"Is there somebody in charge?"
"Mr. Nichols."
"May I speak to him?"
"He's not here. And he's old, anyway. His hearing aid always messes up when he holds the phone to his ear."
"When will he be back?"
"I don't know exactly. He's showin' somebody a place right now."
"Will he be back by noon?"
"That's when I go to lunch."
"I'm not coming to see you."
The nameless receptionist hung up on me. I couldn't blame her.
I GOT TO PLENTY REALTY at ten past twelve. The fourth-floor door was unlocked so I walked in without knocking.
It was a small office with three desks in a line against the far wall. Only the center desk was occupied. An older gentleman, a gray-haired white man, stood up when I walked in. He was barely taller and a lot thinner than I. He wore a baggy, dark-green suit, a brick-red-and-white-checkered shirt, and thick-lensed glasses rimmed with dull steel.
"How can I help you, Mr. Trotter?" he asked after I identified myself as a private detective working for Nyla Winetraub. "This doesn't have anything to do with that mix-up when we thought she'd moved to Florida, does it?"
"No."
"Because we were going on the information we received," he said, blundering on in spite of my assurance. "We were acting in good faith."
"You know that Ms. Winetraub is nearly blind."
"Yes," Mr. Nichols said. He smiled. I wondered at that. Was he happy that he had some kind of knowledge about his tenant? Or was it that he was relieved that he was almost as old as Nyla but still managed eyesight?
"Well," I said. "Miss Lear from upstairs takes care of Nyla's correspondence and other incidentals, but Lear's been missing for more than a week and Nyla is worried about her friend as well as herself."
"I don't see how I can help you, Mr. Trotter. I mean, I haven't seen Miss Lear for three years, not since she signed the papers on her unit."
"I tried to speak to your super, a Mr. Klott…"
Nichols grimaced when I mentioned the name.
"… but he wouldn't tell me anything."
"Klott is a sourpuss if ever there was one," Nichols told me. "But I still can't see where any of this concerns our office."
"I was wondering if Miss Lear had moved, or maybe that she was evicted."
"Oh no. Not at all. The rent on that unit is very low to begin with, and she doesn't pay full price anyway."
"No? The landlord supplements her?" I asked. "Maybe she's with him down in Florida."
"How did you…?" Nichols waved his hands around and then clasped them, the grin back on his lips. "Certainly not. And you shouldn't try to call him. He'd get very upset with me for divulging tenant information."
"I don't want to cause any trouble, Mr. Nichols. I'm just trying to do my job. A young woman is missing and nobody seems to want to help. Now, if there's somebody paying Miss Lear's rent, maybe a family member, then I could have something to give poor Miss Winetraub."
"There's really nothing I can do to help you there, Mr. Trotter. The money, sixty-six-point-six percent of her rent, came from a bank in Delaware. We've been told to keep that knowledge from her. They contacted us just after she called to see an apartment. They asked us to quote only the portion of the rent she was expected to pay. I'm just telling you this because I've said too much already. I do hope that you will keep the confidence."
"I'm working for Winetraub," I said. "And all she wants is for me to assure her that Miss Lear isn't in any trouble. I don't care who's paying the rent unless that leads me to the information I need."
"There was one thing," the nervous little man said.
"Yes?"
"A couple of weeks ago we got a call from Mr. Klott telling us that there was an incident in front of the property. It seems that two men accosted Miss Lear. I'd forgotten because nothing really happened."
"They tried to pick her up or something?" I asked, trying to seem as dense and as coarse as I possibly could.
"No. At least I don't think so. Two big strong men in suits tried to make her get into their car."
"What happened?"
"There's a building down the street tenanted by some, uh, long-haired men with tattoos and the like. They work on cars." Nichols sounded excited by these men. I was sure that he could describe the scent of their sweat. "They saved Miss Lear… drove the attackers off."
"That sounds promising," I said.
"Yes. Their place is three buildings east of our property."
"You seem to know a lot about that building, Mr. Nichols. Are you this familiar with all Plenty properties?"
"The senior Mr. Planter owned quite a few buildings," Mr. Nichols said wistfully. "His son has sold almost everything. Now we… I… am mostly a real estate agent for rentals and sales here in the West Village. But I go out to look at the three buildings we still own… at least once a month."
He took off his glasses and rubbed them clean with his blue-and-white tie.
"Can you think of anything else, Mr. Nichols?"
"No."
"There's no name associated with the money from the bank?"
"No."
"Maybe if I spoke to Jeff?" I suggested.
"The transfer was made electronically, and the original communication was made by phone-with me. Jeffy… Mr. Planter doesn't spend much time in the office even when he's in New York. It was a woman's voice but I'm sure it wasn't her money."
"How much is Lear paying?"
Nichols hesitated but then said, "Six hundred, but you can't tell anybody that."
"Wasn't she surprised that the rent was so low?"
"No," the elder man said, wincing at the memory. "She might have even tried to talk me down. I'm pretty sure she did. But when I wouldn't budge she accepted the price and signed a five-year lease."
"Five years?"
"The bank wanted it that way. They paid the full balance of their share up front. It was a good deal. We needed to do work on that building, and so it was all tax-deductible."
Nichols was looking very nervous. I got the feeling he wasn't used to having visitors and didn't really know how to converse without letting out too much.
"Don't worry," I said. "I'm not here to cause trouble for you. I'll go talk to the hippies. I'm sure that they'll be able to tell me something."
"Yes. Yes, I'm sure they will." But he didn't look very confident.
32
Three lots down from Angelique Lear's apartment was a threestory building that had once been a single-family residence, had then been converted to apartments, and now was, once more, tenanted by a single group-related by interest if not by blood. A few windows were open on the south-facing wall. From each of these some kind of music was blasting. I could make out heavy metal, hard rock, and some punk. No R B, blues, or rock and roll proper.
I didn't need a tour guide to tell me that the two men working on the '64 Chevy in the open garage had done time and spent almost every moment of it in the company of their white brothers.
They both had long hair. The younger of the two had greasy red tresses, while his heavier friend's hair was salt-and-pepper, with a bald spot toward the back. They wore overalls and T-shirts in spite of the November chill. They had more tattoos than a lot of merchant marines, and almost every one represented a crime, sexual act, or violent wish fulfillment.
They seemed to be enjoying their work, until the younger one looked up to see me standing at the threshold of their garage.
"What the fuck you want?" he said, mimicking perfectly the dialect of people he probably detested.
The older ex-con hefted a twenty-four-inch wrench and stared at me. There were letters on the patches of skin between the knucklebones and finger joints of his fist but I didn't have the leisure to look closely enough to read what was written.
"Excuse me, gentlemen," I said in my best English, "but I have come here today to find out what happened to a young woman named Angelique Tara Lear."
"Huh?" Red said.
"Get the fuck outta my garage, man," the older one warned as he approached me with the bludgeon, held at waist level.