Ice Cap (28 page)

I made little effort this time to manage my wardrobe, or hair, or makeup. I just showed up at the restaurant in sweater and jeans and a face gloriously unmeddled-with. Angstrom didn't seem to notice.

“Sorry for making you wait. Had a hard day,” I said, sitting down at the table and receiving my white wine, a standing order.

“You don't seem the worse for wear,” he said, obviously out of kindness.

“Wear would be the least of it.”

“What happened?”

File cards flipped through my mind, each holding a piece of information I didn't want to share with the press. This was not the proper format for a healthy conversation. But I had to accept that it never would be as long as the other party was a reporter.

“Nothing really. So, what can you tell me about Ivor Fleming?”

He took a little notebook out of a battered briefcase and flipped it open. It was the same type as mine, just a different color. I held mine up and we had a light communion over notebook preferences.

“There are two schools of thought about Ivor,” he said. “One says he's still dirty, the other says he decided after the last prosecution to stop pushing his luck. To enjoy his mature years selling scrap metal and sponsoring community activities. It's pretty evenly split, but the latter camp has the better case, since there's no evidence he's involved in any of the naughty stuff he used to be into, which was just about everything. Most criminals like to specialize, but Ivor liked a diversified portfolio. Probably his business background.”

“What do you think?”

“Always the contrarian, I think he's still active. Just far more careful.”

“Anything connected to the Polish or Russian mob in Brooklyn?”

His face filled with surprise.

“You know more than you're letting on,” he said.

I did a little coquettish move and said, “I might,” then instantly regretted it. What is wrong with me?

“Why don't you tell me what you know and not waste our time,” he said in as much of a noncritical way as you could speak those words.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “That was jerky. I know the Poles and Russians are in some sort of alliance—the Russians operating a large global organization and the Poles contracting out as an independent subsidiary. There are benefits to both, on a local level as well as in their international operations. And that's about it.”

He looked impressed. “That's a lot. The configuration you note is relatively new. There's been a lot of bloodletting among all the Eastern European gangs as they sorted out territories formed after the Soviet collapse. They all have a presence in New York, working out of Brooklyn, as you'd have to if you were going to engage in world trade.”

“How big is all this?” I asked.

He gave a “who knows” gesture. “Billions. How many? Anybody's guess.”

“Where do you think Ivor fits?”

He pointed his finger at me, not rudely, but to make sure I would hear what he was saying. “This you don't talk about. It's exclusive. My research, okay?”

“I won't. Unless it will help keep my client out of prison, then I can't promise anything.”

He considered that.

“I believe you,” he said. “You're not only direct, you're principled.”

Yeah, yeah,
I wanted to say, but it would have wrecked the spirit of the moment.

“Okay,” he said, “I think he's working in something closely tied to his legitimate business. It's an area he knows inside and out. Much easier to stay under the radar when you're on home turf.”

“Scrap metal?” I asked.

He shook his head. “A business consultant would tell you Ivor's not in the scrap-metal business, he's in the business of harvesting an inexpensive raw material, processing and packaging it, and then redistributing it as a higher-margin, value-added product. The processing and packaging is minimal, so it's not like he's really manufacturing anything. At the end of the day, it's the moving around of the stuff that he's really good at. So he's not in the metal business, he's in…”

“Logistics.”

“Exactly.”

A single sharp laugh popped out of me, loud enough to cause Angstrom to pull back and the couple at the next table to shift their wary eyes in my direction.

“That's funny?” he asked.

“Not to me. Logistics is serious business. You don't get any more serious.”

“Then why are you laughing?”

“I know the god of the logistic sciences. When people ask, who's the Babe Ruth, the Michael Jordan, the Jimi Hendrix of logistics, they'll say, Harry Goodlander. None better. Broke the mold.”

“Your boyfriend,” he said.

“You shouldn't know his name. That's personal.”

“It was in your background file. I didn't compile it, just read it.”

“That makes me very unhappy.”

“It's probably worse than you think,” he said. “Everybody can know almost everything about everybody.”

I knew this was true, I just didn't want to think it was true about me. So I shifted the conversation back to the original topic.

“So you believe Ivor has somehow integrated evil enterprise into his official business. Which you redefine as essentially import-export,” I said.

“I do,” he said. “The world is now nearly one. Matter flows around the globe like the currents of the sea. Legal and illegal all travel in the same streams. Ivor is a tributary in that system, from his various feeder stations to his plant then out again to trucks, railroads, and shipping docks. Who would be in a better position to serve illicit traffic?”

“What is he shipping and handling?” I asked.

He sat back. “Don't know. Working on that. Could be anything or everything. I don't believe it's nothing.”

“As a matter of faith,” I said.

“That's right. And I'm an atheist.”

“Not me. Agnostic all the way. Hedging my bets.”

He liked that, and showed it by grinning and making me clink glasses.

“You are utterly charming,” he said, his voice pitched down a notch or two. “That's a professional and personal opinion. The more I learn about you, the more impressed I am. I know it's unprofessional of me, but I'm feeling seduced by my subject.”

“Metaphorically,” I said.

“Of course.”

I looked at him a little closer, in the forgiving dim light of the restaurant. His hands looked a little less delicate and his frame more robust. And the face, which stopped me midstride when I first saw it, was getting even better. Something started stirring down below, even though I told it not to.

“Where do you stay when you come out here?” I asked him. “It's not exactly B&B season.”

“We have a travel department at the
Times.
They find secure lodging for reporters in Afghanistan and Somalia. The Hamptons off season are only slightly more challenging.”

“You're charming yourself. Is that something you learn in the reporter trade? Flatter your victims out of their information?” I asked.

“Sometimes. You do the same thing when you have to. And thanks for what I think was a compliment.”

“So what's going on here?” I asked.

He looked theatrically confused. “Nothing. I'm trying to do a story on you and you're resisting me. Which only makes me try harder. And I think we could have something on a personal level if you'd stop pretending we couldn't, though don't wait too long. Once I start writing the story, I have to follow it where it goes.”

I'd already downed two white wines on automatic delivery. When the third one came, I sent it back to be replaced by a vodka on the rocks. Angstrom ordered a scotch and soda, responding to the escalation.

“That's okay,” I said. “You're not only abstruse, you're principled.” I felt the outer surface of his calf, so barely perceptible it could have been his aura, brushing against my leg.

“You know about Harry,” I said. “What about you? I don't have a dossier to pore over.”

He smiled a warm, self-deprecating kind of smile, something I rarely saw among the men I knew. Sam and Sullivan were too hard-assed to consider such a thing, Randall too devoid of affect, Harry too ironic. I liked the change of pace.

“Not much to tell. Succession of women disenchanted by the long hours, occasional risk to life and limb, and low pay. Did I mention obsessive preoccupation with appalling subject matter? I didn't blame them. Still don't.”

“I know the tune to that song,” I said.

“I know you do,” he said, looking at me with those drill-through-your-skull eyes.

Then I felt more than an involuntary pressure against my leg.

“So you won't tell me where you're staying,” I said.

He told me. A motel on the eastern edge of Southampton Village, about ten minutes from my apartment.

“Unless I stayed with you,” he said. “In which case I'm only about two minutes away. Or less, depending on how things go.”

I held up my vodka.

“Things aren't going there,” I said, “but I will finish this drink with you. And I'll pick up the tab as a thank-you for the information.”

He clinked my glass and sat back in his chair, but kept the leg thing going. I gently moved mine away.

“I finally have a source willing to share a lot of information on you,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Ross Semple, the chief of police.”

“You're kidding. He hates me.”

“He admires you tremendously. Had nothing but praise and appreciation. The detective, Joe Sullivan, didn't add much, but he confirmed everything the chief told me. They think a lot of you.”

I remembered the same conversation with my mother. I told her my father saw me as an annoyance at best, and she said I should hear him brag about me to his friends. And to this day, I think, Yes, I should have heard him, because I still don't believe it.

 

20

After that last drink Angstrom and I shook hands and he left for his motel, and I went back upstairs. I went directly to the office and brought my laptop over to the sofa to maximize the comfort factor. The paper bag with Randall's hard drive was sitting on my desk, but it seemed way too technically intimidating to tackle at that point. So I started to wander down more familiar paths, beginning with the standard search engines.

It was relatively easy to track Saline to Kings County Technical College, still very much an ag school back when she was there. True to form, she was nearly invisible, with no record of extracurricular activities or sports. What I needed was her official transcript, which should be confidential, and thus inaccessible by traditional means. I tried that route anyway, halfheartedly, then resorted to Randall's not-so-traditional application, which also didn't quite work. However, I was able to get into her personal file, which some enterprising archivist in the college's administrative office had diligently converted to a digital format.

Included was a recommendation letter to the medical schools she was applying to. According to the recommender, any postgraduate program would be greatly enhanced by her presence. A perfect 4.0 grade point average being the least of her credentials, all academic. Apparently, early in her college career she'd migrated from general agriculture into its underpinnings, settling on dual majors in organic chemistry and microbiology.

I considered people who excelled in fields like that to be denizens of an alien planet. For me, English was the only possible major, since at least I knew the language and had already read a few of the crucial texts in high school. Science and math were subjects to flee from, screaming.

There were other awards and commendations, certificates declaring mastery of various arcane specialties. Then came the other stuff, this not so bright and shiny. Several notes from the school's medical office expressed concern for her health. Poor eating habits were cited. I read anorexia between the lines. Other notes recorded conditions described as exhaustion or malaise. I wondered about this love in officialdom for euphemism. Just say it. The girl was probably depressed and riddled with anxiety. Within each notation was Saline's urgent request that no word of this be communicated to her parents. The writer of the notes expressed openly his or her dilemma—respecting Saline's privacy and upholding the school's right to loco parentis—yet believing her interests might be better served by contacting Mom and Dad.

Maybe if they had, what happened a few years later wouldn't have happened, I thought. Or would have happened earlier.

Saline did graduate, and was accepted into New Amsterdam Medical School. And that's where the Kings County trail ended. So I followed her into the city, where I ran smack into a brick wall. As a medical institution, New Amsterdam had things like HIPAA rules requiring much more rigorous security. Randall could probably sneak in, but I didn't want to put him in any more danger than I already had.

So I jumped back into the land of the legal and drove my search engine around Manhattan for a few hours. To sop up the vodka and white wine, I made a ham sandwich on white toast with butter, my favorite breakfast—comfort food courtesy of my mother, whose culinary repertoire was limited, but always delivered with brio. I think this celebration of food that people not derived from the British Isles would find bland at best was what my family practiced in lieu of actually learning to cook.

I clicked around the Web while I ate and tried to keep toast crumbs from falling on the keyboard and jamming up the keys. So without hardly realizing it, I wandered onto a neighborhood newspaper that covered the Upper East Side. It had gone through the familiar transition from print to both print and online and now exclusively online. Right on the home page, a little window declared proudly that the paper's archives, covering all forty years of publication, were now available with a click of the button.