Crazybone

4

Tamara was twenty-five minutes late on Wednesday morning. When she showed up she wore a quirky little smile and a satisfied, cat-in-the-cream expression. I knew that look: I’d had it myself on more than one occasion.

“That Horace,” she said as she hung up her favorite grungy coat. “Have to be changing his name to Mr. Sun pretty soon.”

“Mr. Sun?”

“Up bright and early, just keeps getting hotter and hotter. Too many mornings like this, I’m gonna have to start wearing sunblock to bed.”

“Tell me something. Ms. Corbin,” I said. “Why is it young people feel compelled to discuss their sex lives in such great detail?”

“Why not? Sex is cool, man.” She grinned. “ ’Specially when it’s hot.”

“It’s also private, or should be.”

“Well, we don’t have hangups about doing the nasty.”

“Who’s ‘we?’ Generation X?”

“Lot more open than yours, right?”

“Too open, if you ask me.”

“No such thing. Better to call it sweet and clean than pretend it’s dirty. Besides, don’t you remember how it was?”

“How what was?”

“Bein’ my age. Horny all the time instead of every once in a while.”

“What does that mean? Every once in a while?”

“You know, now and then.”

“Define ‘now and then.’ ”

“Birthdays, holidays, like that.”

“Is that what you think? People in their fifties and sixties only have sex on birthdays and holidays, if they have it at all? Seven or eight times a year?”

“That often? I figured maybe two or three.”

“... Are you putting me on?”

“No, sir. Horace’s folks don’t do it at all anymore. That’s what his daddy told him and he’s only fifty-two.”

“That’s too bad. But for your information, Ms. Corbin, some of us old codgers still manage to indulge regularly. Not as regularly as you and Horace, God knows, but as often as once or twice a week.”

“Lordy.”

“In the morning, the afternoon, and sometimes even more than once a day. Not always in the missionary position, either, contrary to what you probably believe.”

She made a “tsk” sound and shook her head. “Tell me something, boss,” she said, deadpan. “Why is it middle-aged people feel compelled to discuss their sex lives in such great detail?”

I stared at her for about three seconds and then burst out laughing. She’d been putting me on, all right, playing me the way Horace, her symphonically inclined boyfriend, plays his cello. Score another one for Tamara. Trying to win a point, any point, with her was like going one-on-one against Michael Jordan. You didn’t stand a chance; she had too many moves and too much quickness, and every time you ended up feeling outmaneuvered and overmatched.

“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!