“Who?”
“Never mind. I read a lot of those files you left. It’s certainly suspicious, and I can’t see why a lawyer of Braun’s caliber would back down. So I’ll put the money in a safe place and use it until the case is solved, Man is dead, or I decide that he’s culpable.”
“Thank you.”
“Are you still working at Braun’s office?”
“I plan to quit tomorrow.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“Why not?”
Before I could answer there came the haunting notes of “Clair de Lune” by Debussy. Instantly I hit a button on the intercom that would mute any sound and turn on a red light on Aja’s desk. Then I took a burner phone from the top drawer, and as I picked up the phone I put a finger to my lips for my client.
I pressed a button on the side of the burner for the reply to the second e-mail of the day.
“Mr. Braun?” I said.
“Mr. Boll.”
“I was hoping that you’d call. I’m really stumped with this case.”
“Who are you?”
“A private detective working with a concerned group over the disappearance of Ms. Mudd. No one has heard from or seen her in over a week and we’re very concerned about her welfare. She has diabetes and her grandchildren depend on her for childcare.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Ms. Mudd,” Braun said in his most reassuring, most dissembling lawyer’s tone. “No one knows her whereabouts because no one needs to know.”
“I don’t understand you, sir.”
“It’s not for you to understand. Just take my word when I tell you that Johanna Mudd was in danger, but now she’s someplace safe.”
“Even her daughter and son don’t know how to reach her?”
“It’s better for everyone that they don’t.”
“I can’t say that to my clients.”
“Her son and daughter?”
“No. An interested third party.”
“This is a very delicate situation, Mr. Boll. You must give me your clients’ names so that I can assure them myself. And so that I can impress on them just how important secrecy is.”
I took the appropriate six beats to pretend to be considering this action.
“I can’t just hand over my clients’ names,” I said. “But I will meet with them and tell them there’s more to the case than I at first thought. I’ll tell them that you’re willing to meet…”
“I need to meet with you too, Mr. Boll. We have to talk.”
“About what?”
Willa was staring at me with a fearful look on her face.
“The phone is not a place to share secrets. Do you know Liberté Café on Hudson?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Meet me there at seven thirty tonight. I believe I can convince you of the need to keep this quiet.”
“I can’t make it till nine thirty,” I said. “Got a few important e-mails to catch up on.”
“Okay,” he said quickly, too quickly. “Nine thirty. I’ll see you then. How will I know you?”
“I’ll have a red pansy in my lapel,” I said before disconnecting the call.
When I returned the phone to the drawer Willa asked, “That was Mr. Braun?”
“It was.”
“You told him about what I said?”
“I sent him an e-mail informing him that I was Detective Tom Boll, private, and that I was working for certain concerned parties who wanted me to find Johanna Mudd. He knows that I know about the Free Man case, but that much is in the papers.”
“Did you say about him dropping the case?”
“No.”
She sighed.
“But he may suspect that I’m getting information from inside his office. So the best thing you can do is stay on the job. If anything comes up I need to know, I’ll give you another number you can call me on.”
The young lawyer gazed at me, realizing, for the first time I believed, how deep in shit she was.
She nodded and even forced a smile.
“I guess this is what I asked you for,” she said.
“You want we should drop it?”
She searched my eyes for the answer. After a good long time she said, “No. I never really knew how much a man can be a victim of the law until I met Manny. He’s a killer but he’s no criminal. I can’t turn my back on that.”
I gave Willa the number of another burner I owned and then showed her to the door.
I stood there staring at nothing after she’d gone.
“Did Mom do something to you?” Aja asked from behind me.
“Yes,” I said to the door.
“Did it have to do with me?”
I turned to look at my trench-coated blood. “She looked at my files.”
“How do you know that?”
“I can tell when people look at certain files,” I lied. “Files you never opened before.”
“That’s not really so bad, is it?” Aja asked.
“No. But from now on don’t take work out of the office, okay?”
She nodded and that was enough.
13.
Aja was gone by 6:30. I dressed and was ready for the night by 7:00.
The last talk I had with my daughter had put the trouble with Monica to bed, but I forgot, as most men are wont to do, that what happens to me is not necessarily up to me.
Upon exiting the door onto Montague Street I heard a man shout, “Oliver!”
The street was crowded with shoppers beginning to think about dinner and Christmas and who felt that they should be outside before the bite of winter sent them home for the season.
A group of young men and women, mostly black, were fooling around near the curb. From around the twenty-something revelers came Coleman Tesserat, Monica’s boy-toy husband. He was dressed for jogging with the hood down. The sweat suit was yellow with dark blue or black piping.
I had a short-nosed .45 revolver in my windbreaker pocket, but that hardly seemed necessary. Later that night things might be different.
“Coleman,” I said.
A sky-blue-haired black girl watched us. She heard the threat, as I had, in Coleman’s voice.
“What did you say to Monica?” he demanded.
“Why you wanna ask me that and you already know?”
Coleman got to within twenty-four inches of me. He was a black belt in some Eastern exercise system and thought that taught him how to defend himself.
“I asked you a question,” he said with all the confidence of the dead.
I said, “You already know.”
The blue-haired girl touched a young man’s shoulder.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Coleman was saying.
“If that was true,” I said, still looking at the girl, “you wouldn’t be in my face.”
“I could kick your ass right here,” Coleman warned.
“In front of witnesses?” I said innocently. “And me with my hands at my side.”
“Stay out of my business,” he said, understanding that he’d made a tactical error confronting me like that.
“Did your wife tell you why I said I’d look into you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“She called a man I was investigating. If he was of another nature I might be dead. She was fucking with me for no reason. I just pushed back. And the next time you come at me, be ready to kill, because I won’t stop coming till it’s over.”
I walked away with all kinds of nonsense racing through my body and mind.
Teenage hormones sang in my heart and sinews because I wanted to beat Monica’s new husband to pulp. Under that feeling was the revelation that my preoccupation with the opposite sex had returned. I knew this when I saw Blue-hair looking at me.
I was ready.
There’s an illegal private club on Avenue D down near Houston. It takes up the three-level subbasement of a huge public housing project.
You push the button for apartment 1A and the buzzer lets you in. You come to the door and say a name. If they like the name, you go through the door and down some stairs, coming to another door. This opens to a very large room that is quiet and usually half-filled with men and women who need privacy on the level of a secret society. There are comfortable chairs and tables, walls lined with bookshelves, and servers wearing either tuxedos or miniskirts.
The residents of that building never complain because the owners of the nameless club have at least three security people watching the entrance at all times. There’s no mugging, drug dealing, or prostitution above the basement—ever.