Tower of Babel Page 7

  “This thing Richie and you were doin’ together?”

  Ted decided not to argue the point. “Yeah. That thing.”

  “Yeah? And?”

  “And I’ve discovered some interesting anomalies.”

  “Say what?”

  “Some weird stuff.”

  “I know what anomalies are, asshole. I want to know what you’ve found.”

  “I’m waiting on a callback. Could we talk about this later?”

  “Give me a taste.”

  “I have no way of knowing if somebody else is working this one, but the money is real. I need to find a lady named Barbara Miller. She’s in her nineties and owns a few buildings. If I can cut a deal with her, we’re set.”

  “That doesn’t sound complicated. Or weird.”

  “There are other people involved. I don’t want to go into it.”

  “Is that what’s taking you so long?”

  “Do you know how many Barbara Millers there are in Queens?”

  “You just need one, don’t you?”

  “I’d like to find the right Barbara Miller, if it’s okay with you.” Ted’s phone beeped with an incoming call. “I’ve got to go. This might be the call I’ve been waiting for.”

  “I want to know who killed Richie. Meet me at the Korean barbecue place on Northern Boulevard at eight o’clock. I’ve got a business meeting, but I should be done by then.”

  Ted’s inclination was to avoid all unnecessary contact with this woman—he didn’t trust her. But it occurred to him that he had questions about Richie that only she could answer, and he needed to see her face when he asked. If she was going to lie to him, he would at least make it a little more difficult for her. And he could fit in a quick meeting and still make the game before first pitch. “How about before your meeting? I’ve got Mets tickets.”

  “Fine. Six o’clock.”

  How many Korean BBQ joints were there on Northern Boulevard? They outnumbered the Dunkin’ Donuts ten to one. “Wait! What’s the name of the place? Where on Northern?”

  “I don’t know—I don’t speak Korean. A hundred and fiftysomething block. Near Murray. You’ll see it.”

  And she was gone.

  -14-

  Ted checked the screen. The number looked familiar. He hit the flash button. “Lester? Talk to me.”

  “What’s a Lester?” an angry female voice asked.

  “Jackie?” It slipped out of his mouth before he had time to think. “Sorry. Jacqueline.” No wonder the number looked familiar. Jill had given it to him the night before.

  When Jacqueline Clavette was pissed off, her voice developed the volume and tones of a coffee grinder. “What do you want, Molloy?”

  “I didn’t expect to hear from you.” She had been next on Ted’s to-call list.

  “Cut it out. Jill told me you forced her to give you my private number, so I thought I’d save you the trouble of dialing.” The ability to recognize sarcasm is said to be an early indicator of intelligence. Ted had no trouble identifying it. Every word was soaked in scorn.

  Of course Jill had told Jackie that she had given Ted the private number. He should have expected that. Jill was fun and bright and beautiful, but she was not brave. Avoiding confrontation was her greatest strength—and weakness. But he’d known that about her long before they’d married. He didn’t resent it; it was simply her way.

  “I’m sorry, Jacqueline. I sometimes forget that, though Jill is surrounded by lawyers, she is not one herself. I pushed her too hard. Don’t take it out on her, all right?”

  “I don’t know why she keeps up with you, but if you don’t leave her alone, I will take action.”

  Ted had heard this before from Jackie on more than one occasion. He gave the threat the acknowledgment it deserved. He ignored it.

  Ms. Clavette wasn’t ready to let it go, though. “This is harassment. She is my wife now.”

  And has been for some years now, Ted thought, but he kept silent.

  Jill had been neither a virgin nor exclusively heterosexual before she met Ted, and she had never pretended otherwise. The surprise, for both of them, was belatedly discovering that her sexual attraction to women was neither a fad nor a phase but a defining characteristic. She made no choice. But both she and Ted had accepted who she was and moved on.

  Her family had not been so accepting. They blamed Ted through the divorce for, as her Aunt Grace repeatedly put it to anyone who would listen, “doing something to our girl.” Through this barrage of blame, Jill kept her head down, and for a while she and Ted rarely spoke. She had used all of her bravery capital coming out to the family; she had none to spare for resurrecting Ted’s profile in their eyes.

  He had already made the move from appellate litigation to commercial real estate transactions, where he once again excelled. It was not the kind of work he had ever planned for himself, but the money, power, and prestige plastered over all moral qualms. In the aftermath of the mortgage crisis, the division was gutted. Ted wasn’t let go—the firm devised a subtler method of moving him out the door. They offered him something he couldn’t accept. A dead-end job. He walked.

  Two years later, after he’d bounced through two other firms on a downward career trajectory, Jill called him one night.

  Ted was watching the Mets get shellacked on the road by the Braves.

  “Hey,” she said.

  Pain—real physical pain—shot up into his sinuses, and his eyes began to tear. He lost the ability to form words and merely grunted, “Hey.”

  Neither of them spoke again for an eternity.

  “Ted?” she whispered.

  “Give me a sec, okay? I left the kettle on.” He hadn’t. He put the phone down, went in the bathroom, and splashed cold water on his face. He dried it off and looked at himself in the mirror. He could do this.

  Ted picked up the phone. “How’re you holding up?”

  “I should have called before.”

  He wasn’t going to argue with that.

  “So, what’s up?” He tried to sound casual but only managed cold.

  She let it slide. “I had a fight with my mother.”

  That was monumental news. “Good for you. What was her problem?”

  “The monsignor is running an LGBT prayer group. She wanted me to join.”

  “Does that mean she’s finally going to accept that you like girls?”

  “Not exactly. They’re supposed to pray themselves straight. How are you?”

  “How am I? Big question. Ups and downs. Ups first. Your grandfather helped me out. He persuaded Cromarty, Gaines to take me on as counsel.”

  “I know. Father was very upset with him.”

  “Yeah, well, I made a hash of that, too. I lasted eighteen months.”

  “Oh, no. Why’d they let you go?”

  “No. I left. Esrig, Keane offered me a partnership.”

  “Oh.”

  The indictments of Esrig and Keane for running a pyramid scheme disguised as a law firm were still in the news.

  “The feds shut the firm down last week.” And the current rumor was they would soon be coming after all partners and select staff. Ted believed that he had nothing to fear, but he had hired a lawyer just in case.

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  Was he surprised that she hadn’t known? Hadn’t heard? Possible? Unlikely? He filed it mentally under Unknowable. “Thanks” was all he said.

  “So what have you been up to?” She was trying to keep it light; her conversation was bordering on inane. She was frightened.

  He wanted to say something stinging, something hurtful. But she’d see through it. He didn’t want to hurt her. He just wanted her to know that he was in pain.

  “Are you seeing anyone?” she asked.

  He realized that she had something to tell him and that she w
asn’t quite ready to spill it. She was seeing someone, he surmised. He let her take her time. He was in no hurry to hear about it.

  “You don’t want to hear stories of my naked wrestling bouts with all the hordes of sexy women who can’t resist unemployed lawyers living in Maspeth, Queens,” he said.

  “Ooh. Maybe I do.”

  It was a joke. A small one. Neither of them laughed, but it was a start. A moment of letting the curtain part. Maybe there were emotions they could still share.

  “It would have been good to hear your voice every now and then.”

  There was a very long pause before she whispered, “Yes.”

  He had hoped for more, but that single word was enough. “I’ll let you go. Call sometime, if you get the urge. I’d love to hear from you. See how you’re doing.”

  She didn’t reply.

  Words are so easily misunderstood, but silences can speak so clearly.

  “Bye, Jill.” His thumb hovered over the red button. He didn’t want to hang up, and he didn’t want to hear any more.

  “Wait!”

  He took a deep breath. “I’m here.” Whatever was coming was better than nothing at all.

  “I’m sorry.” The words were spoken so softly he might have imagined them. “I’m sorry,” she said again, louder yet choked.

  “Me too. You deserved something better. I hope you find it.”

  “Not about us. I’m sorry I didn’t call. I’m a coward. But I’m getting better.”

  “Oh. Yes.” He had expected a hurtful revelation and had been presented with something that touched a much deeper pain.

  “What will you do now?” she asked.

  The question was too massive to tackle. There wasn’t a law firm in the tristate that would touch him. There’d been a need for real estate lawyers when the market was ballooning, but since the crash they were all cashing in their IRAs and living on a diet of hope and futility. “I’ll find something.”

  “You’re a good man.”

  He didn’t know what she meant by that, but it felt good to hear her say it.

  “Have you been to any games lately?” she asked.

  He took a long time before answering. What was she really asking? Did it matter? “They’re two wins from clinching the wild card. If they get a streak, they might not need it.”

  “Will you take me sometime?”

  Ted could hear what it cost her to ask, but he was too choked up to reply.

  “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked,” she said.

  “No. No. It’s okay. I’d love to take you to a game.”

  “I’ve missed you.”

  He thought he heard a tiny sob. “I know. Me too.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Pick a day,” he said.

  “Tomorrow.”

  He laughed. “They’re in Atlanta. How’s next Tuesday?”

  And now here was Ted in need of the cooperation of Jill’s new love. Well, he might be able to get by without Jacqueline Clavette. But a few answers from her would clear up a number of issues about the Miller properties. He swallowed and tried to sound as if he were smiling.

  “I’m sorry if I caused you two any aggravation. And if she tells me she doesn’t ever want to go to a Mets game with me as long as she lives, I will respect her wishes, though I may not believe her.”

  “I could get canned for talking to you.”

  “So far, all you’ve done is yell at me. I think the firm would approve.”

  “Do not contact me. Understand? Not on my private line. Not at the firm.”

  The woman’s one great failing as a lawyer, and the reason she had never been prodded into the role of negotiator, was that she tended to set absolute boundaries. Compromise was a dirty word. Ted thought it worked for her more often than not—she was good at her job—but it kept her from being effective on a larger stage.

  He had no leverage, either emotional or rational, but he had to make one more attempt to get her cooperation. “If you answer one question.”

  “I’m hanging up now,” she said.

  “Just one. Where’s Barbara Miller? How can I find her?”

  “Who?”

  “Come on, Counsellor. She’s a client. Barbara Miller. Little old lady in Corona. Owned a bunch of three stories.”

  “I’m not going to share client information with you.”

  “You have just confirmed that you know her, so cut me a break. I only want to talk to her. I met some friends of hers.” Acquaintances really, but he thought the slight exaggeration was warranted. “They want to know that she’s all right. They’re worried about her. She disappeared, they say.”

  “What are you up to, Molloy? Don’t stir up trouble. The firm went easy on you. I can promise you they will not be so friendly next time around.”

  What was she talking about? The firm had blown him off—along with six other lawyers and a score of paralegals, secretaries, and other support staff. That was being easy on him?

  Somewhere deep in his psyche there were still remains of the cocky attaché-case-bearing gunslinger fighting for the little guy, the lawyer he had once dreamed of becoming. His own opportunism had had more to do with destroying that youth than the actions of a vengeful family law firm had. Though he still resented the firm’s treatment of him, his regrets were all his own. But he now existed in the liberated state of one with nothing left to lose.

  “Thanks for the warning, Jackie. I’ll give it all the attention it deserves.”

  -15-

  The phone rang again an instant later.

  “You okay?” Lester asked.

  “I’m still getting over my last two calls. It seems I have a knack for pissing off strong-willed women.”

  “Don’t we all. Can you get a car to take us to Seaside?”

  Seaside was most likely an hour from Corona no matter how you cut it. Traffic on Woodhaven made all the difference. “You’ve got something good?”

  “Barbara Miller.”

  Ted found a gypsy cab depositing a fare at the hotel down the street and persuaded the Yemeni behind the wheel to expand his universe by driving all the way to the beach. The man—who introduced himself by first citing his birth country, then announcing that he had only recently arrived in the States but loved America already, and finally giving all four of his names, the one he used most often being Mohammed—indicated with shakes of the head and double shrugs that he had never been to the South Shore before and today was not a good day for a first attempt. A fifty up front closed the deal.

  Ted sat back and tried not to anticipate. Lester might have hit the jackpot, or they might arrive in Seaside only to find a blank-faced woman in the grips of dementia. Ted was taking no bets.

  The car lurched and scooted around a Snapple delivery truck. Ted realized that his recently reluctant driver was flying down Woodhaven, weaving like a kid on a skateboard.

  “Stop when you get to Atlantic,” he said, gripping the door handle white-knuckled. “We need to pick up my partner.”

  The driver waved a hand that should have been holding the steering wheel. “Okay. Okay. No problem.”

  No problem. The single most-used phrase by immigrants, cashiers, reservation clerks, baristas, and almost everyone else in the service industry. No problems anywhere.

  “And don’t get me killed getting there,” Ted added.

  “Inshallah.” Mohammed looked over his shoulder without any alteration in speed.

  “Amen,” Ted said, wishing that he had the same faith in divine guidance.

  He heard the word “partner” echoing inside his head. Without planning or forethought, he had described Lester as a partner. Not an employee. He barely knew the man. Who knew where this business of trusting people might lead?

  Trust. A quaint concept Ted remembered from an idealistic youth, a conc
ept that engendered in his adult self a sneering cynicism.

  Lester was direct. Ted liked that. The man was taking the work seriously. But his past was a blank—and he drank. Ted had nothing against a man who took a drink or two, but a man who needed to was an entirely different matter. His father had been such a man, and the best thing he had ever done for Ted was to leave.

  The cab whipped over to the right at Ninety-First Avenue, crossing two lanes of heavy traffic without causing any immediate destruction, and continued barreling south in the service lane, avoiding the overpass. Ted took a slow breath when the car came to rest a moment later, blocking a fire hydrant outside of a divey-looking strip club.

  “Where you friend?” Mohammed asked.

  Lester wasn’t there.

  “Give him a minute. We got here a little quicker than I expected,” Ted said.

  Mohammed let his impatience show by turning up the radio. Brian Lehrer was taking calls from listeners who favored the LBC development in Queens.

  LBC again, Ted thought. The media was in a self-regenerating loop and would remain there until, by some sleight of hand that would ever escape him, the subject changed, and the cameras and microphones about-faced and stampeded in a new direction.

  The featured guest was Queens councilman Kevin (Ki-nam) Pak, whose district did not encompass the project, though he was undoubtedly on the pro side. Therefore, the conversations between Pak and the callers were a bit tepid. Lehrer was frustrated—everyone was making nice. No drama. Pak had probably agreed to come on the show only if he didn’t have to argue with protestors on the air.

  “And we now have McKenzie from Ridgewood,” Lehrer said. “McKenzie? Are you there?”

  “Hi, Brian. I always enjoy your show.”

  “Thank you. Are you calling to thank Councilman Pak for his support of this project?”

  “I wanted to ask Mr. Pak one question . . .”

  Ted knew that woman’s voice. The protestor from the courthouse. There couldn’t be two. Like silk and good whiskey. A voice like that ought to be licensed.

  “I want to know how much LBC paid him under the table to switch—”

  They cut her off.