Crazybone

by Bill Pronzini

  “Okay,” I said when I got my face straight again, “let’s do some work here. You can start by explaining that cryptic note you left me yesterday.”

  “About the Hunters? Very interesting stuff, so far.”

  “So you said. Interesting how?”

  “Mr. Jackson Hunter in particular. Seems the man was ten and a half years old when he died.”

  “What?”

  “Intercoastal application says he was horn in Harrisburg, P.A., in I960,” Tamara said. “I checked the Vital Stats Bureau there. No birth record for anybody named Jackson Hunter. Not that year and not any year between fifty-five and sixty-five.”

  “One of the nearby towns...”

  “Uh-uh. Pennsylvania’s not a big state, so I checked all the counties. A few Jackson Hunters and Jack Hunters, but they’re all the wrong race, deceased prior to two weeks ago, or still living in P.A.”

  Frowning, I said, “Sheila Hunter is supposed to be from Harrisburg, too. Twining told me her maiden name is Underwood.”

  “Yeah, I got that from the daughter’s birth record. No Sheila Underwood born in Harrisburg during that same ten-year span. And there be no record of a Hunter-Underwood marriage.”

  “All right. But that doesn’t make Jack Hunter ten and a half years old when he died. How’d you come up with that figure?”

  “Man’s Social Security number,” Tamara said. “Can’t get any information out of the Social Security Administration — be easier to back into the Pentagon files — but the number itself tells you some things. First three digits, where it was issued. Other digits, approximately when.”

  “And Hunter’s was issued ten and a half years ago.”

  “Yep. In New York City.”

  “Mrs. Hunter?” Her Social Security number was on the application, too.

  “Same time, same place.”

  “So. Brand-new IDs for both of them.”

  “Told you it was interesting stuff. What d’you think? Fugitives, maybe?”

  “Maybe. People with something to hide, in any event. The daughter’s birth record tell us anything?”

  “Not much. Born October 16, ten years ago. Peninsula Hospital, Redwood City.”

  “October 16th is tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” Tamara said.

  I shook my head, wondering if the fact that Sheila Hunter had been pregnant when the two of them moved to Greenwood had anything to do with the identity switch. It was possible. Hell, anything was possible in a shuffle like this.

  “Did you check on their house purchase?” I asked. “I’d like to know when they bought it and how they managed to get a loan.”

  “Didn’t need a loan,” Tamara said. “They paid cash.”

  “Cash? For real estate in Greenwood?”

  “Four hundred thousand. No loan ap, no references, just a clean cash deal.”

  “When?”

  “Seven years ago. First three years, they rented.”

  “They didn’t buy the house with a bagful of bills. Even drug traffickers are smarter than that.”

  “Transfer of funds from an L.A. bank. No way I can trace where they be coming from before that. If they got the money from selling another piece of property, they didn’t own it under the Hunter or Underwood names, least not in California. Probably not New York, either, but I’ll check.”

  “Do that.”

  “Could be a high-end real estate scam,” she said musingly. “Have to have new IDs after a deal like that.”

  “Or some other kind of big-money scam. Or the cash could’ve come from any of a couple of dozen legal or quasi-legal sources.” I got up to pour myself another cup of coffee. “Twining told me Hunter worked for Raytec in Silicon Valley when he first came to Greenwood. Maybe his employment files can tell us something.”

  She made that “tsk” sound again. “He illegal for me to back into a company’s personnel files.”

  “I know it and I wouldn’t ask you to. This is my kind of job — the dinosaur approach.”

  I looked up the number for Raytec Corporation in the Santa Clara County phone directory, one of a dozen Hay Area books we keep in the office. They had an automated telephone system, which meant I had to go through a lot of button-pushing nonsense before I got to talk to a real live human being in the personnel department. I gave my name and the agency name without including the word “detective,” and said more or less truthfully that I was the CEO; then I said a Mr. Jackson Hunter had applied for a position with us in our computer department, giving Raytec as a former-employee reference. What could they tell me about him? Sometimes when you work this ploy, they’ll ask for a telephone number so they can call you back to verify you’re who you claim to be. The woman at Raytec was more trusting than most; she put me on hold while she communed with her computer.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said a couple of minutes later, “but your applicant seems to have given you false information. Raytec has never employed a Jackson or Jack Hunter in any capacity.”

  I relayed this to Tamara after I hung up. She said, “Not much of a surprise, huh?”

  “Not much. Either he worked for them under another name, or he picked Raytec out of the blue as part of his cover. Little chance of him getting caught in the lie unless he used Raytec as an actual reference.”

  Tamara considered before she said, “Have to give some kind of reference to get a private consultancy job. No company’d hire him without a pretty solid one. You know which companies he was supposed to’ve done business with?”

  “No, except that one might be on the coast — Half Moon Bay, most likely. Hunter was coming back from a business meeting, apparently, when he was killed. Richard Twining might be able to supply the name.”

  But when I got Twining on the phone he said, “I don’t remember Jack ever mentioning the outfits he worked for. Why don’t you ask Sheila?”

  Which would be wasted effort, after yesterday’s little run-in. No point in calling Doc Lukash, either: even if he’d talk to me I doubted he would have any more information than Twining.

  “Know what I think?” Tamara said. “Man didn’t work as a consultant for any company. Wasn’t in the industry at all. Phony employment background for his new ID.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking, too. But then where he’d get the money to buy his house? And to maintain an affluent lifestyle for three people for so many years?”

  “Shaping up into some big mystery, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And I wonder just how deep it goes.”

  I called Ken Fujita at Intercoastal and laid the whole thing out for him. I said I could have a final report on his desk by the end of the week, but he said no, hold off and stay on the case a while longer at Intercoastal’s expense, see if I could get to the bottom of it.

  “You’ve saved us money and embarrassment already,” he said, “so you’re entitled to the extra benefit. Besides, I’m as curious about the Hunters as you are. Whatever you find out about this game of theirs may help us build in safeguards against potential fraud.”

  Insurance companies are unpredictable and often enough they make decisions that surprise you, but the decisions that involve largesse for employees are rare. Two in a row from Intercoastal was akin to finding a celibate politician in Washington. Not that this one was altruistic, any more than the original one of paying off Jack Hunter’s term life policy had been; something in it for them, as always. Still, it restored some of my faith in the quid pro quo of business dealings — the straightforward approach that seems to have been eroded by incompetence, greed, disinterest, and irresponsibility, and become the exception rather than the norm. The “do a good job and you’ll be rewarded for it” concept.

  I said as much to Tamara. She said, “Retro, man. Things don’t work that way anymore, from the top on down. All the corporate dudes care about is P for Profit, and screw everybody else. Bound to infect the rest of us.”

  “You can’t have much profit without hard work.”

  “Sure you
can. Screwing’s easier and brings the money in faster.”

  “So what’re you saying? Big Business screws us, so it’s all right for us to screw them in return? And anybody else on a lower rung, right on down to the bottom?”

  “New quid pro quo, boss. Business, politics, you name it. That’s how the world operates these days.”

  “Brave new world.”

  “More like Orwell’s than Huxley’s.”

  “That your philosophy, too, college girl? Get all you can for the least amount of effort? Look out for Number One and nobody else? Screw your way through life?”

  “Well,” she said, “the more you do the nasty, the better you get at it and the better off you are.”

  The words came through one of her wry little grins, so I was reasonably sure she was kidding. I hoped she was. What little promise I hold for the future is wrapped up in intelligent young people like Tamara Corbin — the kind of person I believed she was at heart. The possibility that I was nothing more to her than somebody to use on her way up the ladder was too depressing to even consider.

  Other business took me away from the office for the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon. It was three o’clock when I returned. Tamara was industriously thumping away on her new Mac G3. She hadn’t been able to come up with anything else about the Hunters, she said, so she’d moved on to the Holloway case, a missing-husband trace that she was making headway on.

  The phone rang not long after I sat down. Tamara was still busy, so I picked up. And a small, strong voice said without hesitation. “This is Emily Hunter. Are you the man who came to see my mother yesterday?”

  I said yes, I was, managing to keep the surprise out of my voice. “What can I do for you, Emily?”

  “Well, I found your business card in her studio. That’s how I knew your phone number. She doesn’t know I’m calling you.”

  “I see.”

  “She wouldn’t like it if she did.”

  “I won’t tell her. All my calls are confidential.”

  “Thank you,” she said. Very grave and serious, even more so than yesterday. With something added that I took to be a kind of worried determination. “Could I talk to you? In person, I mean.”

  “Of course you can. It must be important.”

  “It is.”

  “Something about your mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s making her so afraid?”

  Pause. “I can’t talk about it now. She might come in any minute. Tomorrow, okay? After school?”

  I glanced at my calendar; the afternoon was free. “Anytime you say. Where would you like to meet?”

  “Do you know the Rincon Riding Academy?”

  “No, but I’m sure I can find it.”

  “It’s on Rincon Road. Not far from where I live. I take riding lessons there every Thursday at three-thirty. We could meet in front at a quarter after.”

  “Quarter after three it is.”

  Another pause. I could hear the faint raspy sound of her breathing, the underlying tension in it. Then, “I have to talk to somebody. There’s no one else. I don’t know anyone else.”

  “I understand. I’ll help if I can.”

  “Thank you,” she said again. She started to say something else, broke it off; then, quickly, “Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye, Emily.” But she had already severed the connection.

  I put the receiver down, thinking: It cost her a lot to make that call. She isn’t the kind of kid who asks for help easily, particularly not from a stranger. Whatever’s going on there, she’s caught in the middle. Dead father, terrified mother, and neither of them who they’ve pretended to be. Does she know who her parents really are, that she’s been living a lie herself?

  All of that, and tomorrow’s her tenth birthday.

  Jesus, what some people do to their children!

  5

  Back in horse country again. Parked in front of the Rincon Riding Academy, waiting for Emily Hunter, watching the activity in the block-square complex. Horses everywhere — horses on my mind.

  Noble steed. Cay use, bronc, bangtail, hayburner, crowbait. Grace and speed on a racetrack; maker and loser, all unknowing, of bettors’ fortunes. Work animals, like cattle and oxen. Companion animals, same pet class as cats and dogs according to the proponents of a victorious proposition on last year’s state ballot to “recognize horses as an important part of California’s heritage that deserve protection from those who would slaughter them for food for human consumption.” Steaks, chops, and roasts to the unfussy palates of Europeans and Japanese, the main markets for horsemeat. Even a taxidermist’s delight — Roy Rogers’ taxidermist anyway.

  Horses are a lot of different things to a lot of different people, to some of them passionately so, but I was not one of the multitude. Strictly neutral on the subject, although I’d voted for the proposition because I don’t like to see any animal suffer inhumane treatment for any reason. Horses themselves, though, I can take or leave alone and mostly I prefer the latter. For one very good reason.

  The noble steed is a smelly bugger.

  Proof of this was borne on the warm afternoon breeze, a pungent combination of manure, urine, sweat, dust, and harness leather from the twenty or so cayuses boarded at the Rincon Riding Academy. It wasn’t altogether unpleasant; the problem with it was pervasiveness. The smell got inside your nose and sinus cavities and stayed there. The horsey set obviously didn’t mind, probably got so used to the aroma after a while they didn’t even notice it. I always noticed it, even at a distance; up close and personal it was twice as potent. I hoped Emily wouldn’t want me to go inside the cavernous riding barn with her. If I had to do that, the scent of horse would not only go home with me but would no doubt linger for some time. Even Kerry would smell like a Kentucky Derby candidate, which would severely inhibit our sex life...

  A young girl on a bicycle came along the road from the opposite direction and turned in at the academy’s gate. Emily’s size and age, but not Emily. I glanced at my watch. Almost twenty past three. She was a little late, not that that had to mean anything.

  I shifted position and thought about putting the window up. Wouldn’t have done much good; the equine effluvium had taken up residence inside the car. Besides, it was a warm day and I liked the feel of the breeze on my face.

  Half a dozen kids and an older woman, all of them in riding togs and mounted on black-and-brown horses, filed out of the barn into an outdoor arena. I watched them ride around in there — walk, trot, walk, trot. Fascinating. Like watching a group of prisoners in an exercise yard, except that this bunch seemed to be enjoying themselves.

  Three twenty-five. And still no Emily.

  I was beginning to get twitchy. Any number of things could have held her up — if she was coming. She might have changed her mind; kids can be mercurial, even serious-minded kids like Emily Hunter. That wouldn’t be half as bad as her mother having found out about the phone call and the planned meeting. The quick way Emily bad said good-bye yesterday... it could’ve been because her mother walked in on her.

  The young equestrians and their instructor kept walking and trotting. And I kept twitching.

  Three-thirty.

  Three thirty-five.

  She wasn’t coming. No doubt of it by then, but I stayed put anyway. It was almost four before I called it quits and started the car. The horse smell went away with me, just as I’d known it would.

  This being Thursday, Anita Purcell Fine Arts was open for business. Not that they were doing any when I walked in; the place was empty except for a twentyish russet-haired woman sitting at a desk, paging through a catalogue. Either Anita Purcell was very choosy, or fine arts were currently at a premium: the gallery’s display stock was on the skimpy side, so much so that the big, white-walled room had an incomplete look, as if Ms. Purcell were in the process of moving in or moving out. Half a dozen large oils and watercolors, the same number of smaller paintings, a couple of marble sculptures, a group
ing of pottery and another of porcelain figurines — that was all there was. The pottery layout was of Sheila Hunter s distinctive blue- and green-glazed, black-design items, and at that there were less than a dozen of them.

  The woman hopped to her feet, smiling and eager, as if I were the first potential customer in a long while. She had sea-green eyes, and when I looked into them I felt a little sad. No there there. Like so many individuals you encounter these days, of all types and dispositions. Genetic pod people capable of superficial thought and basic emotions, existing in personal spaces that were dimly lit and mostly empty. The dumbing down of America not only continues, it seems to be approaching epidemic proportions.

  She was not Anita Purcell, of course; her name was Gretchen Kiley, she was Ms. Purcell’s niece, and she was minding the store while her aunt was away at an auction in Los Angeles. She knew Sheila Hunter, oh, yes, but not very well, and wasn’t it a terrible thing about her husband? She guessed Mrs. Hunter and her aunt were friends, and no, she didn’t know any of Mrs. Hunter’s other friends. Why was I asking? I told her I was conducting a routine investigation on behalf of Jack Hunter’s insurance company. Then I took a small dyer because I’d run out of direct questions.

  “Does your aunt have any friends, artists, customers named Karen?” I asked.

  “Karen?” Blank look. “Uh, why do you want to know that?”

  “It pertains to my investigation.”

  “Oh, it does? Well, I can’t think of anyone. I don’t know that I should— Oh, wait. Someone named Karen that Mrs. Hunter knows, too, is that what you mean?”

  “That’s right.”

  Ms. Kiley gnawed at a well-shaped upper lip. “About a year ago I overheard Aunt Anita and Mrs. Hunter talking about different kinds of art. I mean, I wasn’t eavesdropping or anything, I just happened to be here while they were talking. Aunt Anita said she wished she could get some really good stained glass and Mrs. Hunter said she knew someone who made some. A stained-glass artist.”

  “Someone named Karen.”