Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01 (19 page)

 
          
“And
this was—I’m sorry, when was this?”

 
          
“Monday,
the twelfth of July. I reported it to the gate guard at the
Galaxy,
and I suppose—”

 
          
“You
reported it
where?"

 
          
“The
guard on the gate at the
Weekly Galaxy,”
she
repeated, remembering that she hadn’t seen that guard since that morning. A
stray wisp of question in her mind wondered if the guard’s disappearance were
meaningful, but the thought was interrupted by the sheriffs office man’s next
question: “What were you doing
there?”

 
          
“I
work there. I’m a reporter, that’s why I’m so certain of my—”

 
          
“Oh,
for Christ’s sake,” the voice said, in sudden disgust. “Don’t you people know
better than to set up your bullshit with
us?”

 
          
“What?”
Sara was too astounded to be insulted, at least not at first.

 
          
“We
tape all incoming calls, Ms.
Joslyn,”
the voice said, dripping with scorn. “If we hear from you again, you’re in
trouble.” And he slammed the receiver real loud.

 
          
Phyllis,
looking troubled, entered Jack’s squaricle at
10:45
on Monday morning. “About Felicia Nelson,”
she said.

 
          
Jack
was feeling moderately human at the moment, having had nine yesses at this
morning’s editorial conference and having been singled out for public praise by
Massa for the large number of items he had generated in last Friday’s
Galaxy
. Therefore, he neither snarled at
Phyllis nor moaned in despair at the sight of her, but merely said, “Tell me
everything, Phyllis dear, tell me everything about Felicia Nelson.”

 
          
“There
isn't
everything,” Phyllis said.
“That’s the trouble. There’s almost nothing, in fact.”

           
“Everybody’s somebody, Phyllis,”
Jack told her. “That’s a rule of philosophy. So tell me, now. Who is Felicia
Nelson, what is she?”

           
“Well,” Phyllis said, “she was born
and raised in
Whittier
,
California
.”

 
          
“There,
see?” Jack said. “Already, we’re filling in the picture. I don’t suppose
there’s any Nixon connection.”

 
          
“What?”
Phyllis looked deeply lost.

           
“Never mind,” Jack told her.
“Probably wouldn’t fly anyway, not past
Massa
’s red pencil.” Generally speaking,
Massa
preferred Republicans among politicians,
except for reform Republicans, whom he thought of as unnatural and loathsome,
like hermaphrodites. “Go on, Phyllis,” Jack said. “Give me background.”

 
          
“There
is none, that’s the trouble,” Phyllis said. “That girl’s led the emptiest life
since Princess Di. Never been married, no recorded abortions, never been fired
from a job, never been sued.” “What a tedious existence,” Jack said. “I quite
feel for the girl. But
something
must
have happened to her prior to that singular day when she met John Michael
Mercer.”

           
“Not that I can find out,” Phyllis
said. “She went to secretarial school. She works for an insurance agent.”

           
Mary Kate looked over, raising an
eyebrow. “Wears white underwear all the time,” she commented.

 
          
“Wouldn’t
surprise me,” Phyllis said.

 
          
“All
right,” Jack said. “Time, place and circumstances of the aforesaid singular
day.”

 
          
Phyllis
did the blank look again. “What?”

           
“Where and when did she and Mercer
meet?”

           
“I don’t know,” Phyllis said.

           
“That
is
unfortunate,” Jack told her, “because if
you
don’t know, then I don’t know, and
Massa
is going to
want
to know.”

 
          
“I’m
doing my best,” Phyllis said, looking and sounding harried.

 
          
“I’m
sure you are, dear. Do we happen to know the name of the lucky Miss Nelson’s
employer?”

           
“Feingold and Robinson Insurance in
Fort
Lauderdale
,” Phyllis said, with excellent promptness.

           
“Very good,” Jack said. “Perhaps Mr.
Mercer had a claim to be adjudicated. What does Miss Nelson do for Messrs.
Feingold and Robinson?”

           
“She’s a secretary.”

           
“Hmmm.” Jack considered various of
his options, then said, “All right, Phyllis. Continue to dig for background on
Nelson.
Something.
Does she subscribe
to
Hustler?
Is she in analysis? Find
me something that will make Felicia Nelson as fascinating to me as she is to
John Michael Mercer. Can you do that?”

           
“Do you want me to find out how they
met?” Phyllis asked.

 
          
“No,
we’ll put another of our tireless researchers on that one,” Jack told her. “Be
off with you, Phyllis, and consider yourself lucky. Had you brought me this
little news on a Friday, you’d be leaving here with toothmarks.”

 
          
Phyllis
attempted a light laugh, but it didn’t quite make it past her harried look.
“I’ll do my best,” she said, and hurried away.

 
          
Jack
watched her go. When she was out of earshot, he muttered, “As Massa says, don’t
do
your
best, do
my
best. I wish I had the brass to actually tell somebody that.

 
          
Mary
Kate paused in her typing to look at him. “When I think,” she commented, “of
all the things you
can
bring yourself
to say.”

 
          
“Oh,
pish and tush, Mary Kate,” Jack said, reaching for the phone. “I’m just a
jocular type, everybody knows that.” He punched out a number, and far away
across the room Sara reacted to the white light flashing on her phone. When she
answered—“Hello?”—Jack told her, “This is your master’s voice. And guess what?
You’re going to love
Fort Lauderdale
.”

 
          
On
her way out from the
Galaxy
, Sara braked
the Peugeot to a stop at the guard shack, even though she’d been waved through.
As her window slid down, defeating the air conditioner she’d just turned on,
the guard came over to see what the problem was. It was the usual round-bodied
black man. He said, “Yes, miss?”

           
“Remember me?” Sara asked him. “Week
before last, I’m the one left her temporary sticker on the rental car.”

 
          
The
guard smiled faintly, saying, “Yeah, I remember. And you come back on Friday
’stead of Saturday.”

 
          
“That’s
right,” Sara agreed, nodding, smiling at him to thank him for remembering. “But
here’s the thing,” she said. “You weren’t the one who gave me that temporary
sticker in the first place.”

 
          
He
looked at her, having no idea where she was going. “I wasn’t?”

 
          
“No.
That was another guard on duty here that Monday morning. “Two weeks ago today,
it was.”

 
          
The
guard offered another faint smile, this one subtly different, this one
suggesting Sara was up to something and he was seeing through it. He said, “You
mean, he should have told you about holding on to that sticker? It’s
his
fault, is that it?”

 
          
“No,
no,” she said, reassuring him, “I’m not blaming anybody but myself for that,
honest. It’s forgotten anyway, I’m not in trouble anymore.”

 
          
“I’m
glad to hear that,” he said, his manner neutral.

 
          
“It’s
just that, when I came here that first morning, there’s a
fact
I told that guard, and I want to talk to him to be sure I got
it straight. I know this sounds weird,” she added, rushing on, meaning that she
knew it sounded counterfeit and false and untrue, “but he’ll know what I’m
talking about. Anyway, I keep waiting to see him again, but it seems like it’s
always either you or that tall skinny fellow—”

 
          
“My
relief man,” the guard said, nodding. “Wasn’t him, huh?”

 
          
“No,
he was an older man, very tanned, with a very lined face.”

 
          
“Oh,
that’d be Jimmy,” the guard said, nodding, looking displeased at some memory.
“Yeah, he quit just about then. Two weeks ago? Yeah, that’s when he went. Made
a real mess for
me
, let me tell you.”

 
          
“He
quit?” Sara echoed, then hurriedly asked the reporter’s question: “Jimmy’s his
name? Jimmy what?”

 
          
“Taggart.
But you don’t want to use
him
to
prove anything around here, his name is mud at this paper. Just up and walked
off the job. They caught me on the phone just as I was going fishing.”

 
          
“And
he did that two weeks ago?”

 
          
“Yeah,
just about— Wait a minute.”

 
          
The
guard went back into his stucco-and-glass shack, and Sara wrote on the open
memo pad on the seat beside her,
Jimmy
Taggart.
Then the guard came back, nodding in satisfaction, and said,
“Yeah, I thought so. That was the day. Monday, July twelfth. Monday’s supposed
to be my day off, but here you see me, here again on a Monday, we’re still
shorthanded. Tough to find reliable people, you know.”

           
He quit that day, Sara thought. That
is
not
a coincidence. She said, “So I
guess I better find some other way to verify this fact of mine. Thanks anyway.”

 
          
“Good
luck, now,” the guard told her, stepping back from the car. She thanked him
again, slid up the window, and drove away to
Fort Lauderdale
, where she became a brisk young
businesswoman named Alice Tucker. Having a used jeans boutique in
Boston
, she was thinking of expansion, of opening
a shop in the
Fort Lauderdale
area, where she was also looking at homes to buy. She didn’t make her
livelihood from the jeans boutique, of course, that was just the fun thing she
did; her livelihood came from alimony, and was therefore rock solid and
dependable. However, she was very serious about the business side of her life,
and so she wanted to discuss both business and personal insurance in
Florida
at great length, knowing that each state’s
insurance laws are unique.

 
          
In
the course of two hours at Feingold & Robinson Insurance, Sara talked with
four bright and helpful employees, fended off two passes, learned an incredible
amount about both personal and business insurance in
Florida
, and neither saw Felicia Nelson nor learned
a single thing about her. (The one picture of Felicia Nelson in the
Galaxy’s
possession, taken from a ship
at sea off the John Michael Mercer property in Palm Beach and using a telephoto
lens, was blown up to a grainy grayness, but a specific individual was still identifiable
there, standing in a light short skirt and dark polo shirt on Mercer’s dock,
smiling down at Mercer in his powerful cigarette-style speedboat, the
Zoom Lens.
If Felicia Nelson had been
present at Feingold & Robinson, Sara would have known it.)