"No shit?"
"No shit."
"Hey, I'm happy for you, Pick."
"I appreciate this, Charley."
"Don't be silly. Anytime. Anything, Pick."
Pickering smiled at him, touched his arm, and walked back toward the bar.
Charley signaled with his finger to the bellman standing on the other side of the lobby to join him.
"There's a blonde in the bar," he said. "Tell her there's a telephone call for her. Bring her here. If I'm not back, tell her to wait."
"OK. What's going on?"
"None of your goddamn business," Charley said. He went to the concierge's desk.
"Mr. Pickering's guest will probably ask a young lady to join him for a nightcap in 24-A."
"I understand," the concierge said. "I'll take care of it." Charley the doorman and the concierge had been employees Of the Foster Hotel Corporation long enough to know that Andrew Foster had one child, a daughter. His daughter had one child, a son. The son's name was Malcolm S. Pickering.
Charley the doorman met Pick Pickering when Pick was sixteen and was spending the summer at the Foster Park learning the hotel business: first as a busboy; later, when he proved his stuff, as a baggage handler; and finally, before the summer was over, as a bellman.
(Three)
BETHPAGE STATION
LONG ISLAND RAILROAD
0530 HOURS I SEPTEMBER 1942
Second Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, reached into the passenger compartment of the Derham-bodied Packard Straight Eight 280 limousine and pushed at the shoulder of Second Lieutenant Richard J. Stecker, USMC. When this failed to raise Stecker from his slumber, he pinched Stecker's nostrils closed, which did.
"Jesus Christ!" Stecker said, sitting up abruptly and knocking Pick's hand away, "And good morning to you, Casanova," Pick said. "Nap time is over." Stecker snorted.
"You have a hickey on your neck," Pick said.
"Fuck you."
"That was simply an observation, not an expression of moral indignation. I'm glad you had a good time... you did have a good time?"
"None of your fucking business."
"You sounded like you were having a good time. It sounded like a first-class Roman orgy in there.
"Do I detect a slight hint of jealousy?" Stecker asked as climbed out of the limousine. "You had your chance. She told you she had a girlfriend she could call."
"I paid attention to the Technicolor clap movies I was shown. I don't go around picking up fast women in saloons, thus endangering my prospects for a happy home full of healthy, happy children borne for me by the decent, wholesome girl of my choice after the war."
"Oh, shit!" Stecker said. "And just for the record, she's a legal secretary."
"I gather you intend to see her again?" Pick asked.
"Jesus Christ," Stecker said angrily, suddenly remembering.
"I didn't get her phone number!"
"She's probably in the book," Pick said.
"Yeah," Stecker said. "Christ, I hope so."
"Will there be anything else, Mr. Pickering?" the chauffeur of the Foster Park limousine said.
"No, I don't think so. Thank you very much. I'm sorry you had to bring us out here at this ungodly hour."
"No problem, Mr. Pickering, glad to be of service."
"When you see Charley," Pickering said, "tell him I said thank you very much."
"I'll do that, Mr. Pickering. And you take care of yourself."
"Thank you," Pickering said as he shook the chauffeur's hand.
Pickering and Stecker picked up their bags, walked twenty yards to the head of the taxi line, and climbed in the first one.
"Grumman," Pickering told the driver. "Use the airfield entrance." At least, Stecker thought, he remembers that much. We did not roll up to the airfield gate in the limousine.
In Stecker's opinion, the key to success as a second lieutenant was invisibility. Second lieutenants should be neither seen nor heard. With Pickering, that was difficult. Pick was a living example of Scott Fitzgerald's line about the rich being different from you and me.
During their basic flight training at Pensacola, second Lieutenants were furnished quarters, two men to a tiny two-room apartment in a newly constructed, bare-frame wooden bachelor officer's quarters building. Such facilities proving unsatisfactory to Second Lieutenant Pickering, he rented a penthouse suite in the San Carlos Hotel in downtown Pensacola and commuted to flight school in his 1941 Cadillac convertible.
The two of them made a deal: Stecker paid for their liquor (acquired tax-free at the Officer's Sales Store). In exchange he got to live in the suite's second bedroom. He did not want to be a mooch, but he couldn't refute Pickering's argument that he was going to have to pay for the suite whether the second bedroom was used or not. So why not?
Not without a little surprise, Stecker quickly learned that Pickering was not a mental lightweight or even someone taking a free ride from his wealthy parents. For instance, the Cadillac had not been a gift. It was purchased from Pick's earnings during his last college summer vacation. He had worked as head bellman in a Foster hotel. Stecker was astonished to learn not only how much head bellmen earned, but how important a head bellman is to a successful hotel operation.
Pick had also worked in hotel kitchens enough to have made him a professional-level chef. Stecker never ceased to be amazed that Pickering could tell the precise doneness of a grilled steak-rare, medium, or medium-rare-by touching it with the tip of his thumb.
For a while grilling steaks for Pensacola maidens on the terrace of their hotel suite was a very profitable enterprise, carnally speaking. But then Pick fell in love.
Not with one of the maidens, but with a widow (a young widow, his age) who wanted nothing to do with him. Part of Pick's infatuation with her, Stecker suspected, was that she spurned his attentions. A most unusual occurrence where Pick was concerned; from what Stecker had seen, females ran toward Pickering with invitation in their eyes, not away from him.
The widow, Martha Sayre Culhane, was the daughter of the Number-Two Admiral aboard Pensacola NAS, Rear Admiral R. B. Sayre. Her husband, a Marine First Lieutenant, a Naval Aviator, had been killed on Wake Island.
Pick was of course a formidable suitor, but he got no further with Martha Culhane than some dinner dates and movies. And she flatly refused to marry him.