“My name is March, Mr. Whelan, like the March Hare. How long ago were you posted to Singapore?”
“It’s been about three years, now,” Whelan said, and then I heard Ms. Li’s voice in the background. “I’m sorry, that’s all the time I can give you. I hope this was useful. Good-bye, Mr. Marsh.” There was a click, and all I heard was the hissing of the ether.
“It’s March,” I said to no one.
Chapter Fourteen
Rick Pierro’s suit looked good. It was medium gray-darker than the cloud-filled sky, but lighter than the Town Car that idled at the curb- and it hung with an easy, liquid drape from its master’s big frame. Though it was nearly noon, and had been raining hard since dawn, its trouser creases were sharp and supple. Pierro stepped briskly onto the pavement, into the cafe, and across the room to greet me.
He looked good, too, though perhaps not as good as his suit. His shiny black hair still held its obedient sweep back from his forehead, and his smile was still broad and bright and affable, but his dark eyes were tired and smudged-looking, and his olive skin was tinged with yellow. The flesh above the knot of his deep blue tie seemed to sag. Still a sleek bear, and still well dressed, but a little off his feed. The grip was as firm as ever, though.
“Good to see you, John,” he said. Pierro sat and looked around the room. He had wanted to meet someplace out of the way, and I figured Black Cow fit the bill. It’s in SoHo, just off Prince Street, a small place with a glass front, a high, tin ceiling, and some small black tables along one wall, opposite a massive ebony bar on the other. We were late for the breakfast crowd and early for lunch, and besides a pair of skinny women who’d come from the gallery next door, a bored waitress, and a guy behind the bar who looked like a junkie, we were alone in there. Pierro seemed satisfied with his anonymity, and turned to me, smiling.
“How was your Thanksgiving? Get your fill of turkey and ball games?” he asked. I made a noncommittal noise, and he continued. “I think it’s my favorite holiday. I like having the whole family together, and my kids are still young enough to love the parade. My folks were up from Boca, and Helene’s mom and sister were up too, and they went crazy in the kitchen.” He patted his middle. “I got a little more here than I did last week,” he said. In fact, it looked like he had a little less. The waitress wandered over, but Pierro raised a hand before she spoke.
“Nothing,” he said. She shrugged and looked at me.
“More coffee, please.” She wandered off to get some. Pierro looked at his watch.
“Sorry I don’t have a lot of time, John. I’m on my way to a lunch uptown.” I nodded.
“I won’t keep you. I had a long talk with Al Burrows last week, and I got an earful about Gerard Nassouli. Maybe Helene mentioned it?” Pierro stared at a point around my left ear and nodded vaguely. “Burrows went into gruesome detail, but the long and short of his story was that Nassouli was the devil-not just a money launderer, but a corruptor and a blackmailer-and that you’d have to look hard to find someone he did a straight deal with.” Pierro fixed his eyes on mine. He snorted.
“Is there a question there someplace-another version of are you a crook, maybe? I thought we’d settled this bullshit already.” His voice was hoarse and rumbling. Mr. Nice-Bear was fast disappearing into the woods. I held his gaze but didn’t speak. His big hands fiddled with the flatware.
“I guess you need to hear it again,” he said. “Fine-my dealings with Gerry were legitimate. Okay? That do it for you? Can we get back to work on my problem now?” I looked at him some more.
“What do you make of what Burrows had to say?” I asked. He snorted again.
“How the hell should I know? How is it my place to make anything of it?” Pierro took a deep breath and forced a smile onto his face, but it was faint-a twitch away from a scowl. He sighed, and his shoulders sagged a little.
“I guess it’s like what the government is saying about Gerry-I’ve got no reason to doubt it, but my dealings with him had nothing to do with any of that. So maybe Burrows is right-what the hell do I know?”
“Any reason why he would make up this kind of stuff?” I asked. Pierro turned a fork over and over. He shrugged.
“I barely knew the guy; I don’t know what he’d do or wouldn’t do,” he said. I nodded, then I tried out the five names I’d gotten from Burrows: Whelan, Bregman, Welch, Lenzi, and Trautmann. He looked at the tabletop and listened to the names and said no five times.
Pierro checked his watch and looked up. He pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed again.
“I’m being a prick, aren’t I?” he said. His voice was softer. “Sorry about that. I’m a little tired today. You get what you need here?”
“I asked my questions-you gave your answers.” He made a sound that might have been a laugh.
“And my wife-you get what you need from her, too?” The edge was back in his voice. I nodded. “Did you really have to talk to her about all that… crap? It’s ancient history, for chrissakes. How the hell does dredging that up help with anything?”
“I’m not sure it does,” I said. “But I couldn’t know unless I asked, and I had to ask. I’m sorry if it was uncomfortable for her.”
“It bothered her a lot less than it did me,” Pierro said. He shook his head. “I’m getting pissy again-sorry. It’s just that… Helene’s a good person, John… better than I deserve. She shouldn’t have to air her dirty laundry for no reason.”
“It wasn’t for no reason, Rick. And as dirty laundry goes, I’ve heard a lot worse.” Pierro’s lips pursed.
“So now what?” he asked. I explained my plans to find the five people Burrows had named. He nodded.
“And if someone else has gotten a fax too, then we know something?” he asked.
“Then we know something.” Pierro looked at his watch again, and I figured we were done. But we weren’t.
“I didn’t realize you were Ned March’s brother,” he said. I looked at him. “I know him by reputation, and I heard him speak at a conference a couple of years back-your brother David, too. Smart guys, the both of them. And Klein’s a hell of a firm-one of the last of its kind.” He chuckled. “I did a little research of my own,” he said.
“So I gather.” There was a trace of pleasure on Pierro’s face, at having taken me by surprise. And there was something more-curiosity.
“Tell me if I’m out of line here, John, but I’ve got to ask-coming from a family like that, shouldn’t you be running part of Klein or something? How the hell did you end up in this line of work?”
How did you end up in this line of work? Why do you do it? I’ve been asked those questions enough over the years that I should have some answers handy by now-but I don’t. Instead, I’ve got some vague crap that I mutter about aversion to desk jobs and not being cut out for banking. I trotted a little of that out for Pierro. He smiled and shook his head, incredulous.
“Christ, if I’d had that kind of family juice when I was coming up, I’d have been CEO at French ten years ago.” He looked at his watch and rose. “Got to get to getting, John. It was good to see you. And thanks, again, for everything you’re doing,” he said. And he and his good-looking suit strode out the door. I headed downtown.
“You’re not in here,” she said, and she stared deeply and with some consternation into the monitor that stood on her small metal desk. “If you’re not in here, you don’t have an appointment.” She was maybe twenty, and had a gold stud in her nose and another in her tongue, and was made up like she’d just escaped from the road company of Cats. She was tiptoeing her fingers gingerly across the keyboard, careful that no harm should come to her immaculate French manicure, in an excruciating attempt to locate me in Michael Lenzi’s appointment calendar. She wore one of those campy retro necklaces that had her name on it, rendered in gold-plated script. Brie. I stood a better chance with the cheese.
“Why don’t I just rest here while you look,” I said. She ignored me and continued her glacial typing. I sat down. I watched water drip from my umbrella. I looked at the wet leaf stuck to my boot. I listened as, every minute or so, Brie tapped a key. If she had to answer the phone, too, I’d be here till Christmas.