1 Runaway Man Read online

  After I graduated from NYU drama school, the folks decided to sell our raised ranch in Mineola and move in over the office. By then I had my own place in the East Village and was trying to scratch out a living as an actor. I caught the show business bug from Mom. Desperately wanted to act. I got two weeks on a soap. A few commercials that went national. Speaking roles on a couple of different Law & Order episodes. Given my slight stature and boyish features, they continued to cast me as a high school kid even after I got out of drama school. Until the day they stopped casting me altogether. There isn’t much demand for a twenty-five-year-old juvenile type. Make that zero.

  So I joined the family business. I have a genuine gift for tailing people. Partly it’s my dramatic training. Partly it’s what my dad taught me. I can tail anyone through the streets and subways of New York City and they never know I’m there. But my specialty is finding runaways. Thousands of high school and college-age kids from all over the country disappear into the Big Apple maw every year. Some are fleeing an abusive home life. Some are chasing the Broadway or catwalk dream. Some are just running and have no idea why.

  I know all about that. Three weeks before I graduated from high school I gathered up my life savings of $238, packed an overnight bag and caught a Greyhound bus for Hollywood. Didn’t tell my folks. Didn’t tell anyone. I told myself I wanted to be a movie star. Mostly, I was just desperate to escape. If I didn’t get away I was positive I’d explode all over the Derek Jeter posters on my bedroom wall. After ten days out there, I was shuffling along Hollywood Boulevard with twenty-three cents in my pocket, starved and homesick. A real nice young guy named Stan took pity on me and bought me a meal. Stan even offered me a chance to appear in adult films if I was willing to go down on his extremely large friend Larry. I politely said I’d rather not. He not-so-politely pointed out that it wasn’t exactly a request. My dad found me in a cheap motel room three days later, drugged, dehydrated and dazed. When I was cleared to leave the hospital, we got on a plane for home and the matter was never discussed again. Except for the occasional nightmare that awakened me, screaming, my Project Runaway episode was history.

  But I’ve been there, okay? I know what they’re going through. I know what can happen to them. It’s not my job to choreograph happy endings. I’m a private investigator. It’s not the career that I dreamt of, but given my upbringing I suppose it was inevitable that I’d end up where I am. Actually, it all seems pretty normal to me. Mind you, I go to work every day with two gorgeous women who used to get naked for a living—one of whom is my mom. So one man’s idea of normal is another’s oedipal fantasy a trois.

  After Peter Seymour drove off, I went up to my book-lined apartment. Reading is one of my passions. Mostly showbiz memoirs and biographies, the juicier the better. My apartment has good light, thanks to the wraparound windows. A wood-burning fireplace. Comfy, overstuffed furniture that I inherited from my grandmother’s apartment in Flatbush. On muggy August afternoons I swear it still smells like kasha knishes. I built a fire in the fireplace and put some music on the stereo. Broadway musicals are my other passion. None of that Andrew Lloyd Webber crap either. Real stuff, like the digitally remastered original cast recording of Gypsy starring the great Miss Ethel Merman.

  I stretched out in front of the fire with Seymour’s file on the Weiner family. Bruce’s parents, Paul and Laurie, were both forty-eight years old. Paul was a bond trader with Farrell and Company, as Seymour had mentioned. Laurie, who’d taught school before she and Paul started their family, volunteered at the local elementary school as a teacher’s aide. In addition to Bruce, the Weiners had a daughter, Sara, age seventeen, a senior at Willoughby High School who had applied to Columbia, Tufts, UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago. Sara was a straight-A student, a flautist and an all-conference soccer player. Both of the Weiner kids were athletic. Bruce had been the starting center on the Willoughby High basketball team. He did not play for the team at Canterbury. He appeared to be a model student. Had a 3.76 GPA. No record of drug or alcohol-related activity. No citations from the campus police for excessive partying. The kid seemed clean. But it also seemed obvious that the Leetes people hadn’t put boots on the ground at Canterbury. All they had were the fruits of a computer search. No dirt.

  Although they sure had a lot of it on Bruce’s parents. Paul Weiner was a Gold Card member of the Gladiator’s Club, a high-end online escort service. The man had engaged in twelve assignations in midtown Manhattan hotel rooms over the past eighteen months at a cost of fifteen hundred dollars each. His preference was for Asian women who were young, petite and took excellent care of their feet. He also belonged to an online dating service and had been romantically involved with three different women in the past year. All three were Asian. Four years ago, he’d an affair with an unmarried coworker named Michelle Chen. It had ended when Michelle transferred to the San Diego office. She was presently married and had a small child.

  Laurie Weiner had met with two different divorce attorneys in the past six months but had not retained either of them. Instead, she’d embarked on an affair with the married principal of the elementary school where she volunteered. The affair was ongoing. He had rented an apartment in Scarsdale for their trysts, which occurred three times a week between the hours of four and six P.M.

  It’s like my dad used to say: It’s amazing what you find out about people when you find out about people.

  There was more. Paul Weiner, who was accustomed to earning a six-figure annual Christmas bonus, hadn’t received one last month due to the sucky economy. Their home, which had slid 40 percent in market value since they bought it in 2004, was mortgaged to the rafters. Bruce’s tuition and room and board at Canterbury came to about forty thousand dollars a year. Laurie’s eighty-two-year-old mother, an Alzheimer’s sufferer, was in an assisted living facility in Armonk that cost even more than that. Between them, Paul and Laurie were presently carrying over sixty thousand dollars in credit card debt. They had a daughter who’d be starting college next year. Almost no savings. They were staring at real trouble.

  I set the file aside, wondering once again why Seymour wasn’t using the Leetes Group to find Bruce. They had a gazillion operatives on their payroll. If anyone had the resources to track him down it was the Leetes Group. So why us?

  It was 6:20 P.M. Paul Weiner probably wouldn’t be home yet from the city, but Laurie ought to be rolling in right about now from getting sweaty with her married boyfriend. She answered the phone on the third ring, sounding rushed and harried.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Weiner. I’m Benjamin Golden of Golden Legal Services. We’ve been retained by a law firm to carry out a confidential legal matter concerning your son Bruce.”

  Her first response was wary silence. Totally normal. I would have reacted the same way. “I … don’t understand. Is Bruce is in some kind of trouble?”

  “Nothing of the sort, ma’am. A certain party has bequeathed something to Bruce. We’ve been retained to contact you and expedite the inheritance.”

  “You’d better talk to my husband about it. I can give you his office number.”

  “Already have it, thanks. And I’d rather discuss it with both of you.”

  “And who did you say you’re with?”

  I ran through it for her again. This time she was writing it down. “We prefer to handle these matters in person, Mrs. Weiner. I’d like to swing by your home this evening if you don’t mind. It won’t take long.”

  Most wives would have put me off with a simple, “I’ll have my husband call you.” But I had the advantage of knowing that the Weiners weren’t getting along. And that she’d just been out shtupping her boyfriend and was anxious to jump in the shower before Paul got home.

  Which was why she reluctantly said, “I guess that’ll be okay. We should be done with dinner by 8:30.”

  I phoned my own dinner order down to Scotty’s. Diego brought it up to me on a covered tray. Room service is one of the perks of being the landlord. Ton
ight’s special was Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, string beans and tapioca pudding. I watched Jeopardy while I ate, washing it down with a glass of milk.

  I dressed in my Sincere Young Man ensemble: Oxford button-down shirt, V-neck sweater, Harris Tweed sports jacket, corduroy slacks and the hooded navy blue duffel coat that I got at the Brooks Brothers winter sale for 60 percent off. Then I coaxed the elevator downstairs and took off into the wet, chilly New York night.

  We keep our company car in a twenty-four-hour garage around the corner on Amsterdam. Our wheels had been my dad’s pride and joy—a somewhat gaudy burgundy 1992 Cadillac Brougham with a white vinyl top and matching burgundy leather interior. He loved that damned boat. Babied the hell out of it. And would have been infuriated that I was taking it out in the slush of a January night. But we can’t afford to maintain a car that we don’t use.

  The evening traffic was heavy and slow. I inched my way up the Henry Hudson to the Cross Bronx, then took that to the Hutchinson River Parkway, an icy rain tap-tap-tapping on my windshield. As I headed into the northern burbs, the rain changed over to snowflakes. And I began to get the feeling that I was not alone. I couldn’t make anyone out in my rearview mirror. But I also couldn’t shake the feeling that I had a tail.

  Willoughby is one exit past Scarsdale. When I arrived there I found myself in an entirely different world. Instead of sooty slush there was a blanket of pure white snow. Instead of the hustle-bustle of today I encountered a sleepy, charming village where time had stopped in about 1936. There was a town green complete with an honest-to-gosh gazebo. A steepled white church. Tidy little shops with parking on the diagonal out front. It was positively eerie. The snow was coming down pretty hard as I made my way through town, past dignified homes set back behind white picket fences. The snowplows were out. Hardly anyone else was.

  I still had the feeling I was being followed. I didn’t see anyone behind me on the deserted road. But I felt it.

  The Weiners lived at the end of Powder Horn Hill Road, a relatively new cul-de-sac of immense center-chimney colonials filled with prosperous, happy people leading prosperous, happy lives—as long as you didn’t read their files and know better. As I drew closer to the Weiners’ place, I met up with a family of deer standing in the middle of the road. They didn’t run away from the Caddy. Just stood there. I had to steer around them.

  Paul Weiner answered the doorbell. Bruce’s father was a balding, moon-faced man with a pillowy body and soft, round shoulders. He had a cautious, serious air about him. The air of a man you could trust with your money. He wore a cardigan over a plaid flannel shirt, worn khakis and moccasins.

  “Good evening, Mr. Weiner, I’m Ben Golden of Golden Legal Services. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

  “I didn’t exactly have a choice,” he responded with chilly disapproval. “I just found out you were coming five minutes ago.”

  Laurie appeared behind him the doorway, wearing designer sweats and sneakers. She was a thin, tepid looking woman with limp brown hair, horsy features and a complexion the color of wet newspaper. It never fails: Whenever I study up on a married couple who are cheats, I always picture the wife as a shmokin’ hot cougar and the husband as the spitting image of George Clooney. Reality? The Weiners were painfully plain.

  “My wife,” he said tightly, “was a bit unclear about what it is you do, son. Are you an intern at a law firm?”

  “Actually, I’m a licensed private investigator.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “I am not.”

  “I suppose you have a license and so forth?”

  I took out my wallet and showed it to him.

  He looked it over carefully, shaking his head. “And who has hired you?”

  Peter Seymour had explicitly warned me not to share that information with them. I wanted to know why that was. It’s my natural instinct to be curious about such things. “The law firm of Bates, Winslow and Seymour,” I replied.

  Laurie Weiner drew in her breath, her eyes widening.

  Her husband was a cooler customer. He just said, “You may as well come in out of the snow. But I’m warning you—I won’t agree to act on Bruce’s behalf until I see something in writing and review it with my own attorney.”

  The entry hall smelled of potpourri and teriyaki sauce. There was a cavernous department store showroom of a living room that looked as if it was never, ever used. And a brightly lit den directly across the hall, where the Knicks were playing the Bucks on a sixty-inch flat-screen TV.

  As I unbuttoned my coat, a teenaged girl came bounding eagerly down the stairs. Sara Weiner was a small-boned, bright-eyed girl with a long, shiny mane of honey-colored hair.

  “Are you a friend of Brucie’s?” she asked, gazing at me probingly.

  “No, he’s not,” her father said abruptly. “Mr. Ben Golden is here about a legal matter, Sara. And you have a history paper to write.”

  Sara curled her lip at him and started back upstairs, looking at me curiously over her shoulder. I treated her to my best smile. I got zero back.

  Laurie offered me coffee. I accepted. Paul and I went in the den. He flicked off the TV while I checked out the shrine that had been erected in there. A huge glass case was filled with athletic trophies. And one entire wall was lined with framed, laminated newspaper stories and photos.

  Paul said, “Bruce’s basketball team won the state championship his senior year. Bruce was the starting center and captain. That’s my boy, right there.…” He pointed to a newspaper photo of a big, dark-haired kid with broad shoulders and a square jaw. A real bruiser. Neither of his parents was particularly large. Nor was his sister. But there must have been some size in the Weiner family tree somewhere. “He’s a ferocious rebounder. He wanted to play at the college level but he’s only six-foot-three. To play under the basket in college you’ve got to be at least four inches taller. We talked about him switching to football. They projected Bruce as a tight end. He decided to focus on academics instead. It was a tough adjustment for him. Basketball was his first love. But I told him, hey, sometimes you just have to face up to reality and move on.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “He wants to teach English abroad for a year after he graduates. Has shown no interest in business school, which had been our plan.”

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  “We just want him to be happy,” Laurie said as she showed up with my coffee.

  I took it from her and sat on the leather sofa. She sat next to me. Paul settled into an oversized recliner.

  I sipped my coffee. It was weaker than I like it. “And is he? Happy, I mean.”

  Paul let out a laugh. “Why wouldn’t he be? He’s twenty-one years old. He’s got his whole great big beautiful life ahead of him.” The man’s voice was upbeat but there was wistfulness in his eyes. He sounded as if he wanted to live his own life all over again. Perhaps in Asia this time, with a rotating bevy of petite young women who take excellent care of their feet.

  “When did you last speak to Bruce?”

  Paul shrugged. “Over the weekend, I guess. Why?”

  “Bates, Winslow and Seymour have made numerous attempts to contact him at Canterbury. He hasn’t responded to any of their phone calls or letters. According to his roommate, Bruce left school three days ago.”

  The Weiners exchanged a look of surprise.

  “Chris told them Bruce took off?” Laurie’s voice quavered slightly.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Paul stroked his chin thoughtfully. “So that’s why they sent you here.”

  “Yes, sir. My initial thought was that perhaps he’d come home for a few days. Which I gather he hasn’t.”

  “You gather correctly.”

  “Do you have any idea where he can be reached?”

  He peered at me, puzzled. “We’re Bruce’s parents. Why didn’t they just come to us in the first place?”

  “Because he’s twenty-one. The beques
t is in his name.”

  “Bequest,” he repeated. “Somebody’s left Bruce money? How much money?”

  “I’m not privy to that information.”

  “Well, do you know who left it to him?”

  “I’m afraid not. I’ve simply been retained to locate Bruce. Do you have any relatives who’ve passed away recently?”

  “My folks are long gone,” Paul replied with a shake of his head. “So is Laurie’s father. And her mother was still kicking the last time I looked.”

  “She’s kicking all right,” Laurie said glumly.

  I kept staring at Laurie, trying to imagine her in the throes of passion with her married lover. Or anyone. I couldn’t. “How about a family friend or business associate?”

  They looked at each other blankly.

  “Perhaps an elderly neighbor? Someone who took an interest in Bruce when he was a boy?”

  “Maybe old man Kershaw,” Paul offered. “He retired to Phoenix a few years back. Bruce used to shovel his driveway for him. The old fellow took a shine to him, remember, Laurie?”

  “What I remember is the way he used to stare at Sara when she played in the front yard. That man made my skin crawl.”

  “Do either of you know why Bruce might have left school?”

  “No idea,” he said.

  “Has he ever taken off before?”

  “He and his friends go off on little unscheduled ski trips to Bear Mountain,” Laurie said. “He is a kid, after all.”

  “But a responsible kid,” Paul said, getting testy. “He’s no partier.”

  “I didn’t say he was,” she said, getting testy right back.

  “Does he have a girlfriend?”

  “No one steady,” he said.

  “That we know of,” she said.

  Which Paul didn’t like. “Laurie, if he had a girlfriend we’d know.”

  “Not necessarily,” she shot back.