Missing (21 page)

Paul Grandin, Sr., had assaulted Greenleaf on
September 4, just a few days after Grandin, Jr.’s, arrest for
soliciting a cop. The father’s fury made better sense against the
background of the son’s solicitation bust. It also explained why he
had torn through his wife’s apartment and his son’s effects. He
was looking for a reason—for something or someone he could blame
for his son’s disgrace.

He’d found those letters and found his man in Mason
Greenleaf. Whether his suspicions about Greenleaf were justified was
still an open question. But I doubted that the father would have
needed much incentive to leap to conclusions about him—or to hold
fast to those conclusions, even in the face of his son’s subsequent
misbehavior. It was a lot easier than blaming himself.

"This second bust," I said to Dick. "When
did it occur?"

"About a month ago. June 29. In Mount Adams. The
kid was in a bar and cruised the wrong guy again—an undercover cop
out of Vice. He was in the clink overnight and is currently free on
bond."

Clearly that was the trouble that Steve Meisel had
refused to talk about. And it was big trouble for Paul Grandin, Jr.
It was probably what he’d been discussing with Mason Greenleaf on
the afternoon that Lee Marks had seen them in the Nine Mile
auditorium—at least the timing was close to right. It must have
shaken Greenleaf to the core. Paul Grandin coming to him with a
solicitation charge hanging over his head could only have brought
back terrible memories. Some of the worst memories of Mason Greenleaf
’s life. It made much better sense of that week he’d spent before
he disappeared, his restlessness, his bad dreams. And the fact that
he’d ended up in that bar with Grandin on the night of his suicide
suggested that Paul had somehow succeeded in making his problems
Mason’s problems again. I wondered if perhaps Greenleaf had posted
bond for him—made himself legally responsible for the kid.

"You don’t have any indication of who went
bail, do you?" I asked.

"Just a second," Dick said.

He came back on a moment later. "His mother.
Sarah Grandin."

"Is she still on Rue de la Paix?"

"Check."

After I finished with Dick Lock, I returned Cindy’s
call. Given the unremitting ugliness of the last few hours, it was a
pleasure to hear her voice.

"I was just checking in," she said, "to
see how you were."

"Better, now that I’m talking to you," I
said.

I started to tell her about Paul Grandin, then
decided against it. I didn’t really know what part he’d played in
Greenleaf ’s suicide—just that he’d played a part. Until I knew
the details, I didn’t want her to have to face another betrayal
from another lover.

"You’ll be coming here tonight?" she
asked hopefully.

"I’ll try. I still haven’t talked to Ira
Sullivan."

"Look, if you don’t want to spend the night,
I’ll understand," she said, trying out her candor again—or
pretending to. "This thing’s happened pretty fast between us,
and maybe you need some time to think it through."

"I told you how I felt this morning."

"You didn’t have to say that, you know. I
don’t need to be reassured all the time."

"For chrissake."

She laughed. "Actually, I do need to be
reassured all the time. Seriously, if it gets too late, you go ahead
and crash at your place."

"Why don’t you just come to my apartment? Make
things simple?"

"Come, like for the night?"

"For as long as you want. Go home, come back.
Like you did with Mason."

She thought it over for a moment. "Yeah. I’d
like that. Being here alone, with the card tables and the tea rings
and the bad memories has been exhausting. It would be nice to be
somewhere new for a while. To be with you. Meet your things."

"You’ll find them everywhere," I said.
"You’ll also find a key under the welcome mat."

"That’s not very detective-like."

"I’m not always very detective-like. Make
yourself at home. I’ll call if I’m going to be late."

"Harry," Cindy Dorn said, "you don’t
have to do this, you know? I’ve been living with somebody for three
years, but this is a big change for you."

"I want to do it," I told her. "I want
a change."
 

22

I WENT down to Wah Mee’s on Sixth Street and had
some supper without my usual double Scotch chaser. I had a single
Scotch instead. There were some things about myself. I couldn’t
change as quickly as I had a roommate. Some things Cindy Dorn would
have to accept. Or so I told myself. But I did feel a little like I
had suddenly developed an eye over my shoulder. It wasn’t an
unpleasant feeling. I hadn’t felt like anybody’d been watching
for years.

Who wants to watch somebody drink?

It was close to eight when I stepped back out onto
Sixth. I walked west up to the Parkade, through the powdery twilight
with its mix of late sun and early streetlamp. The temperature had
dropped to a velvety touch with a breezy promise of rain in the air.
I figured I’d stop at Sullivan’s brownstone and check the office
again for messages, before going home. It had been a long time since
I’d thought pleasantly about going home. It was where I went when I
couldn’t go anywhere else. Last call of the day.

I got the car out of the garage and headed north up
the Parkway—all the way to Ludlow. Dark was falling in earnest, as
I coaxed the Pinto up the steep hill to the gaslight district and
circled around Telford to Sullivan’s building. I parked in the
ivory pale of a fluted gas lamp and walked up to the front door of
the bundled-up apartment house. There was no one in the dim lobby.
Just in case, I went over to the brass mailboxes and looked up
Marlene Bateman, Sullivan’s nanny. She was in apartment 21, two
doors down from Ira.

I climbed the marble stairs to the second floor and
walked down the hall to Sullivan’s door without hearing a peep. Not
the cricketing of television sets, or the dull drum of stereos, or
even the rattle of bolts being shot in answer to my footsteps. The
hallway was as still as a still life. It was a good place for a man
like Sullivan to hide out.

Given what Cherie the Secretary had said about him, I
figured that Ira was as unlikely to answer his door as he was to
answer his phone, so I rapped hard. When no one responded, I sidled
two doors down and knocked again. A black-haired woman with dark eyes
and a high-cheeked, vaguely Indian-looking face answered my knock.
She was wearing a robe cinched tightly at her waist.

"Can I help you‘?"

I told her who I was and who had sent me—like I was
trying to get into the back room of a pool hall. She smiled as if she
were used to fielding calls for Ira Sullivan.

"I haven’t seen Sully since last night,"
she said. "He went out around ten-thirty, just as I was coming
in from the movies. I waved at him in the parking lot, but I don’t
think he saw me."

"Was he alone?"

The woman laughed. "Nooo. He had a man with him.
Gray hair, rather distinguished. I must admit, I thought he was a
little too distinguished for Sully."

Clearly she found her friend’s company amusing,
although if she knew anything about the Greenleaf case, she wouldn’t
have. I didn’t know how Ira Sullivan had found him, but the man
sounded like the older guy from Stacie’s bar. I was almost certain
that the younger blond had been Paul Grandin himself If Sullivan made
the same connection, it could explain why he had thought there was
something odd about Greenleaf’s last night on earth.

"They drove off together," the woman went
on. "I assume Sully must’ve come back late and gone out again
early, because his car was gone this morning."

The woman gave me a searching look. "You’re
being so mysterious, Mr. Stoner. Is something wrong?"

"I don’t think so. I just need to talk to
Ira."

I dug into my wallet and pulled out a card.

"If Sullivan comes back later tonight, would you
mind phoning me? It’s rather important."

"If it’s not too late, I’ll tell him to call
you," the woman said.

I hadn’t wanted to confront another Grandin so soon
after the scene at the tennis court, but given his legal problems, it
had occurred to me that Paul might stick closer to home. According to
Tim Bristol, Mom had always been a port in a storm—and she had
already gone bail for him. Luckily, the woman’s condo was only a
few long blocks to the south of Telford, back down Ludlow in a little
hairpin cul-de-sac pretentiously called Rue de la Paix. Rue de la
Paix didn’t exist until up to ten years ago, when a contractor
decided to build a posh highrise overlooking Cincinnati Technical
College. I always assumed the fancy French name was meant to console
people for the view—and the bite out of their wallet.

I parked on the street in the too-sweet breath of a
honeysuckle and walked up a short cement stair to the apartment house
outer lobby. I found the woman’s name on a buzzer box and rang her
number. After a moment she answered in a weary, vaguely boozy voice.
It was a sound I knew too well. The sound of live or six straight
shots on an empty stomach.

"What is it?"

"My name is Stoner, Mrs. Grandin. I’m looking
for your son, Paul."

"Are you the police?" she said, as if that
was the one and only natural response to his name.

Since it sounded like that would get me in—and I
had strong reason to believe the truth wouldn’t—I told her I was
a cop.

"This is about the bond I posted?" she said
almost hopefully.

I told her it was about the bond and she buzzed me
in.

The inner lobby was a far cry from Ira Sullivan’s
old mahogany address. Plate glass and tessellated tile, overhead
fluorescents, flock wallpaper, stainless f1xtures—like something
unfortunate and modern in a Jacques Tati film. Sarah Grandin lived on
the twelfth floor, near the top of the highrise. The woman was
waiting for me in the hall just outside the elevator doors. She had
big, strawberry blond hair inflated in a bouffant around her small,
nervous triangular face. Her hair was so large and her face so tiny,
she looked like a child’s foot in an oversize shoe. She wore a red
silk kimono over a gold silk camisole—and smelled like juniper and
Chanel.

"I thought this had all been taken care of by my
lawyer," she said, rocking a bit unsteadily. Her blue eyes were
heavy with drink, and she kept blinking them open, alarmingly wide,
as she struggled to focus.

"There are some details," I said, not
liking the lie but stuck with it.

"Well, c’mon."

She turned around, almost buckling at one knee, and
walked
ahead of me up a hall to a door that
opened on a white-on-white
living room, as
fleecy as down lining.

"Sit," she said, pointing to a couch that
framed a glass coffee table. There was a bottle of Gilbey’s sitting
on the table—no glass or tumbler—and a pair of tufted mules and a
book, Strqatease, on the floor beneath it. The woman waggled over to
the couch and dropped like a piano onto pavement.

"That’s better, huh?" she said,
encouraging herself She blinked wide at me and asked, "What is
it? You said the bond?"

"Some questions. Routine questions."

She nodded as if I made sense.

"When’s the last time you saw your son?"

She stared at the gin, as if the answer was
inside—like a note in a bottle.

"A few weeks ago," she said. "After he
was arrested. He came. . . he needed some money. I gave him what I
could."

"He’s not staying here with you now, then?"

"Is he supposed to?" she said with a pained
look, afraid she’d inadvertently given him away.

"No. He just has to stay in the city."

Maybe out of a fear that she was going to say
something else that damaged her boy’s chances, she made an effort
to summon up sobriety. I watched her do it, blinking her eyes,
stretching her mouth, straightening up on the couch.

"Wha’d you say your name was?" she asked.

"Stoner. Harry Stoner." I had an old
deputy’s badge that I saved for these occasions. I showed it to
her, pocketed it without pride, and took out my notebook. "At
the time your son was arrested, do you know where he was living?"

"Here and there. He had several friends in Mount
Adams. I don’t remember the names." She extended one arm along
the top of the sofa, in a ludicrous attempt to look more relaxed.
"You know this whole thing was a terrible mistake. This thing in
the bar. Paulie wasn’t . . . he was just joking."

"He was arrested for soliciting once before,
Mrs. Grandin."

"That charge was dismissed," she said
immediately.

"There was also an incident with a teacher of
his—Mason Greenleaf?"

I expected her to turn red, like her husband had, at
the mention of Mason’s name. To my surprise she had just the
opposite reaction, shrinking back into the couch with a shiver, as if
she’d felt someone step on her grave.