ER - A Murder Too Personal (17 page)

The smile left her face. “That’s like
technically correct, if you must know.” She stared into the glass
of amber liquid she cupped in both hands. “But, in my defense, I
only have sex with people I like.”

I could buy that. “Tell me something,” I
said. “Did you have a hard time convincing Alicia to do whatever it
was you did?”

She took a large swallow of scotch. “Not
really. I think she was like primed for it. I mean, she was
surprised when I first suggested it, but she wasn’t angry or
disgusted or anything like that. I think she was secretly
flattered. It didn’t take long to convince her to do it.”

“How long?”

She gulped down the rest of her drink and
quickly poured herself another glassful. She pursed her lips and
said, teasingly, “Is this an official detective investigation or
are you just curious?”

“How long?”

“Less than a week,” she said softly.

She kept rotating the glass in her hands so
the ice cubes clinked. The glass was cut crystal with an intricate
pattern that caught the light and gave off rainbow colors as it
turned.

“What did you tell her to make her do
it?”

Her eyes flashed. “I didn’t make her do it,
buddy boy. She said she wanted to. She said she’d had it up to here
with men. That they’d sold her like a bill of goods—and that
included you.”

She pointed her glass at me for emphasis. “It
was easy to get her into bed. I told her she’d understand her own
sexuality better after she’d made love with a woman.”

Call me old-fashioned, but I had a hard time
believing she was actually telling me all this. “I should have
figured out you were bisexual.”

“Bisexual, ha,” she laughed. “I’m
trisexual—I’ll try anything.”

I whacked her with the back of my hand. She
wasn’t expecting that and it really shook her. She drew back and
put her hand on her cheek. For the first time since I’d met her,
she didn’t know what to say. She started to cry softly.

“You bastard,” she whispered. The tears ran
down her cheeks.

Then, wordlessly, she made her way into my
arms. And we had sex, her way. But it wasn’t really sex. It was
more like warfare. Sudden, brutal, uncoordinated. Two armies of the
night, struggling on a dark battlefield. Until both armies were
battered, beaten and exhausted.

The eighth hole at Birchwood was a dogleg
left par four with a little stream that served as a hazard. It was
a good day for golf—cool and clear. And the course wasn’t crowded
because it was a Tuesday.

I parked the BMW on a deserted side road and
crossed the seventh fairway and a wooded area that bordered the
eighth fairway.

Jergens and his two overweight buddies
couldn’t see me standing in the shadows behind the treeline. Aside
from the fact that the bodyguards had been drinking from brown
paper bags, their eyesight didn’t seem to be particularly keen and
they had no reason to be on the lookout for someone like me.

The men were getting ready to tee off,
standing next to their carts practicing their swings. One of the
men was punching the keys on a cell phone.

I started out of the woods and walked slowly
up to them. The guy on the phone was calling Domino’s Pizza and
ordering a pie to be delivered to them at the ninth hole. He was in
the process of asking the others what kind of toppings they
wanted.

They glanced over at me as I strolled up to
them. You don’t often see a guy in a business suit on a golf
course.

“Jesus, it looks like the secret service,”
the bigger clown said. He could have been a junior league sumo
wrestler, only he had a close-cut beard and an earring with a
dangling crucifix.

I took off my sunglasses. “Jergens,” I said.
“You’ll be happy to see me. My name is Rogan.”

He squinted at me. “You’re a persistent son
of a bitch.” There was a notable lack of warmth in his voice.

“That’s what endears me to people.”

Jergens exchanged wary glances with his
bodyguards. It was obvious they didn’t know what to make of me.

“This is a private club,” Jergens said.

“That’s OK. I’m a private citizen.”

The smaller guy pulled out what looked like a
one iron to my unpracticed eye. He had a plug ugly face with a head
that looked like it had been squeezed in a vice, front to back. His
neck was thicker than his head. “Want me to get rid of him?” he
asked Jergens.

Jergens started to nod, then held up his
hand. “What the hell do you want from me, Rogan?”

He was a well-built man in his mid-forties,
with a square jaw and longish light brown hair. His face was
creased with self-satisfaction. His eyes were dark and narrow, with
a nasty glint. He was wearing a pink Polo shirt and khaki slacks.
And his swing was strong and sure.

“I want to know why you killed Alicia.”

That wasn’t what he expected to hear. He was
the kind of man to whom people seldom spoke frankly. When you
control a massive portfolio, people are invariably polite to you.
He jerked his head in my direction.

“Kick the shit out of him,” he said without
any emotion.

One iron stepped back and took a quick swing
that caught me on my bad side. The pain was incredible. My legs
felt like overcooked spaghetti. I went down faster than a
two-year-old on an ice-slick.

“That’s about the only thing you could hit
with a one iron, turkey,” I said, looking up at his inseam.

Evidently he didn’t like my evaluation of his
golf proficiency. “Fuck you, scumbag,” he said as he brought the
club down on my head.

I saw stars. Purple and black and yellow,
like a kaleidoscope.

The junior sumo rocked back and let go a kick
that caught me in the chest and knocked the wind out of me. This
was turning out to be not much fun. If I were younger, faster and
had better luck, I could be kicking the shit out of them right now.
I didn’t think I could take it much longer without passing out. As
it was, they were pummeling me without mercy, and I was just lying
there trying to think of something witty to say.

The big guy caught me with a one-two kick to
the head that left me dazed. I started to see things double and
triple.

Then I blacked out.

***

Laura looked like an angel from one of those
old Audrey Hepburn movies. She was wearing a white silk scarf over
a white dress and her hair was drawn straight back. A preview of
heaven or at least what it was going to look like after the
environmentalists got around to cleaning it up.

She was leaning over me and whispering my
name. I tried to sit up, and managed on the third try. I was in my
own bed.

“Ed,” she said. “What happened to you?”

Then I remembered. “I forgot to duck when the
guy yelled fore.”

She attempted a smile, but the attempt wasn’t
very successful. She got up and went into the kitchen and came back
with a glass of ice water. It tasted better than Moet &
Chandon. Nothing tasted as good as New York City water when you
were thirsty.

“I think we have a good line on Jergens,” I
said. “There’s a real possibility he killed Alicia, or had her
killed.”

She put her hand on my shoulder. “You don’t
have to talk now. You can tell me about it later, after you feel
better.”

“I never felt better. I just look like
hell.”

She gave me a dubious stare.

“The problem is that it’s tough to get to
Jergens,” I said. “You know who he is?”

“He’s in real estate, isn’t he?”

“He’s one of the biggest developers in the
country. All the banks come to him, begging him to take their
dough. They shovel it out the door at him.”

She looked puzzled. “But why would someone
like that want to kill Alicia?”

“She had something on him. She might even
have been blackmailing him.”

“Alicia would never do that,” she said with a
shake of her head.

How could I explain the dirty facts of life
to this innocent? “The problem, sweetheart, was that she got
herself in too deep. Alicia was tough, but she was playing with the
big boys and they had a different rulebook.”

She gripped my hand tightly. “But what are
you going to do? I’m worried about you. Look what they did. They
might kill you too.”

I shook my head. “They haven’t got a prayer.
I’ll just break some more of their golf clubs with my head.”

She laughed. It was a sweet laugh, warm and
trusting. “How will you find out?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “Jergens is
tougher to get to than the crown jewels. He lives on the top floor
of the Plaza and he has a security set-up Willie Sutton couldn’t
get through. The windows are soundproofed and sealed with sheets of
opaque plastic. Short of landing a helo on the roof, there’s no way
to get to him. He always has a couple of bodyguards with him. And
he hasn’t been returning my phone calls.”

She smiled. I reached over and kissed her on
the cheek. “I may look like hell but I feel like hell warmed over.
Let me get some shuteye.” I lay back down in bed. “Help yourself to
some beer.”

She wrinkled up her nose. “I don’t like
beer.”

“Good,” I said.

***

Tanner called me that night while I was
watching the news. “Nobody on the street knows what the hell
happened to Wheelock. He vanished clean as a whistle, old buddy.
It’s like he de-materialized.”

“What about that guy Murdoch used to work
with Wheelock at Merrill?”

“Yeah, I thought of him. Only problem is he
moved to Vegas.”

“They have phones out there?” I asked.

Tanner chuckled. “Guess they must. I’ll see
if anyone has his number. I’ll get back to you.”

He hung up.

I managed to get to the bathroom. I did look
like hell warmed over. And my suit, or what was left of it, didn’t
look so great either. I took the hottest shower I could and stood
there letting the scalding water run over my aches and pains long
after I’d finished washing, wondering why I wanted it to be
Wheelock and not anyone else.

The hallway was long and hushed, like a
cathedral. The wallpaper was understated and expensive and the
carpeting was thick underfoot. There were maybe thirty rooms behind
heavy wood doors opening onto the corridor. The muted sounds of a
TV talk show filtered out from behind one of the doors. It was
mid-afternoon and my guess was that most of the rooms were
empty.

The hallway ended in a right angle. I edged
along the wall, crouched down and stuck my head out a little.

Thirty feet from me was a man sitting in a
folding metal chair, reading some kind of comic book. From where I
was, it looked like the X-Men. If he’d looked up, he would have
seen me in the right-angle mirror over my head. At his feet were a
can of Coke, a bag of popcorn and a walkie-talkie. I could smell
the popcorn. Behind him was the door that would get me in to see
Jergens.

I stood up, loosened my tie, opened my collar
button, mussed my hair and put on the goofiest grin I could manage.
Then I turned the corner and staggered toward the guy.

“Yo, buddy,” I boomed. “Where’s the can? Ah
gotta piss or ah’m gonna bust a kidney.”

He looked up at me with his jaw wide open and
dropped the comic book. “There ain’t no bathroom here, asshole. Go
down to the lobby.”

He was as big as me and a little heavier, but
his muscles had turned to flab a long time ago. He rose and stood
his ground.

“Ah cain’t go to the lobby. Ah got no time.
Ah got to piss right now.” I staggered once again.

He started to come toward me, completely
unaware of what was happening.

I turned sideways, unzipped my fly and put
the palm of my left hand on that lovely wallpaper.

When he saw what I was doing, he roared, “Oh
no, you can’t piss here, asshole.”

He clamped his beefy hand on my shoulder. He
was off-balance. Dumb and off-balance.

I leaned forward and brought my right elbow
back sharply into his solar plexus. He let out a deep sigh and
tried to inhale but he couldn’t draw the air into his lungs. His
arms were flapping like useless chicken wings. His face became red
and puffy.

I took half a second to zip my fly back up.
You never knew who you would meet, and I always liked to make a
good first impression. Then I gave him a one-two to the right and
left temples. A final rabbit punch to the back of the neck was
enough to put him down.

I pulled off my jacket and tossed it over the
security camera and hoped no one had seen our little charade. They
could always play the tape later at their leisure and get a big
chuckle out of it.

I took some duct tape out of my pocket and
tied his hands and feet together behind his back, then sealed his
mouth.

He was carrying a Smith & Wesson .38 and
he had a set of handcuffs looped through the belt of his brown
polyester pants. I rolled him over and went through his pockets.
There was nothing worthwhile.

The door was heavy-duty steel with two Medeco
locks. And this turkey didn’t have the keys.

I searched him again even though I knew it
wouldn’t do any good. “Christ,” I said under my breath.

There was no way I could open this
sanctorum.

I kicked the goddam door a couple of times,
then picked up the walkie-talkie.

I pushed transmit and said, “Open the
door.”

Static filled the air. “That you, Junior?” it
squawked. “We can’t see nothing. What the fuck is going on?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” I said. “Open the door.”

Static again. “You gotta use the password, I
told you a dozen times.”

“Open the fucking door,” I muttered through
cupped hands.

“The password, Junior.”

“You mudda wears combat boots.”

“That ain’t the password, Junior. You gotta
learn it, I told you a hundred times.”