I walked to the law firm, heading south on Fifth Avenue, swept along in the midtown tide, comforted, somehow, by the forced intimacy.
The shop windows were as glossy as diamonds. People wearing business faces hurtled toward the next obligation. Three-card monte players shouted invitations, took quick profit, then vaporized into the crowd.
Street vendors hawked silly toys, cheap watches, tourist maps, and paperback books stripped of their covers. The homeless squatted in doorways, leaned against buildings.
Bearing crudely lettered signs and paper cups, their hands out, their eyes leeched of expectation. So many more of them than in L.A. but yet they seemed to belong, part of the city’s rhythm.
Five Hundred Fifth Avenue was a six-hundred-foot limestone tower, the lobby an arena of marble and granite. I arrived with an hour to spare and walked back outside, wondering what to do with the time. I bought a hot dog from a pushcart, ate it watching the throng. Then I spotted the main branch of the public library, just across Forty-second Street, and made my way up the broad, stone stairs.
After a bit of asking and wandering, I located the periodicals room.
The hour went fast as I checked four-year-old New York newspapers for obituaries on Harvey Rosenblatt. Nothing.
I thought of the psychiatrist’s kind, open manner. The loving way he’d spoken about his wife and children.
A teenaged boy who’d liked hot dogs. The taste of mine was still on my lips, sour and warm.
My thoughts shifted to a twelve-year-old, leaving town on a one-way ticket to Atlanta.
Life had sneak attacked both of them, but Josh Rosenblatt had been much more heavily armed for the ambush. I left to see how well he’d survived.
Schechter, Mohl, and Trimmer’s decorator had gone for Tradition: carved, riff-oak panels with laundry-sharp creases, layers of heavy moldings, voluptuous plaster work, wool rugs over herringbone floors.
The receptionist’s desk was a huge, walnut antique. The receptionist was pure contemporary: mid-twenties, white-blonde, Vogue face, hair tied back tight enough to pucker her hairline, breasts sharp enough to make an embrace dangerous.
She checked a ledger and said, “Have a seat and Mr. Rosenblatt will be right with you.”
I waited twenty minutes until the door to the inner offices opened and a tall, good-looking young man stepped into the reception area.
I knew he was twenty-seven, but he looked like a college student. His face was long and grave under dark, wavy hair, nose narrow and full, his chin strong and dimpled. He wore a pinstriped charcoal suit, white tab shirt, and red and pearl tie. Pearl pocket handkerchief, quadruple pointed, tassled black loafers, gold Phi Beta Kappa pin in his lapel.
Intense brown eyes and a golf tan. If law started to bore him, he could always pose for the Brooks Brothers catalogue.
“Dr. Delaware, Josh Rosenblatt.”
No smile. One arm out. Bone-crusher handshake.
I followed him through a quarter acre of secretaries, file cabinets, and computers to a broad wall of doors. His was just off to the left.
His name in brass, on polished oak.
His office wasn’t much bigger than my hotel cubicle, but one wall was glass and it offered a falcon’s lair view of the city. On the wall were two degrees from Columbia, his Phi Beta Kappa certificate, and a lacrosse stick mounted diagonally. A gym bag sat in one corner.
Documents were piled up everywhere, including on one of the straight-backed side chairs facing the desk. I took the empty chair.
He removed his jacket and tossed it on the desk. Very broad shoulders, powerful chest, outsize hands.
He sat down amid the clutter, shuffled papers while studying “What kind of law do you practice?” I said.
“Business.”
“Do you litigate?”
“Only when I need to get a taxi–no, I’m one of the behind the-scenes guys.
Mole in a suit.”
He drummed the desk with his palm a few times. Kept staring at me.
Put his hands down flat.
“Same face as your picture,” he said. “I’d expected someone olden-closer to.
.. Dad’s age.”
“I appreciate your taking the time. Having someone you love murdered–” I.
“He wasn’t murdered,” he said, almost barking. “Not officially, anyway.