Westlake, Donald E - Sara and Jack 01 (20 page)

 
          
Drat.
It wasn’t possible in the insurance office to ask about Felicia Nelson or even
mention the woman’s name; that would blow her cover for sure. So, when she
could stall no longer, when there was no single question left for her to ask
and not one possible insurable eventuality left for the folks of Feingold &
Robinson to describe to her, Sara smilingly took her leave, promised to keep in
touch, and spent the rest of the day in her parked car down the block, the
blowup photograph on the seat beside her.

 
          
And
no Felicia.

 
          
Jacob
Harsch didn’t often enter Editorial, and when he did, it was always something
of a surprise that he obeyed the pattern of black lines on the floor. One would
expect Jacob Harsch to walk through walls as a matter of course. And yet, he
didn’t; he turned left, he turned right, he followed the walls and corridors indicated
by those black lines, quartering across the large open space like any normal
human being, and every time he did it everybody in Editorial came that much
closer to a heart attack. Because, of course, until the last second, no one
could know for sure just which one of them Jacob Harsch intended to visit.

           
Jack Ingersoll. Today, Jack.
“Afternoon, Mr. Harsch,” Jack said, smiling brighdy, blinking hard as Harsch
came through the door space into his squaricle. (At her desk, Mary Kate made
one of her very few typos.)

 
          
“Afternoon,
Jack,” Harsch said, in his thin cold voice. He looked out over the writhing
mass of Editorial as though he stood on a mountaintop and were about to offer
Jack the world. Instead, he said, as though referring to some really complex
estate before the probate court, “In the matter of John Michael Mercer.”

 
          
Jack
rose to his feet, hearing the
Galaxy
⁹
s
national anthem. “Yes, sir,” he said.

 
          
“This
time,” Harsch said, with a sort of gloomy satisfaction, “he apparently intends
to marry the girl.”

 
          
“Ida
Gavin thinks it’s heading that way, yes, sir.”

 
          
“There
are other sources of the rumor as well,” Harsch said. “Boy Cartwright has been
building a file.”

 
          
“So
have I,” Jack said quickly, while Mary Kate made a rictus of death and, behind
Harsch’s back, pretended to throw up in the wastebasket.

 
          
“We’ll
want the girl’s bio,” Harsch said, looking away across Editorial again,
dissociating himself from the conversation. “And the touching story of how they
met, this famous television star and this girl behind the notions counter.”

 
          
“You’ll
get it,” Jack said.

 
          
“We’ll
want it in this week’s paper,” Harsch said, with a brief cold glance at Jack.
“By next week,
everyone
will have the
story.”

           
“I’m on top of it, sir.”

           
“If you’d rather Boy did the backgrounder—”

           
“Oh, no, sir! We’ve already got
most of the material on hand, just need to whip it in shape.”

           
“Good.” Harsch smiled, never a
pretty sight. “
Massa
wants,” he said, and left the squaricle, and made his way like the
Windsurfer of Death out of Editorial.

           
Jack sat down. His face was greasy
with perspiration. “Christ on a bleeding crutch,” he said.

           
Ida had been waiting some distance
away, not wanting to interrupt Harsch, but now she entered the squaricle and
said, “Phyllis Perkinson.”

 
          
“No,”
Jack told her. “John Michael Mercer and Felicia Nelson. Where and how did they
meet?” Ida shook her head. “Nobody knows. We’ve bought everybody we can buy,
but our people just don’t know that story. One day he didn’t know her, one day
he did.”

           
“I need it,” Jack said. “I really
need this one, Ida.”

           
Ida came as close to looking
troubled as her bitter face could manage. “Jack, you know me,” she said. “I
don’t give up easy. The origin story just isn’t known by any third party, and
that’s it.”

           
“They gaze in each other’s eyes,”
Jack said. “There’s that moment when they know;
this
time it’s for sure. Ida, do we want to lose this to Boy
Cartwright and his Mongolians?”

           
“He won’t get it either,” Ida said,
with a curl of the lip. “Believe me.”

           
“All right,” Jack said. “All right.
Desperate measures time. Find me a best friend for hire.”

           
“Hers or his?”

           
“Doesn’t matter.”

           
“There’s a fishing boat guy we’ve
used before,” she said. “He and Mercer go deep-sea fishing together sometimes,
get drunk, play boys will be boys. We can use him if we don’t give him
attribution by name in the paper; just for backup.”

           
“That’s the guy, then,” Jack said.
“Get in touch with him, put him on standby.”

 
          
“Will
do.”

           
“I’ll write the meeting and the
romance, you have this fisherman read it to you on the phone, then we have the
tape, our ass is covered.”

 
          
“Easy
as falling off a house,” Ida said.

           
“Good.
Now
Phyllis Perkinson.”

           
“She used to work for
Trend ”

           
“I know that.”

           
“She
still
works for
Trend ”

           
Jack looked at her. Mary Kate
stopped typing and turned slowly in her chair to look at Ida, who stood silent,
a killer robot waiting for the word of command.

 
          
Softly,
Jack said, “What is she doing for
Trend
,
Ida?”

           
“I don’t know yet. But she draws the
salary.”

           
“In addition to ours? That
is
greedy.”

           
“On her Sprint bills, she makes
calls to a number in
Greenwich
Village
, in
New York
. That’s David Levin’s home number, and he’s
the special projects editor at
Trend,”

 
          
“What
are you suggesting, Ida?”

 
          
“I
think I ought to go to
New York
,” Ida said. “I think I ought to squeeze David Levin’s balls, see what
happens next. But there’s the Mercer problem.”

 
          
“No
no, forget that, I can’t get myself blindsided by Phyllis Perkinson. Follow up
on that. Do you think this is connected to the Boy leak? That is what you’re
looking for.”

 
          
“Don’t
know yet,” Ida said. “But that’s the only window so far with footprints outside
it.”

 
          
“So
follow those footprints,” Jack said. “As for the Mercer best friend, turn that
over to . . .” He considered his available team. “What about Sara Joslyn? She’s
rooming with Perkinson, is she part of it?”

 
          
“No
proof so far,” Ida said. “She and Perkinson definitely didn’t know one another
before this. Joslyn has no link I can find with
Trend
or David Levin. It’s still possible, but not likely.”

 
          
“Then
give it to her,” Jack said.

 
          
“I’ll
be a little late getting home,” Sara said, crossing the employees’ parking lot
with Phyllis and a lot of other people whose Tuesday work stint was done.

 
          
“That’s
okay,” Phyllis answered. “I’m in the mood for a real gourmet meal. I’ll stop at
the supermarket and get something frozen. Could you bring wine?”

           
“Red or white?”

 
          
“White,”
Phyllis decided. “I’m feeling fishy.”

 
          
So
that was that. They separated at their cars, Phyllis hopping into her white
Corvette in a swirl of skirt and flash of leg, Sara entering her Peugeot more
staidly, feeling tired and slow.

 
          
It
had been a strange Tuesday. In the morning she’d talked with a heavyset bad-tempered
Italian woman in Lantana who had been Felicia Nelson’s landlady last year;
before, unfortunately, the girl had met John Michael Mercer. There was no
subterfuge this time, no phony name or background. Sara had simply identified
herself as the reporter from the
Weekly
Galaxy,
the one Jack had mentioned to the woman on the phone, and the woman
had demanded five hundred dollars. Sara’s budget was two hundred, which she’d
fully expected to spend, but the woman was
so
bad-tempered that Sara haggled more fiercely than she’d ever done in her life
before, and forced the woman all the way down to one-fifty.
Then
they talked, and as far as Sara was
concerned, even at one-fifty the woman had been overpaid. No scandal, no juice,
no clues to the Mercer connection, nothing. Still, it was further confirmation
of the good girl they were all getting to know, and it was solidly down on
tape, and she had saved the
Galaxy
fifty bucks, so everybody should be reasonably happy.

 
          
Tuesday
afternoon was the telephone call from the best friend. Ida had explained that
situation to Sara this morning, before leaving for
New York
on some mystery mission of her own, so when
the fellow calling himself Rusty Scanlan phoned at
two o’clock
Sara knew she was just supposed to grunt
and say yes at the appropriate points. Rusty Scanlan began by saying, “You want
to know how my buddy Johnny Mercer and that real nice girl, Felicia, met, is
that right?”

 
          
“That’s
right,” Sara said.

 
          
“Well,
I’ll tell you,” he said, and did, in a slow and stumbling monotone, while Sara
sat and listened and occasionally said, “Uh huh. I see. Right.” There was no
point even taking notes, since the whole reason for the phone call was to have
the story on tape, verifiable for the fact checkers, and defense evidence
against any attorneys who might come along in the future.

 
          
After
the monologue from the best friend, there had been a miscellaneous series of
calls to make, all having to do with Felicia Nelson’s background, all dull
stuff—the high school in Whittier, California, that sort of thing—in the middle
of which she’d taken time to look in the local telephone directories, where
she’d found a James Taggart listed, and copied down his address. That former
guard here at the
Galaxy
was of
interest to Sara, more so than the current principal at Whittier High. Why had
the man quit so abruptly, the same day Sara had told him about the murder? Why
hadn’t he passed the report on to the police?

 
          
Was
he the murderer himself? Then why had he left the body there to be found, only
to become panicked when the discovery was made? And if he wasn’t the murderer,
why had he just happened to quit his job with no advance notice on the same day
Sara told him about finding the body?

           
So that’s where she was going now,
on her way home, to beard James Taggart in his den, which turned out to be a
small house in a dusty poor neighborhood, rather reminiscent of Jack Inger-
soll’s house and neighborhood, but in fact miles away. There was no one in
sight when Sara parked the Peugeot and stepped out to the late afternoon’s
sodden heat.

 
          
At
5:30
p.m.
in late July, the sun was still halfway up
the western sky, glittering on the deadlooking venetian-blinded windows of the
Taggart house. Sara could hear the doorbell echo inside the house, but no one
came to answer. The sagging floor of the little porch had been painted
deck-gray years and years ago, and was now worn and flaky; Sara crossed it to
peer in at the windows, but the blinds were closed tight, leaving no gap at all
to look through.