Dead Anyway (7 page)

He came back almost immediately with his pick, and a request for more information. I wrote, “See you then.”

Then I went and did something I really didn’t know how to do—buy a wig. I found the shop by searching for wigs designed for chemotherapy patients, on a hunch that the product line would strive for utility over glamour. I wasn’t disappointed by the selection, in principle, just the complications involved in getting the most natural look. I couldn’t sign up for all the fittings, the back and forth, so I bought a dozen wigs in a variety of cuts and colors, much to the disapproval of the wig seller.

Back at the house, I tried on a sort of Michael Landon mop that demanded little in transitioning at the fringes. I put my L.L. Bean hat over it and a pair of bulky sunglasses over my regular lenses. A little too ridiculous. Without the hat wasn’t much better. So I tried it with a baseball cap, with the hair slightly swept back and streaking out the back, which seemed to do the trick.

My appointment with Henry Eichenbach was set for the next morning at ten o’clock, so I spent the rest of the day and evening installing new gear, stocking the house with various necessities and organizing as efficient a domestic operation as possible. Having worked out of my home for years while my wife tended to her time-consuming office job, household management had fallen to me. Florencia was a neat person, but would never have risen to the level of tidy precision that I brought to the task.

She used to mock me that she was Julia Roberts in
Sleeping with the Enemy
, but she liked things clean and orderly, and efficiently configured, without having to make it so herself. In all our divisions of labor we were absurdly compatible, achingly so, I thought as I lay in bed that night, despite all my efforts not to think about such things.

I’
D CHOSEN
the park bench at the beach in Norwalk because it would be impossible to photograph my face straight on, unless the photographer was out on a boat. The Thimble Islands were out there, lumps on the horizon, but too far away for anything but a spy satellite surveillance camera.

The bench was open to the west, but on the east was a windowless brick building housing a set of rest rooms.

I sat in the Outback before the appointed time—blending in with the cars and trucks whose drivers parked there to watch the water while they caught a smoke, ate lunch or had a cup of coffee—and watched for Henry’s approach.

He was on time, which was notable. He didn’t look around for a backup, also notable. I’m not an expert on surveillance, of course, but I have some experience with how people think and behave. It’s almost impossible to not steal a glance in the direction of a person you think is watching you. Henry’s glances were far more generalized, looking for the guy who was supposed to meet him on the park bench.

I was disappointed by his appearance. Full head of curly, but neatly cropped grey hair, heavy black-rimmed glasses, and a creepy grey Colonel Sanders goatee cut so it formed a point directly under his chin. His face and body were round, with most of the mass settled into his jowls and butt. None of which had any bearing on his skills or integrity as a journalist, so I shook off my first impression and strolled over to the park bench.

I was wearing a light coat with a big collar pulled up around my neck, with the lower half of my face covered in a scarf, and the hat, wig and sunglasses obscuring the rest. It wasn’t the most imaginative disguise, but good enough for the purpose.

“Give me the recorder or let me frisk you,” I said, sitting down next to him. I pitched my voice low and hoarse, like Clint Eastwood, whom I’d mimicked often to Florencia’s delight.

“I don’t have a recorder,” he said, after a pause, “and I’m sure as shit not going to let you feel me up.”

“Okay,” I said, and got up to leave.

“Wait,” he said.

I stopped. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small digital recorder. I told him to shut it off, rewind and erase our brief conversation. I watched him go through the actions, then sat back down.

“Paranoid, are we?” he asked.

“Cautious,” I said.

“Are you one of Sebbie’s boys?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Then what can you?”

“You’re here because you don’t know where he is. And you want to know,” I said, looking up and down the beach and out over the water.

“I do,” said Henry. “I miss the old sociopath. Hasn’t been nearly as much fun without him.”

“Are you freelance or staff?” I asked.

Henry pulled a small notebook out of his jacket.

“Mind if I take notes?” he asked, somewhat sarcastically.

“Nope.”

“Good,” he said, clicking a ballpoint pen, “let’s start with your name.”

“That’s up to you.”

“Huh?”

“You can call me anything you want,” I said.

He was quiet for a moment.

“You’re in witness protection. Interesting,” he said. “We must’ve met, but I can’t place you, I admit it. Nicely done. You don’t have to confirm anything. I know the drill.”

“How’s the book coming?” I asked.

“Slowly. Who told you about that?”

“It’s on your web site. You should check it once in a while. Anyway, it’s understandable. You’ve been on a big story over a period of years. You’re eager to track down a key player. Getting by as a freelance journalist isn’t easy, now that they’ve broomed you out of the
Post
. Why wouldn’t you be writing a book?”

“Hey, not broomed. I was empowered to seek fresh opportunities.”

Henry wasn’t a young man. The grey hair, paunch, baby boomer affectations, sun damage on his pale skin figured him to be about sixty, maybe a little more or less. His eyes were widely spaced, and close to bulging. But brimming with a stirred-up mix of defiance and self-deprecation.

I knew the type. I’d always cultivated relationships with reporters at newspapers and trade magazines, print and online. They were my favorite starting points when venturing into a new realm of inquiry, and my favorite sources at the wrap-up phase.

I liked their inquisitiveness, since it was a lot like mine. And their intelligence and eagerness to cross rhetorical swords. I didn’t like their arrogance and first amendment-entitled insufferability, but nobody’s perfect.

“I have a proposition,” I said. “I doubt you’re going to like it. But I’m proposing it anyway.”

“O-kay,” said Henry, stretching out each syllable, unsure.

“I don’t know where Sebbie is. But if you give me a few key pieces of information, I’ll find him.”

Henry had been sitting sideways on the bench. Now he swiveled around and faced the Sound. He slapped the tops of his thighs and huffed a few times.

“You’re right. I don’t like that at all. What kind of a putz do you think I am? Who’re you working for? Sebbie’s not my favorite person, character-wise, but I’m not helping you kill him.”

“I’m not going to kill him. I just want to talk to him. And I’m not working for anyone but myself. Like you.”

“I suppose you can’t prove any of that.”

“No. If you decide to help me, it’ll be blind trust,” I said. “You won’t know immediately if that trust was justified. But if things go as hoped, your agenda will be advanced in ways that might prove the salvation of your book project.” I turned and faced him. “If you help me,” I said, “your knowledge of the world will expand exponentially. If you decide not to, I’ll just go to the next name on my list and he or she will have that privilege.”

I stood up and started to walk away. He called to me to come back, but I kept walking. A careful study of the behavior of anti-hero archetypes, which I’d made when I was about twelve years old, taught me that indifference to the supplications of the recently put-down amplified their desire to restore the relationship.

“Okay, okay,” Henry yelled. “Come on back. We can talk.”

I took a few more paces, but at a slower pace, then turned slowly, reluctantly, as I’d seen Steve McQueen do. I walked back to the bench, and after taking a moment for my injured brain to locate exactly where it was, I sat down.

“What is your deal, man? I don’t get it,” he said.

“My deal is my deal. Your deal is your book. Where we converge is a wish to talk to Sebbie. All you have to do is tell me the name of his closest confidant. Based on your articles, I’m guessing it’s Wayne Frankenfelder, owner of the Miss Kitty Lounge. Sebbie seems to think of him as a surrogate son. Or so you implied in your reporting.”

“Who cares who his friends are?”

“Human connections are irresistible. Whether you’re a journalist or a street thug, you risk everything to keep the ones you value intact. Especially a highly social guy like Sebbie who loved hanging around his restaurants and clubs. This underpins my theory that he never left Connecticut.”

“Man, this is bizarre.”

I looked at him, noticing again that his irises, bright blue, were surrounded by the whites of his eyes. It added a dash of craziness to his overall aspect. He huffed again and sat back in the bench.

“Killing Sebbie isn’t really the issue, if you want the truth,” he said. “I just don’t want to be treated like a schmuck.”

“Understandable.”

“Frankenfelder’s important, but less so than Madame Francine de le Croix, the accomplished palm reader and chop shop operator,” said Henry. “Word is, Sebbie wouldn’t take a piss without checking with Francine first. I’ve tried to get to her, and Frankenfelder, but they know who I am. I agree with your logic. I don’t think he’d want to cut himself off completely from his local support system. That’s not part of his ego profile. He’d need a way to connect. Outside of a daughter who used to live with him and might still, those two are his closest people. Tells you what sort of crud we’re dealing with here.”

“I thought you missed him,” I said.

“You’re right. I miss the encouraging chats with my publisher. The book’s dead in the water unless I can corroborate a bunch of stuff only Sebbie can do.”

“Okay,” I said, standing up and walking away. “Thanks.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

I went back to the parking lot, walked past the Subaru and across the street to another bench at a sheltered bus stop. From there I could see Henry get into his own car, a ratty, sway-backed Ford Taurus, and drive away. I waited another half hour, then started the Outback with a remote control I’d installed the day before, waited a few minutes, then walked over, got in and drove home.

Francine the palm reader. A professional prognosticator. I’d done some work in futurism myself. Surely we could build something on that common ground.

C
HAPTER
6

“I
wish you’d check in more often,” said Evelyn when I called her on the disposable. “All this worry is interfering with my concentration.”

“Sorry. You’re right. These spatial distortions seem to affect my sense of time as well. Be no surprise to Einstein.”

“How are you doing otherwise?” she asked.

“As a person?”

“No. As a giraffe.”

“I can move about fairly well, even with the limp,” I said. “I’m okay, then I’m not. I sleep. I eat. My emotional range is circumscribed. I don’t seem to experience fear. Anger is always there, though I feel no urge to express it. Grief as well. I feel it profoundly, yet it seems to be operating in an isolation chamber, with no influence on day-to-day operations. Strange, really.”

She had the good manners not to ask what those day-to-day operations were.

“We need another psych eval,” she said.

“I’m sure we do. But I can’t manage it right now. Too much going on.”

“Okay, that’s fine. But I need to talk to you about the agency. You told me you’d like to know what it’s worth. Bruce has a potential buyer. The comptroller Damien Brandt’s father, Elliot. He’s a billionaire investor out of Westport. Bruce has known him for a long time and likes him. The father wants to keep the staff intact and just carry on as they’ve been doing since Florencia died.”

“Why’s that?”

“If a competing agency took over, they’d swallow up the operation and pare down the staff to realize economies, which would likely involve Damien. They’d also want an earn-out provision, which could erode the sale price over time. Brandt is willing to pay full boat up front and be done with it.”

“Buying his kid’s job.”

“Essentially. There are worse ways to support your kids. He’d also buy the building, and more importantly, keep the name. I thought you’d like that part.”

“You think sentiment should be part of the equation?” I said.

“A minor part, but yes.”

I couldn’t help but agree. With Florencia gone, the agency meant nothing to me, but what was wrong with preserving a scrap of her legacy?

“Okay, sure. What do we do?” I asked.

“Give Brandt’s people the right to due diligence. Open the books and come up with a valuation. Bruce will keep an eye on things. He bought about a zillion dollars’ worth of companies for his old firm. This is not a problem for him. With all the crap that’s happened to us, can’t we just take a second and enjoy this one good thing?”

She was right.

“Let’s,” I said. “It can’t be that hard.”

We talked for a while more, Evelyn pushing me on how I was taking care of myself, me evading and countering with questions about the police investigation.

“It’s nowhere,” she said. “Maddox has his theories: It was a professional hit. Florencia had unknowingly exposed herself. Or maybe it was one of your missing person projects. I think the kid is trying, but the odds are long.”

“But we’re not giving up,” I said.

“No, Arthur, we’re not giving up.”

I
T’S NOT
in my nature to enjoy dress-up. As a kid, I loathed Halloween. My only costume was a jacket and tie and a mask my father wore when he was a kid. This served the purpose from the first wearing at age ten straight through to college, after which I avoided Halloween parties altogether.

This distaste extended to my daily wardrobe, which never varied beyond khakis, or jeans, T-shirts or Oxford cloth button-down collar shirts.

So it was no joy for me to concoct a costume for my visit to Francine de la Croix. Even the logic of it was a hard sell to myself, but my better mind prevailed. This was the first genuine penetration into enemy territory. Risking identification, however unlikely, made no sense if it could be avoided by a simple precaution.