The Tower of Songs Read online

  “Think she might have told anyone else?” I asked.

  “She says no. I believe her. She doesn’t really have friends. Maybe her sister, but I doubt it. As for cops, she told me not to consider it.”

  “Does she know you’re talking to me?”

  “No.”

  “Layla, you realize that just by doing this you could be putting your father in further danger?”

  “I told you . . .”

  “That you think he’s already dead, that your grandmother is behind it—yeah, you mentioned that. Now you’re going to need to tell me why.”

  “It’s not like I could see that video and not do anything,” she said. “Maybe my mom can just go pop some more pills and forget about it, but I can’t. I thought about it all weekend. Then I remembered your name.”

  “Listen, if you want my help, you need to start answering my questions. Also, I’m going to need to meet with your mother.”

  I heard her huff and then go silent. I thought she was going to hang up, hoped for it in fact. When I heard her breathing, I said, “Sorry, kid, those are my terms. You’re still a minor. You want my help on this, then your mom needs to sign off on it.”

  “How about I double your rate and my mother stays out of it?”

  “We haven’t discussed my rate yet, and no.”

  “A hundred grand,” she said. “For a month’s work, maybe less.”

  The number caught me up, but for just a moment. I mustered some pride. “I’m not helping you for a million without your parent’s permission.”

  “You realize that will only complicate matters.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “You know how many people would kill for that offer? I mean, literally.”

  “Then maybe you should ask them. But here you are talking to me.”

  “I could get it to you in cash, like today, if you want.”

  “Listen, Layla, I’m busy and this doesn’t sound like it will work out.”

  “Ugh. Fine. I’ll try to set up a meeting with my mom, but your fee just went down to fifty.”

  “Even that’s too much.”

  She let out an arrogant laugh. “My dad’s right. Most people don’t want money, they just think they do.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “So, you’ll help?”

  “When your mother agrees to my involvement, yes.”

  “Fiiine,” she said. “I’ll call you back after I talk to her.”

  She ended the call without saying goodbye. I sat there sipping my sparkling water, petting the ghost of my hound, trying not to think of the closest bar.

  Chapter 3

  Nicole Soto agreed to meet the next morning at the Blade Lounge heliport on West 30th Street and the Hudson. Her daughter informed me that she loathed the city in the summer and wouldn’t be staying long. The helicopter ride from Southampton was forty minutes. She would give me one hour of her time at the lounge before returning on the next chopper back, in time for her afternoon tennis lesson. I’d try not to exasperate her with too many questions about her abducted husband.

  Layla was waiting to meet me by the path along the West Side Highway. She’d traded yesterday’s red sundress for a black one. As bikes rushed past, I caught riders gawking at her. She scowled at my approach, turned, and said, “C’mon, you’re late, she’s landing any second.”

  I followed her across the street to the helipad as her mother’s ride came into view over the river. We watched as it lowered before us, its arms slowing in revolutions until it touched down in a gust. Three passengers departed before her, a trio of harried interchangeable suits, rushing off to meetings in air-conditioned rooms. Then, a pair of toned and tan calves stretched out over the steps, before all of Nicole Soto emerged, carrying a small purse and no luggage. She wore a white woven sundress that ended just below her knees and flat, strappy Grecian sandals.

  To call her beautiful would be insufficient. She was a stunning brunette, tall and graceful, with a walk you noticed across every room. She’d been taught from a young age, at some Country Day or another, how to carry herself, how to move with a regal confidence that said: Keep dreaming . . . A woman destined to marry wealth. With her daughter a senior-to-be in high school, she must have been at least in her middle forties but she looked a decade younger. My career, such as it was, was spent serving women like Nicole Soto. I didn’t presume to be an astute observer of all humans, but there was a certain type I knew with some certainty: unhappy, sophisticated married women in the highest tax bracket. I reminded myself of the first rule in dealing with them: Never get caught staring.

  Daughter gave a slight wave as mother approached. I slipped my phone from my pocket and glanced at the time, doing my best bored, I’ve-seen-better put-on. As she stopped, she frowned, looked from me to Layla and said, “I really can’t believe you’ve done this.”

  “Mom, this is Duck Darley. He insisted on speaking with you.”

  She extended a manicured hand. “Nicole,” she said as I took it. “Why don’t we chat in the lounge?”

  I followed mother and daughter inside. I’d been told that the Blade Lounge contained the highest concentration of fuck-wads you’d ever find, and in this city the competition was high. In summers they congregated here at the end of workweeks, talking too loud about too much money, sipping their rosé, before being whisked off to their shingled castles in the Hamptons. But on this midweek morning in July it was just an empty room furnished with ugly leather seating, brand posters as art, and poor lighting. A twenty-something girl dressed in Blade insignia came hurrying over at the sight of us.

  “They called ahead,” she said. “How are you this morning, Mrs. Soto?”

  “I’ll be better in an hour,” she said. “When does the next flight depart to Southampton?”

  “At one p.m., ma’am.”

  “Is it full?”

  “I don’t think so, no. There are still a few seats available.” The Blade girl glanced at Layla and me. “Will they be joining you on your return trip? I’d be happy to—”

  “No, they will not, but please reserve three seats for me. I’d forgotten how uncomfortable your seating is.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Soto. I’ll book you a full row across.”

  “Thank you.” As the girl retreated, Nicole Soto glanced around the room and down at her daughter. “This place is a glorified bus station,” she said. “But your father does not like us to use the company helicopter without him. And it’s not like I can reach him . . .” At that she turned to me and said, “Shall we sit? I don’t have long, and this was an unexpected errand this morning.”

  The women settled onto a black leather couch. I sat across from them in a low-slung club chair. I waited for Nicole to begin. She took her time, tapping at her phone, sighing, searching over our heads for the Blade girl that greeted us. She came hurrying back and asked if she could get us anything to drink. Nicole said, “A bottle of rosé, please.” She glanced at me. I fought off the urge, shook my head. “One glass,” she added.

  “Thank you for coming in,” I said. “I’m very sorry to hear about your husband.”

  She ignored my comment, kept looking around the space with a frown. Her display of haughtiness would have rendered most women unattractive, but Nicole Soto was used to her behavior having no consequence. She knew how she looked. The hostess returned with a chilled bottle of Whispering Angel and filled her glass.

  “Perfectly dreadful,” said Nicole with a sip and a smile. She set it down, crossed those tan legs, and took my measure. I straightened up, sucked in my stomach.

  “Mom,” said Layla. “This is the guy who helped the Cohens. Remember, the kid from school?”

  “Oh yes, Juliette’s boy,” she said, brightening. “I understand you had a . . . relationship . . . with her.”

  Her pauses were plump.

  “Stevie’s a great kid,” I said.

  “I’m sure his mother was very . . . grateful.”

  “He also met dad,” said Layla. “Remember Charlie McKay, the psycho who worked for him? Duck solved that case too.”

  Nicole Soto took an imperceptible sip. “My daughter is easily infatuated,” she said. “I appreciate your being a gentleman and asking to speak with me.”

  “As I said, I’m sorry to hear about your husband’s situation. I doubt I can be of much help, but your daughter is very persuasive. I’ll try to look into his disappearance, discreetly, if you’d like, but only with your permission.”

  “My permission?” she said with a raise of an eyebrow. “You don’t look like a man who asks for such things.”

  I eyed the bottle of wine before me, felt myself salivate. I was plenty stoned, but a drink would help me deal with this flirty baiting.

  “Your daughter offered me quite a bit of money to look for him. I couldn’t take that in good conscience from a minor without official approval.”

  “How much did you offer him?” she asked Layla.

  “Fifty,” shrugged her daughter.

  “ ‘Quite a bit’, that’s a relative term, isn’t it?”

  For the first time, mother and daughter shared a look that resembled a genuine bond. Both looked at me and smirked.

  “Okay, for that royal sum you have my approval to ask around,” said Nicole. “But if anyone—anyone official, a police officer, a federal agent, an attorney, a colleague of my husband’s—if this reaches anyone like that, there will be a problem.”

  “I understand.”

  Nicole Soto’s face went cold. The beauty drained from her eyes. “No, Duck Darley, you don’t. By ‘a problem’ I mean this: I’ll have you killed. That is, if the people who took my husband don’t kill you first. Is that still worth ‘quite a bit of money’ to you?”

  I put my hands on my knees and pushed myself up. “Nicole, Layla,” I said, “it was nice meeting you both.”

  “Oh please!” cried the mother. “I’m kidding. Quit being so dramatic. No one is killing anyone. Please sit down, Duck.”

  I did, for the moment.

  “I understand you must be used to such violence in your life, but that is not what we are dealing with. I can assure you my husband’s crimes, whatever they are, are strictly white collar.”

  “I saw the video,” I told her, “of Danny being wheeled from your lobby with a hood over his head. He looked as if he’d been drugged. Accompanied by a pair of armed women. Some might consider that a violent abduction.”

  She glanced at her daughter.

  “Relax, mom,” said Layla. “I emailed it from an encrypted account.”

  “I never should have sent that to you. I should have known you’d do something irresponsible with it. Didn’t their note state clearly that we were not to report it to anyone?”

  “So why did you send it to me?”

  “I didn’t think their instructions applied to immediate family.”

  “You just forwarded it so that you could have someone else to stress with.”

  “I am not stressed, darling. I’m sure they . . .”

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Who is ‘they’? Your daughter mentioned . . .”

  “Nai-nai,” said Layla. “I told him I thought nai-nai was behind it.” Then to me, she added, “That’s grandma in Chinese. Dad’s mom is from Shanghai.”

  “What? Why did you say that, honey? Why would nai-nai have anything to do with this? She would never hurt her own son.”

  Nicole took a swallow of her rosé, shook her head as it swished down her throat. She uncrossed, and then recrossed, her legs. She noticed her heel hammering and tried to slow it. The mention of her mother-in-law agitated her in a way that transcended the general agitation caused by all mothers-in-law. I thought I even caught a tremble of fear in her voice when she uttered the word hurt.

  “Layla, why do you think that?” I asked.

  “Because she’s the Dragon Lady.”

  “Honey, stop,” gasped her mom.

  “What? That’s what you call her.”

  “Let’s back up for a moment,” I said. “Have either of you been in touch with her recently?”

  Both women shook their heads.

  “When was the last time you had contact with her?”

  Nicole Soto shrugged. “Not for some time,” she said. “Maybe the holidays? She’s not one to stay in touch.”

  “She texted me on my birthday,” said Layla. “In May, so like two months ago?”

  “If neither of you are in touch with her, then could you explain why one of you thinks she’s responsible for abducting her son?” I turned to Nicole. “And the other seems shaken by the sound of her name.”

  “I am not shaken,” said Nicole. “Please. And her name is Eileen—Eileen Chung—not the Dragon Lady. I merely don’t like the woman. I am not the only wife who does not get along with her mother-in-law.”

  “Layla, what about you? Do you get along with your . . . nai-nai, was it?”

  “She’s nice to me, she’s just weird.”

  “Then why . . .”

  “Because she’s involved in shady shit,” said Layla. “I heard dad talking to her on the phone last week. He was pissed. She’s married to this really powerful old Chinese guy now. I think she was helping dad make some kind of investments in China, with his help.”

  “So, your grandfather is . . .”

  “Dead for decades,” said Nicole. “Eileen is on husband number three now. Each has been richer than the last. Danny’s father was thirty years older than her. They met when he was working in Hong Kong and she was a twenty-two-year-old secretary. She broke up his first marriage. Lionel Soto died of a heart attack when my husband was in grade school. I hear he was a good man. We named our son after him. Eileen remarried less than a year later.”

  “I love how you make her out to be a gold digger,” said Layla, “when you’re married to a billionaire.”

  Her mother glowered at her. “You father was nowhere close to that when we married.”

  “Right, he was only a multimillionaire.” She rolled her eyes. “Such a hypocrite,” she muttered.

  “Please excuse my daughter,” said Nicole. “The ages between sixteen and twenty-five—I do think it’s the most ignorant time in life, don’t you agree, Duck?”

  I did. That was right in the sweet spot when I became a weed dealer, got caught, did thirteen months in Rikers.

  “What kind of shady shit?” I asked. “Do you have any idea what your dad might have been talking about with her, when you overheard him?”

  “I couldn’t really catch details,” said Layla. “They talk in this sort of broken Chinglish. When he gets really upset, he shouts in Chinese. I’ve been taking Mandarin forever, but I still don’t understand him when he’s mad.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “He owns a hedge fund, right? They push their chips anywhere they think they can multiply them. It doesn’t matter where, as long as their stack gets bigger. That’s how my dad explained it, anyway.”

  “What did you hear, Layla?” asked her mother.

  “He was upset with nai-nai,” she said. ‘I heard him yell ‘ni de xian sheng ben si le,’ which means something like ‘your husband is stupid.’ ”

  “What else?” I asked.

  “I also heard him say du fan. That means ‘drug dealer.’ That’s all I could really understand. I wasn’t even in the room. I heard him yelling outside the door.”

  “When did this conversation take place? How many days before he was taken?”

  Layla thought for a moment. “Four,” she said. “It was on a Sunday night, and dad was taken last Thursday.”

  “You overheard this conversation at home, at your apartment in the city?”

  “Yeah, he was in his office. It’s a pretty big place, so I doubt he thought I could hear him. I was walking from my room and stopped outside the door when I heard the yelling.”

  I turned to Nicole. “Where were you that night?”

  “I’ve been out east with Lionel since school got out. My daughter has decided to spend most of this summer in town, for her own reasons.”

  Mother and daughter exchanged a look.

  “I’m a musician,” said Layla. “I play piano. My teacher is here. I need to be here to practice with him. This is summer before senior year, I need—”

  “Your teacher,” said her mother. “How is Michael doing?”

  “He’s fine, mom. How’s your tennis? What’s your instructor’s name again, Ryan? You must be getting plenty of sun with your afternoon lessons.”

  “Brian. I’ll be sure to send him your best. Which reminds me . . .” She looked at her phone and glanced at the doors to the heliport. “I should be getting back shortly.”

  “Before you go, I’m going to need . . .”

  “Money, of course you do.”

  “That too, but I also need some more information.”

  “You could start with Danny’s first wife,” she said.

  “And she is?”

  Layla rolled her eyes. “Dad wasn’t married before. She means his business partner, Peter Lennox. That’s what mom always calls him.”

  “That’s the more important marriage in my husband’s life,” said Nicole. “Peter and Danny started the fund together. He likes to say that Peter’s the only person he truly trusts. He makes a point of saying it in my presence.”

  “I’ll get you his contact info,” said Layla, “and show you how to send email from an encrypted account, if you don’t already know.”

  I shrugged like I did. “I’m guessing a man in Danny’s position has been missed at work. Has anyone from Soto Capital questioned his whereabouts?”

  “Not to me,” said Nicole, “but that’s not so surprising. Ever since that McKay scandal, Danny has become very insular. He used to like hosting parties for the whole staff. Now only Peter is welcome.”

  “But not even Lennox has been in touch since Danny was taken?”

  “No, he hasn’t.”

  “You try to reach him?”

  “I did.” She took another sip of wine. “I told Peter that my husband was on another of his meditation retreats. Danny thinks it sharpens his instincts. When he’s gone, he leaves his partner in charge.”