Marlene told the guard at the gate who she was, and he directed her to the employees parking lot, around the back. There she parked next to Wolfe’s Chevy and Harry’s Plymouth. A pimply youth in a pale blue blazer, holding a portable radio, gave her directions to the security meeting. She left Sweety in the car, the windows cracked.
They were holding the meeting in a basement room used for changing and breaks by the staff of the club: There were lockers along one wall and uniforms of various types stacked on shelves or hung in cleaner bags from the pipes that lined the ceiling. About twenty men were sitting on metal folding chairs or standing about in groups. These were the bodyguards of the tennis celebrities who would be playing in the tournament. Most of them had the serious, cynical faces you picked up in the cops. There was a stir when Marlene walked in, smiles, not entirely sympathetic ones. Marlene was famous in the bodyguard world.
She found Harry Bello and Wolfe and sat down next to them. Harry was wearing a blue Lacoste shirt, pressed gray slacks, and polished loafers. He was blending in again.
Some men entered the room: a short redhead wearing a blue blazer with a club crest on it, a man in the white-shirted uniform of the Southampton police, and a tall, crop-headed state trooper. The man introduced himself as Mort Griffin, the head of security for the club, and introduced the policemen who were to serve as security liaisons with their respective organizations. He began to speak about the security arrangements for the tournament, and the coordinations necessary to prevent large numbers of armed men from getting in one another’s way. Marlene was soon bored, but she observed Harry taking detailed notes. He likes this, she thought, and he’s good at it. It saddened her that their old relationship, like the old casual organization of Bello amp; Ciampi Security, was passing away. The fact was that Harry was a pro at this and she was not, nor did she especially want to be.
The meeting broke up after the security chief had pointed out a row of pale blue blazers, hanging from a pipe, each in bags marked with a name. All security personnel working the event were required to wear them.
They shrugged into their blazers. To Marlene’s surprise, hers fit perfectly. Wolfe went off to a meeting about radio procedure. Harry handed Marlene a thick folder.
“This is what we got on our guy,” he said.
She opened it and leafed through the pages. “Harry, this is all in German,” she said.
“Yeah, but there’s a couple of sheets there says he’s in the country as of last Tuesday. Check out the picture.”
Manfred Stolz, the stalker, had been arrested twice for harassing Trade Speyr, once in Bonn and once in Paris. The photos showed a wiry man with a bony face, a big Adam’s apple, and frizzy reddish hair. He wanted to marry Trude Speyr, failing which he intended to kill her-the usual. What wasn’t usual was that he had declared it quite openly, been jailed for it, and gone on declaring it.
“He looks easy to spot,” said Marlene.
“Maybe. In Paris he wore a wig.”
“Fiendish,” said Marlene. “Okay, Harry, I got to go see Edie Wooten right now. I’ll spend the night there, and I’ll meet you back here tomorrow morning. Say seven-thirty? We’ll have breakfast, providing the help is allowed to eat on site.”
“She wants to meet you,” said Harry.
Marlene rolled her eyes and protested, but then she recalled all those meetings Harry had gone to with the Germans, and she meekly followed him up a flight of stairs to the club dining room, where a reception for the tennis stars was under way. The room was large and white, with huge angled windows facing the ocean, and everyone in it who was not wearing a uniform was rich or famous or both or a worshiper of wealth and fame. Harry led her through the crowd and penetrated a knot of people surrounding what turned out to be a lithe blond teenager. Trude Speyr stopped talking to a short world-famous pop music star and cast an interested blue-eyed gaze at Marlene. Harry made the introductions. There was a startled murmur from the group. Marlene and the girl shook hands. Strobe lights flashed.
They exchanged some banal words, Speyr speaking halting, accented English while the sycophants beamed. Some manager-type in lime green slacks made a crack about the shooting at the fair, and all the famous people tittered. Marlene would have said something vicious had not Harry pinched the back of her arm.
“How can you stand it, Harry?” she asked when they were back outside. “Those people …”
“Beats chasing scumbags down stairways. Beats corpses with maggots in their eyes. Beats waking up covered by your own puke. And it pays the bills.”
She was about to object that wearing a pissy blazer and dancing attendance on gilded assholes was not what she’d had in mind when she started the business, but bit it back. She looked at her friend in the clear afternoon light of a Long Island summer and saw that he looked good, not great, of course, but not a three-day corpse either. He was doing a man’s job, and a difficult one, on his own, and Marlene could, almost for the first time, see the person he had been before his life came apart, a quiet, decent man with a wry sense of humor.
And who was she to talk, she who was just dashing off to care for her very own gilded asshole genius? So instead of having another fight, she hugged him and smiled and was rewarded by a flickering smile in return. She kissed his cheek and got into her car. Which did not start. Sweety whined.
“Won’t start?”
“You’re some detective, Harry,” said Marlene peevishly. “What’ll I do?”
“I’ll get Wolfe to drive you. No problem,” said new Harry, the exec.
Twenty minutes later, Wolfe pulled his Caprice around. Marlene and Sweety got in, and as they did, Wolfe pulled a tape out of his stereo and shoved it under his seat.
“What’s the tape, Wolfe?” she asked.
“Urn, nothing,” he replied. They pulled out of the parking lot and onto the narrow road.
“Come on, Wolfe. What, you’re ashamed of your musical taste? How bad could it be? Worse than Conway Twitty? Mantovani? Tiajuana Brass? Lawrence Welk?”
His face worked nervously. “It’s, ah, not music. It’s like, uh, a motivational tape. For, you know, dealing with people.”
It was Marlene’s turn to feel embarrassed. She had not thought Wolfe a striver; nor had it occurred to her that what she considered a throw-away muscle job could represent, for someone like Wolfe, the basis for a career. To cover she said brightly, “So, do you have any music tapes to go with your fine stereo?”
“In the glove,” he said.
In the glove compartment were two cassettes in new boxes, a Greatest Hits of the 70’s collection and a Best of the Eagles, Volume One. Marlene slipped in the Eagles and turned up the sound, and they headed north with “Take it Easy” playing, Marlene singing along, Wolfe driving, stolid and silent.
They drove north to Sag Harbor, to the marina she had been told to look for, which they discovered to be a white-painted storefront with signs in front of it advertising charter boats (Donna T., SeaWind) and rental Lightnings and Whalers. There was a long gray dock and a small gray beach next to it where some kids were messing with Jet Skis. While Marlene searched out the proprietor, Wolfe took Sweety to throw sticks on the beach. The dog liked him and he was good with the dog. It occurred to Marlene that the firm could send Wolfe to guard dog school and get him a big dog of his own. A little staff development.
She found the manager, a thin old boy in greasy gray coveralls (Ralph embroidered on the breast) and arranged the ride. Edie Wooten had already called him, he said, and was that your big dog?