“She was a stock analyst working for Stallings. He might have known her by the name of Alicia Farrell.”
She clicked off and on again. I could picture her by the tone of her voice. Pinched nose, thin lips, hair tied back in a bun. “Mr. Jergens still doesn’t recall anyone by that name.”
“All right, then tell him it’s about his phony house of cards.”
She was back in a flash. “Mr. Jergens says he doesn’t know anything about a house of cards and he asked me to bid you a very good day, Mr. Rogan.”
And then she was gone.
CHAPTER XXIX
Rachel opened the door to her apartment. She was holding an enormous drink in her little hand.
“Is that scotch?” I asked.
Her lips curled up in an approximation of a smile. “It might be. Care for a sip?” She held the glass up to me and offered me a taste.
I took the glass and tried some. It was scotch all right, and it was good.
“You made a sale. I’ll take four fingers.”
She led me into that enormous living room and sat me down on that enormous couch.
“I thought you’d like it. It’s as expensive as scotch gets.” She reached over to the cocktail table and poured me a glass-full from a decanter.
I took a couple of long, slow sips and thought about all the joys I’d been missing. Cheap scotch dulls the taste buds. Or was it just the passing of the years?
She put the decanter back on the table and glanced sideways at me with a hint of impatience. “Well, tell me. What did you find out?”
I hesitated. “Did you know that Alicia had been raped and badly beaten?”
She took a deep breath and shook her head slowly. “No, I didn’t know,” she said softly. “I thought we were friends. You should be able to tell your friend about something like that, you know. She never told me…”
She took a big drink of her scotch. Then she took another big drink. There was pain in her eyes. She looked down and closed her eyes so I couldn’t see the hurt. She didn’t say anything for a long time.
Then she looked up at me and said, “What else did you find out?”
“It’s not pleasant,” I said.
“I’m a big girl. I can take it.”
“You sure can.”
She narrowed her eyes. “What do you mean?”
“You were a lot closer to Alicia than you told me.”
It didn’t register at first. Then her eyes lit up as she got the picture.
“Tell me if you’re referring to what I’m thinking,” she said coolly.
There wasn’t any use pussyfooting around the subject, so to speak. I let her have it as plainly as I could. “You fucked Alicia.”
A nasty smirk played on her lips. “I didn’t fuck Alicia.”
I smiled too. “That’s technically correct. But you did have sexual congress with her.”
The smile left her face. “That’s like technically correct, if you must know.” She stared into the glass of amber liquid she cupped in both hands. “But, in my defense, I only have sex with people I like.”
I could buy that. “Tell me something,” I said. “Did you have a hard time convincing Alicia to do whatever it was you did?”
She took a large swallow of scotch. “Not really. I think she was like primed for it. I mean, she was surprised when I first suggested it, but she wasn’t angry or disgusted or anything like that. I think she was secretly flattered. It didn’t take long to convince her to do it.”
“How long?”
She gulped down the rest of her drink and quickly poured herself another glassful. She pursed her lips and said, teasingly, “Is this an official detective investigation or are you just curious?”
“How long?”
“Less than a week,” she said softly.
She kept rotating the glass in her hands so the ice cubes clinked. The glass was cut crystal with an intricate pattern that caught the light and gave off rainbow colors as it turned.
“What did you tell her to make her do it?”
Her eyes flashed. “I didn’t make her do it, buddy boy. She said she wanted to. She said she’d had it up to here with men. That they’d sold her like a bill of goods—and that included you.”
She pointed her glass at me for emphasis. “It was easy to get her into bed. I told her she’d understand her own sexuality better after she’d made love with a woman.”
Call me old-fashioned, but I had a hard time believing she was actually telling me all this. “I should have figured out you were bisexual.”
“Bisexual, ha,” she laughed. “I’m trisexual—I’ll try anything.”
I whacked her with the back of my hand. She wasn’t expecting that and it really shook her. She drew back and put her hand on her cheek. For the first time since I’d met her, she didn’t know what to say. She started to cry softly.
“You bastard,” she whispered. The tears ran down her cheeks.
Then, wordlessly, she made her way into my arms. And we had sex, her way. But it wasn’t really sex. It was more like warfare. Sudden, brutal, uncoordinated. Two armies of the night, struggling on a dark battlefield. Until both armies were battered, beaten and exhausted.
CHAPTER XXX
The eighth hole at Birchwood was a dogleg left par four with a little stream that served as a hazard. It was a good day for golf—cool and clear. And the course wasn’t crowded because it was a Tuesday.
I parked the BMW on a deserted side road and crossed the seventh fairway and a wooded area that bordered the eighth fairway.
Jergens and his two overweight buddies couldn’t see me standing in the shadows behind the treeline. Aside from the fact that the bodyguards had been drinking from brown paper bags, their eyesight didn’t seem to be particularly keen and they had no reason to be on the lookout for someone like me.
The men were getting ready to tee off, standing next to their carts practicing their swings. One of the men was punching the keys on a cell phone.
I started out of the woods and walked slowly up to them. The guy on the phone was calling Domino’s Pizza and ordering a pie to be delivered to them at the ninth hole. He was in the process of asking the others what kind of toppings they wanted.
They glanced over at me as I strolled up to them. You don’t often see a guy in a business suit on a golf course.
“Jesus, it looks like the secret service,” the bigger clown said. He could have been a junior league sumo wrestler, only he had a close-cut beard and an earring with a dangling crucifix.
I took off my sunglasses. “Jergens,” I said. “You’ll be happy to see me. My name is Rogan.”
He squinted at me. “You’re a persistent son of a bitch.” There was a notable lack of warmth in his voice.
“That’s what endears me to people.”
Jergens exchanged wary glances with his bodyguards. It was obvious they didn’t know what to make of me.
“This is a private club,” Jergens said.
“That’s OK. I’m a private citizen.”
The smaller guy pulled out what looked like a one iron to my unpracticed eye. He had a plug ugly face with a head that looked like it had been squeezed in a vice, front to back. His neck was thicker than his head. “Want me to get rid of him?” he asked Jergens.
Jergens started to nod, then held up his hand. “What the hell do you want from me, Rogan?”
He was a well-built man in his mid-forties, with a square jaw and longish light brown hair. His face was creased with self-satisfaction. His eyes were dark and narrow, with a nasty glint. He was wearing a pink Polo shirt and khaki slacks. And his swing was strong and sure.
“I want to know why you killed Alicia.”
That wasn’t what he expected to hear. He was the kind of man to whom people seldom spoke frankly. When you control a massive portfolio, people are invariably polite to you. He jerked his head in my direction.
“Kick the shit out of him,” he said without any emotion.
One i
ron stepped back and took a quick swing that caught me on my bad side. The pain was incredible. My legs felt like overcooked spaghetti. I went down faster than a two-year-old on an ice-slick.
“That’s about the only thing you could hit with a one iron, turkey,” I said, looking up at his inseam.
Evidently he didn’t like my evaluation of his golf proficiency. “Fuck you, scumbag,” he said as he brought the club down on my head.
I saw stars. Purple and black and yellow, like a kaleidoscope.
The junior sumo rocked back and let go a kick that caught me in the chest and knocked the wind out of me. This was turning out to be not much fun. If I were younger, faster and had better luck, I could be kicking the shit out of them right now. I didn’t think I could take it much longer without passing out. As it was, they were pummeling me without mercy, and I was just lying there trying to think of something witty to say.
The big guy caught me with a one-two kick to the head that left me dazed. I started to see things double and triple.
Then I blacked out.
***
Laura looked like an angel from one of those old Audrey Hepburn movies. She was wearing a white silk scarf over a white dress and her hair was drawn straight back. A preview of heaven or at least what it was going to look like after the environmentalists got around to cleaning it up.
She was leaning over me and whispering my name. I tried to sit up, and managed on the third try. I was in my own bed.
“Ed,” she said. “What happened to you?”
Then I remembered. “I forgot to duck when the guy yelled fore.”
She attempted a smile, but the attempt wasn’t very successful. She got up and went into the kitchen and came back with a glass of ice water. It tasted better than Moet & Chandon. Nothing tasted as good as New York City water when you were thirsty.
“I think we have a good line on Jergens,” I said. “There’s a real possibility he killed Alicia, or had her killed.”
She put her hand on my shoulder. “You don’t have to talk now. You can tell me about it later, after you feel better.”
“I never felt better. I just look like hell.”
She gave me a dubious stare.
“The problem is that it’s tough to get to Jergens,” I said. “You know who he is?”
“He’s in real estate, isn’t he?”
“He’s one of the biggest developers in the country. All the banks come to him, begging him to take their dough. They shovel it out the door at him.”
She looked puzzled. “But why would someone like that want to kill Alicia?”
“She had something on him. She might even have been blackmailing him.”
“Alicia would never do that,” she said with a shake of her head.
How could I explain the dirty facts of life to this innocent? “The problem, sweetheart, was that she got herself in too deep. Alicia was tough, but she was playing with the big boys and they had a different rulebook.”
She gripped my hand tightly. “But what are you going to do? I’m worried about you. Look what they did. They might kill you too.”
I shook my head. “They haven’t got a prayer. I’ll just break some more of their golf clubs with my head.”
She laughed. It was a sweet laugh, warm and trusting. “How will you find out?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Jergens is tougher to get to than the crown jewels. He lives on the top floor of the Plaza and he has a security set-up Willie Sutton couldn’t get through. The windows are soundproofed and sealed with sheets of opaque plastic. Short of landing a helo on the roof, there’s no way to get to him. He always has a couple of bodyguards with him. And he hasn’t been returning my phone calls.”
She smiled. I reached over and kissed her on the cheek. “I may look like hell but I feel like hell warmed over. Let me get some shuteye.” I lay back down in bed. “Help yourself to some beer.”
She wrinkled up her nose. “I don’t like beer.”
“Good,” I said.
***
Tanner called me that night while I was watching the news. “Nobody on the street knows what the hell happened to Wheelock. He vanished clean as a whistle, old buddy. It’s like he de-materialized.”
“What about that guy Murdoch used to work with Wheelock at Merrill?”
“Yeah, I thought of him. Only problem is he moved to Vegas.”
“They have phones out there?” I asked.
Tanner chuckled. “Guess they must. I’ll see if anyone has his number. I’ll get back to you.”
He hung up.
I managed to get to the bathroom. I did look like hell warmed over. And my suit, or what was left of it, didn’t look so great either. I took the hottest shower I could and stood there letting the scalding water run over my aches and pains long after I’d finished washing, wondering why I wanted it to be Wheelock and not anyone else.
CHAPTER XXXI
The hallway was long and hushed, like a cathedral. The wallpaper was understated and expensive and the carpeting was thick underfoot. There were maybe thirty rooms behind heavy wood doors opening onto the corridor. The muted sounds of a TV talk show filtered out from behind one of the doors. It was mid-afternoon and my guess was that most of the rooms were empty.
The hallway ended in a right angle. I edged along the wall, crouched down and stuck my head out a little.
Thirty feet from me was a man sitting in a folding metal chair, reading some kind of comic book. From where I was, it looked like the X-Men. If he’d looked up, he would have seen me in the right-angle mirror over my head. At his feet were a can of Coke, a bag of popcorn and a walkie-talkie. I could smell the popcorn. Behind him was the door that would get me in to see Jergens.
I stood up, loosened my tie, opened my collar button, mussed my hair and put on the goofiest grin I could manage. Then I turned the corner and staggered toward the guy.
“Yo, buddy,” I boomed. “Where’s the can? Ah gotta piss or ah’m gonna bust a kidney.”
He looked up at me with his jaw wide open and dropped the comic book. “There ain’t no bathroom here, asshole. Go down to the lobby.”
He was as big as me and a little heavier, but his muscles had turned to flab a long time ago. He rose and stood his ground.
“Ah cain’t go to the lobby. Ah got no time. Ah got to piss right now.” I staggered once again.
He started to come toward me, completely unaware of what was happening.
I turned sideways, unzipped my fly and put the palm of my left hand on that lovely wallpaper.
When he saw what I was doing, he roared, “Oh no, you can’t piss here, asshole.”
He clamped his beefy hand on my shoulder. He was off-balance. Dumb and off-balance.
I leaned forward and brought my right elbow back sharply into his solar plexus. He let out a deep sigh and tried to inhale but he couldn’t draw the air into his lungs. His arms were flapping like useless chicken wings. His face became red and puffy.
I took half a second to zip my fly back up. You never knew who you would meet, and I always liked to make a good first impression. Then I gave him a one-two to the right and left temples. A final rabbit punch to the back of the neck was enough to put him down.
I pulled off my jacket and tossed it over the security camera and hoped no one had seen our little charade. They could always play the tape later at their leisure and get a big chuckle out of it.
I took some duct tape out of my pocket and tied his hands and feet together behind his back, then sealed his mouth.
He was carrying a Smith & Wesson .38 and he had a set of handcuffs looped through the belt of his brown polyester pants. I rolled him over and went through his pockets. There was nothing worthwhile.
The door was heavy-duty steel with two Medeco locks. And this turkey didn’t have the keys.
I searched him again even though I knew it wouldn’t do any good. “Christ,” I said under my breath.
There was no way I could open this sanctoru
m.
I kicked the goddam door a couple of times, then picked up the walkie-talkie.
I pushed transmit and said, “Open the door.”
Static filled the air. “That you, Junior?” it squawked. “We can’t see nothing. What the fuck is going on?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said. “Open the door.”
Static again. “You gotta use the password, I told you a dozen times.”
“Open the fucking door,” I muttered through cupped hands.
“The password, Junior.”
“You mudda wears combat boots.”
“That ain’t the password, Junior. You gotta learn it, I told you a hundred times.”
I flung the walkie-talkie against the steel door and walked away down what seemed like the longest corridor in the developed world.
***
I put in a call to Laura when I got back to the office that afternoon, but she wasn’t home. I left a message on her machine telling her that I hadn’t been able to get to Jergens but I’d keep on trying. Then I called Tanner to see if he had any luck in locating Wheelock.
“I tried an on-line search through Nexis to get an address change on his driver’s license and his broker’s license, but all I came up with was a dead end,” I told him.
“Don’t fret, old buddy. I tracked down Murdoch in Vegas,” he said with a note of pride. “He was shacked up with some chorus girl from the Luxor and he was still flogging penny stocks to old ladies. He said he thought Wheelock was somewhere in Connecticut, maybe Westport.”
“Outstanding,” I said. “Now get me some coordinates.”
“Aye, aye, sir. I’ll make some more calls. We’ll tree the SOB yet.”
CHAPTER XXXII
The super opened the apartment door without using a key and turned back to look at me.
“It was not locked, mister,” he said. “Just slammed shut. Solamente cerrado.”
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