“What was her name?”
“Hilda something. Long last name. The cashier.”
“Hulda Wennersehn?”
“If you know about it, why are you asking me?”
“I don’t know about it. What happened?”
“They decided that in view of Tom’s knowing the man was retired and needed security, he had used bad judgment. They slapped his wrist by giving him a sixty-day suspension. And they busted a couple of the more recent trades and absorbed the loss in order to build the old man’s equity back to almost what he started with. That’s when Tom said the hell with it and started Development Unlimited.”
“And Miss Wennersehn now works for him.”
“So?”
“So nothing. Just a comment. How did the business community react to Pike’s problem?”
“The way these things go, at first everybody was ready to believe the worst. People pulled their accounts. They said that while he was looking good with their money, he was piling up commissions. They said he’d been lucky instead of smart. Then it swang right around the other way when he was pretty well cleared. He was out of the brokerage business, and so what he did was move his big customers right out of the market, off-the-record advice, and put them into land syndication deals. Better for him because you can build some very fancy pyramids, using equities from one as security for loans on the next, and he can cut himself in for a piece by putting the deals together. He’s moved very fast.”
“Credit good?”
“He got past that iffy place when Doc Sherman’s death fouled up some moves he was going to make. His credit has to be good.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s got bankers tied into the deals, savings and loan, contractors, accountants, realtors. Hell, if he ever screwed up, the whole city would come tumbling down.”
“Along with the new building?”
“All four and a half million worth of it. Land lease in one syndicate, construction loans and building leases in another.”
“Very quick for a very young man.”
“How old are the fellows running the big go-go funds? How old are the executives in some of the great big conglomerates? He’s quick and tough and bold, and you don’t know what his next move is going to be until it’s all sewed up.”
“Last item. How well do you know Hardahee?”
“More professionally than socially. Wint is very solid. Happens to be under the weather right now. Scheduled this morning at ten on an estate case where I represent one of the parties at interest and Stan Krantz appeared and asked for a postponement because Wint is ill and nobody else over there is up on the case. It’s pretty complex. Jesus! All this work to do and I just can’t seem to make my mind work. McGee, what are you after? What’s this all about?”
“I guess it’s about a dead nurse.”
“That mean that much to you?”
“She was very alive and it was a dingy way to die.”
“So you’re sentimental? You’re carried away because she was so sore at me she took you on? All she was, McGee, was–”
“Don’t say it.”
“You mean that, don’t you?”
“Say it then, if you’re sure you want to find out.”
He looked at me and rubbed the back of his hand across his lips. “I think I’ll take your word for it.”
“You’re mean in a curious way, Holton. Small mean. Like some kind of a dirty little kid.”
“Go to hell,” he said with no emphasis at all. He swiveled his chair. He was looking out at his little oriental garden patio as I walked out. The rain had stopped.
17
IT WAS FIVE when I got back to 109. I unlocked the door and leaned over and reached around it. No wad of paper anywhere near where it should be. I opened the door the rest of the way. The balled-up piece of stationery was five feet from the door, where it had rolled when somebody had opened the door.
It seemed a fair guess that if it had been a maid or a housekeeper, I would have found it in the wastebasket. I checked the phones first. I took the base plate off the one by the bed and found that my visitor was going first class. He’d put a Continental 0011 in there, more commonly known as a two-headed bug. It would pick up anything in the room and also over the phone and transmit it on an FM frequency. Effective maximum range probably three hundred feet. Battery good for five days or so, when fresh. It goes for around five hundred dollars. So he could be within range, listening on an FM receiver, or he could have a voice-activated tape recorder doing his listening for him. Or he could have a pickup and relay receiver-transmitter plugged into an AC outlet within range, and be reading me from a much greater distance. One thing was quite certain. The sounds of my taking the screws out of the base plate with the little screwdriver blade on the pocket knife would either have alerted him at once or would when he played the tape back.