Hardcase

by Bill Pronzini

  “Dominant personality?”

  “I guess you could say that. Paul was nonconfrontational and she was strong-willed and inflexible sometimes.” Ms. Aldrich took a breath, let it out slowly between teeth that were so even and straight you knew she had to have worn braces as a child. “I don’t mean that to sound as if we didn’t get along,” she said. “We did, for the most part. She tried to be a good mother and I loved her too. When she told me she had liver cancer . . . well, it was an awful time. But at least she didn’t suffer long. It was over six weeks after she was diagnosed.”

  This was painful territory and I backed off from it. “The personal effects you inherited,” I said. “Claire’s and Paul’s both?”

  “Oh, yes. She kept everything after he died.”

  “How much did you keep? Legal documents, correspondence, things like that?”

  “Everything that seemed important or that had sentimental value. But Mr. Kleiner and I both went through it. There’s nothing that has any connection to my adoption.”

  “I’d still like to take a look at it, if you don’t mind. Also any photograph albums, scrapbooks, old address books that date back to nineteen seventy-one.”

  She nodded. “It’s all at my apartment. When would you like to come by?”

  “As soon as possible. Are you free this afternoon?”

  “I have an early lunch date, but I can be home by one. I’ll need a little time to bring up a couple of boxes that are stored in the basement. One-thirty?”

  “Fine.”

  “So you’ll start right away then? I’m sure you must be busy, but . . . well, you understand how important this is to me.”

  “Yes. But you’ll have to be patient, Ms. Aldrich. The investigation is likely to take some time.”

  “I will be. I won’t pester you, I promise. How much money would you like in advance?”

  We settled on an amount, and I accepted a check in exchange for her signature on one of the agency contracts. When she was gone I sat there wondering what it was like to be twenty-three years old, attractive, intelligent, poised, self-contained, with more money than you’d ever need—and at the same time all alone, not knowing who your real parents were and bearing a name that might not be the one you were born with. To have everything, and at the same time to have nothing . . . I couldn’t imagine what it was like. I couldn’t even remember what it was like to be twenty-three.

  Chapter Three

  PHILIP KLEINER OWNED one of those deep bass voices that sound as though they’re coming out of an echo chamber. I’d never heard him in court, but if he had any presence there at all, and I suspected that he did, he was probably a formidable trial lawyer. When I got him on the phone and told him I’d agreed to conduct an adoption search for Melanie Aldrich, he said approvingly, “I thought you would. She is a decent young woman.”

  In his lexicon, decent young woman was on a praise level with competent private investigator. He must like her quite a bit. As much as Phil Kleiner could like anybody other than Phil Kleiner.

  I said, “Yes, she is. She filled me in pretty thoroughly, but I thought I’d check with you, see if there’s anything you can add.”

  “Of course.”

  “I take it you weren’t the Aldriches’ attorney at the time of the adoption. Can you tell me who was?”

  “David Greene. Baker, Greene, and Cotswold. But he didn’t represent the Aldriches in their dealings with Lyle Cousins. He’s dead now, but I spoke to his son. The firm has no record of it.”

  “Any idea who did represent them?”

  “No. It may be that no one did.”

  “Cousins handled the whole thing?”

  “He wouldn’t confirm or deny when I spoke to him, but yes, I’d say that’s likely.”

  “Then there’s a chance the adoption might not have been one hundred percent aboveboard.”

  “The thought occurred to me,” Kleiner said. “I did some checking on Cousins with the ABA.”

  “And?”

  “No marks against him in forty-two years of practicing law in the state of California.”

  Which didn’t necessarily mean that Cousins’s hands had never been dirty; we both knew that. The legal profession, like most other professions, has its share—more than its share these days—of ethics benders and outright crooks who have never been caught.

  I said, “Ms. Aldrich told me you and she spoke to several old friends and business associates who knew her adoptive parents in nineteen seventy-one.”

  “A dozen or so; that’s right.”

  “None even suspected that Melanie wasn’t their natural child?”

  “None would admit to any knowledge or suspicion.”

  “That sounds as though you think one or more might have been lying.”

  “Only one,” Kleiner said. “And not lying so much as evading, covering up.”

  “Who would the one be?”

  “Eleanor Nyland. A close friend of Claire Aldrich’s.”

  “Why would she withhold knowledge of the adoption? Melanie already knows about it; there’s nothing left to hide.”

  “Perhaps there is. The circumstances surrounding the adoption, for instance. Or something to do with Melanie’s birth parents.”

  “In which case Eleanor Nyland is either trying to protect Claire’s memory or Melanie’s feelings. Or both.”

  “So it would seem.”

  He gave me Eleanor Nyland’s address, the last thing he had to give me as it turned out. After we rang off I looked up Marlin’s Ferry in the state almanac. As of the 1990 census, its population was 2,754. A state map told me the town was twenty miles or so east of Lodi, just inside Calaveras County, at a point where the Central Valley begins its gradual eastern rise into the Sierra foothills. It was also not much more than twenty miles from the Gold Country town of Sutter Creek.

  I could see the outlines of a pattern emerging. Marlin’s Ferry was almost certainly a farm town, situated where it was, and Paul Aldrich had been an engineer specializing in irrigation pipelines, the owner of a summer home near Sutter Creek. It was logical to assume he’d known a number of people in the area, locals who would be aware of the birth of an unwanted child and of the fact that Aldrich and his wife were willing if not eager to adopt. Somebody had put the Aldriches in touch with either Lyle Cousins or one or both of the birth parents and arrangements had been made.

  It was possible that a fee had been paid to the birth parents as well as to Cousins. But buying an infant under consensual circumstances isn’t strictly illegal; why the secrecy, if that was the case? On the other hand, buying a baby from somebody other than its natural parents is strictly illegal—a very good reason for any adoptive parents to want to hide the truth. Black market adoption rings are big business in California and have been for many years. Statewide, the number of parents wanting to adopt babies is close to a hundred times greater than the number of children available. So the rings buy unwanted infants for a pittance from poor couples or unwed mothers and then resell them at huge profits to people who can’t qualify to adopt through normal channels or who don’t want to go through the lengthy waiting period. Unscrupulous lawyers are an integral part of any black market baby ring, and they’re not always big-city lawyers either....

  But I was rushing ahead of myself here, overworking my imagination. Chances were, there was nothing sinister or even unethical about Melanie Ann’s adoption. Chances were, Lyle Cousins was as honest as his American Bar Association record indicated. And chances were, the secrecy factor was rooted in simple guilt, as so much secrecy is, on the part of the Aldriches or Melanie’s birth parents or both.

  On impulse I called the adoption branch of the Department of Social Services in Sacramento. I had a name there, a guy who had given me a certain amount of cooperation in the past; I thought I might be able to wheedle a little useful information out of him. No soap. This was not going to be as easy as the deadbeat-dad locate earlier. What would produce results in this case, unless I got remark
ably lucky with Eleanor Nyland, was legwork. And that meant a trip to the Central Valley to conduct interviews and check county, newspaper, and other records.

  The prospect of paper-trailing started me thinking again about the dire pronouncements of workers’ comp’s Ms. Stark. If I owned and operated the right kind of computer, I could run those checks from here in the office and save myself a bundle of time. As it was, I would have to visit the Calaveras County courthouse and any number of other public agencies in the area. It was the way I’d always done things, the way I felt comfortable doing things, and yet . . . damn it, a woman I’d never laid eyes on had put a bee in my bonnet that I couldn’t seem to shake loose. A computer would make my job easier in the short run. And it could save my bacon in the long run.

  But I was not about to go out and buy one of the things, nor was I about to learn how to use one—not now and not as long as I remained aboveground. I knew myself well enough to be certain of that. I am not only a technophobe, I’m a technodolt. I don’t like or understand machines and as a result I don’t use them well; a symbiotic relationship between me and a container full of microchips was a virtual impossibility. Besides, you can’t teach a snarly old dog new tricks. Even if the old dog had the time and inclination, which this one didn’t.

  Ms. Stark: If you don’t want to learn computers yourself, then you’d better hire somebody who knows them.

  Well? Taking on another partner, after the way things had ended with Eberhardt, was out of the question. But what about an assistant? Wouldn’t even have to be a full-time assistant. Somebody with computer expertise and preferably with his own machine, who could come in one or two days a week and do information searches and take over the billing. That would ease my workload, give me more free time—more time with Kerry. Could I put up with another person in the office one or two days a week? Probably, depending on the person. Could I afford an assistant on that part-time basis? Probably. Business had been good and from all indications it would continue to be good. There’d be a certain amount of training involved, even if he’d had experience in the detective profession, but it didn’t have to be undertaken all at once. Start him off slow—simple background checks, a program for the billing....

  There was reluctance in me, but it wasn’t based on anything more than a stubborn nature and an ingrained resistance to change. Couldn’t hurt to give it a shot, could it? At least see if I could find somebody who qualified and who was willing to take on piecemeal work. Sure, fine, but how did I go about finding him? Put an ad in the paper?

  George Agonistes, I thought.

  If anyone knew the electronics field and the people in it who were both good and available, it was Agonistes. He was a fellow private investigator and an accomplished hacker, a specialist in electronic surveillance and de-bugging; I’d worked with him a couple of times, the last just two months ago.

  He did business out of his home in San Bruno, and I caught him in. When I told him why I was calling, there was a silence before he said, “Well I’ll be damned. You mean you’re actually thinking about leaving the dark ages and entering our brave new world?”

  “Thinking about it,” I admitted. “You know anybody who might do the job for me, George? Or where I can go to find somebody?”

  “Let me think a minute. How set are you on the hacker having experience in our racket?”

  “Make things a lot easier for me.”

  “Sure, but anybody good and experienced is already working. Or not working for a good reason. You’ll probably have to settle for a trainee.”

  “If that’s the only option.”

  “Might have a prospect for you then.”

  “What’s his name and how do I get in touch with him?”

  “Her name is Tamara Corbin and you’d better let me call her. She’s a student at S.F. State.”

  “Oh, hell, George, I don’t know. . . .”

  “You got something against college students? Or is it the fact that she’s a woman?”

  “Neither one, in principle. But a kid . . .”

  “She may not be very old chronologically,” Agonistes said, “but she’s twice her age intellectually. She happens to be a whiz—head of her class in computer science. And she’s the daughter of a cop, so investigative work isn’t totally new to her. Her old man is a lieutenant with the Redwood City P.D.”

  “A whiz and a cop’s daughter, huh? Well . . . You really think she’d be interested in working part-time for somebody like me?”

  “Might just be. I know her dad fairly well; last time I saw him, he told me Tamara was looking to make some extra money. You want me to set up a meeting?”

  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to talk to her. But I’m going out of town pretty soon, I think—tomorrow morning—and I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

  “How about an interview later today or tonight? If I can get hold of her and if you’re free?”

  “Late afternoon might be okay.”

  “Four-thirty?”

  “Or four forty-five. No later. After five, I go home to my bride.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” Agonistes said. Then he said, “Bride?”

  “That’s right, you don’t know. Kerry and I got married on Friday afternoon.”

  “The hell you did! Congratulations.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Marriage and now computers. I’m impressed. Turning over a whole new leaf at your age.”

  I hadn’t thought of it that way before. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess maybe I am.”

  ELEANOR NYLAND LIVED on Bella Vista Way, on the lower southeastern slope of Mt. Davidson. The neighborhood was Monterey Heights, the same one the Aldriches had lived in before their move to Burlingame in the early eighties. Fairly affluent, although it was not quite as desirable a location as it had been a generation ago: too close to the Ingleside and Sunnyside districts that had been plagued by drug and gang problems in recent years. The houses were mostly large, on large lots, and the greater percentage of them were Spanish-style stucco with tile roofs. The Nyland home was an exception-two-story brick and wood with an English Tudor facade. The front garden was dry and weedy, its shrubs and rosebushes in need of pruning. The wood part of the facade had weathered badly and begun to crack.

  The woman who opened the door to my ring showed similar signs of neglect. Neglect and slow attrition—the kind you see in people who have lost their passion for life, for the things that used to matter to them, and who are just marking time. She was in her late sixties, thin, pale, listless-eyed, and she moved as if her limbs pained her. I wondered if she was ill or had been ill.

  “Yes?” she said. “What is it?”

  “Mrs. Nyland? Eleanor Nyland?”

  “That’s right. Who are you?”

  I gave her one of my cards. She peered at it, then looked at me again with the barest flicker of interest. Her eyes were a faded blue, but you could tell that they had once been vibrant. One of her best features, along with a delicate bone structure and a well-shaped mouth. Attractive once, I thought, maybe even close to beautiful when she was Melanie’s age.

  I said, “I’d like to talk to you about Melanie Aldrich.”

  “Oh, so that’s it. Did she hire you? Or was it Phil Kleiner?”

  “She did.”

  “To find out who her natural parents are.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand that girl. Claire and Paul raised her as if she were their own. She couldn’t have had a better home, more love. They were her parents. Why can’t she accept that?”

  “Maybe she could if they’d told her she was adopted.”

  “She should never have found that out.”

  “But she did. It’s only natural that she wants to know the truth about her origins. A lot of adoptees feel—”

  “No, she doesn’t,” Mrs. Nyland said.

  “Ma’am?”

  “She doesn’t want to know anything about her origins. She thinks she does, but she doesn’t.”

 
“Why not?”

  “The past is dead. Why do people have to keep picking at it, picking at it? You can’t get it back again. I ought to know, if anybody does.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Look at me,” she said. “I’m an old woman. I have a bad heart and weak kidneys and I’m going to die soon. But I accept that. I live in the present, not the past. I’ve had a good life, a good husband, good children. I’m grateful and content. I don’t pick at the bones of what’s dead and gone.”

  Yes, she did. She may have been grateful, but she wasn’t content or accepting. She was a sad, lonely old woman who picked at those dry old bones every day of what was left of her life. Denying it to herself and anybody who’d bother to listen, while she picked and picked and waited to die.

  The insight made me shift my shoulders uncomfortably and she misinterpreted the movement. “It’s cold out here with that wind,” she said. “I’d better go. You’d better go too.”

  “If we could talk for just a few minutes inside . . .”

  “No. The house is a mess. My daughter comes twice a week to clean up, but she still doesn’t know where things properly go. Even after all these years, she still doesn’t know. But she’s a good girl, she comes twice a week. Not like her brother.”

  “Mrs. Nyland—”

  “A good girl,” she said. “He can’t be bothered except once a month.”

  “Do you know the identity of Melanie Ann’s birth parents, Mrs. Nyland?”

  “What? No.”

  “But you do know something about them.”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t Claire Aldrich confide in you? She was one of your best friends. Didn’t she tell you about the adoption right at the beginning?”

  “No. I told you no.” She started to close the door.

  “Please talk to me. Why shouldn’t Melanie know anything about her birth parents? Is it because she was illegitimate?”

  She shut the door to a crack; then suddenly she popped it open again. “Illegitimate?” she said. “My God, if that was all it was.”

  “What was it then?”