The James Deans Part 4

A woman I recognized from the stage upstairs slipped out of the dressing room and walked past the pay phone. They called her Domino, and she had done this dominatrix shtick to Devo's "Whip It." She'd worn a shiny black latex getup, thigh-high boots, and a leather mask and strutted about with a riding crop. Now she was dressed in a halter, jeans, and sandals.

"You're Domino, right?" I said like some goofy stage-door Johnny. "You were great."

She yawned. "Thanks, buddy, but I'm tired, and it's against house rules to mix with the gentlemen."

House rules! Who was she kidding? This wasn't exactly the Lonesome Piper Country Club. For a fistful of fifties and a nice smile, you could get anything you wanted in a place like this.

While I figured out what to say next, I took a careful look at Domino. She had been pretty once, maybe very pretty. At close quarters, however, the wear and tear showed. She was on the wrong side of thirty-five, and the fluorescent light wasn't doing her any favors. I was on that same side of thirty-five myself, but I wasn't trading on my boyish good looks for room and board and who knows what else. The whites of her eyes weren't. Yellow was more like it. She had a touch of drippy junkie nose, or maybe she'd done a few lines too many. She'd get older faster than I, much faster if she didn't get clean. Women like Domino can have short, violent careers, and when things start to go, they go quickly. There's no safety net to catch you and no ladder back up.

"Look, I need to talk to John Heaton," I admitted, unwilling to spin too much of a tale. "I know he works here and it's pretty obvious he's a hard man to see." I gave her my card. "Just tell him it's about his daughter, all right?"

She didn't answer, but took the card. Her eyes got big as she looked past me. Before I could turn around, a powerful hand clamped down on my left shoulder.

"This a.s.shole bothering you, darlin'?" a gravelly voice wanted to know.

"It's okay, Rocky. He's just a fan," she said to the man standing behind me, then refocused on my face. "Thanks for the compliment, mister. Come back again soon."

I bowed slightly. "You're welcome."

She walked past me, her sandals clickity-clacking on the stairs. The vise loosened its grip on my shoulder, and I turned around to have a look at Rocky. So this was the extra muscle. He was definitely an ex-pug. Gee, a boxer named Rocky, what a concept. Though a light heavyweight now, he'd probably fought as a middleweight. By the look of his face, he'd no doubt been a world-cla.s.s bleeder. His brow and the bridge of his flattened nose were thick with scar tissue. That and the fleshy reminders of a thousand unblocked left jabs made him look like he was wearing a pair of skin-tone goggles.

"You're a real f.u.c.kin' pest, chief," he growled. "Everybody from the doorman to the girls behind the bar say you been givin' 'em a hard time."

I considered arguing the point, but I wasn't willing to risk even a playful tap from this guy. He may well have been a bleeder, but the thing about bleeders is they're usually big punchers. It's how they survive. I'm sure more than a few of his opponents left the ring in a lot worse shape than he. It's better to stand and bleed than lie gla.s.sy-eyed on the mat. I showed him my badge.

"What precinct you from?" he asked.

"Not this one. Listen, I'll get outta your hair in a minute. I just want a word with John Heaton and I'm gone."

Rocky gave it some thought. "He ain't in today."

"Don't bulls.h.i.t me, Rocky, okay?"

"I swear, he ain't in today."

I pulled a pen out of my pocket and wrote "Moe" plus a seven-digit number on the wall.

"Tell him to call me when he does get in. I want to talk to him about Moira."

"All right," Rocky said, "I'll pa.s.s word along."

I shook his hand and left. After an hour in Glitters, the air on Eighth Avenue seemed almost fresh. Darkness should have been in full bloom, but all the gaudy neon and street lighting fooled the eye. I headed back to the outdoor lot on Tenth and Forty-fourth where I'd stashed my car. The crowds had thinned by the time I got to Ninth, and here the artificial lighting at least gave the fallen night a fighting chance. As I stepped down off the curb onto the crumbled blacktop of Ninth Avenue, I noticed the footfalls of a man walking right up behind me.

"He won't talk to you, you know."

I turned. "Are you talking to me?"

"I am indeed, Mr. Prager."

His short, slight stature was unimposing if not exactly unthreatening. He was impeccably dressed in a gold-b.u.t.toned blue blazer, khaki pants, a white oxford shirt, a superbly knotted red silk tie, and loafers. He was an older man, in his mid-sixties, but his gray-blue eyes beneath stylish tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses were still very young and fiery. His head was tan and bald, and his chin was adorned with a rich gray goatee.

"Who won't speak to me? You seem perfectly willing to chat."

"I do, don't I? But it's John Heaton to whom I refer. He won't speak to you."

"I won't even get into how you seem to know so much about my business. There seems to be a lot of that going around lately. So, how do you know John Heaton won't talk to me?"

"That's easy, Mr. Prager." My new acquaintance showed me an expensive white smile. "I'm paying him not to."

"That's a switch. Most of the people who don't speak to me do it for free. Maybe I should give them your number. No sense letting their animosity go to waste if they can make a few bucks on the deal."

"Very good. Very good. Can I buy you a scotch?"

"Not back at that dump," I said. "I've had my fill of tawdry for the year."

"Oh my, no, Mr. Prager. I was thinking more along the lines of the Yale Club."

THE YALE CLUB was just west of Grand Central Station, a block or two north of Forty-second. It was a charming old building that was only slightly less difficult to get into than Skull and Bones. There wasn't a hint of ivy anywhere. No one sang "Boola Boola," and, much to my chagrin, none of the staff wore plaid golf pants.

My host's name was Yancy Whittle Fenn, but I was to call him Wit. Everyone called him Wit, so I was told. Though I hadn't recognized his tanned and bearded face, I immediately recognized his name when he was finally gracious enough to share it with me on the ride over. Y. W. Fenn was one of the most famous journalists around. He wrote for everyone from Esquire to Playboy, from GQ to The New Yorker. His forte was the celebrity expose. Not just any old celebrity would do, however. No, Wit's subjects, or more accurately, targets, tended to be from among the ranks of the rich and the powerful, particularly those who had landed in the chilly womb of the criminal justice system.

"You know, Wit," I said as the waiter slid my chair under me, "I don't see John Heaton as the typical subject of one of your pieces."

"How very perceptive," he mocked.

"How are you this evening, Mr. Wit, sir?" asked the nimble, gray-haired black man who had attended to my chair.

"Very good, Willie. Good. And yourself?"

"Same as always, sir. Same as always. What can I get for you and your guest this fine evening?"

"The usual for me, Willie. My guest will have ..."

"Dewar's rocks."

"Very good, gentlemen. One Dewar's rocks and one Wild Turkey heavy on the wild."

Wit and Willie had a good laugh at that. Man, they really got wacky at the Yale Club. Wit waited for Willie to leave before speaking to me.

"Of course I'm not interested in John Heaton as anything more than a source. Actually, he's a bit of a drunken bore."

"He's got his reasons."

"So have we all, Mr. Prager. My grandson was himself kidnapped and murdered several years ago in New Mexico."

"I'm sorry."

"Yes, well, 'sorry' is a particularly empty word to me these days. But I digress. I suspect you have a good idea of whom my piece will focus on. He's your client, if I may be so bold."

"I can't dis-"

"-cuss my clients. Blah, blah, blah. Please, Mr. Prager. Next thing you know, you'll be telling me you can't drink whilst on duty."

"Nah, I'm pretty confident the word 'whilst' doesn't appear once in the ethics code."

Willie brought the drinks, placing them atop blue-and-white napkins embossed with a block Y.

"Enjoy your drinks, gentlemen."

Wit and I clinked gla.s.ses. He took all of his in a gulp, got Willie's attention, and pointed at his urgently empty gla.s.s. When Willie looked my way, I shook my head no.

"Well then, for argument's sake, let us say your client happens to be a certain New York state senator whose biggest backer is a rather wealthy man from that part of Long Island once known as the Gold Coast. Let us further say that said senator had quite a bright-excuse me-a promising future until one of his interns went poof!"

"You're buying." I took another sip of my scotch. "It's only fair that I play along."

"And now I hear that this certain senator feels he's spent enough time in the doghouse for circ.u.mstances completely out of his control and that the moment has come to begin resurrecting that once promising career."

Willie brought Fenn's second drink. Both men dispensed with the pretense and chatter this time. Wit guzzled the bourbon right in front of the waiter and held up three fingers to indicate a third round would be in order. Willie gave me a glance, saw my drink was still half full, and left.

"As I was saying, resurrection is upon us, praise the Lord. But I'm as yet unwilling to let go of Moira Heaton's disappearance. No resurrection without resolution."

"So you're paying off John Heaton for his exclusive story. At least that's what you're telling him, right?" I said. "What you're really doing is trying to stall until you can dig up some dirt on this hypothetical client of mine."

"Maybe. You know what fascinates me, Mr. Prager?"

"Other than bourbon, no."

"Good. That was good. I'm curious why you went to Heaton first. It's not the logical place to start an investigation into the girl's disappearance."

"You're right. It isn't," I conceded. "But all the logic got squeezed out of this case a long time ago by the cops and by the private investigators. I wanted to get a feel for who Moira Heaton was. That's important to me. It's the way I work."

"You're a pretty sharp fellow."

"For an ex-cop, you mean."

He ignored that, and Willie's reemergence couldn't have been better timed.

"Bring me the chit, Willie," Y. W. Fenn ordered, the false chumminess completely gone from his voice.

"Very good, sir."

"So I'm a little slow on the uptake, but I get you didn't bring me here to buy me a drink. You want something, Wit, something from me."

"Everybody wants something from somebody. It's Newton's unwritten law of thermodynamics. It's really what makes the world spin about. I think we might be able to do one another some good and get to the truth while we're at it. It's that simple, Mr. Prager."

"I didn't know horse trading was a course offered up at New Haven."

"Oh, indeed it is, or it was, once," he said, this time sipping on his bourbon. "I majored in it. I'll let you review all my notes and research and, if it's that crucial to you, talk to John Heaton."

"And in return ..."

"Whisper in my ear so that no one else can hear. That's all."

I got the odd sense that our setting impressed Wit far more than it impressed me, and the liquor wasn't helping his perspective any. Did he think I was just going to roll over on my client because he had Ivy League connections? Or maybe, just maybe, he was playing me. I didn't like either scenario.

I stood to go. As I did, I leaned over and whispered in his ear: "Thanks for the drink and go f.u.c.k yourself."

But if I thought this was going to get some angry rise out of him, I was dead wrong.

"We're going to do quite well together, you and I. Quite well." I didn't hang around for an explanation.

Chapter Five.

I WAS USUALLY fairly forthcoming with Katy about my work, but not this go-round. She knew I was on a case, and this time that seemed to be enough for her. Neither one of us, it seemed, was willing to risk another setback. I think her falling apart at Connie's wedding had p.i.s.sed her off. That Sunday, the day after the wedding when I went to talk to Pete Parson, Katy's demeanor had changed. Enough was enough. So I was a bit surprised to find her up and pacing the living-room floor when I got back from the city. I was even more surprised at the smell of cigarette smoke and to see the half-empty bottle of Bushmills out on the coffee table.

"What's the matter? Is Sarah-"

"She's fine. She's fine," Katy rea.s.sured me. "I just wanted to talk to you, Moe."

"You never needed a drink or a cigarette to talk to me before."

"I never needed any courage to talk to you before."

I moved to hold her, but she turned away.

"No, no, I need to get through this. I need to say the words." I couldn't believe this was happening. Nausea rolled over me in waves and I literally lost my balance so that I had to prop myself up against the back of the couch. You hear stories about it, but you never think it's going to happen to you. Your doctor's never going to utter the words "inoperable tumor," and the wife you love more than your own soul is never going to say "I'm leaving." But the moment was here. Never was now.

"Say it, Katy." I forced the words out of my mouth.

"Okay, here goes." She drew a deep breath and turned back to face me, silent tears streaming down her cheeks. "I just wanted to say I can't go through this again, Moe. I know you wanted more kids, but ... I just can't ..."

I was filled with such a profound sense of relief that I was struck dumb.

Katy misinterpreted my silence. "You hate me now, don't you?"

"Hate you! Are you nuts? I couldn't hate you. Maybe I could dislike you a little bit," I teased, "get a little annoyed with you every so often, but I could never hate you."

She folded herself into me in that way she had so that I knew our world was right again. Suddenly, without warning, my thoughts drifted to John Heaton, alone and drunk somewhere. And in that same moment I knew I wouldn't need to make deals with self-impressed little lizards like Y. W. Fenn. No, if John Heaton thought there was a chance of locating his plain-faced girl, he'd find a way to talk to me, payoffs be d.a.m.ned.

"So it's okay with you?" she whispered, her wet cheek pressed against my chest.