The Longest Second

by Bill S. Ballinger

  29

  THE building on Wall Street was tall and very narrow. The lobby, with a cigar counter just inside the door, stretched along one side of the building—a marbled alley —to the elevators, two of them. On the directory board I located Wainwright’s office; it was on the eleventh floor. When an elevator arrived, I stepped into it and waited for what I expected to take place. The operator, an elderly washed-out little man, greeted me, “Mr. Wainwright! I see you’re back.”

  “Yess.” My throat was unusually stiff and I pronounced my few words with more difficulty than usual. In the enclosure of the elevator, my voice sounded extraordinarily guttural and harsh. “Yess,” I repeated.

  The old man seemed to take no notice of the quality of my speech. “You’ve been away quite a while. Have a good trip?”

  “No. Sick,” I told him.

  On the eleventh floor, I found the office at the rear of the building. I had no key, but I did have my Lock-Aid and I did not hesitate to use it. After stepping inside, I had no recollection of ever having seen the office, but as Howard Wainwright I must have spent a lot of time here in the past. Looking around curiously, I saw there were only two rooms —a secretary-reception room and a large private office. The furniture was good with a feeling both of money and restraint ... a good combination for an investment counselor.

  It did not take long for me to discover that all the important books and ledgers had been removed, as well as the business correspondence files, and I sat down behind my desk, attempting to recapture some feeling from the past, some memory. I wondered if Horstman had ever come to this office. Perhaps he had visited me many times and that was why I remembered his name. The idea became a conviction, although not a memory, and I wondered how I could get in touch with him.

  On one side of the room stood a tall mahogany bookcase, and my eyes glanced over the titles ... commercial law, money and banking, business reference books, until I reached a matched four-volume set entitled Rommel’s War in the Desert by General G. K. Henry. Leaving my chair, I walked to the bookshelf and removed the four books. Leafing through them, I found a completely detailed history of Rommel’s entire series of campaigns, together with topographical maps compiled with great detail. General Henry, I read, was head of the U.S. Army War College and this was an official Army report of the campaigns.

  There was nothing secret about the books as they were on public sale, but the presence of them in my office could only be accounted for by my interest in them. It was true that I had served in some of the campaigns myself; this might explain why I had the books.

  After a few more minutes spent in looking around the office, I left it, closing but not locking the door behind me. When the elevator reached the street level, the same operator detained me as I prepared to step out. “Just a minute, Mr. Wainwright,” he said. “I happened to think of something. There’s been an awful lot of people around looking for you. Your secretary asked me to give you this whenever you came back.” He reached a thin hand up to the mirror in the elevator and removed a plain white envelope which he handed to me.

  “Thanks.” I handed him a bill.

  On the street, I tore open the envelope and withdrew a sheet of paper. On it had been written the message, “If you get this, please call me at once. J.” After the initial was a telephone number.

  I didn’t know J., I had no recollection of her. The elevator operator had said she had been my secretary; I wanted to see her. Returning from the lower end of Manhattan back to Fourteenth Street, I made another trip to Bozell’s office. He was in. Patiently I wrote out the information I wanted him to relay over the phone. Then he dialed the number.

  “Hello,” Bozell asked, “is this Mr. Wainwright’s secretary?” There was a pause, and then he said, “No, no, I’m quite sure this is the correct number. Mr. Wainwright received your message from the elevator operator in the office building.” My former secretary seemed worried about the call.

  Motioning Bozell to hold the receiver so I could share it, I listened to her conversation. It was a soft pleasant voice, slightly accented, and I heard her say, “If Mr. Wainwright is there, let me speak to him.”

  “I’m Mr. Wainwright’s attorney,” Bozell replied, “and he can’t speak to you. He’s been in a bad accident, and it’s nearly impossible for him to talk.”

  “How do I know this isn’t a trick?” she asked.

  “Trick?” Bozell seemed puzzled. ‘I’m an attorney,” he repeated. “My name is Bozell, Frank M. Bozell, and I’m listed in the telephone book. Look me up, and call me back at the number listed. That way you’ll know.” J. evidently agreed to this, because Bozell replaced the receiver on its cradle.

  Quickly I wrote on my pad concise directions and handed them to the attorney to read. The phone rang, and it was J. calling back. Bozell relayed my instructions to her. “Mr. Wainwright will meet you at any time and place you suggest. He’ll wait for you on the street, and you can drive past in a taxi and see him for yourself. Then, if you are convinced, you can stop and talk to him.”

  The girl approved this suggestion, and agreed to my waiting on the corner of Fifty-seventh and Fifth Avenue at five o’clock that afternoon. I was to be standing by the curb in front of Tiffany’s.

  At that time of day, there is heavy traffic flowing along both Fifty-seventh Street and Fifth Avenue, and taxis travel in long lines. It would be difficult to stop or follow anyone in another cab, and J. realized it. I was thinking about this, as I waited according to our agreement, and about ten minutes past five, I felt a light hand touch my arm. Turning, I looked down into the face of a slender, swarthy-skinned girl, with great brown eyes and hair bleached to silver gilt. “Mr. Wainwright,” she said softly, her words sibilant, “it is you after all.” I nodded.

  She glanced around anxiously and said, “You must be in trouble. You have been followed, no?”

  I didn’t know; Santini might have a man on me, but I didn’t think that Amar had picked me up again. However, there was nothing to be gained by standing on the corner, so we walked down Fifty-seventh Street until we came to a large antique gallery. Entering it, we pretended to examine a cabinet filled with objets d’art.

  With my pad, I explained to her that I had been in an accident and had suffered a complete loss of memory, that I didn’t remember anything at all, not even her name. “Oh!” she exclaimed. She regarded me for a moment, then said, “My name is Juahara.”

  I urged her to tell me everything that she could ... not to bother about sequence ... just whatever came to her mind. This she did with little prompting. She had come to work one morning, and I had not appeared. After calling my apartment and receiving no answer, she began to be concerned. Because there was very little to be done around the office, she had not discovered until the afternoon that the check and bank books, ledgers, and other confidential business papers had been removed. At first she had intended to call the police, but then she had decided that I would not have wanted that.

  “Why?” I asked.

  She looked away from me. “Because of your business,” she said finally. “The police and then the government too much might discover.”

  “What?”

  “Truth, truth. Among my people is the proverb, ‘With only one eye, you are king among the blind.’” She continued with her story. That night when she left the office and returned to her one-room apartment, two men had been awaiting her —Amar and a great black man named Ghazi. “They asked me many questions to which I could give no answer,” she said and held out her right hand. I looked at her healed, scarred fingernails where they had been mashed and torn. “They threatened to kill me if I reported their visit,” she added, “and I knew their promise they would keep. So I ran away and hide.”

  Why had she risked getting back in touch with me?

  “Because,” she explained simply, “I need money. I want to go away. Far away. My hair, its color I change; I hide; I wait for you. I hope if I find you again, you will give me money.”


  One of the clerks in the store had begun to hover around us, making it difficult to continue the conversation. Outside, the five o’clock traffic rush had subsided and it was now possible to find a taxi. We took one back to the Arena Hotel. There in my room, I continued to probe into the Arabian girl’s story.

  What was she doing in the United States?

  “At the first. I came to study as a student. When I am finish, I do not wish to return to my own country. To live here, I like. I take a job for you.”

  What did she do for me? What was her job?

  “Mostly I translate and write letters for you ... to Syria, and Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.”

  What were the letters about?

  “About provisions—oils, animals, wines,” she explained. “Always quantities of such things to Mecca, to Al-Suweika market in Mecca,” her voice trailed away.

  What was wrong with that?

  “Nothing wrong with that. Merchandise goes on dhows ... always on bum or baghala through Red Sea. Many times whole cargo lost because of British gunboats.” She turned her eyes away. “Gunboats never sink dhows, but merchandise lost anyway.”

  That meant something was being smuggled. What? Drugs?

  “No drugs,” Juahara replied. “I swear by God I do not really know. It is not of my business.”

  I thought hard. Under the desert sands what was buried? What was buried that was so valuable, so precious that it would be worth smuggling? Not gold, because there was no gold there. Oil? Why smuggle it? However, I decided to ask Juahara, and she shook her head. “No oil,” she told me, rising to her feet. “Now I go.”

  I wanted to detain her. What about the provisions—the oils, wines, and animals?

  Juahara looked at me strangely. “In this country, there are many strange things: fruits which are made of glass, vegetables of wax, could not animals be made of metal?” She clutched her hands desperately, almost defiantly, and said, “Wainwrights Khawaja, many things I do not know, so I cannot tell!” She glanced down at her mutilated fingers, and continued, her voice pleading, “I have been afraid to work for a long time. I have so very little money. Perhaps your generosity will give me enough to go away?”

  I told her I would give her the money, and then asked where I had done my usual banking. She named a bank near the office on Wall Street. I asked her to return to the hotel around noon the next day for her funds. I wasn’t positive that I could cash one of the ten-thousand-dollar bills the same day, and I did not want to lower my nearly exhausted cash fund.

  She agreed to return.

  The bank presented no problem when I cashed the bill. It was the National Security & Trust, and as Howard Wainwright, I had maintained my company account there. It was still there with a modest balance. Cashing it in, I deposited eight thousand in the account, took one thousand dollars in a single bill, and the balance in twenties and fifties. While I was at the bank, I made inquiries concerning the possibility of a safe deposit box in the name of Pacific, Wainwright, and O’Hanstrom. There was no box under any of the three names.

  Juahara returned promptly at noon, the following day, and I gave her five hundred dollars. It was not through generosity, as she was prepared to believe, but I was anxious to have her out of the way. She could be dangerous in the hands of Santini, if he found her; I had run the risk of having her seen in my hotel, because I did not believe that Santini or any other detective following me would recognize her on sight. Now it was desirable that she disappear forever.

  After accepting the money, Juahara thanked me and prepared to leave. I attempted to let her know that I was sorry for the trouble her job had caused her, and I asked her again if there was anything more she could tell me.

  Her eyes, dark and black, regarded me impassively beneath her pitifully streaked hair. Behind her eyes, I thought I detected a fleeting moment of sympathy and then it was gone. She shook her head. “It is strange,” she spoke slowly, as if recalling thoughts she had long considered, “that around some men violence is carried like a cloak. It is the breath of their life, it is the music of their soul. They are indestructible, except to be destroyed by their own hands. After you had disappeared, I did not believe that you were dead, even after Amar and Ghazi, the Sudanese, to me swore that you were. The reason I did not betray you was not because you were my friend—for you were not my friend—but because, if I had betrayed you, I would have been killed. If, to those men, I had given information, so soon as my lips stopped their speaking, I would have died. As long as I denied them what they asked, there was a chance through God’s grace that I might live.”

  What was the information they wanted?

  “Where you kept your bank accounts, did you hold boxes of hidden safety?”

  That was all?

  “Not all. They asked of other things, of a woman named Rosemary Martin. And of keys, did you have keys hidden within the office. But always they would ask again of banks where you kept money.”

  Had a man named Colonel Horstman ever called on me at my office?

  Juahara was becoming impatient; perhaps recalling her torture had made her uneasy, and she was anxious to escape. She pulled her coat around her, and walked to the door. She stood there a moment, her hand on the knob before opening it. Finally she said, “Him I never met. Sometimes a letter would come addressed to you as Mr. Wainwright. When I opened it, another sealed envelope was held within. On this envelope would be the name Hans Horstman. This I to you would give unopened, and you would put it away, and tell me you would deliver it to the man.” She took a deep breath. “Perhaps? this man can help you.”

  Had she ever heard from Horstman? Had he ever called on the phone?

  “I know not. If he called, he did not say that was his name.”

  She turned the knob on the door, pulling it gently. “Goodbye, Wainwright, Khawaja,” she said politely using the term of respect. “Perhaps someday your troubles will be over. However, I say to you, if you do not sleep at night, that often I have remembered, when I was a small girl, I hear what happens at the market of Al-Suweika in Mecca.” She bowed her head very slightly, and then the door closed behind her.

  It was very quiet in the room after Juahara had gone. The dirty tan walls seemed to be listening. There was a tenseness, an air of expectation, the waiting for another voice— the voice of Colonel Horstman. An illumination filled my mind, and in a moment it seemed I would hear his voice, remember it as he had spoken to me, and then the feeling dimmed and died away. The moment was gone. After a while, I left the room and went back to Wall Street, and once again to the office of Howard Wainwright.

  This time I searched the office very carefully looking for a lead ... a clue ... a hint ... anything to lead me to Horstman. I had nearly completed my search, without success, when the door opened and Santini walked in. “If you’ll tell me what you’re looking for,” he said, “I’ll help you look for it.”

  At the bookcase, I removed the four volumes of Rommel’s War in the Desert and carried them over to the desk, placing them on top of it. Santini picked one volume up, and leafed through it carelessly, then replaced it. “Reminds you of old times, huh, Pacific?”

  I shrugged.

  Santini sat down in a leather chair and lit a cigarette. “I promised to look you up again,” he said.

  I wrote on my pad, “ ‘One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.’ ” It was a quotation from Nietzsche.

  After reading it, Santini said casually, “I wondered how long it would take you to remember conveniently you were Wainwright.”

  It had been Santini, himself, who had tipped me off that I was Wainwright. The day he told me about Wainwright’s apartment being covered with my fingerprints. The night I had broken into the place, and been intercepted by Amar, I had been careful to wear gloves. I couldn’t have left prints, unless I had been there before. However, I did not feel it necessary to explain this to Santini, so I said nothing.

  “I still can’t figure out yo
ur racket,” Santini continued. “So far I haven’t been able to dig up anything illegal about this joint. It wasn’t a bucket shop or anything like that.” He removed his cigarette and regarded the end of it, consideringly. “Of course I could always dig up a technicality under the state law about operating a business under an assumed name.” He replaced the cigarette in his mouth, and reaching inside his coat pocket withdrew a large heavy envelope. “I got all the dope on you here,” he said, running his thumb along the edge of the envelope. “You interest me, Pacific-Wainwright, and I’ve sort of been working along on you. My own time and expense. But I got an idea I’m not going to have to nail you with a technicality.”

  I watched Santini carefully. Behind his mask of casualness there was a new threat, a new assurance which I had never sensed before. This time I did not believe that he was probing for information. He seemed to be waiting now for something, but what it was I didn’t know. He stared back at me, his eyes flat and cold, no longer hot and angry as I remembered from the first time I saw them at the hospital.

  “Luck, Pacific,” Santini continued, “is only for crapshooters. In a man’s life, he doesn’t have luck—he has other things. He has the mistakes other people make, sometimes he can take advantage of a whole series of errors by people he’s never seen. Maybe it’s the time and the place and the human element of inefficiency which is on his side. These things work for a while, and he thinks he’s lucky but not forever.” He stood and carefully snubbed out his cigarette in a heavy bronze ashtray on my desk. Indifferently he touched the four stacked books. “Pleasant reading,” he said quietly. He walked out without looking back.

  Carrying the books under my arm, I left the office a few minutes later and took a cab up Broadway to see Bozell. He was in and I asked him if he knew anyone who had contacts in Africa, Saudi Arabia in particular. Bozell knew another attorney who had handled a legal case for Maxwell Claussen, a former foreign correspondent for the New York Daily Register. Could Bozell, through his friend the attorney, call Claussen and arrange for me to meet him. Bozell told me that he would try. I gave him my address at the Arena Hotel, and paid him another small fee.