“General,” Banning said, “have you got anything for General Howe? Or McCoy? I’ve got to get back to Pendleton. ”
Pickering thought it over.
“Message them Hart and I made it this far and will be in Washington tomorrow,” he said. “But that’s about it.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
[THREE]
Fleming Pickering marched into the kitchen of The Penthouse, freshly bathed, shaven, and attired in a fresh white T-shirt, boxer shorts, and stockings held up with garters.
“I still don’t have a uniform?” he demanded of Captain Hart. “For Christ’s sake, all they had to do was press the spare in the suitcase.”
“And I’m sure they’re working on doing just that,” Senator Fowler said. “Have a cup of coffee and calm down.”
He pointed to a coffee service on the kitchen table.
“You’ve got a clean uniform,” Pickering said accusingly, to Hart.
“I didn’t have mine pressed,” Hart said. “You said you wanted yours pressed.”
“And he didn’t spill his breakfast on his,” Fowler offered helpfully.
Pickering glared at him.
“I’ve got to call Patricia,” he said.
“I did that for you. She’ll be at the Lafayette when you get there,” Fowler said. And then he giggled as much as a dignified U.S. Senator can giggle. “I told her about . . . your uniform difficulties, and that you were in the shower.”
That earned Senator Fowler another dirty look.
“Jesus, I’ve got to call Ernie Sage. I promised Ernie I would as soon as I got here.”
He went to the wall-mounted telephone and connected with the long-distance operator, who said she was required to ask, because of the increased telephone traffic caused by the war, if the call was necessary.
“Trust me, Operator, I know there’s a war, and this call is necessary.”
He then informed her that he wished to be connected, person-to-person, with Mr. Ernest Sage at the corporate headquarters of American Personal Pharmaceuticals in New York City.
The call to Mr. Sage’s office went through quickly enough, but Mr. Sage’s secretary, he was told, “was away from her desk” and her telephone was being answered by someone else, who, to the scarcely concealed amusement of Senator Fowler and Captain Hart, had never heard of Fleming Pickering, and more or less politely demanded to know what it was that he wished to speak to Mr. Sage about.
“I brushed my teeth with your lousy toothpaste and my teeth fell out,” General Pickering replied. “Now, get him on the phone!”
The someone else answering the telephone decided that she had best at least relay the information that some furiously angry man was on the phone to Mr. Sage’s secretary, who had accompanied her boss to an important staff meeting, and did so.
That lady came next on the line, and asked Pickering if he could possibly call back later, as Mr. Sage was conducting a very important meeting and she hated to disturb him.
“I don’t give a damn if he’s conducting the New York Philharmonic,” Pickering replied. “Get him on the phone now!”
Mr. Sage then came on the line.
“Is something wrong, Fleming?”
“Not at all. I just thought you would be interested in a report about your daughter.”
“Flem, could I ask you to call Elaine?”
“And report to her, you mean?”
“Yeah. I’m really up to my ears in this meeting, Flem.”
“Ernie, I will not call Elaine and tell her myself,” Pickering said, “because I can tell you what I have to say in two seconds, and it would take twenty minutes to tell Elaine, and I don’t have any more time to waste.”
“Well, Jesus, Flem, don’t take my head off.”
“That’s not what I would like to cut off, Ernie,” Pickering said. “Now, listen carefully. Write this down. Ernie is fine. She sends her love. Got it?”
“You did try, right, Flem, to get her to come home?”
“Yes, I did. And she said no. I have to go, Ernie. Go back to your meeting.”
Pickering hung up the telephone.
“You were a little rough on Sage, Flem,” Fowler said.
“If I had a six-months-pregnant daughter halfway around the world and someone called me to report on her, any goddamned meeting I was having would have to wait.”
Fowler shrugged.
The service elevator door opened and two bellmen carrying freshly pressed uniforms came in.
“Finally,” Pickering said.
He took the uniforms from them and walked out of the kitchen.
Senator Fowler waited until Pickering was out of earshot, then asked, “Is he all right, George?”
“He’s fine, sir.”
“How the hell can he be fine when no one knows where Pick is? Or even if he’s alive.”
“McCoy and Zimmerman think he’s alive,” Hart said. “On the run, but alive.”