A Hopeless Case

by K. K. Beck

  “Although,” interjected Mr. Glendinning, “you are expected to use your own funds for any incidental expenses.”

  “And,” said the professor, “it must be handled by strictly ethical means. No sloppy situation ethics.”

  “In addition,” the judge added solemnly, “the letter of the law must be followed. Sometimes Harold managed to bend the spirit of it a little,” he added with a twinkle, “but he never did anything illegal.” She thought of the janitor. She supposed, strictly speaking, he should have been turned in to Boeing security or the FBI or something.

  Jane nodded solemnly. She’d had time to go over the financial report Bucky had given her. Whatever these old geezers wanted, she would do. It all sounded like one of her beloved old blue-bound Nancy Drew novels.

  “Is there some written record of Uncle Harold’s cases?” she said.

  “No,” said Mr. Glendinning. He seemed to enjoy saying no. Probably useful in a banker. “And we all promised complete secrecy. No publicity. Ever. That’s very important. Those we benefit are guaranteed strict confidentiality.”

  Mr. Montcrieff coughed. “Gentlemen, I’ve told you before, and I will repeat my concern. Without a written record the residual legatees—those charities, could cause trouble.”

  The commander waved a hand. “Forget it, Montcrieff. We don’t want a lot of paperwork. And we want privacy.”

  “There’s also a very practical consideration,” explained the bishop. “You wouldn’t want a lot of people coming to you with their problems, many of which, sad to say, would be inconsequential and better solved by good old-fashioned Christian fortitude.

  “But also,” he continued with a smile, “Harold felt that it was better to do good works without drawing attention to oneself. The sin of pride can so easily corrupt the most meritorious undertaking. Once these cases are solved, we never speak of them again.”

  “I see,” said Jane. The main course, veal cutlets, was served, and the men all began sawing away at their plates with interest.

  She surveyed their six white heads bent over their places, a seventh white head, the waiter’s, moving artfully among them. For now, these half dozen old men were the most important men in her life. They had the power to give her the freedom she wanted. She had to be able to handle them.

  She cleared her throat. “All right, let me get this straight.” Jane thought it was time to summarize. “I’m supposed to find a mess that needs fixing, and set it right. Then I’m to come to you for your approval.”

  The trustees nodded.

  “If I can’t find a case, or you don’t approve of what I’ve done—”

  “Then the money goes to charity,” said George Montcrieff.

  “And if I do succeed?”

  “Then you will receive half of the annual income that goes with the trust. We’ll expect another case in six months,” said Mr. Glendinning. “Two a year.”

  “And if, at any time, you don’t approve of my efforts?”

  “The principal will be distributed to charity,” said Mr. Montcrieff, “and the Foundation for Righting Wrongs will be a thing only of memory.”

  And I’ll see you clowns in court, she thought to herself.

  “Thank you,” she said pleasantly. She wondered how new trustees were to be appointed as this crew died out. It was probably a self-perpetuating board, and there were tons of other cantankerous old fossils waiting to take the place of the present collection.

  She turned to George Montcrieff. “Did he give you any written instructions, other than what was in the will? It would be handy to have a specific criteria for cases.”

  He flapped his napkin at her. “Harold left it nice and vague. You needn’t worry about that. Everything’s at the trustees’ discretion.”

  Chapter 5

  All right, all right,” said Calvin Mason irritably. “We can trade it out. But Jesus, Kenny, I can’t trade out everything. I need cash to put gas in my car. And buy the occasional cup of decaf cappuccino.”

  “Ideally, you could trade everything out. In a perfect world,” said Kenny Martin dreamily. He was dressed in paint-and-plaster-spattered work clothes.

  Next to him, Kenny’s dark-haired daughter, Leonora, whose own paint-spattered T-shirt read ROOSEVELT HIGH SCHOOL, clicked her tongue in derision. She shifted her weight from one foot to another, the way teenage girls do, and tilted her head to one side, eyeing the world at a wary slant.

  “The kid’s right,” said Calvin Mason. “There’s nothing wrong with a cash economy. If only you and I could hook into it somehow. So what did you have in mind?”

  “Well, this place could use a little sprucing up,” Kenny remarked, gazing around Calvin’s office, which was actually an apartment in the Compton Apartments, a three-story squat brick building constructed in 1928. It had a gloomy tiled lobby and ten units. A Hong Kong Chinese lady in suburban Mercer Island owned it; Calvin Mason managed this building and a few others that belonged to her, in exchange for free rent on his unit.

  On his letterhead, Calvin’s office was called Suite 7, but actually it was apartment number seven. The living room served as an office, with an old desk, some army surplus file cabinets, a telephone answering machine, a nice old fireplace, and a sofa for the clients.

  Calvin lived in the bedroom beyond; he forced himself to make his bed every day, just in case a client needed to use the bathroom, which was situated off the bedroom.

  “Okay, okay.” He looked around. The walls did look as if a large, greasy animal had rubbed its body along them over a long period of time. Maybe he could get Mrs. Liu to repay him in cash. The lobby needed work, too. And the ground-floor unit was going to be vacant soon. It probably hadn’t been painted in ten years.

  Calvin had represented Kenny in a long, drawn-out suit against a customer who claimed Kenny had ruined his house with a bad paint job, and later, in a matter involving some cement work—a retaining wall had collapsed. That case had become complicated because the retaining wall was on a property line and there were two angry property owners involved, and because Kenny had sued the guy who sold him the load of cement. There was also a further complication, involving the tenacious root structure of some creeping Saint-John’s-wort, which one party had inadvisedly planted over the crumbling remains. Both cases had dragged on for some time, and Kenny owed Calvin about seven hundred dollars.

  “Leonora here’s helping me out,” said Kenny. “She’s a real good trim painter.”

  “Yeah, and I make sure he gets paid, too,” she said tartly.

  “Well, take a look around, give me an estimate,” said Calvin. He handed Kenny a bunch of keys. “This apartment and the lobby. Plus unit one, right off the lobby before you get to the laundry room. But I’m not coming up with cash for the paint. You want to trade, trade out the paint, too.”

  “We’ve got some nice white latex left over from another job,” said Leonora. “We could add a little color to it if you wanted.”

  “We’ll let you figure it in at cost. No mark-up,” said Kenny. “Seeing as I’m stuck with it and all.”

  “Dad,” moaned Leonora, burying her face in her long slim hands in exasperation. “What am I going to do with you?”

  Just then, there was a harsh buzz from the door. Calvin went over and returned the buzz, wondering who it could be. He didn’t have any more appointments this afternoon.

  A moment later, there was a firm rap on his own door. When he opened it, it took him a moment before he recognized the woman. She’d been having lunch with Bucky a few days ago. Now, though, she was wearing jeans and a sweater and she didn’t look like a party to an upscale divorce at all.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call for an appointment,” she said. “My name is Jane da Silva, and I met you—well, almost met you—the other day.”

  “Yeah, Bucky didn’t bother to introduce us,” said Calvin. “Come in. What can I do for you?” Maybe Bucky was too high-priced for her, and she wanted to hire him as a lawyer, he thought optimistically. He
gestured to the sofa, and she sat down.

  “Kenny and Leonora here are painting contractors,” he explained. “Why don’t you guys look around and give me that estimate.”

  Kenny and Leonora disappeared into the kitchen, and Calvin Mason seated himself behind the desk.

  Jane had rehearsed several tactful ways of approaching her subject, but they all hinged on the fact that Mason’s clients were losers, and his cases pathetic, and that Bucky had said so. She had finally decided to wait until she was face-to-face with him and then improvise. That was why she hadn’t made an appointment; she’d been afraid he’d ask her on the phone what she wanted to talk about.

  Her eyes flickered over the room. To someone like Bucky, it was no doubt a pathetic excuse for a law office. She imagined it had been witness to many a hopeless case, but still, it was a comfortable room with character. It needed a coat of paint, though.

  She caught his eye again. He had a slightly defensive expression on his face. She wondered if he thought she was put off by his office. She didn’t know quite where to begin.

  Finally, he spoke up. “Did Bucky send you here?”

  “Well in a way.” She took a deep breath. “I’m looking for a hopeless case. To help. It sounds absurd, I know—”

  “A hopeless case?” He looked wary.

  She took a deep breath and began again. “I recently became involved with a trust—I suppose you could call it a charity—and I need to find—”

  “And Bucky said I was a hopeless case!” Calvin Mason’s wary expression flashed into anger. “That jerk. The only reason he’s on the seventieth floor with a corner office is because his uncle was too far gone not to keep him out of the family firm. Otherwise, he’d probably be selling magazine subscriptions over the phone.”

  Jane smiled.

  He smiled back. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Bucky’s an okay guy, I guess. Just a little patronizing.”

  “No, no,” she said. “I don’t think you’re a hopeless case. I just wondered if, in your work as a lawyer, you haven’t run across some cases that seem hopeless. Cases of injustice. Perhaps,” she hazarded, “someone accused of a crime he didn’t commit. That kind of thing.”

  He looked at her with a look that said, Someone here is crazy and I don’t think it’s me.

  “The point is, Mr. Mason,” she said with a sigh, “I stand to inherit a lot of money if I can come up with some hopeless case to solve.”

  Calvin Mason perked up. “A lot of money?”

  “Yes. But I can’t touch a dime if I don’t come up with a hopeless case to solve. I know it sounds bizarre. It is bizarre. You see, Mr. Montcrieff, Bucky’s uncle, drew up the trust and the will and—”

  “In that case, bizarre is likely to be the operative word,” Calvin interrupted thoughtfully.

  “This is all privileged information, isn’t it?” she said, mindful of the board’s admonition to avoid any publicity.

  “Absolutely,” said Mason.

  Quickly, she outlined the criteria the board had set. “I’m supposed to find the cases myself,” she said. “And I just thought I might start here. Bucky gave me the impression that you took on some difficult cases.”

  He leaned back a little in his chair. “I do a great deal of pro bono work,” he said. “I find it hard to turn down a needy case.” Probably because he didn’t get any other kind, Jane mused.

  He gestured around his office. A large orange cat entered an open window, bounced off an old radiator with rust showing through the paint, and dropped itself on his desk, curling up in a nest of papers. “I don’t worry about a fancy overhead or anything. I didn’t go to law school just to make a lot of money.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “Do you think you can help me?”

  He flipped through a Rolodex file on his desk, and the two people who’d disappeared into the kitchen reappeared. The man looked like an old hippie, with thinning hair and a gingery walrus mustache. The young girl with him was thin and dark and gave Jane an inquisitive look as she trooped by. Jane read her T-shirt.

  “We’ll check out unit number one now,” said the man, rattling some keys.

  “The tenant’s probably not there. Knock first, then go ahead in,” said Calvin. He resumed pawing through his Rolodex file.

  “I went to Roosevelt,” Jane said after a pause, slightly bemused. “I can’t believe I’m back home.”

  “You grew up here, huh?” said Calvin. “I went to Ballard myself. He frowned at his Rolodex. “I may have to think about this,” he said. “It’s sort of an unusual request.” He paused. “And you say there is a lot of money involved?”

  Jane sighed impatiently. “Yes, there is. And to be perfectly honest, I can sure use it. Naturally I would compensate you if you came up with a suitable case. A finder’s fee. But I think it would be best if we kept it confidential,” she added. She sounded so stilted sitting here talking to him, she thought as her words hung in the air. Was it because she’d spent all those years speaking French, which, literally translated, came out sounding like stilted English? “I mean, it’s got to make sense for you, financially,” she said.

  “Fine,” said Calvin Mason, looking suddenly cheerier. He sat back in his chair. “Give me a little time on this, will you, Miss da Silva.”

  “Mrs.,” she said. “I’m a widow.” A look of sympathy flitted across his face, which Jane found rather charming. “But please call me Jane.”

  “All right. But you don’t look like a Jane. Where can I reach you?”

  She gave him her address and phone number, and he rose and saw her to the door. She paused for a moment, to ask him what she did look like, if she didn’t look like a Jane, but she just gave him her hand to shake instead. It was a nice firm American handshake. She realized she’d become accustomed to limp French handshakes.

  “Roosevelt, huh?” he said. “Did you grow up in Laurelhurst?”

  “That’s right,” she said. Laurelhurst was a comfortable upper-middle-class neighborhood full of perfect gardens and big square brick or Tudor houses. When she was a kid she’d been embarrassed to admit she came from there. People thought she was a snob. Which, in fact, she was, she supposed. She remembered her impression of Ballard High School, just a few miles away, in a lower-middle-class Scandinavian neighborhood. It had a rough reputation.

  “When did you leave Seattle, and where did you go?” Calvin Mason asked, lingering in the doorway.

  “I went to Europe soon after Roosevelt,” she said. “When I was in college. Twenty-some years ago now.”

  “Why did you leave?” he asked her.

  She shrugged. “Laurelhurst seemed pretty boring.”

  “It still is,” said Calvin Mason. “But pleasant. Not the kind of place where the neighbors let you have junker cars in the front yard or anything.”

  “Definitely not,” she said.

  “Well, welcome home,” he said. “The place has changed a lot.”

  “Thanks for your help,” she said. On her way through the gloomy corridor to the lobby, she wondered if she hadn’t made a mistake. Would Calvin Mason have attracted some poor wretch with a noble cause to his practice? Or would he simply have a tedious and predictable string of crummy divorce cases and acrimonious landlord-tenant disputes?

  No, she thought, there wasn’t any tedium here. Failure, perhaps, but not tedium. There was something about Calvin Mason that she recognized, with a painful twinge, as being part of her own make-up. Calvin Mason was one of those people who lived on the edge, often by their wits. One of those people who had never really achieved security, and wasn’t quite sure why, but whose life was never dull.

  When she reached the lobby, which was dominated by a large, defiant-looking aspidistra in a glazed ceramic container, she was startled to hear piano music. A Chopin étude. The piano seemed a little out of tune. Without thinking about it much, she drifted in the direction of the sound. It came from an open door with a brass numeral “1” hanging crookedly from a screw.

  Sh
e stepped into the doorframe and saw the paint-spattered young girl at an old upright, head bent in concentration, fingers curled over the keyboard, while the man stood back, stroking his chin thoughtfully and gazing at the walls.

  She waited until the girl had finished, and then she said quietly: “Brava.”

  The girl turned to her and blushed. “Oh, I hope whoever owns this apartment doesn’t mind my using the piano.”

  Kenny turned to the door. “Isn’t she great?” he said. “Great little fingers.”

  “It’s not just her fingers,” said Jane. “It’s the phrasing, the expression, the interpretation. All very sophisticated, but fresh and young, too. As if the piece is writing itself as it’s being played. Great stuff.”

  The girl beamed.

  “Excuse me,” said Jane, “for just bursting in here. I’m Jane da Silva.”

  “Kenny Martin,” said the man, waving. “And Leonora, my daughter.”

  “I just had to see who was playing so beautifully,” said Jane. “Keep up with your lessons.”

  “Lessons?” said Kenny. “I don’t see why she needs more lessons. Her teacher says she can’t teach her much more. You should see the awards she’s won.”

  Jane and Leonora looked at each other for a moment with understanding. She needed to keep studying, now more than ever, if she was ever to become a mature pianist. Jane liked the look of the girl. Serious and intelligent but still charmingly unfledged.

  A moment later, as Jane stood at the curb, opening the door to her rental car, the girl, slightly out of breath, ran up to her. “Can I talk to you?” she said. “I was listening when you were telling Cal what you were looking for. Dad doesn’t like to talk about it—doesn’t want to believe it—but I’m a pretty hopeless case. Do you think you can help me?”

  Chapter 6

  I don’t remember my mother at all, okay. So you don’t need to say I’m sorry, or anything like that.” Leonora curled her long fingers around the teacup and lowered her head as she drank, so that a screen of dark hair fell in front of her face. She was sitting opposite Jane in Uncle Harold’s gloomy parlor.