The next morning at ten, I ducked into Stalling’s office and slammed the door shut behind me. He was surprised to see me. I was surprised by the fact that I was lucky enough to stop by while his secretary was down the hall at the coffee wagon discussing the latest Serbo-Croatian foreign policy initiative.
As he looked up from the research report he was reading, I could see that flash of fear in his eyes. So he remembered our last cordial encounter and the cold feel of a hard polymer gun against his cheek.
He reached for the phone on a little table next to him.
“Don’t do it,” I said.
He pulled his hand back.
“Why did you fire Alicia?” I walked behind where he was sitting on a sofa next to a floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over the harbor and the Statue of Liberty.
Stallings had one of those modern offices that had dispensed with the desk, that archaic symbol of work. He was slouched down on an overstuffed leather couch with a pile of reports on the floor next to his highly-polished shoes. He’d shrugged off his Brooks Brothers suspenders with the little ducks and was sipping herb tea from a china cup. He was wearing the kind of shirt with a white collar and blue body, French cuffs and little gold button cuff links. His slicked-back hair was so shiny the ceiling light reflected off it.
Just as I stepped next to him, he made a sudden jerky movement and dropped his teacup onto the rug. It didn’t break, but the tea slowly spread out in a darkening stain on what was probably a very expensive oriental.
He stood and turned around to look at me. The expression on his face was a strange mixture of fright and annoyance.
“Sit down,” I said. I shoved him back onto the couch.
He did. His undertaker’s style had deserted him. He was no longer the old smoothie. You could see he wanted me six feet under.
“Why did you fire Alicia?” I said.
He looked at me like I’d said, “Why did you kill Alicia?”
The words came out of his mouth in a stammer. “I…I didn’t…”
“Don’t hand me that, Stallings.” I grabbed his shoulder from behind. “Did it have something to do with Jergens?”
His eyebrows went up about six inches. “How…?”
“I find things out. Things you don’t want other people to know. I know what color your skivvies are.”
He slumped even more in the sofa. “I have nothing to say to you,” he tried. “Talk to my lawyer.”
I squeezed his shoulder so hard he winced. “This isn’t due process, Stallings. You can’t take the Fifth with me. But I have a hunch the SEC would like to hear about it. I’m sure you’d welcome an investigation of Jergens’ stock offering. You know how these Boy Scouts are when they start to poke around.”
“Oh, God, no.” His frame slumped even more.
While he debated whether to betray a valued client and lose a stream of future income, I surveyed the view from the fortieth floor. He had the corner office with tinted windows on two walls. From where I stood, you could see all the way down the East coast to Key West. The Statue of Liberty looked insignificant way down in the harbor, like one of those souvenir shop models. You wanted to reach out and pick it up and shake it and let the snow settle on its base.
“What about Jergens? Was he the reason you fired Alicia?”
The answer was barely audible. “Yes.”
I had to prod him. “What happened?”
Stallings practically had tears in his eyes, like I’d just punched the last hole in his meal ticket. “Jergens was going to float a new stock issue in the third quarter and we were to be the lead underwriter. The real estate market has been strong, as you know, and Jergens was one of the strongest operators. It would have taken the slightest hint of scandal to derail the offering and our underwriting fees with it. I couldn’t afford to take a chance. The future of the firm literally depended on it.”
“Why?”
“We’ve lost some large underwriting clients recently and our reputation was starting to suffer. If we’d lost this deal, people on the street would have started questioning our ability to do deals.”
“What did Alicia do?”
Stallings permitted himself a small smile and then looked up at me to see how I’d take it. “She was a clever woman, your wife. I don’t know what caused her to suspect anything, but she actually went down and inspected a bunch of properties in person. She started at the top floor in each building and went through every one, knocking on doors to determine occupancy rates. She talked to maintenance workers and cleaning ladies. What she found out was that Jergens’ financials were not strictly cricket.”
I had to hand it to Alicia. That sounded like something she would have done in the old days, before her new age, Mother Earth self. “Nice detective work, for an amateur.”
Stallings nodded vigorously, as if he wanted to get on my good side. Little did he know I’d lost my good side a long time ago, somewhere in that perfect purgatory that was called the Au Shau valley.
“That’s when you canned her?”
“Well, no,” he said. “It was a little more complicated than that. She evidently went directly to Jergens and told him of her findings. I don’t know to what end. He threatened her and told her to bury the information. Then he set up a meeting with me at an out-of-the-way restaurant and told me to fire her.”
“So you did?”
Stallings nodded. “Yes. But then an odd thing happened.” He narrowed his eyes. “He called me back a couple of weeks later and told me to re-hire her.”
“Why did he do that?”
Stallings leaned toward me. “That’s the strange thing. I don’t know why. But she came back to work as if nothing had happened.”
“What about the report?”
“It was never published. It just disappeared off the face of the earth.”
I took this all in. “What did Jergens threaten her with?”
“He swore to destroy her career. I believe he even threatened her with physical violence. When she came back to the office after meeting him, she looked scared to death.” He stopped and caught himself. “I suppose that’s a poor choice of words.”
“Don’t trouble yourself about it,” I said. “No one’s going to flunk you for insensitivity.”