“Sally, call Rick Mallory’s office and see if you can get me an appointment for this afternoon.”
“Should I come along?” Sally asked.
“No, Sally. No need. I’ll meet with Mr. Mallory alone.”
Chapter 2
The Iceman Cometh
919 Madison Avenue: MTM Security Associates
“Rick back?” Berg asked Lilly Pearson, Mallory’s secretary.
“Not yet,” she told him.
“What’s he been up to lately? Anything I might be interested in knowing about?”
Lilly had the green light to tell Berg whatever he wanted to know, but she figured she’d torment him a bit. “Can’t say,” she replied.
Moe Berg, or “Ice,” as he was affectionately called by his friends, was the leading crime reporter on the New York beat. Wrote a daily column for the Herald Gazette, a conservative rag and scandal sheet owned by the Australian financier, Elbert Sidonia. Berg was an unqualified sleazebag, no bones about it; would sell out his own grandmother for a story. By his own reckoning, Gazette reporters were one step above child molesters on the food chain. And when Sidonia called all hands on deck, he’d pull out a well-notched hatchet from his desk drawer and place it next to his keyboard. Bleeding heart liberals his specialty. Knocked quite a few out of the box: blacks, gays, media pundits, not to mention Tammany shysters on the take. Below average height but perfectly packaged, he was cut from Ivy League cloth, Dartmouth variety, spoke eloquently with perfect diction and could, on occasion, turn a wily phrase in print. Wire-rimmed glasses with circular frames were his carefully crafted trademark. He had a drawn face with a pointy chin that was dominated by a broad, rounded forehead, flowing black hair that was dry and wavy, with a single immutable strand dangling tactfully above his left eyebrow. Attractive in the secular sense, meaning to some women, particularly those with a brain, his sharp purposeful stare befitted his age, early thirties—just a couple of years older than Mallory. It was him that had dubbed Mallory the Super Sleuth, and it was his vivid writing style that had propelled Mallory into the public spotlight.
“Can’t say or won’t say?”
“Okay, I’ll give you something. Ariel dropped the dime on some scientist at Bonhomme Biome, the company sequencing the ape genome.” Ariel Cohen, head of Industrial Espionage at MTM, was a tall, slinky blonde with a restructured nose and a well-documented chest. “Write her up and I’d wager she’d be most grateful,” Lilly quipped, with a smile.
“She dropped the dime, or was it Pincus?” Berg knew Irving Pincus was the resident genius in Industrial Espionage. A full professor of psychology at City College, Pincus designed the so-called honesty test that narrowed down the suspects then nailed them through projective drawings.
“What’s the difference?” Lilly wanted to know.
“None,” Berg admitted. “I’ll pass though. Nobody gives a hoot or a holler about an alphabet with only four letters. Can’t you give me a line on what Rick’s up to?”
“What makes you think he’s up to anything?” Lilly asked as if taking a peek at the cards in her poker hand.
Berg grasped both armrests of her tweed office chair and tilted it backwards. He lowered his head to just above her right ear. “Nice perfume,” he whispered salaciously.
“The Stallings kidnapping,” she blurted out. Berg had selected the right passkey.
“The kid who disappeared eight years ago?”
“The mother was in last week.”
”Now we got something, gorgeous.”
“That’s off the record till you check with Rick,” she added, post haste.
“Check with Rick about what?” came a voice from behind them. Mallory had entered via the garage elevator.
“The Stallings’ kidnapping,” Berg proclaimed. “You haven’t been holding out on me now, Rick, or have you?”
“Quite the contrary, Ice, I was just about to call you,” Mallory said, winking to Lilly. “How did the Bonhomme thing turn out?” he asked her.
“He confessed,” Lilly told him.
“That should amount to a handsome payday. Ariel must be quite pleased. Why don’t you write her up, Ice. I’d wager she’d be most grateful.”
“That’s what Lilly said. But I’ll pass if you don’t mind.”
“New cases?” he asked Lilly.
“We’re scrunched,” she replied.
“Scrunched?”
“Yeah, scrunched. That reminds me, Nick wants to see you,” she said, handing him a stack of mail.” She was referring to Nick Tunney, one of MTM’s principals.
Mallory grimaced. He was not exactly anxious to throw himself into the breach. Following the Black Squares Club case that had been resolved on national TV in a tête-à-tête with Tynan Wesley, conservative advocate and mastermind of the crossword murders, a flood of cases had descended on the firm. Esther Rozan, fifty-one percent owner of MTM Investigations, and Mallory’s on again off again fiancée was away for “treatments” at a spa in Tahoe. To make matters worse, Rudy Errico, MTM’s executive vice-president was likewise away, on his honeymoon. Rounding out the list of no-shows was David Meyerson, MTM’s partner in charge of the data encryption business. He held down a full-time teaching position at Columbia University, and didn’t concern himself with the nuts and bolts of running the business. Tunney wasn’t the least bit happy at having to do the job of three people.
“Sleep on the street last night?” Lilly asked, referring obliquely to Mallory’s three-day growth and unkempt appearance.
“Air Force reserve weekend,” Mallory replied. “Just got back.”
“Oh yeah, Air Force weekend. I forgot. Fly jets this time?”
“No, not this time . . . survival training.”
“Maybe you can apply for the TV program, Survivor.”
“Sorry, Lilly, but I can’t go without sex for more than a week.”
“Could have fooled me,” she replied sarcastically. “Oh, and Melissa Compton called.”
“She called, or her secretary?” Mallory wanted to know.
“Her secretary,” she replied, “Miss Compton would like to meet with you this afternoon regarding the Stallings kidnapping case.” Lilly imitated her candy-coated delivery. “I told her you were booked solid for the rest of the afternoon.”
“Melissa Compton,” Berg echoed like a jilted lover. “Maybe you’re getting too big for the Ice Man and the Herald.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Ice. She just unceremoniously threw me out of her office.”
“You went to see Melissa Compton looking like that?” Lilly asked incredulously. “No wonder she threw you out.”
“But she wants to come over here to see you,” Berg interjected. “That old Mallory charm at work?”
“Ice, you’re a paranoid egomaniac. But you happen to be my friend so I’m going to go against my better judgment and feed your ego.”
“Now you’re talking, Rickie m’boy! What you got for me?” Berg asked, raising his thick eyebrows to the ceiling.
“I’m going out to North Dakota to do some poking around. I’ve spoken to Burns at CTV about you taking over my spot next week. You interested?”
“Well . . . there’s a chance I might be available.”