Allegra was conflicted at the sound of those words. She was proud to think: Yeah, recently it has come to light because I’m the one who dragged it into the light. But at the same time, she was annoyed: Don’t suppose I’ll be getting much credit for that, here or anyplace else. Perhaps I’ve been a little too free with sharing my information around the newsroom.
Pilcher shifted uneasily in his chair. Affecting a glassy-eyed gaze into the distance, he said, “Well…the simple fact is, those boys who killed themselves, and their buddy, the one who said those outrageous lies about me in a house of God…they were all very troubled boys. I was very concerned about them.” Pilcher choked up as he continued. “My only regret is that I didn’t have the wisdom back then to take them off flying status before that fateful mission.”
If he was faking the emotion, he was doing one hell of a job selling it.
Allegra was furious and wide-eyed with disbelief. Milk and cereal dribbled down her chin as she shrieked at the television, “That’s not what I heard, you lying sack of shit! They might as will hand YOU the Oscar now.”
She grabbed her notebook, madly flipping pages until she found where she had recorded Joe Gelardi’s unlisted home telephone number, a product of Charlie’s diligent research. She dialed the operator. “I’m calling long distance,” she said into the phone. “Brookline, Massachusetts…”
Chapter Fifty-Four
Triumphant and cocky from his Meet The Press performance, Leonard Pilcher sauntered into his father’s office. “I laid it on pretty thick for those TV news clowns, don’t you think, Pop?”
Max rose from his desk and stepped toward his son. Leonard smiled, expecting a warm handshake, maybe a proud embrace. Instead, the old man punched him squarely in the mouth. The younger Pilcher staggered backwards, a look of shock on his face. There was a trickle of blood down his chin, but Leonard was not combative. He began to cry.
His voice quavering, Leonard asked, “What did you do that for?”
The elder Pilcher rubbed his punching hand, stoically handling the pain. “You lied to me, Lenny.” With a mocking tone, he continued, “Never saw the son of a bitch in my life, you said.” The mocking tone vanished. It was time to berate. “Now you go and tell the whole world that fucking lunatic Moscone was in your crew! You pissed right in my face!”
Leonard whined like a child. “It doesn’t matter anymore! It never did! I’m going to win this thing!”
Max looked skeptically at his son. In measured tones, he said, “Do you understand what I’m trying to achieve here…for the both of us?”
Leonard did not answer. He just sulked.
“DO YOU?” his father roared.
The younger Pilcher nodded sullenly.
“I hope so, Lenny, because winning or not, I’ll have you beaten to within an inch of your fool life if you ever lie to me again.”
Leonard mustered up some defiance. “I’m glad Mom’s not alive to hear you talk to me like this.”
The elder Pilcher found that amusing. “Son, your mother was the most vicious creature I ever knew. She would have snuffed out your sorry life a long time ago…and not lost a minute’s sleep over it.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
Viewed through the glass doors of the phone booth, Allegra Wise was obviously fired-up. She seemed to be shouting into the mouthpiece, although none of her words penetrated the thick glass to the bustling lobby of Boston’s Logan Airport. The throngs passing by paid her no attention. She was nothing special, just another anonymous traveler acting out her life.
One person was watching her intently, though. In a nearby phone booth, the Hard-Boiled Man, who Tad Matthews dispatched to follow her on that cold night in Nashua, had his eyes glued to Allegra. He was in the middle of a phone call, too.
“Yeah, that’s right,” the Hard-Boiled Man said into the phone. “That skirt reporter had a sit-down with Gelardi…Right, that’s him. The college teacher.”
An impatient traveler paced outside the booths, waiting for one to be free. He had already tapped on a few of the closed glass doors, wordlessly beseeching the callers within to hurry up! while frantically checking his wristwatch. He came to the Hard-Boiled Man’s booth. In response to his pantomimed plea, he received a raised middle finger and a badge pressed against the glass. The badge read Detective, Boston PD. The impatient traveler scurried off. His call could wait; his flight would not.
Allegra was pitching her story to the producer with everything she had. “Listen, Sid! Gelardi finally gave me some good dirt! He said they caught Pilcher consorting with Germans in Sweden! Linker accused him of being a traitor! To his face!” She paused and listened. What the producer was saying puzzled her.
“Oh, come on, boss! Linker! You remember…the Jewish kid who might have gotten murdered? And now I find out Pilcher made lots of anti-Semitic remarks.” These new details were not getting the enthusiastic reception she had hoped for—but she kept pushing. “Well, no…he still won’t say Linker’s death wasn’t a suicide. But couple everything else with Moscone’s story…”
A look of horror crossed her face. “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, MOSCONE DOESN’T COUNT? WE REPORTED IT, DIDN’T WE?” The producer’s response did nothing to calm her. “HE’S NOT INSANE, SID! I’M SURE HE’S TELLING IT STRAIGHT!”
She slumped against the booth’s wall as she listened. Dejection began to set in, making her next words a plea. “Look, boss, I’m pretty sure Gelardi’s still holding back…”
But her argument was making no headway. “Okay, okay,” she said. “I hear you. I still need verification on the murder angle.”
Allegra slammed the receiver onto its hook. She tried to compose herself but not before kicking the wall of the booth a few times. Finally, she calmed down, took a deep breath, and mumbled to no one in particular, “Verification…from God only knows where.” In a second, she was out of the booth and striding across the lobby.
Tracking her progress, the Hard-Boiled Man briskly snapped to his feet and said into the phone, “Gotta go. She’s on the move.” He listened to the voice on the line for a brief moment more, then said, “Sure. I know what to do.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
Joe Gelardi felt quite out of his element in this posh New York City restaurant. This was obviously a place where high-powered people decked out in fine clothes did their business. The food was ridiculously expensive, with portions so small they seemed like mere punctuation on the fine china. Though dressed in a suit and tie like all the other men in the room, Joe felt his well-worn outfit clearly labeled him as the typical shabby professor. Thank God I didn’t wear the jacket with the elbow patches, he thought as he picked at his little cube of broiled halibut.
The young, sharply dressed IBM personnel executive sitting across the table seemed quite at home as he attacked his microscopic serving of coq au vin. Joe was sure he had seen him slip the maitre d’ a $20 bill to secure this window table. Joe wondered, Do mathematicians get an expense account like that at IBM? He strongly suspected they did not. And cocktails with lunch! Are these people working or not?
The IBM man pushed his plate aside. It was time to get down to business. “I can’t tell you how pleased we are you’ll be joining the company, Doctor Gelardi.” He pulled a fresh copy of the employment offer from his leather portfolio and slid it across the table to Joe.
Joe signed it quickly. “I’m a bit embarrassed about what happened to the original letter.” He capped it with a white lie. “Kids! What can I say?” Immediately, he felt deeply ashamed. It was his fault coffee spilled all over the original document. Indicting his innocent daughter to save face with this stranger was nothing short of cowardly. Maybe I should have blamed Pilcher instead.
The IBM man smiled. “I know what you mean. I have two of my own. Quite a bit younger than your daughter, though.”
Joe took one last, lingering look at the document before handing it back. He expected to feel some degree of regret, perhaps even melancholia, to go along with this first ste
p of a major life change. But there was none. At least not yet. He actually felt light-hearted and sure he was doing the right thing.
“So, Doctor Gelardi, we’ll plan on you starting in three months?”
“Yes, absolutely. That should give me ample time to wrap things up in Cambridge.”
“Excellent. I’ll have legal draw up the contract for your signature. It should be in your hands in a few weeks. Welcome aboard, Joe…May I call you Joe, Doctor Gelardi?”
“Of course,” he replied, not knowing or caring in the least what corporate protocol dictated at this moment. He was simply relieved and content to savor the heady exultation that this bridge was finally being crossed.
Outside the restaurant, as Joe and the IBM man shook hands in farewell, their eyes fell on PILCHER FOR PRESIDENT campaign posters plastering a wall across the street. With bubbly enthusiasm, the IBM man said, “You know, Joe, the company is very high on Congressman Pilcher. We think he’ll make one hell of a president. Don’t you?”
Joe’s stomach lurched; he felt as if the wind had been knocked out of him. The irony that his first step into the corporate world would involve endorsing a murderer had struck him a sharp blow. Fighting the urge to vomit right there on the street, he forced a shaky smile and replied, “I’m sure he will.”
“Shall we share a cab?” the IBM man asked.
“No, thanks. I need to take care of a few things first.”
When he finally regained a grip on himself, Joe Gelardi had no idea how many blocks he had aimlessly walked across Manhattan. Thirty-five minutes had elapsed, though, since he left the IBM man outside the restaurant. The train would not get him back to Boston before nightfall; he needed to check his messages at MIT. Some matters, he was sure, would need his immediate attention. Despite the leave of absence, his responsibilities to his students would not be finished until a resignation was tendered and took effect at the end of the semester.
The math department secretary thought nothing was odd when she first answered Professor Gelardi’s call. “And you have one other message,” she said. “From a colleague at NYU.”
The operator broke in. “Please deposit fifty cents for five more minutes.”
Joe fumbled for the change as the secretary’s confused voice crackled in his ear. “Is this long distance? Where are you, anyway, Doctor Gelardi?”
“Oh, I’m just out doing some research,” he replied. He could tell she was not convinced. The harder he tried not to sound evasive, the more evasive he sounded. His only hope was to change the topic. “You were saying I had a call from someone at NYU?” he asked.
He could hear her shuffling message slips. “Oh, here it is. A Doctor MacLeish called. Pola Nilsson-MacLeish.”
The receiver dropped from Joe’s hand and swung like a pendulum at the end of its cord. He was oblivious to the secretary’s muted voice squawking from the earpiece, “Doctor Gelardi, are you there? Hello? Hello?”
Through the ambient noise of the telephone line, the secretary thought she could make out a few mumbled words, words like Why now? and Can’t be!
Poor Professor Gelardi! He must really be losing his mind, the secretary thought.
She was just about to hang up when Joe returned to the line. But his voice was very different. She had never heard him quite like this. He sounded positively anxious.
“Okay, Give me the number for Doctor MacLeish,” he said, his voice shaking. “I’m ready to copy.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Late afternoon rush hour in lower Manhattan. Joe Gelardi had already missed his train back to Boston. He suspected he would miss the later one, too. Impatient people hurried by, anxious to get to someplace else, be it home, a dinner engagement, a lover’s warm embrace—but they were nothing to Joe but multi-colored blurs.
There must have been sounds, too. Loud sounds: car horns, motors revving, the whistles of traffic cops, the roar of subways below the sidewalk grating—the rumble and whoosh that was the background music of city life. But all Joe Gelardi heard was that voice—that wonderful, lilting, accented English—of the woman for whom he had once given up his soul. The woman who was once again walking beside him.
The years had done nothing to mar Pola Nilsson-MacLeish. She was flawless in her early 40s: polished and fit, her white-blonde hair made even more striking by some strands of silvery gray now weaved through it. At the top of her field, she looked every inch the accomplished academic. Joe could not help but share the cordiality she offered. But they both treaded carefully; their tragic history could not be cast aside lightly.
“So you told that reporter nothing about David’s death?” Pola asked. She made it sound like an innocuous question, just a part of light conversation.
“That’s right,” Joe replied. “Not a word. Now, why don’t you tell me exactly what you’re doing here.” Immediately, he winced. He wished that had not come across like he was giving her the third degree.
“It’s a wee bit of a long story, Joseph. Stockholm can be so…well, bleak.”
“Yeah, I know. You banished me there, remember?” In an instant, he was berating himself. Again with the snide tone! Give her a break, for crying out loud! This can’t be easy for her, either.
She let his remark slide as if she never heard it. “So I took this visiting professor’s post at NYU for a while.”
As they crossed Washington Square, they navigated through a flock of pigeons scavenging the sidewalk. They were startled as the birds took flight en masse. She grabbed his arm for balance and did not let go.
“Really, Joseph…I’m very sorry to hear about your wife. I’m a widow myself. Four years now.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. What happened?”
Pola gripped his arm tighter. “Reginald crashed his sports car. Bloody fool fancied himself James Dean. Roddy took it very hard.”
Joe was surprised by the mention of this new name. “Roddy?” he asked.
“My son.”
“Your son? How old is he?”
“Roddy will be fifteen this July. He’s at boarding school in Switzerland.”
Joe rapidly did the math in his head. His feet stopped cold in their tracks. Pola found the startled, deer-in-the-headlights look on his face most amusing. “No, silly, he’s not yours! Blood types, you know. Rh factor problems and all that.” She paused for a moment, her smile broadening. “And we were so careful.”
“How would you know my blood type, Pola?”
She laughed out loud. “It’s on your dog tag, Joseph!”
“You kept my dog tag?”
She began to walk again, their linked arms pulling him with her. “Of course I still have it,” she replied. “Now let’s get back to why I called you.” She paused, gathering strength, waiting for the noisy city bus to pass so she would not have to shout. “It’s time, Joseph. Time to tell the world what we know about Leonard Pilcher.”
Joe dragged them to a stop again, dismayed by what she had just said. He jerked away from her angrily. They squared off right there on the sidewalk, frozen in confrontation, oblivious to the annoyed pedestrians swerving around them.
“NO! YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING, POLA! WHY NOW? HE’S RUNNING FOR GODDAMN PRESIDENT!”
“All the more reason to stop him. It’s time, Joseph…Time to do what we should have done years ago.”
A burly man in workman’s clothing passed hurriedly between them, roughly brushing against them both. “You own the fucking sidewalk, pal?” the burly man yelled as he continued briskly on his way. Joe guided Pola to the relative safety of a vestibule, out of the pedestrian traffic flow.
His next words were thick with sarcasm. “Oh, I see, Pola…It’s still your decision.” He paused, his eyes darting about, searching the city streets for wisdom as he tried to come to grips with her demand.
“Joseph, it’s the right thing to do.”
“NO! I can’t be part of this. Not now!”
Pola took a step back and eyed him curiously. “Oh, isn’t this interesting! N
ow you’re the one who thinks he has something at stake!”
“Damn right! I don’t need to lose this job before it even starts. IBM thinks Pilcher is the cat’s ass.”
Shaking her head sadly, Pola said, “You don’t belong at IBM, Joseph. You’re too brilliant to be a yes man. I’ve read your publications, you know. All of them.”
Joe was genuinely surprised to hear that.
“And Pilcher is still a murderer,” Pola continued. “No matter what anyone thinks.”
There was a tense silence between them for a few moments until a seething Joe went back on the offensive. “You’ve got some damn nerve, Pola. I did what you wanted, then you threw me out on my ass. Now, out of the blue, you want me to ruin my life for you…again!”
His words stung Pola deeply. But she was determined not to shed tears. “Joseph, I still see that boy falling…Every day for the last 16 years.”
“Join the club, lady. Join the damn club.”
She lost her battle with the tears; they began to flow down her cheeks. “And it’s my fault his killer still walks free.”
The one foot of distance that separated them in that vestibule might as well have been the distance from New York City to Malmö. Joe’s anger softened; his eyes were cast down, studying their shoes. But she knew full well he was refusing to yield.
“Fine,” she said. “If you won’t help me get Pilcher, I’ll bloody well do it myself.”
She turned and walked away with a determined stride. Joe took a step after her but stopped himself. He could not—no, he would not—muster the words that would make her turn back.
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