“Find Wheelock for me,” I told Tanner. “The son of a bitch has gone to ground and I can’t locate him.”
He squinted and ran his fingers through his thinning crew cut. “Sure thing, old buddy. Maybe one of his old sailing mates has a line on him. How close did you get?”
“Tracked him down to a rented room in Greenwich. After that he just disappeared. Couldn’t scare up a trace of him.”
Tanner finished off his beer with a flourish and lit up a large foul-smelling cigar. We were in the cocktail lounge of the Hyatt on Forty-second street in the middle of a sea of marble and polished chrome and glass. As the smoke wafted over to the next table a middle-aged woman with wire-rimmed glasses and a sour expression wrinkled up her nose in distaste.
“Let us absent ourselves from this place,” I said. “I need a long walk.”
I tossed a ten on the table and headed through the lobby in the direction of Grand Central. Tanner grabbed his briefcase and hustled to catch up with me. Before we were halfway out of the hotel, our cocktail waitress came running, her rubber-soled shoes making squeaking sounds on the polished marble, and caught up with us.
I turned to face her. “What’s on your mind, honeybunch?”
She struggled to catch her breath. “It’s not enough,” she wheezed.
“What? We just had a couple of beers,” I said. “The rest is your tip.”
“I know,” she said between deep gasps.
“So?”
“Sir, the beers are five-fifty each,” she said.
Tanner and I exchanged disbelieving glances.
“Barley, malt, hops, yeast. A little fermentation. A percentage for advertising, overhead and profit,” he said with a big grin.
I shrugged and handed the girl another ten. “Does this redeem us?”
“More than enough to reserve you a place in the heavenly choir.” She put her hand on my arm. “Come back anytime, gentlemen.”
“Sure,” I said. “Next time I hit the trifecta.”
We left the Hyatt, walked through Grand Central, went up the escalator, through 200 Park and the Helmsley Building and exited onto Park Avenue.
It was lunchtime and all the office workers were out for a stroll. The day was clear and warm and sunny. Tanner and I walked for a few blocks without talking. The only thing fouling the air was his cigar.
“Jesus, will you put out that damn thing. It smells like a cathouse the morning after payday.”
“Sorry, old buddy,” he said as he poked me in the ribs. “Didn’t know your nose was so sensitive. You used to like the smell of WP.”
“Yeah, but that was a different time.”
His remark brought back the memory of a green lieutenant carrying a badly-wounded captain on his back from one of the hilltops guarding Khe Sanh through triple rows of wire and elephant grass to a medevac landing zone and waiting with him for the choppers to arrive while rocket-propelled grenades and mortars fell all around them. He was the kid. I was the captain. I owed him.
We walked to Fifty-ninth without a word. Old friends can do that. Wordsworth once spent an entire evening at Coleridge’s house without either man speaking. When he left, he thanked his friend for a pleasant time.
The secretaries in their summer dresses sat with their boyfriends in front of the office buildings eating salads and drinking Evian. The people strolling by studied the people sitting down who, in turn, studied them.
“Dave,” I said finally, “Did you know that Alicia’d been raped?”
“Hell, no.”
“Raped and had the shit kicked out of her. Spent a week in the hospital.”
“Jesus,” he whispered. “Who did it?”
“Wheelock.”
He let out a long slow whistle. “When did it happen?”
“A couple of years ago. Nobody knows about it.”
“How did you find out?” he said.
“From a dead psychiatrist.”
He nodded.
I looked at him. His eyes had tears in them.
“Find the bastard for me,” I said. “I want to exchange a few words with him.”
“Tell Mr. Jergens my name is Rogan.”
“Just a moment please.”
The secretary came back on the line. “Mr. Jergens says he doesn’t know you, Mr. Rogan.”
“That’s correct. Tell him it’s about Alicia Rogan.”
She clicked off and came back a minute later. “He says he doesn’t know of any Alicia Rogan.”
“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.