JM02 - Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home by Peter Spiegelman Read Free Book Online

ignoring his firm, that support could evaporate. I asked him if by support he meant his coverage of the company— his research reports— and he said he’d always known I was a bright girl.”
    “Bright girl?” I said.
    Jane laughed. “I was stunned— as much by his heavy-handedness as anything else.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I thanked him for his advice and hung up, and then I called the vice chairman of his firm. I told him what had happened and pointed out that— just for appearances’ sake— he might want his boy to ease off a little. A few days later the firm announced that our analyst had been promoted and transferred, and they assigned a new paunchy frat boy to cover us. He was dumber than the first guy but quieter. End of story.”
    “Except that you carry a grudge.”
    “I have a long memory.”
    “Duly noted.”
    “I always knew you were a bright boy.” She smiled and glanced down at her watch.
    “You’ve got to get back to the office,” I said. “I’ll put on some clothes and walk you over.” I went into the bedroom and Jane was behind me. She tossed her T-shirt on the bed and stood, backlit, in the doorway. Shadows fell across her small round breasts. Her nipples were dark and hard.
    “Not just yet,” she said softly, and she came across the room and pulled away my towel. Her hands were soft and warm on my body, and so was her mouth. She pushed me down on the bed and wriggled out of the rest of her clothes and lay next to me. Heat came off her in waves. It carried the milky scent of her soap and the faint spice of her perfume, and beneath them both, the tang of her. I breathed deeply, and my heart hammered against my ribs.
    I kissed her and her tongue played slowly in my mouth. I caught the flavors of mint and curry and cilantro. I slid my hands down her back and sides and along her thighs. She shuddered and rolled against me. I kissed her breasts and her belly, and spread her legs and tasted her.
    She said something unintelligible and buried her fingers in my hair and moved her smooth legs against my shoulders. She pressed herself against me, quivering, again and again, and suddenly she twisted out from under me.
    “Not yet,” she whispered. She pushed me over on my back and hooked her leg across my hips and slid on top of me. She took me in her hands and slowly fit herself around me and we lay there, barely breathing. And then she began to move.

    I came out of the oblivion that had taken me, lying sideways across the bed. Jane was beside me, her dark head on my chest, an arm and a leg flung across me. The room was full of her scent and the heat of her body. In the dim light, I watched the slow rise and fall of her back, the faint flutter of her eyelids, and the tiny random movements of her bow-shaped mouth. I ran my finger lightly along her hairline, just above her right temple, and felt the small ripples there, invisible to the eye— the wake of the bullet that had grazed her last year. Jane opened her eyes and looked at me for a long while before she spoke.
    “No harm done,” she said softly. I wanted to believe it.

3
    Find the real estate. Find the cars. Look for criminal records and civil suits. Get the phone bills. Check the hospitals. Check the morgues. Every missing persons case is different, but every one begins the same way. It’s like the opening gambit in a game of chess, and if your missing person isn’t actually in hiding— or isn’t any good at it— play can often stop soon after. I spent much of the morning making these moves, and thanks to the marvels of technology and the wonders of outsourcing, I could do it all without leaving home.
    I put a Charlie Haden disc on the stereo, filled a mug with coffee, powered up my laptop, and fed Gregory Danes’s name and Social Security number to several of my favorite online search services. For a price, they would make mincemeat of his privacy.
    Nina Sachs had already given me the address of Danes’s Upper East Side