“Yes, I’m Wren. Mr. Salanter needs to talk to you.”
“And since I wouldn’t come to Schiller Street, you decided you had to butt in on my evening with family.”
She was watching Mitch, not listening to me. “Will that dog bite?”
“All dogs bite, but as long as you don’t threaten me in some way, you’re probably safe.”
Gabe Eycks joined us just as Mr. Contreras burst through the front door—he’d come through the building from the backyard.
“Is everything okay, doll? I got worried when I didn’t hear nothing. You know these people?”
“Not very well. They’re minions of a billionaire, which means they disregard anything an ordinary person says—like my telling Ms. Balfour here that I was too tired to talk to her boss tonight. She interpreted that as a signal that they should track me down at home.”
“If Vic here said she was too tired to talk, that means it’s time for you to leave,” my neighbor said. “We got a new baby you woke up, people are trying to have a little peace and quiet after a hard day. Not everyone in this economy even has a job, that ever occur to you?”
Balfour looked bewildered, as people often do when they first meet Mr. Contreras, but Gabe said, “We’re not quite as insensitive as you think, but Mr. Salanter is eighty-three, and he’s worried about his granddaughter.”
“Well, I’m eighty-seven, and I’m worried about Vic,” Mr. Contreras snapped. “And I don’t have a secretary or a chauffeur or whoever else your boss has to drive him around and paint his toenails pink.”
I choked back a laugh. Out on the street, the back door to the Mercedes opened. As soon as he realized the billionaire was emerging, Gabe trotted back to the car. Wren Balfour looked nervously from her boss to Mitch. The dog grinned up at her to show it had been a game, just good fun, but the sight of all those teeth kept her glued to the front door.
In the brief quiet, I could hear the Soong baby wailing from behind the building, and then Chaim Salanter and Eycks joined us.
“I’m sorry to bother you at home, Ms. Warshawski. My staff tells me you are tired, and I am weary myself, at my age, after a long flight. But I hope you will put your gun away and let me speak to you for a few minutes.”
I made a face but told him we could talk in my apartment. When Salanter assured me he could manage the three flights without difficulty, I let him and the rest of the entourage into the building.
I pulled Mr. Contreras aside so I could give him a key to Jake’s apartment, explaining that I wanted Lucy and Kira to sleep in there.
“I don’t want Salanter or his acolytes to see the girls or Petra,” I muttered. “It’s not that I don’t trust them, but—I don’t trust them.”
Mr. Contreras had a better plan, to put the girls up in his own place, on the beds his grandsons use when they spend the night with him. He assured me he wouldn’t let Kira or Lucy into the front of the building until Salanter was out of sight, but it was high time they were in bed, not good for little ones to be up at all hours.
Mitch decided the fun part of the encounter was over and followed Mr. Contreras through the hall to the backyard, but Peppy stayed with me as I led Salanter and his pals to my home. My feet were filthy. I was also trailing little specks of blood from where the blisters had come open, I saw when I switched on my entry light.
I waved an arm toward the front room and went into the bathroom to rinse my feet. I still hadn’t found time to take off my flaking nail polish—I, too, needed someone to follow me around, painting my toenails pink.
When I came back to the living room, Salanter was standing at the piano, softly picking out a few notes from my Don Giovanni score with a halting hand.
“You sing Mozart?” he asked.
I sat cross-legged in my armchair, smoothing my frock over my knees. Lucy had managed to rub chocolate into the fabric as well as marshmallow. “Surely you didn’t drag your weary bones all this way to discover my musical tastes.”
“Pleasantries are permitted even in a crisis,” Salanter said.
He sat on the piano bench, his shoulders hunched, his heavy black brows low over his eyes. Wren Balfour tried to urge him to the couch but he gave a tired smile and stayed where he was. I wondered if the pantomime was meant to make me feel sorry for him.
When I didn’t respond, Salanter said, “I need to know everything you can tell me about how my granddaughter ended up in the trunk of that orderly’s car.”
I held out my hands, palms up. “Mr. Eycks knows everything I do, and a whole lot more besides. The only thing I can suggest is that you talk to Nia Durango: Arielle shares all her secrets with Nia.”
“I’ve talked to Nia. She can tell me nothing.”