These days when someone invited you to a gentleman’s club you weren’t sure whether you were going to sit in a paneled library full of old jaspers rattling the pages of the Financial Times or have your porterhouse served with a naked lap dancer on the side. The River Club was decidedly of the former variety, occupying a three-story Georgian brick townhouse along the Middlesex canal, with a lantern-lit entrance and granite hitching posts in front, though all the horses were corralled under the hoods of Cadillacs and Benzes in a side lot. I went through the coffered door into a foyer lit with original long-stemmed gas sconces refitted with electric, the light picking up the gleam of elegant old wood in the floor and wainscoting. A blond man wearing black slacks and a white shirt stood at a greeter’s podium. The nameplate pinned to his maroon-and-burnished-gold brocade vest identified him as Duncan. He wasn’t even born when the damask silk wall coverings had been hung, but nevertheless he had the snooty, inquisitional glance down pat. “May I help you, sir?”
I gave him my name. “I’m here to see Judge Travani.”
He continued his appraisal of me a moment before he sniffed and said, “If you’ll wait here, please.”
I had a feeling this would be a onetime visit for me, so I took in the
sights. Beyond the foyer was a high-ceilinged room with a branching brass and crystal chandelier. To the left, a curved staircase rose to what was evidently a dining room. I could hear the low mutter of conversations over the muted clink of cutlery and smell the lavish aromas of gourmet cooking. On the wall to my right, big bwanas and grand poobahs of decades past gazed from gilt-framed portraits, including a younger Martin Travani, looking as dignified as a man wearing a sequined fez can. At least there weren’t any stuffed caribou dangling their beards into the room.
Duncan returned. “If you could walk this way,” he said unctuously.
The high-ceilinged room actually was a library, and there actually were people reading newspapers. It appeared as if someone had cleared out half the state forest for the wood paneling. Martin Travani rose from a reading table and extended his hand, which was soft, though he gripped mine as if it were a gavel. Lines formed in his broad forehead, and his eyes behind the steel frames of his glasses were inquisitive. I guessed my outfit passed muster, as he didn’t say anything to the contrary. Duncan faded.
“Thank you for seeing me, Your Honor.”
“I’d have suggested you come to the courthouse, but there’s so little time there, and far too many distractions. I’m expecting lunch guests shortly, but I thought we could talk first.”
I said the time was generous and I appreciated his making it for me. He buttoned his suit coat and gestured through a doorway on the right. “We can converse in here.”
It was a smaller chamber, what once would’ve been called a drawing room. Underfoot was a deep blue carpet flecked with yellow and orange, as if someone had sprinkled it with gold dust and rusted iron filings. We took a pair of antique-looking wing chairs in a corner near a mullioned window that looked out upon the canal. At the judge’s invitation I began to lay out my ideas. He listened with an expression that went slowly from concentration to concern, his small, even teeth nibbling at his lower lip. When I finished, he raised his eyebrows. “That’s quite some assertion.”
“I’d have spoken with Attorney Meecham first, but that wasn’t an option.”
“Do you know which police officers might be involved?”
I hesitated. “A patrolman named Duross, for one. Others, I’m not sure.”
“Have you actual proof of any of this?”
“Not exactly, no, sir.”
“Documentation?”
“No. But there are indications.”
“I see.” He turned his head to the window and sat silent for a time, his brow creased with thought, and I felt I’d done the right thing in coming to him. I was reassured by his wisdom and experience. Even his suit and the crisp white shirt and elegant silk tie conveyed a reasoned competence. He turned back to me. “Do you remember how the planet Pluto was discovered?” he asked. “Back in the last century?”
I shifted forward in the antique chair. “Astronomers guessed at its existence first, wasn’t that it?”
“Yes, Percival Lowell, as a matter of fact. Before there were telescopes big enough to actually see it, he posited its existence from the movement of other objects. That seems to be what you’re attempting to do here, isn’t it?”
“I’m not sure I—”
“You’ve developed this theory of police involvement in a crime, and a possible cover-up, based on other things you perceive going on.”
My shirt collar felt tight. I shifted again; the chair was as comfortable as a rock pile. “I think the indications call for a closer look.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“Well, I haven’t any jurisdiction. It’s why I’ve come to you, Your Honor.”
Travani curled a speculative finger under his lower lip. It was warm in the room, as if the overnight cold had activated the building’s thermostat, set at a temperature sensitive to the creaky bones and gummy blood-flow of people for whom winter meant Palm Beach. If this and this chair were what the club-dues bought, I wasn’t sorry not to be a member. “So you want me to be the big telescope,” he said.
I cleared my throat softly. “I’m hoping that you’ll know what to do next.”
Duncan came in, escorting a prosperous-looking older couple. Judge Travani glanced at his watch and rose; I got up, too. “Vera,” said the judge.
“Kostas.” The woman kissed the air an inch from Travani’s cheek. Kostas shook hands with him and gave me a faint glance. No introductions were made. Ignoring me altogether, Vera attempted a smile at the judge. Her face had been lifted too high, too often, so the effect was ghastly. “I’ve got a table—go right on up,” said Travani. “Duncan will show you. I’ll join you in a moment.”
When they’d gone, Travani didn’t resume his seat. “Mr. Rasmussen, I thank you for coming. Now, I really must go.”
“I understand. Do you want to think about what we’ve just—”
“Oh, I’ve heard plenty,” he interrupted. “You should hear yourself Do you know how this sounds?”
“It’s speculative, I know, but I think it warrants attention.”
“You do, do you?”
“Judge—with due respect—you implied it yourself. When the astronomers actually looked, Pluto was there.”
“You’re standing on shaky legs. Even if you could fill the gaps, unlikely as that seems, jurisprudence imposes a burden of proof, of evidence, corroborating testimony. Those are the foundation stones of our legal system.”
“Your Honor, I know. All I’m asking—”
“Enough!” I was surprised at how suddenly the anger had come. “I see now what you’re pulling, criticizing the police, the criminal justice system. Well, you’re not going to get away with it. How dare you barge in here making demands! You may leave.”
He turned to go, and my own anger rose. I stepped to block him. His eyes widened with shock, and perhaps a tincture of fear. “Save the lecture for the bench,” I said, my face hot. “I’m no court. It’s why I can be quick on my feet, why I trust gut feelings.”
He measured me with a look that was now just outrage. “Well, I feel sorry for you, then. You’re a throwback. In your small shabby world of guts and … instincts, you’re a sneaky little animal that steals in toward the fire and snatches crumbs and then darts back to the shadows.” He moved his lips back from the small, neat teeth, which I was suddenly sure were a dental plate, into a sneer. “But you never get to bask in the warmth. You don’t know the security and community where decent
people live, and where the rule of law protects them.” He pointed his finger. “I know all about you. You were a sworn officer at one time.”
If he knew that, he knew the rest.
“Judge—wait.” I was trying to rein in my frustration, to get us both back to a rational place. I needed him. “What I’m trying to say is—”
He swung his hands in a scissoring motion. “You violated the public trust, yet you want me to listen to you? There are men and women in this city who put the welfare of the public above their own—even above personal safety, and yet you’re ready to malign them. Ridicule the system that protects you. No, I was wrong. I don’t know you. I don’t understand you. I’m trying very hard not to feel utter contempt for you, sir. Now, just go, while you’re free to.”
The desk man came over. “Judge,” he said, but he was looking closely at me. “Is there a problem?”
“No, Duncan, it’s fine.”
“Do you want me to—”
“Beat it,” I said.
The man straightened, tugged at his brocade vest, then about-faced, his blond mop wisping, his heels clicking determinedly across the parquet.
“That was rude,” the judge said.
“He’s rude. Everyone in here seems to be. You’d find better manners in any dive bar on Middlesex Street. But I guess that’s what you pay the heavy dues for,” I said, “a place to come and be as rude as you please.”
“He’ll be back.”
“With people who can handle problems. Dues must also cover the salary of a former marine commando or two.”
“Just get out. You repulse me.”
Before you could say floorwalker, Duncan was back, escorting a medium-height fellow with a firm jaw and a bristling gray haircut. He wasn’t large, but he looked like he’d be as adept at handling nonmembers as Kid Sligo was at expelling rowdy drunks from the Silverado Lounge. He wouldn’t be rude; he’d be rough. Still, I might be able to take him, but it would involve busting up some antiques, and it would also mean charges being brought, maybe a lawsuit, and publicity, and I already had
more than I wanted. We all stood there in silence a moment, like a museum diorama display.
“I have pity for you, sir,” the judge told me, smoothing his tie. “And I find your presentation wanting. Frankly, I find you wanting. There’s nothing more to say. Gentlemen, please see Mr. Rasmussen to the door.”
In my car, I hermetically sealed myself inside, AC on full, radio loud. I drove with one hand and used the other to wipe sweat from my brow, which was hot as a baked brick. After a few miles I turned the music off, then the AC, and opened the windows. I used my cell phone and called the courthouse.
“Hello, Ms. Ouellette’s line,” said a brisk female voice.
“Is Ms. Ouellette there?”
“No, she’s not. She didn’t come in today.”
“She’s a no-show?”
“What?”
“Thanks for your time.”
The way the state patronage system operated, Carly Ouellette could be gone from her desk six months before anyone thought to dock her pay or wonder why. I found a parking spot on Tenth and climbed out and looked for the woman’s little gold Mazda but didn’t see it. I crossed the street and went into her apartment building and rang the buzzer for her unit. Apparently she was a no-show here as well. I located the button for the building superintendent and pressed it. After a time, a mop-haired party in a tartan robe and bare feet appeared, looking like I’d dug him out of bin Laden’s cave.
“I was hoping to talk with Ms. Ouellette in apartment seven,” I said.
He yawned. “What about?”
“A routine inquiry.” My PI license got his attention, but the twenty I dangled was the tongue-loosener.
“I seen her going out late last night with suitcases,” he offered, pushing at his frizz. “Vacation, I gather.”
“Any idea where she was headed?”
“La-La Land for all I care. I asked her did she want a hand loading them into that little rice burner she drives, and she told me where to go.”
His face darkened with suspicions. “Why? You know something I don’t?”
I gave him the twenty. “Do you have a key to her unit?”
The place didn’t appear to have much beyond the furniture, which the super said belonged there, and trash tied in vinyl bags. He could choose to imagine she was on vacation, but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be back. Nothing personal had been left behind, nor anything that couldn’t be more easily bought anew someplace else. The clincher was the telephone. When I picked it up, the line was dead, as though service had been cut off. Crumpled beside the phone was a three-by-five card with a phone number on it. The number had been lined out, but I recognized it as the general business line for police headquarters. I smoothed the card and put it in my pocket.
“She ain’t a bad-looking head, but she’s got this pissy personality,” the super extemporized when we were back in the lobby, “like everything is out to annoy her personally. I’ll see her in the hall and say hello, and it’s a crap shoot whether I’m gonna get a scowl or be ignored altogether.”
“Did she socialize with any of the neighbors?”
“What am I, a dorm mother?” He frowned, maybe testing to see if there was more green to be had. I gave him a stare, and after a few seconds he wilted. “Not that I ever seen. There was one guy used to come around. Big sorta good-looking guy. He maybe got wise that he could do better. Though come to think of it, he probably had a wife. It’s like donuts, ain’t it?”
“Come again?”
“Women on the side comes with being a fuzz.”
From my car I called Danielle Frampton. Her answering machine came on, the out-going message about as clear as a subway PA announcement. I gave my name and was starting my spiel when she picked up, sounding groggy and disconcerted, as if she’d been dragged from a deep hole of sleep. “Alex?”
“You need to tell me the rest of the story,” I said. “About your friends in the Polaroid.” The silence went on just a little longer than it
should have if I was wrong, and I knew I’d struck something.
“I told you last night,” she said, recovering. “I think it was last night. I’m too fogged in to remember.”
“Well, clear the fog, girl. This may be the most important conversation you’ll have all day.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
I was looking at the crinkled three-by-five card I’d taken from Carly Ouellette’s apartment—though not at the number; rather, at the reverse side. Coincidence, maybe (the woman did work at the courthouse, after all), and yet it was a juror ballot card, like the one I’d found in Flora Nuñez’s apartment. When I’d pressed the superintendent at Carly Ouellette’s building for more on the cop who used to visit, he sure sounded like Paul Duross. “The quicker you talk, the sooner you’ll get back to dreamland.”
“I’m going to hang up now. Good-bye.”
“I’ll be knocking on your door in fifteen minutes.”
I heard a prolonged, cheek-puffing sigh that just as easily could have been a raspberry. “Let me get dressed. Fifteen minutes, no sooner.”