Gerald Davis - A Murder Too Personal

The last call she ever made to me came in just before eight-thirty that night. I was still in the office wrapping up the final details on the file I was scheduled to deliver to the bank the next morning.

Working late gave you a chance to think in the stillness. Think about the sad bastard vice-president who was sweating like a stuck pig in front of his giant plasma screen picture-in-a-picture digital sound HDTV right now, wondering when I was going to hand over the file and how much damage it contained.

What it contained was a ream of printout that would put this joker away for a significant chunk of his active sex life. The only hitch was that the bank didnt like the sound of the word embezzlement and the fact that it would besmirch their lily-white reputation.

I knew what was going to happen. It didnt matter that this guy had lifted twelve million bucks because of a minor infraction like unauthorized use of the access code. The pantywaists at the holding company would have him make some kind of token restitution and plead nolo contendere-I never did it and I promise never to do it again.

The phone gave off its soft purring sound. It was almost like an apologetic sorry-to-bother-you tap on the shoulder. I still hadnt gotten used to the new phone system. The thing kept on malfunctioning, with its goddam chips and electronic switching devices. At first I didnt know if it was a real call or another false alarm. Whatever happened to the old comforting embrace of Ma Bell?

Rogan, I said into the speakerphone.

Hello, Ed, came her husky reply.

I didnt answer for a long minute.

Hello, Alicia, I said finally. It had been a long time between drinks.

Im sorry to trouble you like this, Ed.

I knew she wasnt.

Howve you been? I asked.

Oh, fair to maudlin, I guess. It was an old joke between us. She paused. Actually, Im doing very well on the professional front. Ive gotten a lot of recognition from my peers over the last couple of years and my name is being mentioned on some of the outstanding analysts lists. But thats not why Im calling you, Ed. Im calling because Im having some personal problems.

She didnt have to tell me that. She was the kind of girl to whom the words interpersonal relationships were mutually-exclusive.

I see.

There was a long silence, as if she expected me to say more. When I didnt, she said, Ed, Id like to hire you. Id pay you whatever your going rate is. She stopped and then added quickly, It would be strictly a business transaction.

She sounded just like she used to bright and brisk and full of phony bravado.

I loosened my tie, swiveled my seat around and stared out the window at the darkening sky. You can get used to anything even the view out of the forty-eighth floor of the Pan Am building looking north up Park. At least, what they used to call the Pan Am building before the airline went deep six.

I dont do that kind of work, Alicia. My clients are corporations. I do business investigations.

I tried not to sound too harsh with her. Four years was a long time to carry a grudge.

Couldnt you just make a single exception for me for old times sake?

Dont push your luck, I thought. For old times sake was the very reason I wouldnt do it.

Instead, I said, You couldnt afford my fee. She didnt know that was a load of guano. My fee was whatever deal I could squeeze out of the unsuspecting client. And sometimes even less than that. But she bought it. Why shouldnt she? Id never lied to her before. Id always been as straight as Mother Teresa in the confessional.

My response surprised her. She hesitated.

I waited. The only sound in the office was the muted whir of the laser printer. I felt like getting up and pouring my eighty-third cup of decaf.

Oh, Ed. You wouldnt turn me down. There was a plaintive note in her voice Id never heard before.

I didnt think she could generate a response from me anymore, but I guess I was wrong. Her tone was so different from the self-assured mask she always wore.

The hell I wouldnt. I wasnt going to sing that old song again.

Oh, Ed. Ill serve you linguini with white clam sauce and a chilled bottle of Pouilly Fuisse.

She remembered.

I didnt say anything. It was becoming a conversation of long pauses. I looked out the window at the June evening and thought about another time and another existence. A time when a man and a woman took endless walks of discovery through the city.

Please, she managed finally, I need your help. There was that note again. She never would have pleaded before.

I thought about it for a while. About a nanosecond. Then I said, No, Alicia, I dont think so.

I could hear a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line. Then I couldnt hear anything. She was probably thinking about whether it was worthwhile to try to change my mind.

The laser printer finished its work and fell silent. Now there was no sound at all. It was strange to be in a city of eight million and not hear a single sound. Like someone had pressed the mute button.

Then she sighed. It was an anguished sigh and, for a moment, I almost regretted the decision.

All right, she said. Silence again. Good-bye, Ed.

She hung up.

Sure, it hurt. But I told myself it would hurt less this way.

She crowded into my thoughts a lot the next couple of days. You cant be married for five years without building up a storehouse of memories. They say you remember the good times and forget the bad. But I remembered both the good and the bad mostly the bad.

I delivered my report to the CEO of the bank the next morning at nine-thirty. Just the two of us in an amphitheater that could have held the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and had room left over for the third Roman legion plus its camp followers.

As I sat opposite him at the boardroom table, he kept shaking his bald head and flipping the pages of the printout. His face was so ashen it looked like it was covered with a layer of talcum. From time to time, he would murmur, Son of a bitch. He said it maybe seven or eight times.

I wondered how many different ways he could inflect those words. Here was a man making six point one million, including bonus, according to the proxy statement, and that was the extent of his vocabulary.

While he scanned the numbers, I thought about her. Had she changed her hair? Probably. Why did women feel this strange compulsion to change their appearance at regular intervals like clockwork? When I knew her, she wore her blond hair long and flowing, like her dresses.

She was a tall gal, six-one, almost as tall as me and she always held herself ramrod straight. She liked to have people stare at her. With her angular face and thin frame, she was striking. When she wore those full-length dresses that she loved, she looked like a Viking goddess here on a temporary visa from Valhalla.

I knew she was fragile but no one else did and it wasnt often that she let me see her frailty.

I glanced back at the CEO. Hed been reading the report for the better part of an hour. As he read, I looked around the board room. It was expensively but sedately furnished. The style was some indeterminate historical period between Periclean Athens and the Fall of Constantinople. The purpose was to create an atmosphere of solidity and timelessness, even though the bank was only seventy years old. The bank was medium-sized, striving mightily to enter the top ranks, so nothing was overstated. There was a Gilbert Stuart portrait of Washington on the wall. How many of these damn things did Stuart paint? Id seen them in at least a dozen corporate headquarters.

Finally he looked up at me and blinked. Neat, he said with a grim smile. I didnt know if he meant the scheme or the way I cracked it. The concept was neat. The vice-president had used the banks access code to wire odd amounts from an inventory of inactive private investment company accounts in the Cayman Islands to his accounts in Curacao, Panama and the Bahamas. He kept shifting the funds from account to account. Then, before an audit, hed wire funds back into the PIC accounts to make them whole. The only problem was that he never took a vacation. He never even took a piss. Then one day, because of the federal regulations that no one ever pays attention to, the bank made him take a vacation. A two week vacation that the regs required. Someone noticed a discrepancy. That was the start of his slide down that slippery slope. That was where I came in. My job was to make sure he didnt find a foothold.