Fairhaven had gone pro with his life. Back when he was just another pimply high school kid. So Fairhaven thought Smithback was just another run-of-the-mill reporter, doing nugatory work? Well, he’d wouldn’t be laughing so hard when he opened his Monday paper.

All it took was ten minutes on the Web to hit paydirt. Fairhaven’s class at P.S. 1984, up on Amsterdam Avenue, had recently celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of their graduation. They had created a Web page reproducing their yearbook. Fairhaven hadn’t shown up for the reunion, and he might not have even known of the Web page—but all the information about him from his old yearbook was posted, for all to see: photos, nicknames, clubs, interests, everything.

There he was: a clean-cut, all-around kid, smiling cockily out of a blurry graduation photograph. He was wearing a tennis sweater and a checked shirt—a typical well-heeled city boy. His father was in real estate, his mother a homemaker. Smithback quickly learned all kinds of things: that he was captain of the swim team; that he was born under the sign of Gemini; that he was head of the debating club; that his favorite rock group was the Eagles; that he played the guitar badly; that he wanted to be a doctor; that his favorite color was burgundy; and that he had been voted most likely to become a millionaire.

As Smithback scrolled through the Web site, the sinking feeling returned. It was all so unspeakably boring. But there was one detail that caught his eye. Every student had been given a nickname, and Fairhaven’s was “The Slasher.” He felt his disappointment abate just slightly.
The Slasher.
It would be nice if the nickname turned up a secret interest in torturing animals. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

And he’d graduated only sixteen years ago. There would be people who remembered him. If there was anything unsavory, Smithback would find it. Let that bastard crack his paper next week and see how fast that smug smile got wiped off.

P.S. 1984. Luckily, the school was only a cab ride away. Turning his back on the computer, Smithback stood up and reached for his jacket.

The school stood on a leafy Upper West Side block between Amsterdam and Columbus, not far from the Museum, a long building of yellow brick, surrounded by a wrought iron fence. As far as New York City schools went, it was rather nice. Smithback strode to the front door, found it locked—security, of course—and buzzed. A policeman answered. Smithback flashed his press card and the cop let him in.

It was amazing how the place smelled: just like his own high school, far away and long ago. And there was the same taupe paint on the cinderblock walls, too.
All school principals must’ve read the same how-to manual,
Smithback thought as the cop escorted him through the metal detector and to the principal’s office.

The principal referred him to Miss Kite. Smithback found her at her desk, working on student assignments between classes. She was a handsome, gray-haired woman, and when Smithback mentioned Fairhaven’s name, he was gratified to see the smile of memory on her face.

“Oh yes,” she said. Her voice was kind, but there was a no-nonsense edge to it that told Smithback this was no pushover granny. “I remember Tony Fairhaven well, because he was in my first twelfth-grade class, and he was one of our top students. He was a National Merit Scholar runner-up.”