The James Deans Part 11

I kissed her forehead and pulled the sheet back over her.

MY HAIR WAS still wet when I pushed back the door to Bordeaux in Brooklyn and hurried to cut off the alarm. Sheepshead Bay to Brooklyn Heights, a drive that during rush hour could take over an hour, had taken me about twenty minutes. It's amazing how several hundred thousand fewer cars on the road can cut down on your commute.

I liked the store when it was empty and quiet. Of course, there's no quiet in Brooklyn, ever, not really. Even at this time of night you could hear the buzz of car tires against the roadway grates of the Brooklyn Bridge and the rumble of the subway just up the street. I suppose I mean I liked it when it was peaceful. Tonight, however, there would be no peace, not for me. I locked the door behind me and retreated to the room next to the office.

It was all well and good that I was motivated to do something, but I hadn't figured out what. I was kind of hoping it would come to me during the drive over. When it didn't, I hoped staring at the files spread out on the floor might do the trick. I was fresh out of inspiration when I got down on my hands and knees and began wading through the files for the third time. Finally, something-out of desperation, I think-occurred to me to try. Previously, I'd spent my time matching the police file to the work Spivack had done. In other words, I was looking at overlap, looking for names and faces that appeared in both files. If a piece of information turned up in both, I figured it carried more weight.

Maybe because I'd been a member of the NYPD and, in spite of its numerous shortcomings, believed it was the best police department in the world, I had pretty much dismissed the more esoteric pieces of information gathered by Spivack and a.s.sociates. Sure, I'd glanced at the surveillance reports on Moira's professors and the interviews with her soph.o.m.ore roommates. But I had a.s.sumed that Spivack's own people had gone over all this material several hundred times trying to comb out leads. Now it was my turn. Instead of looking for overlap, I did the polar opposite. I separated out everything-name, photo, doc.u.ment, etc.-that was unique to either set of files. Not unexpectedly, I culled a small mountain of unique information out of Spivack's files.

I guess it was around four in the morning when I got to the sign-in logs of the community affairs office. Everybody signed in and out of that office or the staff wouldn't help them. I'd had to do it. I think it had something to do with getting administrative funding from the legislature. The more people you serve, the bigger next year's allocation. The cops had had some of these logs as well, but the Spivack file had copies of the logs that went as far back as the day Moira Heaton was first interviewed for her intern position. There were thousands of entries.

For example: SIGN-IN (Please Print) DATE TIME IN TIME OUT STAFF MEMBER Maria Chianese 3/29/80 9:30 10:45 Sotomayor George Matsoukis 3/29/80 9:40 9:55 Abramson Unless I worked backward from the day she disappeared, I figured to be in that room until the new millennium. Call me selfish, but I wanted to catch at least the last couple of years of the twentieth century. By five I was nearly out of my mind, and I'd only gotten as far back as six weeks before the disappearance. Staring at the same page for a minute or more without seeing anything, my head would drop and I'd startle awake. Punchy as I might be, I sensed that there was something to see, a name maybe, but that I was just too tired to grasp it. It had to be around six when I drifted off.

I don't think I dreamed. If I did, I didn't remember. My neck was stiff and my drool had blurred some of the copier toner on the logbook photostats. The chirping phone cared not at all for my neck or lack of sleep or dreamlessness. I trudged into the office to answer it.

"h.e.l.lo," I rasped, "what time is it?"

"You sound like s.h.i.+t, Prager." It was Detective Gloria.

I peeked at one of the promotional mirrors hanging on an office wall. "I look worse than I sound. What time is it?"

"Eight fifteen. I called your house first and your wife told me I might find you at this number."

"Who says the guys at Missing Persons can't find their own shoes without a road map?"

"Very funny. You left a message, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, I did."

"About the statute-of-limitations thing."

"Right, right." Remembering, my heart began to race.

"We knew about that," Gloria explained, sounding slightly defensive.

"And ..."

"And nothing. Dead end. As far as we can tell it was an innocent question. We got no record of her going to a lawyer or anyone else about it. Apparently, the only one she ever mentioned it to was her father. Like her old man says, she was probably just asking on behalf of someone else or maybe she was just curious."

So much for that lead, I thought, then said: "But it's weird."

"What is?"

"I don't have a record of that interview in the official files."

"You don't, huh?" he asked, his tone changing from collegial to adversarial. "And how the f.u.c.k did some swinging-d.i.c.k private investigator get ahold of police files?"

That was careless of me, mentioning the files to him. If Larry McDonald had been privy to this conversation, he would have been on his way across the bridge to shoot me. Never mind that he'd failed to get me the complete file.

"Look, Detective Gloria, you know the people I'm working for are pretty powerful."

"You f.u.c.king threatenin' me now, you piece a-"

"No, no, no. Calm down, for chrissakes! All I'm saying is that there isn't much these guys can't get me access to if I need it. That's all, nothing more complicated than that."

"Okay, all right, 'cause if you got those files through someone in the department, I'll sic f.u.c.kin' IA on your inside source."

My heart rate picked up again. "What did you say?"

There was a brief, confused silence on his end of the line. "I said I'd get Internal Affairs on-"

"No, you said IA, you'd sic IA on them. Hold on, just hold on a second."

I dropped the phone and ran into the adjoining room. I rummaged through the sign-in sheets I'd been checking over before I pa.s.sed out. There it was, a name I'd come across four or five times in the weeks leading up to Moira Heaton's disappearance.

I picked the phone back up. "Gloria, you still there?"

"What the f.u.c.k's this all about?"

"Humor me, okay, just for a minute? Try thinking along."

"Christ, Prager, you sound like you're gonna have a freakin' canary. But go ahead, I'm listening."

"If crooks had half a brain-"

"-cops would be in trouble," he finished without my needing to prompt. "So what? I learned that one even before I got on the job."

"Me, too. In Missing Persons you must see a million aliases, huh?"

"That estimate's on the low end. Again, so what?"

"You ever go to a motel?"

"Prager, you are outta your mind, you know that? What's aliases got to do with motels?"

"You fill out a card when you go to a motel, right? You always put down some bulls.h.i.+t name and address, but it's not so easy to think of that stuff off the top of your head. You're nervous about getting caught. So if you don't think it through beforehand and you don't use John Smith, what name do you use?"

"I think I get you," he said, relieved he wasn't going to have to have me committed. "You would use a name that sounds like your name or that has the same initials. You'd think they'd learn, but these clowns do it all the time."

"Right. If they had half a brain ..."

"Okay, Prager, I follow your reasoning, but what's it got to do with Moira Heaton or anything else?"

"Maybe nothing, Detective, but maybe everything. You know Forty Court Street in Brooklyn Heights?"

"I can find it."

"Do that. I'll meet you in the lobby in two hours."

"Two hours."

"And Gloria ..."

"Yeah?"

"Start praying."

I ran out to talk to Joey the Gimp at the newsstand and to get a fifty-five-gallon drum of coffee. I had a lot of ground to cover in the next two hours.

IT WAS A motley crew a.s.sembled in the lobby of 40 Court Street, and none of them was particularly happy to see the others. I almost wished I had a video camera to tape the introduction of Y.W. Fenn to Captain Larry McDonald to Detective Robert Gloria to Pete Parson. One thing I can say without qualification is that the elevator ride up to Spivack's was the quietest, most uncomfortable elevator ride I'd ever taken.

As on my first visit, Joe Spivack hung back just long enough for the receptionist to greet us. And in keeping with everybody else's rotten moods, he seemed particularly miserable this morning.

"This way," he growled, his eyes burning holes in my forehead.

I understood the reason for his dissatisfaction. Not more than an hour before, I had had the unpleasant task of informing him that he was going to host a gathering of people he probably had no interest in meeting. I'd also demanded that he not inform his employer and mine, Thomas Geary, of this get-together.

"Who the h.e.l.l do you think you are?" he'd screamed over the phone. "I don't work for you, you small-time little s.h.i.+t. I can lose this account if he finds out I didn't-"

"As I recall," I said calmly, "Geary promised me your full cooperation, so cooperate and maybe I can spin this so you don't come out looking bad."

He couldn't have liked hearing that, and if I was correct, there were things he was likely to hear that he would like far less. What Spivack didn't know, what he couldn't have known, was that I had extracted individual promises from everyone else involved to keep this meeting, the things discussed during it, and the events leading up to it confidential. If things broke right, confidentiality wouldn't be an issue. If they didn't, confidentiality would be in everyone's best interest.

Spivack walked us past his office to a large conference room. We all found places around a black oval table that shone like a freshly waxed car. I did a second series of introductions.

"What the f.u.c.k is this, Moe?" Larry Mac asked the inevitable.

"I think I know what happened to Moira Heaton."

Detective Gloria gave voice to what he'd thought all along: "Brightman?"

"Sorry to disappoint you, Detective, but the only thing Brightman did wrong here was hire Moira Heaton. It was wrong because it gave the real perp access to her."

"She dead?" Pete Parson asked.

"I'm pretty sure, but I think we all a.s.sumed that all along anyway."

Silently, they nodded their heads in agreement. Although he'd known the reality of the situation from the day he'd taken the a.s.signment, Wit seemed distressed at the unanimity of opinion. The death of hope is never a pleasant experience.

Now it was Spivack's turn. "So ..."

I pulled out the sign-in sheets from Brightman's office, selecting five sheets in particular. I pa.s.sed them around, letting everyone get a good look.

"The name Ishmail Almonte appears on these sheets five times in the six weeks leading up to Moira Heaton's disappearance. As far as I can tell, his is the only name that appears that frequently."

"That's kinda thin, ain't it?" Pete wondered.

I didn't answer directly. "You got the sheets in front of you. Anyone wanna tell Pete something else about Ishmail Almonte's visits to the community affairs office?"

Wit spoke up. "He saw Moira Heaton on all five visits."

"That's still thin," Larry Mac said. "Can't build a case on that."

"You're right," I agreed. "Now, I know the answer to this already, but I'm going to ask anyway. Mr. Spivack, how many people on these sign-in sheets have you or your employees interviewed over the last nineteen months?"

"Every one of them," he boasted, "with the exception of the deceased, the infirm, and people who've dropped off the face of the earth."

"Holy s.h.i.+t!" Detective Gloria was amazed. "Your client got some deep-a.s.s pockets."

"And who interviewed Ishmail Almonte?" I continued.

Spivack squirmed. "I did."

"Why you?" I asked.

"Because I'm not blind. I was a U.S. f.u.c.king marshal for twenty-two years. It didn't escape me that his name appeared so frequently."

"And ...?" Detective Gloria prodded.

"And nothing," Spivack said smugly. "The guy's story checked out. He said he was an illegal and wanted to find out how to get a green card. He said Moira Heaton was helping him. I ran the guy's sheet. He was clean."

"Oh, please!" Larry Mac was skeptical. "He was clean 'cause he gave you a bulls.h.i.+t name."

Spivack turned an angry shade of red. "Listen, you second-guessing p.r.i.c.k, ask your buddy over there from Missing Persons how many of these people he interviewed. Ten? Five? One? None? He had access to the same records I had. If the f.u.c.king NYPD did their job in the first place-"

Gloria jumped up. "Watch your mouth, a.s.shole. I never met a fed worth his weight in p.i.s.s."

"Okay, okay, this s.h.i.+t's gonna stop right here and now," I bellowed, pounding my fist on the table. "Right here and right now! Not one person in this room could've done anything to prevent what happened to Moira Heaton. Not one. If who I think did what I think, she was long dead by the time anyone even knew she was missing. So let's stop the name-calling and recriminations. To me, the only thing that matters now is that we find the guilty party and bring a little peace to the family so they can grieve. Agreed?"

They all nodded sullenly.

"Agreed, Mr. Prager," Wit repeated. "But evidently, you think this Ishmail Almonte is responsible."

"Sort of," I said.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Pete was curious.

I turned to Spivack. "I think we all realize you interviewed a ton of people in the course of the investigation, so no one's gonna get bent outta shape if you don't remember what Ishmail Almonte looked like."

"Twenty-five to thirty years of age. Light skinned, Spanish speaker with a Cubano accent. Some English. Five foot six or seven inches tall, one hundred forty pounds, muscular build. Shoulder-length black hair, full beard and thick mustache. Dark eyebrows, dark brown eyes, broken nose. No visible tattoos or scars, as I can recall. But you know all this. There's a copy of my interview notes in the file, Prager."

Wit was fascinated by a single detail. "How did you know it was a Cuban accent?"

"Seven years working in Miami-Dade'll make you an expert," Spivack said. "I can also smell a phony Cohiba from a mile away, for what it's worth."

Strangely, the tension in the room seemed to evaporate. Spivack finally relaxed. Wit lit a cigarette. Larry Mac loosened his tie. Pete Parson took off his jacket.

I pushed ahead. "What Spivack said before about my having a copy of his interview notes on Almonte is true. It's also the case that I looked them over before we came here. That's beside the point. It's not whether I looked the notes over that's important, but whether Spivack looked them over."