JM02 - Death's Little Helpers aka No Way Home by Peter Spiegelman Page A

her voice or her name or might think she’d changed employers after all these centuries. “I’m confirming your meeting tomorrow afternoon, at two o’clock, here at our offices.” She recited the address and I laughed out loud, fully expecting her to follow with directions. “You’ll be interviewing Mr. Geoffrey Tyne, whose curriculum vitae you should already have received. The interview will take place in Mr. Ned March’s conference room, next to his office on the seventh floor. Mr. March would like to meet with you afterward for about fifteen minutes, to discuss your impressions of Mr. Tyne. Please call me to confirm.” I didn’t dare do otherwise.
    Mrs. K’s call ended in a discreet click, and then Jane’s voice was there. There was noise on the line and other voices in the background.
    “I’m with the lawyers again, and it looks like I’ll be here late.” I heard the rueful smile in her voice. “Leave a message, tell me what you’re up to. Maybe we can have dinner, if you don’t mind waiting.” I heard someone call her name. “Got to jump. Call me.”
    I’d learned that, to Jane, late could mean anything from nine till after midnight, and I called to tell her voice mail that tonight I couldn’t wait. Tonight I’d be working. I’d made two failed attempts to speak with Irene Pratt; the third time, I figured, would be the charm. I opened up my laptop and started my browser.
    There were three Irene Pratts in the metropolitan area, but only one in Manhattan— on the Upper West Side. I dialed her number, and an answering machine picked up. I recognized the quick talk and the Long Island accent. I didn’t leave a message. I couldn’t count on finding Pratt at home for at least a couple of hours, so I heated some coffee and returned to the court records databases and my list of the complaints against Danes and Pace-Loyette.
    The list of the aggrieved was long and varied— from pension funds in the Midwest to coupon clippers in the Sun Belt and day traders on both coasts— and their allegations ranged from plain old negligence and conflict of interest to elaborate conspiracy and fraud. Most, though not all, involved Piedmont Science. Some of the claims had been resolved, settled out of sight for undisclosed sums and with all concerned silenced by nondisclosure agreements, and some were still pending, drifting slowly through a limbo of depositions and discoveries, but none of them had yet made it to an actual judgment.
    Mixed in with the investor suits were others, unrelated to Danes’s job as an analyst. There was a six-year-old action— ultimately dismissed— against Danes and every other shareholder in his old 90th Street co-op, brought by a bicycle messenger who’d sprained his ankle in the building’s lobby. And there was an eight-year-old claim, brought by Danes, which involved chipped granite countertops, a broken sink, and an unrepentant contractor. It had dried up after five months. At the bottom of my list was the ten-year-old case of Sachs v. Danes, the divorce proceedings. Seeing it there reminded me that I owed Nina a progress report, and I called her before I headed uptown. She answered on the eighth ring, and she was distracted and barely civil.
    “I’m working, for chrissakes,” she muttered, and I heard her lighter snap. “You can come over tonight if you want to talk.” I told her I would.

    Irene Pratt lived in the upper seventies, on a leafy street of brownstones between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues. It was nearly six when I got there, and the narrow sidewalks were crowded with people walking dogs and toting groceries and heading for expensive workouts. Pratt’s building was a Romanesque town house of rough, tobacco-colored stone. It was five stories tall, with narrow arched windows, a cavernous entryway, and lots of decorative masonry. There was a video intercom system at the door. Judging from the buttons, there was only one apartment per floor. Pratt was on the