by W. T. Tyler
“Back the hall.”
“I thought they might be moving.”
“Not this way they’re not; back there.” The voice wasn’t friendly and neither were the suspicious green eyes directing him back down the corridor. His brown hair was thick and curly under the ludicrous wool cap, his cheeks were scarred, and his heavy mustache was flecked with gray.
In the Caltronics suite he found two black movers in gray overalls pulling drawers from file cabinets and stacking them on an aluminum lift cart. The name of a Washington office equipment firm was stitched in red thread across their backs.
“Is anyone around?” he asked.
They told him that there were just the two of them, come to pick up the furniture. They didn’t know where Caltronics had moved. The other offices were also empty. In the inner corridor that joined the three private offices, a copying machine stood against the wall; taped to the front was a notice from the firm from which it had been rented, warning that it wasn’t to be removed. Behind the machine was an interior door. He opened it, squeezed between the wall and the copier, and peered into a dim interior reeking of silver nitrates and photographic emulsions. He flicked on the light switch to his right and in the red glow of the unmasked bulb saw a photographic workbench, a wall of steel shelves holding a few empty film boxes, and a rack of empty videotape spools.
Another door stood at the end of the corridor. On the wall nearby was a hand-lettered admonition: “Don’t Tamper with Telex,” but the carpet below was empty; all that remained of the telex machine was the rectangular depression left by its weight. He opened the door and looked into a large, bright room illuminated by a haze of sunlight flooding through the bank of windows along one wall. At a long table against the far partition, a man half-sat, half-leaned, a set of headphones on, his head turned toward the strawberry blonde Wilson had seen outside, and who was now seated at a word-processing console, earphones on as she transcribed on the keyboard the tape to which both were listening.
The man turned, saw Wilson, and stood up, jerking off the headset. Wilson recognized the same burly man he’d spoken to in the corridor.
“Sorry,” he called. “Wrong door.”
He stepped back, but the man wasn’t mollified. “Hey, Mac,” he called angrily. “Hey, Mac! Wait a minute!”
“Sorry.”
The strawberry blonde had turned too, looking at Wilson in surprise.
“Hey, Mac, what are you doing, huh? You walk in the fucking door like that, into someone’s private office, and you just say, ‘Wrong door’ and walk out. What the fuck are you doing? I mean, who the shit do you think you are?” His mood was ugly, his voice growing uglier as he crossed the cluttered office, pushing his way angrily through boxes of electronic gear that blocked the aisle in front of a long workbench overhung with fluorescent lights, where a TV monitoring camera lay disassembled. Over the door to the outside corridor Wilson saw a bracketed camera, cocked downward, like the one over his head. A small table to the side held a curious-looking camera and two night optical devices.
“I opened the door, Bernie,” the blonde called. Her eyes were darkly fringed by artificial eyelashes.
“You opened the door?” He turned brusquely. “What the fuck for?”
“I unlocked it when they took the telex out this way. The movers asked me after they checked out our telex and I said O.K. I guess I forgot to lock it.”
Just inside the door next to Wilson stood a teletype machine, connected by metal conduit to the same feeder line that had powered the machine on the other side of the partition.
“So what? The movers are gone. It’s not our problem.” He turned to Wilson again, no longer moving forward. “Who are you—the fucking telex man?”
“I was looking for someone from Caltronics.”
“So you come nosing around here. I told you already, didn’t I tell you already? You got the wrong door. What the hell are you nosing around here for? Hey, Mac, wait a minute—”
“Wait for what?” Wilson said, annoyed himself. “I got in the wrong door, like the lady said. You want to make a federal case of it?” He stepped back and pulled the door closed behind him.
“Yeah, well, just stay the hell out, then. O.K.?” He heard the man’s voice from just beyond the door; a moment later a set of heavy tumblers fell into place as the security lock was set.
Wilson meandered through the suite a final time, still annoyed with himself, and went out the front door. The movers were dragging their handcart down the hall toward the freight elevator. Wilson went back to the public elevators, but as he stood waiting, eyes lifted to the illuminated number of the floor indicator, he changed his mind, pushed through a nearby exit door, and skipped down the concrete steps to the basement parking garage.
The office equipment firm’s truck was backed to the loading dock. A few desks, cabinets, and chairs stood in the shadows, awaiting transfer. Among them were an executive desk and a heavy combination safe/filing cabinet. The safe drawers had been swept clean, but the desk drawers still held the rubbish of office routine, including a handful of business cards. A truck door slammed closed as he searched through the side drawers.
“Hey, watcha doing, man?” a sleepy voice called from the garage floor. A black truckdriver stood looking up at Wilson as he pulled on his work gloves.
At the back of the middle drawer, a few pleated pages were caught, hung up between the middle and bottom drawers. “Looking for an address,” said Wilson as he removed the drawer. The truckdriver lifted himself to the freight dock, and Wilson pulled out the caught pages. “You know where Caltronics is moving?” he asked as he put the pages in his pocket.
“We’re taking this load to Rosslyn, office over there.”
“That’s where they’re moving?”
“Have to ask the boss. He say doan let no one take nothing.”
The freight elevator had settled to a stop at the end of the freight dock. Wilson went down the concrete steps to the garage floor. “I’ll check with the office manager.”
“Hey, ain’t you got it loaded yet?” he heard one of the movers call to the driver.
“Only one o’ me. What you talking about?”
Wilson continued across the garage floor, past the parked cars in the reserve area, up the ramp and out into the pale morning sunshine. Only as he crossed Virginia Avenue toward the Watergate did he remove the folded papers he’d taken from the desk. As he stepped to the curb, he stopped to look at them more closely. The two crumpled pages were Xerox copies of a guest or invitation list. A few names were underlined, three were heavily circled, and two had question marks after them. He moved to a nearby postal storage box and smoothed the pages against the iron crown. Some of the names he recognized—prominent politicians, government officials, show business personalities, and local lawyers and dignitaries. In the center of the third page the list was interrupted by the caption “Smithsonian,” and beneath it the list began again, in alphabetical order. Looking at the names, firms, and political affiliations cited in brackets, he suspected the Xeroxed pages were a partial invitation list for a cocktail party or reception given by Caltronics earlier in the year.
He tore up the list and dropped it in a waste receptacle. As he stopped at the parking meter to put another coin in the slot, his hand dug in his pocket, he saw a man turn away from the curb across the street. His back was now to Wilson as he moved up the pavement, but the move had been too abrupt for Wilson to ignore and too late for the man to disguise. The hat was different, but the face and mustache were the same, those of the man whose back door he’d gotten into by mistake.
Rita Kramer, wearing a crimson suit and a white blouse, sat at a window table in the hotel coffee shop, her silk-lined mink coat shed like a shell on the leather lounge seat behind her. Her expression was as inscrutable as ever. She was a woman of moods—hard, sullen, or yielding, as she’d been during their trip to Grace Ramsey’s house, but always tyrannical. She alone controlled the tempo. It was a little like
playing tennis with an overpowering opponent, a semiprofessional, Wilson thought as he approached the table: she always dictated the pace, past performances didn’t count, and each day on the court was likely to be a totally new if not totally humiliating experience.
“Sorry I’m late,” he apologized, shedding his raincoat.
“It’s about time,” she said tonelessly. “This is a friend of Artie, Mr. Strykker.”
He hadn’t realized the man sitting somewhat ambiguously near the next table was with her. Strykker immediately stood up and offered him a soft, damp hand. Short and henna-haired, he was wearing a gray silk suit, a gray shirt with a white collar, and an oyster-gray silk tie. A dark-blue cashmere overcoat was folded carefully alongside him. A few large rings decorated his small fingers, and a vulgar little mustache, spiny as a caterpillar, outlined his upper lip. The eyes were lively and inquisitive, but there was something sad about them, as if trapped within this carefully chosen facade was a coarser but simpler man, struggling for recognition.
“I thought maybe you were giving us the runaround again,” Rita Kramer said with a trace of hoarseness.
He sat down gracelessly. “Sorry, but I got tied up.”
“I’ll bet. For someone who’s about to close a very expensive deal, you look pretty nonchalant.”
“I’ve got a miler’s pulse rate,” he said. “Inside, I’m running wild.” She didn’t return his smile and Strykker sat studying him somberly. “Breaking the sound barrier,” Wilson added, aware of Strykker’s mystified gaze. “Are you from California, Mr. Strykker?” he asked graciously. With this meeting, and with Matthews due back from Florida on Monday, he would be out of the real estate business.
“From L.A., where else?” Rita answered for him. “Where’s Grace Ramsey’s elusive Washington lawyer, Edward Donlon?”
Wilson searched the room for the waitress. “In situ,” he said, remembering a scrap of law school Latin. Rita Kramer had that effect on him. So did cat-whiskered California entrepreneurs in shiny suits. “He can’t make it.”
Rita Kramer sat up. “Can’t make it? What are you talking about?” The waitress came to the table and he asked for coffee.
“Too short notice; he’s tied up.”
“Now look here, Mr. Wilson,” Strykker began.
“Shut up,” said Rita Kramer, leaning toward Wilson. “What the hell do you mean, not coming? You said we could close this morning. Strykker’s got the goddamned check—”
“I’ll close for him.” He took an envelope from his coat pocket and passed it across the table. “There’s your contract. If you have the cashier’s check, I’ll sign, and you’ve got the house.” The waitress brought a Pyrex coffeepot and Wilson leaned back as she filled his cup.
Rita Kramer still watched him in suspicious silence as Strykker studied the contract through a pair of black-rimmed glasses, head resting on a cushion of double chin. As Wilson lifted the coffee cup, he was aware of the fragrance of baby oil, pressed to his fingers by Strykker’s plump hand. He reached for his handkerchief.
“What’s it say?” she asked, turning to Strykker. “Is it legit?”
“It looks all right.”
“So it’s O.K., then?”
Strykker was silent as he turned a page with a wet thumb. “There are a few points I’d like to check,” he observed sagely, the way a man of affairs would. He removed his glasses, cleared his throat, and sat brooding ponderously, his glasses removed.
“For Christ’s sake,” Rita Kramer said.
He put the glasses back on. “Maybe we’d better go back to the office and talk to Edelman.”
“Forget it. Go call him if you want to, but don’t drag me across town to talk to Edelman again.”
“Maybe I could telephone him,” he reconsidered. “Artie too.” He looked at his watch. “He might be up by now.”
“Not Artie, either. This is my money and I want to finish it now, understand? Right here, right now, or I’m leaving this goddamned town on the next flight.”
Strykker lifted himself to his feet with a sigh. “I’ll give Edelman a ring,” he murmured, his voice carrying a faint, weak protest.
“Why all this hassle,” she asked dejectedly after he’d gone, “wearing me out like this?”
“You wear yourself out,” he said. “Why all these people? Edelman, now Strykker. Who else? Who is he, anyway?”
“A partner of Artie’s, a kind of financial consultant. Anyway, you don’t know the half of it. When you live with Artie, you live with a houseful. He carries a crowd around with him, night and day.”
“Maybe you should have checked with him before this.”
“Artie? He said the house was my decision and it’s my money—most of it, anyway.” They sat in silence as she watched the door, waiting for Strykker to return. After a few minutes, she said, “I hope you’ve played it straight with me. That’s what I told everyone—that you played it straight. I hope you don’t disappoint me. I’ve never handled a sale like this, that much money involved.”
“You did fine. You couldn’t have gotten the house for any less; she would have kept it. Stop worrying.”
“You don’t know Artie. He’s flying in this weekend to see what I’ve been up to. Friday night, maybe Saturday. To tell you the truth, I wanted to do something on my own for a change, make a decision without him looking over my shoulder all the time.”
Strykker was entering the coffee shop. Watching her face as she saw him, he was surprised by the quickness of the transformation. He observed the same hardness he’d identified when he crossed the coffee shop thirty minutes earlier. It was Strykker. She didn’t like him. As she picked up her purse their eyes met, and in that moment of silent contact she seemed to know what he’d seen. He smiled in reflex, but she wasn’t amused.
“Don’t try to read my mind,” she said coolly.
“Edelman seems to think it’s all right,” Strykker announced, a little out of breath as he sat down. She had dropped her eyes to her purse as she searched through it silently. “Not quite what I would have preferred, but this is his territory, not mine. Are you sure you don’t want to call Artie?”
“Forget it,” she said, ignoring him as she brought out a pen. She signed the contract, gave Wilson a cashier’s check for $150,000 with the balance due in thirty days, and invited him to meet Artie on Sunday afternoon.
On his way out, Wilson passed a florist’s shop, stopped, and went in. He ordered a dozen yellow roses, signed Grace Ramsey’s name to the card, and asked that they be sent to Rita Kramer’s room.
5.
Dr. Foster, the acting director of the Center for Contemporary Studies, was a pudgy little professor of forty-five or thereabouts, wearing hornrimmed glasses thick enough to so distort his eyes that he seemed not so much to peer through the glasses as to hide there, a reclusive soul seeking refuge from the anarchy of the world. His voice was as relentless as rain, a tireless falsetto that held the light, dry gossipy patter of some graduate school faculty lounge. He was dressed like a mildly bohemian professor, in a rumpled corduroy suit, a tattersall shirt, a wine-colored tie with a discolored knot, and scruffy down-at-the-heels loafers.
He received Haven Wilson and Ed Donlon in his first-floor office a little after ten o’clock on a wet Friday morning. Thunder boomed over the rooftops as they made their way up the walk to the old ivy-covered building at the heart of the complex just off Twenty-third Street and only a few blocks from George Washington University. The main building, once a Victorian residence in a neighborhood of nearly identical structures, sat behind a six-foot ivy-covered brick wall and was joined to the other buildings in the complex by brick and concrete walks well planted along their verges by shrubs and flower beds, as symmetrical as a college quad.
The administration building was darkly wainscoted, the light dim in the reception room, where a gray-haired secretary sat at a desk behind a wooden railing. Dr. Foster’s office was brighter. It had once been a parlor. A long oak conference table occu
pied the center of the high-ceilinged room, which was painted a pale green. Against the exterior wall was an ornate mantel and a gas-fired heater. Two tall bay windows flanking the fireplace overlooked the side garden.
Foster stood at one of the windows, an architect’s plot of the Center unrolled on the window seat as he identified through the rain-streaked panes the buildings across the quad.
“The thalamus group works in that building there,” Foster said, pointing across the garden, “the newest one, relatively speaking. The canteen is there too, in the basement. We have a dining room here, on the far side of the center hall, but it’s seldom used since the fire. The kitchen fire, I mean. The cook—well, not quite a cook … a resident fellow intrigued by the culinary arts. A baked Alaska went amok in the dumbwaiter. Our board dinner. Why anyone would put a baked Alaska in a dumbwaiter, I haven’t the slightest. So now we have the meals catered. The annual board dinner is held there. There’s also a private library next to it, where we assemble for afternoon tea. The fireplace is real, not gas, like this one, so the atmosphere is quite congenial. Collegial too, although few of the thalamus group attend, and we don’t make it compulsory, nor should we. I’m not a thalamus myself, although if I had the opportunity to begin over, I might be. A historian’s logic is more in the rhetorical seas in which he swims, isn’t it? But I’ve broadened my perspective, thanks to the Center, and learned to look at history more purely in pathogenic terms.”
Dr. Foster smiled, slightly winded. Wilson thought he seemed under strain.
“Thalamus?” Wilson repeated, eyes lifted through the watery panes. “Maybe you’d better explain.”
“The endocrine people,” Foster said. “But not just endocrines. Biopathology, if you will. The chemical basis of character, success or failure, Napoleons and Lincolns, Mussolinis and Stalins. We call them the thalamus group for short—those that work at that sort of thing.”
“I’m not sure I follow. What’s it prove?”
“Prove?” Foster seemed surprised.
