The Second Time Around Read Free

a disease that the vaccine might reverse.
    As people streamed out, I took names, addresses, and phone numbers. Thanks to my column, a lot of them knew my name and were eager to talk to me about their financial loss as well. They asked whether or not I thought there was any chance of recouping some or all of their investment.
    Lynn had left the meeting by a side door. I was glad. I had written her a note after Nick’s plane crashed, letting her know I would attend a memorial service. There hadn’t been one yet; they were waiting to see if his body would be recovered. Now, like almost everyone else, I wondered if Nick had actually been in the plane when it crashed or if he had rigged his disappearance.
    I felt a hand on my arm. It was Sam Michaelson, a veteran reporter for Wall Street Weekly magazine. “Buy you a drink, Carley,” he offered.
    â€œGood God, I can use one.”
    We went down to the bar on the lobby floor and were directed to a table. It was four-thirty.
    â€œI have a firm rule not to have vodka straight up before five o’clock,” Sam told me, “but, as you’re aware, somewhere in the world it is five o’clock.”
    I ordered a glass of Chianti. Usually by late April I’d have switched to chardonnay, my warm weather choice of vino, but feeling as emotionally chilled as I did after that meeting, I wanted something that would warm me up.
    Sam gave the order, then abruptly asked, “So whatdo you think, Carley? Is that crook sunning himself in Brazil as we speak?”
    I gave the only honest answer I could offer: “I don’t know.”
    â€œI met Spencer once,” Sam said. “I swear if he’d offered to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge, I’d have fallen for it. What a snake oil salesman. Did you ever meet him in the flesh?”
    I pondered Sam’s question for a moment, trying to decide what to say. The fact that Lynn Hamilton Spencer was my stepsister, making Nick Spencer my stepbrotherin-law, was something I never talked about. However, that fact did keep me from ever commenting publicly or privately on Gen-stone as an investment because I felt that might be considered a conflict of interest. Unfortunately, it did not keep me from buying $25,000 worth of Gen-stone stock because, as Nicholas Spencer had put it that evening at dinner, after this vaccine eliminated the possibility of cancer, there would someday be another to eliminate all genetic abnormalities.
    My baby had been baptized the day he was born. I’d called him Patrick, giving him my maternal grandfather’s name. I bought that stock as kind of a tribute to my son’s memory. That night two years ago Nick had said that the more money they could raise, the faster they would have the tests on the vaccine completed and be able to make it available. “And, of course, eventually your twenty-five thousand dollars will be worth a great deal more,” he had added.
    That money had represented my savings toward a down payment on an apartment.
    I looked at Sam and smiled, still debating my answer. Sam’s hair is a kind of grizzled gray. His one vanity is to comb long strands of it over his balding dome. I’ve noticed that these strands often are somewhat askew, as they were now, and as an old pal I’ve had to resist saying, “Surrender. You’ve lost the hair battle.”
    Sam is pushing seventy, but his baby blue eyes are bright and alert. There’s nothing babyish behind that pucklike face, however. He’s smart and shrewd. I realized it wouldn’t be fair not to tell him of my somewhat tenuous connection to the Spencers, but I would make it clear that I’d actually met Nick only once and Lynn three times.
    I watched his eyebrows raise as I filled him in on the relationship.
    â€œShe comes through as a pretty cool customer to me,” he said. “What about Spencer?”
    â€œI would have bought the Brooklyn Bridge from him, too. I