Dead Money (20 page)

Or that old lady next door.

The one dressed in the Anthony Perkins outfit.

Hmm. You hadn’t told me about her. Are you holding back on me again?

I could see Ramon in that outfit. And speaking of the twins again …

Ramon, Raul, she said. Trips right off the tongue. I wonder if FitzGibbon made up the names too?

You’d think he’d have enough imagination to come up with ‘Carlos’ or ‘Pedro.’ Something that started with a different letter.

Yes. A viable theory. We’ll keep it on the list.

Good. I like to think I’m making some kind of contribution to the enterprise.

Oh please, darling. You’re the boss. Isn’t that enough for you?

The boss? This is news. When was the title bestowed?

Just now, she said with an indulgent smile. I knew it would make you feel better.

You were right. I feel much better.

So, you were saying?

About those twins. I think we ought to dig around a little. I mean, why did FitzGibbon keep that bit of information from me?

Did it ever come up?

Well, one would think, when discussing wills and trusts and mothers and sons and things, that it would be natural to mention, at least, the existence of two potential heirs. Besides, one of them was right there in FitzGibbon’s office. FitzGibbon said he was Security.

Ah. That is indeed curious. Or not. Would someone normally introduce his son to a perfect stranger?

Perhaps not. But it would be more believable if he’d said nothing. Why say he was Security?

Maybe he is.

Part-time job for Daddy Warbucks?

Right.

But still. And somehow Jules never mentioned them either. Which I find even stranger.

Had other things on his mind, I guess.

Maybe. But he was awfully defensive when I asked him about them.

Why would
he
want to hide them from you?

I’m not saying he did. But it’s a possibility. Have to keep it on the list. No evidence to exclude it. Implausibility is not a criterion for removal. Many things seem implausible, until more facts are in.

Quarks.

Not the first example that comes to mind, but yes. Quarks.

The indeterminacy of the quantum world.

Right. Although right now I’d prefer to stay on a somewhat less rarefied plane, thank you.

Oh, all right. I thought you liked that kind of stuff. I do. I do. But right now I’d like to keep playing unsophisticated gumshoe, if you don’t mind.

I don’t mind.

Okay. So. My point is, we know a lot of stuff. Some of it makes perfect sense. Is irrefutable. Or close to it. There’s a body. It’s homicide. Jules and the former owner of the body had a fight earlier. Not long earlier. If he’s convicted, he’ll be out of luck on the trusts. FitzGibbon hates his son, and would be happy if he lost the trusts. All of this seems clear enough. At least enough to serve as a starting point. But we don’t have enough information to put everything together. To make sense of it all. Even to have an idea whether we’re wasting our time. That Jules just did it. Too bad. Work the plea angle.

Agreed.

So, the more information we can gather, the better. The closer we can get to at least achieving that critical mass of data that will tell us whether our efforts have a reasonable chance of bearing fruit.

I love it when you get into professorial mode.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to.

It’s so sexy.

Please don’t go there.

Sorry. But you left something out.

Yes?

Data points.

Jesus, I said, you’re relentless.

WHEN DORITA LEFT
, I missed her. This was not good. This was not how carefree friends were supposed to feel. Damn. What was I doing to myself? My life was already complicated enough.

I was confused.

Well, I sighed, since I’m confused, there’s only one thing to do.

I called. She was free. This was good.

I walked there.

I needed the exercise.

Halfway there my cell phone rang. ‘Private number.’ Jesus.

This time I answered.

I heard a clattering sound. Some muffled grunts. Then the line went dead.

Just what I needed. Crank calls. I resolved to go back to ignoring private numbers.

Sheila was wearing a suit.

My, I said, you’re looking very corporate today.

She usually wore her quasi-hippy gear. Sandals. Baggy flowered top of some kind. Jeans, or something between hospital workers’ greens and silk pajamas.

She smiled, ignored my comment.

Okay, I said. On to matters more germane.

I wanted to talk about this Dorita thing. I wanted to talk about how radically I needed to sublimate – or was it how radical was the sublimation I needed? – when the need that needed to be sublimated was itself so radically submerged. But I couldn’t. For some reason it didn’t feel right. I didn’t feel ready. Not that I thought that Sheila would react in some inappropriate, some disabling way. Just that I didn’t think that I was ready to handle facing up to it. Getting up front and personal with my own personal Monster. Couldn’t do it. Not that day.

We talked about the strange and liberating coldness that I felt in the face of Melissa’s relapse.

There’s got to come a point when you recognize her responsibility for her own condition, she said. That it’s not your doing. You’re like the child who blames himself for his parents’ divorce. It’s not your fault. And you don’t have to live in hell forever. She’s created that hell. Not you. And only she can un-create it. You’ve done what you can do. It’s time to sit back. Let nature take its course. Or Melissa. If she’s ever to be rid of this, it won’t be because of anything
you
do or say. It has to come from within herself.

Sheila rarely went on at such length. But I’d lobbed her an easy one. And she’d hit it out of the park. Yes, of course. That was what I had been feeling. It wasn’t cold, unfeeling evil. It was resignation. It was taking back my life. And it was okay.

We talked about work. My increasing disillusion with the gamesmanship and intellectual squalor of office life.

She made the usual sympathetic noises.

The sympathetic noises helped. But they weren’t quite enough. We
talked about tinkering with the meds. Increasing my dosages. I refrained as usual from telling her about the extra Valium I’d stolen from one of Melissa’s many stashes. Not because she wouldn’t understand. Because she might tell me about some deadly side effect. Of mixing it with all that other stuff. Then I’d have to give it up.

I’m thinking of quitting the legal biz, I said. Become a professional poker player.

Really? That’s interesting.

Interesting? I thought you’d disapprove.

Why would you think that?

Don’t you addiction people think of gambling as just another species of the beast? Wouldn’t you be afraid I’d succumb? Make my life even more ruinous than it already is?

Your life isn’t ruinous. You know that. And yes, it can be an addiction. A very destructive one. But I don’t see you as a gambling addict. I think you’re too calculating. Actually, I see you more like one of my other clients. He quit a very successful investment banking career and opened his own poker room. Right here in the city. He’s doing very well. And he’s happy. More happy than he ever was making five times the money.

That’s positively inspiring. And you think it’s okay? Isn’t running a poker room illegal?

I wouldn’t know. But you know I don’t make those kind of judgments.

The moral agnosticism of the shrink profession never failed to give me pause. It didn’t seem to fit, somehow. Perhaps it was some residual connection my subconscious made between therapy and confession, but I always expected Sheila to show some disapproval, however subtle, when I told her of my less savory actions and thoughts. But she never did. She was very consistent that way.

Well then, I said, I’ll keep it on the agenda. I wouldn’t know how to start, though, to tell you the truth. Which I always do, you know.

Know how to start?

Tell the truth.

Ah.

But not all of it.

She smiled her warm smile.

You wouldn’t be you if you did, she said.

I shook my head in admiration. She knew me better than I knew myself.

Of course, that’s what I was paying her for.

Anyway, as I was saying, I continued, to tell you the truth I wouldn’t know where to begin. But I can do some research. How hard can it be? Can’t be harder than what I do now, can it?

I would think not. We know that anything you apply yourself to you can do.

Sublimation, I said.

Sublimation?

She raised an eyebrow.

That’s what it is, isn’t it?

What what is?

This poker thing.

Maybe, she said.

Sometimes she liked to go into mysterious mode. Let me figure it out. Old-style shrinkification. But she saved it for special moments. When she knew I was close to something. When she could sit back and let me break out. Open a new door. Take a new step.

How far I still had to go. Before I could just sit in a chair, in the sun, sipping an iced coffee, and think, wow, it’s a beautiful day.

Damn, I said, you’re good.

She smiled her indulgent smile.

Did she like a compliment, like the rest of us? Or did she put it in a box, with the rest of my neuroses, neatly labeled? ‘Rick Redman’s compulsive aggrandizement of therapist: overcompensation for lack of parental objects of veneration in anal stage,’ blah, blah.

Who knew? Who cared? Hey, it made me feel better.

Surely that was enough.

I CALLED BUTCH.

I asked him if he knew about the twins.

Sure, he said. Job one is track down the family. You know that.

Of course. It’s just that their existence seems to be something of a secret. In certain circles, anyway.

Could be. I don’t know about that. But we tracked them down pretty quick.

Okay. You interviewed them, then?

Somebody did.

I meant the institutional you.

Right. Not much there. I heard they and the kid didn’t get along too good. But that’s just hearsay.

Anybody ask where they were that night?

Sure. You always ask.

You do?

We do.

One does.

Right. They were at some club. Some exclusive kind of place.

You know the name of the club?

The White Swallow.

Don’t think I know that one.

I’d be surprised if you did. A little upscale for you, I’d think. Besides, you’re way too old.

Really? I guess you’d be in a position to make that kind of judgment.

Butch laughed. I laughed.

He gave me the address of the club, the name of the owner.

The place wasn’t far away. I grabbed Dorita. We walked over.

When we got to the address, I figured I had written it down wrong. There was no sign proclaiming the existence of a club. The street number was crudely painted on a metal door.

Dorita pointed out that this was exactly what you’d expect to find at an exclusive, known-only-to-the-plugged-in-few dance and debauchery joint.

If you say so, I said.

We knocked.

No answer.

I stepped back from the door. From that vantage, I realized that the crudeness was feigned. The numbers were shaped to resemble a bird in flight. A white bird.

Yep, I said. This is the place.

We knocked again.

The door opened a crack. A small thin man with a pencil mustache peered out. Can I help you? he asked. He had a heavy eastern European accent.

Is Anfernee here? I asked. We have a business proposition for him.

The thin man looked suspicious.

Wait here, he said.

It must have been ten minutes before he returned. Time enough for a smoke, anyway. When he finally came back he opened the door wide.

Come in, he said. Mr. Wallender will see you now.

I wanted to ask him where he’d left his hunchback, but thought better of it. Dorita looked like she wanted to say something similar. Or, knowing her, worse. I jabbed her in the elbow, gave her a stern look. She got the message. Reluctantly.

Igor led us through a maze of black-painted corridors, into a large octagonal room in which a dozen or so heavily sweating workers were variously hammering, sawing, humming and wallpapering under the direction of an elegantly high-strung Cole Porter look-alike. If Cole Porter had had a North African mother. The smoothest milk chocolate skin I had ever seen. An elegant slightly curved nose. A fabulously expensive silk shirt. And an air of absolute entitlement that made his warm, sympathetic brown eyes seem strangely out of place.

Anfernee Wallender thrust out a limp hand, as if to indicate that ring-kissing would not be out of place. I was tempted to crush it with a Manly Squeeze, but refrained, remembering that we wanted information from the guy.

Rick Redman, I said. And this is my colleague, Dorita Reed.

Most pleased to meet you, said Wallender. I understand you have some kind of business proposition for me?

Not exactly. Actually, I just used that to get by your assistant here.

I looked around for Igor, but he seemed to have vanished into the darkness.

Igor. Yes. He’s very protective.

You’re kidding, right?

Kidding?

His name isn’t really Igor, is it?

Sure. It’s like ‘John’ in Russia. Very common.

Wow.

Wallender looked puzzled.

Never mind, I said.

Dorita suppressed a giggle.

I must let you know, said Wallender. As you can see, I’m very
preoccupied here. We have to get this room ready for the VIP opening tonight. And there’s a great deal left to be done. If you don’t really have any business to discuss …

He said this in a sincere, apologetic tone. He looked frankly into my eyes. I could feel the pull of the professional facilitator. He aimed to please. You wanted to like him. You wanted to accommodate his needs.

Yes, I said. Sorry about the little ruse. We won’t take much of your time. We’re investigating an incident. We just have a few questions we’d like to ask you.