10 The sound of running water, coming from the bathroom, woke him up. Was his toilet tank leaking again? But the super had fixed it just a couple of weeks earlier! No, it sounded more like the shower. The memory came to him with a jolt. He had just spent the night with the beautiful Betty Wilner, Daniel’s sister. Arguably the most beautiful, certainly one of the three or four most beautiful women he had ever slept with. And, unlike the others, she was pretty hot in bed. He couldn’t believe his luck. He’d made a date with a lovely woman, she’d had to call it off, and instead he’d scored with an even lovelier one. But he still desired Megan Kenner. Indeed, he felt that if could make a choice between the two for the coming evening, he would choose Megan. He hoped that her perhaps would turn into a yes. Thinking about Megan made him horny again, just as it had with Julia Lusha two nights before. The shower stopped, and Betty came out of the bathroom on tiptoe, wrapped in a towel. By the dawn’s early light, between the folds of the towel, he could see her shapely legs and thighs, her slim waist, her full hips and breasts. It seemed remarkable that a woman with a body like that did not dress to show it off. The jeans she had worn were straight and not particularly tight-fitting, and her loose blouse did not hide but also did not emphasize her bosom. Most women with boobs like that would wear something with plenty of cleavage. Of course he had managed to see, and taste, that cleavage after unbuttoning the blouse, as she had requested. “Good morning,” Tom said. “Oh, hi,” Betty said, “I’m sorry I woke you up.” She had almost finished drying herself. She had not washed her flowing auburn hair. “You didn’t. I’m a light sleeper. Come back to bed.” “I’ve got to get dressed and go,” she said. “No, you don’t,” he said. She smiled, dropped the towel to the floor and approached the bed. Afterwards, when she was dressing in what seemed to be a hurry, he said, “Let me take you back to the hotel.” “You don’t have to,” she said. “I can take a taxi. I looked out the window and saw that there are plenty of them.” “Then let me at least go down to the street with you.” “Thanks, Tom,” she said, now fully dressed and sandaled and putting her jacket on, “but you don’t need to do that. I’ve got to get back to Megan.” She came over to the bed and leaned down to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Bye!” she said, and walked toward the front door. After she left he remembered that she had never, not once, kissed him on the lips. Like some hookers he had known, who saved their kisses for their boyfriends. Or for their pimps, who were sometimes the same thing. It was now past six-thirty. He might as well get up and plan his activities for the day. He had a full day ahead of him. He would need to report to Rick DePalma on the latest twist in the Begović case and tell him of his plan to revisit Daniel Wilner’s apartment. Claudia would be back, and he would need to brief her on his doings of the past week, and to go over their other two open cases with her. He reminded himself, as he let the hot water wash the remains of his night with Betty Wilner, that Claudia was not exactly an early bird; she lived in Jackson Heights – where she had grown up – and commuted to the Bronx by car, often managing to hit traffic jams. He hoped that Claudia would accompany him on his rounds for the day: to the property office in the Bronx County Criminal Court Building in order to check out Wilner’s camera; to the Manhattan Surrogate’s Court in order to get Megan’s permission, once the probate decree was signed, to enter the apartment; to the apartment itself. Would it be awkward to have Claudia with him when he saw Megan, with whom he still hoped to get together in the evening? When Megan got up to go the bathroom, she noticed that behind the door the light was on. Had she forgotten to turn it off? She opened the door and found Betty, fully dressed, sitting on the toilet-seat cover and reading The New York Times. “Good morning,” she said in a whisper as she quickly got up and left the bathroom for Megan. “Hi,” Megan said when she came out and sat next to Betty on the sofa. “How was it?” “Okay,” Betty said. “Just okay?” “Pretty good, actually, except that I’m still a little sore. He’s big. I mean Mister Big.” Betty and Megan laughed. “Now I understand the nickname,” Betty went on. “Don’t you think they look alike?” “You mean, the Mister Big actor and Tom? Yeah, I flashed on it when I first met him.” “Anyway, my period had just ended, and I’m on the tight side anyway, so it was a little uncomfortable, especially the first time. Maybe more than a little.” “How many times were there?” “Four.” “Not bad.” “Twice to begin with, then once...” “Twice to begin with?” “Well, this may sound silly to you, but I’d been with only two guys in my whole life, one circumcised and one not, so I was curious about Tom, whether he is or isn’t. But as we were starting he put on a condom before I had a chance to find out. So afterwards, after he’d taken it off, I felt him up – he is circumcised – and that got him hard again. So I got on top of him and got him inside me just to feel what it was like, and we did it for a while, though he didn’t stay hard too long. But I found that with me on top I could control the... the action, so it felt much better.” “The tricks of the trade!” Megan said. “I’ve done it with lots of guys that were big, because for an actor in my business a big cock is a requirement. Fortunately my directors always let me choreograph the positions.” She paused. “Were you wet enough at the beginning?” she asked. “Oh, yes. He gave me an orgasm by hand even before we were undressed.” “That’s nice. Not many guys do that. Your brother usually did, by hand or by mouth. How about the next time?” “Well, I woke up some time between three and four, I think, and I found myself still wondering if Tom was circumcised or not.” Betty giggled. “I seemed to have forgotten what I had discovered earlier, so I felt him up again, and the same thing happened, except that this time he did stay hard and came inside me.” “Didn’t that feel good?” “Sort of. Nothing special. Not the way it’s with Paul, when I usually come too, and there’s also the feeling that one of these days it’s going to be a baby.” “I’ve always liked having guys come inside me, and it was especially knowing that there wasn’t going to be a baby that gave me a feeling of power. You see, in movies the guy usually pulls out before, so that they can get a come shot.” “Really? I guess I haven’t seen any real porn.” “How about the fourth time? This may sound silly to you, but I’m in the habit of quizzing women about their sexual experiences. I told you that I worked on the scripts, and this was a way of gathering material.” “It was after I’d already showered and was drying myself, when he woke up and asked me to come back to bed, so I did. This time he tried to get on top of me, but I wrestled him down, and he let me. That part was fun. Afterwards he gave me another orgasm by hand.” “He sounds like a good lover,” Megan said. She would have liked to ask more questions, especially about everything that had led up to the first time, but the moment didn’t seem ripe for more inquiries. “Do you think you’d like to do it with him tonight?” Betty asked after a pause. “He proposed it, after all.” Sam was suddenly heard from, but babbling, not crying. “Maybe,” Megan said. “It depends on you-know-who.” “I’m asking because I want you to know that I’m not interested.” “Oh?” “I’m not interested in Tom per se. I mean, it was very liberating and all that, to do it with someone you don’t love. I felt ready for that, and Tom is an attractive man who happened to be there. Now I understand where someone like Samantha on the show comes from. Hell, I understand you, because I guess for you it’s the norm.” “That’s true. Well, it was.” Megan walked over to Sam’s cot and saw him smiling with his eyes half-open. He shut them with he saw her, but the smile remained on his face. “Well, for me the norm is this continuity, or at least this imbrication” – Betty giggled when she said the word – “of elements, from saying ‘I love you’ to kissing or touching affectionately to kissing passionately to making love to cuddling afterwards. When it’s just sex it sort of stands by itself. I’m not knocking it, but...” “I really do know what you mean, Betty. From the time I decided to get pregnant with Sam there was no one but Daniel, and it was more like that. It was wonderful. God, do I miss him... Do you miss Paul, by the way?” “That’s the weird thing, Megan. I don’t feel like I do. I’m not sure I still love him.” “Wow,” Megan said, expecting Betty to go on talking about her feelings. But Betty said nothing further. Sam’s eyes were now wide open. “Mommy,” he said. “Pee-pee.” “You want to go pee-pee? Let me take you.” She swooped him out of the cot, carried him to the bathroom and placed him on the stool that she had moved next to the toilet with her foot. He performed admirably. “By the way,” Betty said when Megan and Sam came back to the room, “you said that you’d decided to get pregnant with Sam, as though you’d known that your baby would be named Sam.” “I did. I got the idea from Ian Rankin,” Megan said, sitting down on the sofa with Sam in her lap. “The novelist?” “Yeah. Daniel was a big fan, and so am I. DI John Rebus and his ex have a daughter named Sam, but they had decided to name their child either Samuel or Samantha, so they could call it Sam. Daniel liked the idea. And we weren’t the only ones; there’s even an Internet forum called Parents of Sam.” “Wow! Look at him,” Betty said. “He seems to be following our conversation.” “Well, he’s hearing his name mentioned.” Megan laughed. “So,” Betty began after a pause during which Megan played with Sam, “what’s happening this morning?” “We’re having breakfast at eight-thirty with Cary, the lawyer.” “Carrie, as in Sex and the City?” “No, Cary, like Cary Grant.” Laughter. "He wants to meet you and Sam.” “Where?” Betty asked. “A place called Harry’s, in the Woolworth Building.” “Oh, I know where that is. I was there yesterday. It’s right near where I took the subway to Columbia.” “Good, then you will guide us. Now let me take a shower.” It wasn’t even eight o’clock yet when Tom showed up at the precinct, but Claudia was already there, reviewing cases on her computer and cross-checking her files. “Hey!” Tom said as soon as he knew that she would hear him, “how was your vacation?” “Hey there!” she replied. “Other than me and Tony breaking up, it was great!” “Remind me: where did you go?” “To Cartagena. It was fabulous!” “So what happened with Tony?” “He didn’t like the way I danced with other guys. As if I could dance any other way! He’s Latino, he ought to know! We had a fight about it on the flight back, and I said to myself, like, I don’t need this shit!” She laughed, and Tom joined her. “Speaking of dancing,” he said, “I went to El Rinconcito last night. With Daniel Wilner’s sister Betty. She and his girlfriend Megan are in town for a probate hearing on his estate, especially the apartment. In fact the hearing is this morning. She plans to sell it as soon as the deed is in her hands, and I’d like us to go there for another visit. There’s also...” “So what’s this with you going dancing with the sister?” “There’s a lot to tell,” he said before proceeding to do so while leaving out all the nonprofessional parts of the tale. He would save those for another occasion, over drinks. “That’s very interesting,” Claudia said, “but we’ve got two other open cases that Rick wants us to get back to work on. And the Lejla case – are you sure you want to back out of it?” “Well, it doesn’t seem to be connected to the Wilner case anymore...” “Aren’t you long-jumping to conclusions?” Claudia asked with a snicker. Tom laughed. It was an old joke between them: when they were first getting acquainted he had told her that he had been a long-jumper in high school. What’s that, she had asked. A broad-jumper, he had said, thinking that she might be more familiar with the older term. Oh, she had said, so tell me about all the broads you jumped. But now Claudia went on in a serious vein. “The Murovas are still connected to both cases, aren’t they?” “Maybe, but they aren’t suspects in the Begović case anymore, at least not prime suspects. Orsini and Schiller want to focus on the Brooklyn mosque connection, and I’d rather not go there. It could be a major can of worms and it’s too far off our turf.” “And you really want to focus on the Wilner case.” “I guess so.” “Don’t let yourself get too involved with the sister and the fiancée.” “She’s not the fiancée, just the mother of his child, and don’t worry.” “But I do. I know you, Tom. I’m not worried about your ethics but about your perspective. So far it’s only a hypothesis that Wilner’s killing was not accidental, but you’re already acting like it’s a certainty. Did you say one of those ‘we’ll find the killer’ things to one of them?” “I told Betty that we’d get to the bottom of the case. Because we will. You and me, amiga.” Megan was silent and pensive, and Sam was quiet and subdued while Betty was pushing his stroller along Park Row, passing City Hall Park. When they reached Barclay Street the Woolworth Building came into view. “We’re almost there,” Betty said to Sam. “Almost there,” Sam echoed. “Mr. Seligman’s table, please,” Megan said at the restaurant’s reception desk. The hostess, a very young and slim black girl whose name tag read Alicia, looked down on her list. “Yes, Ma’am. Please follow me.” “Seligman,” Betty said to Megan as they were following Alicia, with Betty maneuvering the stroller between tables that seemed to be occupied mostly by well-dressed middle-aged people, male and female, busy in serious conversation. “That name sounds vaguely familiar.” “Did you ever meet Audrey?” “Oh, Audrey! Of course! She was at my birthday party! She seems to be a friend, or maybe more than a friend, of Harvey’s.” “Well, Cary is her brother. And she was a friend and more than a friend, several times, of Daniel’s.” Cary and Audrey, Betty thought. Like Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. A coincidence? Not likely. She was about to make a comment to Megan when a male voice was heard from behind them: “You must be Betty and Megan. But which is which?” Cary Seligman was a trim redhead like his sister. “I’m Betty,” Megan said, but Sam quickly corrected her. “No, mommy,” he said. Everybody laughed. “I was hoping to be here ahead of you,” Cary said, “but at least I’m not late. Let’s sit.” A high chair was already in place for Sam, and Megan let Betty put him there. “So you’re Megan and you’re Betty,” Cary said, shaking hands with each woman in turn before they all sat town. “I feel like I already know Megan,” he said to Betty, “from talking on the phone and exchanging letters, but let me introduce myself to you. First of all, I’m really sad about your brother. I had no thought that the will that I wrote for him would have to be probated so soon.” He paused. “When he found out that he was going to be a father he told my sister about it, and he mentioned that he wanted to make out a will, so she told him that her brother – that’s me – is an estate lawyer. So he came to me and asked me to be sure that I wrote it very carefully, unlike his father’s – your father’s – will. I understand that when your father passed away you were left out of the will, because your father’s lawyer didn’t anticipate any future issue.” “That’s right,” Betty said. “But Daniel fixed the problem on his own. My father’s lawyer, by the way, is now my father-in-law.” Cary chuckled. “It’s funny how the words father and law can be combined differently.” Megan’s cell phone rang just as a waitress came by with menus and a coloring book for Sam. “Hello!” she said and followed with “Hi, Tom!” She listened for a minute or so while Betty and Cary, by tacit agreement, sat silently. “I’ll let you talk to the lawyer,” she concluded before handing the phone to Cary. It was Cary’s turn to listen for another minute or two, and at last he said, “Sure. I’ll get back to you, say, between eleven and twelve.” He handed the phone back to Megan. “How come I don’t get to talk to him?” Betty asked with a laugh. “Because you’ve been a naughty girl,” Megan said with a wink. Betty felt herself blushing. Megan turned away in order to play with Sam, whose merry giggles brought smiles to the people at the neighboring tables. “Detective Radnovich wants to see Daniel’s co-op,” Cary explained to Betty, “and he wants to do it with Megan’s permission, without having to get a court order, once it’s legally in her hands, which should be as soon as the hearing’s over.” Cary spoke in a pleasant voice, with barely a trace of the New York accent that was so prominent in his sister’s speech. All the R sounds were clearly audible in court order. The waitress came by to take their breakfast orders. Betty wanted only a bagel with cream cheese and a cup of coffee, while Megan and Cary ordered full breakfasts, hers with tea and his with coffee. Betty noticed that Cary’s coffee also didn’t sound like a New Yorker’s. “Where did you go to college?” she asked Cary, remembering to say college rather than university when talking to Americans about their undergraduate education. “Stanford,” Cary said, and laughed. “You’re asking because I don’t sound like a New Yorker?” Betty smiled and nodded, feeling herself blushing once more. Then she felt something else: she was attracted to Cary Seligman. The feeling produced a sense of alarm in the pit of her stomach. Feeling attracted to a man she had just met – not merely finding him attractive, but feeling herself infused with attraction – was an altogether new experience for her, one that she had not even had with Tom Radnovich; as she had told Megan, Tom had been just an attractive man who happened to be there at the right moment. But with Cary she could even imagine herself kissing his full, vibrant lips. “It took some practice,” Cary said. “Actually, you’ll find that a lot of people in Manhattan by now don’t have much of an accent anymore, but where I grew up in Westchester County – that’s just north of New York City – most of the people had moved there from the city in the forties, fifties and sixties and brought their accent with them.” “Where do you live now?” she asked Cary. “Oh, in Manhattan, in the East Village, not far from here. I usually bike to the office, which is in this building.” “Alone?” Betty asked, not sure why. “No, I live in a commune with a bunch of hippies...” Cary laughed. “Yes, I live alone,” he amended. Another Manhattan bachelor, Betty thought, like the ones on Sex and the City. She wondered if he was a modelizer. “Don’t mind Betty,” Megan said. “She’s just curious about the lives and customs of that strange subspecies known as single people.” Betty smiled. She felt grateful to Megan for the distraction, but her real curiosity was really about herself: where did this sudden feeling of attraction – to a man who had shown no special interest in her – come from? Both Gérard and Paul had courted her assiduously before she developed amorous feelings for them, and other men had flirted with her – most recently Emilio – without eliciting any such feelings. Of course she’d had a girlish crush on Paul, but that had been long before such feelings meant anything. Megan and Cary had somehow gone on to talking about the will and the upcoming hearing, and Betty felt justified in keeping herself out of the conversation. She looked at Sam. He seemed to follow the talk, moving his eyes between Cary and Megan as each spoke in turn. They were on the sidewalk outside 31 Chambers Street. “This is my partner, Detec...” Tom Radnovich began. “Hi, I’m Claudia,” Claudia Quintero said as she reached her hand out to Megan, taking care to give her name her preferred pronunciation – Cloud-ya – before Tom could introduce her as Clawed-ya. “Detective Claudia Quintero,” she said as she shook Cary’s hand. When she said her full name it sounded even more Spanish. “I’m Megan Kenner,” Megan said, “and this is my attorney, Cary Seligman.” “Hi, Counselor,” Tom said to Cary, shaking his hand. “Hi, Detective,” Cary replied. “I take it the hearing went well,” Tom said as they began walking westward. “Yes, except for a little hitch,” Seligman said. “It seems that over the weekend a fax arrived from Paul Berman, Betty Wilner’s husband, who’s also a lawyer, asking the court for a continuance on her behalf, citing a suspicion of fraud. Of course the deadline for any such intervention had long passed, and since Megan could state under oath that Betty was with her here in New York, babysitting the very beneficiary of the will, and that she had no intention of contesting the will, the judge ruled summarily that Paul had no standing and approved the distribution.” “It was a shock, though,” Megan said. “Betty and Sam should be joining us any minute, and I’d rather she didn’t know about this.” They had reached the corner of Broadway, and Megan looked behind her. “I see them coming,” she added. “Mum’s the word,” Claudia said. The turn of events struck her as bizarre. “Anyway, if we just go to my office, here in the Woolworth Building,” Seligman said as he pointed down Broadway, “I’ll get you the authorization to inspect Daniel’s apartment that you can show the super when you go there.” “Here they are,” Megan said, and Claudia could see a laughing little boy in a stroller that was being pushed in a zigzag running motion by a beautiful young woman, her wavy auburn hair billowing in the morning breeze. “In fact,” Cary Seligman went on, “I will attach a copy of the decree with a schedule of assets, in case you need to look into bank or credit-card transactions.” “That’s great,” Tom said. “Hi mommy,” Sam said with a smile when he saw Megan, but his expression changed to a frown when he saw Tom Radnovich. Megan and Betty exchanged knowing glances. Megan pulled Sam out of the stroller and hugged him tightly. “Hi, my rich little boy,” she said as she kissed him. “By the way,” she said, turning to Betty, “this is Detective Claudia Quintero, Tom’s partner.” “Hi, Claudia,” Betty said. “you must be the one who taught Tom to dance to salsa.” “That’s right,” Claudia said. Canadians, she thought as they walked down Broadway, had no problem with saying people’s names the way people wanted them said. New Yorkers, by contrast, tended to say them as they read them. They called Bette Davis Bett, not Betty. The street named for Sam Houston was called Howston, not Hueston. And Roosevelt, to many, was Ruse-velt, not Rosa-velt. Tom was explaining that Clawed-ya and he had found Daniel Wilner’s digital camera in the Bronx property office and that there was no card in the camera, which was why they needed to search the apartment again. Even Tom Radnovich, who knew several languages, including some Spanish, called her Clawed-ya. He had no trouble with exotic names, including Spanish ones that were spelled distinctively, like Esteban or Julio. But Julia or Angel or Claudia had to be said as if they were English, he had told her the first time they were in bed together (it was after they had gone out for drinks, and then dancing, at El Rinconcito), because it was NYPD policy. But she had asked Harry Arvanakis if it was so, and Harry had said no. The memory of sleeping with Tom reminded her that she was single again, after eight months with Tony Peralta. Special agent J. Anthony Peralta, FBI. Too bad. It had been fun with Tony, or at least it had seemed to be fun. To kick back and let him make the decisions. About when to get together, where to go, what to eat. But Claudia liked to be in control of her life, at least of the major things in it, And Tony didn’t seem to know the difference. She would miss him. But no more than she missed the other men who had passed through her life and stayed long enough to linger. Except Doug, to whom she had been married for three years, and with whom she was still in touch. Back to the present. They had reached the Woolworth Building, and followed Cary Seligman into the lobby. Cary Seligman was cute, with his flaming red hair and his smiling eyes, looking more Irish than Jewish. He was too young, of course, barely thirty. But the young and beautiful Betty Wilner seemed interested in him. She was married, but one never knew. And that husband of hers! Trying to contest his brother-in-law’s will at the last minute, supposedly on Betty’s behalf but unbeknownst to her! By Tom’s account that morning, Paul Berman hadn’t known about little Sam’s existence until just a few days earlier. So he probably believed that he could, through his wife, profit from Wilner’s death. If the connection weren’t so preposterously far-fetched, Claudia thought, she might even have liked him as a suspect. But a Jewish lawyer in Montreal and Albanian gangsters in New York? Give me a break. “This shouldn’t take very long, detectives,” Seligman was saying in the elevator. “I already called my secretary, and everything should be ready for my signature and Megan’s. This sort of thing is actually fairly routine,” he added with a smile. A very cute smile. “What about any mail that might have been coming to Mr. Wilner posthumously?” Claudia asked. “Oh, yes,” Seligman said, “I meant to tell you. The super’s been picking it up, and it’s all sitting on the table in the apartment. Feel free to go through it, detectives, and to get rid of anything that’s obviously junk. It’ll save Megan the trouble.” He laughed. “Thanks, Cary,” Megan said. They had landed on Seligman’s floor. “Of course anything from institutions that have been notified of Daniel’s death,” Seligman said as he led the way to the office, “like banks and government agencies, has been coming to me as the administrator pro tem of the estate, but there’s always the possibility of flukes. Here we are.” As he opened the door the secretary, a chubby but pretty black woman of thirty or so, was already standing there and handed him a sheaf of papers. “Here it is,” she said in a West Indian accent. Seligman took the papers over to his desk, glanced at them cursorily, giving the impression that he trusted his secretary to get things right, and signed the top paper. After Megan placed her signature in its place, he put the papers in a manila envelope, which he handed to Tom. “This is it, detectives,” he said. “Good luck.” “Thanks, counselor,” Tom said, and then, turning to Claudia, added, “we’d better get to work.” “Suppose you go through the mail,” Tom said as they entered the apartment, “and I’ll check out the shelves and drawers.” “Okay,” Claudia said. “Let me just get a shopping bag for the junk.” Tom looked around the space. In the daytime it was well-lit, even with the overcast sky outside. The inventory of searchable places consisted of a desk and a bookcase in the living room, drawers in the kitchen, and a dresser and a nightstand in the bedroom. He and Claudia had done a perfunctory inspection of the place back in October, when the killing was considered accidental. But now that murder was suspected he still didn’t know what to look for, except a card, or maybe a disk, storing digital photographs. And even that was uncertain. The place looked clean, unchanged in eight months. The super, a heavyset, ruddy-faced fiftyish man named Eddie Witkowski, had told them that he had been vacuum-cleaning it a couple of times a month. He had been fond of Daniel. “He was only nineteen when he moved in,” Eddie had told them on the way to letting them in, “and he would ask me to buy beer and wine for him until he was old enough. Not that he was a big drinker – never had any parties or stuff like that, except once, when his soccer team won something or other. But he sure brought a lot of young ladies into this place! I mean, one at a time, no orgies, but he was quite a ladies’ man, young Daniel was!” The half-empty box of condoms was still in the nightstand drawer, a silent affirmation of Eddie’s account. “There’s some personal mail here,” Claudia said after a few minutes of searching, “mainly from last December. Probably Christmas or New Year’s cards from people who didn’t know about what had happened to him. Hold on, here’s one that may be from a relative in Germany, B. Wilner...” “That’s Brigitte,” Tom said. “I know who that is. It’s his father’s first wife. Betty told me about her. She’s supposed to be a famous actress in Germany. Is there a return address?” “No, just a Hamburg postmark.” “Maybe it’s inside, or maybe the German consulate will help us get in touch with her. Any others?” “A couple from Spain, one from Renshaw and one from Rozowski – not exactly Spanish names. Here’s one from Florida, C.C. Bloom – I know who that is! She’s a psychologist who’s been on Spanish TV lately! She wrote this very controversial article about Latina women and Anglo men.” “Bloom? That’s not exactly a Spanish name either.” “It’s from a marriage. I was Holtz for a while, you know. In Spanish countries women don’t usually take their husbands’ names, but here we usually do. Anyway, if these people didn’t know Daniel’s family in Canada, and if they don’t read the New York papers, they may still not know. We should try to notify them.” “Maybe we should just give the information to Betty and her mother. It should come from them, not us. Don’t you think so?” “You’re right,” Claudia said as she continued to browse through the envelopes, “except that I’d like to contact C. C. Bloom myself. I think she went to Columbia, she seems to be around Daniel’s age, so she may have been one of the young ladies that he brought here.” She chuckled. “Now this is interesting,” she said with a sudden change of tone. “It’s from Citibank, and it arrived just a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t notice a Citibank account in the schedule of assets.” Tom checked the back page of the document. “No,” he said, “there’s only Chase.” “Let’s open it and see. It could be just an ad, but it doesn’t look like it.” “Okay, go ahead.” “Hmm,” Claudia said after looking at the contents of the envelope, “it’s a bill for a safe-deposit box.” “Really? He had his box in a different bank from the one he banked in?” “It could be that he changed banks at some point, but the new one had no boxes available. It’s happened to me.” “But even if all he had in that bank was in that box, wouldn’t he have told his lawyer about it?” “Maybe he forgot. But that isn’t likely, for a journalist like him. Maybe he used that box for stuff that he considered personal and not a part of his estate.” “You’re right,” Tom said. “All the more reason to check it out. When is the bill due, by the way?” “July first,” Claudia said. “This could be what we’re looking for. Maybe the PC cards from the camera are in that box,” Tom said. “Or maybe other stuff,” Claudia said with a smile. “I know,” Tom said and laughed. “I’m focusing too much on the camera. Where is this branch, anyway?” “Right near here, Columbus at Eighty-first.” “Let’s go,” Tom said. “I’m not finding anything here.” “How about giving me a chance to look around? Woman’s touch, you know...” But after ten minutes of poking around Claudia was just as empty-handed as Tom had been.