Read Online ER - A Murder Too Personal by Gerald J Davis - Free Book Online Page B

grunted. Nothing like being nailed by a
dead ex-wife.
    “And she said you were good-looking.”
    I examined her face. “Was she right?”
    She giggled. “I’ll never tell.” She took a
sip, then a long swallow and finished her drink. Then she looked
hard into my eyes. “I always wondered if I’d ever meet you. From
the way Alicia spoke…”
    She didn’t finish the sentence. The girl was
a curious amalgam of vulnerability and self-assurance.
    I didn’t say anything. She got up and went
into another room and came back with a small filigree glass and
gold case. She put the case and a small mirror on the cocktail
table and looked up at me. Her eyes glinted.
    “Want a line?” she asked.
    I shook my head and held up my glass. “My
downfall. But you go ahead into never-never land.”
    Her gaze took my measure. She seemed
undecided.
    “What else do you do?” I asked.
    “Whatever my shrink says I can do,” she said
with a tight smile, “and whatever he says I can’t do.”
    She made up her mind. Abruptly she reached
over, opened a drawer in the table and put the coke away. “Maybe I
can convince you later, you know, when you’re more mellow.”
    “Why do you go to a psychiatrist?”
    “Why not? Who do you know that doesn’t go to
a psychiatrist?”
    “Did Alicia know you went to one?”
    “Know?” she chuckled. “Hell, I sent her to my
lovely, little sexy shrink.”
    I shook my head. “Alicia never would’ve gone
to a shrink when I knew her. She despised them. Said they were
worse than useless.”
    “Well, then either you were wrong or she
changed her mind, because she became like a devout analysand. You
know, the three-times-a-week kind.”
    “And why did she go to your shrink?”
    Rachel spread her hands. “Because either the
world was fucked-up or she was fucked-up and she wanted to know
which one it was.”
    “How was Alicia fucked-up?”
    “I don’t know. I’m not sure she was. You’ll
have to ask our cute little Dr. Pasternak.”
    Yes. In due course I would do that.

CHAPTER XIII
     
     
    It was four-thirty Monday afternoon, but not
too late to get Stallings if he was still in his office. I’d called
his office before I headed down to Wall Street and given a name I
knew he’d recognize. His secretary told me he was in a meeting that
would probably run past six.
    His office building was on William Street in
one of those Art Deco structures that had been renovated when the
real estate boys convinced themselves that Art Deco wasn’t such a
bad style after all. The building had turquoise and aqua highlights
to show it was trendy again.
    I planted myself across the street next to a
construction site. It had just begun to rain, so I stepped back
under an overhang and pulled up my raincoat collar. There was a
clear view of the entrance to his building. I opened a copy of the
Journal and paged through it, keeping an eye on the people exiting.
When the downpour started, the street emptied quickly. The sky was
slate gray and it didn’t give promise of clearing anytime soon.
    It took forty-five minutes. Stallings came
out of the building with another man. They talked for a minute,
then split up. Stallings opened his umbrella and headed toward Wall
Street and then turned onto Broadway. He went down the stairs to
the uptown Lex and I followed not too far behind. There were enough
people on the platform to give me cover.
    In a couple of minutes, the express pulled
in. I got into the next car where I had a clear view of Stallings
through the glass window in the door. He didn’t read anything. Just
stared straight ahead with a glazed end-of- the-day New York look.
Behind me, two bums were arguing over who was going to finish off a
bottle of John Daniels. The riders cleared a space around them to
give them room to curse each other but otherwise didn’t seem to pay
too much attention.
    When we stopped at Grand Central, Stallings
got off. He cut across the main waiting room, walking briskly, and
went