He was to meet a young man in the Loop, in Water Tower Place, at the top of the escalator. “Bernard Casey.” Hazel inhaled. “The way he talked, I looked him up. There is a Bernard Casey at Foley, Farnum, and Casey on Madison.”
From the legal lowlands where he dwelt, Tuttle had often considered the great names in the law who practiced in the Chicago area. Foley, Farnum, and Casey represented an alpine peak. Hazel’s excitement communicated itself to him.
“How will I know him?”
“He will know you. I mentioned your tweed hat.”
“I’ll be there.”
Parking in the Loop meant two possibilities, either parking in the street and risking being towed away or putting his car in a garage and coming up with would have been a down payment on its replacement. It was with the sense that his fortunes were turning that Tuttle nosed his car into a garage and then had to rise level after level until he was on the one called Ireland. The seventh level. Seven was his lucky number. It had taken him that many years to get through law school. He wedged his car into a narrow space, got out, pulled his tweed hat firmly onto his head, and went down in the elevator to the street.
He was two blocks from the Water Tower, the landmark that gave its name to the huge edifice across Michigan Avenue from it. With his topcoat flapping, Tuttle negotiated the traffic, weaving among the maniacal drivers and then given interference by a city bus. Through the revolving doors and up the escalator he went, craning his neck as if to make his tweed hat more visible. No one awaited him at the top.
He paced; he removed his tweed hat and put it on again; he paced some more. The thought grew on him that someone had used Hazel to play a practical joke. Was it possible that Hazel herself … He had pulled out his cell phone and switched it on when someone spoke.
“Mr. Tuttle?”
Tuttle whirled, his hand on the brim of his hat.
“Bernard Casey.” He put out his hand. Tuttle took it. The young man exuded success. The dark suit must have cost five hundred dollars; his tie was richly tasteful. His expression became dubious, but then he overcame his doubts and suggested they have coffee.
Casey brought their cups to the table where he had ensconced Tuttle and lifted his in a toast. Tuttle sipped, scalding his mouth. He cried out.
“I’ll get some water.”
“It’s okay,” Tuttle managed to say.
“I should have warned you.”
“Maybe I can sue.”
Laughter. Casey brought up the suit against McDonald’s some years before. Hot coffee had turned out to be against the law. This broke the ice.
“You practice in Fox River.”
Tuttle nodded. Casey would have had to know this to contact his office.
“I apologize for not coming to you, Tuttle. I should tell you that I am a lawyer myself. What I need done has to be done in Fox River. It would be impractical to send one of our people out there.” He paused. “No. Truth time. What I want to find out is for a friend of mine.” Casey sipped his coffee with care. “Have you had anything to do with adoptions?”
“As a matter of fact, I have.” Tuttle crossed his legs instead of his fingers.
“Good. I’ll try to make this as concise as I can.”
There was a young lady who had been adopted. She had been born in Fox River and given up to her foster parents at birth. She wanted to find her real mother.
“Of course, the mother may no longer be alive. She may long since have moved out of the area. If she married, who knows what her name might be?”
Tuttle lifted a hand. “Just leave all that to me. Your friend’s name?”
“Martha Lynch.”
Tuttle’s heart leapt. Somewhere in the next world, his father must be guiding events. Through Martin Sisk, the Lynches had hired him to locate the mother of their adopted daughter. Now Bernard Casey, acting for the daughter, was asking him to do the same thing.
“I’ll get at it.” He hesitated. Bernard Casey drew a wallet from his inner pocket and put a hundred-dollar bill on the circular table. Tuttle covered it with one hand and shook Bernard Casey’s with the other.
“I suppose it’s all on record.”
The image of the Fox River courthouse loomed in Tuttle’s mind, the scene of so many of his defeats and his few small triumphs. He wished he had thought of that earlier. They exchanged cards, Casey somewhat surprised to see Tuttle’s emerge from his tweed hat. He was glad he had retrieved it from Marjorie. It occurred to him that he could soon afford to have a new batch printed.
“I’ll want all this to be just between the two of us,” Casey said.
“Of course.”
Casey had the look of a man who had accomplished his mission. “Do you know Amos Cadbury?”
“Everyone knows Amos Cadbury,” Tuttle said carefully.
They parted there with another handshake. Tuttle eschewed the escalator and bounced down the stairs to the street. He had half a mind to call Hazel, but it was a thought easily rejected. At the garage, he ransomed his car with a credit card, but his manner was insouciant. Soon all his bills would be paid.
15
When Father Dowling mentioned the death of Nathaniel Fleck to Phil Keegan, Keegan said he would have Cy Horvath drop by the rectory. “I told you it wasn’t exactly what we thought it was.”
“What exactly was it?”
“Let Cy explain.”
Since talking with Amos, Father Dowling had pondered the lawyer’s normal dilemma. Madeline Lorenzo, the adoption of whose out-of-wedlock baby Amos had handled years before, had appeared in his office greatly upset by the reappearance of that child’s father, who had abandoned her when she found she was pregnant. A familiar story, alas, the male refusing responsibility for his deed while the poor woman carried within her the result of their liaison. How many men had walked away from such a situation and thought of it no more. That Nathaniel Fleck, however belatedly, had felt the pangs of conscience was commendable, but his reappearance threatened the life that the mother had since built; she had a husband, a professor at Northwestern, and four children born of their union. A sense of responsibility that would have been welcome to her long ago had become a menace, and clearly Amos feared that she had been tempted to remove the threat to her marriage.
When Cy arrived, Marie showed him in. Father Dowling, feeling somewhat duplicitous, told the stolid Hungarian that he found himself still wondering about that strange event of the death of Nathaniel Fleck.
“I’ll tell you what we know, Father.”
Father Dowling had had many occasions for understanding the confidence Phil Keegan had in Horvath, assuring the pastor of St. Hilary’s that Cy was worth half a dozen of his other detectives—“meaning the rest of the department.” Cy still had the look of the football player he had been before an injury his freshman year at Illinois had sidelined him for good. In the service, he had been an MP; when he was discharged, he applied for the Fox River police. Phil had recognized the name from Cy’s stellar career as a high school player and would have hired him on that basis alone. That Cy had turned into such an excellent detective was frosting on the cake.
Cy’s description of the way the accident had altered from hit-and-run to something more ambiguous was familiar ground to Father Dowling. Having summed that up, Cy looked at the priest. “Of course, I wondered what he was doing in Fox River. He lived in California. There was a memorial service, you know.”
“I heard.”
“I went. Nothing said there explained why he was in the Chicago area, let alone Fox River.”
“I suppose there could be a hundred explanations.”
“One of them I found out. He had been at the alumni center at Northwestern—he was an alumnus—asking about a former classmate.”
“Did he find him?”
“Her. I figured that, if he looked her up, she might know what he was doing here. Maybe she was the reason.”
“Ah.”
“Men get into their forties, they remember past
loves. Maybe that was it, and he just wanted to see what the woman looked like now.”
“So you were able to identify her.”
“She’s married to a faculty member at Northwestern. Mark Lorenzo.”
“Did you talk to her?”
Cy shook his head. “Maybe I should have. But I talked to the husband. His office reminded me of this room.”
“How so?”
“The books. Maybe more than you have.”
“Well, after all, a professor. And what did you learn?”
“Fleck had got in touch with her, and she hadn’t liked it at all. She refused to talk to him. Then he wrote her a letter. It looks as if he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.”
“What was the question?”
Cy shrugged. “As I said, men in their forties get romantic. Maybe he thought things could be as they had been.”
“And she didn’t.”
“You can see how that got my mind going. Here’s a man who shows up after all these years to see a happily married woman and makes a pest of himself. She panics. He is a threat. Then someone jumps a curb and he dives through a window and ends up dead. Naturally, I wondered who was driving that car.”
“I can see that.”
“Well, it couldn’t have been her. Or him, for that matter. Their car couldn’t be more different from the one the witnesses described.”
“You checked it out?”
“Their car is a little compact. The vehicle that jumped the curb was an SUV. The Lorenzos have only the one car and don’t use it much. Their life is pretty much lived on campus, and they can walk everywhere.”
“Case closed?”
“As much as most of them are. We still have a man dead after a strange incident.”
“But the Lorenzos no longer figure in it?”
“If they do, I’d like to know how.”
Father Dowling felt vicarious relief for Amos Cadbury. Cy Horvath’s account of his investigation would, when he heard it, take a great weight off the lawyer’s mind. However, as Cy had indicated, that left a mysterious death mysterious still. When he was once again alone in his study, Father Dowling pondered the strange death of Nathaniel Fleck. There was, he persisted in thinking, something right about the man’s desire to learn of the child he had fathered so long ago. That his curiosity had meant a great threat to the mother was also right. After all, the woman had resisted what must have been a great temptation simply to rid herself of the result of her folly. She had the child; it had been given up for adoption and, most fortunately, had been raised by the Lynches. Their reaction to their adopted daughter’s curiosity about her real mother was also understandable, but who could not sympathize with the young woman’s desire to know her true origins? Like most human affairs, this one was complex, the collision of intentions each of which had merit but which collectively had the great inconvenience of being irreconcilable. His own immediate reaction was relief that Amos’s fears had no foundation. Thank God for Cy Horvath.
16
The realization that Mark had known her secret all along and had honored it made Madeline love her husband all the more. But how could she not feel rage at learning that it was her supposed dear friend Catherine Adams who had told him? What an odd sense that gave her in retrospect of the years of her marriage. All her memories of Catherine had been of her dearest friend, the one who had stood by her at the worst moment of her life. She remembered when she had returned stunned from the meeting when Nathaniel had made it clear that she was on her own.
“Thank God for Roe v. Wade,” Catherine said.
“What do you mean?”
“There is a remedy, after all.”
“No. No, I could never do that.”
“Just think about it, Madeline. You’ll see it’s the only way.”
The more she thought of it, though, the surer she was that she could never get rid of her baby like that. Catherine had supported the decision she did not understand, helping Madeline deceive her parents, even sitting in on courses for her so that Madeline earned credits she didn’t deserve. An A- in Latin! The following semester, she had signed up for a course in Caesar and Cicero, scrambling to learn the grammar she supposedly already knew—and got an A.
“Of course,” Catherine had said. “You’re Catholic.”
“Do you imagine we go to confession in Latin?”
“Confession! Do you do that?”
“Only in English.”
Several months before she gave birth, she confessed her sins, prepared to be scolded and treated like a scarlet woman, but when the priest asked if she would have her child and she said yes, he ended by congratulating her. She emerged from the confessional with the feeling that she had used her sin in a bid for praise. In truth she was delighted with herself that she had found the courage to carry her child to term. Of course, the Women’s Care Center had been wonderful, and when she met the woman who would have her baby, any doubt she had had about the wisdom of her decision was gone.
She had learned their name—not from the center; they would never have told her, and Madeline understood the policy. She was agreeing to let her baby go and had to put aside forever any thought of a reunion. It was quite by accident that she found it out. She volunteered each week at the hospital where she had delivered, with some vague thought that she was paying a debt, and one night she caught a glimpse of one of the doctors who had been there before she was put under and wheeled into the delivery room. She told herself that she would work up the courage to ask him, but she could never figure out what she would say that would lead him to tell her what she wanted to know.
“Oh, it’s a medical family,” someone said. “Lynch the pathologist is his son-in-law.”
She kept an eye out for Dr. Lynch and was surprised to learn that he, too, had been there when she had her baby. They were in the phone book, and she drove past their suburban house, again and again, and at last she saw in the driveway the woman with whom she had wept. Then she knew. And that had been enough.
After she married Mark and had his children, one after the other, thoughts of her first baby dimmed. It would have seemed disloyal to remain curious about the child the Lynches had adopted. Then one day a few years ago, she had seen the photograph of Martha Lynch in the paper, salutatorian of her class at Barat College. The picture might have been her own graduation photograph. Rather than stirring up her desire to see her daughter, that photograph put an end to it. Everything had turned out all right, and it would be criminal to disturb the life her daughter had. Then the Monster had appeared.
Appeared and then almost immediately was struck down on a Fox River street. His death enabled her to think of him almost as she first had. His reappearance, now that it was no longer threatening, had a redeeming quality. Perhaps he had imagined that she had remained unchanged, that he could return and they could reclaim their child, and what had not been would be. But if her thoughts toward Nathaniel softened, those toward Catherine hardened into something very much like hatred, the hatred of the betrayed. Nathaniel had been weak, but what excuse did Catherine have for telling her secret to Mark? Talking with Janet and learning the extent of Catherine’s perfidy filled her with loathing for the woman she had considered her best friend. Beware of best friends indeed.
Listening to Catherine at the memorial for Nathaniel, astounded to hear her speak of her lifelong relationship with him, Madeline had been numbed, but her confusion became clarity when she went home and Mark told her he had always known her secret—had known, and it didn’t matter. Clearly, Catherine must have imagined that telling him would abort their marriage.
She had not wanted to talk to Catherine at the memorial, but in the following days she became determined to confront her. There had been mention of the Hyatt Regency Chicago in one of the newspaper accounts, and Madeline phoned the hotel to find that Catherine Adams was still registered there. She took the train to the Loop.
She was told at the desk that Catherine’s room did not answe
r. She felt frustrated. She descended to the street floor and sat in a chair and looked out at the urban scene, at the comings and goings of people, the revolving doors seemingly never still. Outside, taxis discharged their fares and valets took charge of vehicles.
Then she saw Catherine. She had just stepped out of a car and turned it over to a valet. Madeline watched her come through the doors and take the escalator, looking out over the open restaurant below as she was carried upward. After ten minutes, Madeline went to a house phone and asked for Catherine’s room.
The length or brevity of time is contingent on our moods. Madeline seemed to wait forever while the phone rang in Catherine’s room, yet during that time she hardly breathed.
“Yes?”
“Catherine?”
“Who is it?”
“Madeline.”
The slightest of pauses and then a squeal. “Madeline, where are you?”
“In the lobby.”
“Here in the hotel?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be right down. My God. This is marvelous. Will I know you?”
“I’ll know you.”
Five minutes later, she appeared, descending on the escalator, looking expectantly at the scene below. Madeline awaited her at the foot of the escalator. Catherine took one look and came running into her arms.
“Oh, what a wonderful surprise. Madeline, you look wonderful.”
“You’ve cut your hair.”
“Only on the ends. Come, let’s have a drink.”
In the bar they ordered glasses of wine; Catherine charged them to her room. The place was full of people, mostly men in suits, the women elegantly dressed. Madeline felt frumpy in her faculty wife clothes. Catherine lifted her glass, looking at Madeline with a huge smile. Suddenly she leaned forward and kissed Madeline on the cheek.
“Don’t even say how many years it’s been. Tell me all about you.”
“You were there at my wedding, remember.”
“Of course I remember. And how is Professor Lorenzo?”
“I came to the memorial for Nathaniel. You were in our neighborhood.”
Blood Ties Page 9
