Frank De Felitta - Audrey Rose

Only after Bill took a healthy sip of his frosty martini did he ask to see the letter.

Janice fumbled around in her purse, finally found it, and passed it across to him with a shaking hand. Obviously, Bill didn’t have her concern about fingerprints, for he extracted the small printed sheet with a total disregard for the possible evidence it might contain.

Bill’s eyes narrowed to slits as he strained to read the tiny print on the tissue-thin paper. His lips slowly mouthed the words but were submerged by the wall of chatter surrounding them:

Hoover, Elliot Suggins (hoo’ver), corp. exec; b. Pitts., Jan. 26, 1928; s. John Roberts and Ella Marie (Villatte); student Case Institute Technology, 1945–49, Dr. Engring (honorary), 1955; married Sylvia Flora, May 5, 1957; children, Audrey Rose. Asst. to v.p. in charge raw materials Susquehana Steel Corp., Jan.–Sept. 1959; v.p. in charge raw materials Great Lakes Steel Co. of Penna. 1960–62. Writer, lecturer on personnel administrn. and human relations. Trustee, mem. exec. com. Pitts. Community Chest. Health Fund Greater Pitts. Silver Beaver, Silver Antelope, Silver Buffalo Awards Boy Scouts Am. Member N.A.M. Clubs: HooHoo, Rotary, Harrison Country and Golf. Mem. Am. Iron and Steel Inst. Zeta Psi. Mason (33, Shriner, Jester) Home: 1035 Wellington Dr., Pitts. 29. Office: 1 William Penn Pl., Pitts. 30.

Janice was astonished to see Bill’s smile grow as he slowly read through the short biography. She had found nothing funny in any of it.

“Well”—Bill chuckled—“you gotta admit he’s an all-American boy.”

“Why did he send that to us?” Janice asked measuredly, trying not to slur her words. “What does it mean?”

“Damned if I know.” Bill shrugged. “He’s dealing, Janice.”

“Take it to the police. Show it to them.”

“Is it enough? I mean, after all, what does it tell us? A couple of facts about his life, his work, his affiliations.… It says nothing about his motives, his intentions.” Bill picked up the thin slip of paper and studied it intently. “It may not even be him. Maybe he just clipped any old bio out of Who’s Who to test us. See what our reaction would be.”

“Then you propose to do nothing?” Janice was conscious of a shrill note in her voice.

“What can we do?” Bill argued. “Right now the moves are all his. Until he does something that’s overt or threatening, we have nothing to go to the police with. They wouldn’t even consider this an act of mischief,” Bill concluded, placing the slip of paper back into the envelope and pocketing it.

“I only hope,” Janice stated in a soft, quavering voice, “that when he does decide to make his move, you don’t live to regret it.”

Her words scored. The firm, confident cut of Bill’s rugged features slowly collapsed, fragmenting into small, vulnerable shapes of helplessness and despair. His eyes beheld her through a veil of hurt. Janice despised herself for having spoken.

Their meal arrived, and they ate in silence through the entrée, a veal marsala accompanied by a Bibb lettuce and arugula salad. Both finished all the food on their plates and even sponged up the delicious sauce with pieces of crusty bread, their anxieties failing to disturb their appetites.

“I’m sorry, Bill,” Janice said after the waiter had cleared the table. “You’re probably right. At this point, the police wouldn’t know what to make of all this, no more than we do.”

Bill reached across the table and took her hand in his. Their eyes embraced with compassion and understanding, reaffirming mutual trust and togetherness.

“Let me think on it,” Bill said. “There may be a way to force the issue.”

It was two thirty-one when Bill finally found a cab and deposited Janice into it. Even in the slush and misery of the traffic-clogged hour, there was still plenty of time to make the eight blocks to the Ethical Culture School before the three o’clock bell sounded.

Bill’s storm boots sucked noisily into wet, grimy deposits, as he trudged the several blocks back to his office, his mind fully concentrated on devising formulas and elaborating plans of action to force Sideburns’ hand.

Janice was right, he decided. Who could predict what his first real move might be? If he turned out to be a lunatic, and if Janice or Ivy were to fall into his clutches—Bill quickly maneuvered his thoughts away from such a horrible prospect and shifted back to ways and means of provoking a confrontation. By the time he reached his office building Bill was resolved that the very next encounter with Hoover would be the moment of truth for them both. He was finished pussyfooting around. Game time was over.

Ted Nathan was standing in the elevator when Bill entered. As the car whizzed up to the thirty-eighth floor, Bill turned to him and asked, “Do we keep editions of Who’s Who, Ted?”

“Certainly,” Ted replied. “We got ’em going back to sixty-nine.”

Bill accompanied Ted back to his office and went through all three editions of the big red books. He found no Hoover, Elliot Suggins in any of them. This puzzled Bill. He had been certain that the clipping was pulled from a Who’s Who. He compared the typeface and printing format of the clipping with those in the book and found them identical. Jotting down the publisher’s name and address—The A. N. Marquis Company, 210 East Ohio Street, Chicago, Illinois 60611—Bill returned to his own office and asked Darlene, his secretary, to put in a call to them.

“Yes.” Mrs. Ammons’ voice returned on the other end of the line after a hold of nearly ten minutes. “Hoover, Elliot Suggins is listed in our 1960-61, 1962-63, and 1964-65 editions. He was dropped after the 1966-67 edition.”

“Can you tell me why, Mrs. Ammons?”

“Well, I suppose because he was deceased.”

Bill thought about this a moment, then asked, “How do you generally learn about a person’s death, Mrs. Ammons?”

“We either read about it or we’re informed by the family.”

“I see.”

“Sometimes we know when our mailings to biographees are returned to us unopened and with no forwarding address indicated.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Ammons. You’ve been very helpful.”

Bill slowly cradled the phone and began to probe the hypnotic patterns of the Motherwell across his desk.

Accepting the premise that Elliot Suggins Hoover was alive and that he and Sideburns were one and the same person, why then had he chosen to return the correspondence from Who’s Who unopened and with no forwarding address?

Bill made two more long-distance calls.

One to the main office of the National Chapter of the Shriners, in Cleveland; the other to the Iron & Steel Institute, in Pittsburgh. Both corroborated the information he had got from Mrs. Ammons. The Shriners still had him listed in their inactive roster, although they presumed him dead since they had not heard from him in seven years. The Iron & Steel Institute had revoked his membership in 1968 after a one-year lapse in his dues payments.

Well, Bill thought, at least one thing was becoming clear.

Sometime around 1967, something happened to cause Elliot Suggins Hoover to wish to disappear from the face of the earth.

The noise was appalling. A bedlam of car horns and obscenities battered through Janice’s wavering consciousness, pulling, tugging, wrenching her back to wakefulness. Against her will. She would have preferred the silent, restful nothingness to the tough, blasting cadences pressing in on her from all directions.

She was sitting on the curb in a puddle of wet slush, where the policeman had placed her after the accident, leaning against a litter bin with the legend “Use Me Please” hovering slightly above and to the right of her line of vision. A bevy of faces drifted in and out of focus around her, sympathetic, solicitous, rapt with interest and excitement. Beyond them, the indistinct figures of two men hurling foulnesses at each other strained to penetrate the barrier of blue-coated policemen separating them.