Midnight Pass

4

Now, as I pulled into the driveway of the Traskers’ house, I was thinking about the kids in the photograph Severtson had shown me.

The house was big, new, Spanish-looking, with turrets and narrow windows. It was on the water at Indian Beach Drive, not far from the Ringling Museum of Art and the Asolo Performing Arts Center. I’ve seen the outside of both, never felt the urge to go in the first and look at paintings in the second.

I rang the doorbell and waited. In about a minute, the door opened and I found myself facing Roberta Trasker.

Flo could have done a better job of describing her, but Flo was a woman and saw her through a woman’s eyes. I was looking at her through my eyes, which might be even less reliable.

Roberta Trasker was probably well into her sixties and maybe she looked it, but she was the best-looking sixty-plus grandmother I had ever seen. She was model slender, wearing tight black jeans and a silky white short-sleeved blouse. Her face was unlined and beautiful. She reminded me a little of Linda Darnell, except Roberta Trasker had short, straight, gleaming white hair. Plastic surgery was possible but I couldn’t detect it.

“Who’re you?” she asked.

“Lew Fonesca,” I said. “Flo Zink called a little while ago.”

“What do you want?”

“To come in and talk,” I said.

“About what?”

“Your husband,” I said.

“I recognize your voice,” she said. “You called a few hours ago.”

“I did.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Fonseca…”

“Fonesca,” I said. “Lots of people make that mistake.”

“That must be annoying,” she said, now playing with a simple silver band around a slender wrist.

“Depends on who makes the mistake.”

“Did I annoy you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Not because you got my name wrong but because you did it intentionally. But I’m used to that, too.”

She looked at me with her head cocked to one side. I was being examined to see how much if any of her precious time I was worth.

“My husband is out of town on business,” she said.

I could hear that hint of emotion in her voice, the same hint Flo and I had heard on the phone.

“Your husband is missing,” I said. “He is also very ill, too ill, from what I hear, to be traveling on business or pleasure.”

“You are wasting my time, Mr. Fonesca,” she said, starting to close the door.

“I’m here to help find him,” I said.

“And you are…?”

“By trade? A process server. I’m good at finding people. I can find your husband and I can do it quietly.”

“And you want money,” she said.

“No,” I answered. “I’ve got a client. I’m poor but honest.”

“I can see that,” she said. “The poor part.”

I was wearing my freshly washed black jeans, Cubs cap, and a yellow short-sleeved shirt with a collar and a little toucan embossed on the pocket. My socks were white and clean. So were my sneakers.

“Take off your hat and come in,” she said after a long pause.

I took off my cap and little smile lines showed in the corners of her mouth. I wasn’t sure what amused her, my receding hairline or the total picture of a less than threatening, poorly dressed creature.

I stepped in and she shut the door. We were in a massive living room. The floors were cool, tavertine marble. The place was furnished like something out of Architectural Digest, something that a movie star might live in, if the movie star liked early Fred Astaire movies. Everything was either black or white. White sofa and chairs, white bookcases filled with expensive-looking glass animals, black lamps, a black, sleek low table that ran almost the length of the wall across from the bookcases. A stack of unopened mail stood on the table. Over the table was the only real color in the room, a huge painting of a beautiful young woman in a satin white dress, sitting on a black sofa. The woman’s legs were crossed and she leaned forward, her head resting on the fist of her right hand, her other hand dangling languidly at her side.

The room had been furnished to complement the painting. It was also a room that wouldn’t welcome the intrusion of grandchildren with unwashed hands and shoes that tracked in sand from the beach.

“That’s you,” I said, looking at the painting.

“You’re showing your brilliance already,” she said, sitting in one of the white chairs.

“You’re Claire Collins,” I said.

“Now, I am impressed,” she said.

Claire Collins had been a starlet in the late Fifties and early Sixties. She was in a handful of RKO movies, usually as a bad girl with a smoldering cigarette in the corner of her mouth suggesting close encounters of the third kind with the likes of Glenn Ford and Robert Mitchum.

“I’ve seen a lot of your pictures,” I said.

“There weren’t a lot,” she said with a sigh. “There were twelve, none of them big, only three in color.”

I looked at her.

“I think I can name them all,” I said.

“Please, no. I’ll take your word for it,” she said, shaking her head.

“On television, videotape,” I said. “ Black Night in December, Blackmailed Lady, Dark Corridors, When Angels Fall, The Last — ”

“Stop,” she said. “I believe you.”

I was afraid to sit on her white leather furniture so I kept standing.

“Mrs. Trasker…,” I began. “Do you know where your husband might be?”

“No,” she said, “but he can’t be far and I don’t think…”

“He’s a very sick man,” I said.

She gave me shrug, which suggested indifference or that I was simply repeating something she already knew. I recognized the shrug as one she had given Dane Clark, in Outpost, one of the movies she made in color.

“Who told you that?”

“My client,” I said. “My client is well-informed. My client wants your husband found.”

“Why?”

“So he can be at the commission meeting on Friday,” I said. “There’s an important issue. His vote is needed.”

I didn’t like the way I had said that. It sounded hollow.

“I want him back too,” she said. “I don’t care about any vote. I want to be with my husband when he dies. I owe him that and a lot more.”

“He’s really that close to dying?” I asked.

“He is really that close,” she said.

Her eyes were moist now. She looked like her character in The Falcon in Singapore in the scene where she was trying to convince Tom Conway that she was broken up by the death of her sister. It turned out that her character had killed the sister over a small man and a lot of money.

“Tell me about your husband,” I said.

She stiffened a bit and looked at me as if what her husband was like was none of my business. But she saw something in my face, knew I would pay attention and be nonjudgmental. People seemed to feel safe talking to me.

“Bill? Now, he’s a little bit bitter and a lot crotchety,” she said. “Not with me. He knows better. When he was young, he didn’t just walk over people, he trampled them into submission. And he had and still has a temper. All three of our children left us the moment they were of legal age. It wasn’t just Bill. Bill runs far too hot and I run far too cold. It may add to the appeal I built my career, for what it was worth, on, but it didn’t serve me particularly well with my family. Does everyone open up to you like this?”

“Almost,” I said.

“I can’t believe I’m…where was I?”

“Your family.”

“I can’t say I was particularly unhappy about my sons and daughter leaving,” she said. “I was happy with Bill. He was happy stepping on people. Then we moved down here so he could find new fields of grass to trample.”

“You admire your husband’s ruthlessness,” I said.

“As he admires what he calls my ‘mystery.’”

“Midnight Pass,” I said.

“Midnight Pass,” she repeated, pursing her lips and looking at her portrait. “Since he found out he was dying, my husband’s interest in trampling people has turned to nearly sweet compassion, at least for him. That makes him less attractive to me than what the disease has done to his body. If he lives long enough, he might even decide to publicly declare every shady deal he’s ever made, though I doubt if he’d go so far as to try to provide restitution. There are just too many he’s wronged and not enough money to go around and leave me comfortable.”

“And you’ll be comfortable?” I asked.

“Very,” she said. “I like money. I like spending it and I love my husband.”

“Any idea of what happened to him?”

“I don’t know,” she said, looking at me. “Maybe he didn’t want me to see him die. My husband used to be a big, powerful man. As I said, tough, ruthless. He would probably prefer that I remember him that way.”

“So you think…?”

“He is dead or in some hotel room or with some friend.”

“He didn’t call you?”

“Nobody called me,” she said, straightening her back as if she had just remembered that good posture was essential to a beautiful woman.

“Any suggestion about where I might start looking?”

“You can try the people at his office,” she said. The word “people” came out with the suggestion that they were something less than what she considered real “people.” “I’ve called repeatedly. His secretary, Mrs. Free, says she has no idea where William is or might be.”

“Enemies?”

This time she did an Audrey Hepburn, narrow-shouldered, almost gamine shrug with a matching who-knows pursing of her lips.

“My husband is a politician and a contractor. Two occupations that make very few friends and very many enemies. You’d get a better sense of who his friends and enemies are from his secretary. If Bill is in a hotel or motel, she might even know that. I know he’s not in any of the hospitals in Sarasota, Manatee, or any adjoining county.”

That was all I had to ask for the moment. I liked looking at her, but I was getting a little tired of standing.

“Thanks,” I said.

She got up.

“If you find him, you will let me know.”

She was touching my arm now, her eyes searching mine. I had the feeling that performance and persona were merging for a second.

“I’ll let you know,” I said.

Outside the door in a blast of heat and humidity I put my cap back on. I knew where William Trasker’s office was on Clark just east of Beneva on the south side of the street. I’d passed the two-story white brick building dozens of times, and a few of those times the big red-on-white sign that said “Trasker Construction” had managed to register.

I stopped at a phone booth outside of a 7-Eleven on Beneva and called Dixie at the coffee shop. The manager told me she had taken the day off.

“A cold, flu, tuchisitis, who knows,” he said. “I’m up to my ass in latte orders and I’m getting a migraine from the smokers. Good-bye.”

He hung up and I called Dixie at home. She answered after three rings. Her voice was hoarse when she said, “Hello.”

“Me, Lew Fonesca.”

“Hi, Lew,” she said, the hoarseness gone. “I thought it was Creepy Cargroves, my boss.”

“You’re okay?”

“Got a good freelance hacking job for a local merchant whose name and business are confidential. You know what I’m saying?”

“I know. Can you do a quick check for me? See if you can find William Trasker’s trail. He’s missing.”

“The County Commission guy?”

“That’s the one.”

“He’s been in the shop a few times. Last time about a week ago. Looked awful. Likes his coffee straight and black with something sweet.”

“He come in alone?”

“With something straight, black, and sweet,” she said.

“Know her name?”

A massive truck whizzed by and I missed what Dixie said next.

“What was that?”

“Don’t know her name, but she’s always dressed for business.”

“Hooker?”

“Not that kind of business. Business business. Suits, serious shoes, white blouses, pearls, costume ones. I’ve got an eye. How long’s he been missing?”

“About four days,” I said.

“I’ll do the job for thirty bucks if I don’t run into complications,” she said.

“How long?”

“No more than half an hour, if I don’t run into complications.”

“I’ll call back. Dixie, you know any good jokes?”

She told me one. I wrote it down in my notebook.

Twenty minutes later I was talking to a woman who was black, sweet, and dressed for business right down to the serious shoes and costume pearls.

Before I got to her, I had to get by the receptionist at Trasker Construction, who was well-groomed, late forties, early fifties, with a nice smile. She seemed like more than receptionist material when she deftly parried my lunging questions about Trasker. I figured her for a mom who was just rejoining the workforce and starting at the bottom.

She finally agreed to talk to Mr. Trasker’s secretary, which she did while I listened to her side of the phone conversation. She handled it perfectly, saying a Mr. Fonesca wished to speak to her on a matter of some urgency regarding Mr. Trasker and that Mr. Fonesca would provide no further information. There was a pause during which I assumed Trasker’s secretary asked if I looked like a badly dressed toon or acted like a lunatic. The receptionist cautiously said, “I don’t think so,” to cover herself.

Two minutes later I was sitting in a chair next to the desk of Mrs. Carla Free. Her cubicle in the gray-carpeted complex was directly outside of an office with a plate marked “William Trasker.”

Mrs. Free was tall, probably a little younger than me, well-groomed and blue-suited, with a white blouse with a fluffy collar. She was pretty, wore glasses, and was black. Actually, she was a very light brown.

“I have to find Mr. Trasker,” I said.

“We haven’t seen him in several days,” she said, sounding like Bennington or Radcliffe, her hands folded on the desk in front of her, giving me her full attention.

“Does he often disappear for days?” I asked.

Mrs. Free did not answer but said, “Can I help you, Mr. Fonesca?”

There was no one within hearing distance. Her voice sounded all business and early dismissal for me. I decided to take a chance.

“Where do you live?” I asked.

She took off her glasses and looked at me at first in surprise and then in anger.

“Is this love at first sight, Mr. Fonesca?” she asked.

“You don’t live in Newtown,” I said.

“No, I live in Idora Estates. My husband is a doctor, a pediatrician. We have a daughter in Pine View and a son who just graduated from Pine View and is going to go to Grinnell. Now, I think you should leave.”

“I have reason to believe that if Mr. Trasker goes to the City Commission meeting Friday night, he will vote against the Midnight Pass bill and that members of the commission will try to divert the money they would have spent on opening the Pass to helping with the renovation of Newtown,” I said.

I waited.

“Who are you working for?” she asked quietly.

“Someone who wants to find William Trasker and help Newtown,” I said.

“I was born here,” she said so softly that I could hardly hear her. “In Newtown. So was my husband. My mother still lives there. She won’t move.”

“Where is Trasker?” I asked.

“Off the record, Mr. Fonesca,” she said. “Mr. Trasker is not well.”

“Off the record, Mrs. Free,” I said, “Mr. Trasker is dying and I think you know it.”

She nodded. She knew.

“You really think he’ll vote against opening the Pass?” she asked.

“Good authority,” I said. “A black man of the cloth.”

“Fernando Wilkens,” she said with a sigh that showed less respect than resignation.

“You’re not a big fan of the reverend?”

“I’d rather say that he serves the community when that service benefits Fernando Wilkens,” she said. “Fortunately, the two are generally compatible.”

“You know him well?”

“I know him well enough.”

She looked away. She understood. The sigh was long and said a lot, that she was considering risking her job, that she was about to give away things a secretary shouldn’t give away.

“One condition,” she said, folding her hands on the desk. “You are not to tell where you got this information.”

“I will not tell,” I said.

“For some reason, I believe you,” she said. “God knows why. You’ve got that kind of face.”

“Thanks.”

“You’ve heard of Kevin Hoffmann,” she said.

“I’ve heard,” I said.

“He has a large estate on the mainland across from Bird Keys,” she said. “Owns large pieces of land all along Little Sarasota Bay.”

“So he’d make money if the Pass was opened.”

“Now boats have to go five miles past the Pass site to the end of Casey Key and then come up Little Sarasota Bay another fiveplus miles.”

“I get it.”

“Only part of it,” she said. “If the Pass opens, a lot of Kevin Hoffmann’s property, now a bog, could be turned into choice waterside home sites. Trasker Construction has done almost all of the work for Kevin Hoffmann. It’s been said that Mr. Trasker is in Kevin Hoffmann’s pocket. It’s also been said that Hoffmann is in Mr. Trasker’s pocket. They are certainly close business associates and have been for many years.”

“It’s been said,” I repeated. “You think Hoffmann’s done something to Trasker to keep him from voting against opening the Pass?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“You’ve put some thought into this,” I said.

“Some,” she admitted, adjusting her glasses. “You can check out Kevin Hoffmann’s holdings in the tax office right downtown,” she said. “Which would be more than the local media have done.”

“Thanks,” I said, getting up.

“No need,” she said, rising and accompanying me down the hall. “We haven’t had this conversation. I’ve told you nothing.”

“Nothing,” I agreed.

“Why doesn’t Mrs. Trasker like you?” I asked.

“Five years ago when I came to work here,” she said, “Mr. Trasker was looking less for a competent secretary than a possible sexual conquest. By the time he realized that he would not be permitted to even touch me, he had also realized that I was probably invaluable to the business. Mrs. Trasker is a smart woman. I’m sure she knew what had been on her husband’s mind. I’m also reasonably sure that she knew he had failed, but Mrs. Trasker is a vain woman not likely to be kindly disposed toward any woman her husband found attractive.”

When we stood in front of the receptionist’s desk, she shook my hand and said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t help you, Mr. Fonesca, but I will give Mr. Trasker your name and number as soon as he returns.”

It was almost four, but I drove up Swift and made good pre-rush hour time. Rush hour in Sarasota was still not a big problem, compared to Chicago or even Dubuque, but it slowed me down.

I got to the parking lot in front of Building C in a complex of identical three-story buildings marked A, B, C, and D off of Fruitville and Tutle. It was just before four-thirty.

Building C housed some of the offices of Children’s Services of Sarasota. Buildings A, B, and D had a few empty office spaces but most were filled by dentists, urologists, investment advisers, a jeweler, an estate appraiser, a four-doctor cardiology practice, and three allergists.

John Gutcheon was at the downstairs reception desk, literally twiddling his thumbs. John was thin, blond, about thirty, and very openly gay. His sharp tongue was his sole protection from invaders of his life choice. His world was divided into those who accepted him and those who did not accept him.

I was on John’s good list, so I got fewer verbal barbs than a lot of Children’s Service parents, who usually sullenly and always suspiciously brought in the children they had been charged with abusing. He looked up at me and shook his head.

“That cap has got to go,” he said. “You are not a hat person and only real baseball players and gay men with a certain elan can get away with it. You look like an emaciated garbageman or, to be more socially correct, an anorexic sanitary engineer.”

“Good afternoon, John,” I said. “She’s expecting me.”

“Good afternoon,” he answered. “I’m glad you prepared her. Are you saving someone today or are you going to try to pry Sally away from her caseload for dinner? She could use the respite.”

“Both.”

“Good. I’ll sign you in.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s been drearily quiet here today,” he said, looking out the window at the cars in the parking lot. “I’m giving serious thought to moving.”

“Key West?” I asked.

John rolled his eyes up to the ceiling.

“No,” he said. “Care to try for a second stereotype?”

“San Francisco,” I tried.

“You are a George Sanders-level cad, Fonesca,” he said. “Providence, Rhode Island, the city of my birth, the birth of my life which still puzzles my parents.”

“Providence,” I repeated.

“My parents are very understanding people,” he explained. “Very liberal. They walked out on Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? when they first saw it. Couldn’t accept that a beautiful man like Sidney Poitier, who played a world-famous, wealthy, and brilliant surgeon, would be in love with that dolt of a white girl.”

“I get the point. You know any good jokes, John?”

“Hundreds,” he said, opening his arms to indicate the vastness of his comic memory.

“Tell me one.”

He did. I wrote it down in my notebook.

“Flee,” he said with a wave of his right hand when I finished writing. “Your lady awaits.”

He pulled the clipboarded sign-in sheet on his desk and began to carefully enter my name.

I took the elevator up to the second floor unannounced and went through the glass doors.

In most businesses, with the clock edging toward five, the employees would be in the act of preparing for their daily evacuation. Not here. The open room the size of a baseball infield was vibrating with voices from almost every one of the small cubicles that served as office space for the caseworkers.

Most of the workers I passed were women, but there were a few men. Some of the workers were on the phone. One woman looked at me in a dazed state and ran a pencil through her thick curly hair as she talked on the phone. She closed her eyes and tilted her head back.

“Then when will you and your wife be at home?” she asked.

Never, I thought. Never.

Sally’s cubicle was big enough for her to sit facing her desk with one person seated to her left.

The person sitting was a thin black woman in a sagging tan dress. She was worn out, clutching a little black purse against her small breasts. She looked up at me with tired eyes as Sally spoke to a boy of about thirteen standing to the right of the desk. The boy looked like the woman with the purse. His eyes were halfclosed. His arms were crossed and he was leaning back against the thick glass that separated Sally from the caseworker across from her, Julio Vegas. Vegas, on the phone and alone, gave me a nod of recognition.

“Darrell,” Sally was saying evenly, “do you understand what I’m telling you?”

Darrell nodded.

“What am I saying?”

“I get in trouble again, maybe a judge takes me away from my mother.”

“More than maybe, Darrell, almost certain. And you heard your mother say that if you didn’t straighten out, she didn’t want to see you till you went somewhere else and came back a responsible man.”

“Yes,” Darrell said.

“You think you can straighten out?”

“Yes,” said Darrell without enthusiasm.

“Really?” Sally said, sitting back.

“Maybe,” the boy said, avoiding his mother’s eyes.

“Mrs. Caton?” Sally asked, turning her eyes to the thin woman. “You willing to try once more?”

“I got a choice?”

“Considering his police record and breaking into the car last night, I can start the paperwork now, put Darrell in juvenile detention, or we put him into Juvenile Justice and see how fast we can get in front of a judge if you say you can’t handle him anymore.”

It was a lose-lose situation. I recognized it. Sally had told me about it a few dozen times. Kid goes back to his mother, and there is no way outside a miracle that he is going to straighten out. Kid goes into the system, and the odds were good that if a foster home could be found, he wouldn’t straighten out and the foster home might even be worse for him than living with his mother. There was at least a shot if a good foster home could be found, but generally it was lose-lose.

Mrs. Caton looked at her son, at Sally, and at me. Sally watched the woman’s eyes and turned to me. She held up a finger to indicate that she would be finished in a minute. Normally, Sally’s minutes were half an hour long. She turned back to Mrs. Caton.

“Guess we can try again,” the woman said with a sigh and a shake of her head.

“Darrell?” Sally said, turning her head to the boy.

“I’ll habilitate,” he said.

“Good word choice,” Sally said. “Now make a good life choice.”

“Let’s go home, Darrell,” Mrs. Caton said, shaking her head to show that this was no more than she expected.

Darrell, who stood about three inches taller than his mother, moved past me. Darrell whispered to me, “What’d you do to your kid?”

Since I had no kid, I had no answer. He didn’t expect one. I didn’t put high hopes on Darrell’s habilitation.

When they were gone, Sally swiveled her chair toward me, took off her glasses, and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Sally is dark, pretty, maybe a little overweight, and definitely a lot overworked.

“That boy is thirteen,” she said. “His mother is twenty-eight. Do the math, Lew. I was bluffing. There’s no space in juvenile and no basis for any action. She’s stuck with him till he commits a felony, she kicks him out of their one-bedroom apartment, or he decides to live on the streets or with the crack dealer he picks up a few dollars from as a lookout.”

“Darrell is lost?” I said, sitting in the chair where Mrs. Caton had been.

“No,” she said, brushing back her dark hair with both hands. “Percentages are against him. I’m not. I’ll do an unannounced drop-in in a few nights, maybe take them out for coffee or an ice cream for which I will not be reimbursed.”

Sally was a widow. Her husband had died five years ago and she was raising her son and daughter in a two-bedroom apartment about five minutes away on Beneva. She worked sixty-hour weeks for thirty-seven and a half hours of pay and once in while she sent someone to me for the kind of help I can give. Someone like Kenneth Severtson.

“Use your phone?” I asked.

She handed it to me and I called Dixie.

“It’s Lew,” I said when she answered with her I’ve-got-a-bad-cold voice. “Anything on Trasker?”

“Not a trace after last Thursday,” she said in normal Dixie. “Thursday night he paid for gas on an Amex card. That’s it. No hotels, motels, escort services, bank withdrawals, bagels, cafe lattes, or bank deposits. Nothing. Whatever he’s spent since last Thursday has been with cash.”

“Thanks.”

“Did find something,” she said before I could hang up. “He’s got a record. Goes back thirty-two years. Spent two years in a California prison for nearly killing a man who he said was diddling his movie-star wife.”

“Claire Collins,” I said.

“That’s the one. William Trasker was Walter Trasnovorich when it happened. Legally changed his name when he got out in 1972.”

“Who was the man he almost killed?”

“Actor,” said Dixie. “Movie name, Don Heller. Real name, Franklin Morris. Want to know Roberta Trasker’s name before it was Claire Collins? Roberta Goulding, but I think there’s a name even earlier. There’s a big blank in her life from the age of zero to about seventeen. I’ll keep working on it.”

“Trasker have any family?” I asked. “Brothers, sisters?”

“I can find out,” she said.

I thought for a second. I could call Roberta Trasker for an answer, but I don’t like telephones. I don’t like the dead space I’m expected to fill on them and Roberta Trasker might give me a lot of dead space.

“See what you can find,” I said. “I’m going out of town tomorrow. You can leave a message on my answering machine if you find anything. And there’s someone else I’d like you to check on: Kevin Hoffmann, the real-estate developer.”

“Got it. I’ll have to bill you some more,” Dixie said apologetically. “I’m a working girl with two cats.”

I hadn’t seen any cats in her apartment but I believed her.

“Okay,” I said, and hung up to look at Sally, who was looking back at me with slightly raised eyebrows that held a question.

“Long story,” I said. “You have time for the China Palace buffet?”

Sally looked at her watch.

“No,” she said. “I’ve got to put in at least another hour filling out reports and then get home to the kids.”

“I’ll bring you some carryout. Cashew chicken and hot-and-sour soup?”

The China Palace was three minutes away on Fruitville.

“And a bunch of egg rolls for the kids,” she said, reaching down for her purse under the desk.

“On me,” I said. “I’ve got a paying client, remember?”

“Kenneth Severtson.”

“I’m going to Orlando tonight,” I said. “His wife and children are there with-”

“Andrew Stark,” she finished. “You have a plan?”

“No,” I said. “Find her, watch, maybe talk to her. Maybe I just tell Severtson where they are. He tells his lawyer. Think that’s a good idea?”

“Probably not,” she said. “I don’t think Kenneth Severtson’s likely to handle the situation very well. It’s better if you talk to her. If she won’t come back, Severtson can get a lawyer. They’re his children, too.”

“But that would take time,” I said.

“And money,” she added. “And she could be out of Florida before the paperwork could get done so someone like you could serve it.”

“What do you have on the family?”

She reached over to a stack of files leaning against the glass at the back of her desk, fished through them, and came up with the one I wanted. I knew she couldn’t let me read it, but that didn’t stop Sally from answering some questions.

“Your own words,” I said.

“My own words,” she said, pursing her lips. “Kenneth Severtson is not the Cosby dad, but he’s not Homer Simpson either. He’s got a temper. He’s tough to get through to. They have credit-card payment problems, even talked about bankruptcy. His business is good, but they spend like its Microsoft. He took it out on his wife. The police were called in. He needed help. He doesn’t trust therapy and resented our intervention. Janice isn’t a mouse, but she isn’t a dragon. Good mothers can do dumb things when it comes to their kids. I had her down as a loyal wife who was willing to put up with a lot to keep her marriage and family together.”

“Things have changed,” I said.

“Andrew Stark,” she said. “Stark isn’t an old friend of the family. Went into partnership with Kenneth Severtson a few years ago. Definitely a shady background. He’s done some very soft time for consumer fraud, and he has not been particularly polite in dealing with women who are, unaccountably, attracted to him.”

“You met him?”

“No, just made a few calls to friends in the sheriff’s office.”

“So?” I asked.

“She’ll probably stay with Stark until he gets tired of her. Or maybe it’s true love. Truth is, Lewis, I don’t care about the future of Andrew Stark and only dimly about Janice Severtson. It’s the kids. Do what you can, Lew.”

I nodded.

Sally looked over at Julio Vegas, who was in animated conversation on the phone in Spanish.

“I’ll be back with Chinese in a shopping bag,” I said, getting up.

“I’d kiss you if we weren’t in the equivalent of South Gate Mall,” she said with a tired smile as she touched my hand. “Be careful.”

“At the China Palace?”

“In Disneyville.”