Spygirl (13 page)

ELEVEN             

George and I stopped for apple fritters on the way uptown to meet Detective DeSanto. We sat in the Dunkin’ Donuts at Fifty-sixth and Second, munching away. He punctuated the quiet by telling me stories and asking me about my love life.

“So, are you still all busted up about your boyfriend dumping you?” He smiled and dropped a last piece of fritter in his mouth.

“He didn't
dump
me,” I protested. “I dumped him. It was sort of mutual. We outgrew each other.”

“Uh-huh.” He was already looking dubious. On the way out, he started to tell me about a friend of his wife's who had gotten
involved with a cardiac surgeon. I hadn't told him about Edward and was a bit freaked out by this.

The woman, Karin, had always had shady taste in men, but she fell really hard for this guy and, as George said, “the fact that he was a fancy doctor really got her going.” Totally different from me and Edward, I thought to myself, although I didn't really know him well enough to
know
exactly what attracted me to him above and beyond his stunning good looks.

Right before Karin was due to marry the vet, George did a little research on the guy, just by calling up his medical school and checking on his degree. It turned out he didn't have one. He was a physician's assistant for eleven years, and had completed two years of a master's degree in nursing. He also had a $200,000 lien on his house, which was barely worth more, and two ex-wives he forgot to mention to Karin. George went to his wife, who gave the 411 to her friend, who then broke off the engagement.

“The first time I met that guy, I knew he was a fucking prick. The thing is, the next guy she met was a piece of work, too. He took out a four-hundred-thousand-dollar life insurance policy on her and tried to have her thrown off a powerboat.”

“Are you serious?” I was sickened.

“Yeah, but the guy pussied out and went to the cops. Meanwhile, she let him cosign on all her bank accounts and credit lines, so he's got his grubby fucking hands on most of her assets now. The people that are attracted to these losers never change. If I out one of these guys, she'll find another. She's a loser magnet. I mean, don't shit in my mouth and call it a sundae.”

This was definitely an unappetizing commentary. I thought about all the women in the world who found themselves repeatedly and inexplicably hooked up with con men, polygamists, sociopaths, felons, petty thieves, pathological liars. They distorted
these men through the lens of their overwhelming desire to be loved. I hoped I wasn't one of them.

When we got to Lou DeSanto's office, Goldie was already there, and the two of them had made fast friends. She was sitting on his desk, leaning back and laughing, saying, “Lou, yawr a caaard!” He was laughing loudly enough that we'd heard him from the other end of the tiled hall as we were escorted down to meet them. He had a neat mustache and a round belly, and looked like a guy who had been around.

“Miz Gray, Mizster Neilan, have a seat.” He waved us into two ancient Naugahyde-upholstered chairs in front of the desk.

“You toow would not believe …” Goldie drew in a breath. “Lou and I know a lot of the same people.” They smiled at each other. It felt like we'd stumbled into their first date. Lou cleared his throat, “So tell me what's going on here.” George talked, and asked me for backup sometimes, and I'd explain what the parole terms were for Wilbur's conviction in Texas or whatever. Lou shook his head a lot and interrupted us to take a few calls. At one point, he got a message on the intercom telling him he had a call from Frank Marispone. “Frankie!” Goldie squealed. “From security at the Plaza?”

“Holy crap,” Lou said, “do you know him too?” When the call buzzed over, Goldie grabbed it and said, “Frankie, do you know who this is? I'll give you three guesses. No. No. Okay two— yeah, yeah, it's Goldie. I'm in his office right now!” After Goldie and Lou had chatted with Frankie and squared away their connections, George resumed pitching the case. When he was finished, Lou put an unlit cigar in his mouth and started chewing on it.

“I don't see a crime here—yet—except for some possible check fraud, unless Goldie had a written contract with him that he's violated by not paying her.” She didn't, so Lou's idea was to
try to work with the people over at the St. Regis to snare him, probably by getting him to sign a contract and then pass a bad check. Our only other hope, he said, was that Garry might be violating his probation. When we left the office, we agreed that I'd draw up a report of everything we knew about Garry for Lou that night and get it to him the next day. He'd see what he could do, he said, adding, “But without a crime our hands are tied.” Even if there was a crime, if it was just a misdemeanor or if it didn't violate the probation, it was too small for the police to get involved. “This is New York, ya know, we've got bigger fish to fry.” At this, Goldie made a pouty face, and Lou added, “But honey, I'll do everything I can.”

George and I went out for a celebratory beer after the meeting. Over a few frothy Guinnesses, we talked about his kids. He had a cherubic, tow-headed three-year-old son, and a brand-new baby. The older one, Stuart, seemed to be totally unlike his tough-guy dad. When he came into the office, he held his dad's leg and shielded his face, sometimes bursting into tears and crying into his dad's pant leg, squealing, “I want mommy!” Stuart was the same age as Sol's son and at least three inches shorter, and his blond locks fell softly around his head, making him look more like a pretty little girl, with tiny, pinched, pouting lips.

“You just hope when your kids grow up they have the equipment to handle this world,” he said, “because it's full of ugly things.” And with that we left OHara's Tavern and headed our separate ways.

I went back to the office and worked up my report for Lou. I transcribed the whole tape I'd recorded in the field with Alexis.

When I got back to the office, Evan seemed curious about my case. He asked me if I was enjoying playing cops and robbers. “Nailing these guys is better than sex,” he observed.

“I couldn't say, I've never had it.” I said dismissively “Besides, I thought you liked girls.” Cries of “Ahhh, busteeed!” escaped from Assman and Nestor's direction.

“Amy, I have a surprise for you.” Linus came out of the conference room with a cat that Nestor's girlfriend had donated to us. A big, cuddly, mostly red-haired tabby. “Ohooooooooo, hi sweetie, hi, little one,” I coooed. I love cats, and I'd had to give the one I had with Ben back to him as part of the division of assets. “What's her name?”

“Kitty,” Linus said.

“I think I love her.” Kitty was purring aggressively on my lap. Then I noticed Sol. He had started wearing enormous hands-free headphones around the office so he could do his wheeling and dealing and walk around, too. With his headset and his ungainly posture, he looked like an operator at a spina bifida telethon. He thought he looked cool. He walked over to me as he was hands-free schmoozing with a client. “Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I think we should do the searches in California and Colorado because the ex-wives are there and his credit may have been under their names. Right. So it's another G. Think about it and call me back.” He left the black monster on his head.

“So, Miss Marple, you're back,” he said to me.

“I'm just curious,” I said. “Do you get direct TV with that portable satellite dish on your head? ”

He was never one to take a compliment lying down. “I get Yiddivision—all Jews, all the time. But you wouldn't know anything about that, Miss Amy-make-like-she-came-off-the-
Mayflower
-Gray”

I hadn't been given this much shit for being a bad Jew since my cabinmates at summer camp freaked out because I didn't know what a mezuzah was.

Sol seemed ready to burst in anticipation of asking me, “Okay A. Gray who's the most famous Jew in the world?”

I hesitated. “Kid Rosenthal!”

“Nice. And Jesus was the first Jewish carpenter.” Sol was cracking himself up. His headset hung around his neck like a stethoscope, and he was hysterical, slapping desks, the upper tones in his cackle bouncing off the back walls of the office.

My report started thus: “Although the evidence contained herein is not conclusive, our research indicates that Ms. Whitcomb is unaware of her fiancé's illegal activity. Her comments indicate that she believed Mr. Wilbur is thirty-eight years old. As you'll see in Exhibit F of this report, identification sources show Garry Wilbur was born on November 6, 1947.” It continued in this parched language for ten pages. I sent it to George by e-mail around nine-thirty and he sent it back with a few changes soon after. I made a copy of the audiotape, included it as Exhibit H, and had it messengered over to the Sixteenth Precinct. It was almost ten. I was the only one in the office, except for the occasional sounds of rats scurrying along the walls, but I didn't even look up. From the strain of staring at my computer screen, it felt like two holes had been bored into my eyes with blowtorches. I rubbed them and tears of exhaustion rolled out from the corners and smudged my face.

Being the only one in the office when the phone rang, I was sure it was for me. I straightened my face and answered it. “Amy Gray speaking.”

“Amy, it's Lou DeSanto.”

My spine pricked up. “Lou, how are you?”

“Great. Great. Listen, that report you sent was excellent.” Nice to know I'm not the only one working late.

“Oh, good.”

“It was a very professional job. Very professional. I just wanted you to know that I talked to my friend Eddie, who's the head of security at the Waldorf, and it looked like Wilbur sent a kited check over there, which we can use to nail him for a parole violation.”

“Great.”

“We have a meeting set up tonight with him at the hotel, and some agents will be there to take him into custody. I can't guarantee anything, but at the very least we can try to extradite him to Texas.”

“Really?” I hesitated. “Don't you want to prosecute him?”

“We don't have much to hold him on now, honey.” I was touched by Lou's term of endearment. I imagined myself, years into my investigative career, perched on his desk, bending his ear with my stories of corrupt corporatiers and then using him to cultivate a seductive symbiosis with the police. “Let me know if you ever need any help with anything. Some cases you're working on, whatever. Give me a call.”

When I got off the phone, I felt a profound sense of disappointment. All of a sudden, just as this case was getting interesting, the police were pawning him off to another state. I felt cheated. What would happen to Alexis? What other people were being manipulated by this guy right now that we knew nothing about? I called George at home and apprised him of the situation.

“Okay,” he said. “Sounds good.”

“So why don't we try to put together a real case against him in
New York? ” I pleaded. I could hear George's lips curl into his usual smirk.

“Let it go,” he said quietly.

I packed up my laptop. It was cold and misting outside. When I arrived downtown, the halogen lamps that limn Niagara's sign were haloed, giving off a dirty cartoonish yellow light against the blue. Unlike its one-of-the-wonders-of-the-world-namesake, Niagara looked ever more the set-piece for urban squalor. You couldn't get more Gotham than this. I felt a warmth emitting from inside and scurried into my shabby refuge. Cassie and my other friend Skye were sitting faithfully at the bar, sipping frothy beers.

Skye was a gorgeous six-foot-one giantess with the confidence to match. Although she and Cass were temperamental op-posites, they had a kind of social symbiosis that was mutually beneficial. Cass seemed to become a little more vulgar around Skye, and Skye always seemed slightly less unhinged around Cass. We each ordered rounds of scotch-on-the-rocks and talked about our lives, and gradually unwound. Cassie, as usual, was keeping an eye on Stuart, but more important, she was contemplating an old boyfriend who was suddenly coming to town.