The Girl From Nowhere (10 page)

ELEVEN

What happened next
didn’t make things any less confusing. While I was standing there by the window, an ugly black stretch limo pulled up outside. A chauffeur in livery disembarked and rang my doorbell. It was as if the limo had been waiting till the fuzz departed, then slid into the vacated slot. The driver, who had a fake British accent, inquired if I was Mr. Alex Novalis. Then he informed me, in tones that I took to be a touch patronizing, that Mr. Jack Debereaux had requested the pleasure of my company.

Well, well! Jack Debereaux, gubernatorial hopeful, craves the presence of humble-yet-honest private eye. Curiouser and curiouser. Debereaux’s political clout might explain the involvement of the Special Affairs Bureau with whatever was going down.

“Heavens to bestiality,” I said. “Is it pinochle night again already? How time flies.”

Stress brings out the sophomore in me.

“All I know, sir,” said the driver, “is that Mr. Debereaux emphasized the need for promptness.”

They always do.

“I’ll just change into my white tie and tails,” I told him.

“As I understand it,” said the driver, “this is more of a come-as-you-are occasion.”

The Debereaux family made their money in distilling and brewing, which suggested that back in the Prohibition Era they likely kept some pretty choice company. While the limo crawled uptown, I checked out its cocktail bar—stocked with a multitude of Debereaux brands—and mixed myself a martini, which I then sipped, debonair as all hell. Traffic being stalled as usual, I had plenty of time to think about why Big Jack, as he liked to be called, wanted to see me. The only thing I was reasonably sure of was that it probably had something to do with the fact that he was regularly seen at spots like The Pierre and Le Pavillon, dining with Sami Mendelssohn, Yari’s mother.

Eventually we arrived outside a big Dutch Colonial row house not far from the offices of Lucking, Thorpe, & Lucking. I rang the bell and the door was opened by a slender valet of Asian ancestry. I wished I had a hat for him to hang somewhere. He showed me to a room that felt like an undiscovered corner of the Frick, with good European furniture and Old Master paintings hung on brocaded walls. I was studying a small canvas of becalmed fishing boats by a follower of Aelbert Cuyp when I heard someone behind me.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” said the new arrival.

It was one of those gravelly, meta-masculine voices that has the mysterious ability to reassure lackey voters that—if they will be so kind as to oblige by approving a massive but necessary tax break for cologne-soaked extortionists with offshore bank accounts and top-heavy trophy brides—then they will get to enjoy a blissful retirement with an endless supply of Lucy reruns and Cocoa Puffs laced with Valium for breakfast every single morning of the week.

Like a good lackey, I allowed myself to be interrupted and turned to see a face familiar from newspaper photographs and television news bites. A smooth, almost babyish face that seemed to ask rhetorically, “And why wouldn’t you trust a puss like this?”

“You like the Dutch?” Debereaux asked. “My father worshipped the Dutch. He appreciated their ability to find both wealth and beauty in everyday things. He would look at a painting like this and see the entire Dutch economy as it existed at the height of Holland’s Golden Age—the
Gouden Eeuw
as he liked to call it—interpolating from the cod and herring in the holds of these vessels the riches of the Dutch East India Company and the wealth that it brought to Amsterdam and Delft, and New Amsterdam too of course—the wealth to which we are all heirs. This is his room. I’ve left it as it was when he passed away.”

Big Jack was a lot smaller than I had imagined he would be, with shrewd eyes and thick white hair—a New York politico straight out of Central Casting. He had on a burgundy velvet smoking jacket with shawl lapels and a pleated dinner shirt open at the neck. He put an arm around my shoulder and guided me toward an inlaid sideboard on which was displayed an array of liquor bottles and silver-plated accouterments for preparing cocktails.

“Let me make you a gimlet,” he said. “That’s what you private investigators drink, isn’t it?”

“Mostly we drink anything,” I assured him.

“I thought you were all disciples of Raymond Chandler?” he said.

“Only the ones that can read.”

“In any case,” said Debereaux, “Chandler’s gimlet is a travesty. Half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice indeed! Shameful.”

I watched as Debereaux rubbed the rim of two martini glasses with slices of lime, then poured gin into a cocktail shaker half-filled with crushed ice, added a small quantity of Rose’s Lime Juice, threw in a sprig of mint, shook the mixture vigorously, strained it into the glasses, and added twists of lime peel.

“Now
that’
s a gimlet,” he said, awaiting my reaction.

It was passable, if a little effete. I forced myself to make an appreciative face.

“I suppose,” he said, after a couple of sips of his own drink “you’re wondering why I asked you here?”

“To try out cocktail recipes?”

He laughed. It was a laugh the way dehydrated broccoli is a vegetable.

“Well,” he began, “I understand you’re an art lover, so to start with I thought I’d give you a tour of my collection—the tiny part that’s here.”

I’ll skip the catalogue, but he had corralled an impressive hoard, ranging from Cézanne and van Gogh to a Warhol soup can. In between there was Picasso, and Braque, and Gris, and Ernst, and Dalí, and Bacon, and Dubuffet. Americans privileged to join the club included Pollock and Rothko and Rauschenberg and Johns, and there was a room dedicated to realists like Hopper and Marsh and, inevitably, Stewart Langham.

“You know Stewart Langham?” I asked.

“Well, of course,” said Debereaux. “I’m on the board of practically every museum in town, how could I not know Stew? Also, for a while anyway, he belonged to a set I socialize with.”

“When he was married to Cynthia Cutteridge?”

“You’re uncommonly well informed,” said Debereaux.

He seemed to be in no hurry. As we moved from painting to painting, he was ready with anecdotes about this artist or that dealer. I made appreciative noises. Not much of an imposition given that the quality of the work was mostly superior. At the end of the tour he gestured toward a doorway and said, “Let’s step into the den for a chat.”

The den was a paneled room, informally furnished, with a large rolltop desk against one wall and a fire blazing in a fireplace—although the house was not in the least chilly. Everywhere you looked there were silver-framed photographs of Debereaux with Democratic Party bigwigs, from FDR and Harry Hopkins to Adlai Stevenson and Bobby Kennedy. Seated in a red leather armchair, wearing a ritzy black cocktail dress and a red shawl, was a formidable woman in her late sixties. She was slender, with long, shapely legs and a manner that can only be described as regal. With high cheekbones, a profile resembling the Wicked Witch of the West’s, and her hair pulled back in a chignon, she was probably more striking than she had been forty years earlier.

“Nice to see you again, Mrs. Mendelssohn,” I said.

“I had forgotten we met before, Mr. Novalis,” she replied. Her eyes were even closer to purple than Yari’s, and she was taking me in like a Westminster Dog Show judge sizing up a mutt who’s been admitted by mistake in the nonsporting category.

“Mrs. Mendelssohn has been anxious for me to speak with you,” said Debereaux. “It seems you are acquainted with a young woman named Sandy Smollett.”

“We’ve crossed paths,” I said.

“Please don’t misunderstand me,” said Debereaux. “There’s nothing wrong with you knowing Miss Smollett, though I should add that she should be approached with great caution.”

“What do you mean by ‘approached’?”

“He means,” interrupted Mrs. Mendelssohn, “that you’re stepping on dangerous ground. I won’t pretend that I’m interested in your welfare, but I am concerned for Yari’s. As I now recall, you know from personal experience that Yari has a knack for getting himself into scrapes. We have reason to believe that anyone who becomes entangled with this Smollett girl is likely to find himself in very hot water. That would include anyone who delves too deeply into her background.”

“And where does Yari fit into all this?” I asked.

“That’s better left unsaid,” she told me, “though I’ll pass on to you my conviction that his possible involvement is purely a matter of happenstance.”

Yeah, sure.

“The bottom line,” said Debereaux, “is that I’m prepared to pay you handsomely for staying out of this affair. We’ve reason to believe that Miss Smollett is in possession of information that makes her a danger to herself and to others.”

“I guess that’s why someone is trying to kill her,” I said.

Their expressions of shock could have passed for the real thing.

“I was approached,” I told them, “by a party I cannot identify to provide protection for Sandy. Providing her with protection is what I’m doing.”

They exchanged glances.

“That does not mean you cannot accept my proposition,” said Debereaux. “In fact, I insist on it. I’m putting you on a retainer.”

I tried to stop him right there.

“I’m not interested.”

“I would have thought it was preferable to being in a cell, or to being interminably questioned by the police.”

“And what could you do to prevent that?”

“To be frank, that’s no business of yours—but let’s just say that I know people and have influence. I think I might be able to persuade the Department to keep its hands off you, at least in the short run. I might be able to convince them that it’s in their interest to have you out on the street.”

This was adding another layer of nuttiness to an already preposterous situation. What did Debereaux know about it being in the cops’ interest to have me on or off the street? That only made sense if he was much better informed—perhaps by the Special Affairs Bureau—than he was letting on. I asked him what he knew that I didn’t know. His expression was too plaintive to be called a smirk.

“Many things,” he said. “Some that I wish I didn’t know. Just be thankful that I can rent you your freedom—for a day or two at least.”

Some flicker of uncertainty—the kind you see in a politician’s eyes when the exit polls from Erie County start to come in—made me suspect he was trying to bullshit me.

I stood up and said, “There’s nothing more to talk about.” Then I made my exit.

Nobody tried to stop me, but Debereaux handed me his card.

TWELVE

Once out of
there, I walked over to Madison and headed south toward midtown. I took my time, trying to squeeze some sense out of that encounter. Everything about it had been off-key. Why the leisurely tour of the art collection? And why the bullshit about the retainer? And why did he tell me not to trust Sandy? What was his interest in her? Yari might have been able to answer some of my questions if he were around, though whether he would have chosen to was another matter.

I’m a perverse son of a bitch, and Debereaux’s warning not to trust Sandy just made me want to trust her implicitly. But what the fuck was I thinking? This was no time to be losing touch with reality. On the other hand, I didn’t have much to lose by believing anything I chose to believe, and right then I chose to believe that Sandy—though she had plenty to hide, much of it probably none too savory—was on the right side of this standoff. That’s what my metastasizing hunch told me, and at that juncture there was no point in fighting it. As I looked back over the previous couple of days, it hadn’t played out so badly. It just hadn’t got me anywhere. The question was, where
was
Sandy? By now, I suspected, quite possibly in the loving care of the NYPD.

Debereaux’s talk about being able to guarantee my freedom, if only for a limited time, made me suspect that some deal had already been cut with the cops before his car picked me up. The more I thought about it, the more I felt certain it was no accident that the limo had arrived outside my door immediately after Campbell’s car had left.

I walked past the old Sotheby’s/Parke-Bernet building and noticed that there was activity across the street at Galleries St. Briac, apparently the opening of an exhibition—a “vernissage,”
as establishments like St. Briac preferred to describe such events. I’m the kind of guy who can’t walk past a frame shop without stopping to look at the crappy seascapes in the window, so I crossed over to see what the fuss was about. Galleries St. Briac specialized in American and European art of the early modern era. The show being previewed was devoted to work by representatives of New York’s Ashcan School—always popular with the well-heeled. In the window, there was an extravagantly framed John Sloan painting of newsboys freezing their nuts off in the snow. Beyond that, I could see the usual crowd one encounters at such openings—men who get their nails buffed at hotel barber shops, women who think it chic to trail their furs behind them like lionesses dragging the carcasses of wildebeest back to their lairs. Some of them had come from as far as a dozen blocks away.

I wasn’t planning to join the fray, but then I saw Stewart Langham with an attractive young woman—not Sandy—on his arm. Not surprising he was there. St. Briac probably had a selection of his paintings in its inventory, so it was a place for Langham to rub shoulders with collectors and potential collectors, as well as social cronies.

He spotted me as I entered and did nothing to discourage me from coming over, though he said something to his companion, who moved off toward a tray of canapés.

“Mister Novalis,” he said. “Is this part of your usual beat?”

“I saw you through the window and thought I’d say hello.”

“You happened to be passing?” he said.

“Pure chance,” I told him. “I had a meeting with Jack Debereaux and thought I’d work up an appetite before dinner.”

I wanted to see if he had any reaction to the name. His face didn’t register more than a flicker of curiosity, but he said, “Why don’t we step outside?”

First though, he introduced me to the woman he had been with. She was not as young as she had looked through the window—probably in her early thirties—and was quite beautiful in a classic kind of way, with straight blonde hair and blue-gray eyes. There was about her something of the same “untouched” look that Sandy possessed, at least when inhabiting one of her personas.

“This is my daughter, Reina,” he said. “She has her mother’s looks. Reina, this is Mister Novalis. He’s a friend of Sandy’s. If you’ll excuse us for a moment, we have something to discuss.”

Reina favored me with a nice enough smile, then her father and I headed for the sidewalk, where Langham produced a pack of Dunhills, offering me one.

“You’ll be wondering about Sandy,” he said.

“I stopped by your building this morning,” I told him.

“I’m aware of that,” he replied. “The doorman informed me—at least, I assumed from his description it was you. You were correct in presuming that my studio was where Sandy would seek sanctuary. It proved temporary, however. It seems that somebody killed himself in her apartment, which inevitably attracted the attention of the police—but perhaps you already know about that? From what Sandy told me, that seems likely. You must have discovered the body, I fancy, though the officers who came to my studio said that the discovery had been made by a cleaning woman who comes twice a week and has a key.”

I asked him if he knew where Sandy was.

“The police took her away for questioning. They didn’t tell me where.”

“Did you get the officers’ names?”

“I have them written down somewhere. One of them fancied himself as a bit of a character. Smoked a pipe until I asked him not to.”

“That would be Detective Campbell.”

“Merely a detective? I would have hoped for an inspector, or at least a sergeant.”

“Rank is about passing exams. Sometimes a plainclothes man with hands-on experience has more clout than somebody sitting behind a desk with stripes on his arm.”

“Is that so? In any case, they took Sandy away. I called an attorney for her. Rupert Schindler.”

I knew Schindler by reputation. He had been a tough prosecutor who now worked the other side of the fence, where the grass is a lot greener.

“What time did they take her?” I asked.

“Several hours ago.”

“I had a visit from Campbell and his sidekick too,” I told him. “They asked questions about Sandy but didn’t say anything about having picked her up. Nor did they bring up anything about the suicide. I hope you didn’t mention to them anything about me maybe having discovered the dead guy?”

“I saw no reason to.”

I thanked him.

“All I can tell you,” he continued, “is that I would be at home now, waiting for Sandy’s call, but I had to come to the gallery because I’d arranged to meet my daughter here. She was arriving in town by train and I had no way of getting in touch with her to make a new plan. She got here a few minutes ago. We’ll be going back to the studio shortly.”

“When Sandy calls,” I said, “assuming she does, please ask her to get in touch with me.”

“I’m not so sure she’ll want to do that.”

“You don’t think she trusts me?”

“On the contrary. She says she doesn’t want to get you into trouble.”

“Please,” I said, “tell her to call.”

“I’m not sure that I’m prepared to do that,” he said, “because, despite Sandy’s apparent trust, I don’t know what your intentions are. I don’t have any idea of what you might be mixed up in.”

“My intentions are to help her,” I said. “You’ll have to take my word for that. And what
I’m
mixed up in? I wish I knew, but I have a suspicion that Sandy is the key to finding out. Now, can I have your number in case I need it?”

He hesitated, but gave me his card. He then returned to the gallery to find his daughter and I continued on my way. Could I trust Langham? I had no idea. I turned my thoughts to Sandy. Where had they taken her? The Special Affairs Bureau most likely. That was somewhere in midtown. I’d never had any reason to visit. How long would they hold her? No way of knowing, but—given everything I knew and suspected—it could be a long time. There was no crime to charge her with that I knew of, but like me they saw her as the conduit to something of interest. And when they released her, where would she go? Back to Langham’s? That seemed possible, but based on what I knew about Sandy—which didn’t amount to a hill of garbanzos—it was foolish to even make a guess.

I was walking past the half-assed bunker in which the Whitney Museum had been rehoused a couple of years previously, wasting my time with foolish guesses, when I heard what I took to be a backfire. I quickly realized that something had hit the museum’s granite facade, just a couple of feet from where I was standing. Simultaneously, a Volvo station wagon took off down the street like a Sidewinder missile. It took me a second or two to get over the indignity of having been shot at from a station wagon, and a European one at that, but I recovered my wits enough to scram before the shooters came back, possibly in a Peugeot. The only witness was a lady in a mink wrap walking her Yorkie, and she was convinced that the dog had been the intended target. I scuttled west, pretending to be invisible, until I reached the IRT station at 77th Street. I rode down to Union Square, went to my office, and checked my mail and messages. Bill collectors and then a familiar voice. Sandy’s. Three calls.

“Where are you?” the final one began. “I’ve been waiting on your front steps and it was freezing, so now I’m in a bar—I’m not sure where, but not far from your apartment—and guys are hitting on me, and I’m waiting for a burger, and I wish you’d come and rescue me.”

I tracked her down in the little tavern at the corner of West 4th and Jane, which was packed. She didn’t look too unhappy perched on a bar stool, noshing the last fries off her plate, surrounded by half a dozen guys who were taking the evening off from writing the Great American Novel. When she saw me she jumped down from the stool, rushed over, planted a kiss on my nose, and said, “Take me home, please.”

Home?

She then said good-byes to all her admirers, and we left.

“You look pretty spry,” I said, “for somebody who’s just been interrogated by the police about a guy who killed himself in your apartment.”

She burst into tears. Not just your everyday blubbering—blind, helpless, heart-wrenching sobs. I had never encountered anything quite like it, and had no idea what to do. It was as if she was trying to purge herself of a lifetime of misery. I tried to comfort her, but she rejected every attempt to touch her. Passersby stared at me with hatred, and one woman told me that men like me should be castrated and strung up from the nearest lamppost. After a couple of minutes of this, Sandy threw up in the gutter—an unappetizing gumbo of ground beef, ketchup, and undigested fries.

I offered her a handkerchief. She thanked me, then she grabbed my arm like the survivor of a shipwreck clutching a spar for dear life.

“Let’s go home,” she said again.

I put an arm around her and half-walked, half-carried her to my house. She stumbled onto the stoop and I left her there for a moment while I unlocked the front door, and then the door to the apartment. When I returned, she seemed to be on the verge of passing out. I picked her up and carried her inside and to the bed. She asked me to take off her sneakers and jeans, which I did. Then I covered her with a blanket. A minute later she was asleep.

I was pouring myself a drink when the doorbell rang. I checked the stoop through the window. It was Janice—famous for her bad sense of timing. I opened the door and told her politely to fuck off.

“Oh, and which sex kitten did you buy the kitty litter for tonight?” she asked.

I slammed the door in her face.