Wayfaring Stranger (Holland Family Saga 1)

“Sir, I think you should go.”

I glanced through a glass window down a corridor and thought I saw two men in white uniforms taking Rosita through a set of doors quilted with thick pads. She was wearing a smock tied loosely in back and slippers that looked made of cardboard. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. I beat on it with my fists and was escorted to the front entrance by two uniformed police officers.

I could not stand the thought of what was being done to Rosita. Two days passed and there was nothing in the newspapers about my attack on Hubert Slakely. My lawyer was of no help. I wondered if I was being taught a lesson about the nature of power: You either gave in to it or you were crushed by it. Tearing Slakely apart was poor redress. My attack upon him was similar to the hanging of the misanthropes at Nuremberg. They deserved what they got, but they were the instruments, not the designers. The orchestrators of the Reich skated, sometimes committing suicide, but they never had to look their victims in the eye.

I knew only one person who had the power and money to undo our problems. Unfortunately, I did not know who lived in his skin. I guess I wanted Roy Wiseheart to be more than he was capable of. So maybe the problem was mine and not his.

It was Wednesday morning when I shined my shoes and put on a suit and tie and went to the office he kept by the Rice Hotel. As always, he seemed unbothered by the intrigue and contradictions that seemed to define his life. His face glowed with health; not a hair was out of place on his head; his handshake was firm, his eyes clear. “Did Linda Gail tell you about meeting Frankie Carbo? I think it unnerved her a bit.”

“No, she didn’t. She doesn’t report to me,” I said. “What are you doing with a guy like that?”

“You’re a funny one to ask. He’s your uncle’s business partner.”

“What?”

“Cody Holland is your uncle, isn’t he? The man who lent you the money to start up your pipeline company?”

“Yes,” I said, the back of my neck tingling.

“Your uncle is a boxing promoter. Nobody gets into the fight game without dealing with Frankie Carbo. Come on, let’s go to the club and play some handball.”

“Say that about my uncle again.”

“I’m not judging him. He’s a smart businessman. Can you name one human being who wouldn’t touch money because it had germs on it? Look, maybe you can help me. Linda Gail is talking about quitting the picture. Jack Warner is down with the flu and wants to halt production for a couple of weeks to straighten out some union trouble, so we’re temporarily off the hook. Will you talk to her? It’ll cost the studio a fortune if she quits.”

I sat down in a straight-back leather chair by the window. I looked up at him and wondered why I had come. His concerns were always about himself: In his mind, the world was a tin globe on a st

and that he could spin and observe and stop whenever it suited him. I also wondered if Roy Wiseheart could read people’s minds. Whenever I was about to write him off, he would say something of a redeeming nature that caught me off guard and made me revise my condemnation. “How’s Hershel?” he asked.

“Not good.”

“I wish I could change what happened. What you’ve never understood about me, Weldon, is—”

“I’ve never understood anything about you. You’re Proteus rising from the sea, always changing shape.”

“Hardly anything so grand. The truth is, I’d like to be you. You’re a self-made man. You’ve got the guts of a back-alley beer-glass brawl. You’d put your hand in a fire for a friend. You’re probably the only honorable man I’ve ever known.”

“I need you to get Rosita out of state custody. Not just out of the psychiatric ward. You know the people who can do it. They can have my pipeline company. They can have whatever they want.”

“You overestimate my importance.”

“Don’t tell me that. You know people who can buy Guatemala with their Diners Club card.”

“These are people who listen to my father, not to me. In some ways I’m like you, a man traveling on a tourist visa in his own country. Without my father’s name and my wife’s money, I’d be nothing.”

“Tell it to the chaplain.”

“You’re always a hard sell,” he said. “Did you see the story about that cop Slakely, the fellow who’s been causing trouble for everyone?”

“No, I didn’t see the story,” I said, letting my eyes go flat.

“It’s here in the Post,” he said, flipping open the morning paper on his desk. “Somebody chopped him up with an ax. Probably couldn’t have happened to a more deserving fellow. Here, you want to read it?”

“Not particularly.”

“Even though this is the man responsible for the charges against Rosita?”

“I hope he found a shady place.”