Twenty Plus Two

Chapter 19

It was time enough for a Major General in the Pentagon to have acquired the data Alder had requested. He put in a call to the Chevy Chase, Maryland, number and spent two minutes talking to Gladys Mattock. She sensed his urgency and did not hold him too long. The General was still at the Pentagon.

Alder got him there.

“Bingo!” boomed General Mattock, when he identified Alder. “I got the dope on Koenig. There are about a hundred and sixty Daniel Koenigs, but the old Univac machine got him first crack out of the gears — the police business did it. Minor convictions, two-three months for assault and battery, reduced from assault with a deadly weapon — thirty days for, whoa — pandering! Nice boy. Numerous arrests, no other convictions. One twenty-five-dollar fine, suspicion of — yeah, the same thing — pandering. Why can’t they come right out and say it? Pander. Pimp!”

“That’s a dirty word, General. Mind your language.”

“All right, wash out my mouth with soap. Great service record, this Koenig. Inducted February, 1943, Fargo, North Dakota.”

“North Dakota?”

“N.D., that’s what it says on the Univac machine and Univac machines don’t lie. From February, 1943, to August, 1943, Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Transferred to Luke Airfield in Arizona. Remained there two months. AWOL twenty days. Thirty days guardhouse, then transferred to South Carolina. It’s a wonder we won the war the way they bounced the enlisted personnel around. What difference does it make if a private in the Quartermaster Corps serves at Fort Snelling or Fort Bliss?”

“Quartermaster Corps?”

“All the way, Tom. Right through to August, 1945. He dished out socks, shirts, rifles, ammunition, soap, all through the whole blasted war. Good man, though, made the grade. Inducted as private, private first class, specialist second class, private — and in August, 1945, he rose again to private first class. Another two or three years and he could have made corporal. This Koenig boy, Tom, he isn’t by any chance the great movie—”

“Pleschette,” interrupted Alder.

“Zero. Univac couldn’t dig up any Pleschette, Auguste. I hit the machine a lick or two myself. No Pleschette. A draft-dodger. I’ll get the Army on his tail. It’s not too late to pick him up. All right, boy — even without Pleschette?”

“Yes,” said Alder, “but there’s only one thing wrong with Koenig’s service record. It’s the service record of a dead man.”

“So he kicked the gong!”

“Yes, in February, 1938, exactly five years before he was inducted.”

“Hey,” said the General, “maybe that’s why he never made corporal!”

Alder grinned. “I’ll write to my Congressman, Chuck. See if I can’t get you another star.”

He said goodbye and hung up.

The telephone rang instantly. It was Miller Hastings. “In Chicago, Alder? In person, yourself.”

“Yes, Hastings, and I need your help.”

“Shoot. Who’s the heir? Hope it’s a good one.”

“Something else this time, Miller. There’s a family named Kovacs—”

“K-o-v-a-c-s, like in Kovacs? I gotcha.”

“They lived out in the suburbs, small town, maybe the country even. My guess is the town is anywhere from twenty to forty miles from Chicago.”

“That makes it easy. Only about two hundred little telephone directories to go through.”

“The pay is good, Miller.”

“Oh, it’s always good, Alder. It’s good money, but not enough of it, that’s all. Kovacs, first name?”

“None.”

Hastings groaned. “It gets better all the time. This is going to cost you.”

“I haven’t complained, have I? All I can tell you about the family is that the father is illiterate. Probably speaks English with a heavy accent. Mother possibly speaks poorer English. She can read, but not English.”

“Father — mother, that means there are children. How many?”

“I’m not sure. Perhaps only one. She would be—” Alder hesitated. How old was Nikki? She looked no more than thirty, possibly thirty-two or three. Yet she was so beautiful, so flawless that she could even have been older — a few years would not tell on her.

“Middle thirties, I guess,” he said into the phone. “Her name is Nikki.”

“That sounds Russian.”

“Hungarian, Miller. But Hungarian may cover a wider range than you would ordinarily believe. Possibly Slavic. That’s all I can give you.”

“No even one more morsel? It’s not much, Alder.”

“I can’t help it. It’s urgent, Miller, important as hell. Put some people on it right now.”

“Will do? I send the bill to your California address?”

“You send it to Walter Collinson of Burlingame, California.”

Hastings whistled softly. “Collinson Steamship Lines. Big stuff. I’m working for him?”

“You’re working for me. All reports to me, bill to him when you’re through. I’ll give you his address later.”

Alder broke the connection and called Room Service for sandwiches and coffee.

The door buzzer whirred ten minutes later. Thinking it was the waiter with the food, he got up and opened the door. It was Linda.

“I tucked them to bed,” she said cheerfully. “At least I got rid of them. I suspect that Walter will go to his room and brood and Harris will go downstairs and get drunk and wind up with a floosie. They do have floosies in Chicago, don’t they?”

Alder grinned. “If I wasn’t a gentleman, Linda, I’d call you a floosie. Girls who come to men’s hotel rooms get bad reputations.”

“Give me a bad reputation, Tom! Then you’ve got to marry me.”

She kissed him and tried to pull him down to the couch.

“Behave yourself. I’ve ordered food and the man’s due with it any sec.”

“Food! How can you think of food? I’m lovely, I’m delectable, I might even be willing. Come to think of it, I have always been willing. With you.”

The door buzzer whirred. “Damn,” said Linda.

Alder let the waiter in. “Do you want anything, Linda? I can order for you.”

“I couldn’t eat a thing!”

But when the waiter was gone and Alder took a sandwich, she reached for a half of a chicken sandwich. She nibbled at it.

“Tell me what you really think about Nikki,” she said. “Have she and Walter had a fight?”

“I don’t believe so. On the plane she didn’t look or sound like the kind of woman who was just breaking up with her husband.”

“You got to know her pretty well in those few hours? That puzzles me as much as anything, dear. Nikki wasn’t the kind of girl who talked much. I always felt that she was holding back a great deal more than she said. She... she was, well, I hate to say it, but she was pretty much of a mystery even to me, and she opened up more with me than with anyone else that I know of.”

“How long did you know her?”

“Most of two years. I’ve been living in the Bay area.” She frowned. “I’ve a little money. That bank cashier husband of mine that you hate so much — he bought the vine-covered cottage we lived in for something like thirteen thousand. In ’45 we sold it for sixty-five thousand. He invested most of it in undeveloped property out in the desert. Palm Springs. My share of the community property — and maybe a little extra — was two hundred thousand dollars. Of course, I would have gone through that by this time except for Freddie.”

“Freddie?”

“Freddie McIlhaney. My next, after Newcombe, Number One. Freddie was in shipping. It was through him that I met the Collinsons. Freddie was very generous in his settlement.”

Alder shook his head. “You’ve done all right, haven’t you?” He added, with only partial grimness, “Maybe I can give up my little business.”

“Now the sandpaper’s back in your voice, Tom.” She brushed crumbs from her fingers, touched a napkin carefully to her lips and leaned back against the couch. She studied him as he finished his coffee.

After a moment, she said, “You’ve fallen in love with her.”

He turned. “Nikki?”

“You knew who I meant.”

“Who have we been talking about?”

“Nikki.” Her beautiful forehead creased into a frown. “I haven’t been able to put my finger on it, but ever since — well, since the other day, I’ve sensed that there is something missing. In you, darling. But you’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“There isn’t anything to tell.”

“You’ve told me absolutely nothing of yourself since — since 1943. That’s seventeen years, Tom. You haven’t been in a vacuum in all that time.”

“I was in the Pacific until late ’45.”

“That’s only two years. I... I know you had a hard time during the war. You were quite severely wounded. But it doesn’t show on you.”

“No, it doesn’t show,” he said.

“There’s still fifteen years.”

“It took a while to settle things, Linda. I drifted around a while. It was two or three years before I settled down to the heir-searching work.”

“Was there — has there been another girl, Tom? I’ve told you about Newcombe and Freddie, although I don’t think I should have. The least you can do is tell me if there is another girl?”

“There has been no one else, Linda. I’ve gone out with girls, of course. A great many. I’m not a hermit and I don’t live in a monastery.”

“You’re still being very cautious, Tom, my lad. You very carefully put in — since the war. What about during the war? Did you meet anyone during the war?”

“There was no other girl, Linda. There has never been anyone else. Not — like you.”

She got to her feet. “It wouldn’t be any good tonight, would it, Tom? I... I’ve put my foot in it somehow.” She smiled ruefully. “Maybe I should have let Harris take a poke at you. I think it would have roused you from that... that coma you’re in. Coma, as far as I’m concerned. He wanted to start a fight pretty badly. He’s — very physical. He might have licked you.”

“He might, at that,” said Alder.

She blew him a kiss and started for the door. “I’ll take you to your room,” he offered.

She opened the door. “I found it down here and I guess I can make it back without a Seeing Eye dog. Good night, Tom. Pleasant dreams, if they’re about me.”

She went out.