Requiem for a Realtor by Ralph McInerny Read Free Book Online Page A

At first he didn’t believe Wanda could take such a small-town hotshot seriously, even if this was her small town. She began to take her breaks in a booth with Stanley. From the bar Willie had observed the progress of the relationship with disbelief and dread. Finally he made the mistake of telling Wanda what he thought of Stanley.
    â€œIt would take three of him to make a man, Wanda. Don’t encourage him.”
    â€œHey, do I try to run your life?”
    â€œI’m not trying to run your life. I’m speaking as a friend.”
    â€œOkay, you’ve spoken.”
    In vain. What Wanda and Stanley had in common was their childhood in Fox River. And they both were Catholics.
    â€œI didn’t know you were Catholic, Wanda.”
    â€œHalf the world is Catholic.”
    â€œI’m not.”
    â€œWhat are you?”
    â€œPresbyterian!” It just came out. Willie hadn’t been to church in half a century.
    â€œGet together with another Presbyterian and you’ll understand.”
    Willie asked around about Stanley, discreetly, and it was worse than he would have thought. The guy was a total ass, a suit, zilch. But Wanda was a woman, and, increasingly, Stanley was her man. When he was in the room, she sang to him. And she was seeing him during the day.
    Wanda had rented an apartment when the deal with the Rendezvous became permanent, but Willie distrusted security and kept his room at the Frosinone. It was a hotel on the skids, his kind of place, he became part of the background there, the permanent guest no one noticed. He had an old upright in his room on which he played Mozart, using a lot of soft pedal so the rapping on the walls wouldn’t begin. Someone rented a room for the night and thought they owned the hotel.
    Willie was not proud of his spying, but he had to know how serious Wanda was about Stanley. As for Stanley, nothing Willie had learned suggested he could be serious about anyone but Stanley. At least once a week they spent the afternoon together in Wanda’s apartment. Willie got so he could recognize the car and know Stanley was up there. The affair was a threat to what he realized he considered his life. What the hell would happen to him if Wanda ever decided to break up their partnership? Stanley Collins was a menace, there was no doubt about it.
    â€œYou should get married and settle down, Wanda.”
    â€œYou trying to get rid of me?”
    â€œThis is no life for a woman.”
    â€œNo sale, Willie. You’re stuck with me.”
    If she had admitted it, he might have doubted her. He became convinced that Stanley Collins was going to put him on the dustheap of has-beens. The thought filled him with terror.

11
    The Frosinone Hotel had been the U. S. Grant until the Pianone family took it over and renamed it after their ancestral city. Architecturally, it claimed to have been designed by someone in the Sullivan school, and it was this claim that Bob Oliver had come to inquire about when he was considering an article about the buildings of Fox River.
    The way the reporter looked around the lobby made Primo Verdi, the manager, certain the Frosinone would not make the cut. Verdi led him to an arrangement of chairs in a corner of the lobby and, as luck would have it, Oliver got the chair with the broken leg. He tipped to one side as he settled in.
    â€œHere, take this one,” Verdi urged.
    Oliver made a gesture with his hand. “I feel tilted anyway. Why hasn’t this place been condemned?”
    â€œFor what?”
    â€œFor impersonating a hotel.”
    Oliver put his notebook back in a side pocket, leaning to do so, a movement which made him more or less upright, given the tilt of his chair. “Seriously, I thought this place was closed.”
    â€œWe’re open twenty-four hours a day.”
    Verdi wasn’t worried about this visit. One, he could see the Frosinone would not figure in any article Bob Oliver wrote about the