Extenuating Circumstances

by Jonathan Valin

  In the icy anteroom bronze-haired Millie was bent over a word processor at her desk. She glanced at me as I came out of Lessing’s office. The yellow computer screen reflecting in her glasses made it look as if she had TV sets for eyes.

  “Find anything interesting?” she asked.

  “Not much.”

  I pulled up a chair and sat across from her. She turned off her computer, and the TV sets in her glasses went out with a blink. In spite of the chained horn-rims and the prison matron’s hairdo, Millie wasn’t nearly as old as she dressed. Early thirties, at best. I had the feeling that it flattered some officious bone in her body to look the part of a secretary, even if it was the secretary from a forties melodrama.

  “You mind talking to me about Mr. Lessing?” I asked.

  She smiled encouragingly. “Not a bit. I’d do anything to help Mr. L. or the missus.”

  “You like him, don’t you?”

  “I like him a lot,” Millie said. “He’s a sweet man and real well organized. I like Mr. T. too. But he can get cross when things go wrong. Mr. L. don’t have a cross bone in his body. He’s always so kind.”

  “Do you know if he was working on something special this past week?”

  “Don’t think so. Truth is he was only in the one time last week, on Friday. To sign the checks.”

  “So he spent the week away from the office?”

  “I guess you could say that,” Millie said. “But then he don’t spend much time here, anyway. What with his commission meetings at the Court House, he only comes in three, four times a week normally.”

  “The commission takes up that much of his time?”

  “Guess it must,” Millie said. “It’s been like that since I come to work here three years ago. Mr. T. handles the everyday stuff. Mr. L. comes in for meetings and to sign checks.”

  “Your boss didn’t have a problem with drugs or alcohol, did he?”

  Millie gave me a look. “Of course not. What makes you say such a thing?”

  “I found two checks on his desk made out to a drug rehabilitation clinic.”

  Millie laughed. “You must mean the Lighthouse.”

  “That’s the name all right. Why is that funny?”

  “‘Cause Mr. L. ain’t no patient there. That’s just a charity he contributes to. In fact, he had a lot to do with starting the place up—him and Mr. Geneva. I think Mr. L. paid for the lease right out of his own pocket.”

  “Your boss must be a generous man.”

  “He’s got a soft spot for street kids.” She scowled as if she didn’t share the same weakness.

  I got up from the chair. “This guy Geneva you mentioned, where could I find him?”

  “At the Court House,” Millie said. “He’s on the commission too. Mr. Don Geneva.”

  I started for the door.

  “You don’t really think something has happened to Mr. L., do you?” Millie called out.

  “I don’t know, Millie. Probably not.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she said, looking concerned. “There just ain’t enough like him to go around. Most men are out for what they can get.” She raised her ring finger and waved her wedding ring at me as evidence.

  ******

  I caught a taxi on Madison and had the cabbie drive me through the boiling, smoggy heat to the Court House on Fifth Street. It was a three-story stone fortress with barred casements and barred turrets and a general air of ugly utility, like a Protestant orphanage. The information carrel inside the lobby was deserted. In fact, most of the first floor had emptied out for lunch. The only sounds came from the wall fans, buzzing on their consoles, and a few typewriters clicking away behind pebbled-glass doors.

  I walked across the lobby to a staircase where a blue-jacketed security guard sat dozing on a stool. A Turfway Racing Form lay at his feet, flapping gently in the breeze from the fans. I made enough noise as I approached to wake him up. He resettled his Sam Browne around his tubby gut and gave me a rancorous look, as if he’d caught me napping.

  “Can you point me to the commissioners’ offices?” I asked.

  “Ain’t no one there,” the cop said. “Most folks eat lunch this time of day.”

  “Let’s pretend I already ate.”

  “Upstairs. Second floor.” He jerked his thumb at the staircase above his head as if he was showing me the gate.

  There was a directory on the wall at the top of the staircase with each of the commissioners’ names listed on it, followed by an office number. Ira Lessing was 210. Don Geneva, 216.

  I tried 210, but it was locked tight. I made a mental note to ask Len about getting me a key to the place, then walked down to 216. The door to Geneva’s office was wide open. Inside, a well-dressed blond man in his early thirties was sitting at an oak desk, feet up, holding a sandwich in his right hand and a Wall Street Journal in his left. I would have bet that he was a lawyer. He had that look about him, as if he had the world by the balls.

  “Help you?” the man said as I walked in.

  “You can if you’re Don Geneva.”

  The man pointed with his sandwich at the placard on the desk in front of him, and I caught a whiff of bologna. The placard read “Don Geneva, City Commissioner.”

  “Your name is?” Geneva said, taking a bite of the sandwich.

  “Stoner. I’d like to talk to you about one of your colleagues, Ira Lessing.”

  “You a friend of Ira’s?”

  “I’m working for the family.”

  Geneva chewed on that for a second. “I’m pretty close to Ira and Janey, and I don’t recall hearing your name.”

  Now, I was sure he was a lawyer. “Len Trumaine hired me this afternoon.”

  Geneva smirked when I mentioned Trumaine. “Plastics stuff?” he said, as if Len and plastics were the least interesting things in the world.

  “No. I’m a private detective. Mr. Lessing has been missing since Sunday night, and the family’s hired me to try to find him.”

  Geneva’s mouth fell so wide open I could see the bologna on his molars. He dropped the newspaper on his desk and the sandwich on the newspaper, sat up in his chair, and gawked at me.

  “If this is a joke . . . ”

  “It’s not a joke, Mr. Geneva.”

  Geneva put his hands on the desk and pushed himself back in his chair, as if he was going to stand up. But he didn’t stand up. He just sat there, looking stunned. “Chrissake,” he said in a shocked voice. “You got ID?”

  I showed him the photostat of my license. He stared at it blankly, then handed it back to me.

  “Maybe you could answer a few questions?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said, still looking stunned.

  “When’s the last time you saw Mr. Lessing?”

  “Here. On Friday. At the commission meeting.”

  “Was anything special discussed at this meeting? Any project that Lessing was involved in?”

  “No. It was a slow day, even for July. We had a couple of zoning disputes and building-code violations. Nothing that anyone really cared about, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Did you talk to Lessing?”

  “Of course I did,” Geneva said. “We’re good friends.”

  “Did he mention any plans for the weekend? Any business plans?”

  Geneva thought about it for a second. “No. He said he and Janey were going to watch the fireworks on Sunday, like they do every year. He asked what Jeanne and I were planning for the Fourth. You know, small talk.”

  “Did he seem at all preoccupied to you? Distracted or depressed?”

  “Ira depressed?” Geneva said in a scoffing voice. “Ira is one of the most upbeat men I’ve ever met. He’s always positive. That’s just his nature. A decent, positive man. Just ask anyone here at the Court House. Anyone in Covington. Hell, everybody likes Ira.”

  He got a worried look on his face, as if he was considering what he had just said. “Christ, it’s awful to think that something could have happened to him.”
r />   It surprised me a little that a guy like Geneva, with his razor-cut good looks and snotty air of self-possession, could get shaken up about anything other than the loss of a retainer. Apparently Lessing had made an impression on him. And that impressed me.

  “Lessing didn’t mention a place called the Lighthouse at the meeting, did he?”

  Geneva half smiled, as if the name was familiar to him. “Why do you ask?”

  “He left some checks on his desk made out to it.”

  “That’s normal. Sam Kingston, the director, is always phoning Ira up for an extra buck.”

  “The Lighthouse is one of Lessing’s projects?”

  Geneva nodded. “It’s a clinic on Monmouth for teenage drug abusers. Ira started the thing by personally soliciting contributions. He even got me to pitch in. Eventually we got the commission to fund the place. It’s a step toward cleaning that damn street up.”

  “What’s so special about Monmouth?”

  “There’s a good deal of drug trafficking and prostitution around the bars there. And that upsets a lot of people, not just Ira. Of course nobody did anything but complain until Ira came along. He paid the bills for the clinic out of his own pocket for almost a year. Still pays a few, when the grant money runs low.”

  “Why so generous?” I asked.

  “Ira thinks the city should look after the street kids—and all the other folks who haven’t had the advantages that we’ve had.” Although he said it with the sort of light irony that you’d expect from a guy like him, the irony was mixed with something respectful and fond.

  “He sounds like an old-fashioned do-gooder,” I said, smiling.

  “That’s exactly what he is,” Geneva said. “Ira can bore you to death with facts and figures. I mean, he’s a stickler for detail. But under the bow tie and pressed shirt, he’s got a heart of gold and everyone knows it.”

  His face fell. “Look, if there’s anything I can do to help find him, don’t hesitate to call me. Here or at home. I really mean that.”

  “I’m sure the Lessings will appreciate your offer.”

  “I just hope it’s a false alarm.”

  4

  BEFORE RETURNING to the Lessing house I caught a cab to the Lighthouse Clinic on upper Monmouth Street. On the way uptown I took a look at the bars that Geneva had mentioned—little brick boxes, with light bulbs flashing around their doors and sandwich signs on the sidewalks advertising the most beautiful girls in Kentucky, all nude, all the time. And of course there was the street traffic that had apparently upset Lessing. Sixteen- and seventeen-year-old girls in Madonna-ware, with their spikey hair spray-painted purple and their eyes made up like Halloween masks. Twenty-year-olds in leather minis and tube tops, their breasts oozing out of their bodices like squibs of toothpaste. They schooled together in groups, according to their ages, wandering up and down the blocks in front of the bars, occasionally darting out into the street, getting swallowed up by a passing car and speeding off. I’d seen that kind of thing so many times before in so many different cities that the bars and the whores seemed like part of the urban landscape now, like fireplugs and phone lines. I guessed Lessing had seen them differently.

  The Lighthouse was a half mile north of the red-light district, a brick storefront in the middle of a commercial block. The front window had been boarded over with painted plyboard, and a sign had been hung above the door picturing a lighthouse. A teenage girl was sitting in the doorway, looking very stoned and very lost. As I got out of the cab she walked over arid panhandled me for change.

  “Why don’t you go inside?” I said to her, pointing at the building.

  “Why don’t you get fucked?” she said, stalking off. “I ain’t ready to be saved.”

  Judging from the thinness of her arms and the sallowness of her complexion, I gave her a few more weeks. Then she’d be ready for anything.

  I walked through the open door into a reception room filled with folding chairs. A half-dozen spaced-out kids sat there, nodding off. There was an unmanned secretary’s desk at the rear of the waiting area, with a sign on its corner saying “Counseling.” A long aisle ran from the back of the waiting area to a pair of swinging, doors with the word “Clinic” printed on them. Behind that door a kid was screaming holy murder. The junkies on the folding chairs didn’t seem to notice, but it got my attention, all right. After a few minutes the screaming subsided into sobs, then stopped altogether. A young nurse, looking ashen-faced, came through the swinging doors and up the aisle. She sat down at the counseling desk.

  I walked over to her.

  “You all right?” I asked.

  She nodded slowly, as if she were making up her mind about it at that very moment. “Yeah, I’ll be all right. Can I help you?”

  “I’d like to talk to Sam Kingston.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at the swinging doors. “Sam’s busy at the moment.”

  “I heard.”

  “Some kid freaked out on T’s and B’s. Sam’s talking him down. He shouldn’t be too much longer if you want to wait.”

  I sat on one of the folding chairs, next to a kid who smelled like a clothes hamper. A few minutes went by, then a stocky, bearded black man in a doctor’s frock coat came through the swinging doors. He walked over to the waiting area and sat down heavily on the corner of the nurse’s desk.

  “What’s next, I wonder?” he said, rubbing savagely at his thick black beard.

  “Sam?” the nurse said. “That fellow’s been waiting to talk to you.” She pointed at me.

  The man turned his head toward me and held out his hand. “I’m Sam Kingston. How can I help you?”

  “My name is Stoner, Dr. Kingston,” I said, shaking with him. “Could I talk to you for a few minutes?”

  “You a narc, Mr. Stoner?”

  I smiled at his savvy. “No. A private detective. I’m working for the Lessing family.”

  The name Lessing made Sam Kingston straighten up.

  “Come on back to the office,” he said.

  ******

  The office was nothing more than a glassed-in carrel in one corner of the clinic. The Hippocratic oath was hung like a stitched motto above a tiny desk and chair. The only other furnishing was a stained Mr. Coffee machine sitting on a plastic table.

  “What exactly do you do for Ira?” Kingston said, pouring two cups of coffee and handing one to me.

  “Right now, what I’m doing is looking for him.”

  “Did you try at his office or over at the Court House?”

  “He’s disappeared, Dr. Kingston. Since Sunday night no one has seen or heard from him.”

  Kingston sat down on his desk chair, slopping a little coffee on the floor. “Seriously?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  Kingston set the coffee cup on the corner of his desk and stared at me with concern. “I sure hope nothing’s happened to him. It might sound corny, but the guy is a saint. Without him none of this would exist. Not the Lighthouse or half a dozen other charities and halfway houses around town. My God, he’s put over ten thousand of his own dollars in this place alone. And if we run short or some kid needs money for special treatment, all you have to do is ask Ira. I don’t know how much he’s handed out over the years. All you have to do is ask.”

  “You haven’t seen or heard from him this week or weekend, have you?”

  “I talked to him on Saturday afternoon,” Kingston said.

  “What did he say?”

  “The usual things. He asked how we were doing, if there was anything we needed.”

  “Did you need anything special?”

  “Money,” Kingston said with an embarrassed laugh. “We always need money. The Lighthouse is funded by the commission now. But, in spite of the dole, we’re perpetually short. Ira mails us a monthly check to help defray costs. And of course we’re always sending local kids to him for handouts—to help get them started in the program.”

  I asked Kingston the same thing I’d asked Don Geneva: �
�Why is he so charitable to street kids?”

  “Because he’s a good man,” Kingston said thoughtfully, as if he’d asked himself the same question many times before. “I mean I’ve talked to him about it. Sometimes you can’t help thinking you’re taking advantage of a guy who’s that generous. But he says it’s something he needs to do. He has more money than he can use, and he doesn’t have any children of his own. He just wants to help kids.”

  I reached into my coat and pulled out the two canceled checks I’d found in Ira’s calendar.

  “I found these on Lessing’s desk. They might have meant something special to him. Do they mean anything to you?”

  Kingston reached out and took the checks. “They look like Ira’s usual doles—to get kids started in the drug rehab program.”

  “Nothing unusual about them?”

  “Not that I can see. I could have our bookkeeper, Marty Levine, examine them if you want to leave them with me. She’s out on vacation this week, but she should be back next Monday.”

  “All right,” I said. “Just don’t lose track of them, Doc, okay?”

  Kingston pulled open the drawer of his desk and laid them gently inside, as if he was burying a pet.

  5

  IT WAS close to four when I finished with Kingston. I caught a cab on Monmouth and had the cabbie drive me back to Riverside Drive. As we turned onto the street I spotted a rusting blue-and-white Cincinnati police cruiser parked beneath the graceful French Quarter house. At first I thought that Trumaine must have talked Janey Lessing into calling the cops, although why she’d called the Cincinnati cops rather than the Covington department was a mystery. But as I paid the cabbie I saw Trumaine come out the front door with a plainclothes detective beside him. Even at a distance I recognized the detective—his name was Art Finch and he was on the CPD homicide squad.