Authors: Peter Spiegelman
My picture had lots of white space in it, though, and Lenzi was the only guy I knew who could fill in the gaps. Only he could tell me what they had on him, how they’d contacted him, and what they’d wanted. Only he could confirm that someone had, in fact, tried to squeeze him. Or, he could tell me that my picture was bullshit—that, after who knew how many years of favors for Nassouli, Lenzi’s management had finally caught on and canned his ass.
I stripped off my clothes, changed into running stuff, and ran five miles in thirty-eight and a quarter minutes. After that, I went to the gym and pushed some steel around until my arms were quivering and I felt vaguely nauseated. Then I went home, showered, ate two cartons of yogurt, and fell into an empty sleep.
Chapter Fifteen
“Let me fill that,” Lisa Welch said. She took my glass and moved serenely across the slate floor of her sunroom, into the adjoining kitchen.
She was a calm, almost ethereal woman with straight, straw-colored hair that fell halfway down her back. She had an open, fine-featured face and, though December was closing in, her prominent cheeks and broad forehead were tanned an attractive golden color. Her large eyes were an odd shade of blue that changed with the changing light—from gray to nearly violet. Her mouth was broad, and in repose fell into a faint, sad smile. She was five foot seven and maybe a hundred and twenty pounds, including the change in her pockets. She wore jeans and a sleeveless blue T-shirt that said “Sanibel Dive Shop” on the front. Her arms were firm and lightly tanned. She was about my age.
I heard her bare feet pad across the wide plank floors of her kitchen. I heard her open the fridge and pour water from a pitcher. I heard her open the oven to check the bread baking inside. The phone rang, and I heard her soft, even voice speaking, though I couldn’t make out the words. An indolent chocolate Lab named Jesse slept near the wrought iron and glass table where I sat, and I heard him sigh heavily.
While I waited for Lisa, I watched her children play on the big back lawn, just beyond the stone patio that lay outside the sunroom. There were two of them—a boy and a girl, ages five and three, blond-haired, blue-eyed, broad-faced, long-limbed, like their mother. The girl seemed to have something of her mother’s serenity. She was feeding two baby dolls in a toy stroller, and occasionally wheeling them around the patio. The little boy was more frenzied. He was climbing and jumping all over a backyard playground, doing imaginary battle with pirates, or robots, or robot pirates . . . it was hard to tell.
It was Thursday afternoon, and a warm day for late fall, in the low sixties. Birds twittered softly, and between their singing and the warmth of the sunroom, and the mild breeze through the open windows, and the muted sounds of the children’s play, and Jesse’s slow, heavy breathing, and the aroma of baking bread, and the gentle murmur of Lisa’s voice, the whole place exerted a powerful soporific effect. Some cookies and milk, and I’d be ready for nap time. But that’s not what I’d come for.
I’d spent yesterday morning winnowing down my list of names. Of the two Steven Bregmans left on my list, only the one in Pound Ridge was in finance. And of the three Nick Welches, only the departed Mr. Welch, late of New Canaan, fit the bill. I’d spent yesterday afternoon making contact with Steven Bregman and the widow Welch, and convincing them to see me.
My story to Bregman was the same as I’d used with Lenzi: his name had come up in connection with a confidential investigation, and I wanted to meet and ask some questions. He’d reacted predictably: wary silence, wary curiosity, a wary, grudging acquiescence. I’d told the same story to Lisa Welch, except with her husband’s as the name that had come up. Her response surprised me.
“I thought this was over with,” she’d said. “I got the check four months ago, and I thought that was it. My lawyer told me that was it.” She wasn’t nervous or upset, just puzzled. So was I.
“Mrs. Welch, I have no clue what you’re talking about,” I said.
“You’re not from Connecticut Mutual?” she asked after a moment.
“No, ma’am.”
“Oh . . . I apologize,” she said, and agreed to see me.
New Canaan and Pound Ridge are neighboring towns, separated only by the state line, and I’d arranged my meetings for the same afternoon—Lisa at two, Bregman at five. I’d risen late this morning and gone for a run. Then, clean-shaven and breakfasted, and dressed in black pants, a maroon polo shirt, and a gray sweater, I’d picked up my rental car. It was 12:45 when my Taurus and I set off.
Getting out of the city was the usual hell—lunatic traffic, cratered streets, highways that ended without warning, road signs written by liars and idiots. I took 95 North, itself a nightmare of construction and careening trucks, and got off in Darien. Then I took 124 through the pristine, suburban splendor of Darien, and into the pristine, suburban splendor of New Canaan. The terrain grew hillier and the traffic lighter as I drove, and the houses and their properties grew larger.
The trees were bare in New Canaan, just as they were in New York— but they were much neater about it. Behind the artfully tumbled stone walls, the high-priced landscapes were brown and faded and buttoned up for winter. Leaves had been blown, bagged, and hauled away, perennials had been cut back and blanketed in straw, shrubs were swaddled in burlap, and deer fencing was strung. Lisa Welch lived off of 124, on a road that climbed up a ridge and went from hardtop to washboard about a mile before it got to her place.
The house was an old colonial with white clapboards, black shutters, and a shiny red door. It sat close to the road, on several acres of lawn, mature trees, and stone walls. It was not a huge house—four bedrooms, I guessed—but it had been meticulously renovated and updated. The double-hung windows were new and set with insulated glass. The plasterwork and wainscoting were unblemished. The floors were bird’s-eye maple and perfectly laid. Halogen lights were mounted unobtrusively in the ceilings. The kitchen was outfitted with the latest high-end appliances—clad in the same cherry wood as the cabinets. And the security system was state of the art. The decor was simple, comfortable-looking, and expensive.
She’d told me to call her Lisa and ushered me through the kitchen and into the sunroom, where we’d watched her kids play outside and where she’d told me a little about Welch. He’d been fourteen years her senior. They’d met at a wedding—a cousin of hers had married a friend of his. They’d known each other less than a year when they’d gotten engaged. She’d quit her job as a preschool teacher, and they’d moved to Connecticut right after the honeymoon. They’d been married just six years when he died. He was, she said, a devoted father, and active in the church and local charities. It was a second marriage for him. The first had ended a decade before—no kids. Lisa had never met number one and didn’t know where she lived. She glided across the sunroom and set the water glass down in front of me and folded herself back in her chair.
“I don’t know how much I can tell you about Nick’s business, John. He didn’t bring it home with him. We didn’t talk about it much, and I didn’t know the people he worked with.”
“No socializing?”
“No. Work just wasn’t an all-consuming thing with him, not while I knew him.”
“It used to be?”
“Oh, yes. When I first met him, it was his life. But his priorities changed.”
“How so?” I asked. She smiled a little.
“He found other things. More important things. Like his family, like being a part of the community.”
“Big change,” I observed. She smiled again, but said nothing. She sat with one leg tucked beneath her, motionless except for her eyes, which followed her children.
“He’d been with his firm a long time?”
“Yes. He’d spent his professional life there. Over twenty years.”
“Ever hear of MWB—Merchant’s Worldwide Bank?” I asked. She shook her head. “How about Gerard Nassouli, or Bernhard Trautmann?” Lisa thought for a moment and shook her head again.
“As I said, I didn’t know a lot about his work.”
I drank some water. Outside, far away, a dog yipped. Jesse sighed, but did not stir. Lisa was perfectly still. The ball of her right foot rested lightly on the stone floor. It was a nice foot, tanned and high-arched, with well-kept toes. Silence settled over us like dust, and it was only with some effort that I spoke again.
“Lisa, forgive me for asking, but from what you said on the phone I wondered if there’d been problems with your husband’s life insurance.” She turned her head to look at me, her eyes a slate gray.
“We did have some, yes,” she said.
“They paid off on the policy, what . . . four months ago, you said?” She nodded. “That’s over a year after your husband passed away.” Another nod. “That’s a long time.” She looked down at her longfingered hands, resting lightly on the edge of the table.
“They had questions,” she said, softly. “It took them a while to satisfy themselves.”
“What kind of questions?” She pushed her hair back behind her ears and cleared her throat.
“They didn’t come out and say it, not right away, but they wondered if Nick hadn’t committed suicide,” she said. She let out a deep breath.
“Why did they think that?”
“I really don’t know, John. There was something about an exclusion period, and they said something about statistics, and the boat’s service records . . . I don’t know. Neither the police nor the Coast Guard shared their doubts.” Jesse was dreaming, about chasing something or being chased. He growled and snuffled and whined, then settled back down. A slow, regular pulse beat in Lisa’s long neck. She was otherwise motionless.
“What did you think?” I asked. She looked at me and then turned back to her children.
“I thought the suggestion was offensive and obscene, John,” she said evenly. “My husband would never have taken his own life. Never.” Her little girl pushed her stroller up to the French doors and waved at us. We waved back. “I don’t know much about my husband’s life in the time before we met. I never cared to. We were focused on the here and now, and on the future. I know he wasn’t happy, back then. I know he was a . . . different person. Maybe not always a good person. But Nick changed his life when we met—for the better. He found his center, John, in being a husband and a father, in the church, in the volunteer work he did. He’d worked hard to find that. He would never have thrown it away.”
“There’d been nothing odd in his mood, in how he behaved, in the days and weeks before his death? Nothing that had happened at work?”
“Nothing.” She let out another sigh and looked up at the glass ceiling. “I can’t tell you how many times I went over all this with the insurance people. Please don’t ask me to go through it again with you.” I nodded.
Jesse roused himself. He sniffed my shoes and circled the table and finally shambled over to the French doors. He looked back at Lisa and whined. She got up and let him out.
“Is any of this relevant to your case, John?” she asked. There was no reproach in her voice. She mostly sounded sleepy.
“I don’t know,” I said, and I meant it.
Lisa walked me to the door and gave me a warm, firm handshake. She stood, motionless, under a big, bare-limbed linden, and watched as I drove away.
I had two hours until my meeting with Bregman, time enough to grab some lunch and make some calls. I got back on 124 and continued north, over the state line. Pound Ridge is more serious money than New Canaan, and a lot of it is spent on privacy. The big houses and their parklike grounds are tucked far from the eyes of curious motorists, and all you see from the narrow, twisting roads are dense woods, empty fields, fences in studied disrepair, and, only occasionally, a nameless mailbox standing by an inconspicuous drive.
Pound Ridge doesn’t have the same sort of Norman Rockwell Main Street as New Canaan. The closest it comes is Scott’s Corners, a wide place on 124 with a firehouse, a high-end supermarket, and a surprising number of eateries. I parked my Taurus and went into a pizzeria. I got two slices and carried them outside and sat on a bench in the fading sunlight.
I spent the next half hour, and much of my cell phone battery, finding out that the senior claims investigator for Connecticut Mutual Insurance was one Stanislaus Kulpinski, that he had personally handled the investigation of the Welch claim, and that his office was in Stamford. Finally, I found Stan himself. He was hoarse and wheezy and old-sounding, and he chewed a lot of gum. I introduced myself and told him what I was interested in, but he wanted references before he would talk.
“Who do you know that I know? Anybody on the job in Connecticut?” he asked.
“No,” I answered. “You know anybody in New York?”
“I know a lot of people,” he said, and reeled off a bunch of names. None of them rang a bell, but I gave him the names of some guys I knew in the NYPD who didn’t think I was something sticky on the sidewalk. “Give me your number, I’ll call you in a half hour,” he said. And he did, by which time I was back in my car, with my phone hooked up to the lighter.
“You want to know why I thought there was something funny with Welch? Okay. You know anything about boats?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“You’ll need some background, but I’ll go light on the technical stuff,” he said. He didn’t go light enough. Twenty minutes later I knew more than I wanted to about the dangers of fire and explosion on boats with inboard, gasoline-powered engines, about how these boats were designed and equipped to ensure proper venting of volatile fumes, and about the safety practices employed by even the greenest power boater to prevent incineration. He told me about automatic sniffers, and exhaust blowers, and duct positioning, and rates of airflow through the engine compartment at various speeds. It was apparently a topic of great fascination to certain segments of the insurance industry.