She pulls her phone out of her bag, consults her calendar. “I was on a Zoom conference call with Sidney then. People actually saw my face, and I was in my office. You can confirm that,” she says quite calmly. “And I mean that—you should. I would if I were you. Also, you should know I threaten to kill people all the time. And all of them are still alive. At least as far as I know. Anyway, whatever happened to your mom didn’t have anything to do with me. Besides, her vanishing only hurts me. It’s not like I can find someone else to do the kind of thing your mom does.”
“What does that mean—what kind of thing?”
“You know, clean up,” she says, waving an imaginary magic wand.
“Cleanup of patents?”
“Ha. That’s funny—patents.” She gives another brittle little laugh “My situation was patently something; that’s for sure.”
“Please, can you—” My voice cracks again. I can’t help it. I can’t take one more bad surprise. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. My mom is a patent attorney at Blair, Stevenson. And I’m not sure why you think this is funny, because none of it is funny to me.”
Vivienne searches my face skeptically for a moment.
“Your mother isn’t a patent lawyer. She’s a fixer,” she says, the bite gone entirely from her voice. “She helps with problems that can’t be fixed in a court of law. You know, the tawdry kind.”
“Mymom? She wouldn’t do anything that’s even in, like, a gray zone.” But I feel queasy.
“I agree that your mom is buttoned-up. I was actually worried about that when Mark first introduced us,” Vivienne says. “I was like,thiswoman is going to sort shit out for me? She looks like sheshould be heading up the PTA in Greenwich. But Mark assured me there was more to her than met the eye. And if I hadn’t seen it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it. But she’s good. She showed up at this one guy’s job to get information we needed. Huge mountain of a guy, worked in construction. Anyway, she scared the shit out of him somehow, and suddenly he would not shut up. Told us everything we wanted to know. She’s also not afraid of me—which is extremely aggravating. But I respect her. From what I hear, she’s tangled with a lot of powerful people in one way or another, though. You could have a long list of suspects.”
“What other people?”
“I don’t knownames.No one wants these kinds of things getting out—sex, drugs, who knows what else.” She thinks for a moment. “Your mom is always very discreet. And nonjudgmental. I appreciate that … Anyway, I’d find her other clients. I’m not saying any of them are violent, but it’s also not impossible. Somebody caught with an underage prostitute or a hit-and-run, for instance …”
“She helped people with those things?” I can’t believe my mom kept all this a secret. That she did any of it in the first place. I can’t decide if I feel impressed or betrayed.
“Again, I don’t know what other people did, exactly,” Vivienne says. “I’m just saying these are people with money and power anda lotto lose.”
“Her boss has been really nice. He’s trying to help—but he didn’t say anything about this. Actually, he kind of lied when I asked about her job. He definitely said it was patents.”
“Well, it’s not exactly the kind of work they hand out bar association awards for.”
“And now her assistant is having some kind of episode and—”
“Episode?” Vivienne makes a face. “You mean Julia? What are you talking about?”
“Jules. Yeah. They had to fire her.”
“Huh.” Vivienne considers this, looking up toward the sky.“That doesn’t sound right. I talked to Jules like a day ago, and she seemed absolutely fine.”
“And now her phone’s been shut off. I tried to call her a little while ago. I have no idea how I would even find her.”
Vivienne leans toward me. “Nowthatis something I can help with.”
I sit on the edge of the tufted eggplant-colored sectional in Vivienne’s fun house of a living room—there’s a shag-covered armchair and large cushions on the floor, for sitting, apparently, the color the same as the bright orange poppies on the wallpaper between the massive windows overlooking Central Park West. Her fingers have been flying over her keyboard.
Vivienne snorts quietly, shakes her head. “You’d think that law firms would know better. Their personnel files are basically hanging wide open.” She writes something down on a piece of paper. “Jules Kovacis. That’s her home number and her address.”
I take the piece of paper, look down at the address and nod. Washington Heights. “Thanks,” I say to Vivienne.
“Listen, I know I haven’t always been so easy on your mom. But I’ve always admired her. She’s a fighter. You ask me, not enough women know how to fight.” She’s quiet for a moment. “Anyway, call me if you need anything else. I am very good at finding a way around almost any firewall.”
The beautiful tree-lined block Jules lives on looks a lot like our street in Park Slope. Except up in Washington Heights, everything is on a slightly larger scale—the sidewalks a bit wider, the brownstones, too. It’s alsoreallyquiet. Too quiet. There’s not a soul in sight. In New York City, there’s nothing good about empty—not empty streets or empty storefronts or empty subway cars.
I’m feeling pretty jumpy by the time I find Jules’s building, one of the best maintained on the block. There’s aFOR SALEsign out front.Luxury Two-Bedroom Unit!it proclaims with aPlease Inquireand a phone number.
I look up toward the windows as I ring Jules’s bell, 3F. No answer. I ring the buzzer again and lean back to see if the lights are on in her unit.
“You missed her.” I whirl around, to find a short white man with a very thick mustache and a snug off-white tank top standing behind me. He’s holding a broom. Maybe the super.
