Take a Number

by Janet Dawson

  “Where would I go?” She looked up at me, her brown eyes like those of a deer caught in headlights, her voice defensive, tinged with shame. “Stuck on Guam with a toddler, no car, no one to talk to, thousands of miles from home. He wasn’t like that when we first married. It wasn’t until after Wendy was born, after we went to Guam. And then not all the time. Sometimes he was really good to me. Then, every now and then, he’d lose control.”

  It sounded like a pattern, a cycle repeating itself over and over. “It’s not your fault,” I said suddenly, because she needed to hear it.

  “I know it’s not.” As she said the words her head came up and her jaw tightened. I saw she’d inherited some of her father’s steel. “I’ve been planning my escape since Christmas. When Sam got orders to the Bay Area, I told him I wanted to leave Guam early so I could spend some time with my family. It didn’t matter to him. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself. Wendy and I left the first week in June, a month before he did. When we arrived, I told Mom and Dad everything. I’m still a California resident, so the first thing I did was contact Blair and file for divorce. Sam was served with papers the week he arrived from Guam.”

  Sam Raynor’s response to this fait accompli was to quickly divest himself of most of his assets. He knew Ruth could garnish the Navy paycheck that came twice a month. But she knew Sam had more than his salary.

  “I found a bank statement in his desk drawer,” Ruth told me now, a bitter edge to her words. “Right before Christmas, when he wouldn’t give me any extra money to buy presents. We didn’t even have a tree, so Wendy and I decorated the rubber plant. One night we wanted to cut up construction paper to make chains. I couldn’t find the scissors in the kitchen where I usually kept them, so I looked in Sam’s desk, the one I was supposed to leave alone. And there was this statement from the Bank of America in downtown Agana, in Sam’s name only. It had a balance of over a hundred thousand dollars.” Ruth said the words as though it were a hundred million.

  “I couldn’t believe it. I sat there and held that statement in my hand and just stared at it. And I got madder and madder. Where did he get that kind of money?”

  Where, indeed? A hundred thousand dollars might not sound like much money to your basic Wall Street robber baron. But it’s a lot of cash for a sailor to have lying around. Navy enlisted men don’t make that kind of money, particularly first-class petty officers with less than eight years in the Navy, which was Sam Raynor’s present status. I doubted the money had been found at the end of the rainbow or obtained by legal means. Of course, how Sam Raynor acquired a hundred thousand dollars was less important than what he did with it when he returned from Guam and found out his wife had filed for divorce.

  “We had a joint account at the credit union on base,” Ruth was saying, her voice still tinged with bitterness, “the one I used to pay the household bills and buy groceries, the one that was overdrawn half the time. Sam was always carrying on about how his salary didn’t stretch far enough to cover all our expenses, and it was my fault because I didn’t manage better and I spent too much money.” Two red spots burned on her cheeks as she remembered. “I couldn’t even buy Christmas presents for my folks because he wouldn’t give me any extra money for the holidays.”

  “Did he always keep you on short rations?” I asked.

  Ruth nodded. “I had to beg for every penny. He hated to give me anything. The only nice things we had were mine before I married Sam. If I didn’t sew, Wendy and I wouldn’t have any clothes. All the time he had that money. He wouldn’t even spend it on his own child.”

  “Was he into anything illegal while he was over there?”

  Ruth shrugged. “I don’t know. He wasn’t home much. He was always out with his buddies. That was all right with me. I felt safer when he was gone. He’d take a few days’ leave and go off to Thailand or Hong Kong or the Philippines, and I wouldn’t even know until he got back. It’s not that far to any of those places. When you’re on Guam you’re already on that side of the Pacific.”

  “Drugs?” I wondered aloud, thinking of Thailand and the Golden Triangle, so close that someone could pick up extra money by acting as a mule.

  “I don’t know,” Ruth said again. “I was stuck in Navy housing with no car and a three-year-old. It was a three-mile walk to the commissary if I wanted so much as a quart of milk. If it hadn’t been for my neighbors I wouldn’t even have seen much of Guam. Not that there’s much to see. Except for Betty, my neighbor, there was no one there I could really talk to. But finding that bank statement helped me make a decision. I knew Sam was due for orders this summer. It didn’t matter where he went. I was coming back to California, to get a divorce. I planned how I was going to do it. I even mailed things to my folks, things I would need. Betty mailed them for me when I couldn’t get out of the house. When Sam got orders to the air station in Alameda, that just made it easier for me to get back here. I’m going to get out of this mess, Jeri. My family will help me. I hope you’ll help me too.”

  I looked at Ruth’s delicate face and made my decision. “I will.”

  Having said it, I turned from Ruth to her attorney. Blair Castle looked less relieved than did Ruth at my signing on for this assignment. “Did you try to freeze that account in Guam?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she replied, with a flash of irritation. “All the standard family law restraining orders went into effect when we filed, including the one that prevents each party from disposing of any property.. But Raynor closed the account before he left Guam, which was before he was served with papers. He’s hidden the money. Now he’s denying he ever had it.”

  “I wish I’d made a copy of that statement.” Ruth’s hands tightened in her lap. “That would at least prove he had the money. But all I could do was write down the account number.”

  Blair Castle leaned back in her padded leather chair. “I’m trying to find out where he transferred the money after he closed the Bank of America account. I subpoenaed the records, his lawyer filed a motion to quash. I’m waiting for a ruling.”

  While the attorneys dueled with their legal documents, I’d check a few other avenues. “My guess is he moved the money from Guam to California so it would be waiting when he arrived. There are several ways to do it and they all leave a paper trail. If he’s still using Bank of America, they could have done an internal transfer from Guam to any of the branches here in the Bay Area. If he’s switched to another financial institution, the bank might use a wire transfer. If he withdrew it using one or more cashier’s checks, those checks would eventually go back to the bank in Guam with the endorsement of the depositing bank. Any way I look at it, we need those records from the bank on Guam.”

  “I’m working on it.” Castle’s words were sharper than necessary.

  “I doubt he’d risk opening accounts under his own name,” I said. “When you do that, you have to give the bank personal information, like a social security number.”

  “Which we do have,” the lawyer interjected.

  “That’ll help. Rather than run the risk that an investigator like me can trace an account with his name and social security number, Raynor’s probably stashed the cash with someone or loaned some money to a friend or family member. What about his family, Ruth? Where’s he from, before the Navy?”

  “He told me he grew up in San Jose, and his parents are dead. I don’t know much more than that. He said he didn’t like to talk about himself. So we didn’t At the time I felt sorry for him. I can’t imagine not having a family. I’m so close to mine.”

  “Are you living with your folks?” I asked, as long as we were on the subject of families.

  Ruth lifted her chin and smiled. “I did for the first few weeks. But now I have a job and an apartment. Mom and Dad are helping me financially. But that’s just for now. I have to get on my own two feet, and make a home for me and my daughter.”

  Ruth had a job at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland. She’d started last month, working as a secretary in Records
, a temporary position with the promise of permanent status later on. And she’d moved into an apartment down the street from Kaiser, at Forty-first and Howe, which meant she could walk to work. She found nearby day care for Wendy. As she talked, I sensed how important it was that she take control of her own life. And I knew that would be hard, given Lenore Franklin’s protective instincts and Admiral Franklin’s forceful, take-charge personality.

  “Sam doesn’t know where I live, of course,” Ruth added.

  “Absolutely not,” her lawyer chimed in. “We’ve got a stay-away order.” The restraining order specified Sam Raynor must stay at least a hundred yards away from Ruth and her residence, place of work, and their daughter’s day care center.

  “What about custody and visitation?” I asked. Divorce always rakes the nerve endings. It’s much worse when children are in the battle zone. This was certainly true in Raynor v. Raynor, judging from the indignation in Ruth’s voice.

  “He doesn’t care anything about Wendy. He never paid any attention to her. Until now.”

  Castle seconded Ruth’s comment. “We’re asking for sole legal and physical custody, of course. As for visitation, it’s the same old story. The party with no interest in the child demands custody and visitation, just to push the other party’s buttons. He’s only pulling this superdad routine to get back at Ruth.”

  Going for Ruth’s soft underbelly, I thought, where he could do the most damage.

  Since Sam Raynor had the right to visit his child, whether or not he cared about her, the court had granted him visitation. Due to Ruth’s concern about her safety, Sam’s visits were controlled and supervised, at the home of Ruth’s parents, under the watchful and no doubt hostile eyes of Lenore and Joseph Franklin.

  “You mentioned that your husband was always running around with his buddies on Guam,” I said. “Did any of those shipmates transfer here in the last year?”

  “I don’t know,” Ruth said. “Sam came and went as he pleased. He didn’t bring friends to the house and I don’t recall any names. Maybe the Korsakovs would know. Ed sometimes gave Sam a ride to the air station when our car wasn’t working.”

  “Your neighbors? Were you good friends?”

  Ruth nodded. “Oh, yes, at least with Betty. We’d have coffee together in the mornings, after her kids went off to school. She’d take me places in her car.”

  “Do you have a current address for them?”

  “Yes, I do.” Ruth picked up her shoulder bag, put it on her lap, and pulled out a slim cloth-bound address book. She flipped through the pages to the K’s.

  “They left Guam a short time before I did,” she said as I wrote down the address. “Ed had orders to the air station at Whidbey Island, in Washington State. That’s his work address. The closest town is Oak Harbor. They’re probably in Navy housing or an apartment. Betty said they were going to buy a house, but I don’t imagine they’ve done that yet.” Ruth smiled wanly. “Betty said she’d be so glad to get back to a place that has all four seasons, and no tree snakes. After she left, I felt so isolated. But I was leaving too. I held on to that. It’s what got me through until June.”

  “Did Sam have a girl in every port?” At that stereotyped description of sailors, the red spots reappeared on Ruth’s cheeks and she ducked her head.

  “Of course,” she said, her voice low. “Probably more than one. From the day we were married until now.”

  If Raynor was dating someone, his current girlfriend would be worth checking out. He could have convinced her to hide a portion of his bankroll, playing on the girlfriend’s sympathy by giving her a song and dance about his greedy soon-to-be ex-wife trying to suck him dry and take him to the financial cleaners. Name that tune—I’ve heard it before.

  So had Blair Castle. I could tell by the look in her eye. “We don’t know where he lives,” she said. “He may be in the enlisted quarters on base or an apartment somewhere. Either way, directory assistance doesn’t have a number for him. My only contact with him is through his lawyer, Henry Tolliver, at one of those law firms that advertises its services as being ‘divorce for men only.’ As if the men needed all the help.”

  Judging from the attorney’s sour tone, she held the opposite opinion, as well as a low regard for Mr. Tolliver, whose office was on MacArthur Boulevard.

  “Sooner or later, Raynor has to visit his lawyer. When he does, I’ll tail him back to where he lives. I’ll need a recent photograph.”

  “Done.” The attorney reached into the folder on her desk and pulled out a snapshot that showed the upper half of a man’s torso. He was broad-shouldered and good-looking, with short curly red hair, and he wore a tropical shirt over white slacks. Standing beside a palm tree, he had a can of beer in his left hand and a big grin on his face.

  “That was taken last summer at a neighborhood barbecue,” Ruth said. “That’s the most recent picture I have.”

  “It’ll be enough. What kind of car is he driving?”

  “A red Pontiac Trans-Am,” the attorney said. “I saw him get into it after the first hearing. I got part of the license number.” She handed me a slip of paper with three letters and a single number. “I assume you can get information from the Department of Motor Vehicles.”

  “It’s getting harder as the DMV gets more concerned about privacy. This should be enough, though.”

  Castle looked at her watch, then fixed me with a businesslike gaze. “Jeri, we’ve got another hearing scheduled in three weeks. I’d like to have some ammunition on Sam Raynor’s finances. He’s lying about the money and I want to nail him.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “It’ll take more than your best,” Castle said briskly. “I’m speaking from experience here. Finding that money won’t be easy. Whoever said you can’t get blood out of a stone must have been a divorced woman.”

  Three

  MY OFFICE IS ON THE THIRD FLOOR OF A DOWNTOWN Oakland building on Franklin Street, a short walk from Chinatown, the Old Oakland redevelopment project, and City Center. I’m also shoe-leather distance to the Alameda County Courthouse and various city offices, just as well because parking downtown is a hassle. I rent a space for my Toyota in a parking lot on the same block as my building, but I fear it won’t be long until a developer builds something on it.

  As I came out of the stairwell, I waved a greeting to my friend Cassie, an attorney and partner in the firm of Alwin, Taylor and Chao, which occupies the front suite of offices. She was with a client, standing in front of the elevator looking very serious and lawyerly in her blue linen suit, the kind that wrinkles when I wear it and wouldn’t dare wrinkle on Cassie.

  I unlocked the door to my office, solid wood with gold letters proclaiming J. HOWARD INVESTIGATIONS. The long narrow room was warm so I opened the window and grabbed a bottle of cold mineral water from the little refrigerator I keep at the back. A sheet of paper had emerged from my brand new fax machine. I reached for it and read a pitch to sell me fax paper. Junk fax, the latest variation on junk mail. I crumpled the ad into a ball and tossed it into the wastebasket.

  I checked the messages on my answering machine and returned some calls. Then I opened a file on the Raynor case, making notes on my computer while my meeting with Ruth and her attorney was still fresh in my mind. I added these to the folder, along with my contract and the photograph of Sam Raynor.

  He looks like a cocky bastard, I thought, staring at the snapshot of Raynor. He radiated charm and self-assurance, the cheerful grin on his handsome face masking the wife batterer. Men who beat their wives and children occupy a particularly low rung on my ladder of slimeballs, not far above rapists and deviates who molest children.

  I closed the file abruptly on Sam Raynor’s face and tucked the folder into its alphabetical niche in a filing cabinet drawer. Then I reached for the phone and called directory assistance for Oak Harbor, Washington, hoping that Edward Korsakov was not a common name in that community. It wasn’t. There was only one listing. It was nearly five. With any
luck, Ed Korsakov was home from whatever work he did at the Naval Air Station, Whidbey Island, and Betty Korsakov was fixing dinner.

  One of the Korsakov offspring answered the phone. When I asked if one or both parents was home, the kid yelled “Mom! It’s for you.” I winced, holding the receiver away from my ear. A moment later an adult female voice came on the line.

  “Is this Betty Korsakov?” I asked. When she confirmed this, I plunged ahead. “Mrs. Korsakov, my name is Jeri Howard. I’m an investigator in Oakland, California. I’m working for Ruth Raynor, your neighbor on Guam. She’s divorcing her husband.”

  “Good for her,” Betty Korsakov blurted. “It’s about damn time.”

  “You don’t care much for Sam Raynor.”

  She didn’t answer right away. Despite the spontaneity of her first words, I wasn’t sure I’d get much information out of Betty Korsakov. In my dealings with people in the military, I’d noticed a certain us-against-them mentality, them being anyone who was a civilian. Besides, phone calls from private investigators understandably make some people wary.

  “How do I know you’re who you say you are?” she asked finally. Her voice had an eastern accent, I noticed, possibly New York.

  “I understand your caution, Mrs. Korsakov,” I said. “I can’t give you Ruth’s number because it’s unlisted. Her attorney, Blair Castle, can verify my identity and employment.” I recited the lawyer’s telephone number. “After you talk with Ms. Castle, please call me back collect.” I gave her my office number. “I’d appreciate hearing from you as soon as possible.”

  Betty Korsakov didn’t ask me to repeat either phone number, so I assumed she’d written them down. Then suddenly she said, “Wait. Wait a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  There was a muffled clunk as she set down the phone receiver. I strained to hear sounds through hundreds of miles of telephone cable, identifying a dog’s bark, the high voice of a child, a woman talking, answered by the deeper timbre of a man’s voice. A moment later Mrs. Korsakov picked up the receiver again. “You say Ruth Raynor gave you my number?”